The Name of the Star

by Maureen Johnson

  “Do you want to help her?” Stephen asked. “Then you’ll tell me everything.”

  He indicated the sofa. I sat. He pulled up one of the chairs and sat directly in front of me, leaning forward to look me in the eye, as if he could tell when I was leaving something out by studying my pupils up close. I had been grilled by the police before. At least that experience had prepared me for this.

  “The school was having a dance—” I said.

  “I know,” he cut in.

  “You told me to tell you everything,” I snapped. “So are you going to listen or are you going to tell me what you already know?”

  Stephen put up his hands, conceding the point.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “We were having a dance,” I said again. “And we were . . . dancing. Everything was fine. Then he appeared. He was just there . . .”

  “He?”

  “The man, the guy. The Ripper.” Saying “the Ripper” made me queasy. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “He stood right in front of me. I mean . . . I could feel him. I could feel something. He told me to come outside with him . . . I didn’t want to, but . . .”

  Only now did it occur to me what might have happened if I hadn’t gone. It was possible that he would have just walked away, that Boo would be fine right now. It was equally possible that he would have shoved a knife directly into Jazza’s neck. And now that I had a chance to run over the possibilities, I felt myself begin to quake.

  “He asked me if I knew where we’d met. I thought it was at school, but he said we met at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder—”

  “You were at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder?”

  “My . . . friend. Jerome. He wanted to go. We just went to the street, not to the pub. You couldn’t get near the pub.”

  “I was there,” Stephen said. “And you’re saying he was too?”

  “That’s what he said. He said we met there, but I don’t remember him.”

  “But he remembered you,” Stephen said. “So you must have reacted to him in some way. Even just looked at him, moved around him. He knew you could see him.”

  “Well, yeah. He knows I can see him. He knows I have it. This thing. That we do. Because he had it too.”

  “He had the sight?”

  Something on Stephen beeped. He slapped his pockets until he found his phone, then read a message. He grabbed the remote and switched on the television. The familiar red BBC logo lit up the room.

  The newscaster was standing outside on the street bathed in the glow coming from dozens of cameras and their lighting equipment.

  “. . . a very strange evening here at the Ten Bells, where the international Ripper conference was held this evening. Conference organizer Richard Eakles had just started his presentation when witnesses say there was a power cut. Eakles claims that while the room was in darkness, someone pushed him up against the board and wrote a message . . .”

  The image cut to a picture of the whiteboard, the words written in all caps, in a firm hand. THE NAME OF THE STAR IS WHAT YOU FEAR.

  “The meaning of the message is unclear,” the newscaster went on, “but some people have noted that the quote is similar to one from the Bible . . .”

  “That’s from the book of Revelation,” I said. “Our local seafood place puts up quotes from the book of Revelation every week. That’s why we call it Scary Seafood. It’s a quote about the third angel that comes at the end of the world. Something about the star being Wormwood.”

  There were piles of books along the walls. Stephen scanned through these for a moment, finally finding one he wanted in a large pile. He managed to extract it, but five or six books on top of it came tumbling down. He ignored this and started flipping through the onionskin pages.

  “Where, where, where . . . here. ‘And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as if it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.’”

  On the news, they were back in the studio, and the newscaster was talking to a guest.

  “. . . most people here feel that this incident was some kind of stunt, but some concerns have been raised that the real Ripper did somehow manage to leave this message. And if he did, it could have some serious implications. Sir Guy, what do you make of this?”

  “Well,” the guest said, “I don’t think we can rule this out as a threat of terrorism. The Bible quote clearly indicates poisoned water. I think we would be remiss if we didn’t consider the possibility that this entire incident has been a form of terrorist attack, designed to cause London to . . .”

  Stephen turned off the television, and the room went quiet.

  “Right,” he said, after a moment. He left the room and went down the hall. He returned with some clothes and a rough red towel. “You can change into these. They’ll be more comfortable.”

  Their bathroom was a pretty no-frills place, just two toothbrushes, two towels, two razors. I scrubbed my skin with a bar of hand soap, turning the makeup to a gray runny mess that stung my eyes and took ten minutes to rinse off. I left big gray streaks all over the towels. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my skin was pale and raw, my eyes were red, and my hair was wet and streaked with makeup and soap. The sight of my reflection almost brought me to tears for some reason. I had to sit on the edge of the bathtub and take a few deep breaths. Then I stripped off the costume and picked up the things Stephen had given me. One turned out to be a pair of sweatpants that said ETON down the leg. The lettering had been broken up from lots of washings and wearings; the words were cracked. Eton was a name I knew. There was also an oversized and overwashed polo-neck shirt from some event called the Wallingford Regatta. Stephen was well over six foot, and I just about made it to five foot four, so I had to roll up the cuffs of the sweats in order to walk.

  As I picked up my clothes, I felt my phone in my pocket. I removed it and found that I had several messages from Jazza and Jerome, wanting to know if I was all right. I would answer them later. When I emerged, Stephen was in the kitchen, staring at the kettle as it boiled. He was staring at it so intently, in fact, I wondered if he wasn’t controlling the boil with his mind.

