by Greg James
Then, there were small voices, laughter, empty sounds, little bones disturbed in their coffins. Unseen fingers rifling through the resting limbs of the dead.
“You leave my boys alone,” Liz’s voice was hoarse, “bloody well leave them be.”
“Mummy ... come with us ... come out of the circle ... ”
“No, my boys are dead. They can’t speak. I said you leave them alone, you hear?”
“We speak, mummy ... and it’s so cold ... need a hug, mummy ... need a cuddle and a kiss goodnight ... ”
Liz blinked tears away and blew a kiss into the darkness, “Good night, my sweethearts. Mummy loves you, always have, always will. Go sleep now. Go sleep ‘til morning.”
And the sounds evaporated.
Jerry and Spice could hear Liz sobbing in the dark.
“Liz-” Jerry began.
“Show yourself! You fuckin’ cowards! Using my boys like that!”
Everyone tensed, watching, waiting, feeling the sepulchral ambience cast by the vacuum tubes resonating in their bones. The electrified elements of the circle sizzled, spitting. Then, Jerry trembled, throwing his head back violently, he felt something leave him, escaping at long last.
“Jack is here!” he screamed.
Smoke was rising up from the candle at the centre of the table, filling the library with the raw perfume of lilies; corpse-flowers, funereal blooms.
It gathered, forming a gauzy shroud in the air. The candle itself turned from black to white, ember bright. Curling wreaths of the scented fumes were darkening by degrees. The smoke cloud swirled, turning as if disturbed by a wind, sparkling with brilliant motes, all of them coming together, collecting into a single incandescent point of abyssal light. That point then grew and grew as more and more motes disappeared into it. It became a sphere, hovering within the smoke, illuminating the library. The sphere then shimmered and lost its definition, dissolving into a momentary shapelessness before resolving into a trembling likeness of a man’s head and shoulders, taking root in the candle flame. His features were obscure and shifting, a reflection in disturbed water. Recognisably male but its age and exact features remained in an unnerving state of flux.
The apparition spoke, “You called me. I have come.”
Its voice was distorted, a hissing fuzz of static, without identity.
“Jack? The Ripper?” Dr Spice asked.
“We be the echo.”
“You are what is left of Jack?”
“We be the echo.”
“What can you tell me, Jack? What are you? Why are you here?” he asked.
“I am the chromosome flaw, the black grain scoring the hearts of men. If Christ were a messiah, I would be his blackest mirror. Where I walk, earth bleeds. When I am done, all hope will be gone.”
“I beg you to be less elliptical in your speech, spirit.”
“I come before the storm, I herald the Vetala and the Grey. And they come before the Darkness that is All and One. There is more to this game than you can ever know. You have your place in the design of the Ceremony. It is all part of the Passover.”
The vision of Jack grew more tangible, heavier, fleshier, now drawing substance from the candle. The acrid odour of burning bone and roasting meat stung their eyes and nostrils. Jack’s face was now an oozing mannequin mask with a lopsided, lipless grin. It spoke through mouthfuls of sodden matter, spitting congealing clots onto the tabletop where they writhed blindly before crumbling into wax and residue.
“Ceremony? Passover? I’m still unclear on your meaning, spirit.”
“One more death is all I need, one more whore’s blood will complete the Ceremony. The deaths that once were will be again and history will crack down its seams. All shall fall. The black teeth will come, this is the Passover, they will grind out Darkness and London will be consumed.”
The slobbering visage tilted, turning to Liz, leering.
“Your whore’s blood will do.”
Jack lunged, materialising fingers from the pregnant ether; dripping, smoking extremities reaching out for Liz. With a crackle of scalding wax, the congealing spirit was suddenly crowned by a silent gush of fluttering black flames reaching up to the ceiling.
Dr Spice made to move, to banish the being, but there was a static binding his hands to the others, as before at the seance. He was caught again. The air was once more becoming polluted with the stench of the sty. Spice’s tongue was stilled by the rancour as he opened his mouth. He breathed in nothing but foulness. It coated his mouth and throat, pouring down into his lungs in tangible rivers. Making him mute.
