Last One To Die

by Cynthia Murphy

  “The boat won’t be full in an hour, lovely, if that’s still what you want to do.” She nods at the door. “Go. Learn. Worry about this afterwards.”

  My eyelids have never been this heavy, not even after the early mornings on Granny’s farm. The lecturer’s voice is a blur, each monotone word indistinguishable from the last. I pinch the skin under my arm in an effort to wake up, but the dark, stuffy room is fogging up my brain. I desperately try to concentrate on what he’s saying. I need some information if I’m going to write this essay.

  “Then we have the more traditional puppet shows of the Victorian era. You will of course know Punch and Judy. . .”

  Pictures flicker past on the large screen but my mind is busy wandering back to last night and my eyes start to lose focus. The girl had to go for surgery. She lost her eye. A shiver crawls over my shoulder blades as I recall the scraping sound of metal on metal in the dark tube station, the gust of hot air that enveloped me on the escalator. I straighten my back and push myself up in the seat, desperately trying to think of something, anything, else.

  “This character is known in various guises, such as the Devil or, in one period of Victorian history, as a character named Spring Heeled Jack. This ne’er-do-well could have been an exaggerated urban myth, or maybe a deeply disturbed figure responsible for brutal attacks on women in London. Either way, he grasped the public imagination and so the Devil became Spring Heeled Jack for a while.” The lecturer continues and I shake myself awake. Scholarship, Niamh. Words. Essay. If I’m going to write the flaming thing at all.

  I pick up my pen to take notes. My wrist brushes against the edge of my notebook and I’m back on the Southbank, Tommy’s lips whispering against my skin. If I go home, I leave everything behind, including any chance I have with him.

  Suddenly I have laser focus.

  “That leads us nicely to Penny Dreadfuls and their influence on theatre in Victorian London.” Paper rustles all around me as everyone reaches for the handout I’d pretty much forgotten about. I flip the first page. “These contained a whole host of characters you may be familiar with and some you may not: Frankenstein’s Monster, Jekyll and Hyde, and, of course, Spring Heeled Jack.”

  A hand goes up somewhere towards the front.

  “Yes?”

  “Which one is Spring Heeled Jack? Is it this guy?”

  “It is indeed.” The lecturer presses his clicker and the screen shifts to a large version of one of the small black-and-white pictures on the handout. A man with a devilish beard is depicted leaping over a wall, dark cloak spreading out around him. He’s almost flying. “He was a bit of an enigma, old Jack. No one has ever discovered who he really was, if he was real at all, although there are many different theories. Not unlike his namesake, Jack the Ripper.” The lecturer chuckles, his voice much more animated now, almost cheerful. Not creepy at all. “He dressed like a creature no one had seen before, white oilskin suits and blue flames shooting from his mouth.” A ripple of laughter disturbs the quiet room and I find myself joining in. It does sound pretty ridiculous. “He was said to be able to bound over fences and even buildings. It was reported that he tore at the skin of young maids with metal claws, though he was never caught and we only have the tabloids of the nineteenth century to go off. . .”

  My hand shoots up into the air, almost of its own accord.

  “Did you say metal claws?”

  “I did.” His eyes twinkle in the most unsettling way behind his thick glasses and he lowers his voice. “There have been sightings of him across the centuries, all the way up to the modern day.” A shiver ripples around the room and he chuckles and changes the screen, which floods the room with warm light. “Anyway,” he continues. “Penny Dreadfuls really catered for the lower classes, making theatre more accessible. . .” I stopped listening as images flashed through my mind.

  Metal claws. The scrape of metal on metal. And a girl with blood running down her face.

  I push the library door open, still breathing hard. The bell tinkles to announce my arrival.

  “Ruth?” I shout, before remembering that I’m in a library. I try again in a whisper. “Ruth, are you here?”

  There’s movement up in the stacks, so I throw my bag on the table and head to the stairs. “Ruth?”

  “She’s not here.” A low, male voice answers from deep in the stacks. A long shadow creeps across the floor towards me and, as much as I want to move, I’m rooted to the spot as the tall, lanky figure of the library assistant emerges.

