Requiem for the Ripper

by kindels

  Reid went on to tell me that after his uncle, Mark Cavendish, had carried out his devilish plan and the murders in Brighton and Warsaw, he, Reid, figured out that his Uncle, Robert Cavendish, must have been the one, in his particular generation, who was spared the full effects of the Cavendish legacy. True, reading the journal had a devastating, and perhaps, fatal impact on the psychiatrist, but Jack became convinced that Robert must have confided in his own brother, Mark, and that, somehow, Mark became the recipient and, therefore, the carrier and implementer of the curse, as far as his generation was concerned. The two brothers had apparently always been close and, yet, after Robert's death, Mark disappeared from the radar, so to speak, selling his business interests and leaving the country, without telling anyone where he was going.

  Mark Cavendish must have spent years preparing for the eventual bloodbath in Brighton, and Jack Reid's search for his uncle, and the subsequent discovery of him by Mark's young henchman, must have been like manna from heaven for the elder man. Jack Reid became the perfect fall guy for Cavendish, and it's quite obvious, to all concerned, that Mark Cavendish must have been one seriously deranged individual to go to the lengths he did, to perpetrate his own heinous crimes and attempt to implicate his own nephew or, to be more precise, his second cousin, though he'd always been referred to as uncle, in those terrible murders.

  I digress, however. Jack Reid told me that after his release from Ravenswood, he returned home, and that was where he found the remaining segment of the journal, the one you're now holding, David. Remember not to remove it from that plastic sleeve, won't you?"

  I nodded. Forbes continued.

  "Within a few short days, Jack Reid began to feel as though a presence, as he described it, was watching his every move. We must remember that when Reid first received the journal, as a young man of eighteen, he read it quickly, was horrified at its content, and then stuffed it in his bag when he left home. It remained there until stolen from him, by Mark Cavendish's young accomplice, Michael, and the pages then fell into the hands of his uncle, quite literally. If, as Reid put it, there was something evil and malevolent in those pages, Mark Cavendish held it so often that it must surely have worked its evil effects on him.

  With Cavendish dead, and with the journal apparently destroyed, that should have been the end of the matter for all time; but, that one page survived and Jack Reid thus became, somewhat belatedly, the unwitting recipient of the curse of the Cavendish family.

  Having read the words on that page, David, and having felt the warmth and the stickiness that seems to emanate from the page itself, Reid began to experience strange dreams, almost hallucinogenic, so he told me, in which the victims of Jack the Ripper, and those of his uncle, Mark Cavendish, reached out to him in the form of terrible apparitions. Their screams were the most terrible sounds he had ever heard in his life and, when they weren't screaming, they moaned and groaned as though they were being crushed or tortured; their breath, if you could call it that, being slowly forced from their bodies, with no way of it ever returning. The mouths of those apparitions, so he said, were like the open jaws of an enormous shark, or a whale, with a gaping maw and with, what appeared to be, the entrance to a black, cavernous interior from which, Reid instinctively knew, there would be no returning from, were he to be sucked inside.

  So, he found himself continually running, trying to escape from the apparitions, the shapeless, and yet, all too real forms that were searching for him, reaching out to him. He was a descendant of The Ripper, and he just knew that those creatures were hell-bent on his destruction; as he was, after all, the living embodiment of the man, or should I say men, who had so hideously snuffed out the lives of those poor women.

  Into those dreams there came another figure, one who he once again recognised immediately, not by his face, because Reid insists he had no face, but by his actions, by his appearance, and by his voice. It was at this point in his story, David, Kate, that Jack Reid told me of his first and most terrifying meeting with what he believed to be the manifestation of Jack the Ripper himself!"

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jack

  The flames from the log fire in the grate cast dancing shadows round the room, and the occasional soft crackling sound of a log, settling into a new position as it burned down, added a certain atmospheric quality to the room as Forbes went on with his story.

  "Jack Reid found it harder and harder to concentrate on his everyday life, and on his job valetting cars, as the dreams and the feeling of being possessed began to take its toll on him. He'd managed two nights with no dreams, or should I say nightmares of The Ripper's victims when, as he put it to me, he faced, for the first time, the ultimate horror of a direct contact with what he described as the spirit of Jack the Ripper. He'd fallen into a fitful sleep, as had become the norm ever since he'd found, read, and reread the journal page, and now, after the brief respite of the previous couple of nights, his mind descended into the darkest pit that hell could provide, or at least that's how he described it to me.

  Like all of his dreams/nightmares, this one apparently began with him cautiously walking along a dark, cobbled street, devoid of any street lighting. The end of the street was always in view; though, walk as he might, he never seemed to draw any closer to that end, where a distinct junction could be seen, one exit right, one left. He knew instinctively that he had to reach the end of the street and take one direction or the other, but, first, he had to get there. As he walked along that filthy, slime-ridden street, he could just make out the outlines of windows in the buildings he walked between. Those windows appeared to be blacked out, or covered with ragged pieces of cloth to keep the weather out. The air was still and the fetid stench of human excrement, added to that of horse dung and other animal by-products, assaulted his nostrils. He knew he was in the middle of the biggest and most foul slum area in old London town. He was in the cesspit of human degradation that was Victorian Whitechapel!