No incantations would come from his lips this time.
Jerry stuggled also, watching Jack leaning in close, those moist, smouldering hands of pale putty were forming a strangling circle in the air around Liz’s throat. He flexed his fingers, unable to let go, bound to the circle, helpless, hopeless, choking and gagging on the soiled atmosphere erupting from the candle.
Then, Jerry felt another burning, another heat.
His coin, his keepsake, it was a circle of fire pressig against his breast.
Jerry closed his eyes and thought of Badger.
Baby brother.
Bright eyes. Scruffy hair. Son of Pan. Free spirit.
A dirty, running, shouting satyr to Jack’s twisted, embittered devil.
The boy who wanted him, big brother, to stay safe.
And it was gone, the static binding his hands to the circle.
He was free.
Jerry opened his eyes, tore the Canadian coin from his breast pocket and thrust it into Jack, pushing it into the heart of the molten mass. The hands of the Ripper, they faltered, mere inches from ensnaring Liz’s throat. The fingers fell, crumbling into tallow splotches on the table. Arms, shoulders, these receded, disappearing into wreaths of noxious vapour. Jack’s head thrashed about, spraying clumps of wax and twitching strings of detritus.
Screaming, gurgling, guttering, going out.
He was gone.
The fallen candle holder lay in state, buckled and buried deep in a mess of whitening wax and dried-out fat. For a moment, there was silence and peace.
“Something else is coming, listen.” said Dr Spice.
There was a commotion in the consuming darkness outside the circle, hoggish and wild.
The Vetala were angry.
Spice’s further words froze in his throat.
They heard a pig’s squeal, it was answered by another. Then another and another. The ground shook underfoot. The stampede coalesced, greyed tusks, wiry near-white hairs, crusted nostrils and foam-flecked maws. The bellowing of swine became thunder, a shattering violence tearing the air apart.
“They’re going to charge!” Jerry shouted.
The Vetala struck, hurling themselves bodily at the circle. It held, throwing them back. They charged it again. The impact rocking those within. Quickly, the three companions scrambled to rejoin hands as the horde milled in disarray around the glowing barrier cast by the vacuum tubes, disoriented, disheartened. Snuffling and honking, the Vetala turned away.
Defeated.
One by one, they disappeared – and the first rays of dawn filtered through the thin, high windows set near the library’s ceiling. The only sound was the broken buzzing of the vacuum tubes. Dr Spice, Liz and Jerry moaned as one, pawing at their eyes as the light struck them.
“Did we do it? Make it through the night?” asked Jerry.
“It would seem so,” said Dr Spice, scratching at his head.
Had they done it?
Dr Spice felt something was missing, forgotten, something obvious. It fled from him as he tried to grasp it. Liz went over to Jerry and kissed him on the cheek. Dr Spice’s shoulders slumped and he breathed out a colossal yawn.
“Is that it?” Liz asked, “Is it over now? Has Jack gone for good?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” Dr Spice said. “I believe we were used. It was part of the ceremony. He had secreted some part of himself inside Jerry. Last night, it
escaped, we let it out.”
“Yeah, I felt it leave me.” said Jerry, “Weird stuff. My head’s clearer than it’s been in weeks.”
“Liz, how many deaths have there been?” asked Dr Spice.
“You mean the ones they’re blaming on Jack? Four, I think.”
“Yes, and he said he only needed the blood of one more.”
“That one was almost me.”
“I know, how are you feeling, my dear?”
“I dunno. I should be all shaken up but it doesn’t feel like it was real, not in the daylight. More like we all just shared a bad dream.”
Dr Spice got to his feet, checking on the state of the vacuum tubes. They were unbroken by the night’s violence. He turned off the battery powering them.
“Good.”
As his companions embraced and took comfort from one another, Dr Spice thought on what they could do next. Tonight would be Jack’s last slaying, a recreation of Mary Kelly’s murder, he was sure. Running his fingers over the cooling exterior of the tubes, he had an idea. There was a way they could get rid of Jack forever.
