The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

by Mark Hodder

  Sir Richard Francis Burton led the men to the north.

  Meanwhile, opposite the lower eastern end of the field, in the isolated cottage, the Alsop family hunched around a table in the candlelit cellar and played games of whist, while above them, on a chair in the hallway, Sister Raghavendra sat facing the front door. She held a revolver in her lap and kept her finger on the trigger.

  Farther to the east, beyond the village, near a derelict farmhouse, six rotorchairs landed. Their drivers sat and watched Old Ford. If they saw Constable Krishnamurthy’s chair rise from it, they would fire up their engines and follow him.

  The forces marshalled by Sir Richard Francis Burton were ready to pounce.

  However, so were the forces gathered by the opposition.

  Beneath the trees surrounding the Alsop field, the Rakes slouched insouciantly and endured the insults hurled at them by the caged birds.

  In Darkening Towers, on the outskirts of Waterford, three miles to the west of Old Ford, the orangutan known as Mr. Belljar, who was actually Henry de La Poer Beresford, the Mad Marquess, impatiently paced up and down the huge empty ballroom, its chandelier blazing above him. The light would attract any parakeet that happened to have a message for him.

  Outside, in the grounds, two rotorships sat. The larger, which dwarfed the other, had its engines idling. It contained Charles Darwin, the automaton Francis Galton, Nurse Florence Nightingale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Hanning Speke, and a great many Technologists.

  Along the shadow of a hedgerow between Waterford and Old Ford, an injured albino limped eastward. At his heels, following obediently, were twenty-three robed and hooded figures who walked with a peculiar lurching gait and who occasionally emitted slavering growls, like starving dogs.

  Soon these forces would meet.

  It was just a matter of time.

  THE BATTLE OF OLD FOLD

  n September 28, 1861, Spring Heeled Jack bounced onto the brown, dying lawn outside the veranda doors of Darkening Towers. They stood open and the lights were on in the ballroom. He stalked in.

  “Henry! Henry, where are you?”

  “Stay there, Oxford!” commanded a brash, ugly voice. It came from behind a French screen in the corner of the big, decrepit room.

  “Who the hell are you?” demanded the time traveller.

  “It’s me, Edward—Henry Beresford.”

  “You sound different. Why are you hiding? Come out!”

  Fire suddenly erupted from the control unit on his chest.

  “The suit is almost dead!” he groaned, smothering it with his cloak. “Come out, damn you!”

  “Listen to me, Oxford. This is important. I had a serious accident,” gurgled the thick voice. “I broke my neck. They had to perform extreme surgery to preserve my life. Prepare yourself. I’m not the man I used to be.”

  An orangutan lumbered out from behind the screen. The top of its head was missing and had been replaced by a liquid-filled bell jar in which a brain floated.

  Edward Oxford started to laugh. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he gasped.

  “It’s temporary, I hope,” said the orangutan.

  Oxford doubled over, his laughter rising in pitch, echoing around the large chamber.

  “This world-is-fuck-fucking-insane!” he screamed.

  “Calm down, Edward! It’s strange for me, too. I was beginning to think I’d dreamed you up. I can hardly believe you’re real after all this time.”

  The orangutan lurched toward the stilt-walker and reached out a hand to him.

  Spring Heeled Jack staggered back. “Don’t touch me, ape!” he cried.

  “All right! All right! Just try to control yourself, man! I have the list of girls for you!”

  Oxford looked at the primate. “Is it really you, Henry?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were successful?”

  “In the main, yes.”

  “In the main? What do you mean, ‘in the main’?”

  “One of the families moved to South Africa. I’ve lost track of them.”

  “Well, find them, you fool! She could be the one!”

  “I’m doing all I can, Edward. In the meantime, I have the descriptions and locations of Angela Tew, Marian Steephill, Connie Fairweather, Lucy Harkness, and Alicia Pipkiss.”

