by Amy Cross
And she's staring straight at me.
“This is your fault!” she screams, her voice filled with hatred. “I fought so hard to get away from here and you sent me straight back! I hate you!”
“What are you talking about?” I shout. “Who are you? What are we doing here?”
As soon as she reaches me, she grabs my arm and tries to pull my hand away from the rock-face.
“What are you doing?” I stammer. “What -”
Suddenly she bites my wrist, sinking her teeth deep through my skin. I cry out and try to pull away, but she bites harder for a moment before finally letting go.
“I spent hundreds and hundreds of years here,” she snarls, “until I found a way back, until Grazier opened up a body for me to enter. And if I have to do that all over again, then I will, and this time I'll make sure there's no-one like you there to ruin it! I hate you so much, I'll never forgive you!”
“What do you mean?” I ask, before suddenly realizing the truth.
Although she looks and acts like a little girl, this must be the creature that was inside Catherine Grazier's body, the original soul that entered her and then tried to merge with me. This must be what she looked like in the beginning, when she first died, but...
She's so young.
How can this be the same person?
And how old is she? How long ago did she die?
Still blinking furiously, I finally manage to get a slightly less blurred view of the girl, and I see that I was right: she's so young.
“Go!” she screams suddenly, grabbing my arm and trying again to pull me away from the rock-face. At the same time, she starts kicking me furiously while precariously hanging onto the rocks herself. “You ruined everything, but you won't ruin it again! I'm going to live again and no-one will even remember who you were! No-one even likes you!”
“I -”
Before I can reply, she kicks me hard in the face, with enough force to almost send me spinning away from the rock-face. As I try to recover, she scuttles around me, moving quickly across the rocks like a spider. She must have learned how to survive here while she was trapped, and now she's already trying to pull my other hand free.
I try to cling on, and after a moment I manage to slip my hand into a deep crack that's running into the rock-face. I can see a faint hint of light at the bottom of the crack, but I don't have the strength to reach any closer. Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I simply focus on trying to hang on for a moment as the wind blasts more grit – and even some larger rocks – against my side.
Suddenly the girl bites my neck. I scream as I try to pull away, but she's holding on too tight. I open my eyes and swing around, barely clinging to the rocks, and now the girl is climbing across my back while keeping her teeth sunk firmly into me. The pain is immense and I can feel blood running down onto my back. The girl has one hand still holding onto the rocks, anchoring herself with her fingernails digging so deep into the surface that the tips are raw and bloodied. She doesn't seem to care, though; I think she only cares about surviving.
I scream again as I feel her teeth ripping away a chunk from my neck. She immediately bites again, and this time she grips my arm with one hand while holding onto the rock-face with the other.
Trying to get her to stop biting me, I reach around and push against her face. I can't force her back, however, even as the pain gets stronger and stronger. Crying out, I feel the fingertips of my other hand starting to slip against the rock-face, so I instinctively reach back to get a better grip.
“Stop!” I scream. “Leave me alone!”
At that moment, I knock her arm and force her hand away from the rocks. I hear a faint cry over my shoulder, and I turn just as her face pulls away from my neck. She has a chunk of bloodied flesh in her mouth, but she looks absolutely horrified as she loses her grip on me. As she screams, she starts falling away, but at the very last moment she manages to grab hold of my foot as her body is pulled toward the void.
“Help me!” she gasps, with my blood running down her chin. She sounds terrified and absolutely panicked, and – for the first time – truly like a little girl. “Please, don't let me go! You have to help me!”
I try to reach down, but I can't quite manage to grab her outstretched hand. She's just a little girl, and she's terrified. I can't let her get pulled away, not when I can maybe save her and make her see things differently. I look around, hoping to see something I can use, but finally I realize I have no choice. Leaning down even further, I can feel myself coming loose from the rock-face as I try desperately to grab the little girl's hand.
“I don't want to die!” she sobs, with tears streaming down her face. “Please don't let me go! You have to help me get back, I don't want to go into the darkness!”
I try again to grab her hand, but I just can't quite reach.
“Please!” she continues. “Help me!”
I strain even more, and finally – somehow – I manage to grab her hand. I struggle for a moment to get a better grip, and then I start pulling her closer.
“It's okay!” I shout. “You're going to be -”
Suddenly she lunges at me, screaming and biting hard against my hand. At the same time, she grabs my shoulder and tries to haul herself along my body. As she does so, she grabs my arm and starts pulling me away from the rock-face. I can feel her teeth grinding against the bone just above my thumb, and the pain is intense.
“Stop!” I yell, as she bites down harder on my hand. “You're going to make us both fall! You're -”
Before I can finish, she lets go of my hand and turns to me, hissing blood in my face. At that moment her grip on my arm slips and she falls. I instinctively reach out to grab her, but I can only watch helplessly as she falls screaming away from the wall and vanishes into the void. Blinking as grit continues to fill my eyes, I stare into the darkness for a moment before realizing that it's too late, and she's truly lost.
