Mayhem

by Sarah Pinborough

  After Juliana and James had said their goodbyes, Mary also bade us goodnight, leaving Charles to pour us both a brandy. I fought to steady my thoughts. So James had travelled in Europe – but where? There was so much more I needed to know, if only to stop this dread rising in my blood. My head rushed, my palms were clammy. I struggled for breath as my anxiety rose.

  I tugged at my collar as Charles handed me a glass.

  ‘Are you all right, Thomas?’ His eyes were on my shaking hand.

  ‘I think perhaps James is not the only one who is unwell,’ I said. My words sounded as if they were coming from far away, and my vision shimmered as if I were separated by glass from the world. I knew these sensations. My anxiety was getting the better of me. I struggled to control it. I took a deep breath, and then a long swallow of the liquor – that would help. ‘I can’t shake this slight fever.’

  I made the effort to smile at him, but it was wasted; Charles was looking down at his plate again, and there was not a trace of his normal good humour.

  ‘I’m sorry, Thomas.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘This evening – we are not quite ourselves, I fear. James is ill, Juliana is worried about him, Mary is worried about her’ – he shrugged slightly – ‘and I … well, I have been having these awful dreams.’

  I wanted to ask him about Harrington’s travels – I itched to do so – but this was not the time for it. Charles was obviously distracted.

  ‘Sometimes I can’t breathe for the wickedness in them,’ he whispered, and I had never seen him look so desolate. I was reminded of the time he spoke of evil at his windows. This was not my friend Charles I saw before me; Charles was a blustering man, firmly rooted in the present and full of life, even when surrounded by death. Something was most definitely plaguing him.

  He stared into his glass.

  ‘I see things in them.’ He did not look up. ‘I scare myself with what I see.’

  ‘They will pass, Charles,’ I said gently. It was all I could say. However, I wondered about the gifts the priest had spoken of. If I could sense something, then maybe Charles could too? And if Harrington truly was the Upir …

  I couldn’t bring myself to carry that line of thought through. It surely could not be possible …

  *

  I excused myself not long after the young couple had left, and Charles put up no argument. We were all exhausted from our individual internal battles. By the time I got home, the bracing air had chased away the remnants of my anxiety attack, and although I was tired from its effects, I poured myself another brandy and stared out of the drawing room window at the gloomy night. The road was empty: no strange priest, no mad hairdresser. My reflection looked back at me, light and ghostly, the edges refusing to remain firm. It was like looking at myself in a river, with the night outside as black as the murky depths, and the glass the only slight surface between me and whatever might be hiding there. I shivered.

  I told myself I would stick with my resolution to free myself of this madness; I would not seek out the priest. However, I needed to prove the foolishness of my mad thoughts, and I could only do that by dispelling any doubts my unruly mind had: I would look more deeply into James Harrington and his travels.

  My reflection refused to stop studying me, and I knew that I would need more than brandy if I were to make even a pretense at sleep that night. I turned and reached for the laudanum.

  31

  London. 3 June, 1889

  Elizabeth Jackson

  The days were warmer, but the nights were still cold, and Elizabeth could find nowhere better to shelter than under the bridges by the river. As the afternoon was turning to evening she had found a place pressed up against the wall, and in the hour or so since, more people had gathered around her. At least there was company here, although even among the destitute and lost there were hunters, those who would think nothing of taking what they wanted and throwing the original owner into the water.

  She had become an expert in reading prey and predators, learning to recognise them: there was a silent growl in the way they walked, a snarl in every tilt of their heads. But none of them could match the one who was after her. She was nearly always left untroubled, almost as if those feral men realised that she was marked by something far beyond any evil they could conceive.

  There were others here, though, young and old, men and women, the waste products of the ruthless city. They huddled in groups, barely speaking, but still needing some sort of human company to make their grim, isolated existences bearable, and Elizabeth felt safe joining them. Her once-nice clothes, bought by John Faircloth for their fruitless search for work, were now dirty and ragged, and in their furtive glances they recognised her for one of their own. Elizabeth found a small comfort in the false sense of security they gave her, even though she knew in her heart that nothing could keep her safe, not even in her dreams, where she was endlessly running for a patch of light somewhere in the distance, for the darkness had started to overwhelm her.

  The wall was damp and she could feel the chill creeping through her coat, but she did not care; she was glad to be off her feet. She was seven months gone now, and the baby sat low and heavy. Her thin frame was struggling with the weight; she was weak, and often dizzy, and it felt like this had been her life forever. Everything that had gone before was inconsequential. And here she was, back in Chelsea: all that running, and she had just come full circle.

  Elizabeth sighed. She had always known she would end up back here, ever since she saw him on the Embankment, looking – hunting. Time had melted into one long, endless moment of survival, but she was sure it had to be at least two weeks ago, maybe even longer. It was before she had seen Mrs Minter in the street – when the kind woman, an old family friend, had taken pity on her and given her the Ulster coat she now wore.

