A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper

by kindels

  Now, as you read what is to come, I hope that you will grant me that understanding, and I can at least find some semblance of peace in that knowledge, though my tortured soul shall burn forever, of that I sure.

  As I said, on this occasion when I visited him, he was quite lucid, hardly deranged at all, and I thought he was improving, that the drugs I had prescribed for him were helping in some way. I hoped that he might have desisted in his use of laudanum, but he said that his headaches had been getting worse, and that the laudanum was the only thing that helped. I knew then that he was addicted to the stuff, and would probably be over using the opiate. Nevertheless, he conversed quite well for a few minutes, and his education and breeding were quite evident in his whole manner and bearing. I could not help but look at his eyes, those eyes that were so like his mother's, and I expressed my sadness that she had ended in such a way, dying as she had in that place apart from those who cared for her. As I spoke of her, however, his demeanour changed, and his eyes seemed to flare with a baleful and malevolent gaze. I thought he was perhaps in the throes of another brain seizure, and was convinced of such when he suddenly announced that Jack the Ripper wasn't finished yet, that he would strike again soon, and that everyone would soon know of his greatest crime to date. I felt that he was being over dramatic and sensationalist, and dismissed this rant as another example of his fevered state, as though he were fixating all his pent up hatred for his sorry state upon the Ripper, identifying with him in his madness, still never for one minute believing that he was indeed that very man. How wrong I was, how very wrong. Would that I could live my life again, and do things differently, but I cannot, and you now know the truth, or, most of it, I am not yet ready to reveal the end to this sorry tale. Perhaps when you have read the rest of his confessional you will understand my torment, and why I did what I did, and why the silence must be total, for all time.

  Your father

  Burton Cleveland Cavendish

  The note was undated, though I knew it must have been written some time after my great-grandfather had read the entire journal, and now I knew, at last! Jack the Ripper was a distant relative of mine. He was the illegitimate son of my own great-grandfather, the result of a one-time liaison with a woman whom my ancestor was so obviously infatuated with in his younger days. In fact, from my great-grandfather's words, and from what I'd read in the information provided by the Casebook, I now had a pretty good idea of the identity of the Ripper, though somehow, his name had suddenly become an irrelevance to me. I tried to work it out; if he was the son of my great-grandfather, then he would have been my great uncle, I thought. He must have been, as he would have been my grandfather's half-brother, though grandfather obviously knew nothing of his existence until he'd received this note with the journal so many years ago. I could only imagine his shock and horror at making such a discovery. How, I wondered, had he taken the news that he was so closely related to the killer? More to the point, how had he managed to keep it quiet for so long, only revealing the truth in the form of the journal, left to my father after his death, as it had been bequeathed to me? The answer was straightforward of course. It was there in my great-grandfather's own hand, a plea from the grave, requesting that the secret be kept within the family for all time. Having read his sad and revealing confession to his son, my grandfather, I could understand why.

  There was more of course, there had to be. There was something my great-grandfather wasn't revealing, not yet at any rate. I knew it was something terrible, worse perhaps than the revelation of the Ripper's identity, and his involvement with the family. It was a feeling that was growing stronger inside me, a feeling that the final horror of my ancestor's association with Jack the Ripper wasn't quite concluded. I had to go on, complete the journal, and hope to find the truth along the way.

  I had been away from the words of The Ripper for too long, it was time to turn another page, to draw ever closer to the night of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the night when Jack the Ripper's reign of terror reached its final, bloody crescendo.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Mary, Mary, Sweet Little Mary

  I was glad that I'd taken the time to study the facts of the Mary Kelly case. I felt that in some way I'd managed to arm myself against whatever the Ripper himself may have subsequently added to the journal. Nothing could be more horrific than the truth, and the words of the doctor who'd carried out the post mortem on the poor girl had been all the more chilling in their cold, professional presentation. My great-grandfather had given enough away in his words to further arm me in my continued journey through what were to be the last few pages of the journal. My own father had always told me to listen to the truth as it presents itself, and that any subsequent lies or exaggerations will therefore cause me no harm. I had done that, as best as I could, and now once again I took hold of the journal, and turned from my great-grandfather's note to view once more the handwriting of Jack the Ripper.

  As was becoming more and more prevalent by that time, he had missed a number of days between entries, the next one coming some three days after the last.

  29th October 1888

  Time is running short, the voices are growing louder in my head, the pain so much worse, and the laudanum is failing to relieve me. I take ever more and yet all it does is make me sick, and I am a mask of fever. I must strike again, and soon, the whores are growing too confident, they think I have gone, departed the darkness, but no, I have been sleeping, waiting, resting, and I shall make the streets red once more with whore blood. I've seen her, the one who I shall slice and gut so soon. A pretty thing, could be a ladies maid, but she's not, she is a dirty pestilent whore, and she will die. Have twice spoken with the whore in an ale house on Commercial Street. She has a high opinion of herself this one, and is deserving of my best efforts, I shall slit her well, and leave a sign for all to see.