In the distance, a blur of light briefly lights one part of the void.
“Most of the dead simply scream as they're pulled away into the void,” I remember the old woman telling me in the basement, “where they either spin forever or fall into the jaws of the over-gods and the under-gods. I saw those gods with my own eyes, I saw their great glowing faces with their wide-open mouths.”
Another flash briefly lights up a different part of the void. Squinting, I try to work out what I'm seeing, but my eyes are too badly damaged. For a moment, however, I can't help wondering if better eyesight would allow me to see these 'over-gods and under-gods', whatever those are.
I spot another flash, but there's no point watching any further. My sight is too blurred, so I guess I'll never know.
I turn and adjust my grip on the rock-face. Shivering and bleeding, I try to think of some way I can save myself, but I know there's nowhere to go. If I'm in this place, I must be dead already, which means I have two choices: either I cling on here for as long as possible and then eventually I fall, or I let go and allow myself to get pulled into the void. Wincing, I try to dig my fingernails deeper into the rocks. The little girl was able to move about with ease, but I guess she'd had a lot of practice. All I can do is cling on for dear life.
Or, I suppose there's a third choice: I could try to fight my way back, the way that little girl fought her way back. As I look along the rock-face, however, I realize that there's no way I can be like her. I pause for a moment, trying to work out whether there's anything else I can try, and then I start to accept the inevitability of what's about to happen.
All around me, blurred figures are screaming as they're pulled into the void.
I guess I'll probably scream too but, wherever I end up, at least I won't have to fight any longer. I can feel the wind picking up and starting to make my shirt flap wildly against my back. It's as if the void is trying extra-hard now to peel me away from the wall.
It's inevitable.
I fought as hard as I could, and now it's time to stop.
I close my
eyes and count to ten, and then I wait a little longer, and then finally I let go. I expect to be instantly pulled away, to feel myself being flung through the void until I reach whatever's out there, but instead I realize after a moment that I'm still pressed against the rock-face. And a moment later I realize I can feel something holding my wrist.
Opening my eyes, I can just about see – through blurred and scratched vision – that an arm has reached out from a crack in the rock-face, and that I can see a face shouting at me. He's already starting to pull me back through, and although I can't quite make out the words he so desperately yelling, I realize after a moment that I recognize him.
It's Doctor Charles Grazier.
Somehow he's pulling me back into the world. He's saving my life again.
Epilogue
Maddie
Five years later
It's 5:30pm on a cool November evening. As I step out of the car, I can't help looking both ways along Cathmore Road and marveling that everything seems so normal. Autumn leaves have been piled against walls and bins, and cars are parked in every available spot. And as I stop for a moment, I realize that I've never actually seen anybody going in or out of any of the other houses along here.
It's almost as if this street is holding its breath.
I know there are other people who live on Cathmore Road, but I guess maybe they've subconsciously leaned to ignore number nine. Maybe they hurry to get inside their own houses as quickly as possible, so as to avoid that nagging feeling that there's something else here. Maybe they sense that something's wrong but they don't know quite what, so they stop worrying and just get on with their lives. Certainly nobody seems to even notice number nine, which apparently is left alone by the universe.
And that's fine by me.
Because as I slam the car door shut, I look up at the front of number nine and see that it still seems so utterly unremarkable, so normal, that I totally understand people walking past and not even casting a glance beyond those railings at the front. Not even thinking about the boarded-up windows or the overgrown garden. Something's keeping people away and that's a good thing, because I still believe that there's something very powerful and very dangerous that wants to burst through from the house and return to this world. Not that it'll ever get the chance, but still...
Matt thinks I'm wrong.
He think the house is just a house.
I'd like to believe him, but I can't help noticing that people still ignore the place. There's still something here.
Suddenly I spot movement nearby, and I turn to see a woman and her daughter coming out from one of the other houses. Number fifteen, I think. The woman leads the little girl – who looks to be about nine or ten years old – out of the house's garden and then this way along the pavement.
As the woman and her daughter walk past, the little girl glances at me and smiles. I smile back, but then I turn and watch as they head straight past number nine. The woman is checking her phone, but I half expect the girl to look toward the house. When she doesn't, however, I feel a flash of relief.
The ghost of Jack the Ripper still casts a shadow over London but, so long as he remains just a ghost, he can't do any harm. And the house of Jack the Ripper can rot, and the crack in its floor will never grow wide enough to let anything through.
I watch as the little girl and her mother disappear around the far corner, and then I turn to find that Matt has come around to join me outside the front of the house.
“You don't have to do this, you know,” he tells me.
“Yes,” I reply, feeling a tightening knot of anticipation in my chest, “I do.”
***
Blood drips from the gash on my hand, splattering against the floor. Reaching down, I use a scarred fingertip to paint the blood into a fresh set of symbols, finally completing my latest repaint of the circle in the basement.
