The Killing Hand

by Andrew Bishop

Lilly smiles and places her hand on my chest, letting me slip back down to rest. "Relax, Eric. Once they caught him they realised what had happened. Now that Jack has been brought to justice, you are a free man."

  "What about the autopsy?"

  “What of it?”

  “Well… who was he?”

  She shakes her head gently. "They have no idea. They put his face in the papers, but nobody has identified him."

  I mumble a feigned response. “I daresay they would not want to."

  "Either way, they were not able to connect him to anything. It was as if he came from nowhere."

  I still feel uneasy, having not seen it myself, but it appears this is as good as it gets. Lilly witnessed Jack die. Was that good enough to lay my mind to rest? I thought not. Too little had been answered, yet there was enough for me to start my life again.

  "He is gone, that is the main thing," I say, more to myself so that I can hear those words said.

  "So what will you do now?"

  I consider my answer briefly, but deep down I already know the response. Perhaps my memories of Europe were a facade, but my desire to leave London was not. "I am going to travel out to Europe. Try and start a new life. London is not for me."

  Lilly gives me a happy, but sombre, smile.

  "Will you come with me?"

  "I figured that you would ask," she replies, looking out of the window to her home. "London is all I know. All I have ever known. My home is here, Eric."

  Before Lilly can continue, one of the doctors notices that I am awake and walks up to my bed. "Well, Mr Godwin. I must admit I was not quite sure we would see you come back to us so soon."

  "How bad is the damage?"

  "Bad." I can hear the graveness in his voice. "You are lucky to be here at all. You have lost your right eye entirely. The rest of you should heal with time. You will have severe scarring, but you will function. You will, however, have to remain hospitalised for some time until you recover from all your wounds. Just take it easy."

  I thank the doctor and he returns to tending his other patients. The news is grim, but it is better than the alternative.

  I ask Lilly, "Did they find anything?"

  "What like?"

  "Anything on him? Identification? Paperwork? Anything at all?"

  Lilly's face grows stern. I can hear her voice tremble as she speaks. "You went after him because of the money. I knew such a thing. The only driving force in your life is money, Eric. And now look what it has done to you."

  "It was not about the money."

  "It was. Just because you justified it as travelling, or recreation, or whatever, does not mean at its heart it was not fuelled by monetary gain."

  I feel no shame in my intentions being found. "The money in that account was everything. Without it, my life was over." I sink into my bed and rest, not even bothering to wrap up in the covers. Tonight there will be no screaming, no pain, nothing to make me shiver in the darkness. Tonight I may just get to sleep, although somehow I doubt it.

  Lilly sits and stares at me. I wonder if she hates me. Eventually, she smiles, and for the first time in a long time I know that everything was going to be alright. I smile back at her. It hurts to smile, but at least I remember how.

  A great sleep overcomes me, the weight of such wounds bearing down on my body. My eyes close and I slip out of consciousness into a dreamless sleep for the night, finally free of the nightmare, free to bask in our triumph. The hardship was over. The battle finally won and, although it was not heaven, it was close enough. I was still alive - despite odds that even I would not have even bet on.

  It took six months until I finally discharged out of the hospital, and even then it was at the doctor’s reluctance. I can walk, but only with the help of crutches. My right eye is gone; I now hide it with a bandana wrapped over. My body is hideously scarred, some wounds so deep they will never level out, but for the most part I am still a functioning human being and that is all that matters.

  The reason behind my early discharge is to make haste of finishing my business in England. I do not wish to stay in this country any longer than I have to, especially after being holed up in that hospital for so long. As the sole remaining benefactor to The Hudson Group, I decide it best to retake that which is rightfully mine. With the account details from that fateful day when I signed up in my hands,I make my way towards the bank, Lilly accompanying me. The night had just lost its hold on the day and the blazing sun was peaking over the rooftops as we arrive. There is a surprising freshness to the air about London this morning, and for a split second I feel as though I could grow to love the place.

  I arrive at the bank shortly after opening, seating myself at one of the banker's tables. That very same desk that I visited with Lucius, almost half a year ago now.

  The leery baker spends several absent moments scrawling in a log book before leaning back in his seat and peering down through his spectacles at me. "How can I help you, Sir?" I can see from his expression he knows full well who I am, but without Lucius stood by myself he offers to warm invitation to private business.

  I push the slip of paper marking my share of the account across the desk towards him. "I would like to withdraw everything from this account."

  He picks it up and eyes it. I can tell he wants to scream. He wants to tell me to go away, that this money is not rightfully mine, but he has no leg to stand on: it is mine, albeit through grim inheritance. Putting on his professional voice to mask the anger and avoid attention from the others from the room, he simply responds "Just a moment, sir," and carries the slip of paper away into a back room out of sight.

  I turn to Lilly, speaking fast and purposeful. "There is a boat heading for Europe in just under an hour. A shipping boat, but I can convince them to let me on. I do not wish to stay here any longer than I have to."

  She looks at me with a discerning expression. "And what will you do?"

