The Drowned Geologist (1898)

"The Drowned Geologist (1898)" is a short story by Caitlin R. Kiernan that combines the fictional worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker. It was first published in Shadows Over Baker Street (Delrey, 2003).
The story reflects Kiernan's fascination with deep time, as when the narrator remarks:
==Synopsis==
The story is narrated by Dr. Tobias Logan, in the form of a letter to Dr. John Watson, dated 10 May 1898. Logan is a paleontologist who has come to Whitby, England, where he plans to meet up with a geologist friend from London, Sir Elijah Purdy, to examine Whitby's famous fossil beds. While Logan is there, a schooner named Demeter runs aground, creating a to-do that he doesn't pay much attention to. (Logan notes, "I have a habit of becoming so intent upon my collecting that I may often neglect to glance about me for long stretches.")
Logan encounters a mysterious stranger whom he suspects is Watson's friend Sherlock Holmes, even though Holmes at the time was supposed to have died in Switzerland. The stranger tells Logan of mysterious artifacts that have been discovered on the Yorkshire coast, tablets that seem to have writing on them but which were found in strata countless millions of years too old.
Logan receives a note from his friend Purdy that refers to "unusual fossils" he found, and asks, "Are you familiar with Phoenician (?) god Dagon or Irish Daoine Domhain?" Purdy later turns up drowned. Only Logan notices that his corpse is holding "a small ammonite of the genus Dactylioceras"--a recently living specimen of a species long extinct.
Logan receives a note from the stranger--signed "S. H."--that reveals that the mysterious tablets have all disappeared. The writer tells Logan, "Dark and ancient powers, the whim of inhuman beings of inconceivable antiquity and malignancy, may be at work here"; he urges the paleontologist to forget the matter if he can. Logan notes that the ammonite specimen, too, was taken in a burglary.
The story ends with a note saying that the unmailed letter to Watson was found after Logan's death by hanging on May 11, 1898.
==Characters ==
*Dr. Tobias Logan: A paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History from 1894-1898.
*S. H.: A mysterious stranger who appears to be the famous detective Sherlock Holmes.
*Dr. John Watson: A medical doctor and a veteran of the Afghan wars; Holmes' friend and biographer.
*Sir Elijah Purdy: A fellow of the Geological Society of London and a friend of Logan's.
==Connections==
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are, of course, the creations of Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle killed Holmes off in "The Final Problem", published in 1893, and brought him back by popular demand in 1905's The Return of Sherlock Holmes, though by the internal chronology of Doyle's stories, Holmes had resurfaced several years before 1898.Baker Street Wiki, "Timeline of Sherlock Holmes"
The Demeter is the ship on which Dracula first arrives in England in Bram Stoker's novel; it arrives at Whitby on August 8, 1898, as in Kiernan's story, with its crew either missing or dead.Preceden, "Dracula: Chronological Order"
The reference to the "Daoine Domhain"--Irish for "Deep Ones"--links this story to Kiernan's "Valentia", where the Mythos creatures are also so called. The two stories also share a theme of paleontological evidence that contradicts the accepted history being suppressed, a trope found in "From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6" as well.
Another scientist character is named Ogilvey, possibly a reference to the similarly-named Ogilvy from H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.
==References==
Category:Caitlin R. Kiernan works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Crossovers