“We’d best hope so,” Jadwiga said, adding an ominous edge to his tone for effect, “For in truth, the knowledge we seek lies in dangerous territory. The spirits of blood and shadows guard their secrets ferociously, gentlemen, especially in Whitechapel. There are scholars who maintain that these bloodied streets lie over the entrance to Hell itself, while others swear that the souls of all those who’ve died here yet remain, bound in chains of blood and pagan sorcery. We have chosen this place for our temple for that very reason—for in London there are few places where the walls that separate man from spirit are thinner than Whitechapel.”
The men at the table grumbled and nodded to each other, as if Jadwiga’s tommyrot made perfect sense. There were five of them—Mr. Chapman, Mr. Eddowes, Mr. Stride, Mr. Nichols and Mr. Kelly, none of which were their real names, she thought—and they were a fine crew of toffs, dressed well, and out for a lark, looking to learn things man ought not to know. They were by and large middle-aged and had the look of Oxford dons-in-training, aesthetic and paunchy and pale.
She and Jadwiga occasionally got a certain type in—men and women looking to connect not with deceased loved ones, but other things entirely. Those were the ones they had to watch out for, and the reason Jadwiga kept a stout knobkerrie to hand. This crew wasn’t that bad, all things considered. At least they didn’t want to dredge up the black secrets of ancient Khem or some other rot like that.
No, this lot just wanted to talk to someone.
She twitched in her seat. The spirit-stuff stiffened and went loose. Sometimes it was like having a fishing line with one end attached to your tongue and the other to a door knob across the room. Sometimes, you could move the door if your tongue was strong enough. Other times, well, your tongue was liable to be sore for a week after. She had that scraped raw feeling inside that let her know she was nearing her limit and she slowly closed her mouth. The sensation of cold bile in her throat ceased abruptly. She felt dehydrated and slightly nauseous, and knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to talk for some time afterwards. The hands that held hers tightened as the ectoplasm began to balloon and waft like a gaggle of obese, airborne jellyfish. Its appearance varied, depending on her mood. Sometimes it looked like vapour, other times a bundle of fine threads; mostly, however, it looked gelatinous.
It was like clay, but shaped by thought rather than fingers. It had taken her years to strengthen her mind, so that she could muster the concentration required. Even now, it was tiring. That was why the faces and shapes were so indistinct. She had to save her strength for the big show. These were just the preliminaries.
As the shapes took form, she let her eyes drift around the garret. It wasn’t the worst flat she’d ever lived in, but it certainly wasn’t the nicest. They’d done what they could with it. The walls were hung with sumptuous brocade and fetish masks bought from an artistically-inclined carver in Cheapside, and a threadbare Turkish carpet covered the floor boards. A strong fragrance rose in lazy azure whorls from the grinning jaws of a silver idol Jadwiga had purchased in Limehouse. The windows were closed, but she could still hear Whitechapel going about its business for the evening. While the rest of London slept, the East End was hard at work.
Whitechapel had come a long way since before the War, but it hadn’t quite crawled up out of the muck just yet. Jadwiga was hoping there was still enough of the exotic in the neighbourhood to bring in the punters, and so far, his hopes seemed well-founded. In the wake of the War, spiritualists were ten-a-penny, but so were customers. Everyone, it seemed, had lost someone, whether to the war or to the Spanish Flu. The poor went to church, and the rich went to mediums like Andraste.
Jadwiga’s grip on her shoulder tightened slightly. It was time to bring out the Flea. She concentrated, her mental commands moulding the ectoplasm she’d exuded into a crudely humanoid shape. This was where the hard graft came in—it required absolute focus to mould the ectoplasm into such a distinct shape. Her eyes strayed to the table, the surface of which was dominated by an intricately carved shape—a recreation of William Blake’s ‘The Ghost of a Flea’. The Flea had been another of Jadwiga’s ideas. All mediums used spirit-guides; mostly they were exotic sorts—the wandering spirits of Cherokee medicine men or aboriginal shamans or suchlike—but Jadwiga had insisted they have something unique. He’d seen the painting once, at the National Gallery on Millbank, and had thought the grotesque creature would make an impressive interlocutor.
Andraste didn’t care for it herself. Muscular and nude, the semi-reptilian shape was unpleasant, with its long tongue and scrabbling claws. She had nightmares about it, occasionally. It formed, like a demon out of a story, rising from a puff of ectoplasm, and glared about it as it crouched on the table. She had practiced for months to get it just right. Sometimes she even fancied that she had done too good a job. The Flea drained her more than her other constructs. It took an enormous amount of effort to keep it from flying apart, and it required every bit of the ectoplasm she manifested.
Gasps rippled around the table, and she had to tighten her grip on the hands she held, to keep them from pulling away. “Do not be afraid, gentlemen. This creature is but our Virgil, come to guide us through the forests of the night.” Jadwiga could lay it on thick, when he wanted. “Speak your question to it, and it shall hunt down the answer.”
The men looked at one another, conferring silently. Then the one at the opposite end of the table—Eddowes, she thought—cleared his throat and stood. “We shall, in a moment,” he said. He glanced at one of the others and said, “Mr. Stride, are you satisfied?”