  "Travel. Away from here. Away from everyone, I guess. I cannot stay here now, not with so many bad memories."

  "And you will go alone?"

  "I had hoped you would join me."

  She smiles, but it is sorrowful. "I have lost so much here too, Eric, but I do not know if I could leave. I have a life here now. You could, too. You can always rebuild."

  I shake my head.

  "And what of Francis? Did he not leave to go to York? You could join him there."

  "No. England itself is too stained with blood now. To escape its borders is the only true escape."

  Lilly sighs. I can tell she will not join me. I knew before I asked, of course. What would a woman do out in the harsh plains of the world anyway? What would I do? But I scrap that question - what I will do is irrelevant. I could collapse and die within minutes of arriving, but escaping from England is all that matters. I cannot make heads nor tales of the events that have occurred here, nor do I wish to.

  "I know you will go," she finally speaks. "You have always done as you wished, in the end. I fear that this time you will never return, but I will not stop you. It is evident to me that in order to become your own person you must first lose yourself. I hope that when you stand out in the dark wilderness, you finally meet him. Yourself. Perhaps one day you may return, but no - I do not believe it."

  I do not respond, pretending that I have not heard. Anything to avoid admitting to the truth. We sit there in awkward silence for some time, but fortunately the banker returns to end it. When he does, he places a small box on the table before me.

  Confused, I ask. "What is this?"

  "This is the content of the account."

  "...A box?"

  "That is right."

  I shake my head. "No, the account was a business account, full of money. I am the only person with access to the account..."

  I do not manage to finish my sentence.

  "Eric..." Lilly cuts in, her face worried. I know what she was going to say before the words even came out: "...Open it."

  I do not want to hear it. W
hy, I do not know. My stomach churns as I pull the box towards me. How could such a small thing cause so much fear? Did I fear that it was empty? No, even I was not that contorted by money. I feared that I would find something so much worse, to perhaps show that this entire venture had all been in vain. That men had died for absolutely nothing.

  I flipped the copper latch and open the wooden lid. Peering inside, I know only too well that this nightmare will never leave me.

  The History of The Killing Hand

  The Killing Hand was based off an idea I had roughly around 2005, when I was attending college. The concept was simple: the story would explain the real-life mystery of Spring-heeled Jack. He would be a member of a wealthy group, and would take to the night to commit perverse acts in order to prove his prowess to the woman he wished to woo. Naturally, the attempts would fail. Would you be impressed by a man who jumped about at night and tore women’s clothes off? No, I thought not.

  Throughout those many years the idea remained rooted in my mind, slow cooking like a good roast. Whilst I had a few attempts to jot the scenes in my head down (two particular ones come to mind, since lost to time: one of Jack hunting a wealthy man across rooftop, the other of the finale scene where he crashed down through the roof of a butchers warehouse whilst in pursuit of his love, sending knives and carvers flying about the place. Neither were good enough to reuse.)

  It wasn’t until January 2012 when I sat down and seriously turned my eye to The Killing Hand. I was fuelled by my second (failed) attempt at National Novel Writing Month, which took place in November 2011, and wanted to go in with a stronger entry this time around. Throughout the period of January to October the story existed in various formats. Back then the story frequently changed names, flitting from Springald, to Steel Jack, to various others I’ve since forgotten. I spent a great majority of my time studying Spring-heeled Jack, the majority of which I ended up ignoring come my first draft. The Spring-heeled Jack case is one burdened with masses of disinformation – at the time Wikipedia had several supposed attacks listed as factual, despite their being no mention of them in the history books or papers until modern day. Thankfully, these have since been removed, but I have no doubt the fanatics will continue to distort the truth. A large part of the distortion of the truth which occurs throughout the book was influenced by my research.

  Springald existed in script form for the majority of the year. A lot of the original dialogue from the stage play version still exists as it were at the time, namely the intro chapter, the public meeting, and a great deal of the secret meetings. The script was interwoven with the actual newspaper clippings from the case, but as time went on I realised that the concept of these men commanding Jack to go threaten random women in the night felt… well, it just didn’t make any sense. Using the reports, I fabricated them into making it so that Jack was killing businessmen. Far more menacing.

  In November, as per yearly tradition, I took part National Novel Writing Month 2012 using the work I’d done for Springald to start telling the story proper. At some point, the penny dropped to start calling it The Killing Hand. It was during this period that I began showing the work to the public and hosting it on various sites. In this section I hope to accurately chart the journey of The Killing Hand, and just where it’s been prior to landing in your hands (or on your lap, on your monitor, etc.).

  First Edition

  The very first publically accessible version of The Killing Hand appeared in early November 2012, during National Novel Writing Month. The first couple of chapters were uploaded to FictionPress. A couple of months later I decided I hated the site and removed it. During the same month it also appeared on Wattpad, frequently disappearing and reappearing until the publication of the Second Edition. Up until the publication of the Second Edition, the novel also appeared on sites such as Authonomy and Goodreads.

