"The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone"

by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson
originally published Shadows Over Baker Street, 2002

Holmes and Watson are summoned by Thomas Stone to investigate his sister, Violet.  Three years ago, she went swimming in a lake in Greece, and came out not herself - amnesiac, emotionally absent, and unable to eat food.  She's been wasting away for three years but, impossibly, is still alive.

Holmes and Watson find her debilitated but functioning.  She grabs Holmes arms and demands that he take her "diary", which is full of technical diagrams and instructions, and have some things made by machinists and lens manufacturers.  After reading the diary, Holmes suprisingly agrees, telling Watson that the girl's touch made him aware of a race of advanced beings, living in earth's distant past, who could send their consciousness forward through time to study different eras.  It seems Violet is a victim of the Great Race.  But this, an early experiment in the process they will later perfect, has gone awry.

Holmes has a strange device manufactured, and returns to the Stone home with it.  He secludes himself in her bedroom, with no witnesses, and does something with the machine.  Violet's consciousness is restored to her body, with no memory of her strange experience.  Holmes never explains what happened.

Though entertaining and with an interesting concept, this story is little more than a trifle.