Tales of Jack the Ripper

by Laird Barron

  You were certain it was Custer when you put him in the chair, but that was a long time ago. So much has changed since then. The continents have drifted closer together, the geography of his features has altered for the worse. It’s gotten dark. There’s the storm and your sabotage of the reserve generator to thank. You’ve gathered wool and lost the plot. Can’t even remember why you’d reserve special tortures for this one.

  Why are your hands so fascinating all of the sudden?

  Oh, Jesus, what if Snodgrass spiked the punch? He’d once threatened to dose his party-goers with LSD. Nobody took him seriously. But, what if? That would explain why the darkness itself has begun to shine, why your nipples are hard as nail-heads, why you’ve suddenly developed spidey-sense. Oh, Emmitt Snodgrass, that silly bastard; his guts are going to get extracted through his nose, and soon.

  You detect the creak of a loose board and turn in time to see a snub-nosed revolver extending from a crouched silhouette. A lady’s gun, so sleek and petite. Here’s a flash of fire from the barrel that reveals the bruised face of the final girl. Don’t she know you’re invulnerable to lead? Didn’t she read the rules inside the box top? Problem is, it’s another sign that your version of reality is shaky, because you are sure as hell that you killed her already. Sliced her throat, ear to lovely ear. Yet, here she is, blasting you into Kingdom Come with her itty bitty toy pistol. What the fuck is up with that?

  Double tap. Triple, dipple, quadruple tap. Bitch ain’t taking any chances, is she? You’re down, sprawled next to your beloved victim, whoever he is. Your last. The final girl done seen to that, hasn’t she?

  Custer, is that you? you ask the body in the chair. He don’t give anything away, only grins at you through the blood. Luckily you’re made of sterner stuff. Four bullets isn’t the end. You manage to get your knees and elbows underneath you for a lethal spring in the penultimate frame of the flick of your life, the lunge where you take the girl into your arms and squeeze until her bones crack and her tongue protrudes. When you’re done, you’ll crawl away to lick your wounds and plot the sequel. Four shots ain’t enough to kill the very beating heart of evil.

  Turns out, funny thing, the final girl has one more bullet. She hobbles over and puts it in your head.

  Well, shit—

  “Christ on a pony, what are you dooo-ing?” This plaintive utterance issues from Eliza Overstreet’s ripe mouth. She’s dressed as a cabaret dancer or Liza Minnelli, or some such bullshit. White, white makeup and sequins and tights. A tight, tight wig cropped as a Coptic monk’s skullcap. All sparkly.

  Emmitt Snodgrass cackles, and pops another tab of acid. The rest of the batch he crushes into the rich red clot of punch in a crystal bowl shaped as a furious eagle. The furious eagle punch bowl is courtesy of Luke Tucker, collector of guns, motorcycles, and fine crystal. The suite is prepared—big Christmas tree, wall-to-wall tinsel, stockings and disco balls hung with care. Yeah, Snodgrass is ready for action, Jackson.

  Eliza gives him a look. “Everybody is going to drink that!”

  He grabs her ass and gives it a comforting squeeze. “Hey, hey, baby. Don’t worry. This shit is perfectly safe to fry.”

  “But it’s all we’ve got, you crazy sonofabitch!”

  The doorbell goes ding-dong and the first guests come piling in from the hallway. It will be Bob Aickman, bare-assed and goggle-eyed on acid, who will eventually trip over the wires that cause the electrical short that starts the tragic fire that consumes the top three floors of the Estate.

  Deputy Newcastle operates two official vehicles: an eleven-year-old police cruiser with spider web cracks in the windshield and a bashed in passenger side door, and an Alpine snowmobile that, by his best estimate, was likely manufactured during the 1980s. Currently, he’s parked in the cruiser on Main Street across from the condemned hulk that is the Frazier Tower. The sun won’t set for another forty-five minutes, give or take, but already the shadows are thick as his wife’s blueberry cobbler. It’s snowing and blowing. Gusts rock the car. He listens to the weather forecast. Going to be cold as hell, as usual. Twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit and sinking fast. He unscrews the thermos and has a sip of cocoa Hannah packed in his lunchbox. Cocoa, macaroni salad and a tuna sandwich on white bread. He loathes macaroni and tuna, loves cocoa, and adores dear Hannah, so it’s a wash.