  The ape shuffled across to the banqueting table—which Oxford saw had been moved from the dining room—and took from it a sheet of paper which he then handed to the time traveller.

  “I’m sorry about the writing. It’s difficult. I don’t have proper thumbs.”

  Oxford looked at the names scrawled messily on the paper.

  “They are all children of the original Battersea Brigade daughters,” continued the orangutan. “One of them is your ancestor, of that I am certain. Be aware that your opportunity with the Pipkiss girl is limited. I know where she will be the night after tomorrow, but before and after that, her movements are unclear.”

  “Very well,” replied Spring Heeled Jack. He read down the list. “Ah,” he said. “She won’t be far from here. The same cottage as before!”

  “Yes.”

  “And the South African girl?”

  “Sarah Shoemaker. I have sent agents to track her down,” lied Beresford.

  “Good. I’ll not delay—I must act while the suit still functions. What is to become of you?”

  “I hope to have a new body soon. Will you return?”

  “Yes. If I’m successful and I restore my genealogical history, I’ll come to say good-bye before returning to my time. If I’m unsuccessful, we’ll know that the Shoemaker girl is the one and I’ll need your help to find her. I must go now.”

  “Good-bye, Edward.”

  Oxford nodded and strode out into the grounds. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the orangutan silhouetted in the doorway. He started to laugh again. Ridiculous world. None of it was real. He jumped.

  He was still laughing when he landed on Wix’s Lane, between Battersea and Clapham, at seven in the evening on August 2, 1861. He immediately vaulted over a fence into an area of waste land which local residents used as a rubbish tip. A shout from the street told him that he’d been spotted. He hopped away over piles of rubbish.

  Moments later, he arrived at the back of the houses on Taybridge Road. He identified the fifth one along and approached its high back wall. He was just tall enough to look over it.

  A gas lamp was on in the kitchen and through the window he could see a woman washing dishes in a basin. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been just fourteen years old. Now Lizzie Fraser was thirty-eight. She looked careworn and exhausted, with a haunted expression around her eyes.

  A young girl came into view: the daughter, Marian.

  The mother said something.

  Marian replied.

  She moved away from the window.

  The back door opened.

  The girl stepped into the yard and walked over to a small chicken coop.

  She bent over it.

  Edward Oxford vaulted over the wall, landed behind her, pressed a hand over her mouth, wrapped an arm around her slim body, lifted her off her feet, and leaped back over the wall, clutching her tightly.

  An agonised scream came from the kitchen.

  Damn! The mother had seen him!

  He whirled the young girl around and grabbed her by the upper arms, shook her, and growled: “You’re Marian Steephill, yes? Answer me!”

  She nodded, her face contorted with fear.

  The screams from beyond the wall became hysterical.

  Without further ado, Oxford grabbed Marian’s dress and ripped it away. He clawed at the slip beneath until her skin was bared.

  There was no birthmark.

  He pushed her away and ran back into the rubbish tip, took three giant strides, soared into the air, and landed in Patcham Terrace at ten in the evening of September 6, 1861.

  It was a warm night. The street was empty but he could hear a vehicle approaching. He pr
essed himself into the shadows as it passed: a motorised penny-farthing, leaving a cloud of steam behind it. He shook his head and chuckled. Impossible. There was no such thing!

  Lucy Harkness, the daughter of Sarah Lovitt, lived at number 12 with her parents. It was Friday; her mother and father would be at the Tremors public house.

  Oxford walked up to the door, which opened straight onto the pavement—there were no front gardens in this road—and knocked on it. He bent to bring his height down below the transom window.

  “Who is it?” came a muffled girl’s voice.

  “Constable Dickson,” said Oxford. “Lucy Harkness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has there been a break-in here?”

  “No, not at all, sir.”

  “Would you allow me to check your back windows, miss? There’s an intruder in the area.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  He heard a bolt being drawn back.

  The door cracked open.

  He threw his weight against it, knocking the girl backward onto the floor.

