The handsome face of the prosecutor took on a reflective look. He raised his hand, and the shade of Annie Chapman fell silent.
“Why did you do it?” he asked. “We understand the Accused; in our preparation for his trial, we learned what there is to know about him—who he was, why he chose to commit the crimes he did in the way he did, and the reason he suddenly retired after his career of carnage and terror, unidentified and unexplained. We understand him, but we do not understand you. You—Emma Smith and Martha Tabram, Mary Nichols and Annie Chapman, Long Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly—all of you who paid him for immortality in the transient coin of passing gratification, you are here for reasons unconnected with his crimes. We have examined the mind of the murderer, but we cannot fathom the minds of the victims. Whitechapel and the whole East End of London were in panic as he struck again and again, always in the same area, always at the same women. Didn’t you feel it? Why did you continue to walk the streets at night alone, courting the coppers of all men and the steel of one? Speak for them all, witness; why did you do it?”
“It was our life,” said Annie Chapman simply. “It was our life, and like farmers on the flank of Vesuvius, we had to live it or die; we lived it, and we died.
“We bear him no grudge. Poor fellow, he did himself more harm than he did us. It was over for us in a moment—a mere slash of a knife across our throats, and after that, if he chose to indulge himself on our bodies, why it was no more than he had paid to do, paid like the countless others before him. It was the way we made our living.”
“The witness will confine herself to the questions I ask and not venture into matters of opinion or forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the business of this court,” interrupted the prosecutor severely. “I understand the Defendant stole from you certain items of value?”
“Nothing of value, sir, only some brass rings and my life. And what was life? The autopsy surgeon who finished what the Defendant had started said that my body showed signs of great deprivation, that I was badly fed, that I was bruised. The night I was killed, I was turned out into the deadly dark streets from a common lodging house for lack of fourpence to pay for my bed. Yes, I bear him no grudge; he was just part of a foolish destiny which was misread for me in a cracked teacup.”
“Explain, please.”
“Once I was an honest wife living in Windsor with a respectable husband, a coachman who was dull but good, good but very dull. I was a romantic—aging, searching, unfulfilled. A gypsy read my fortune in the tea leaves and saw—need I say it?—a tall dark man who would change my life. One day, a tall dark man did appear, and I left my short, fair, good husband and went away with him—I, a woman of forty-two, no beauty, but a fine figure of a woman, aging and discontented—I went with him, searching for romance like a green girl. It was not long before he left me. He changed my life; that much of the gypsy’s prophecy was true.
“For a time, my husband, the coachman, dull but very good, sent me ten shillings a week, but then he died. I was left to sell my body in courtyards and arcades for miserable farthings; I had already sold my soul for the fraudulent romance of a gypsy charlatan.
“For it was the promise of romance that made me leave the humdrum of Windsor for the lodging houses of Thawl Street and Dorset Street and the lanes and alleys of Spitalfields and Whitechapel. The gypsy never promised fame; she never told me that seventy years after my death people would still know my name and wonder about what had happened to me. I believed in romance; I would never have believed in immortality.
“Romance! When I was lucky I went drunken to a filthy bed and awoke with coppers for rum at the Ringers or the Five Bells. Rum was my only friend and my dearest enemy. Oh, I pursued romance to the bitter end, the very depths! I wore three brass rings as if they were gold, and I sang sad songs in a cracked voice and wept at their false sentiment—‘It was only a violet I plucked from Mother’s grave…’ ”
“Spare us, please,” said the figure in red. “You may be excused. We will attend to you later.” And the woman who had been Annie Chapman faded from the box.
“We rest our case,” intoned the prosecutor as he ascended to the bench and assumed the role of judge. “We have proved beyond doubt what was already known beyond doubt: the Defendant murdered Annie Chapman and the others, women unknown to him, in a manner calculated to terrify a whole city and to horrify succeeding generations. Despite our reputation, it is neither our function nor our desire to reward evil. If the Defendant wishes to make a statement before we pass sentence, he may do so.”
