She perked up in interest. “Do you read it?”
“No, I don’t know German. And besides, I don’t waste my time reading idealistic bullshit.”
I drew in a sharp breath. This was what I had been dreading.
Raizel’s mouth flattened into a tight line. Even the darkness couldn’t conceal the rage burning in her features. “Excuse me?”
“That’s what it is, isn’t it? Idealistic, meaningless bullshit.” Frankie scoffed. “There’s always going to be someone kicking you down so they can climb higher. It’s just human nature. Why waste your time trying to change the system when you can just game it?”
“Frankie, I think your friend is waiting,” I said to keep tempers from boiling over.
With Raizel seething in silence behind me, we joined the man in the houndstooth suit on the sidewalk.
“Mr. Whitby, these are my friends, Alex and, uh, Ryan.” Frankie spoke English slowly, with clear deliberation. “Ryan, Alex, meet Mr. Whitby. He is a...business associate.”
“A pleasure to meet you.” Mr. Whitby tipped his chin in acknowledgment. His blue eyes were genial and closely set, with one magnified by a golden monocle. When he smiled, he resembled a turtle from a children’s picture book. “But please, call me Six here. I insist.”
“What kind of name is Six?” I whispered to Raizel once Whitby’s back was turned.
“It’s a number,” she said, looking at me as though I was dense.
I rolled my eyes. “I never would have guessed.”
Frankie looked back at us and mouthed, No Yiddish.
Entering the alley was like diving into a cave. We splashed through shallow puddles, startling flies from their perches atop piles of rotten food. Yellow light emitted from a niche ahead. We stopped in front of the heavy wooden door, whose stained-glass fanlight formed a grinning skull and crossbones.
Whitby held the door for us. “Come in.”
At the bottom of the stairs, we found ourselves in a dim entry hall. There were accommodations for plenty of people, but only a few chairs were occupied at this midnight hour. Black wainscoting adorned the burgundy walls. The color scheme conspired with the darkness to make the room seem larger than it truly was, the walls receding into the edges of my vision.
Turned low, the gas jets offered a subdued glow, their flames contained within unusual white fixtures. As I stepped through the door and my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I discerned yellowed teeth, naked sockets fitted with glass orbs that refracted the firelight. My breath caught in my throat.
The lamps were made from human skulls.
Beside me, Raizel paled considerably.
“Those can’t possibly be real,” she whispered to me.
I swallowed hard. “I think they are.”
“I told you, it’s not like the Masthead,” Frankie said, falling into line beside us. He put his hand on my upper back briefly, as though he meant to pull me close or turn me away from the worst of it. Then his fingers slipped away, and he strode on ahead.
Even greater horrors adorned the walls surrounding us and were fastened by ropes to the ceiling above. Swords, axes, machetes, spears, and crude instruments that resembled primitive torture devices.
Be brave. I stepped deeper into the room. Fear nothing.
How was it any different than washing corpses? The dead remained dead, no matter how much we wished they could come back.
As Mr. Whitby led us deeper into the room, he explained that the club was decorated with relics of slaughter. A knife used for murder. Nooses from the execution yard. The lamps were not porcelain or chalkware; they had been made from the skulls of the mad, acquired from Dunning Asylum.
I thought of my father and how he might wash up one day along a beach in England or Greenland or Brooklyn. He must be as thin and pale as these bones now. I wished I would stop thinking about these things. I hated how every time I pushed the thoughts from my head, they rammed back into me like a runaway wagon.
As we passed a mannequin dressed in a frock coat and top hat, Mr. Whitby stopped to appreciate it. A wicked knife was fixed to the figure’s hand.
“Allow me to introduce you three to our club’s honorary president, Jack the Ripper.” He winked at us. “Or rather, a representative of him. He has yet to honor us with his presence.”
“Well, I think we’ve found our culprit,” I whispered to Raizel.