  His beat is usually quiet. The geographic jurisdiction extends from the village of Eagle Talon to a fourteen-mile stretch north and south along the Seward Highway. Normally, he deals with drunks and domestic arguments, tourists with flat tires and the occasional car accident.

  Then along came this business with Langtree and the slaughterhouse scene at his shack on Midnight Road. A forensics team flew in from Anchorage and did their thing, and left again. Deputy Newcastle still hasn’t heard anything from headquarters. Nobody’s taking it seriously. Langtree was a nut. Loons like him are a dime a dozen in Alaska. Violence is part of the warp and woof of everyday existence here. Takes a hell of a lot to raise eyebrows among the locals. The deputy is worried, and with good reason. The angel on his shoulder keeps whispering in his ear. The angel warns him a blood moon is on the rise.

  Despite the fact his shift ended at three o’clock, Deputy Newcastle has spent the better part of an hour staring at the entrance of the abandoned Frazier Tower. Should have gotten leveled long ago, replaced by a hotel or a community center, or any old thing. Lord knows the village could use some recreational facilities. Instead, the building festers like a rotten tooth. It’s a nest for vermin—animals and otherwise—and a magnet for thrill-seeking kids and ne’er-do-wells on the lam.

  Custodian Floyd is supposed to keep the front door covered in plywood. The plywood is torn loose and lying in the bushes and a hole led into gloom. This actually happens frequently. The aforementioned kids and ne’er-do-wells habitually break into the tower to seek their fun. Deputy Newcastle’s cop intuition tells him the usual suspects aren’t to blame.

  “I’m going in,” he says.

  “You better not,” says MJ. The King of Pop inhabits the back seat, his scrawny form crosshatched by the grilled partition between them. His pale features are obscured in the shade of a slouch hat. He is the metaphorical shoulder-sitting angel.

  “Got to. It’s my job.”

  “You’re a swell guy, deputy. Don’t do it.”

  “Who then?”

  “You’re gonna die if you go in there alone.”

  “I can call someone. Hendricks will back my play.”

  “Can’t trust him.”

  “Elam.”

  “Your brother is a psychopath.”

  “Hmm. Fair enough. I could ring Custer or Pearson. Heck, I could deputize both of them for the day.”

  “Look, you can’t trust anyone.”

  “I don’t.” Newcastle stows the thermos and slides on his wool gloves. He unclips the twelve gauge pump action from its rack and shoulders his way out of the cruiser. The road is slick beneath the tread of his boots, the breeze searing cold against his cheek. Snowflakes stick to his eyelashes. He takes a deep breath and trudges toward the entrance of the Frazier Tower. The dark gap recedes and blurs like a mirage.

  True Romance isn’t Deputy Newcastle’s favorite movie. Too much blood and thunder for his taste. Nonetheless, he identifies with the protagonist, Clarence. In times of doubt Elvis Presley manifests and advises Clarence as a ghostly mentor.

  The deputy adores the incomparable E, so he’s doubly disconcerted regarding his own hallucinations. Why in the heck does he receive visions of MJ, a pop icon who fills him with dread and loathing?

  MJ visited him for the first time the previous spring and has appeared with increasing frequency. The deputy wonders if he’s gestating a brain tumor or if he’s slowly going mad like his grandfather allegedly did after Korea. He wonders if he’s got extra sensory powers or powers from God, although he hasn’t been exposed to toxic waste or radiation, nor is he particularly devout. Church for Christmas and Easter potluck basically
does it for him. Normally a brave man, he’s too chicken to take himself into Anchorage for a CAT scan to settle the issue. He’s also afraid to mention his invisible friend to anyone for fear of enforced medical leave and/or reassignment to a desk in the city.

  In the beginning, Deputy Newcastle protested to his phantom partner: “You aren’t real!” and “Leave me alone! You’re a figment!” and so on. MJ had smiled ghoulishly and said, “I wanna be your friend, Deputy. I’ve come to lend you a hand. Hee-hee!”

  Deputy Newcastle steps through the doorway into a decrepit foyer. Icicle stalactites descend in glistening clusters. The carpet has eroded to bare concrete. Cracks run through the concrete to the subflooring. It is a wasteland of fallen ceiling tiles, squirrel nests, and collapsed wiring. He creeps through the debris, shotgun clutched to his waist.

