The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  Maygrave dug his hand into his overcoat pocket. He pulled out a grubby specimen jar and set it down on Sir Henry’s desk.

  Sir Henry started back in his chair, “Christ, Maygrave, what on earth is that?”

  Inside the jar were the leftovers of a human heart, half-eaten. It was unsteadily beating against the glass of its prison, making the receptacle tremble.

  “Cargill’s heart, sir. He’s still alive. Dismembered and gutted but still feeling every ounce of pain dealt out to him. No reason why he won’t continue to feel it until he rots down to nothing.”

  Sir Henry stroked his chin.

  “There is one other thing you might like to consider, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need a killer. We have an eyewitness who can place Cutter at the scene of Cargill’s murder. If I have to shoot Cutter, and I think I will have to, in the line of duty, we can pin the entire murder spree on him.”

  “You think so, Maygrave?”

  “He’ll be dead. He won’t be able to answer back. He wasn’t a well-liked man. The only person likely to come forward in his favour is his mate, Private Russell Parkhurst. We can get Thwaite to hush him up.”

  “But you will have to kill him, Maygrave. He must be dead. We can’t have him wounded. Able to stand trial. There could be complications if he does. A member of the Redcaps and all that, you know. Awful fuss in the papers.”

  “I know, sir. I will kill him. In the line of duty.”

  “Do you know where he will be heading to?”

  “Yes, I do, sir. He will be heading for Miller’s Court, where Mary Kelly died.”

  “Then, you have my permission to proceed. But this will be on your head. You will take full responsibility, whatever the outcome.”

  “I accept that responsibility, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  Sir Henry opened the locked drawer in his desk. He took out the small leather-covered box. The combination lock click-clack-clicked. He opened the lid and handed Maygrave the key to the Black Hole.

  The Black Hole was buried deep. Away from the light. Away from clean air. Beneath the places where decent men and women go. Maygrave made his way down the dungeon steps. The wrought iron door was sealed with a rusted, old padlock. He unlocked it. With both hands, he began to unbolt the loop from the padlock housing. It came open slowly, creaking, inch by painful inch. His muscles bunching into knots from the strain. The only sounds in the stairwell were Maygrave’s short, terse breaths and the grating shriek of rusted metal.

  With a last heave of strength, he twisted it free. The padlock banged to the ground at his feet.

  Without a sound, the door to the Black Hole swung inwards. Maygrave crossed the threshold. Tugging at a flaxen cord, he snapped on the lights. He looked over shelves stacked with crates, cases and the leaning old cabinets in between.

  This was the Black Hole.

  It was a storage room. A gigantic reptilian skull with splintered fangs, hung from the centre of the cracked, cobwebbed brickwork ceiling. Rumour said that it was the head of St George’s dragon.

  Maygrave picked his way through the creaking narrows. Most of the stuff here was worthless occultnik junk. But, amongst the rubbish, there were a few items that Scotland Yard, and the Crown, dare not let out of their hands. A worm-eaten copy of John Dee’s Necronomicon. A bundle of esoteric papyrus tatters known as the Dark Doctrines. Recovered holy bones said to possess the power of resurrection and healing.

  And what Maygrave found was looking for.

  An unimpressive wooden box with a wolf’s head crudely carved into its lid. He snapped open the clasp. There was a moan of decayed wood. Inside it was the last bullet of Gevaudan. So named after a province of southern France where, two centuries past, a werewolf, Le Loup de Chazes, terrorized the people. It was shot dead by Antoine Chastel with a silver bullet. The nugget of precious metal in the box had belonged to him.

  Tonight, Maygrave would find out if the tales of its power were true.

  The silver bullet shone in his palm.

  Placing the box flat, Maygrave took out his own revolver and opened the feeding cylinder. All six chambers in it were empty. Taking the Gevaudan bullet between finger and thumb, Maygrave slotted it into one of the chambers, making sure to align it with the chamber that was one before the barrel.

  It went in smoothly, as if it were made for his gun.

  He was only going to get one chance to use it.

  One shot.