  “OK, thanks. I’ll just go,” I manage to garble. I turn on the spot, and slam directly into another warm body standing behind me.

  “Ooof!” The figure bounces back as I try to catch my breath. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” A girl around my age is straightening a pair of dark framed glasses and smoothing down a preppy checked skirt. “You OK?”

  “Yeah, um.” I glance behind me, but the boy has already melted back in among the books. “Yeah,” I repeat. “Sorry.”

  “No problem. Are you looking for Mum? Ruth, I mean.” She leans forward and lowers her voice, pointing back towards the stacks. “Ignore Will, he’s a bit, well a bit of a weirdo. Or eccentric, as Mum says.”

  Funny, that’s what Mammy would say, too. Always PC. I agreed with this girl though – he freaked me out too.

  “Ruth has popped out,” she says. “But maybe I can help? I’m Jess, by the way.”

  “Thank you.” She heads back down the steps, her shiny, sun-streaked hair bouncing around her head. She has gorgeous, tight curls, tiny ringlets that have been carefully smoothed and separated. I follow her over to the circulation desk.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Do you have any newspapers?”

  “Sure.” She cocks her head and snaps her fingers, the click loud in the empty room. “That accent is fabulous. You must be the Irish girl? Niamh, isn’t it?” I nod reluctantly. “Mum mentioned you.” She laughs and rolls her eyes. “She always seems to think I need a new friend. Mums, hey?” I nod again, not quite sure whether she’s happy Ruth thought we could be friends or not. “What were you after again?”

  “Newspapers.” I repeat.

  “Oh, of course! Today’s? Or old ones? We’ve got some scanned but the really old ones are on Microfilm. We’d have to wait for Mum to come back to use that though.”

  “Today’s are fine, thanks.” For now. Old newspapers could be interesting later on, so I store that nugget of information in the back of my mind.

  “Cool, here you go.” She pulls a sheaf of newspapers from beneath the counter and slides them across to me. “Gimme a shout if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks,” I reply absently. The headline emblazoned beneath the red top of a tabloid has grabbed my attention.

  LONDON LUNATIC ON THE LOOSE!

  “Scary, isn’t it?” Jess gestures towards the picture below the heading and I realize it’s familiar to me. Tatty, yellowed wallpaper frames a door that is crisscrossed with blue and white police tape and signs that yell “Crime Scene: Do Not Cross”.

  Sara’s room. My could-have-been room.

  If I’d eaten anything today, I’m pretty sure I’d feel sick.

  “You know,” Jess continues, and I decide she’s as big a gossip as my sister, “two of the girls attacked were meant to be starting the theatre course here.” Her eyes spark with interest. “What course are you doing?”

  “Erm.” I look down at the newsprint. “Journalism.” I blurt.

  “Oh.” She looks disappointed and I breathe a sigh of relief. “OK.” I pick up the papers, as she seems to lose immediate interest in me, and settle myself at a table. I glance behind me to see what Jess is doing; she’s perching on the end of a counter, a thick book wedged in her hand. I subtly turn my back so she can’t see what I’m doing.

  Right. I spread the newspapers across the desk in front of me and scan the headlines, looking for anything which mentions an attack on a woman, discarding those that do
n’t seem to have anything useful in them. I’m left with a stack that mention, among other attacks, the two that I witnessed this week, though no others mention unusual blades as these ones do. I begin to flick through each of them, pausing every now and then to make notes. After about twenty minutes I have a full page and fingers covered in newsprint.

  Oh, and the beginnings of a conspiracy theory.

  “What you looking at?” Jess’s head pops over my shoulder and I jump in my seat, almost bashing her in the face. “Oops, I keep sneaking up on you, don’t I?” She scrapes out the chair next to me and drops into it, placing her open book face down on the table. Stephen King, a bit dark for me but Meghan loves them. “Eww, the attacker with metal nails. It’s so creepy.”

  “I know,” I mutter, placing my forearms on the notebook to hide it.

