In woodland just before sunrise, seven year old Henry Knight is running through the trees panting heavily. He is repeatedly looking behind him and having flashbacks to the terrible scene he has recently witnessed where a man was being attacked by someone – or something. The man was screaming and crying out in terror, scrabbling at the ground as he tried to get away from his attacker, which was growling and snarling ferociously. Henry runs on, trying to get away from the horror. After some time, he has cleared the trees and is out on moorland. He runs up an incline just as an old woman comes over the top of the rise. She is walking her dog.
GRACE: Oh, hello.
(Henry stops and looks at her, but his attention is mostly focused on her dog – some kind of spaniel which just stands there pretty much ignoring him.)
GRACE: Are you all right?
(Still Henry stares at the dog, whose features are mostly obscured in shadow due to the sun rising behind it.)
GRACE: What is it, dear? Are you lost?
(The dog pokes its nose towards him in a friendly way. Henry screams in utter terror.)
Twenty years later, the young boy’s screams are echoing in adult Henry’s ears. He looks around blankly as if he doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, then his face fills with horror as he realises that he is standing in the middle of a deep hollow in the woods. He starts to stumble away.
OPENING CREDITS.
BAKER STREET. As the door to 221B slams closed on someone who has just gone inside, the camera pans across to show two nodding dogs in the window of Speedy’s café. Upstairs in the flat, the living room door bursts open and Sherlock charges in, stopping just inside the room and slamming the end of a long pole down onto the ground. Sitting in his chair, John looks round and his eyes widen at the sight of his flatmate, who is wearing black trousers and a white shirt and whose arms, chest and face are covered with blood – far too much blood for it to be his own – and who is holding a harpoon. He looks round to John, breathing heavily.
SHERLOCK: Well, that was tedious.
JOHN: You went on the Tube like that?!
SHERLOCK (irritated): None of the cabs would take me.
(He walks out of the room.)
Later he is back in the room having cleaned himself up and changed into a clean shirt and trousers with one of his blue dressing gowns over the top. He is still carrying the harpoon and is pacing rapidly between the door and the window, looking round repeatedly at John as he sits in his chair flicking through the newspapers.
SHERLOCK (impatiently): Nothing?
JOHN: Military coup in Uganda.
SHERLOCK: Hmm.
(John chuckles in amusement as he sees something in one of the papers.)
JOHN: Another photo of you with the, er ...
(He points to a photograph of Sherlock wearing the deerstalker hat. Sherlock makes a disgusted noise. John moves on to another newspaper.)
JOHN: Oh, um, Cabinet reshuffle.
SHERLOCK (furious): Nothing of importance?
(He slams the end of the harpoon onto the ground and roars with rage.)
SHERLOCK: Oh, God!
(He looks round at John intensely.)
SHERLOCK: John, I need some. Get me some.