  There could be no mistakes. Silver was not as dense as lead so it would not travel as fast as a lead bullet. It would not cause as much damage when it penetrated either. He would have to be sure of his mark.

  No mistakes, he thought.

  His quest rewarded, Maygrave left the Black Hole. Flicking the lights out, he heaved the door closed. It locked with a tectonic crash. He replaced the padlock and made his way back up to the surface. The iron steps clanging and banging beneath his feet. A dark shape darted out in front of him. Maygrave jumped. Catching his breath, cursing himself. It was only a rat, fat, scabby and black, watching him with the obsidian chips of its eyes.

  Chapter Twenty

  London was waiting for them, cold, brooding and silent, her streets dissolving into the Grey. They climbed out of the Hansom cab. Dr Spice checked the cab driver. His fingers searching for a pulse, driven on by vain hope. The man’s flesh was stiff with frostbite. The horses were the same; grotesque statues, their eyes glittering with a sheen of ice crystals.

  “Blast it!” Spice said.

  A long moment spun out, one they did not want to break. Knowing what they must do next, where they must go.

  “Why are we still here?” Jerry asked, “Why hasn’t all of this shit affected us?”

  “Because we have a part to play,” said Dr Spice. “a place in this damnable design. Otherwise, we would have shared in the cab driver’s fate.”

  “Great,” said Jerry. “I feel so much better knowing that.”

  Spice ignored the sarcasm. “Which way to Miller’s Court? I don’t know this part of Whitechapel so well.”

  “I do,” said Liz. “Follow me.”

  Retrieving the valises from the coach, they left the dead man and his horses behind.

  The sky hung low, greasy with clouds. The setting sun seemed to no longer be the sun, its light was that of a diseased eye looking down upon them. Dim lights shone from windows. Tarpaulins of beaten skin hung as curtains across open spaces. From behind those flapping leathery sheets came the sounds of choking and drawn-out strangulation, followed by wormy tongues lapping up blood. A foul wind blew, rattling old bones that hung from gas lamps by sinew strings.

  They glimpsed human shadows moving behind the cured curtains and tattered shades, gliding from one side to the other and then back again. Liz had a feeling those shadows were not of bodies, living or dead, but instead cast by no-one, they were Nothing, left to emptily wander, now that they were no longer Something.

  She shivered.

  “What is that?” whispered Jerry. “Look, over there.”

  Through the mildew and misery that clung to everything, he saw an abysmal root, a black obelisk, standing taller than St. Paul’s cathedral, crowned by the clouds. A dreary call emanated from it in atonal pulses, echoes of loss and utter despair. Each moan it let out shook them to the core. It was horrible, a seismic rape of the soul. Dirty smoke seemed to robe the facets of the thing. It was not Vetala though. An avatar from the gravelands, the cold and darkness. If the Vetala were pawns, then this was something greater.

  Bishop to Knight Five, Jerry thought.

  “It’s one of the Stones.” said Dr Spice, “The black teeth that grind out Darkness.”

  “Just like Jack said.” Liz whispered.

  They heard screaming from far away, from parts of London now being strangled by the Grey.

  Liz’s hand found Jerry’s.

  “The Ceremony is almost done. The Passover will be soon,” said Spice, sounding
distant.

  “Dr Spice, you don’t sound right,” said Liz.

  “I’m not, Liz. None of us are. We’re being used. Things are in my head that are not mine, thoughts that shouldn’t be there. Things are getting muddled up. Time and Space eaten away.”

  “I just had something too,” she said, “about those shadows in the windows. Something, nothing. No, it’s gone now.”

  Jerry said nothing.

  He could hear them breathing, the Vetala, muttering their tuberculotic chants. The eyes of the dead, many of them, glowing, dead points of light in the Grey smog spreading out before them. He could hear sobbing and wet sounds of separation, flesh from skin. So close to us now, he thought, that they can reach out, touch us and tear us apart.

  We don’t get to wake up from this nightmare.

  “Here we are,” said Liz.

