The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

by Mark Hodder

  —SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON

  here he is!” yelled one of the Rakes.

  Burton turned back and looked at the spot he’d just left. Spring Heeled Jack was standing over the ashes of the fallen loup-garou. Ribbons of steam curled around him.

  “Shit!” screamed the stilt-walker. “Why didn’t you fucking listen, Burton!”

  Two Rakes dived at the tall lanky figure and knocked him sideways to the ground. Burton made to move toward them but a sixth sense warned him that danger was at his back. He dodged and something sizzled past his neck, gouging a furrow through the skin, burning the edges of the wound. Twisting, he found himself facing a Technologist who was holding a strange crossbowlike weapon. A belt of pointed bolts hung beneath it and the man was in the act of pulling back a lever that, the instant Burton looked, caused the topmost bolt to clunk up into the snub barrel. The Technologist raised the weapon and pointed it at the king’s agent. At the same moment, to his right, a Letty Green villager who was wielding a hatstand like a staff swung it into the chest of a Rake. His victim, thrown off balance, floundered into the gunman; the crossbow gave a sharp puff of compressed steam and the bolt ripped through Burton’s coat, missing his thigh by inches. The edges of the hole caught fire.

  Burton slapped the material and lunged at the man, caught him around the waist, and sent him crashing down. He knocked him senseless with a left hook and snatched up the weapon. There was some sort of heating element beneath the grip. Four thin pipes passed from it into a cylinder positioned over the barrel. He pulled back the lever at the side of the crossbow as he’d seen the man do. The next bolt slotted into place.

  Sheathing his blade, Burton took aim at one of the slavering werewolves. With the steam from the rotorship above, and the swaying lights from the circling rotorchairs, the scene of the battle crawled with dark and distorting shadows, making it difficult to focus on the target; nevertheless, his aim was true, and the bolt tunnelled through the beast’s brain. The wolf-man fell, twitched, and lay still.

  Burton reloaded and looked around in time to see three Rakes hoisting Spring Heeled Jack above their heads and running with him up the slope toward the western end of the field. He lifted the crossbow and shot one of the three in the leg. The man fell with a cry of pain and lay jerking spasmodically while the other two dropped the struggling time traveller. One of them caught the next bolt in his shoulder and went down with a screech. The remaining man began to spin bolas, his eyes fixed on Burton. The king’s agent shot him in the arm before he could let fly.

  “Trounce! Honesty!” bellowed Burton, spotting the two men fighting nearby. “Jack is here! Help me!”

  Detective Inspector Honesty was engaged in fisticuffs with a huge brute of a man, a Technologist who, by the state of his clothes and skin, was evidentially employed to stoke the boilers of the gargantuan ship hovering above. The svelte Yard man was dwarfed by him, yet, miraculously, seemed to avoid every swipe of the mammoth fists while planting his own again and again on the blocklike jaw above him. Even as Burton watched, the Technologist’s knees wobbled and gave way. The big man dropped to a sitting position, and—bang!—his head snapped to the left as Honesty’s fist met the solid jawbone. Bang!—it was smacked to the right. The Technologist lay down and slept.

  The slim detective shook his hands, flexed his fingers, and ran over to Burton with a smile on his face.

  Detective Inspector Trounce, meanwhile, was displaying a much more basic form of combat. Truncheon in hand, he was moving from Technologist to Technologist, Rake to Rake, walloping them over the head.

  He, too, paced over to Burton.

  “The fight is moving up the field!” he shouted. “They have more men than us! We’re losing constables fast, Captain!”

  “Where’s your jumping Jack character?” asked Honesty, wiping a spot of blood from his goggles.

  “There!” said Burton, but as he pointed to where Edward Oxford had fallen, the stilt-man suddenly bounded up and sprang away, a shower of sparks and blue flame trailing behind him.

  “After him! Don’t let him escape!”

  Oxford took two mighty strides, plucked a shovel out of a villager’s hand, whacked the man on the head with it, then started laying about himself indiscriminately.

  Trounce and Honesty sprinted toward him.

