by Eric Black
He tried a few more times and the results were similar. He was almost robbed going west. He turned east and a pack of dogs that shouldn’t have been wild but were attacked him. He escaped unharmed. Finally, having proven his theory, he gave in to the pull on him and headed towards Washington, D.C.
He didn’t realize it but another man was being pulled there as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
It was the nights that were the worst for Jack. The dark hours used to be his favorite. That was the time when he would create his works of art. He saw the night as a curtain that hid his art until the sun rose, similar to the curtain rising on a stage performance, sharing what he had done with the world.
Now the night only brought memories of what he had done.
Jack couldn’t explain how or why his conscience had returned. It had not been with him for many years. And if it had been there, it edged him on rather detouring him from committing the murders for which he had become famous.
He closed his eyes and he saw Polly Nichols, the first person he had killed. He saw himself placing his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. With his right hand, he brought the knife up. He saw himself touch the knife to the left side of her neck. Then, he inserted the blade and drew it across her throat, slitting her gullet from ear to ear. He watched her eyes as the life left them.
After she was dead, he switched the knife to his left hand and then mutilated her stomach. He recalled smiling lustfully as her insides spilled out of the jagged wounds. He was full of rage and continued to slash, enjoying the act of mutilating the body. When he finally stopped, he was painted in blood.
Jack screamed and opened his eyes.
After an hour, he was able to close his eyes again. This time he saw Elizabeth Stride, known as Long Liz. He had also covered her mouth so she couldn’t scream and pulled her backwards into the courtyard. He pushed the blade into her neck and then slid the knife across, severing her windpipe, ending the gash at her artery: he was careful to only barely nick the artery.
With her windpipe severed, she could not call out so Jack removed his hand from her mouth. She reached up and grabbed at her neck, trying in a state of shock to stop what had happened. Because her artery was only partially cut, she bled but bled slowly. Jack sat on top of her and watched her take a minute-and-a-half to die.
Before Jack could wake, he saw Catherine Eddowes. He watched as she walked by him with a flirtatious smile. He grabbed her hair after she had passed, pulling her to the ground and murdering her. In his dream he saw the large incision across her face from her nose to her right cheek. He didn’t recall now why he had done it but he nicked each of her eyelids. He removed part of her right ear and ripped her abdomen open from the middle of her chest to well below her navel; then, he removed several of her organs.
Jack woke up sweating with a second scream caught in his throat. He wanted the scream to escape (it burned his throat) but he was so horrified at what he had done that it would not exhume itself. He had admitted to Wilson that he was a monster – and he was right. “I am a monster,” he repeated aloud in the night.
Jack had killed countless more people and he could see all of their faces at that moment. What have I become?
He knew sleep was pointless. He would keep recalling the murders he had committed as he dreamt. Staying awake was almost as bad. He tried to block out the images but they would not be dissuaded.
Finally his thoughts turned to President Libby Williams. Libby, who had come to a decade in American history where she never should have been. Libby, who had made the best of a difficult situation but had also changed history.
And now she was dead. By his hand.
He had taken parts of her body from her as she screamed. He did not kill her fast. He wanted her to experience all of the pain before he finally ended her. He started by stripping her flesh and finished by opening her stomach and displaying her intestines to her dying eyes. He remembered retching when he was finished and how confused he had been at that moment. He had spent so many years as a serial killer – cold and decisive – and now it seemed he was back to the man he had been before he invented time travel.
He was full of regret and knew he deserved to die a terrible death but he also knew that everything he had done was not done under his own influence. The technology he had developed for travel through time had changed him for the worse and had taken the killer that is within all men and brought it to the surface. He had become what his subconscious desired to be. Now that part of him had once again become suppressed and he was back to a life of full emotion and consequence.
Jack thought several times about taking his own life. But in the end, he was resigned to the fact that his death would solve nothing (although there were others who would disagree). He was one of the few men in the world who knew how to make time travel happen and now that he was released from his inner-monster, maybe he could actually do some good with his knowledge. Perhaps he could recreate the technology in a safe manner – similar to the device that Wilson used – and could go back and stop himself from ever becoming Jack the Ripper. If he did, everything he had ever done including kill Libby Williams would be reversed.
He also knew that many other parts of history would change.
He wrestled with the idea a while longer before making up his mind. In the end, he knew the decision he had to make. It seemed he had no choice on making a trip to Washington, D.C. Since he was going there anyways, he would meet with Wilson. He would take Wilson’s device, fix it if it no longer worked and travel forward in time and stop himself in the future from creating time travel.
What he didn’t know at that moment was that history had again been changed, and this time not in the way that he was expecting. Or by whom.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
Vincent thought back to when he first woke up on the killing field during the war. The smell of death was so intense that even the cold couldn’t keep the stench at bay. He remembered emptying his stomach as he puked to the sight of burnt bodies.
