by Alex Grecian
He wondered about the meaty organs grinding and churning inside her. He knew how beautiful they must be, glistening and wet.
And he looked away at the glob of pork on the plate in front of him, encased in fat, cold and dead and salty. And he ate it.
There was more than he could hold. He had not eaten, really eaten, in a year, and his stomach had shrunk. A few bites of this and that, and there was no room left in him. He turned his gaze inward and wondered at his own organs, wondered how well they were digesting the food he had just eaten. Wondered whether he should chew more thoroughly or whether he had done the job.
He did not look at the women again, but stood and walked out of the pub and away.
He hoped someone would finish his food. He hated to waste anything, but he clearly no longer had the appetite he’d once possessed.
42
Day!”
He was dreaming about a time when he was nine or ten years old, fording a brook in Devon with his trousers rolled up past his ankles . . .
“Walter! Can you hear me?”
There was someone with him, another boy standing in the water, but the sun was behind him and the boy was a rainbow halo blur that was talking, shouting at him . . .
“Walter, did he hurt you?”
His words made no sense because they were flavored like orange custards. Day was not fond of orange custards. He turned from the other boy and walked upstream, watching as the water broke against his shins and soaked the ends of his trouser legs where they were rolled and heavy. It became harder to walk and the boy behind him was hollering about something and the lovely sunny childhood afternoon began to seem tedious. His arms were sore and his legs hurt with the effort of pushing back against the streaming water and he wanted to go home.
And so he woke up.
“Walter?”
“I’m here. I’m awake.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought perhaps . . . Well, I wasn’t sure you were still with us.”
Adrian March’s voice came from someplace nearby, behind the wall.
“I don’t know where I am,” Day said. “But I think we’re still in the tunnels.”
“We are. He’s got us in these cells we made in the catacombs.”
“Your gentlemen’s club, you mean.” So he was, as he had assumed, shackled in one of the alcoves underground. “Adrian, I think there’s a bag over my head. Something made of cloth. I can’t see anything.”
“It’s probably the hood we used on him. Has he hurt you?”
“I’m chained here. My wrists and ankles.”
“I am, too. But give me a moment. I’ve got my cufflinks on, the set with the lockpick hidden inside.”
Day bent his wrist against the shackle around it, curled his fingers, and strained until his fingers cramped.
“Funny,” he said.
“What is?”
“I’m wearing those same cufflinks, remember?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t reach them. I’m trying, but my sleeve’s been pushed too far up my arm.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of here, if given the time.”
“Are we alone here?”
“I think so. Griffin stopped screaming more than an hour ago, if my sense of time hasn’t deserted me.”
“Who is Griffin? Is Griffin the one who did this to us?”
“No.”
“Is he one of the prisoners?”
“No,” March said. “Well, yes, actually, I suppose he is, but not in the way you mean.”
“Are you able to get at the pick?”
“I’ve already got it. It’s just a matter of bending my wrist properly so I can get at the lock on this shackle. Once I get an arm free, the rest will be simple. I’ll be over to fetch you soon enough.”
“Do please hurry.”
“Believe me, I’m doing what I can. Now be silent so I can work at this. It’s not easy picking a lock that is about one’s own wrist.”
“Godspeed, Adrian.”
“If he comes back, if he comes before I finish, keep him busy. Make him talk.”
“Saucy Jack, you mean.”
“He called himself Jack, but I never knew whether it was his real name. He seems to have taken a liking to you.”
“I can’t explain it.”
“It’s no great mystery, my dear boy. The man has been caged for months. You’re the first person to actually listen to him. You are, quite literally, a captive audience. You must continue to listen, to provoke, to distract him if you can. But do be careful.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Day said.
“Why not?”
“All he can do is kill me.”
“That’s not all he can do.”
“What else is there?”
“Don’t be so unimaginative, Walter. You really should be afraid of him.”
“How did you catch him?” he said. The sound of his own muffled voice echoing in the little cell was, at least, better than silence.
“After all those months of chasing Jack, he fell asleep in Mary Jane Kelly’s bed.”
“That was his last victim.”
“Yes. We found him there, covered with her blood, head to toe.”
“That was quite a stroke of luck for you.”
“It wasn’t luck.” There was a long silence before March spoke again. When he did, his voice was so soft that Day could barely hear him. “We used that girl. She was bait for Jack. We were supposed to protect her and we failed.”
“Your Karstphanomen make a lot of mistakes.”
“What we do isn’t very precise. It’s not a science, you know.”
Day said nothing.
“No,” March said. “You’re right. We failed poor Mary Jane and we failed last night. Our ideals are sound, but I’m afraid we are not all up to the task.”
“So Mary Jane Kelly lured him in . . .”
“And we were meant to be waiting for him, but there was a miscommunication. Much as there was at the prison.”
“You may have a traitor in your mix.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Then you’re all incompetent and misguided. Do you believe that?”