  “I’m making tea,” he said, keeping his gaze on the kettle.

  The kitchen was as plain as everything else in the apartment, but the appliances that were built in were high quality—all stainless steel and sleek. The counters were made of a sparkling granite, and the cabinets were smoked glass. The surroundings didn’t match the small card table that served as a dining table, or the plastic folding chairs, or the mismatched mugs.

  “I spoke to someone at the hospital,” he said. “She’s awake. They’re x-raying her now. She seems to have several broken bones. They’re not sure of the extent of it, but she’s awake. That’s something.”

  I took a seat at the table and pulled my feet up onto the chair. The kettle rumbled and clicked off. He dropped two tea bags into mugs.

  “This is a nice place,” I said, just to make it less quiet.

  “We got it at a steep discount.” He brought the mugs over to the table. Mine had a chip on the rim. “We could never afford to live around here, but . . . there was another inhabitant who was giving all the other tenants trouble. No one wanted to live here. We sorted it out.”

  “A ghost?”

  He nodded.

  I wrapped my arms around my legs and placed my forehead on my knees.

  “You’re the only police looking for the real Ripper, right?” I asked. “Because the regular police can’t see him. What if you can’t stop him?”

  “We can,” he said. He set a box of shelf-stable milk in front of me, punctuating his remark. He had said all he was going to say about that. We sat in silence for a few mo
ments, looking at our tea but neither of us drinking it. We just let it steep, darker and darker, like our thoughts. The kitchen wasn’t very well lit, so there was a closeness—a gloom around us.

  “What happened to you?” I asked. “To make you like this?”

  He tapped his mug with his spoon, considering his answer.

  “Boating accident. At school.”

  “Eton,” I said, pointing at the leg of the pants. “That’s where you went?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long have you been . . . this? A policeman, or whatever you are?”

  “Two years.”

  Stephen removed the tea bag and set it on a lid from a takeout container. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He took a long breath and exhaled loudly.

  “Everyone’s always known that London is full of ghosts,” he said. “It’s a particularly haunted city. And in that spirit of organizing things and controlling the empire, it was decided—very quietly—that something needed to be done, some kind of watch needed to be kept. But belief in ghosts, and science, and law and order, these things didn’t really go together. Back in 1882, a group of prominent scientists founded the Society for Psychical Research, probably the most respectable and serious attempt to study the subject of the afterlife. This was right in the middle of the development of the police force and the security service. The police system itself isn’t that old. The London Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829, and the Security Services—which is MI5 and things like that—in 1909. So in 1919, with the help of the Society for Psychical Research, the Shades were born.”

  “The Shades?”

  “It’s another word for ghosts. MI5 are called the spooks, and we were a lot smaller and stranger. A shady little branch. I think they used to call us Scotland Graveyard as well. Anyway, we were around for years. Very secret. Never very large. But in the Thatcher years . . . someone got wind of the group and didn’t like it. I don’t know what happened . . . something political. But they shut it down in the early nineties. Two years ago, they decided to start it up again. They found me. I was the first one.”

  “How did they find you?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “And classified.”

  “So, are you a cop? A real one?”

  “I am,” he said. “I was trained. The uniform is real. The car was issued to me.”

  There was a jingle of keys in the door, and Callum entered, wearing a London Tube uniform.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “I got your message.”

  “There’s been an accident,” Stephen said.

  “What sort of accident?”

  “Boo—”

  “Boo got hit by a car,” I said. “The Ripper came after me. Boo tried to help, and he threw her in front of a car.”

  For a moment, Callum couldn’t speak. He leaned against the counter and put his hand to his forehead.

  “Is she—”

  “She’s hurt,” Stephen said, “but she’s alive. I had to get Rory away from the scene.”

  “Alive? Conscious alive? How alive?”

  “She wasn’t conscious at the scene,” Stephen said.

  Callum just stared at me.

  “It’s not her fault,” Stephen said.

  “I know that,” Callum replied, but he wasn’t acting like he knew that. “Please tell me she got him. Please tell me that. Please let that be the upshot of all this . . .”

  “It sounds like she tried,” Stephen said. “But no.”

  “It was a mistake to send her in alone,” Callum snapped. “I told you it was a mistake. I told you we should have just stayed at the school.”

  “We needed to investigate—”

  “Investigate what? What exactly have we come up with so far?”

  “He spoke to Rory,” Stephen said, his voice rising. “We learned a few things. We learned he had the sight when he was alive. That’s probably why he’s been trailing Rory. That’s probably why he killed at Wexford. He found someone who could see him, who could hear him.”

  “Oh, good,” Callum said. “Well, then. Sounds like we’ve solved it.”

  “Callum!” Stephen’s voice went deep when he yelled. I could feel the sonic boom in my stomach. “You aren’t helping. So either stop it now or go outside and walk it off.”

  For a moment, I thought they were going to have a fight—a real, physical one. Callum stood up, straightened, and stormed out of the room. I heard a door slam somewhere else in the apartment.

