Let this journal stand as the one trueaccount of the events in and around Dartmoor and the estate known as Baskerville Hall. Undoubtedly, the exploits there of Sherlock Holmes and his biographer Dr. Watson will command a worldwide audience once published. I hope this modest diary will serve as a corrective to Watson’s inevitable fabrications and omissions regarding the circumstances surrounding the curse and terrible hound of the Baskervilles.

✶

Where to begin? Last night, I fled home and hearth to plunge headlong into the treacherous bog of Grimpen Mire with only self-preservation in mind. In dinner coat and spats, I raced across the mire without a lamp to guide my way. Feverish in my escape, fearing being struck by a bullet from Dr. Watson’s military pistol, my footrace into the mire was almost animalistic in instinct.

Crossing from the hilly moors into the bog-mire was signaled by the fetid stench of Grimpen, its miasmas and decomposition saturating the foggy night air. The foul, rotten-egg stench is evidence of a cycle of renewal. All that comes from the earth returns to the earth. Muscle and skin and eyeball and brain matter are mulched down by the mire from their exquisite forms to a muck of fetid goop. From this stew comes new life reconstructed, as it were, nourishing off the death of that which precedes it.

Once in the mire, my progress reduced to a near crawl for fear of plunging into a muddy bog pit and twisting a knee. Worse, I feared encountering a sink pit and being drawn whole into the thick, churning sludge, sucked under like a giant anaconda devouring a fawn. In some parts, I resorted to advancing on hands and knees to test my way with full assurance.

I reckon it was near two in the morning before I reached the tin mine, now long-abandoned and quite desolate. The mine is on an island within the mire, with a mere thread of solid ground acting as a natural bridge to cross and reach it. Even in daytime, the crossing is treacherous. The moat about the island is blanketed by a thick mesh of bog-peat and grass, a great rug hiding a massive trapdoor capable of killing horses and mules, kings and queens, barons and baronets…even pretenders to the throne.

Sopping wet, covered in mud, bitten up by mites and bog fleas, I stood among the mine’s abandoned structures with a cocked ear. I waited for the distant sounds of the men of Dartmoor mobbing and thirsting for blood—my blood. No sight of torches dancing in the fog-ridden moonlight. No baying of bloodhounds, no shouts demanding I surrender myself. My inflamed mind cooled as I recognized my pursuers had not made even basic progress to the mire’s edge. Grimpen’s reputation as a watery grave for calves and dogs has become my first line of defense, and a formidable one at that.

Exhausted, I retired to a concrete bunker at the rear of the island. This was once the explosive depot storing the miners’ detonators and TNT. The depot does not compare to the great explosive storehouses I’ve seen in South America, where mining tends to be dry rather than wet, and the mineral veins deep rather than shallow. For now, this depot serves just fine as a refuge from the elements.

Although the events of last night remain a shock to me, I can at least prove I was not ill-prepared for them. Over the course of months, I have assembled here a humble camp. In this storehouse, I keep a cot, dry goods, spare clothes, wool blankets for the fog-soused nights, hardtack and salt pork, fresh water, Caribbean rum, a small cache of tobacco and its accouterments…all the necessaries for fire, light, and warmth. Perhaps I should have stocked more in the way of self-defense. Save for a buck knife and a Colt Single-Action Army—one of the few mementoes I’ve kept of the New World—I am defenseless and alone. The men of Dartmoor are armed, savage, and legion.

Although I earned an appetite after my swift campaign across moor and mire, I took no meal. The rum shot a little fire into my belly and cooled my panicked head. I shook out three wool blankets from my cache. After starting a meager fire in the rear of the storehouse, I arranged my wet clothes to dry. I draped one of the blankets over my wretched self and stood at the fire, teeth chattering and tucked-in arms shaking, wondering if I had caught my death.

No, wondering what my next moves should be.

