The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack bas-1

by Mark Hodder

  "I came back in time to prevent his crime," answered Oxford, "but instead killed him."

  "So no happy ending in Australia, then."

  "He didn't have a happy ending anyway, Henry. Look at this."

  Oxford pulled a wallet from his pocket and took a folded sheet of paper from it. He slid it across to Beresford. The marquess unfolded it and saw that it was a letter, though written in no type of ink that he'd ever seen before. He read it:

  Brisbane, 12th November, 1888 My Darling There was never any other but you, and that I treated you badly has pained me more even than the treasonable act I committed back in '40. 1 desired nought but to give you and the little one a good home and that I failed and that I was a drinker and a thief instead of the good husband I intended, this I shall regret to the end of my days, which I feel is a time not far off, as I am sickly in body as well as in heart. I do not blame you for what you do now. You are young and can make a good life for yourself and our child back in England with your parents and I would have brought more misery upon you had you stayed here, for I have been driven by the devil since he chose me as his own when I was a mere lad. I beg of you to believe that it is his evil influence that brought misery to our family and the true soul of me never wished you anything but happiness and contentment. You remember, my wife, that I said the mark upon your breast was a sign to me of God's forgiveness for my treachery and that in you he was rewarding me for the work I had done in hospital to restore my wits and good judgment? I pray now that he looks mercifully upon my failure and I ask him that the mark, which so resembles a rainbow in its shape, and which lays also upon our little son's breast, should adorn even y of my descendants forevermore as a sign that the great wrong I committed shall call His vengeance upon no Oxford but myself, for I it was who pulled the triggers and no other. With my death, which as I say will soon be upon me, the affair shall end and the evil attached to my name shall be wiped away. You have ever been the finest thing in my life. Be happy and remember only our earliest days.

  Your loving husband

  Edward Oxford P.S. Remember me to your grandparents who were so kind to me when I was a lad and who, being among the first f I ever had, I recall with immense fondness.

  "It's a scan of the letter he sent to his wife after she left him and returned to her parents in England. I have the original at home. It has been passed down from generation to generation," revealed Oxford.

  "Fascinating! A letter from the future!" exclaimed Beresford.

  "For me, from the distant past," countered the other man. "And now, a letter that will never be written."

  "Yet here it is in my hand," muttered Beresford, wonderingly. "It raises some questions, my friend. For a start, who was the wife?"

  "I don't know. There's no record of her name. All I know is that she was the daughter of a family he was acquainted with in the days before he committed his crime. You'll note his postscript."

  "Yes. So it was a crime of treason, was it? It must have been bad, else you wouldn't have travelled through time to prevent it."

  "It was. It has been an embarrassment to my family for generations."

  "But you're not going to tell me what it was-or should I say, will be?"

  "No, I'd rather not."

  "What of this rainbow he mentions?"

  "A small birthmark above the heart, bluish and yellow in colour and shaped like an arc. It has appeared sporadically on Oxfords throughout the generations. I don't have it but my mother does."

  "A mark of God's forgiveness, or so the poor fellow thought," murmured Beresford. "What ultimately happened to him in your history?"

  "He died a pauper in 1900."

  "So if you find him at the present time and dissuade him from ever contemplating the crime, you might save him from his miserable fate-but surely this presents a problem: for if he doesn't commit the crime then he won't be sent to Australia, won't meet the girl, and your ancestors won't be born."

  Oxford nodded and wearily ran his fingers through his hair.

  "I thought of that before I began this venture," he admitted. "But consider this: the Original was acquainted with the girl's grandparents before he was incarcerated. There is, therefore, every chance that if he remains at liberty he will meet and woo her before she emigrates, and that she will marry him."

  Beresford looked astonished. "Good gracious, Edward-do you mean to tell me that you embarked on this scheme with only that vague possibility to protect your future existence? Are you out of your mind, man?"

  "Shut the hell up!" snarled the time traveller, his eyes suddenly afire. "It's a matter of probability, and probability theory is a science of the future, so you are hardly qualified to comment, are you? You damned primitive ape!"