  “Sorry,” Stephen said quietly. “He’ll calm down in a moment.”

  I could hear things being thrown around in the other room. Then the door opened again and Callum joined us, rattling the table and spilling our tea with the force of sitting down.

  “So what do we know?” he asked.

  “Someone is clearing up the red tape. He’ll tell me when it’s all right for me to take Rory back to Wexford. Until then, we should stay here with her.”

  “We should be out there, dealing with him.”

  “I’d like that too,” Stephen said, “but we have no idea where he’s gone. But in the meantime, we can work with what he’s said this evening. He’s been communicating.”

  Stephen quickly brought Callum up to speed on the various messages while I drank some tea and kept my head down. I was a little frightened of both of them at the moment. Boo was hurt because of me.

  “There was something written on a wall after one of the Ripper killings in 1888,” Stephen said. “After the fourth murder—a bit of anti-Semitic graffiti. Most people think it was a false lead, that it wasn’t written by the Ripper at all—or if it was, it was probably written to lead the police down the wrong path. This message feels wrong . . .”

  “Maybe he just wanted to turn up at that Rippercon thing,” Callum said. “Do a signing for the fans.”

  “Possibly,” Stephen said. “Everything he’s done so far has been about attracting an audience. The very act of imitating Jack the Ripper is an attempt to get attention and cause fear. He commits murders in full view of CCTV cameras. He sent a message to the BBC to be read aloud on television. Tonight, he pulled Rory aside. And then he wrote a message right in front of half the world’s press, directing us to a phrase from the Bible. It’s all been very, very specific and theatrical.”

  “But everyone’s going to think this Richard Eakles guy wrote that,” Callum said. “Apart from us, no one’s going to believe his story that an invisible man knocked him aside to write some weird, possibly Bible-related message. At least the one about Rory was clear.”

  “What one about Rory?” I said.

  Callum backed away from the table a little and played with the edge of the plastic tablecloth. Stephen exhaled long and slow.

  “There’s one part of this we haven’t mentioned,” Stephen said, staring at Callum. “We didn’t want you to be unduly alarmed. It’s all under control—”

  “What message about Rory?” I said again.

  “The James Goode letter,” he said. “There was one final sentence that confirmed in our minds that what you had seen was real. It wasn’t read on the air. It said . . . I look forward to visiting the one with the sight to know me and plucking out her eyes.”

  Both of them remained silent while I took this in. I stared into the depths of the teacup. I was from Louisiana. Bénouville, Louisiana. Not from here. I was from the land of hot weather and storms and big box stores, of freaks and crawfish and unstable McMansions. Home. I needed home.

  “You are the only lead,” Stephen said. “Every other avenue has been tried. The paper and the package that was sent to the BBC . . . analyzed over and over. Paper and box and wrapping from Ryman’s stationers—one of thousands they sell every year. Not particularly helpful, as he obviously didn’t buy it—an invisible man can’t walk into a shop and buy a box—so we couldn’t trace it at the point of sale. CCTV turned up nothing, as is now well-known. No physical evidence at any crime s
cene to tie back to the killer—again, obvious to us, baffling to the lab. We only had you. From you, we at least knew he wasn’t the original Jack the Ripper, because of his appearance . . .”

  I think he saw that none of this was helping, so he shut up.

  “The plan is simple,” he said. “You stay at Wexford, and we stay near you. Very near you. If he comes anywhere near you—”

  “He came near me tonight,” I said.

  “So we double our protection,” Stephen said. “It won’t happen again. But now you know, and you have to listen to us, and you have to trust us.”

  “What can you do?” I said, my voice shaking. “If he comes near me, what can you do about it?”

  Callum opened his mouth to speak, but Stephen shook his head.

  “We take care of it,” Stephen said. “The details are covered under the Official Secrets Act. You can be angry. You can be upset. You can be whatever you want. But the truth is, we’re the only people who can keep you safe. And we will keep you safe. It’s not only our job, but now he’s hurt our friend, and that happens to bother us quite a lot.”

  “I could go home,” I said.

  “Running away won’t help. Going home probably wouldn’t even deter him, if he’s serious. The ghosts we’ve encountered operate basically in the same manner as humans in terms of general locomotion. While most tend to haunt one place, there are plenty that have much larger territories. The Ripper seems comfortable moving around the East End. There’s no reason I can think of that he wouldn’t be able to travel.”

  He didn’t sugarcoat it. The bluntness was oddly calming.

  “So you stay where we can do something about it,” he went on. “And you try to live your life as normally as you can.”

  “Like you two?” I asked.

  It was a bit of a low blow, but Callum laughed.

  “I think she’s getting it,” he said.

  26

  IT WAS ALMOST THREE IN THE MORNING WHEN STEPHEN dropped me off at Wexford, but there were lots of lights on in the windows. I saw people looking out as I stepped from the police car.

  “For the next few days, Callum and I will be keeping an eye on you,” he said. “One of us will always be around. And remember, you have to say she stepped out into the road and didn’t see the car.”