Stepping back, I take a moment to check that I've done everything right. I come here once a year now and add fresh blood, just to make sure that the circle doesn't fade. I know there's probably no need to be so assiduous, that my blood is stained into the ground, but I still want to be absolutely certain. Now the circle has been freshened up and the symbols are a rich red again. My work is done here for another year, but I'll be back exactly three-hundred-and-sixty-five days from now to do it again.
And the year after that.
And the year after that too.
For as long as I live, I'll come and make sure that this circle remains in place.
“Looking good,” a voice says nearby, and I turn to see Matt limping down the stairs. He comes over and stops next to me. “Are you sure you still need to -”
“What did you find?” I ask, hoping to avoid another conversation about whether or not I need to keep this ritual going. I look down at the papers he's holding. “Anything interesting?”
“It's slow going,” he explains, shuffling through the different print-outs he brought to study while I was down here, “but one of these photos has made me wonder.”
He holds up a very old picture of Cathmore Road. I immediately recognize the house, although my attention is drawn to several women in the foreground who are holding up peacock feathers. The whole scene seems pretty ridiculous, almost comical.
“Believe it or not, this was taken to commemorate the anniversary of a zoological society,” Matt explains. “I don't know why they took it right outside this house. Maybe that was just a coincidence. The point is, thanks to some other research I was able to pin the date down to October the seventh, 1888.”
“That's right before Charles Grazier killed himself,” I point out.
“Exactly, but look closer.”
I peer at the photo, while wiping my bloodied palm with a tissue.
“What am I supposed to see?” I ask.
He points at one of the house's windows. Just as I'm about to ask again, I realize I can just about make out a face peering out from inside the house, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little.
“That's not Charles Grazier,” I say finally.
“It's not,” Matt replies. “I have no idea who it is, although you can just about see that he's wearing Grazier's suit. In fact, I think it might even be the suit Grazier was wearing when he died. Nowhere else in any of my research have I come across anything to suggest that there was somebody else in the house with Grazier at that time, but this photo proves there was.”
“Jack the Ripper, maybe?” I suggest with a half-smile.
“I'm going to keep looking into this,” he continues. “I know it's crazy, but I really want to know. Maybe Grazier wasn't alone in the house after his wife died, maybe he had someone with him. An assistant, maybe, or someone who encouraged him to keep going with his work. We'll probably never know for certain. Most likely, this photo will just haunt my investigations and I'll never even have a name for the guy. It's funny how some people can fade into history, isn't it? This guy might have played a central role in all the madness at the house, yet somehow he disappeared from the record.”
“He didn't completely disappear,” I point out, still staring at the picture and feeling a little creeped-out by the intensity of the man's stare. He looks trouble, and maybe a little afraid. “You've got this.”
Finally Matt folds the print-outs and slips them into his pocket, before looking down once again at the symbols.
“I know what you're going to say,” I tell him, as I stare at the symbols too.
“You do?”
“You're going to say that this is unnecessary,” I continue. “That she's never coming back, that she can't. And that even if she could, it wouldn't be through this house again.”
“You read my mind.”
“You're going to say that I'm spilling my blood for no reason,” I add, before placing a hand on my belly, “and that I shouldn't expect anyone to carry on doing the same thing after I'm gone. That expecting her to carry on after me is wrong.” I turn to him. “But it's my blood, and
it'll be our daughters' blood, and -”
“Or son's,” he suggests.
“I've got a feeling it'll be a girl,” I tell him. “The point is, she'll probably think I'm crazy when she grows up and I tell her about this. The last thing I want is to ask our daughter to take over this job and to come here once a year and spill her blood just to keep some stupid circle in place. I know how it sounds, but please, just let me have this one. Let me be stupid, let me keep the ritual going. I'll explain it to her when the time comes. I'll make her understand.”
“As if I could even stop you,” he says with a smile. “Heard any ghosts while we've been here this time?”
I shake my head.
“I went up to the bedrooms,” he explains, as we wander across the basement, heading toward the stairs. “I still didn't see anything, and I didn't feel a presence either.”
“I really think they're gone,” I tell him. “We'd have noticed something by now.”
“You think they're both gone?”
“I think Charles Grazier drove himself insane while he was alive,” I continue, “but I think that once he died, once he was a ghost here, he became his sane self again. I think finally, somehow, he allowed himself to go up to be with Catherine again. Once they were reunited, once they were at peace, they left and went...”
My voice trails off.
“Went where?” Matt asks.
Stopping at the foot of the stairs, I turn to him. “I have no idea,” I reply. “Would you mind giving me a moment down here alone before we leave?”
“You always ask me that,” he points out. “Mind if I ask why?”
“Just a moment alone,” I reply. “A moment of peace. It'd really help.”
He leans closer and kisses me on the cheek, before starting to limp up the stairs.
“Don't be too long,” he calls back down to me. “I want to swing by Tesco on the way home and pick up some stuff. Or maybe we could eat at the pub tonight.”