  Burton raised the crossbow and took aim at Spring Heeled Jack’s left leg. He began to apply pressure to the trigger.

  A blade slid out of his upper right arm, then withdrew.

  With a cry of pain, Burton dropped the Technologist weapon, its bolt sizzling into the air.

  He turned and faced Laurence Oliphant.

  “From behind, Oliphant?” he asked, stepping back and drawing his blade left-handed.

  “I’m not feeling gentlemanly today,” answered the albino. “Fighting with my off-hand doesn’t agree with me; though I have, at least, evened things up on that score.”

  “How is your paw? Haven’t you licked it better yet? And a bullet in the arm just above it. Poor little kitten.”

  Their swords clicked together.

  Blood ran down the fingers of Burton’s right hand and dripped onto the grass.

  “I see you have my blade,” observed Oliphant. “I want it back. I had it specially made. It’s a very fine piece.”

  “That’s true. It’s wonderfully balanced,” agreed Burton. “I have it in mind to keep it as a souvenir, something to remember you by after I run it through you. Don’t you find it nicely ironic that the blade you commissioned is the one that’ll pierce your dastardly heart?”

  They circled each other.

  Oliphant’s sword blurred through the air. Burton countered it with ease and pricked the panther-man’s shoulder.

  “My my!” exclaimed the king’s agent. “You aren’t nearly so fast today!”

  Oliphant bared his canines.

  Over his opponent’s shoulder, Burton saw Trounce knocked to the ground by a wolf-man. Detective Inspector Honesty crossed to his colleague, pulled out a pistol, and put a bullet through the monster’s skull. He looked up and saw Burton, then raised his pistol and pointed it at the back of Oliphant’s head. Burton shook his own slightly, as if to say, “No. This one is mine.”

  Honesty gave a curt nod and plunged back into the battle, chasing after Spring Heeled Jack.

  Oliphant lunged and almost caught Burton in the chest. The king’s agent barely managed to parry, but parry he did, then turned the tables with an une-deux of such power that the albino’s sword not only flew from his hand but also broke into two pieces.

  Burton levelled his blade at his adversary’s throat.

  Oliphant laughed viciously, stepped back, and drew a pistol, aiming it between Burton’s eyes.

  The king’s agent lowered his blade. “What a blackguard you are!” he sneered.

  Oliphant’s feline eyes narrowed. His finger applied pressure to the trigger.

  A dark object smacked into his face and exploded in a cloud of black dust. He fell backward. His gun cracked and the bullet flew wild.

  “Yaah-hooo!” came a cry from above.

  Burton looked up and saw Algernon Swinburne grinning down at him from a madly tumbling box kite that was being towed along by a huge swan. A great flock of the giant birds was flying in from the south, their feathers startlingly white against the night sky, the lamps from the rotorchairs shining off them.

  In each kite—with the exception of Swinburne’s—sat two boys, chimney sweeps, who were eagerly throwing bags of soot down onto the combatants below.

  Now it became apparent why the all policemen were wearing goggles, for while it was true that they had to frequently wipe the black powder from their eyepieces, at least their eyes were protected. Not so the Rakes and Technologists! As the air clouded with the dust, which whirled through the steam as it was blasted by the rotorship overhead, the enemy forces stumbled around half blinded. Man after man, with watering eyes, walked into a descending truncheon and fell senseles
s onto the grass.

  Meanwhile, the sweeps, directed by Swinburne, split into two groups. The first continued to circle under the rotorship, the kites whipped about by its downdraught, the boys throwing soot bombs. The second group peeled off and swooped out, up, and over the massive ship, then began to wheel above it. The boys took out metal rods—handle sections of their chimney brushes—and dropped them onto the spinning wings beneath. Loud clangs sounded and chunks of the damaged wings streaked out sideways, spinning away over the trees that bordered the field.

  It had the desired effect: very slowly, the rotorship began to retreat, sliding westward at a snail’s pace.