That experience should have prepared him for what he saw. Only it didn’t.
He looked down at the slaughtered body of his wife.
At first it was hard to believe the mess of flesh and blood-soiled hair could be human, but it was. More, it was the President of the United States – the love of his life. The clothes and shoes confirmed it was her.
The woman that he had held in his arms a few hours earlier was now a lifeless shape of knife wounds. It was like her body was reversed; everything that should have been inside of her was on the outside.
Vincent imagined the fear and pain she must have experienced as she was carved up to the point of death. Vincent held out hope that she had been killed quickly and that everything he was now seeing was done after she was dead. But he knew better. Someone who could do this to another person would want to experience the cries of terror of the victim. It would be part of the thrill of the murder.
Anger seeped into Vincent’s soul. There was more anger than sorrow.
Vincent was not as young as he had been when he first arrived at the Battle of Passchendaele. He was not quite as driven or reckless as the man he had been when he had shot and killed Adolf Hitler, changing everything. But inside of him, the rage and quiet determination that existed as he was serving in the Howitzer unit during the Great War was still there. He could still draw on the raw ire that felt like hot steel when the time called for such action.
He would now use that inner-rage and determination that lived within him; he would use these gifts to hunt down whoever had killed his wife. He would find the man and just as he had killed men during the war – including Hitler in cold blood – he would kill that man.
The body of President Williams was taken away to the mortuary and afterwards Vincent was left with only his thoughts and an empty White House residence. President Roosevelt (fresh off
being sworn in) had come by and expressed his deepest sympathy and resolved that they would stop at nothing to find the heinous individuals who had murdered the President.
Vincent was not given an official timeline but a week after the funeral, he was gently removed from the White House residence. It was suggested that he might be more comfortable in his own private home. Plus, Roosevelt needed his family with him as he went about the business of serving the nation as its President. As President, the Roosevelt family was now the legal resident of the White House.
With nowhere else to go, Vincent went to the home of Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson answered the door on Vincent’s third knock. The hour was late but Wilson didn’t seem to notice or care. “I’ve been expecting you,” Wilson said to Vincent.
With those words, Vincent felt the weight of the last few weeks slip away. His wife’s death was still heavy on him so it didn’t go away entirely but it was enough for him to relax. Wilson had welcomed him into his home. He had a place where he belonged.
Wilson showed him inside and took him upstairs to the room where he would sleep. When Vincent was settled, he joined Wilson downstairs for a very late dinner and a cup of coffee. Coffee didn’t affect Vincent’s sleeping habits – not that he could sleep much anyways. Vincent’s entire family had been that way. They would all drink strong, black coffee at all hours of the day and then fall asleep with little fanfare.
“How are you holding up?” Wilson asked Vincent as they were sitting on his front porch drinking the post-meal coffee.
“I’m surviving. That’s about all I can say.”
“Well, I admire you. You’ve gone through something that few people will have to face and you’ve done it with dignity.”
“How so?”
“You could’ve made a public display of the fact that your wife had just been murdered and now you are being put on the street with nowhere to go but you did not. You handled it well. I know it wasn’t easy.”
Vincent didn’t response. He was still numb and had little to say about anything he had been through. Plus, he wasn’t feeling particularly public-minded. In fact, for the first time in years he was not worried at all what the public thought of him.
The two sat quietly for several minutes when Vincent turned and looked at Wilson. “Where’s your wife? I thought she would be back in town by now.”
“She went back to our home in New Jersey. I told her that you might be coming to stay for a while and we weren’t sure you needed to see the two of us together.”
Vincent smiled weakly. “That’s very kind of you but unnecessary. Just because I’m a miserable person doesn’t mean everyone else has to be miserable.”
“She understood. Plus, sometimes it’s good for men to be around other men when they are grieving, not women.”
Vincent nodded. “I would say that’s probably a true statement.”
They were quiet once again, sitting in the silence listening to the sounds of the night. Wilson thought Vincent had gone to sleep in his chair but when he looked over at him he saw that Vincent’s eyes were open. In the night light, he could make out the glint of cold anger in Vincent’s eyes. Wilson wondered how Vincent would react if he told Vincent he knew who had murdered his wife.
He was about to start a conversation on the beautiful late fall nights in Washington, D.C. when Vincent looked at him and told him, “Good night, I’m going to bed. Thanks for the coffee.”
Wilson wished Vincent good night as well and sat on the front porch long after Vincent had gone to bed.
Four hours later, Vincent heard an argument from downstairs though the door to his room. Curious, he quietly rose and opened the door and walked downstairs. In the foyer was a man talking with Wilson whom Vincent had not seen before but something about the man was familiar. The men were in heated conversation.
The stranger noticed Vincent over Wilson’s shoulder. “What’s he doing here?” he exclaimed.
Wilson turned and saw Vincent.