  It had been very late, in the silent hours, when she had seen the tall figure moving through the sleeping bodies, but she had known instantly it was him. She would always recognise him, the way his shoulders moved, his gait, even if he had lost his natural shy stiffness to whatever unnatural instinct now drove him.

  She had pressed her face into the ground and he had walked past her. She knew then that it was only a matter of time; he would find her. She was sure he could smell himself as he grew inside her, and he would not let that go, just as whatever was growing inside her wanted to be near him and the river – it was the reason she was here; it had drawn her back. It sounded like madness, even in the confines of her own thoughts, but she knew it was true. She had been living in Purgatory since the night he had violated her. All that was waiting for her in the future was Hell. She had lost the will to keep running from the devil.

  Even when she and John had been on the road north she had known that Chelsea would drag her back. Finally, after John Faircloth was gone and she was back on the streets, she had walked into its clutches. She had gone to her mother first. Her pride was gone – it had not taken many nights out in the open in London for that to happen. She was ready to beg to be able to stay, if only her mother would give her the chance, but the woman who answered the door was a stranger who brusquely told Elizabeth that her mother was in the workhouse, and nor did she know where her sisters were, or care. Elizabeth had cried then. The wickedness that had marked her out was touching them all.

  She went to his street – the street where she had worked for six happy years – and watched both houses with an aching heart. She looked at them for so long that she could see their reflections as shadows behind her eyes when she closed her eyelids. She peered around corners and tried to stay out of sight. It was all so painfully familiar that for a while she wondered if perhaps she had just gone mad; that she had never seen anything the night his family fell ill – maybe his mother had been sick already when she came to Elizabeth with her worries.

  When she saw the woman coming from his house, her fingers gripped the wall so hard that two nails snapped. The woman was tall and elegantly dressed, but she was not
much more than a girl, really – she might have been younger than Elizabeth. Her shining hair was a deep red, and thick, curled neatly under her hat. She existed in another world, one of warmth and security and comfort. As she stared more intently, Elizabeth saw that the redheaded girl’s mouth was tugging down in a frown that aged her, and the sight of it closed the divide between them. She understood the cause of that worry, probably far better than the girl did. A shape moved behind the window and there he was, looking out, his pale, thin face a contrast with the dark shadows behind him. Even from a distance and through the glass, Elizabeth felt a wave of revulsion, looking at the man who was now a stranger to her.

  She gagged as the night he had filled her belly came flooding back. She had been with rougher men since, but she had never experienced anything so inhuman, so cold, so utterly terrifying. The girl on the pavement glanced back, as if she too could sense his presence. Elizabeth wanted to run to her and pull her away, wanted to tell her to save herself; to leave and never look back.

  She felt his eyes on her. Her breath hitched and she turned her head back to the window. His lips were curled in an unpleasant smile and she felt herself, huddled against the wall and trying to stay out of sight, exactly where he had expected her to be.

  All thoughts of the finely dressed lady were devoured by dread. She tore her eyes away from his gaze and ran, her exhausted legs somehow finding the energy as she pressed her filthy hand into her mouth to stop from crying out. He was coming for her; she knew that. It was only a matter of when.

  And now here he was. She looked up at him, and although she felt that awful dread, it was mixed with a resigned calm: this was Fate at work and there was nothing she could do about it. The wall was rough, even through the coat, and several strands of matted hair fell across her face. The river gurgled and somewhere a few feet away, a baby cried. Inside, her own infant squirmed, perhaps aware of its father’s presence, desperate to be free of her body. She felt no urge to protect it – but then, she felt no urge to protect herself.

  She thought idly that he might not recognise her now. She was thinner, even pregnant, her hair was no longer spun gold, and it had been a very long time since she had smiled in the way he had claimed to have fallen in love with. Her shoulders were hunched. There was nothing beautiful about a broken woman, and that’s what she was, broken beyond redemption. He strode towards her, and even in the fading light of the evening she could see the mottled blotches on his cheeks. She shuddered, but did not move. Where would she go?

  He stood in front of her and reached out his hand. A tear slid down her cheek. She was glad she had seen her mother, two days past – perhaps that meeting, purely by chance, bumping into each other in the street, had been Fate’s work too. They might not have talked for long, but they parted friends, and she was happy about that, for her mother’s sake. It would help her with what was to come. She reached out. His fingers were cool.

  32

  Evening Star – Washington, D.C.

  JACK THE RIPPER

  A Belief that He Has Resumed His Bloody Work

  London, June 4.

  THE DENIZENS OF HORSLEYDOWN, on the southern side of the Thames, were thrown into a fever of excitement this morning, by the discovery in the river of the lower portions of a woman’s body cut into pieces. The rest of the body and the legs were no where to be seen. These ghastly objects were tied in a parcel with a stout cord. Shortly afterward a parcel of female clothing was found at Battersea. Both the fragments of the body and the clothes were wrapped in pieces of cloth, which together had comprised a pair of woman’s drawers.

  At Battersea were also found the thighs of a female, showing conclusive evidences of having been cut from the trunk found at Horsleydown. They too were wrapped in pieces of the pair of drawers.