  Slamming the door shut behind him and crouching so as to avoid the ceiling, he paced forward until he was next to the prone girl.

  She was shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering.

  He reached down and pulled apart the buttons of her blouse.

  She didn’t resist.

  He pushed aside her underclothes.

  No birthmark.

  All of a sudden, her body arched upward and her eyes rolled into her head. She was having some sort of fit.

  Oxford backed away nervously, fumbled with the door until it opened, stepped out, and jumped.

  He thudded into the ground at five o’clock in the morning on Thursday September 19, 1861. He’d landed on a dark, misty pathway in Hoblingwell Wood near Mickleham village.

  He ducked into the cover of the trees and waited.

  A few minutes later he saw the light of an oil lamp approaching.

  He stepped out.

  “Who’s that there?” demanded a girl’s voice.

  Suddenly she turned and started running.

  He sprang after and caught her, yanked her around, and savagely rent her clothing, ripping it wildly until her naked skin was exposed. Bending her backward, he placed his face close to her chest. Blue light from his burning helmet reflected off her pale, unmarked skin.

  He looked up into her face.

  “Not you!”

  Then he dropped her and jumped away—but landed in the same time, and in the same place.

  “Shit!” he spat.

  The leap from Battersea to his current location had drained the suit’s power. Now he’d have to wait until dawn, when the sunlight would recharge it.

  He paced along the path, out of the woods, across a road, and into a field. He sat beneath a gnarled oak, the mist curling around him, and waited. A feeling of drowsiness overtook him.

  Is this what I’ve come to? he thought. A man who rips the dresses from teenage girls, like some sort of sexual pervert? God, I want to go home! I want to have supper with my wife! I want to put my hand on her belly and feel the child kick.

  About thirty minutes later, he was roused by a shout.

  He looked up.

  A crowd of people were charging toward him, waving pitchforks and clubs.

  He hauled himself upright and ran away.

  His legs ached.

  He was exhausted.

  When was it he last slept? He couldn’t remember. Probably years ago. Literally!

  He stumbled on. The villagers followed.

  Sometimes he outdistanced them and stopped to rest. Then they’d come back into view, yelling and brandishing their makeshift weapons like crazed animals.

  If they caught him, they’d kill him, of that he was sure.

  As dawn broke, Spring Heeled Jack, Edward John Oxford, the man from the distant future, sprang on his stilts from one field into the next, over hedgerows and across roads, over a golf course and into the shelter of some woods.

  He pushed through the trees, leaned against one, and tried to regain his breath.

  The sun was up but it was misty and the light too weak to recharge his batteries quickly.

  Something irritated his ear—a distant vibration, the sound of a machine.

  As it increased, he recognised it. It was the noise made by rotor blades.

  Closer it came, until the tree at his back began to vibrate.

  He looked up as it flew overhead and caught sight of a ludicrous flying contraption.

  Edward Oxford didn’t believe anything he saw anymore. The world was one giant fairy story, a crazed jumble of talking apes and horse-drawn carriages and accentuated manners and the stink of unprocessed sewage and, now, flying chairs which trailed steam.

  The machine approached again, at such a low altitude that the trees thrashed beneath its downdraught.

  “Oh, will you please piss off and leave me alone!” he yelled.

  It passed above him. He crouched, leaped, shot up through the twigs and leaves, and caught hold of the side of the machine. It rocked and careened sideways.

  The man at its controls turned and looked at him through a pair of goggles.

  “I said piss off!” shouted Oxford.

  He reached out and grabbed the man by the wrist.

  The machine spiralled out of control and crashed into the trees.

  Oxford was knocked from its side and fell spinning through the foliage. He thumped onto the ground and lay still, winded, his shoulder hurting.

  He got to his knees. He could hear the whistle of steam off to his left. Pushing himself upright, he walked in the direction of the sound until the wrecked machine came into view.

  A man was lying facedown beside it. He rolled over as Oxford stood above him with a stilt to either side.