She rolled her eyes. “Speaking of Jack the Ripper, we’ve heard stories about body parts washing up on Lake Michigan’s shoreline. A few weeks ago, a foot was found, still within its shoe. And before that, a skull and torso. Do you think there’s a connection?”
“Ah, yes. I heard about that.” He chuckled. “The authorities actually believe the parts belong to just one or two people. Both male. Suicides, perhaps. When bodies are in water for long, they begin to rot. The limbs break free at the joints. Because of the shoe’s rubberized soles, the feet sometimes float to the surface.”
“Oh.” Raizel’s face dropped.
“But isn’t it possible those people were murdered?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose. Nonetheless, those finds hardly fit the Ripper’s modus operandi. They bear only a slight resemblance to the Thames Torso Murders, and here at the club, we can’t even decide if the Ripper was responsible for those murders either.”
“Well, did someone ever come here asking about those murders?” Raizel asked.
“Not that I recall,” he said after mulling it over in silence. “We seldom get guests here.”
“I see.” Her shoulders slumped in disappointment.
Mr. Whitby led us to the bar at the other end of the room. The gaslight gleamed off the bartender’s slicked-back hair and glowed in his eyes like twin moons. Meeting his gaze, I thought I could see the skull lamp fixtures reflected in his dark irises as well.
“Get me the regular, old friend,” Whitby said, slapping his hand on the bar.
“Six, what is the meaning of this?” the bartender asked in English, his voice as smooth and oily as his hair. “These boys don’t belong here. This is a members-only club.”
“Easy, One,” Whitby said. “This place could use some new blood.”
“Does he mean that literally?” I asked Raizel as the bartender poured amber liquor into a faceted crystal glass.
“No Yiddish, remember?” she whispered back furiously, before smiling at the bartender and responding to him in English: “We have heard great things about this club.”
The man on our left, a mustached fellow with gray eyes, regarded us curiously. Dressed more casually than Whitby, he had his sleeves rolled back to expose a green inked dragon curling up his right forearm, its tail encircling the letters КАТ burnt into his flesh. With the dragon’s broad horselike face and flattened body, it resembled the sort of zmeu that might adorn a medieval icon or tapestry.
To our right, an emaciated mummy of a man guzzled ruby-red punch out of what eerily resembled a human brainpan. Heavy gold rings glinted on his tobacco-stained fingers. Lowering his cup, he glared at us with cold contempt.
Frankie slid a couple coins across the counter and nodded to Mr. Whitby. “I’ll have what he’s having.”
“We’re here for business,” I hissed at him.
“And one for my friend, to help him extract the stick from his ass.”
“Too bad your drink won’t help you develop a brain,” I said, but I took the cordial glass he offered me anyway. At the very least, the liquor might thaw the chill the storm had buried in my bones.
“Would you like one?” Frankie asked Raizel.
“Please.”
While the bartender poured her drink, I looked back at the entrance. I didn’t much care for the lack of windows or the dark walls, not to mention the decor itself. If something happened down here, nobody would know.
“I suppose you three co
uld stay,” the bartender said after pocketing Frankie’s tip. “On one condition.”
I exchanged an uneasy look with Raizel and Frankie.
“What condition?” Raizel asked.
“Each of you have to tell a story.”
She chuckled. “Excuse me?”
“It’s what we do here,” Mr. Whitby explained. “It’s the entire purpose of the club. We come here and discuss tales of murder and tragedy.”
Ah. That explained the decor.
“But—” Mr. Whitby held up a finger “—the story must be real.”
Frankie gave it some thought. “I have one.”
“Ah, I knew you’d step up to the challenge, my lad.” He took another slug of his drink. “Enlighten us.”
“I know a man who can get almost anything you want, provided you can pay the price.” Frankie set his glass on the counter. Whenever he told a story, he would gesture for emphasis, and now was no exception. “He barters in stolen goods mainly, but he also has a few respectable clients with more, dare I say, discerning tastes.”