More than the frigid water, I shook with bitter outrage. Here I stood, in the center of a damp, godforsaken bog, only able to count the simple blessings of a wood fire and a roof overhead. An entire county beyond the bog’s borders waits to slaughter me in my socks. To emerge from Grimpen Mire was tantamount to tying off the thirteen loops of the hangman’s knot and slipping the noose about my own neck.

I am a Baskerville, born into aristocracy and raised with a proper education. I’ve traveled from New World to Old, enjoyed the hard-earned weight of a fortune in my purse many times, and watched it slip away just as often. My raven-haired wife, known across Central America for her soul-weakening beauty, is a turncoat. My closest friend has abandoned me. Nero is dead. Agrippina is…unknown. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted.

How did I arrive at this position? Last night, a magician walked on stage, employed his world-famous sleight-of-hand, and—poof!—I disappeared. His act was so convincing, not one audience member raised a hand to request my return.

Of course, the illusionist I speak of is the damnable Sherlock Holmes.

After the botched events of last night, I must now consider the possibility that matters will never sufficiently cool for me to leave this place. Not only is all of Dartmoor on their guard for my presumptive exit from Grimpen Mire, by now, Scotland Yard has undoubtedly placed a watch for me at all ports. Never could I have foreseen an international light like Sherlock Holmes becoming involved in this matter, nor the presence of his faithful spaniel Dr. Watson, who will undoubtedly polish and buff the account of his involvement to exaggerated effect.

In my many treks across the bog, humping in food and supplies to this old tin mine, I managed to include a pocket leather-bound notebook, as well as two fountain pens and traveling bottle of India ink. This provision was not to maintain anything like a journal or memoir. In my travels, I’ve learned that a bit of paper and a ready supply of ink to be invaluable in a pinch. Now I find another use for these tools: To record my version of the events in and around Baskerville Hall, which concluded so unjustly last night.

✶

When I awoke this morning and glanced about this abandoned explosives storehouse, in my bleary daze, I thought I’d been transported to a gray windowless prison cell.

I revived the fire I’d made in the wee hours and brewed coffee from a small tin of Costa Rican beans I stashed here. Crushing the beans and boiling the water reminded me of the fine morning meals we used to assemble on the muggy floor of the Amazon before a day in the banana fields. It’s a simple luxury, these brief memories.

Today, I abandon the dowdy English costume I adopted of a naturalist, the chaser of butterflies, the absentminded bachelor of Merripit House, running around the moors with my trusty net flapping behind me like a regatta’s sailing flag. There will never be occasion again for tie and dinner jacket. My father taught me there existed an upward path in this world, if only I could locate it. The truth is plain to me now. All paths lead to this watery, bog-ridden island, surrounded by snapping turtles and parasites eager to burrow into your scalp.

I don the clothes I cached here. They are more suitable for this dank environment. The dungarees and denim bring with them a renewed nostalgia for my years in the fields of Brazil and Panama. Hands in the dirt. Shovel handles and machete grips. The songs shared as we moved from tree to tree gathering nature’s yield. From the earth I came, to the earth I return.

✶

After the tin miners’ abandoned their claim to Grimpen Mire, nature reclaimed the island. Peat and mud have begun to overtake the island the miners toiled so hard to develop. Someday the cottages and storehouses will sink into the bog, be digested whole, and forgotten.

As with the explosives depot, the mess hall was emptied before the mine was abandoned. Not even a footstool was left behind. It is there I kenneled Nero and Agrippina, the Hellhounds of the Baskervilles. Their cages remain, as do their water and feed bowls. Sticks and leashes, chokers and collars, the muzzles they chewed through like so much jerky. Steak bones for rewards. Leather crops across their snouts for simple punishments. Training a beast requires steely resolve, make no mistake.

From the refuse, I produce the pair’s first harnesses and muzzles, all blackened leather with the seller’s name embossed in ripe gold print. The gold embossment is long destroyed—Nero and Agrippina fought any restriction I placed on them.

Holding the leather to the morning sunlight, I locate the faint outline of the seller’s name impressed into it: Ross & Mangles, Brompton Cross, London.