  Laurence Oliphant kicked Burton’s legs out from under him. The famous explorer sprawled onto the ground and cried out as pain lanced through his injured arm. The panther-man hurled himself onto him. They rolled, punching, scratching, biting, kicking, forcing their elbows into each other’s throats, head-butting and scrambling for an unbreakable hold. Burton had the skill, the strength, and the training, but Oliphant possessed animal savagery; his mock manners had fallen away to reveal the beast within, and the king’s agent felt as if he were back in Africa, fighting hand to hand with one of that continent’s great cats.

  It was impossible to get a grip on the albino, and Burton’s strength drained rapidly as he weathered the storm of slashing claws and snapping teeth. Then Oliphant’s brow hammered into his face with such force that for a second Burton saw nothing but stars. His vision returned as the pantherman bent over his throat, his jaw distending unnaturally, his dripping canines glinting with wicked intent.

  A rope slid across Burton’s outstretched hand. He snatched at it and, in one lightning-fast motion, coiled it about the albino’s neck. With a choking cough, the panther-man was yanked backward and dragged from him, slid across the grass, then was hauled into the air. He swung, kicking and jerking convulsively at the end of the line, which descended from one of the departing rotorship’s open doors. Then he became still, his white face blackening, until he limply vanished into the cloud of steam and soot.

  “Still hanging around with the wrong crowd!” observed Burton.

  There came a sudden flash and Oliphant’s body swung back into view, burning brightly; he had spontaneously combusted.

  Burton watched as the blazing corpse vanished into the pall again, then he located the crossbow, picked it up, and went in search of Honesty and Trounce.

  Visibility was severely hampered by the black dust that moved through the air and clung to his goggles, but it seemed to him that the battle had thinned out, with fewer men fighting and a great many lying dead or unconscious on the grass.

  The mist parted and a massive swan emerged from it. Flying extremely low, it shot past him, the long leather straps attached to its harness trailing behind to a box kite in which a redheaded passenger was yelling: “The cottage!”

  It was Swinburne—and his message was clear!

  Burton started running down the field.

  On the well-swept high street of the village, Old Carter the Lamp-lighter was attempting to restrain his neighbours.

  “It ain’t nothing to concern us!” he announced. “I happen to know that it’s a police matter and they’ll not brook interference from common folk!”

  “Who’re you calling common?” shouted a middle-aged man. “Old Ford is our village! It’s bad enough we had Spring Heeled Jack back in ‘38—now we have to put up with giant swans, wolf-things, and all manner of flying contraptions! It ain’t natural, I tell you!”

  “Aye!” came a cry of agreement. “There’s a bloody curse on this village!”

  “There ain’t no such thing as curses!” objected Old Carter the Lamplighter.

  “Then how do you explain all that malarkey?” shouted another, pointing at the battle in the field across the small valley. “I tell you, it’s the old mansion in Waterford that’s the cause of it! There’s been an ill wind blowing through Old Ford ever since the Mad Marquess took up residence there back in ‘37!”

  “It’s true!” called a voice from the back of the crowd. “He may be dead but he’s not forgotten! His ghost haunts that place!”

  “Darkening Towers was built by a mad ‘un and it’s had mad ‘uns in it ever since!” a woman screamed. “We should have burned it to the ground years ago!”

  “And what about this Mr. Belljar blighter? Has anyone actually seen him?”

  “No!” they roared.

  “Who is he? Why did he come here?”

  “Look! Look! The flying ship is leaving! It’s heading toward Waterford!”

  “It’s going to Darkening Towers, I’ll warrant!”

  “Let’s follow! Let’s find out who this Belljar is, once and for all!”

  “Aye, and if it’s him what brought this madness upon us, let’s string him up!”

  “Bravo!”

  “Aye! “

  “Hang him!”

  “Stop, you fools!” yelled Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, but no one listened, and soon, brandishing makeshift weapons and burning torches, the mob was descending toward Bearbinder Lane, which, if they followed it to the right, would eventually lead to the main thoroughfare to Waterford.

  “What the heck!” Old Carter the Lamp-lighter sighed. “If you can’t beat em, join ‘em!”

  He hurried after his neighbours.

  Down the hill they marched until, at the bottom, with the Alsop field sloping up before them, they came to the cottage.