  This short entry proved to me that he was now in the final throws of his insanity. The voices growing louder, the sickness, the fever, all signs of the Ripper's final degeneration. The laudanum, far from bringing relief from his symptoms had now become in itself an additional problem, he was suffering from the cumulative results of opium poisoning, and his body, and indeed his brain, could surely not take much more.

  His description of his meetings with Mary Kelly, (for surely it were she he was describing), showed me that in this, his last and most gruesome murder, the Ripper had deliberately stalked his victim, had met her, spoken with her, had spent time with her. From his reference to Commercial Street, and my own check with my notes, I thought he was probably referring to a tavern by the name of the Queen's Head, which was a common haunt of prostitutes on that road. It would have been perfectly reasonable to expect him to have met his victim there. His further comment that 'she thought a lot of herself' further supported my belief that this was Kelly, who was known to be something of a braggart and a weaver of fantasies believing herself to be of a higher social standing than many of the unfortunate women in her profession. There was a stark chill about his final comment to 'slit her well'. Mary Kelly had no idea at the time, yet she had been marked for death well in advance of her actual demise. This final act of the Ripper's had been no random act, but a predetermined calculated attack upon a selected victim. Even now, after all I'd read in the last two days, he had managed to surprise me by the brutally callous selection of the victim of his final and most bloodthirsty murder yet. She was pretty he said; did that make him angry? Was he by then so jealous of those who were unafflicted with the gradual wasting disease such as he suffered that he had selected her because of her good looks? It would be true to remark that none of his previous victims had been either young or particularly well endowed in the beauty stakes, but now here he was, seemingly seeking out and selecting the prettiest prostitute he could find in order to satisfy his latest blood lust. There was a cold-heartedness about his words that filled me with a chill. Mary Kelly had, at that point in his journal a little over week of life left to her, and the R
ipper was counting down the days to the time when he would slake his thirst for blood in the most heinous and horrible example of his work to date. How could she have known that the man she had been drinking with on at least two occasions, by his own admission was the man being sought by the entire London police force for the murders of her fellow prostitutes, or that she was talking to, perhaps even laughing with the man who would soon bestow upon her the dubious 'honour' of being the last recorded victim of Jack the Ripper?

  Another entry was recorded at the bottom of the page, just a short one, but it was all the more damnable for that!

  30th October 1888

  Mary, Mary, sweet little Mary, I know your name and where you dwell,

  Mary, Mary, dirty whore Mary, soon you'll be in Hell.

  Hahahaha

  He knew her name, he was playing a game in his mind, and the poor girl was being used as the unwitting pawn in his last and most fiendish display of blood curdling viciousness. His mocking verse sent a shudder through me, and I could only imagine the perverse glee that he must have felt as he penned those few words. His mind was by then almost on the verge of collapse, of that I was sure; he was descending ever deeper into the depths of his final insanity, and the unfortunate Mary Kelly was being targeted in the way a cat stalks a bird in the garden. He was watching her, waiting for the moment to strike, while all the time she went about her business as usual, totally unaware of the sudden and brutal end he had planned for her.

  I turned the page, and there were more brief, twisted verses lying in wait for me.

  31st October 1888

  Mary, Mary, whore, whore, whore, soon you'll be dead,

  Mary, Mary, whore, whore, whore, I just might cut off your head.

  1st November 1888

  I'll slice and gut the Mary whore,

  Till there's nothing left of Mary no more.

  2nd November 1888

  Visited the Queen's Head again. Drank with the whore and gave her money. A shilling to buy drink. She will learn to trust her gentleman friend, and then I'll have my way.

  3rd November 1888

  My head hurts; I can not wait much longer. The voices will tell me when, but it must be soon. I can feel the need to spill the whore's blood. She must die soon, and I must rest, the work is hard, and I ache with the sickness within me. Cavendish came to see me, poor fool. He still believes me to be hallucinating, wants me to give up the laudanum. He tried to help in a way I suppose. How can I stop now? I tried to tell him, wanted him to understand, him of all people, I needed him to know, to realise the importance of my work. Why won't he believe me? I know I shall go the way of my poor dear Mama, it's started already, so much harder to think, to focus my thoughts on what I must do, and so much pain that I can scarce bear it, I do wish Cavendish could help, but he cannot, will not, for he does not understand, nor believe. I shall visit the park tomorrow. I shall throw crumbs to the ducks on the lake.

  So, he plans what was probably the most gruesome and grisly murder known in London's history, then decides to go and feed the ducks in the park! I felt sure that the Ripper's madness was now complete. This ability to switch from the insane to the mundane in the space of a second's thought convinced me of that. I remember thinking that he probably thought more of those ducks upon the ornamental lake than he did of the lives of those women he so brutally slew. He had at least acknowledged my great-grandfather's attempts to help him, though he'd just as quickly dismissed them, preferring to see his own father as nothing more than a 'poor fool', for not believing his tales of being the Ripper. I tried to imagine how my great-grandfather must have felt when faced with the Ripper's 'confessions'. What father after all would want to freely admit that his own son was the most foul and heinous murderer of his time? Perhaps my ancestor had found it easier to believe, knowing the Ripper's recent history that he was simply confessing to the crimes of another, in an attempt to secure some sort of attention. I know that if I had had a son, I would have done almost anything rather than admit to such a possibility, and I had sympathy for my great-grandfather at that point.