  What does he find? An escaped convict, dirty and hypothermic, like in the fall of 2006? Kids smoking dope and spraying slogans of rebellion on the walls? A salmon-fattened black bear hibernating beneath a berm of dirt and leaves? No, he does not find a derelict, or children, or a snoozing ursine.

  The Killer is waiting for him, as the King of Pop predicted.

  Deputy Newcastle sees shadow bloom within shadow, yet barely feels the blade that opens him from stem to stern. It is happening to someone else. The razor-sharp tip punches through layers of insulating fabric, enters his navel, and rips upward. The sound of his undoing resonates in the small bones of his ears. He experiences an inexplicable rush of euphoria that is frightening in its intensity, then he is on his knees, bowed as if in prayer. His mind has become so disoriented he is beyond awareness of confusion. His parka is heavy, dragged low by the sheer volume of blood pouring from him. He laughs and groans as steam fills his throat.

  The Killer takes the trooper hat from where it has rolled across the ground, dusts away snow and dirt, and puts it on as a souvenir. The Killer smiles in the fuzzy gloom, watching the deputy bleed and bleed.

  Deputy Newcastle has dropped the shotgun somewhere along the way. Not that it matters—he has no recollection of the service pistol in his belt, much less the knowledge of how to work such a complicated mechanism. The most he can manage at this point is a dumb, meaningless smile that doesn’t even reflect upon the presence of his murderer.

  His final thought isn’t of Hannah, or of the King of Pop standing at his side and mouthing the words to “Smooth Criminal,” eyes shining golden. No, the deputy’s final thought isn’t a thought, it’s inchoate awe at the leading edge of darkness rushing toward him like the crown of a tidal wave.

  A storm rolls in off the sea on the morning of the big Estate Christmas party. Nobody stirs anywhere outdoors except for Duke Pearson’s two-ton snow plow with its twinkling amber beacon, and a police cruiser as the deputy makes his rounds. Both vehicles have been swallowed by swirls of white.

  Tammy Ferro’s fourteen-year-old son Mark is perched at the table like a raven. Clad in a black trenchcoat and exceptionally tall for his tender age, he’s picking at a bowl of cereal and doing homework he shirked the previous evening. His mother is reading a back issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The cover illustration is of a mechanical heart cross-sectioned by a scalpel.

  Tammy divorced her husband and moved into the village in September, having inherited apartment 202 from her Aunt Millicent. Tammy is thirty-three but can pass for twenty-five. Lonnie DeForrest’s appreciation of her ass aided her in snagging a job at the Caribou Tavern waiting tables. She earned a degree in psychology from the University of Washington, fat lot of good that’s done her. Pole dancing in her youth continues to pay infinitely greater dividends than the college education it financed.

  She and Mark haven’t spoken much since they came to Eagle Talon. She tells herself it’s a natural byproduct of teenage reticence, adapting to a radically new environment, and less to do with resentment over the big blowup of his parents’ marriage. They are not exactly in hiding. It is also safe to say her former husband, Matt, doesn’t know anything about Aunt Millicent or the apartment in Alaska.

  Out of the blue, Mark says, “I found out something really cool about Nate Custer.”

  Tammy has seen Custer around. Impossible not to when everyone occupies the village’s only residence. Nice looking guy in his late forties. Devilish smile, carefree. Heavy drinker, not that that is so unusual in the Land of the Midnight Sun, but he wears it well. Definitely a Trouble with a capital T sort. He goes with that marine biologist Jessica Mace who lives on the fifth. Mace is kind of a cold fish, which seems apropos, considering her profession.

  She says, “The glacier tour guide. Sure.” She affects casualness by not glancing up from her magazine. She dislikes the fascination in her son’s tone. Dislikes it on an instinctual level. It’s the kind of tone a kid uses when he’s going to show you a nasty wound, or some gross thing he’s discovered in the woods.

  “He survived the Moose Valley Slaughter. Got shot in the head, but he made it. Isn’t that crazy? Man, I never met anybody that got shot before.”

  “That sounds dire.” Guns and gun violence frighten Tammy. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever acclimate to Alaska gun culture. However, she is quite certain that she prefers grown men leave her impressionable teen son out of such morbid conversations, much less parade their scars for his delectation. Barbarians aren’t at the gate; they are running the village.