  "His feet made no sound upon the cobbles. Reid described the feeling as that of walking, but at the same time hovering, just above the surface of the street, as though he were there, but not really a solid fixture in the scene in which he now found himself. He continued walking, moving past the dilapidated buildings with the blacked out windows, yet still the end of the street appeared no nearer.

  Suddenly, a piece of black sackcloth, covering one of the broken windows, flapped back, inwards towards the room beyond, despite there being no wind, and Reid stopped dead in his tracks. From within the dark and derelict innards of the hovel, a mournful sound emanated and drifted out into the dark street. Reid covered his ears as the sound grew to a piercing shriek and then, unable to take his eyes from the window casement, he saw a skeletal hand groping through the opening, trying to pull itself out into the street. Something appeared to be holding it back and, unable to help himself, Reid drew nearer to the opening until he saw the most terrifying sight. Attached to the skeletal arm was the emaciated body of a woman, yet not a woman any longer, a pitiful and worm-infested parody of a human being, a living corpse, its mouth nothing more than an empty hole, no teeth, no tongue, just a gaping black cavity from which that awful, keening screeching continued to pour forth.

  As Reid drew to within touching distance, the creature seemed to sense his presence and its blank, blood-red eyes suddenly appeared to lock onto him, holding him in their dead gaze. He described feeling frozen in time, unable to move or speak, as he watched the terrible writhing of the apparition as it struggled against some unknown and unseen bonds, still trying to claw its way into the world outside.

  As the screams grew to a horrifying crescendo, Reid suddenly caught sight of another figure, in the shadows behind the awful creature. Before his eyes could attempt to focus on the other being, he sensed, more than saw, the second creature raise an arm in the darkness and then, to his ultimate horror, the arm flashed down, towards the back of the woman-thing and the terrible corpse-like creature simply exploded before his eyes. There was
no sound, just a colossal and terrible torrent of blood that gushed from the creature and splashed, in a river of crimson, all over the figure of Jack Reid. His mouth opened, but no sound came. He tried with all his might to utter a scream of horror, but, though his mouth opened and his lungs felt as though they might burst, only silence issued forth. His clothes were covered in the stale, rancid, sticky blood of the dead thing that had disappeared before his eyes and, as movement returned to his limbs, he began to run. He ran and ran, still trying to reach the end of that awful street, though, again, the end with its inviting junctions seemed as far away as ever.

  And yet, the strange part of the dream was that although he drew no nearer to the end of the street, he knew he was moving past the decrepit buildings, as they appeared to flash by him as his legs carried him as fast as he could go. As he dashed for what he hoped would be safety, more of those awful, skeletal hands began to appear from behind the darkened windows of the buildings. Pieces of cloth, rolls of old newspaper, all the ragged pieces of materials that had been used to block out the windows from the effects of the weather, were suddenly strewn aside as those awful creatures of darkness reached out, trying, so he thought, to drag him into their terrible and blood-soaked world. As he passed each one, the screams began, and as he rushed past the groping hands, each one disappeared in an explosion of blood, in the same way the first apparition had apparently been destroyed, from within, by some other fearful creature of the night.

  His face, his hair, and his clothing, all reeked of the copper-sweet smell of blood as he ran, headlong, towards the seemingly unapproachable exit from that street of nightmares. His hands flailed as he tried to clear the blood from his face, to prevent it from clogging his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. He retched, feeling the bile rise as he tasted that terrifying red cocktail, and tried to breathe without inhaling the sticky, red blood of those awful creatures of the dark.

  And then, as quickly as the screaming had begun, the street fell silent, silent as the grave. Reid looked down, astonished to see that all traces of the vile smelling, cloying blood had disappeared from his clothing. He reached up and felt his hair. It was dry. He swept a hand across his face; it, too, was dry.

  To his further astonishment, as he looked ahead he saw that he stood a mere ten feet from the end of the street. The two way junctions lay so close he could reach it in seconds. He could make out the lights and the sounds of the streets that lay beyond, as his mind came to realise he was within yards of safety. One second, he'd been running and making no forward movement, now he stood so close to the way ahead. He could almost feel the warmth of the well-lit streets that lay beyond the dark street of horrors he'd struggled to escape from.

  He needed no forcing onwards, towards the light, and then, just as his feet reached to within a yard of the junction, a long, dark shadow fell across his path, surrounded by an unearthly glow, backlit from the gas lamps on the street behind it. Jack Reid stood stock still, his instincts telling him, straightaway, exactly who now stood blocking his path.