  Beresford shot to his feet and glared at his guest. "How dare you, sir! I'll remind you that this is my home," he snapped, "and I'll not be spoken to in that manner! I'm going to tend to the horses. I suggest you consider your position here very carefully, Mr. Oxford, because I'll be damned if I'll shelter any man who addresses me so!"

  He stamped out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  Edward Oxford stared after him, then stood, moved over to the fire, and watched the flames consuming the logs.

  He landed in the grounds of Bedlam by the southeastern wall at eleven o'clock that same night, a mere two hours into the future; it was still late June 1837. The big hospital loomed behind him, wreathed in fog.

  Vaulting over the wall, he dropped into a cemetery, which he crossed rapidly, then jumped the railings on the opposite side, hitting the cobbles of the street beyond directly in the path of a businessman, who screamed, dropped a sheaf of papers, and ran off.

  Oxford looked to his left, to where the road joined a busy thoroughfare.

  "That must be St. George's Road," he muttered. "This is Geraldine Street, so West Place is straight ahead."

  He heard footsteps approaching and quickly walked away from them, crossing the road and entering a mist-heavy square enclosing a small fencedin public garden in the middle. Beyond the railings, trees sagged over deep wells of darkness. It was the perfect hiding place.

  He knew that the Original had worked as a potboy in a number of public houses during his early and midteenage years before settling at the Hat and Feathers in 1839, then at the Hog in the Pound for the first few months of 1840. Where he worked this year, '37, was a mystery, but Oxford figured that since the boy was just fifteen years old, he probably laboured close to home. Lambeth was a fairly respectable borough; its pubs were more likely to stick to the regulations and close at eleven thirty; the Original should, therefore, return home within the next couple of hours.

  He didn't.

  Men passed; some women; a couple of youths; but no one resembling his ancestor.

  By two in the morning, Oxford, feeling damp, stiff, and chilled, stepped out from under cover, leaped straight up into the air, and landed on the same spot at eleven in the evening of the next day.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  He tried the following day, and the next, and the next.

  He was exhausted, his nose was running, and his temper had frayed.

  Ribbons of energy were crawling over the surface of his suit's control unit. He kept his cloak wrapped around it.

  "Fuck this!" he whispered to himself.

  At which point fifteen-year-old Edward Oxford sauntered past.

  It was half past midnight.

  The time traveller recognised the boy immediately; it was like looking at a youthful version of himself.

  He bounded over the railings, grabbed the lad by the shoulders, spun him around, and punched him on the point of the jaw.

  The Original slumped into his arms.

  Oxford hoisted him up and carried him into the gardens.

  With the boy in his arms, he leaped three and a half hours ahead. Four o'clock in the morning would be quieter.

  Oxford laid his burden on the grass and squatted over him. He slapped h
is ancestor's face. The Original opened his eyes and screamed. Oxford clamped his hand over the youth's open mouth.

  "Shut up! Do you hear me? Shut up!"

  He stared into the boy's wide eyes. The Original jerked his head in a spasmodic nod. His body was trembling wildly.

  Oxford removed his hand. "Listen to me and remember what I say."

  The boy nodded again. He kept nodding.

  Oxford grabbed him by the hair.

  "Stop that, you little idiot! I have something to tell you, instructions which you must obey!"

  The Original's mouth opened and closed. Foam flecked his lips.

  "Three years from now you're going to get it into your head to commit a crime. Don't fucking do it, do you understand?"

  The boy made a gurgling noise. His eyes were filled with stark terror.

  "If you do as you intend, your name will be remembered through history. You will bring shame on every generation that bears it. You will bring shame on me! Do you understand? On me, Edward Oxford!"

  The Original started to jabber senselessly.

  "Keep quiet!" snapped Oxford. "Pay attention, you little moron! Stay away from Constitution Hill on June 10, 1840. Remember that date and remember my instructions! June 10, 1840! Do not go to Constitution Hill!"