From the darkness of the dock rose a face so ravaged by an unspeakable disease as to be unrecognizable as an individual or, indeed, even as a human being.
“Why am I here? Why am I made to stand this mockery of a trial? Hell I expect, but why am I singled out for special punishment? I did not escape retribution on earth; I have been punished humanly and inhumanly. I plead that my debt has been paid. I do not demand justice; I beg for mercy.”
The judge laughed. “We deal only in justice here. However, if you think you can soften our heart, proceed.”
“Let me go back then. Let me speak to you from the damnation which was mine before my death. Let me prove that my punishment on earth was crueler than any which you might devise in Hell. Let me show that my debt has been paid so that I may share in the general damnation of all sinners rather than suffer alone a particular fate which will again make me a stranger to mankind.”
“You may go back,” said the judge. “Return to the years that intervened between the death of Mary Jane Kelly and your own. Speak to us from there.”
From the dock, the voice, echoing back through the years, was dull with puzzlement and pain, but in its very dullness, fear and horror screamed in imprisoned agony as the halting words asked questions of a fugitive self that was afraid to answer them.
“Where am I? Why am I here? The iron bars at my window are artfully wrought in the fanciful shapes of flowers that do not grow, of birds that neither fly nor sing, and of animals that do not leap nor love nor, indeed, live. The bars are gilded, but they are still iron and still bars. The locks on my door, they say, are to keep out the terrors and affrights of the world, but they also keep me in. My gaolers are called nurse, companion, mother, but they are still gaolers. They say that I am ill, but I am a prisoner. Though my bonds be of the softest silk, they are as of the strongest steel; I am a prisoner.
“I do not know how it happened. There are no mirrors in my cell wherein I can divine the reason for my being here. It is buried in the barren wastes of my mind, and I spend my days frantically digging, frantically tearing at the bleeding soil of an injured brain hoping to find the answer and fearing what I might find. I dare not succeed, and I dare not fail, and I am lost in the nothingness between.
“It was my hands that sinned, not I. I look at my hands and marvel that they are still unstained by the crimes which they, not I, committed, and which I cannot now remember. Even now as I speak, my words seem strange to me, the product of my hands, of another and alien personality.
“Who am I? Once I was free. I remember I walked in the world beyond this cell as John S——, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, respected and loved, healing the sick and mourning the dead. And I remember that I was also young Saucy Jackie, Gentleman, and only slightly—only youthfully—wicked. Once there was gaiety and wine and the friendship of men and the love of women. I remember the strengths and lusts of youth, the high-life of the West End and the low-life of the East—the oat-sowing evenings which began in the glittering salons of Mayfair and ended stupidly in silly, drunken, sordid commerce with pitiful drabs in the squalid alleys of Whitechapel and Spitalfields.
“There was a time when my mother did not weep for her son, and when the gilded iron at my window formed a mere decorative grate, a bar to intrusion instead of to escape. There was a time when I was a single, unfragmented being, when my hands did not make my mind shudder and flee into the darkness, the mo
st miserable victim of my own unremembered crimes.
“They say that I am ill. It is true; I am ill. But the dread and revulsion I see in the eyes of my attendants are not caused by the loathsome disease which rots my body and turns my brain to corruption. I am ill and horrible to look at, but that does not explain why I am denied a razor to shave my beard and a knife to cut my food. Do they fear that I might commit some small crime against myself? Or can it be that they would guard against some horrid abomination to themselves?
“I am ill, but that is not why I am a prisoner; that is not why the doctor comes, a smiling executioner, speaking to me as if he were a man and I were a man like him, smiling and exchanging false encouragements with my gaolers, smiling and lying, smiling and hating the obvious wealth that has bought him and his silence and his smiles.
“Perhaps he will come soon, bearing his gift of sleep, of sleep in a bottle, of sleep without dreams. Once, I remember, sleep came as a friend, but now there are dreams which have robbed me of my freedom and have made my hands the enemies of my mind. Now there are dreams, and I awake feeling my guilt but without the memory of my crimes.