  The time traveller squatted.

  “Who are you?” he asked. The man had a vaguely familiar face—dark, savage, powerful, but also scarred, battered, and bruised.

  “You know damned well who I am!” exclaimed the man.

  “I don’t. I’ve never seen you before, though I must admit, I feel I should know you.”

  “Never seen me! You gave me this damned black eye! Or maybe that was your brother?”

  Edward Oxford grinned. More nonsense! More of this world’s idiocy!

  “I don’t have a brother,” he said. “I don’t even have parents!”

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  The man beneath him shifted uncomfortably.

  Oxford looked down at his face.

  So familiar. It was so familiar.

  “Where have I seen you before?” he muttered. “Famous, are you?”

  “Comparatively,” answered the man, and started to wriggle out from between the stilts. Oxford reached down and clutched the front of his coat, stopping him from moving.

  “Stay still,” he barked.

  He searched his memory and thought about the history of this period, the biographies he’d read and the old black and white photographs he’d seen.

  The name came to him.

  Fucking hell! he thought. You’re Joking!

  But it wasn’t a joke. There was no doubt about it. He knew who this man was.

  “Yes, I know you now,” he muttered. “Sir Richard Francis Burton! One of the great Victorians!”

  “What the hell is a Victorian?” snarled Burton.

  Shouts reached them from the distance. There were people approaching—and, too, the far-off chopping of another flying machine.

  “Listen, Burton,” hissed Oxford. “I have no idea why you’re here but you have to leave me alone to do what I have to do. I know it’s not a good thing but I don’t mean the girls any harm. If you or anyone else stops me, I can’t get back and I won’t be able to repair the damage. Everything will stay this way—and it’s wrong! It’s wrong! This is not the way things are meant to be! Do you understand?”

  “Not in the slightest,” replied Burton. “Let me up
, damn it!”

  Oxford let go of the man’s coat and Burton pushed himself out from between the stilts and got to his feet.

  “So what exactly is it you need to do?”

  “Restore, Burton!” replied the time traveller. “Restore!”

  “Restore what?”

  “Myself. You. Everything! Do you honestly think the world should have talking orangutans in it? Isn’t it obvious to you that something is desperately wrong?”

  “Talking orang—?” began Burton.

  “Captain Burton!” came a distant shout.

  Oxford looked up through the trees as the second flying machine drew closer.

  “The mist has cleared and the sun is high enough,” he muttered to himself. “I should be able to recharge.”

  “Charge at what?” demanded Burton. “You’re speaking in riddles, man!”

  “Time to go,” said Oxford. He laughed. “Time to go!”

  Burton suddenly dived at him.

  Oxford twisted out of the way and, as the famous Victorian crashed past him, he strode away.

  “Sir Richard Francis Burton,” he hissed to himself. “That’s all I bloody well need!”

  Ducking under branches, he moved from bole to bole until he emerged from the woods back onto the golf course. Off to the south, he saw a horde of policemen and villagers milling about. A police whistle blew and a roar went up from the crowd. They surged toward him.

  Oxford bounded away and circled the course. He only had to remain in the sunlight for a couple of minutes; it would be enough.

  In enormous hops, he ran around the perimeter while the mob surged back and forth trying to cut him off.

  He passed the edge of the trees again and saw Burton standing there. The man ran out to intercept him. Oxford bounded over his head.

  “Stay out of it, Burton!” he shouted.

  He took six more strides and sprang high.

  At the apex of his jump, he ordered the suit to flip him to the next destination and, at exactly the same moment, realised that the second flying machine was too close, almost touching him.

  He landed in the Alsop field on the night of September 30, 1861, with fragments of the machine accompanying him. He hit the ground awkwardly, floundered, and fell. Bits of twisted metal thudded into the earth around him. One piece embedded itself in his right forearm. He screamed with pain and yanked it out. Blood splashed over the scales of his suit.