  They were at Miller’s Court. The way-in nestled between the slum houses of Dorset Street. Odours of mouldering cabbage, urine and faeces were as pervasive as the thickening ropes of the Grey. Jerry and Dr Spice shared carrying the valises.

  The quiet was disturbed only by their footsteps.

  Liz felt her mouth drying despite the damp air. So many people should be here. There should be screaming children, swearing mothers, roaring drunks and bloody-mouthed beggars. This place was a pit, a den in the cuniculi of Whitechapel. Now, it was as dark as it gets, as cold and as quiet.

  “Can you see that?” asked Dr Spice, as they came out into the courtyard.

  There was a foggy glow ahead of them, growing brighter, coming towards them. The lamp of a lighthouse through crawling sea fog, a flaring pulse, a beacon. The glow was deepening, becoming intense.

  A lone figure was coming out of the gloom before them; a young soldier. Tattered flesh and the torn mud-streaked cloth of uniform were stitched into a gruesome patchwork. His gas mask hung loose from the bone of his skull and burns were all that remained of his face. His arms had no hands, his legs had no feet, the cauterised stumps were dragging on the ground. The protruding bare bones scraped along the stones of the street. He paused, inches away from them, fiercely sucking the toxic air into his ravaged lungs, desperate for oxygen. His hair was sprouting in strips and clumps, there were cuts visible on the scalp, each one pregnant with pale infection. Deeper slashes ran down the length of his back and a humiliating dried crust of diarrhoea stained his rear.

  “Is someone there?” he croaked. “I can hear breathin’. Is someone there?”

  Liz saw Dr Spice stiffen despite the gloom.

  “Please, if you’re there, can you ‘elp me?”

  Liz made to take a step forward, to help him, to help the soldier. She wasn’t sure which. Jerry laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered into her ear, “Don’t. Leave him.”

  Dr Spice backed away from the soldier, letting the blind invalid by.

  Liz bit her lip.

  “Father? Is that you?”

  Dr Spice remained silent and still.

  Liz closed her eyes for a moment, swallowing. She then opened them and saw the soldier was gone. “Was it him?” she asked.

  Spice said nothing.

  “Dr Spice, was it him? Your son?”

  “How do I know?” he said, quietly. “What is real? What is not? We don’t know, not here. I couldn’t take the risk. It was for the best. Yes, for the best.”

  His voice broke as he spoke these last words.

  Liz looked back over her shoulder, into the darkness, where the boy had gone, then into Jerry’s eyes, wondering what would become of them in this place.

  *

  Russ did not know what was going on. The train had stopped dead in its tracks. He had been taking it to Whitechapel station, after Cutter, on his trail. They had all seen the mess Cutter had made of Cargill, not pretty, not pretty at all. Russ knew that Cutter was capable of some things, that he was a man wound tight and could go off at someone proper nasty, just like that, but this was different. Something was wrong with his mate. Was he going to have to shoot him?

  Could he do that?

  They had been together a long time, fighting their way through life. That familiarity, though not love or respect, was something Russ did not want to give up, to betray. He did not want to shoot Cutter.

  What was he going to do then?

  As the question passed through his mind, it happened.

  Everything changed.

  The lights in the carriage went out, passengers screamed, then there was a strangely complete silence. It went on for immeasurable moments. Russ felt like he was all alone, buried alive in unexpected night.

  Then, he heard some sounds, moaning coming from mouths close to him.

  Russ got to his feet, he was going to see the driver. He was only a Private but he was also a Redcap, he would be listened to, that was how things worked. He fumbled a box of matches out of his pocket. He would need a light to find his way. It might also help him see what was up with the other passengers.

  Russ snapped a match into life.

  In the small shivering light of the flame, he could see what had happened to the other passengers, what was on them, coating them, making them moan like that. A skin of squirming, sickly grey nuggets. He caught glimpses of half-eaten skin and bare bone as the tidal morass shifted over the submerged people. The match was burning his finger and thumb, raising bright pink blisters.

  Russ didn’t notice.

  He could see men, women and children, their heads flung back and millions of minute, segmented horrors surging out of their mouths, bulging free from tear-ducts, sparing no-one, consuming everything.