“So here am I with my bars and my locks and my dreams. Here am I, knowing that I might be saved if I remember, knowing that I might be lost if I remember. I must remember! The only thing worse than remembering is not remembering. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? If I could remember, perhaps I could repent. I must remember! A crime out of mind is a crime out of conscience. I must repent! For in repentance is the salvation of the soul, and my mind and body are already damned.
“I must remember. The dreams—the fog in Whitechapel, always the same—myself, nameless and faceless in the fog, always the same—but each night a different cowering figure—each night the flash of my knife in the fog—and then—AND THEN!…”
The tormented voice stopped abruptly and then started again on a note of despair: “Where am I? Why am I here? The iron bars at my window are artfully wrought in the fanciful shapes…”
The judge broke the spell. He had been listening intently. Now he clapped his hands with a sharp report which shut off the dismal flow of words from the dock.
“Come back through the years and hear my sentence; return and hear your doom! The punishment meted out to you on earth by your mother for love and your attendants for gain is indeed as just and as cruel as any we could devise here. For their sins, I condemn your mother, your physician, your nurses and companions, all of whom are in our power, to relive their roles throughout eternity; I condemn the one to despair and grief and the others to hatred and fear for all time.
“As for you, John S——, Surgeon, alias Saucy Jackie, alias Jack the Ripper, I sentence you to the care of those who protected you in life from the justice of men; I sentence you to that barred room until the end of time, to the fear of your own hands and mind and past forever.
“ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE!”
From Hell Again
GREGORY FROST
As an author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Gregory Frost (1951– ) has been nominated for numerous awards, most notably for his novelette “Madonna of the Maquiladora” (2002), which received nominations for the Nebula, the Hugo, the James Tiptree, Jr., and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards. The historical thriller Fitcher’s Brides (2002), a tale of Bluebeard reimagined as a combination ghost story and Gothic horror novel, was a finalist for both the World Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for Best Novel.
Other novels by Frost include Lyrec (1984), about Lyrec and Borregad—two interdimensional travelers who set out to hunt down and kill a giant creature named Miradomon who destroys whole worlds; Táin (1986) and its sequel Remscela (1988), which retell the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge—the stories of Cú Chulainn, the hero of Ulster who at the age of eighteen single-handedly defended his people against the invading army of the sorcerous queen Maeve; and The Pure Cold Light (1993), a futuristic tale in which a rebel journalist discovers a conspiracy that threatens the basis of human civilization. He has also produced a short story collection, Attack of the Jazz Giants (2005).
Frost has served as an expert researcher for episodes of television programs on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel. He also is the director of the fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College.
“From Hell Again” was first published in Ripper!, edited by Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper (New York, Tom Doherty Associates, 1988).
FROM HELL AGAIN
Gregory Frost
He pulled lightly upon the oars, stroke upon stroke, and his boat skimmed the black water of the Thames. Mayhew was a dredger and this his work, but no commission had ever been so strange. He pondered what it could all mean and how it had come to be. In his Peter boat, shallow-bottomed and easy to row, he often forgot himself entirely. Sometimes he sang or hummed a tune. Sometimes his thoughts just strayed, to happier times before his wife had taken to drink and run away, when his daughter had lived with him. But now she was back after all, and things would be better again…with this commission.
He remembered Demming. Two nights before, coming out of the fog in a frock coat, a tall toff’s hat and shadow for a face, Demming had appeared upon the quay as Mayhew tied up his boat. Gaslight glinted off the gold of Demming’s walking stick. He asked after Patrick Mayhew, and feigned surprise when he learned who he was speaking to. “You’ve a reputation as a dredger,” Demming told him. And Demming knew how lean the summer was—so lean that no sane man could have denied his offer: a job of dredging with five hundred guineas paid in advance and a promise of an impossible five hundred more if it proved successful. “Tomorrow night then,” Demming said, “I’ll meet you here at two.” Mayhew remembered how his footsteps faded in the fog but the sound of the stick tapping went on and on.
It seemed to echo in the slap of the water against his squared bow.