Vincent watched Wilson’s face wrestle with a thought for a moment and then saw his face gave way to an expression of resolution. Wilson looked back at the stranger and then to Vincent once again. “Vincent, I’d like to introduce you to Jack. He’s the man who murdered your wife.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
Vincent thought Wilson was joking. The joke wasn’t funny.
Vincent was still on the stairs coming down but his sudden rage brought him to the bottom and in front of Wilson without self-recollection of doing so. “Who the hell do think you are?” Vincent snarled in Wilson’s face. He was not spitting yet but the spit would soon come. He was angry and he wanted Wilson to know it. He didn’t care about Wilson’s other guest or how he would perceive his anger. He was furious with Wilson for pretending to care and then exposing his pain. “You invite me into your home and pretend to be a friend. And once in front of an audience, you turn on me and make a mockery of my wife’s death.”
“Vincent, you don’t understand.” Wilson raised his hands in a sign of peace.
Vincent knocked Wilson’s hands away. “I could very well choke the cynicism from your body but I won’t. I’ll take what little bit of life I have left and I’ll leave you to yours.”
Vincent wasn’t sure he could stop himself. He wanted to wrap his hands around Wilson’s neck and squeeze. He struggled to keep his hands at his side. Finally, he managed to turn to go back upstairs but as he was turning, he caught Wilson’s eyes. Wilson should have shown fear or remorse but his eyes only showed compassion – and truth.
Vincent paused.
He thought for a moment and made the decision to trust his instinct. Wilson was telling the truth. “You’re telling me this man killed my wife?” Vincent asked.
Wilson nodded.
“If that’s true, why is he here at your house? And how do you know him?”
Wilson looked at Vincent seriously. “He’s here for the same reason you are.”
Vincent looked at Jack. Jack’s eyes did show both fear and remorse. “What reason is that?” he asked Wilson.
“You’re here because you are lost.”
“And you know the way? Or perhaps your friend here does.”
“I’ll explain later,” Wilson answered. “But first we need to deal with what is before us.”
Vincent narrowed his eyes and looked at Jack. “You mean him.” It was a statement not a question.
“Yes, I mean him,” Wilson replied. “What do you intend to do with him now that you know the truth?”
Vincent thought about this briefly. And then before anyone could react, Vincent broke off the thoughts and struck Jack in the chin with an uppercut. Jack’s head snapped back and without hesitation Vincent grabbed Jack’s head with both hands and threw him backwards to the floor.
Wilson made no attempt to interfere.
Neither did Jack. His instinct was still there; he had killed countless people and knew how to turn a situation into his advantage – but he chose not to at that moment. He knew he deserved anything that might happen to him.
Vincent began driving his fists into Jack’s face. On the fifth strike, he noticed that Jack was not defending himself. The lack of fight in Jack caused Vincent to hesitate and his rage lessened slightly. “Why don’t you fight back you coward?” Vincent yelled into Jack’s face. “You were so powerful when you slaughtered my wife but you won’t raise a fist against me.” The word slaughtered ignited his memory and his rage flared back up.
Vincent grabbed Jack’s head in a position that would allow him to snap Jack’s neck. He knew how and he would do it. But at that moment, something happened. Vincent wanted to twist his arms but found he couldn’t move them. He struggled against what seemed impossible but found that even with the extra effort he could not move.
“What’s going on?” Vincent yelled out in rage. He turned that rage on Jack and tried again to move his hands forward but they would not move. He finally
let go.
“It’s the causality paradox,” Wilson said calmly.
“What are you talking about?” Vincent snarled. The hatred in his eyes reached out to Jack.
“The causality paradox,” Wilson said again. “It’s how time travel protects itself.”
Vincent wrenched his gaze from Jack and looked at Wilson. “What are you talking about? How can something that is not actually something protect itself?”
“I can’t explain it. I can only tell you it exists,” Wilson answered.
“What is it?”
“It is the concept that the universe won’t let someone go back and change something about their own timeline,” Jack answered.
“You’d be better off not speaking to me,” Vincent said, snapping his head back towards Jack.
“Or what? Isn’t it obvious you can’t kill me? And now that I’ve proven the point, I’ll fight back this time. You won’t like what you face,” Jack replied with a cold undertone.
Vincent turned on Jack and came after him. Jack, who had not always had a clean kill on his victims, had been attacked many times. He had always relied on his instinct to guide him in what to do and survive the encounter (long enough to finish the murder) and he had learned much about of what he was capable.
Jack leveled Vincent with a chop to his throat. Vincent underestimated Jack’s speed and the blade of his hand landed across Vincent’s trachea before Vincent could get his hands up.
Jack backed away and gave Vincent a few moments to recover. Vincent coughed almost uncontrollably as he struggled to get to his feet. After several minutes, the throb in his throat subsided and Vincent was able to stand tall. He looked at Jack with anger but also with a new sense of respect.