Chapter Eighteen
Sister Sarah Clayton was awake. She had nodded off at her desk by the ward entrance for a moment and that was when she heard it; the sound of dying.
And voices, those voices, light as ashes falling to earth after a fire.
Sister Clayton rose from her desk, following the sounds, those voices, out of the ward, down the stairs, along the corridor, to Dr Cargill’s office.
She opened the door without knocking.
She looked in, saw what was there.
There was little left of Cargill to see.
Torn scraps of flesh were scattered across the carpet, its original colour was barely visible, so much blood having soaked into it. Smears of viscera decorated the walls. The desk was slathered with remains; a face, hacked beyond recognition, skull-bone shone through a film of gore. The limbs and torso were peeled clean of every last trace of skin. The abdomen was a maze of jagging wounds, splintered ribs jutting out, grasping like white fingers. The chest cavity was empty. The heart, lungs, liver and kidneys lay at the feet of the dripping spectre standing over this desolation. And it was looking at her as it wrung syrupy streams of fluid from the tripe-coloured lengths of intestinal tract wound around its hands.
It spoke, “Get out of here. This is not for you to see.”
Sister Clayton ran and called the police.
Maygrave sat with Sister Clayton in a doctor’s office. She was shaking still, her skin the colour of soured milk.“Sister, who did this? I don’t want to press you but we do need to know.”
This could be it, Maygrave thought, we could have our man. No more pinning the murders on the innocent, we could have found Jack.
“It-it wuh-was Sergeant William Cutter, the nuh-new arrival. I recognised him, there was so much blood on him, but I recognised him.” Her voice jumped up an octave, cracking. “He had no eyes but he could see me, Inspector. He looked right at me.”
Maygrave nodded, reaching across to pat her hand. “Thank you, Sister. That will be all. I suggest you go home and get some rest.”
If Cutter was Jack, playing at being him, Maygrave knew where he was going to next, there was only one murder left.
Mary Kelly, the worst of the lot, at Miller’s Court.
“I’ll have to be there, waiting for him,” said Maygrave.
He was standing outside the London hospital with Constable Simpson sharing tots of rum from the bobby’s flask. They needed it after what they had just seen. There was a lot of cleaning up to be done in there, after Cutter had made his mess.
“Are you sure about this, Inspector?” asked Simpson. “Mary Kelly was slaughtered. If this blighter is in a frenzy when you meet him, you might not be able to take him down alone.”
Maygrave shrugged. His face was threaded with thin furious lines. He’d been there, in the same office as Cutter. He’d felt it. Something queer in the air about the Sergeant but he’d not acted on it. Why? Because he was a soldier, a Redcap. He had people to vouch for him.
Lot of good that did the dead.
I should have known, he thought, staring out into the crowds, the milling people pushing through the smeary smog, all of them were shapes in the mist. Their faces and forms insubstantial, anonymous and unimportant until a knife slit them open, then they became clear and corporeal.
Then, they mattered.
Until then, they were nothing but victims waiting to happen.
“Frenzy or not, a bullet between the eyes will fix him and I aim to be the one to deliver it. You seen the state of them girls? What he did to that doctor? The more we dither about, the more the world laughs. No, we missed this cunt the last time he was around, this time we put him in the ground, cold as stone.”
Chapter Nineteen
The backstreets of Whitechapel were a vagrant maze. Open sewers into which outcasts crept and crawled to do their illegal business. Cataract-blighted eyes shone dully. Gangrenous hands in fingerless gloves warmed themselves over small fires of refuse and bone, lit to ward off the rumoured murderous ghost. All the while, hearts strained with the mournful desire for death, hoping to be heard by some careless, abandoned creator.
The first of the Vetala reared up, out from amongst these shadows of darkness, summoned out of the Grey by the imminent Passover, when they would descend upon the whole city to gorge and feed.