  The story was frequently taken down and reworked whilst on these sites, and as such the term First Edition actually refers to any versions of the work that appeared throughout this period, as opposed to an actual specific version.

  During this period of drafting, the following changes were made to the story:

  The original draft was set in third person. I reworked the entire thing to first person.

  The character of Lilly was was originally attributed to the prostitute working in the brothel. In the first few drafts Eric kept returning to the brothel, presumably for pleasure, but from the reader we mostly received snippets into the conversations they had, where he confided with her the situations in his life. It appeared he was falling in love with her. Towards the end it was intended he was going to use her to lure Jack out into the open, but by that point her part had been removed and their discussions given to Lilly.

  On the subject of the brothel, it was revealed in one scene that it was joint owned by Lucius and Palmer, who openly mocked Eric at the meetings when he was discovered visiting.

  Lilly has originally married to an American soldier who had settled in England.

  As a consequence of the above, the part of Gilbert went through many changes. At first, Gilbert was Eric’s older brother, who refused to give Eric a get out of jail free card. Eventually, the characters of Gilbert and the American soldier merged, forming Eric’s Father’s former business partner.

  In the very first draft, Jack’s identity remained ambiguous. The end was so unrealistic that there was no plausible solution other than Eric was making the entire thing up, suggesting his mental instability and opening up the possibility that he was Jack. In subsequent revisions, I made this more obvious. At the midpoint of the book Eric begins reading letters from his Father’s chest and discovers the various doctors letters from the years, discovering that his time in Europe was actually a façade whilst his parents institutionalised him during a particular bad breakdown. Eric, as Jack, managed to break free and murder his parents, before fleeing for a while and eventually reawakening as Eric, who simply joined the dots. The final struggle was meant to be a representation of the fight going on in his mind, with the unrealistic happy ending suggesting Eric has actually lost and regressed into a dreamlike state within his own consciousness.

  The cover art for this edition was shamefully stolen from a Spring-heeled Jack website I discovered whilst researching, the source of which I’ve unfortunately since been lost. I wasn’t concerned at this point about the ramifications, with the draft not being commercially available, but made sure to change the art for the commercial release.

  Feedback was limited, but positive. Many people actively followed the story on Wattpad, enjoying the mystery of Jack and the nature of the meetings. I received praise on Authonomy, where the writing style was commended alongside the fresh twist on an old legend. The other websites provided little to no feedback. No agents or publishers were queried during this period.

  Second Edition

  The Second Edition is marked from the novels publication via Kindle Publishing on 2nd July 2014.

  The Second Edition contained the following changes:

  The character of Arthur Shaw was introduced. Previously, Shaw did not exist as a character and therefore is appeared that Lucius did all his dealings with Jack directly. This never sat well with me. Lucius is a businessman down to the core. He’ll happily talk murder and deceit, but only if you’re wearing a suit. The concept of Eric picking a target to try and catch Jack existed in the first draft, where a rough version of Shaw who acted as Gilbert’s business competitor existed. Ultimately, Eric failed to even put anything into place to capture Jack and the entire situation was squandered, as was the plot idea.

  Changed Eric’s parents being murdered by Jack to just Eric’s Father. The historical accuracy of a woman being in charge of a business was sketchy at best to begin with, and additionally both their murders bring in too many red flags in. Eric’s Mother had few parts in the original draft (which is why I found cutting her out so easy), and those that did exist were transferred to Eric’s Father.

  Eri
c is no longer the killer. This is the biggest change. In the first draft, the novel ends with Eric being beaten and left for dead by Jack. The idea was none of this was really happening, it was just a mental struggle between the two in Eric’s head, and Eric losing the fight was meant to represent Jack fully taking over his body. As the second draft progressed, the revelation that Eric was the killer was revealed partway through, which was interesting, but ultimately it bored me and I scrapped it.

  A scene near the start of the story had Eric and Lilly cleaning their Father’s house and removing a weighty chest which contained notes and diaries. In the first draft some of these letters revealed Eric’s state of mind. In the second draft they had much less relevance, and were eventually removed altogether.

  The Second Edition was released without cover art. Too many book cover artists seem to regurgitate the same dire designs (Here’s a woman with her cleavage showing whilst sucking a rose, and a vampire in the background! Teen angst! Breasts! Werewolves! Buy! Buy! Buy!), and it was through trawling through God knows how many dreadful book cover galleries that I decided I was simply better off going without until I could secure something. A publisher may disagree, but screw them right? Digital age, I want it my way. My vision, maaaaan.

  Thanks

  Throughout the period of writing this novel I was constantly throwing ideas back and forth and butting heads with those about me who I felt could help breathe the story some life and guide it (and me) on the path that I felt it deserved to be on. It is here that I feel that I must thank the following for helping me, for without them I have no doubt The Killing Hand would still exist as a mass on unrealised ideas.

  Bud deserves due praise. Not only did he help nurture the original concept in my college days, but he met frequently with me during my brainstorming leading up to, and including, the first draft. He also leant a critical eye to the original script work of dialogue.