by kindels
Jack grudgingly took a seat in the armchair the man had indicated. He couldn't help himself. There was too much he needed to know.
"Look, just who are you? At least tell me that, and how you know my real name."
"Listen, Jack, as to who I am, that really isn't important, not right now. As to you, well, I'm afraid you can blame Michael for that one. When you first went back to the flat with him you slept for a long time and he was able to go through your belongings as you slept. He found the journal Jack and the letters from your uncle and you're your great uncles and so on. I know who you are, Jack Reid, and I know what you are. I know everything."
"What do you mean, you know who and what I am? Just who are you?"
"Ah, Jack, I've been searching for something for so long and I know you've been searching too and now at last I've found what I've been looking for, though you still have some way to go in order to fulfil your own search for your uncle."
"How do you know about my uncle? There's nothing about that in my papers."
"Oh, but there was, Jack. The letter from the girl who you'd sent to the solicitors?"
Damn, thought Jack, he'd forgotten about that.
"Okay, so you know all about me. What has that got to do with whatever it is you say you're searching for. And why have you had me drugged?"
"Patience, Jack, patience, please."
"My patience is running thin. So far, you seem to hold all the aces, but what's to stop me getting up and running across to you and&"
"And attacking me as you did poor Michael yesterday? Poor boy, he's really rather a coward, isn't he? Jack, you may be young and you may be strong, but let me assure you that if you were to even attempt such a move against me, you would most certainly find yourself in a very painful position. I'm far stronger than I may appear. Oh I'm sorry, I don't appear as anything behind this light, do I? You must take my word for it, Jack, that you will not succeed should you attempt any act of violence in my direction. That is a promise and one you would do well to remember."
Something in the man's voice reached deep into Jack's mind. He recalled the things Michael had told him about this man and he felt something of the things Michael had described. There was something strange about this faceless, nameless man who seemed to know everything about Jack, whereas he knew absolutely nothing about the man. Jack also sensed something of Michael's feeling about the man being not quite of this world. Something in his words and the way he spoke them was at odds with the modern world. The man seemed to belong to a bygone age, not the present.
As Jack sat silently pondering the things he'd just been told, the man spoke again.
"Now, Jack Reid, are you ready to listen to what I have to tell you?"
As the chill of the house mingled with the uneasy feeling that the man's voice generated within his mind Jack Reid silently nodded and with that small gesture, the man began to speak, his voice level and firm. Jack didn't interrupt him, not even once, as he spoke for an hour, answering some but not all of Jack's questions. As he spoke, the room grew colder and Jack Reid began to shake not just with the cold of the house on Abbotsford Road but from the fear that the man's words were instilling into his mind and into his very soul.
There was no sun, no warmth, no outside world any longer. Jack found himself wishing he'd never set foot in Brighton, never met Michael or gone to the house on Abbotsford Road. But of course, by then it was too late, not just for Jack but for too many others. As Jack shivered the voice of the man droned on and Jack's mind began to assimilate the horrors contained in the words he heard.
Chapter 23
Questions and Answers
Jack Reid tried hard to see past the glaring beam of the halogen light that continued to glare at him from just behind the man at the desk, but to no avail. The beam was so intense that even shielding his eyes with his hands brought no respite from the unremitting shaft of high intensity light that lanced across the room straight to his position in the armchair. What, he asked himself were the man's motives in concealing his face in such a way? Could it be that it was someone who Jack knew or would recognise? He'd detected something familiar in the man's voice right away, though he felt that even the voice was disguised in some way, making any recognition impossible. Then again, maybe the man was disfigured in some way and wished to remain hidden. That theory was quickly dismissed from Jack's mind for after all surely Michael would have told him if the man had been some hideously deformed freak. Was it simple theatrics, a ploy to add drama to the meeting? No, it had to be that Jack would or might recognise the man if he saw him. At least that was his conclusion as he sat waiting for the man to begin his explanation for the strange set of events that had overtaken him.
Jack had hoped that as his eyes became better adjusted to the glare, maybe he might just be able to make out a little more of the shape that represented the man behind the desk, but no, the beam of the light was far too strong to allow even for that possibility.
"You may as well give it up, Jack," said the man, as though he were able to read Jack's thoughts. "You'll never see past the light. It's specially positioned and is of a precise intensity that means no-one can see through the shaft of its light. Even if you could, you wouldn't know me, not at all. Just in case you entertained any thoughts of rushing me, let me tell you that there's a small calibre pistol trained on you right now as we speak. I'm a very good shot, Jack, and any sign of movement on your part will result in great pain for you, believe me. Nod if you understand."
Jack nodded. The man spoke.
"Good, now let's see. Ah yes, your name is Jack Reid, son of Tom and Jennifer Reid, nephew or should I say second cousin of the late Doctor Robert Cavendish and his brother, Mark. No, don't speak, just listen," said the man as Jack made as if to ask a question. Jack fell silent and the man continued.