The second meeting. Demming had given him the heavy purse as promised. He hadn’t needed to count it to know how much it must contain. But in the interim the questions filled with worry had come to plague him, and these had to be cleared up. “This is criminal, what you want me to do,” he said over the purse. “Not at all,” Demming replied. “It’s dredgework that you’ve done a thousand times before.” “Will I need a net or grappling hooks? What is it you want me to find?” Demming paused before answering. His face was plainly visible now in the light of Mayhew’s lantern: a long, proud face, pouchy under the eyes, perhaps from drink. A clean-shaven face, a powdered face. “Hooks or nets is a matter for you—I can’t say. What you seek is a body. However, the corpse itself hardly concerns me. The man—for it is a man, Mr. Mayhew—stole from me a watch, a family heirloom that is irreplaceable. The mischief that befell him is of no concern. If you find money on him, you may keep it, but you may not turn him in to the police for any finder’s fee. I’m paying you quite enough to discourage that. Nor are you to mention him to anyone. Anyone at all.” Mayhew thought he understood this: “You kill the fella?” he asked. But Demming hardly balked. “That is none of your business, either. You perform your dredgework, stick to that, and we will get on just fine.” This left him believing that Demming had killed a man without knowing that the man carried the stolen watch on his person. An odd oversight, but not an impossible scenario to envision. And it was not much of a crime to refrain from turning the corpse in, not enough of one to overcome a small fortune.
Mayhew listened for a moment to a drunk shouting, somewhere out in the dark, near the passing quay.
Last night on the river. With the half-built Tower Bridge a mangled horror hanging over him, he secured his weighted nets to the boat, then unshipped the oars and began the long, exhausting process. Lights on the ships at dock winked at him. He dragged and hauled nets, dragged and hauled again. His black-tarred sou’wester coat kept the sodden nets from soaking him, but made him sweat twice as hard at the oars so there was hardly a difference. As dawn came up, he called it quits with three shillings worth of c
oal dredged up but nary a sign of a body.
Then the happiest moment of all in this whole adventure took place. Returning to his house, he found his daughter, Louise, on the stoop. She had come back to him out of the depths of the East End. He listened to the whole sordid story, forgiving her for her sins before he even heard them. She had lived as a whore for nearly a year, keeping with a man in Castle Alley. He had been cruel to her, but she feared, as most of the whores did, the one the papers called “the Ripper,” and her hateful prosser was at least protection against that. Soon enough she had turned to drink—ironically, to the same Dutch gin that her mother had loved. She cried as she spoke, and Mayhew held her close; she was his little girl again. He felt the weight of the money in the pocket of his coat, and he dreamed of their new life. Soon he would quit the river, carry his daughter away from the squalor of Lambeth. They would take a country house, a small estate—just as soon as he found the body, and the watch.
With renewed vigor at the thought of success, he put his back to it, and the Peter boat skimmed the water like a skater across ice.
At three he was under the Tower Bridge once more, his weighted nets dragging, catching. Ship lights gleamed like will-o’-the-wisps along the banks. The first haul produced a piece of a hansom wheel and an intact lantern, also from a carriage, and Mayhew wondered if an entire cab could lie beneath him in the black depths. The lamp was worth some money to him, and it was a curious enough proposition that he dropped his nets there again to see if he would collect more fragments from a hansom. As he rowed vigorously, the nets caught again, this time holding like an anchor. He tried, but couldn’t pull them free. Taking one of his grappling hooks, he stood, removed his coat, and tossed the hook out behind his boat so that it would sink beyond the nets. Down and down the rope played out, until the hook touched bottom. Then he retrieved it, slowly, letting it drag along. The hook, too, caught on something, and Mayhew pulled on that for all he was worth. He strained till his pulse was throbbing in his head. The hook tore free suddenly, sent him sprawling back into the wet bottom of his boat. He reeled in the hook. It brought up a large broken slab of wood caught on one of the spikes. When he tried the nets, he found them freed as well, and drew them in as fast as he could.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 157