  His eyes fell to the ground, to the point where the shadow began at the feet of the newcomer. Black polished boots rose from the foul smelling street surface, though they bore none of the filth that was such a feature of the cobbled surface. Above the boots, clean, dark grey trousers led up until they met with the hem of a long, black frock coat. Reid continued to raise his eyes until the head, or what should have been the head of the newcomer appeared in his view. Where that head should have been Reid saw a black, swirling mass of something he couldn't even begin to describe to me. At best, he described it as a sort of cloud, shaped into the semblance of a human head, but with no eyes, mouth, ears, or visible sign of hair. The whole thing carried a stench, more foul than the all-pervading odour of decrepitude and effluent that rose from the filth of the street itself. Despite the lack of visible organs, he felt that the thing could see him quite clearly; a notion confirmed when the mass appeared to flash from the effects of some kind of internal light, and the most unearthly voice Reid had ever heard emanated from deep within the creature.

  "At last, we meet, young Jack, and what a handsome young gent you are,' it said, in a voice that Reid swore to me could have come from the deepest, darkest, recesses of Hell. 'You know me, Jack, so you mustn't fear me, for I am you and you are me. You know this, do you not?'

  Reid couldn't speak, and then he realised that the voice he was hearing had no earthly voice at all. The words were reverberating in his brain, as though planted there by the foul creature that stood before him.

  "That's correct,'said the beast in confirmation of his realisation. 'You don't need to speak, just think of me and I'm with you, Jack, and I hear you, and can speak to you from within your very own soul, for the soul is something we share. You saw those creatures in the street? Do you know who they were? They are what's left of our victims, Jack. Six from Whitechapel, 1888, three from Brighton, and two from Warsaw. They are condemned to stay trapped here forever, and each night I return and they are forced to relive the sublime torment as I consign their souls to Hell once more. Are their screams not the most exquisite sound you've ever heard? You see the empty windows Jack? They are for the others, those yet to come, those you will send to join me!'

  Reid could hardly believe it. This was the most evil incarnation of Hell that he could have possibly imagined. Here was, without doubt, none other than Jack the Ripper, confirming not only that Jack was his descendant, but that the two of them somehow shared the same, evil, black-hearted soul.

  Not only that, but the thing was telling him that he would join him in the terrible litany of murder that had so obviously spread its tentacles through the previous century and more.

  "We'll meet again soon, Jack, all too soon,' said the creature, as it suddenly began to swirl into nothingness before his eyes. The last thing Reid remembered of the dream was the sound of music as the thing, which had once been the living, breathing, Jack the Ripper, floated away into the night. The song was one he'd never heard before, but he knew by its sound that it was old, from a time long ago, perhaps a Victorian music hall tune.

  The Ripper was gone as suddenly as he'd appeared, and Jack Reid woke up screaming into his pillow. He clicked on the bedside light in his room and looked around, but all was quiet and still. There was no one and nothing in the room but him. His hands trembled as he pulled back the bed covers. He made his way to the bathroom, where he splashed his sweat-covered brow with cold water. As he did so, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. The sight of his own face seemed to mock him as he realised that, not only did the Cavendish legacy carry a fearful curse, but that he was somehow inextricably linked, heart and soul, to the infamous Whitechapel murderer. No matter how hard he'd tried to fight it, Jack Reid now knew what destiny held in store for him, and though he swore to me that he did everything he could in the coming weeks to avoid the inevitable, there was nothing he could do to prevent the bloodletting that would eventually cause the streets of twenty-first century Whitechapel to run red once more!"

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate's Revelation

  "William, please! I need you to stop, right there. There's something I have to speak to you about," Kate suddenly interjected animatedly.

  Something about the description of Reid's dream had obviously struck a chord in her mind, and it was quite clear that she needed instant clarification, of whatever it may be, before allowing Forbes to continue. Forbes appeared quite relieved to have an opportunity to stop and draw breath. He visibly relaxed, and it was only at that moment that I realised just how rigidly he'd been holding himself throughout his narration. He allowed his shoulders to sag a little as he leaned back in his chair, rubbing his neck, which was clearly stiff and sore from his having held it in one position for so long.

  "What is it Kate? What's wrong?" I asked, unsure what she would say next.

  "Yes, Kate?" said Forbes.

  "Your description of Mr. Reid's dream was extremely lucid, William, almost too
lucid, I venture to say."

  Forbes's eyes suddenly assumed that odd, haunted look as she spoke, and I could see him becoming tense once again after only a few seconds of being at rest. Kate continued before he could respond to her assumption.

  "I can quite understand him giving you a graphically vivid picture of what he saw, heard, and felt during his nightmare, but for you to relate it in the manner you've just done, to David and me, without a single note of guidance to aid your recall of his words, leads me to believe that there is much more to this dream than you're letting on to us."

  "You ... you know, don't you?" Forbes exclaimed, his face visibly paling as he spoke. He'd turned a deathly white, all evidence of the previous ruddy redness in his cheeks disappearing in an instant. I might have been mistaken, but I could have sworn that his hair, thin as it was, actually stood on end as a new fear appeared to take a hold of the man and sweat began to break out on his brow. Unfortunately, as yet, I'd no idea what Kate alluded to, and I waited with baited breath for the explanation for Forbes's sudden terror.

  "What do I know, William? Please, tell David what you think it is I already know, that you haven't told us yet."

  "Yes, please, one of you tell me what's going on," I pleaded.