  The boy started to giggle hysterically. He didn't stop.

  The time traveller let go of his ancestor, stood up, and looked down in disgust at the pathetic creature.

  One thing was obvious: the Original was already insane.

  Oxford stepped away from the lad and jumped to Green Park on June 10, 1840, but instead of materialising a few yards from the assassination site and a few minutes before the shots were fired, he found himself way up the slope behind a large tree. Screams sounded from the path below.

  Far to his right, a man was running toward a thickly wooded corner of the park. He was being chased by a policeman.

  Ahead, down the slope, Prince Albert was kneeling beside his dead wife while four horsemen struggled to hold back a panicking crowd.

  On the other side of the royal carriage, a man lay dead, his head impaled on a railing.

  "No," breathed Oxford. "God damn it, no, no, no.,,

  He returned to Darkening Towers and the year 1837, landing in the grounds and falling to his knees.

  He remembered tackling the Original next to the queen's carriage. They had struggled, and his ancestor had said, "Let go of me! My name must be remembered. I must live through history!"

  "This is not possible!" cried Oxford, and, raising his face to the sky, he bellowed, "I can't be causing all of it! It's not possible! It's not possible!"

  During the course of the next ten days, Edward Oxford was bedridden, suffering a fever that, for hours on end, caused him to rant incomprehensibly.

  Henry de La Poet Beresford nursed his guest assiduously, for he'd become fascinated by this strange man from the future.

  "How like gods we can be," he told Brock one day.

  The valet eyed their patient dubiously. There didn't seem much godlike about the hollow-faced wretch he saw laying there, with skin pale as the sheets stretched tautly over sharp cheekbones. Oxford seemed to have aged twenty years since his first appearance at the mansion. Deep lines now scored the flesh to either side of his mouth, around the sunken eyes, and upon the forehead. His nose was thin and prominent.

  "Should I send for a doctor, sir?"

  "No, Brock," answered Beresford. "It's a chill, nothing more."

  It was, in fact, a great deal more.

  Edward Oxford was disintegrating. Submerged in a world that was alien to him, and with the knowledge that his own time no longer existed, he was disengaging from reality. Psychological bonds had loosened and slipped free; he was floating without any coordinates. He was losing his mind.

  The fever broke on Tuesday, July 6. It happened during the night, when Oxford was awoken by screams.

  For a while he lay still, not knowing where he was, then, slowly, his ragged memory returned and he groaned in despair.

  The screams continued.

  They echoed through the manor: a woman in terrible distress, her cries punctuated by an angry male voice.

  Oxford pushed himself out of bed and rose weakly to his feet. He tottered to a chair, retrieved a gown from its back, pulled it on, and shuffled to the door.

  Passing through, he entered the hall beyond and stood for a moment, supporting himself against the wall.

  "Please!" came a woman's cry. "Don't do it! I can't stand any more! God have mercy!"

  The commotion emanated from the marquess's room, some way along the corridor.

  Oxford took a couple of steps toward it, but suddenly the door ahead of him flew open and a naked woman crashed out of it to the floor. She scrambled to her hands and knees and started to crawl in his direction. He saw that her back was crisscrossed with red welts, some of which had cut the skin and were leaking blood.

  "No more, I beg you! I beg you, my lord!" she howled.

  Beresford reeled into the passage, dressed only in breeches, a whip in his right hand, a bottle in the left. He laughed demoniacally, raised his arm, and sent the whip lashing down across her rump.

  "Stop it!" cried Oxford.

  The woman fell on her face and lay whimpering.

  "By God!" exclaimed the marquess, looking up. "You're conscious, are you?"

  "What-what's happening here?" mumbled the time traveller.

  "Ha!" roared Beresford. "I'm giving this trollop all she deserves, man! And it's costing me but a few shillings! The cheap whore!"

  His whip cracked down again. He laughed.

  Oxford tried to say something, failed, and watched the floor swing toward him. He felt his forehead impact against it.

  He knew no more.