  “It’s happening all over the city, that’s crazy.” She is right; aside from Sara and the girl on the Tube last night, police had linked two other teenage girls, speculating that they were all attacked by the same person. One escaped relatively unharmed, just cuts around her neck where her necklace had been stolen, but one of those girls was Tasha. Jess narrows bushy brows beneath her glasses as she looks at my page of notes. “Why are you so interested in all of this?”

  Her voice is curious, rather than disapproving. I make a snap decision.

  “I know – well, knew – two of them.” I point to a grainy photograph of Sara that the tabloid has clearly lifted from her Facebook profile. She is beaming, perfect smile in a perfect face. “I traded rooms with her when I got here.”

  “Wait,” says Jess, her eyes growing wide. “So that should have been your room?” I nod. “Wow, you are a lot more exciting than Mum made you out to be. She just said you were lonely.”

  “I’m not,” I protest, thinking of the way Tommy kissed my hand. “I have friends.”

  “I’m not saying. . .”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupt, my voice curter than I intended. “Ugh, sorry,” I sigh. “It’s just been a horrible week already.”

  “Yeah.” She studies me from behind her designer specs. “I’ll bet. Listen, I’m sorry, you seem really nice, and. . .” I wave a hand to stop her.

  “Honestly, don’t worry.” An uncomfortable silence settles around us. Then Jess leans over and whispers in my ear.

  “She tried to set me up with Will, once.”

  “What?” I squeak, laughter bubbling out of me. “Are you serious?” She nods.

  “Yeah. So, I’m always a little bit wary when she tries to introduce a new BFF.”

  “I don’t blame you.” I giggle, which sets her off and within seconds we’re both clapping hands over our mouths so he doesn’t hear us. I eventually stop and wipe my blurry eyes. “Ah, I feel mean, now. But he is pretty creepy.”

  Jess nods, wiping her glasses on her sleeve before replacing them.

  “Oh, he’ll be fine. Anyway, despite the brush with death, you seem pretty normal.”

  “Compared to Will?” I laugh, and we’re in danger of losing it again. I catch sight of the newspapers and stop laughing. Jess glances down too, and her face becomes serious.

  “Jeez.” She draws one of the papers towards her and studies it. There’s a timeline of the victims with photos alongside on the open page. She looks down and then back at me. She does this three times before I decide I can’t take it any more.

  “What?” I mutter.

  “They, well. . .”

  “What?”

  She turns the page round so that I am looking down at it. “They all look like you.”

  I look at the parade of teenage girls with long dark hair. All have a smattering of freckles from the sun and I gently stroke the ones on the bridge of my nose. A bitter taste floods the back of my throat and my next words barely reach a whisper.

  “I know.”

  I drag myself out of bed early the next morning after another rubbish night’s sleep. I’ve always had vivid dreams, nightmares even, though I have plenty more fuel for them now than I ever did before. It’s my day at the museum and I’m looking forward to distracting myself from thoughts of serial attackers and creepy Victorian myths.

  Unfortunately, the museum is full of the latter.

  It’s only just past opening time and Geoffrey and I have the place to ourselves. I can’t see Tommy and I’m too embarrassed to ask Geoffrey; maybe he doesn’t start until later. I wonder what he does when he’s not working here, apart from going to the theatre that is. In the meantime, I’m trying to get to know the place, which means following Geoffrey around and letting him give me a history lesson.

  Now, he stops in front of a narrow booth that reeks of musty velvet and bad decisions. A faded poster, edges soft and tattered, declares it was once home to “Madame Josephine, the most gifted fortune teller in London Town”.

  Next to it is a display case crammed with what Geoffrey would call curios. A dusty spotlight draws my attention to a lone cushion, its golden tassels moth-eaten but otherwise well preserved. A pale, porcelain hand sits lightly on top of it and I edge closer, the fleshy mounds and crenellations beckoning to me in the creeping light.

  “What’s this, Geoffrey?”

  “Oh, yes.” Geoffrey removes his top hat and places it carefully on the glass case. He slides open the door and picks up the hand, cradling it gently. “You can hold it. It was once a fortune-telling device, popular in this era. If you look closely, you can read the original markings.”