  Four constables, who’d been guarding the premises since the fight commenced, came forward.

  “Folks! You should return to your homes at once!” said one. “It’s not safe here!”

  “Aye!” cried a villager. “And it’ll never be safe until we’re rid of Darkening Towers!”

  “It’s true!” shouted another. “We’re going to burn the accursed place to the ground!”

  The constable shook his head. “You’ll be doing no such thing!”

  Suddenly one of the women screamed and pointed at the field. They turned and saw the dirty cloud parting as a dreadful apparition came hopping toward them. The tall, gangling creature was familiar to them all; it had been associated with Old Ford ever since it attacked Jane Alsop twenty-three years ago on the very spot where they were standing. It was Spring Heeled Jack!

  With cries of terror, the villagers scattered as the grotesque bogeyman ploughed into them, swinging a shovel left and right while shrieking, “Get away! Get away!”

  The constables were mown down by his frenzied attack. The villagers raced away. The cottage was left unprotected.

  The stilt-man threw the shovel aside and vaulted over the gate, stalked up the pathway, and slammed his shoulder into the front door. It swung open. He bent and peered into the hallway.

  A young woman was standing in it. She held a pistol levelled at his head.

  “Tell me, girl—do you have a birthmark on your chest?” he demanded.

  “I’m not Alicia Pipkiss,” she replied coolly. “She’s been taken to a place of safety. You’ll never find her.”

  He expelled a sulphuric hiss of fury and for a second Sister Raghavendra thought he was going to pounce upon her, but then a voice rang out: “Edward John Oxford!”

  Spring Heeled Jack whirled around.

  Sir Richard Francis Burton was standing at the gate.

  He held a strange weapon in his hand.

  He pulled the trigger.

  A bolt crackled through the air and thudded into the time suit’s control unit.

  Oxford screamed and convulsed as lines of energy writhed up and down his body.

  He tottered, nearly fell, crouched, leaped, and vanished.

  “Bismillah! Where the hell has he gone now?” muttered Burton.

  He heard his name called from the battlefield. It was Detective Inspector Trounce, who was waving his bowler above his head to attract the explorer’s attention. He strained to hear what the man was shouting.

  “He’s here! He’s here! The Techn
ologists have him!”

  When Spring Heeled Jack leaped out of 1861 with the energised crossbow bolt embedded in his suit’s control unit, he had no clear idea of a destination. His mind had been pushed to the brink of unconsciousness by an electrical discharge. He jumped without considering a landing place and, for a split second, or possibly an eternity, he floated beyond time.

  He fragmented.

  All the elements that had made Edward Oxford the man he was separated from one another and drifted apart. Decisions taken were unmade and became choices; successes and failures reverted to opportunities and challenges; characteristics disengaged and withdrew to become influences.

  He lost cohesion until nothing of him remained except potential.

  Yet, set apart from this strange process, something observed and wailed and grieved as it watched itself disintegrate into ever smaller components.

  It was that same something that clung despairingly to one final possibility; that issued a last command to the ebbing time suit; that hoped against all evidence to the contrary that another attempt to dissuade the original Edward Oxford from assassinating Queen Victoria might—just might—work, and wipe this crazy version of history out of existence.

  Spring Heeled Jack popped into existence above Green Dragon Alley on February 27, 1838, hit the ground, fell, and dragged himself into an angle in the narrow passageway.

  He pulled the suit’s cloak over his head, seeking darkness and a moment to remember, to gather his thoughts.

  Who was he?

  Where was he?

  Why was he here?

  What must he do?

  There was a name: Edward Oxford—the Original.

  And a place: the Hat and Feathers.

  And an enemy: Burton.

  And a voice: “Are you sick, Mister? Shall I fetch help?”

  He pulled the cloak aside and looked up. A young girl was standing looking at him; a child, also female, just behind her.

  He had to rape her, or someone like her.

  Rape?

  What was he thinking? He’d never done anything like that in his life; he wasn’t capable of such brutality! Why was he contemplating such a foul act? Why was his head filled with all this violence? Rape and ripping girls’ dresses and assassination and fighting and—