“We are not incompetent. We thought it all out very carefully and we had Griffin inside the prison. He was our second plan, in case the first went wrong somehow.”
“And what about Mary? Was there a second plan in place to protect her?”
“We learned from her. Her sacrifice was not in vain.”
“Because you caught Jack?”
“We did.”
“Only because he fell asleep. I’ve seen what he did to them. Everyone has. Jack spent so long dismembering that girl that he practically handed himself over to you, isn’t that right?”
March cleared his throat as if about to respond, but then said nothing.
“And yet you didn’t arrest him,” Day said.
“How could we? What we had seen, we who hunted him and cleaned up his messes, it was all too much. We couldn’t let him do those things and just . . .”
The images of Jack the Ripper’s victims flooded Day’s head. All the postmortem photographs and artists’ reconstructions. It was overwhelming. Day felt dizzy and nauseated. He fought against blacking out again.
“It was wrong, what you did,” Day said. “It was selfish.”
“I know.”
“The public still fears Jack. You left your fellow policemen to deal with the aftermath of your actions, all of the public’s fears and insecurities. Everybody thinks he got away.”
“Well,” March said, “he did, didn’t he? And now he’s going to kill us if we can’t get ourselves free and stop him.”
“We’ll get out of here. We’ll catch him again and we’ll turn him over to the proper authorities. And then I’m still going to place you under arrest.”
March fell silent. Day concentrated on breathing. In and out, through his mouth, no deep breaths. He had threatened to arrest two people desp
ite being shackled to a wall in a cave.
He was counting on March to get him free, but Day’s mentor had no good reason to help him now. He was afraid he would die there, deep underground, his body lost forever.
But Day was a detective inspector for Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad. And if he was going to die, at least he would do so with some integrity.
43
Cinderhouse dreamed that he was falling and he woke with a start. He was sitting in the upstairs hallway of the house with the red door. The first thing he noticed was the excruciating pain in his mouth, shooting through his jaw and up into his head. He put a hand to his mouth and immediately regretted it. He fished in the pockets of his trousers, no easy feat from a sitting position, and found his handkerchief, dabbed at the corners of his mouth. There was a little blood on the cloth when he pulled it back. He held it against his lips again and applied pressure, but it didn’t help. The pain was deep inside.
He realized that the bedroom door was open behind him at the same time he noticed that the knife was missing from his hand. He had been waiting for the spider to wake up and unlock the bedroom door, and now the door was open and the knife was missing. He eased himself up and peered in through the open door, but the room was empty. There was the stale remnant of body odor, and dust motes swirled in the sunlight through the window opposite the big bed.
Cinderhouse blinked and sniffed and picked gunk from the corners of his eyes. He stood and staggered into the room, just to be sure no one was there, then went back to the hallway and sat at the top of the stairs, moved slowly forward and out, and bounced down each step. At the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed the post at the end of the banister and pulled himself up. He glanced in at the parlor on his way past and noted the absence of Elizabeth. The kitchen was as deserted as every other room he’d seen, but the back door was open and honeybees flitted in and out, visiting the purple blossoms in the garden and taking a wrong turn into the house before finding their way back out.
“Aaaauuoogh!”
He thought he was going to shout hello, but the sound that came from his tongueless mouth was some hideous howl of loneliness and pain. He winced at the sound of it.
He held perfectly still, his back to the butcher block, and listened. There was nothing. The house was empty. The echoes of silence came back to him and proved that there wasn’t a sound being made anywhere except here, except by him and the honeybees.
Jack had left and he had taken Elizabeth with him.
Jack had chosen Elizabeth over Cinderhouse. Never mind that Cinderhouse had planned to kill Jack, had been waiting for him with the biggest knife he could find in the kitchen, had fantasized about plunging that blade deep in Jack’s chest and then taking it out and cutting out Jack’s tongue before the spider died. Never mind any of that. Cinderhouse had helped him, and still Jack had chosen Elizabeth to be his new rock, his Peter, his fly. He had taken Elizabeth away, and Cinderhouse felt certain they would never come back for him.
He pushed away from the butcher block and turned. He opened the drawer behind him and saw a rack of silverware inside. He couldn’t remember where he had found the twine he’d used to bind Elizabeth. He concentrated and crossed the kitchen and opened another drawer beside the water basin. Inside was another ball of rough string, not as thick as the stuff he’d used on Elizabeth, and a corkscrew, three pencil stubs, several thumbtacks, a pair of gloves, a shaker of salt, and a map of London, folded the wrong way round as if someone had consulted it and then been too impatient to fold it back properly.
Cinderhouse pulled out the map and one of the pencil stubs. He went to the table in the room and unfolded the map, spread it out flat across the table. He used the pencil to mark where he thought he must be, Elizabeth’s house on Phoenix Street. He saw that he was still near the prison, despite the many journeys to and fro under the street, the dead dog, the ambushing of the homeowner, and the aborted attempt at friendship with the little girl across the street. None of that had taken as much time as it had seemed to take, and none of it had taken him very far from the gates of Bridewell.