I could feel the eyes of the clubs’ occupants shifting toward us. The man with the dragon tattoo cocked his head in interest, while the old one tapped his ring-adorned fingers against his cup, which I was now certain was in fact made from a human skull. Skin prickling, I downed the rest of my drink.
“Doctors. Scholars. Professors. They come to him looking for skeletons and jarred organs. Why? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.” Frankie nodded toward the skull-lamps adorning the walls. “Quite possibly, he’s the same one who found you those. This man, he doesn’t just go around digging up graves or rutting through the potter’s field over in Dunning. No. He has a particular source, a drugstore owner and hotel man, uh, a—”
“Hotelier?” Mr. Whitby guessed. Frankie cocked a finger at him.
“Yes, that’s the word. This hotelier brings him these parts. Now, this fence used to be a doctor, and he knows how to identify a skeleton’s sex based on, I don’t know, measurements.” Frankie waved a hand dismissively. “Point is, all the skeletons have been women. Every single one of them.”
Frankie trailed off. We waited.
“Well?” Raizel asked after Frankie had taken another sip of liquor.
He arched an eyebrow. “Well, what?”
“Is that all?”
“It’s all he told me.”
She sighed. “You’re a terrible storyteller. I suppose I’ll go next. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Homestead Strike, but I doubt you have heard it told this way. Gather close, I will tell you how last year, the fearless anarchist, Alexander Berkman, crept into the office of the oppressor Frick, armed only with a revolver and a makeshift shank, and—”
“Next,” Mr. Whitby declared.
“Excuse me? I barely even started.”
“Assassination attempts do not count.” As Raizel fumed in silence, he turned to me. “I don’t suppose you have a story?”
“Um...” I racked my mind for what to say. I had been able to follow along with the conversation up until this point, but I dreaded the thought of having to speak. Maybe it was the club’s stuffiness or the sallow glow of the gaslights, but the room seemed to shrink by the moment. I loosened my collar. “There was a bokher, a boy, I mean, who was found...”
As I spoke, the air thickened. I struggled to breathe, yet the words flowed from my mouth, faster now:
“A boy was found in the—” lagoon at the World’s Fair, I meant to say, except the words that came out were “—the Pletzl, in an abandoned home, his neck slit. 1889. His name was Daniel. Three others went missing in Paris that summer. There were two boys found in London in 1887, young Jews, just children. They had fallen into the Thames and drowned. There were—”
My voice broke abruptly, as though a pair of hands had grabbed hold of my throat and wrenched the words from me. Seized by a panic I couldn’t name, I stumbled back from the bar, nearly knocking shoulders with the tattooed man.
“Excuse me,” I choked, pressing my hand over my mouth.
Frankie reached for me, my name forming on his lips.
“I’m fine, I just need some fresh air.” I didn’t realize I had spoken in Yiddish until the words left me. I twisted away from him and fled for the exit. Even after I reached the stairs and took them two at a time, the gas lamps’ glow lingered in my vision like spreading flames.
In the alley outside, I sank against the wall, pressing my cheek to the bricks. As I drew in gulps of cool night air, the crushing pressure on my throat slowly loosened. My panic faded into an absence. I crammed my ribbon tie in my vest pocket and unbuttoned my collar, wiping at the clammy sweat dewed on my neck.
“You dropped this,” a voice said from behind me, and I opened my eyes.
The tattooed man held my bowler cap out to me.
“Thank you.” I took it back from him and put it on again.
“Interesting story.” His English was clipped by a faint accent I couldn’t trace. I didn’t think it was American, but I couldn’t be certain. Southern, perhaps. “How does it continue?”
“I don’t know.” I must have heard about those murders somewhere. My father must have told me about them when he had first gotten it in his head to come to America, appealing to my mother that the whole of Europe was steeped in Jewish blood.
“Perhaps you will.” His gaze focused on something over my shoulder. “Ah. Your friend is coming. Take care.”