  “It happened twenty years ago. Moose Valley’s a small town, even smaller than Eagle Talon. Only thirty people live there. It’s in the interior… You got to fly supplies in or take a river barge.” Mark isn’t looking at her directly, either. He studies his black nails, idly flicking the chipped polish.

  “Gee, that’s definitely remote. What do people do there?” Besides shoot each other, obviously.

  “Yeah, lame. They had Pong, maybe, and that’s it. Nate says everybody was into gold mining and junk.”

  “Nate says?”

  Mark blushes. “He was a little older than me when it all went down. This ex-Army guy moved in from the Lower Forty-Eight to look for gold, or whatever. Everybody thought he was okay. Turns out he was a psycho. He snapped and went around shooting everybody in town one night. Him and Nate were playing dominoes and the dude pulled a gun out of his pocket. Shot Nate right in the head and left him on the floor of his cabin. Nate didn’t die. Heh. The psycho murdered eleven people before the state troopers bagged him as he was floating downriver on a raft.”

  “Honey!”

  “Sorry, sorry. The cops apprehended him. With a sniper rifle.”

  “Did Nate tell you this?”

  “I heard it around. It’s common knowledge, Mom. I was helping Tucker and Hendricks get an acetylene bottle into the back of his rig.”

  She hasn’t heard this tale of massacre. Of course, she hasn’t made many friends in town. At least Mark is coming out of his shell. Despite the black duds and surly demeanor, he enjoys company, especially that of adults. Good thing since there are only half a dozen kids his age in the area. She’s noticed him mooning after a girl named Lilly. It seems pretty certain the pair are carrying on a rich, extracurricular social life via Skype and text…

  “Working on English?” She sets aside her magazine and nods at his pile of textbooks and papers. “Need any help?”

  He shrugs.

  “C’mon. Watch ya got?”

  “An essay,” he says. “Mrs. Chandler asked us to write five hundred words on what historical figure we’d invite to dinner.”

  “Who’d you pick? Me, I’d go with Cervantes, or Freud. Or Vivien Leigh. She was dreamy.”

  “Jack the Ripper.”

  “Oh… That’s nice.”

  A young, famous journalist drives to a rural home in Upstate New York. The house rests alone near the end of a lane. A simple rambler painted red with white trim. Hills and woods begin at the backyard. This is late autumn and the sun is red and gold as it comes through the trees. Just cool enough that folks have begun to put the occasional lo
g into the fireplace, so the crisp air smells of applewood and maple.

  He and the woman who is the subject of his latest literary endeavor sip lemonade and regard the sky and exchange pleasantries. An enormous pit bull suns itself on the porch a few feet from where the interview occurs. Allegedly, the dog is attack-trained. It yawns and farts.

  The journalist finds it difficult not to stare at the old lady’s throat where a scar cuts, so vivid and white, through the dewlapped flesh. He is aware that in days gone by his subject used to camouflage the wound with gypsy scarves and collared shirts. Hundreds of photographs and she’s always covered up.

  Mrs. Jessica Mace Goldwood knows the score. She drags on her Camel No. 9 and winks at him, says once her tits started hitting her in the knees she gave up vanity as a bad business. Her voice is harsh, only partially restored after a series of operations. According to the data, she recently retired from training security dogs. Her husband, Gerry Goldwood, passed away the previous year. There are no children or surviving relatives on record.

  “Been a while since anybody bothered to track me down,” she says. “Why the sudden interest? You writing a book?”

  “Yeah,” the journalist says. “I’m writing a book.”

  “Huh. I kinda thought there might be a movie about what happened at the Estate. A producer called me every now and again, kept saying the studio was ‘this close’ to green-lighting the project. I was gonna make a boatload of cash, and blah, blah, blah. That was, Jesus, twenty years ago.” She exhales a stream of smoke and studies him with a shrewd glint in her eyes. “Maybe I shoulda written a book.”

  “Maybe so,” says the journalist. He notices, at last, a pistol nestled under a pillow on the porch swing. It is within easy reach of her left hand. His research indicates she is a competent shot. The presence of the gun doesn’t make him nervous—he has, in his decade of international correspondence, sat among war chiefs in Northern Pakistan, and ridden alongside Taliban fighters in ancient half-tracks seized from Russian armored cavalry divisions. He has visited Palestine and Georgia and seen the streets burn. He thinks this woman would be right at home with the hardest of the hard-bitten warriors he’s interviewed.