"You recently attained your coming of age, and on so doing, you received a legacy from your Uncle Robert, namely a collection of papers and letters and, not to mince words, the journal of the long-departed serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Before you begin to ask how I know all this I must tell you that Michael did a very good job of obtaining the papers etcetera from your holdall and copying everything and bringing them to me. You were employed as a trainee nurse, a most honourable profession young Jack until you received the documents and realised just what kind of a heritage you shared with your forebears. Having made the shocking discovery you began to revert to the state of mind that so disturbed you in your earlier childhood. Oh yes I know all about that, too, Jack. Why do you think that was? Why did you find the dark thoughts of your formative years returning to haunt you, I wonder? Please don't try to answer, as I hope that I'll be able to do that for you before long.
"You read and re-read the journal didn't you, Jack? You read every letter and every note placed within its pages. Robert Cavendish's great-grandfather was most informative was he not? The great physician himself, Burton Cleveland Cavendish, that great pillar of the community, the great healer, and of course, the great philanderer himself. Did it not shock you, Jack to discover that Robert and Mark's great-grandfather, your own ancestor had an affair, an affair that led to the birth of a monster? Yes, Jack, I'm sure you were shocked to learn that the bastard spawn of Burton Cavendish grew up to be the man we know as Jack the Ripper!
"But that wasn't all you discovered was it, Jack? I also read every one of those pages, and I know what you know. His blood, and I mean Burton Cavendish's, flows in your veins, doesn't it, Jack, as it did in the veins of Robert and Mark and their father and grandfather before them? It flows in the veins of every direct blood descendant of Burton Cavendish, which gives a share of the Ripper's genes to your own father, Tom Reid and of course it flows in your veins, too. How does it feel to be cursed with the bloodline of Jack the Ripper, Jack, and by a wonderful quirk of coincidence to carry the name 'Jack' as well? How delightfully symbolic and ironic that your unfortunate parents should give you that name, don't you think?"
"Listen, I
&"
"Silence, please. You may speak when I've finished. For now, I ask that you give me your full attention."
Jack fell silent once again. His secret, or what he thought had been his secret, was now known to this man and to Michael obviously, and Jack needed to know what the man intended to do with the knowledge as well as finding out why the two men had conspired to drug him and try to make him forget certain parts of the recent past.
"I'll try and keep this short, Jack, don't worry," the man continued. "To put it in simple terms, when you discovered all of this you realised that perhaps you knew why you'd led such a disturbed childhood. Your blood fixations, your bouts of moodiness and occasional violence could suddenly be explained, couldn't they? You're a descendant of The Ripper. That thought, coupled with the knowledge of your previous troubled childhood was more than your feeble mind could cope with. You needed to get away, to seek solace and solitude and so you began a search for the one man who you thought might be able to help you. You knew from hearing your own family speak over the years that your Uncle Robert had led something of a disturbed life in his later years, leading up to this death and you put two and two together and realised that his state of mind had probably been affected by his reading of the journal. After all, it was having the same effect on you, too, wasn't it, as it still is?"
Jack could keep silent no longer, and now he deliberately and forcefully interrupted the man. He would not be silenced.
"Just how the hell do you know so much about my Uncle Robert? He was injured in a car crash, the one that killed his own father. He lay in a coma for weeks and when he came out of it he was never the same man again. I was only young, but I do remember a lot of it. He was eventually diagnosed as having a brain tumour and that's what killed him. What the hell is all this nonsense you're spouting at me?"
"Oh, come now, Jack. Give me a little credit please. I know that while he was in his coma Robert Cavendish suffered from appalling nightmares and visions of Jack the Ripper and his crimes and that even though he was told it had all been a dream, a figment of his tortured brain while in the coma, within weeks of going home he received the awful legacy that he subsequently passed on to you, his nearest thing to a male heir. Even then, he delayed the legacy until you reached the age of eighteen; I suppose in order to shield you, at a tender age from the effects of reading that journal you carry in your holdall."
Jack's mind was working overtime. This man knew so much, he had to have been close to Robert Cavendish at some time. There was also the familiarity in his voice. He gambled on trying to force the man to reveal his connection.
"You knew him, didn't you? What were you, one of the nurses or orderlies in the hospital, even perhaps one of his doctors? Is that how you know so much about what happened to him in the hospital? Or did you work for the solicitors? Did you sneak a peek at the documents years ago and realise what they were? What I don't understand is why you want them now, why you want to do what you've been doing to me."
"Ha," the man laughed. "You'd love to know, wouldn't you, Jack? I could tell you, but at this time I choose not to. I do know that you're here searching for your Uncle Mark, Robert's brother in the hope that he may be able to tell you something of what really happened to your Uncle, something that the brothers may have shared in a moment of intimacy, something that Robert may not have shared even with his wife. Why Brighton, Jack? You must have heard from the pretty little mole you sent to the solicitors that Mark had left the country, sold his assets and gone to live in the sun. Ah, I can see by your face that you did. But you're cleverer than most, aren't you, Jack? You learned somehow that Mark Cavendish retained one small business interest in this country, didn't you, one that his solicitors knew nothing of? You found out about the guesthouse in Brighton, am I right?"
Jack slowly nodded.