As the man retreated into the club, Raizel joined me.
“Are you all right, Alter?” she asked.
“I’m fine now. It was just too hot in there.” I adjusted my bowler cap. “Where’s Frankie?”
“Finishing off his drink.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t think Aaron would have stayed here long. He doesn’t speak English well enough to talk to any of these men.”
Several minutes later, Frankie joined us in the alley.
“You ran out of there pretty quickly,” he told me. “Don’t tell me you can’t hold down a single drink?”
I rubbed my eyes. “It wasn’t the drink. I’m just... I’m so exhausted. I barely slept last night.”
“I can tell. What was that back there? You could hardly call it a story.”
“Just something my dad must have talked about once, I think.” I sighed. “I don’t think anyone here is responsible for Aaron’s disappearance.”
“Oh, so the murder weapons on the walls aren’t suspicious at all?” Raizel asked sarcastically. “Or the skulls for lamps?”
“They’re fascinated by murder, but that doesn’t make them murderers.” Now that I had a chance to think about it, the Whitechapel Club’s decorations struck me as ostentatious and overdone as the false medals of a military imposter. “They’re playing pretend here.”
“I have to agree with Alter,” Frankie said, combing a hand through his hair. “The only thing these men are guilty of is their lack of taste. Before you two showed up, I was telling Mr. Whitby about Victor’s murder.”
“Victor?” Raizel asked.
“An old friend of ours,” I explained.
“Mr. Whitby doesn’t know anything about it,” Frankie continued. “The people here are only interested in the notorious murders. Jack the Ripper. The Servant Girl Annihilator. Boston Borgia. The death of some street kid is nothing in comparison. It happens all the time.”
Raizel sighed. “Maybe you’re right. In any case, I doubt we’re going to gain anything else here tonight. Let’s go home.”
15
The next morning, I woke with nausea so bad, I had to scramble across the floor for the chamber pot. I retched until my throat burned, an iron band of pain cinched tight around my windpipe. Exhausted, I pressed my cheek against the side of my steamer trunk and pushed the bowl away.
Dovid sat up, pushing back his nest of black hair
. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I think it’s all the potatoes.”
He and Haskel exchanged looks.
“Maybe you should go to a doctor,” Haskel ventured. “You’re looking a bit pale, and your voice—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I closed my eyes. “It’ll pass...”
Neither of them answered, but on our walk to shul, they kept glancing at me worriedly.
While Haskel and Dovid found a seat in the front, I sat in the back row and took my prayer shawl from my rucksack. At the front of the hall loomed the wooden ark containing the Torah, its velvet curtain adorned with ornate goldwork.
Although my nausea had faded, I still felt cold and stiff. The chazzan’s sonorous chanting soothed me like balm on a burn. All throughout the world, shuls were reciting the same passage from the Torah. It was comforting to know that back in Piatra Neamţ, the chazzan had sung these same words just half a day before.
My comfort didn’t last. As I went through the standard motions—the rising and sitting, the donning of the prayer shawl, the prayers that came to my lips as naturally as breathing—anxiety stirred in my gut. By the time we began the recital of the Mourner’s Kaddish, my anxiety had become dread, and the cramping and dizziness had returned with a vengeance.
I fisted my hands at my sides and stood through it, echoing amen when it was appropriate. My limbs felt frozen stiff, my muscles clenched so tightly that the tendons bulged on the backs of my hands.
From the women’s section across the room, I felt Mrs. Brenner’s intense dark eyes burning into me. She had tried approaching me before we had taken our seats, but I had pretended not to see her and turned away. I dreaded to imagine what she wanted to tell me.
A darkness had crept over you, she’d said, and maybe she was right. Maybe there was something terribly wrong with me. Something growing inside of me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the clapboard walls, the lack of windows. We would never hear a stranger coming. And the walls would catch fire. And smoke would fill my lungs, hot and smothering, like ashes crammed down my throat—I could taste it now.
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