  The hand is cool, delicate and disturbingly lifelike in my own. Geoffrey is still talking, telling me what each line represents and how the fingers each relate to an element, but I can’t concentrate on any of that. The museum shrinks away from me as a strange sensation shoots up my arm, a hundred tiny arrows that restrict my chest and puncture my windpipe. I gasp as a cool, mineral taste chokes the back of my throat and I forget that I’m holding something delicate, something almost two centuries old; I just want the damn thing away from me. I drop it quickly into Geoffrey’s waiting palm and the world rushes back like a slap to the face.

  He doesn’t seem to have noticed a thing.

  “Yes, yes, quite a charming little item, isn’t it? We have all sorts of occult objects here,” he twinkles, blatantly unaware of how unsettling his artefact is. “Ah!” He fixes on something behind me and straightens up. “Our first tour group has arrived. Are you ready for your debut, Miss Jane?” An echo of unease follows his words and I shudder. “I know you are shadowing me today, so I don’t expect you to answer any of the questions and whatnot, but please do excuse me if I become carried away and introduce you.”

  I nod mutely, convincing myself that what I feel isn’t actually fear and foreboding, but nerves. I’ve never acted at such close quarters before.

  “Wonderful,” he announces, replacing his hat and striding to greet his audience. “Good morning, dear friends,” he booms. “Happy tidings to you all.”

  I follow the group on their tour. Geoffrey presents his version of a Victorian gentleman, which is pretty wonderful, plus he knows just about everything about the museum, so they are rapt.

  Soon, we approach the dressing room where the portrait of Jane Alsop is displayed. My palms are damp and sticky, but I’m not sure whether it’s because of the lingering feeling of dread, or because I know Geoffrey is going to try and make me join in now. My skirt whispers across the stone floor as I wipe my hands on it, desperate to clear my throat. I put up with the choking feeling instead. I’m not quite ready for the attention, yet.

  Thankfully, when we get there Geoffrey gives me a look that seems to say “Ready?” and I shake my head so fast I almost pull a muscle. My shoulders release as he tips me a tiny, knowing nod and carries on, all without breaking his stride.

  “This room was thought to belong to a wealthy young lady who lived in the home attached to this building, the daughter of the factory owner. Not much is known of her life, though we do have records of both her birth and untimely death.”

 
My ears prick up.

  He gestures to the picture behind him. “This portrait of Jane Alsop was commissioned shortly before her sixteenth birthday, as was common at the time. The Victorians liked to commemorate a significant life event in some, ah, unusual ways. Please, come closer.” The crowd, including me, step forward as one, tethered to his story. “You can see a few of the details are missing. The lace detail on her sleeves, some of the curls in her hair. They were left unfinished. The portrait – abandoned.”

  “Why?” A young man asks, one hand wrapped loosely in his partner’s. Something catches the corner of my eye and I see Tommy in my peripheral vision. He’s looking as enraptured as the rest of us, although he must have heard this story a thousand times.

  Then I realize his attention isn’t on Geoffrey; it’s on me. My cheeks flame and I’m grateful the lights are dimming again. I adopt what I hope is a casual pose and pretend I haven’t seen him. Be cool, Niamh.

  “There was a terrible accident.” Geoffrey’s voice is low and I have to strain to hear every word. “Much is unknown, although the death certificate does confirm the horrific way poor Miss Jane died.”

  One of the kids in the crowd eyes me warily, looking between my costume and the painting and edging away. I make a mental note to surprise him around a dark corner later on.

  “However, details emerged over time, adding up to a tragic story of forbidden love and untimely death that has survived alongside the artefacts. There were rumours that Jane had a secret love, a young man who worked on the factory floor. Someone, of course, who she would have been forbidden to marry due to her father’s high social status.”

  I dart another glance at Tommy. His gaze is fixed on Geoffrey, lost in the story. I don’t know whether I feel relief or disappointment that he’s not looking at me any more.

  “That’s so sad,” a woman in a raincoat murmurs. A quiet rumble of agreement ripples through the crowd.