"The Arcadia Hotel was jointly owned by Mark and his old friend Simon Davis, but all the paperwork was in Davis's name, and he used a different solicitor to your family so there was no way they could know about it. You came here thinking that Mark may have kept in touch with Davis, didn't you, but you found out that Davis had disappeared six months ago. No-one knows what happened to him, where he went, anything."
"Are you Simon Davis?"
"No, I'm not, Jack. I doubt anyone will see the man again to be honest with you."
With those words, delivered coldly and slowly, Jack somehow knew that Simon Davis was dead, and that the man behind the desk in all probability was the man who'd killed him, or who at the very least had arranged his death.
"Perhaps you should know that Mark Cavendish is also no more. He's gone forever, dead beneath the waves near his home on the beautiful island retreat he'd chosen for himself. He knew something you see, something that scared him and he couldn't live with the knowledge any longer. I was there when he disappeared beneath the sea for ever, Jack. So you see, he can tell you nothing about what your Uncle saw in his mind or the things that came to him when the nights were dark and the figures from the past, described in the letters he left you with the journal came to visit him."
Jack now felt sure he was in the presence of a very dangerous man. In that, at least, Michael hadn't lied to him. Perhaps he was even responsible for the death of Mark Cavendish.
"But why? And what has all this to do with you?"
"I told you, I was searching for something and I found it in you. I needed to know certain things about myself and your arrival here in Brighton and the words of the journal, the letters from your male ancestors, from Burton Cavendish through to Robert himself have given me what I needed."
"But, I still don't understand your involvement at all. Why did you need to know these things and why did you have Michael drug me?"
"Ah yes, the Rohypnol."
Rohypnol, thought Jack. So that was it. The date rape drug that had gained notoriety in recent years. The drug would render the recipient pliable and drowsy, unable to control their movements, or to remember what had happened to them whilst under its influence. But, why?
"Before you say anything, let me reiterate that I know who and what you are, Jack Reid. I knew as soon as I read the journal and the accompanying papers that you were the spawn of Jack the Ripper and that you had, or should I say have, a destiny to fulfil. Your Uncle Robert was troubled by the journal but his own training as a psychiatrist, his superb mental control meant that he was able to avoid falling victim to the true nature of the journal. You on the other hand have been troubled since birth with, shall we say, the effects of the 'dark side' of your inherited genes? It was only a matter of time before they began to take control of you and once you'd read the journal and the letters, you began to slowly realise what that destiny was. That's why you went in search of your Uncle Mark, isn't it? You thought he could help prevent you from turning into exactly what you have turned into."
"What do you mean, what I've turned into?"
"D'you mean to tell me that you still haven't caught on? Even after what I've told you? You have the soul of the Ripper within you, Jack. I knew that, which is why I ordered Michael to lace your food and drink with the Rohypnol. I knew that when the time came you'd begin your own version of the Autumn of Terror. It was just luck that brought you here to Brighton and into my sphere of influence, where I could observe and try to control the limits of your excesses. By drugging you I had thought that we could control your movements enough to prevent the deaths of any innocent victims, but I was wrong wasn't I, Jack?"
Jack's face took on a puzzled look. He had no idea what the man meant.
"I don't know what on earth you're talking about," he said. "What have I got to do with the deaths of innocent people?"
"Oh, come now, surely you can't be so naïve. There've been two murders in the town in recent weeks. Who do you think was responsible?"
"You can't seriously expect me to believe that I've killed two people without knowing anything about it. I'm not so gullible as to be taken in by a story like that. Just what the fuck are y
ou trying to do to me?"
"Listen to me, Jack. We drugged you in the hope that we could prevent your mind, which was already teetering on the verge of murderous intent, from going over the edge. I had a feeling that after your experiences with the journal and all that it means you'd be easy fodder for the influence that emanates from its pages."
"What influence? What the hell are you talking about? How could my mind be influenced by reading the journal?"
Even as he spoke the words Jack knew that the man was correct. All the while he'd read the pages of the journal of the long dead Jack the Ripper, he'd felt that something real was contained within the yellowed pages of the ramblings of the murderer. He'd known instinctively that his Uncle Robert Cavendish must have felt the same things and that had been confirmed by Robert's own notes, inserted at various intervals between the pages. He'd suffered from the same terrible dreams that his uncle described, haunted by images of the tortured souls of the Ripper's victims and of the Ripper himself, an amorphous, wraith like entity that swirled around his mind, encroaching upon his innermost thoughts and feelings. So disturbed had Jack become after reading the journal that he'd soon realised that he needed to leave home, to be alone as he sought the truth, as his mind began to feel the extraordinary pull of the ethereal force that virtually oozed from the aged pages. He had to find a reason for what was happening to him. He'd quickly recognised the evil that lived within the journal, as though the soul of the Ripper lived on in his twisted words.
He'd truly believed that Robert's brother Mark may have held the key to solving the riddle of what had truly happened to his uncle, but with the knowledge that Mark had died, or rather had taken his own life, that hope had now been dashed. What if Mark had also fallen victim to the same aura of evil that Jack felt with certainty lay within the journal? Mark was, after all, Robert's brother and as such he would also have shared the same bloodline that now appeared to have laid its curse upon the hapless Jack. As though from nowhere, he suddenly realised that the man behind the desk was speaking to him again.