  Why was he not cocooned with the others?

  “Why hasn’t it happened to me?”

  Russ threw away the guttering match. He lit another and made his way out of the carriage, grimacing as each footstep crunched wetly on the animate carpet he could not and did not want to see.

  There were things down here, in the tube tunnels. They scared the shit out of him, that sound they made, fucking horrible they were. Bulbous and undulating, filling the circumference of the tunnels, glistening with countless shimmering cilia, segmented like worms. Their heads were unsightly clusters of livid swellings, cystic black moons. That hooning ululation they made kept on echoing off of the walls, from everywhere it came. A hunter’s horn being constantly sounded. Crunching his way through the maggots underfoot, Russ kept moving. He had left the train and its moaning dead a long way behind. He wandered the tunnels for what seemed to be an age, getting nowhere, finding no-one alive. There were maggots, worms and grubs everywhere, crawling over every inch of surface there was going. He kept having to pick the little bastards out his hair and the folds of his uniform. There was someone up ahead, further into the tunnel.

  “Hey, Bill! Is that you?” Russ yelled.

  The figure had its back to him but he was sure it was Bill.

  “Bill? Cutter, old mate!”

  It had to be him.

  “Bill, oi!”

  Russ jogged across the distance between them.

  “Bill? Why didn’t you answer me, mate? D’you know what the fuck’s going on down here?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What, you do? What is it then? What’s happening?”

  Cutter turned around.

  Russ screamed.

  The face before him was a grimy, blood-caked mask. Cutter had done some more work on his eyes, scraping out the sockets and slicing off the eyelids, hacking away unnecessary skin, not stopping until he felt skull bone grating beneath his blade. The eye sockets were eye sockets no more, they were dripping chasms, brimming with the abyss.

  “What’s happening?” Russ asked again.

  Cutter’s voice was so quiet, it was a rattle of uneasy bones in a grave.

  “It’s dead simple, Russ.”

  Russ did not see the knife, hanging there, twitching, waiting, bloodthirsty, in Cutter’s hand.

  “I’m going to hell, old son.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

/>   There was the door to Room Thirteen.

  Spice moved closer, examining it; the many stains colouring it, the warping of the door within the frame, bulges and holes left by woodworm. The number thirteen was tattooed onto its surface, unlucky for some.

  It was unlocked. He pushed it open. The room inside was small, thirteen feet square. The left-hand wall had one window set in it, through which no light came. There was a table standing underneath the far window with two chairs tucked under it. The fireplace was opposite the door on the far wall and an old cupboard stood next to it. The door banged against the bedside table as Dr Spice opened it. the bed was up against the right-hand wall, its sheets were unwashed and sour-smelling.

  “Not enough room to swing a cat in here,” Liz said.

  She closed the door behind them. Jerry placed the valises on the ground. Spice unfastened them, taking out the parts that would make up his apparatus. Jerry heaved the table into the far right corner of the room and stacked the rickety chairs on top of it.

  Dr Spice explained what he was doing.

  “When he arrives, we will ensnare him in the vacuum tube circle. It will work on the same principle as the seance last night. I activate the circle and Jack will be cut off from the Grey. Dissolution will follow, he will ‘die’ and, as he is the nexus for the Vetala, what is happening to us and to London will come to an end.”

  His hands were shaking as he assembled the equipment. His back ached from crouching and bending, and there was that bad taste in his mouth again, the red room taste, old blood.

  How appropriate, thought Dr Spice.

  The last connection clicked into place. Wiping the back of his hand across his forehead, tired from the exertion, Dr Spice turned the battery on.

  An electric vibration shot through the room, making them all start. With a flicker and a hum, the circle came to life. The blue shades shining bright but with no gaiety. A crackle of emerald lightning erupted across the glowing glass. Weaving fingers of brilliance went sparking into the air. There was a second crackling of the bright green light, arcing up from the spiral to dance off the walls. Then, there was a dull slash of colour, leaving a kaleidoscopic smudge scorched into their retinas.