Faking Death Afterwards

The fake death is a difficult trope in itself, because it’s been done very often in recent decades and people almost suspect that certain deaths are fake. There are, however, also cases where the death was meant to be final, but was undone later for plot-related reasons. Let’s have a look at two of those and see how they worked out, shall we?

My first example is a rather recent one: Horst Cabal from the Johannes Cabal series. At the end of the first novel, “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer”, Horst, already a vampire, decides to go out into the sun and end his life, shocked at what has become of his little brother Johannes. In the fourth novel, “The Brothers Cabal”, Horst is resurrected by an evil organisation to become their ‘Lord of the Dead’. Needless to say that Horst, the nicest vampire ever (yes, including Edward), isn’t staying in that capacity for long and, eventually, the brothers are reunited against said organisation.

Of course, a series centred on a necromancer does have it a bit easier to bring a dead (or un-dead) person back to life. Magic clearly exists in Johannes’ world, it is possible to raise the dead again (several stories deal with that, although we only see Johannes raise two people). Horst is brought back with a complicated ritual which he can’t tell his brother about, on account of not having seen all of it and on account of not knowing as many dead languages as Johannes.

Given that Hammer Studios have raised Dracula often enough so he should have invested in a revolving door for his coffin lid, raising vampires isn’t a new idea. Horst’s ashes, for some reason, have remained gathered in the grass where he died (for the second time), so he can be resurrected rather easily. Once he’s also fed again (insisting on not killing the three ‘sacrifices’ brought along, but taking a bite from everyone), he’s back to normal.

I’m pretty certain that when “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” was written, Horst’s death was meant to be final. However, the fourth novel draws heavily on the relationship between the brothers and the whole ministerium tenebrae situation is introduced through his eyes. It would be hard to tell the first half of the story from Johannes’ point of view. Not to mention Horst has to nurture his brother back to health after the events of “The Fear Institute”.

My second example is much older - the death and return of Sherlock Holmes. When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “The Final Problem” as the last story of the second set of twelve to be published by the Strand Magazine, he wanted to get rid of Sherlock Holmes. The great detective was meant to stay dead, but twelve years later, realizing that Holmes was always good for income, Doyle brought him back to life in “The Empty House” (in-between, he published “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, but that one is set before “The Final Problem”). Now, there are some plot problems in both stories, but those I will tackle in another post. This one is about how Holmes was killed and later on resurrected again.

Since Sherlock Holmes lives in a world without magic, there wasn’t just a ritual to invent in order to get him back, instead, he needed not to die at all in the first place. Luckily, Doyle wanted to give him a hero’s death, which means he didn’t die in plain view, but was presumed dead after a confrontation with his nemesis at the Reichenbach Fall. Had Doyle decided to have Holmes shot or stabbed in plain view of Dr. Watson, leaving a body to deal with, his resurrection wouldn’t have been possible at all (unlike that of Horst Cabal).

Here the short story of Holmes’ death and resurrection. In “The Final Problem”, Holmes is after the head of a criminal organisation (one might even say the head of the underworld as a such), a former professor of mathematics named James Moriarty (whose brother, a colonel, strangely enough carries the same first name). He has worked hard to unravel the net and give the police all the information they will need to catch Moriarty and his men. For this, he’s been visited by the Professor and been threatened with death. He’s been in three suspicious ‘accidents’ in one day. Therefore, Holmes asks Watson to accompany him to the Continent, where they will stay for a week, well past the time when all members of the organisation should be rounded up. At Strasbourg, they learn that Moriarty and three of his lieutenants escaped the net and are still at large. At the Reichenbach Fall, high up in the Swiss mountains, Watson is lured from Holmes’ side and, when he comes back after realizing it, finds traces which lead him to deduce that Holmes and Moriarty met at the fall, fought, and went over the ledge together, dying in the gorge. None of the bodies is ever recovered, but that doesn’t seem unusual for the area. Three in-world years later, Watson’s interest is peaked by a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes - the death of Ronald Adair, a young nobleman who was shot with a revolver bullet in his locked first-floor (second floor, if you’re American) sitting room. While lingering outside the scene of the crime, Watson collides with an old, gruff bibliophile who comes to his house later to apologize and peddle books - only to turn into Sherlock Holmes while Watson, prompted to, turns his back on him. After recovering from the shock of seeing his old friend alive, Watson then learns that Holmes survived the fight, but decided to go into hiding because three lieutenants were still out there (and one was throwing boulders at him). The murder of Ronald Adair made him come back to finally deal with one of the lieutenants - Colonel Sebastian Moran. Moran is lured into a trap and arrested - though not for the attempted murder of Sherlock Holmes, but for the murder of Ronald Adair. How he did it? With a special air gun that uses revolver ammunition. The air gun, by the by, is already mentioned early on in “The Final Problem” as a danger Holmes fears.

During “The Final Problem”, Doyle drops massive foreshadowing twice that it will be the last story, having Holmes claim he would gladly die, if he could take Moriarty with him, and that he also has grown tired with his work and is in a financial situation in which he doesn’t need to work any longer. Therefore, having him die in a fight with Moriarty, indeed taking the professor along, is a good death for the great detective. Because there was no body, it’s also technically possible for Holmes to come back to life. A corpse would have been ultimate proof (although there are ways around that, too, as the modern interpretation of the TV series “Sherlock” proves). A man missing in action can come back, at least. That Holmes notified his brother, who kept his rooms cared for, but not his best friend, is explained, if badly so, during the story. Badly so, because Watson has proven he can keep secrets by not publishing some cases until a long while later (and only ever hinting at others). Yet, the story works well enough (the plot problems are not with the return as a such, but with other parts of the stories).

If you want to fake a death from the beginning, you can plot it out so that a second explanation is possible. If you decide after the facts, after the story is published and can’t be changed any longer, to raise someone from the dead, you have to be careful about how you explain things. In the Johannes Cabal stories, the resurrection of Horst Cabal works because magic exists and we’ve all seen vampires resurrected before. Sherlock Holmes’ return from the dead only works out because Doyle decided not to present a body in the first place and readers already know that Watson is not Holmes equal in deduction. Always be careful if, when, and how you kill off a main character - you never know if you’ll need them again!