  * * *

  The Times of London

  June 5, 1889

  Early yesterday morning, almost simultaneously, two packages containing portions of a woman’s body were discovered on the foreshore of the Thames …

  * * *

  The Times of London

  June 7, 1889

  In fact, the entire makeup of the ghastly parcel was exactly similar to the others, and the work was evidently done by the same hands.

  * * *

  The Times of London

  June 8, 1889

  A most careful search for the portions of the body still missing is being maintained. All along the foreshore of the Thames experienced watchers have been engaged, and every likely hiding place, such as the shrubbery of Battersea Park, where one of Thursday’s discoveries took place, is being inspected.

  33

  London. 13 June, 1889

  Dr Bond

  As winter passed into spring, and with no further killings, London had relaxed slightly. Jack was gone, the people whispered – either dead, or moved on to become some other place’s problem.

  For my own part, however, although the days were lightening, my mood was not. I did not analyse the amount of laudanum I was taking, nor the frequency, nor the fact that sometimes my urge to visit the dens was so overwhelming that I paced and paced around my house through the night until my legs ached. My anxiety attacks were increasing, so I did my best to battle them and my perpetual exhaustion by hunting more often, embracing nature and fresh air and putting all thoughts of creatures existing in men’s shadows out of my mind, if only for a few short hours. Juliana rode with me, and rather guiltily, I used these opportunities to question her about Harrington’s travels in Europe.

  It appeared that most of his stories were focused on a rather eccentric American he had met in Venice and to whom he now spent long hours writing; it was this gentleman who had apparently prompted James to be more adventurous. Juliana told me Harrington’s stories of his travels had become vaguer after they split up in Venice, although she thought he had become ill for the first time in Poland.

  After hearing this, I could not settle. That very night I had found my way to the priest’s rooms, determined to share this with him – if only to relieve my own anxiety. There was no light on, and no answer to my knock on the door, so I headed to Whitechapel to find Kosminski. His sister told me that he was in the grip of one of his ‘fits’ and could not receive visitors, doctor or no, but the expression on her face suggested that no matter her verbal assurances, she would not be passing on my message, asking him to contact me. Perhaps she saw a little of her brother’s madness in my own eyes, and I found I could not blame her for that.

  Afterwards, when I had returned home and my nerves had calmed, I was glad I had not reached either man, for I had no actual proof against young Harrington, who had grown weaker and sicker over the weeks. He was still just about managing to go about his business, but he was not capable of much else, and this in turn worried Juliana enormously. My suspicions of her husband felt like a betrayal of her. I needed to remain as rational as possible.

  And yet here we were: another death – another woman – and in the brief, snatched moments of sleep I had managed over the past few days I had been haunted by something awful in the shadows: something watching me, something that I could not quite see. I had woken sweaty and breathless, and more exhausted than I had been before. The last piece – a right arm folded at the elbow and tied with string – had been recovered this very morning and brought to us at Battersea Morgue, to add to our gruesome collection.

  ‘Let’s put her back together then, shall we?’ Charles had been eager to start from the moment he had arrived, and immediately started removing the preserved body parts and laying them out for our study. There was something about the intensity of his enthusiasm that unnerved me slightly. I did not know if it was simply my own dark imaginings of late echoing into this situation, but there was an eagerness there that differed from his normal cheerfulness. ‘I think we have nearly all of her,’ he said.

  ‘Apart from the head,’ I added.

  He nodded and smiled, but was already lost in his work, making notes as he examined
the brutalised remains. Once again I was glad that I had distanced myself from the priest and the hairdresser, for I found Charles’ mood-swings disturbing enough. Some evenings he was so gripped with melancholy I was sure he was going to do some harm to himself, and at others he was bouncing with fevered over-enthusiasm, as he was now. Although I still went for dinner frequently, I did so mainly for Juliana’s sake. Harrington rarely came himself – he was too ill – but he insisted Juliana did, for the company, as he was too weak to provide much at home. I did not know if I was flattering myself, but I sometimes thought that given her father’s strange moods, she too was there primarily to see me.

  ‘How is James?’ I asked as we studied each of the severed pieces. The top portion of the trunk had been separated from the missing head at the sixth vertebra, cut off with several relatively clean cuts. ‘A fine-toothed saw, perhaps?’ The chest had been opened up at its central point, the sternum cut through and the lungs and heart removed to God only knew where.

  ‘I would say so,’ Charles agreed. ‘And a sharp knife through the skin. The separation of the arms and legs would definitely suggest a saw.’ He shrugged at me, calmer now that he was working. ‘He’s certainly adept at dismemberment. Oh, and I meant to say earlier, but with all this’ – he gestured towards the gory display – ‘anyway, thank you for asking, but young James appears to be on the mend. Juliana says that he’s become much more himself over the past week. He’s certainly got his colour back – quite a relief, I can tell you. They’re going back to Bath for a few days, and then when they return, they’ll come and stay with us while the house is finished.’ His face twitched slightly as he spoke, an involuntary action, betraying an underlying distaste or worry at that thought that was at odds with his next words. ‘Mary and I are looking forward to it tremendously.’