  By Wednesday afternoon, he was sitting up in bed sipping tentatively at a bowl of chicken broth. The events of the night before seemed like a vague dream.

  His host entered the room dressed in his riding clothes. The marquess had just returned from a hunt and was, once again, uproariously drunk-a not infrequent occurrence. He stumbled as he crossed to a chair and hurled himself into it.

  "Back from the brink, I see! How the devil do you feel?"

  "Weak," replied Oxford. "Henry, I'm sorry about the way I spoke to you."

  "Fetch the damned bootjack, Brock," ordered Beresford. He grinned at his guest. "I can never get the bally things off without the old codger's help."

  "What I said to you was unforgivable," continued Oxford. "I shouldn't have called you an ape."

  "Pah! Forget it! Water under the bridge, what! So the Original wasn't having any of it, hey? You couldn't dissuade him? You've been babbling about it in your fever."

  "Rather than talk him out of it, I think I talked him into it," admitted Oxford.

  "Hah! So Victoria is fated to die, it seems! Ha ha!"

  Oxford slopped soup onto his bedsheets and, with a shaking hand, placed the bowl onto the bedside table.

  "I seem to have said rather too much," he croaked.

  "Not at all, old man. I have no love for our little prim and proper bitch queen, and I feel I have a better grip on the affair now that I know the full story. I take it, then, that Her Majesty becomes a figure of some importance in your history?"

  "She oversaw the expansion of the British Empire and a period of remarkable technological advancement."

  "Brock!" yelled Beresford. "Where are you, man? These blasted boots are killing me!" He shook his head at Oxford. "We're well on our way to such circumstances anyway, Edward; I don't see how the snooty tart can possibly influence the country's advancement one way or the other."

  "She's a figurehead."

  "Figurehead be damned! Disposable, Edward! Disposable! Bollocks to the queen, that's what I say! Ah, Brock, at last! Get these blessed things off me, would you, you doddering old goat!"

  The stony-faced valet pulled over a small three-legged stool, sat on it, lifted Beresford's right leg, placed it o
n his knee, and began unbuttoning the long riding boot.

  "No, Edward," continued the marquess, "if you ask me, you've been placing too much emphasis on the events of that day in 1840. We should concentrate our efforts elsewhere."

  Brock inserted the jack into Beresford's boot and began to lever it off.

  "There's little choice," replied Oxford. "I'm at the event in triplicate now, and on each occasion I seem a little more displaced; pushed away both geographically and chronologically, as the suit prevents me from meeting myself."

  "So, as I say, perhaps you should abandon that side of it," suggested Beresford. He gave a sigh as his boot came off and Brock got to work on the other one.

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Leave history to run its course. Perhaps what matters is not the shape and order of events, but that you, ultimately, are in them. If you can ensure that the right girl has a child with an Oxford, you'll reestablish your ancestry. Who gives a damn that, without Victoria, history might unwind a little differently? At least there'll be a 2202 with an Edward Oxford in it! You'll be able to go home, man!"

  The time traveller stared at his hands thoughtfully.

  "It's true," he muttered, "the Original did-I mean, does have brothers. Even if I can identify the girl, though, which won't be easy, I don't see how I can force them together."

  The marquess gave a roar of laughter and, as his second boot came off, waved Brock away. The valet bowed and left the room with the footgear in his hand.

  "By heavens, for a man from the future you can be mighty slow-witted!" Beresford cried drunkenly. "You bloody well do it, man!" He slapped his knee mirthfully. "You do it! Find the little trollop and have her!"

  Oxford looked at his host in shock. "You surely aren't suggesting that I rape my own ancestor!" he said, slowly.

  "Of course! Exactly that! Fuck yourself into existence, Oxford! What other option have you?"

  PREPARATION

  It's all fate and chance.

  - ARAB PROVERB

  Three days later, the idea didn't seem quite so disturbing. This wasn't because it was making more sense; it was because Oxford was making less. He felt horribly detached from his environment and, whenever Beresford or Brock spoke to him, it seemed extremely well acted, but not real. It simply wasn't real.