There were no screams from the tramps and beggars, though its skin glistened horribly clear under the gas lamp lights. Withered veins hung as dead webs within its form. Silverfish and pale worms crawled in shimmering streams across the papery crinkles of its hide. Loose flesh drooled from the clicking bones of its fingers. The head of the Vetala was hairless and primal, worn crusty crags were its fangs, nestling in diseased gums. Its shining eyes radiated abysmal cold and a hectic chuckle worked its way out from its throat into the congested air.
It cast the black gravity of its gaze over the sorry creatures of the streets, letting them know what it wanted, understanding itself what they so desired. The destitute and the hobbledehoys left their makeshift firesides, kneeling as one before the Vetala, offering it their filthy throats and it gave, to each one of them, its blessed and most filthy kiss.
*
“Are there no cabs left in London?” Dr Spice sighed in annoyance, pacing outside the front door. Jerry and Liz stood guard over the valises and the precious equipment inside them. Most of the capital’s horses were at the Front, only a few were spared and these were usually old nags soon to be bound for the knacker’s yard. At that moment, a Hansom turned the corner up ahead and came down the street. It was a dilapidated, rattling rickshaw, the driver and the horses drawing it had seen better days.
It would have to do.
Dr Spice walked out into the street, signalling for it to stop.
The Hansom pulled up.
“Where’re you wanting to go to, squire?”
“Miller’s Court, Dorset Street, Whitechapel, please.”
“Right you are, sir. You want me to put that baggage on the top?”
“No, it’s fine, thank you. We’ll manage with it in the carriage.”
“As you like. C’mon, get up quick.”
Dr Spice and Liz clambered into the cab. Jerry passed the cases in then he joined them. With a crack of reins, their journey began.
There was a thumping on the top of the carriage.
“It’s the Boche!” yelled the cab driver.
“It can’t be, man. There was no siren. No warning,” Dr Spice shouted back.
“Lack of formalities’re not gonna stop ‘em, mate.”
Jerry leaned out of the cab. There they were. Heavy cancerous blots were rising out of the dimming dusk, making a foreboding drone.
The cab driver cracked the reins against the horse’s backs.
“Come on, you old nags!”
The cab went catapulting down the road.
Inside the cab, they all hu
ddled together against the ferocious wind gusting in. Space rolled by, strobing the streets into chasms and void as Mick navigated through them, people flickering in and out of existence. Their clothes becoming strange. Their faces showing signs of youth, pain, age and then extinction in seconds. The rows of houses became cracked cemetery skulls, bricks and mortar flaking, rotting and powdering, some disappearing in sudden flashes of flame. Others collapsing in on themselves, splintered timbers rising from the ruins, clutching the fingers of the dead poking through the greying rubble.
“They are rolling Time forwards, look,” whispered Dr Spice, in awe, “It’s incredible. They’re wearing the remains of the day away.”
“Why do that, doc?”
“Because they are strongest at night, when we sleep and dream.”
The horses were racing, pulling away from one another, fright driving them to compete. The cab driver’s flesh was as white as the bones it sheathed. He dared not look to the sky because he could hear it screaming.
Those shapes weren’t zeppelins after all.
With a cry, he gathered up the reins with frost-crusted fingers, whip-cracking them hard, bucking the horses into a furious gallop. Mick could feel his heart missing beats, his throat and lungs growing stiff. His head felt light and heavy, all at once.
The carriage rattled and lurched to a halt.
*
“Absolutely not. I forbid it,” Sir Henry shook his head.
He didn’t approve of men barging into his office, unannounced. Maygrave had done just that. He tugged his moustache in annoyance.
“Sir, with all due respect, it has to be done. It has to be used.”
“It’s too valuable to waste on a case like this. Besides, you have no proof of,” Sir Henry paused to lick his lips, “of unnatural involvement in this matter.”
“What about a man, who’s just lost his sight, finding his way to Cargill’s office? What about no-one seeing or hearing him go?”
“You’ll need to give me something more substantial than that, Maygrave. Hard evidence that I can see is what I need to justify handing over that key to you.”