He traced the pencil up along Great College Street and found Kentish Town, then west to Primrose Hill. It was nearby. He sat at the table, got his nose down so that it almost touched the map, and moved the pencil around and around and stopped at Regent’s Park Road. He couldn’t be sure exactly where number 184 was, but he found the rough spot where he thought it must be and he circled that spot again and again with the tip of the pencil until it began to tear through the paper and the stub broke in half.
He had a splinter under his nail from the pencil and he dug that out with a paring knife.
He was much too lonely to go on like this. He needed the companionship of someone who would not confuse him the way that Jack did. Of course, a child would be the perfect companion. Children had always made him feel big and strong and able.
The old lady had seen him and had taken away his chance with the girl. But he knew it had not been much of a chance, since he had no tongue. It wasn’t the old lady’s fault. And it wasn’t Jack’s fault for taking his tongue. Not really. Cinderhouse had earned his punishment.
What he had not earned was a prison sentence. Not when he had been so good to his last child, the lovely little boy named Fenn, who had called him Father just the way he was supposed to. He had been good to that boy. And then the policemen had come to his house and ruined everything.
He remembered that little boy, and he remembered the policeman, some of them better than others. The tall policeman in the cheap black suit. His name was Walter Day. He remembered Walter Day’s wife, too. Her name was Claire.
And he remembered where they lived: 184 Regent’s Park Road. In Primrose Hill.
And Primrose Hill was not far away at all.
44
He felt a presence in the cell before he heard the voice:
“Exitus probatur.”
“Is that you, Jack?”
“Hello, Walter Day.”
“Let us go free.”
“Hmm. Maybe. But no, probably not.”
“Then are you going to kill me now?”
“Look around you, Walter Day. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. That hood looks silly on you, by the way. I think I carried it off a bit better. Shall I describe our surroundings for you? Let us see . . . There are chains here, dirt floors, and stone walls. There are no windows, there is no sunlight, no butterflies or chirping birds. For that matter, there is a distinct lack of shrieking and bleeding and weeping and piercing. We’re not in an abattoir or some dark alley in the East End. It’s quite dull here, actually. This is a dungeon, a prison, a sort of purgatory. This was a workshop for evil men, and I have taken it from them. They did not kill people here, and I do not mean to, either. This has become a sacred place, a birthplace. To be honest, though, I think I might have killed a man just over there on the other side of this wall. The fellow has stopped moving. I should look into that.”
“Do you mean—”
“In my rambling and contradictory way, I mean to say that I’m not planning to kill you, Walter Day. Not today, I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still thinking. I’ll decide about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. Today I desire intelligent discourse and I have my hopes pinned to you. It’s been such a very long time since I had a real conversation with someone who wasn’t screaming.”
“You said you killed someone down here. Was it Adrian March? On which side of me is the dead man?”
“Oh, I’ve killed so many people. Does it matter?”
“Was it March? I don’t hear him.”
“He’s sleeping. It was the other man I killed. That is, if I killed him.”
Day realized he was holding his breath and he let it out, took another breath. It sounded like a sigh.
“You can’t keep us here,” he said.
“I most certainly can. You don’t
tell me what I can and cannot do, Walter Day.”
“People will be looking for us.”
“But will they find you? I’m aquiver with excitement. Will the detectives solve the mystery and rescue their cohorts? I can’t stand the suspense. Actually, Walter Day, I’ve spoken with your Inspector March, and there’s little reason to think anyone will search these tunnels. Nobody even knows you’re down here.”
“They’ll come looking for you. The Karstphanomen will. They’ll come for you and find me here instead. What do you think they’ll do then?”
“You’re not as stupid as the rest of them, are you, Walter Day? You present a problem for me.”
“And you present quite a problem for me, Jack.”
Jack chuckled and patted him on the arm. Day’s chains rattled with the movement.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Jack said. “Let me ask you something. Are you ready for me to ask you something?”
“I think so.”
“Listen carefully now. Exitus probatur.”
“You said that before. What does it mean?”
“Are you being coy, Walter Day? I can’t decide if you’re playing a game with me. I do like games, but I’m not sure I have the patience right now.”
“It sounds like Latin. What you said. Is it Latin?”
“You really don’t know what it means?”
“No. I swear it.”
“Fascinating.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure, Walter Day, but some of your friends do seem to know what it means.”
“My friends?”
“Your man to the right of me, in the neighboring cell, Mr March. He knows what it means. And the gentleman to my left—he’s to your right, I suppose. He knows, too. Or knew. As I said, he’s stopped doing things and knowing things. Though it hardly matters. He’s not important to our story anymore.”