  Despite having sat and studied the Kelly case in some detail before applying myself to the journal I still found myself shocked by much of what I was reading. Though I hadn't yet reached the night of her murder in the journal, the entries themselves were chillingly disturbing to my increasingly fragile mind.

  First of all, it had now become abundantly clear that she was not a random victim, as the others had appeared to be, and secondly, the fact that the Ripper had taken the time to form a kind of relationship with her caused me great pain and uneasiness, for it was plain that Mary Kelly had been 'groomed' for murder. The Ripper's self control was slipping away with each and every new entry in the journal, the sick little rhymes, the switch from death to ducks, and the final, most disturbing entry yet as I reached the end of that page.

  4th November 1888

  I shall kill and gut the whore,

  Then Jack shall live for evermore.

  For as her blood flows on the floor,

  I shall step through history's door.

  haha

  I was gripped with a terror that, even to this day, I can't properly explain. What did he mean? 'Jack shall live for evermore?' Did he think he was about to be granted some form of immortality. What did he mean by stepping 'through history's door'? Through the door to where? The present? To where I now sat trembling and shaking with the thought, however illogical and impractical that he had somehow found a way to live on beyond the grave, that the killings were some form of rite that had granted him a passage through time and space, giving him the ability to cheat death? I was more than terrified at that point, I was petrified beyond belief. I had the sudden thought that the journal itself might in some way be the doorway he'd written of, a portal, a means of providing him with a window into the future, his future, and enabling him to revisit his crimes in perpetuum from century to century. I quickly tried to tell myself that such thoughts were utter nonsense, nothing more than the rantings of my own mind, brought on by the unsettling nature of the journal and its gory contents.

  With a supreme force of will, I made myself rise from the chair, and walked from the study to head for the kitchen. I needed coffee, tea, something; anything at that moment to take my mind away from those thoughts that were so terrible that no-one on this earth could have imagined for even a moment how I felt just then. As I left the study, I closed the door behind me, and as I did, I could have sworn that I heard the sound of very quiet laughter coming from within the room. I was too afraid to look back, or to open the door, not just yet anyway.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Deadline

  The kitchen felt warm and inviting after the chill that had fallen over me in the study. Perhaps that was an illusion created by my mind as a result of being surrounded by the ordinariness of kettle, fridge, and the implements of day to day life. As I sat in the fireside chair, hugging a steaming hot cup of coffee to my chest I tried to rationalize the last few minutes in the study, to bring myself back to a sense of reality, and escape from the surreal and imagined terrors that were taking hold of my conscious mind.

  For the umpteenth time I told myself that Jack the Ripper had been dead for around a hundred years, and it was impossible for his soul, or his spirit, call it what you will, to have survived in some form by investing itself into the pages of a crumpled and weary old journal. Over and over again I repeated that to myself, trying to convince my own mind that I was being totally irrational, and extremely stupid. Why then, despite my so-called logical and intelligent mind did I fail to totally believe myself?

  I certainly didn't believe in reincarnation or the spirit world. Ghosts had no part to play in my life. They were the figments of people's overactive imaginations, useful for use by authors and TV executives as a means of producing fictional tales to entertain and terrify the gullible amongst their audiences. So why couldn't I shake off the feeling that something out of the ordinary was happening
to me, here in the apparent safety of my own home?

  My head was aching and every muscle in my body had tensed up, so that I suddenly realised that I was sitting as though I were stiff as a board. I tried to relax, to slow my breathing down. I closed my eyes, hoping to let some of that tension dissipate from my mind. Instead, all I saw in my mind's eye were those terrible images from my nightmares; the wraith-like spirits and tortured souls of the Ripper's victims, twisting in their agonies and crying out for help, for release from their eternal torment. I opened my eyes again and rose from the chair. I dragged my weary limbs across to the kitchen sink, and splashed copious amounts of cold water on my face, trying to shock myself into the real world, wanting, but not succeeding to force the feelings of dread and foreboding from my mind.

  No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I couldn't escape the hold that the journal and its writer had exerted over me. It was as though I were trapped in a kind of limbo world, halfway between the reality of my previous life, (it was only a couple of days ago), and the strange half-life that I seemed to be existing in as I trawled through the journal's blood steeped pages. The worrying thought that was growing in my mind was of what would happen to me when I reached the end of the journal? Would I be able to simply put the pages away, and return to the life I'd led before I'd known of its existence, or had I somehow been condemned to live the rest of my life haunted by the knowledge contained within those pages, to live forever in the shadow of the Ripper?

  I felt as though a chasm had opened up before me, and that something beyond the boundaries of everyday reality was slowly pulling me ever closer to its edge. It would take a supreme force of will to retain my grip on what was real and what was not, as the danger grew in my mind that I was slipping into another time, another place. Why else would I be receiving such real and graphic images of the Ripper's victims, his crimes, and why also did I feel as though I were beginning to understand him so well, as if I were peering through a window into his mind?