Stride licked his lips and nodded. “Quite so Mr. Eddowes,” he said, eyes wide. “I’d heard she was the real thing, but I never dared believe…”
“Get to it, then,” Mr. Kelly said. His gaze darted about, and he flinched back from the Flea’s blank leer. “Let’s do what we came here to do, Eddowes.”
“Patience, Mr. Kelly,” Eddowes said. He was hard-faced and his posture was as stiff as an iron bar. The others were in awe of her, or at least her abilities, but not him. Andraste wondered whether this was his first time seeing this sort of thing. He stared up into the Flea’s leering features, as if searching for something. Then, he smiled, and her stomach sank. He looked at Jadwiga. “As I suspected…there is no intelligence there. It is a vessel right enough, but empty.”
Andraste tensed. She felt Jadwiga do the same. His hand slid off of her shoulder, dipping for the knobkerrie sheathed on the back of her chair. She blinked. Somehow, a revolver had appeared in Eddowes’ hand. The hands holding hers tightened, like manacles. She tried to jerk loose, but failed.
“Leave that skull-cracker where it is, Mr. Jadwiga. There is no need to get excited, either of you.” Eddowes’ smile turned thin as he spoke. He looked at Andraste. “In fact, relaxation would be conducive to our experiment, and, likely less painful for you, my dear.”
Her throat was too dry, both from the sudden bloom of fear and the expulsion of the ectoplasm, to offer up a reply. Jadwiga replied for both of them. “Who the devil are you?” he snarled.
“Humble seekers of truth, Mr. Jadwiga; the pistol is merely to ensure your cooperation. We came to ask a question, as we said. But we require an honest answer, sir, and not mere hokum,” Eddowes said. “We are quite familiar with your particular carnival sideshow, and we know that while Ms. Andraste is terribly talented in the art of ectenic manipulation, she is a poor conduit.”
“I have a theory that her skill is a result of her limited aetheric capacity,” Stride interjected, “Rather like the strengthening of a blind man’s remaining senses, what?”
Eddowes frowned. “Thank you for that enlightening interjection, Mr. Stride. Do please be quiet until negotiations are complete, there’s a good chap.”
“What negotiations?” Jadwiga said. “What are you planning?”
“We came here to talk to a spirit, and we intend to do just that,” Eddowes said. “Ms. Andraste will provide the conduit through which we dr
edge forth the answer to one of the greatest secrets held by the stones of this city, and Whitechapel in particular. We are all old hands at making the spirits answer, but for this endeavour, we require a medium of more strength than those others of our acquaintance, as we have discovered time and again, to our chagrin.” Eddowes snapped his fingers. “Mr. Kelly, Mr. Nichols, Mr. Chapman, if you will align yourselves to the other three cardinal points, according to the Incantation of Raaaee, from the Prinn translation, please. I shall stand as King of the North. Mr. Stride, will you do the honours of calling into the black?” Eddowes stepped around the table, gesturing with the pistol for Jadwiga to step back as the four men rose to their feet and moved to different points around the room. Stride moved to the edge of the table, in front of the Flea, and slipped off his coat. Gazing up at the unmoving phantasm, he began to roll up his sleeve.
Andraste wanted to protest, to recall the wafting ectoplasm, but the pistol in Eddowes’ hand made her hesitate. What would he do, if she did? Would he shoot them? Or worse, force her to call it up again? She reached up and Jadwiga caught her hand. “I’m all for giving customers their due, but I’m not certain that this is wise,” Jadwiga said. He squeezed her hand, trying to comfort her. “She could be injured—or worse.” He eyed the pistol nervously.
“We shall pay the promised upon fee, Mr. Jadwiga, after we have gained that which we seek. Ms. Andraste will not be harmed,” Eddowes said. “Mr. Stride is an experienced pilgrim of spiritual climes, is that not so Mr. Stride? He was once a member in good standing of the Society of Psychical Research.”
“Quite so Mr. Eddowes; I had the good fortune to learn how to transverse the higher realms at the feet of the nine ascended masters. I have peered into the crystal egg and my mind has crossed the void between static moments more than once. I daresay I’m quite the cosmic voyager, what?” Stride said. “And I have our question lodged firmly in my mind, as well as the requisite sympathetic items.” He began to pull items out of his pockets. A cracked wedge of cobblestone, a few pruned grapes, a bit of something that looked like dried meat, and a folded letter. “A bit of stone from George Yard to anchor, a familiar taste to entice, a bit from one of the unfortunate victims to stir, and his own words to remind; all of the required ingredients for the raising and binding of our spirit. All of these things I shall send out into the void, with Ms. Andraste’s help, and we shall see who replies, eh?” He glanced at Andraste and smiled encouragingly. “Now, you’ll feel a bit of a tug, but it shouldn’t hurt.”
Then, without hesitation, he thrust his hand into the Flea’s chest. The ectoplasm roiled and expanded and the Flea twitched and bent, like a living thing. Beads of sweat appeared on Stride’s face, as if he’d just been exposed to an intense heat and the ectoplasm lost cohesion, bunching and swirling about his hand. Andraste felt as if he’d grabbed her lungs and squeezed. She gasped and twitched and wanted dearly to break the connection, to pull it all back in but there was no way to do so now. The Flea mimicked her twitching, and its jaws champed mindlessly, as Stride began to speak in a low, dolorous voice.
Strange symbols and the titles of forbidden texts, tools and anecdotes, faces, dates and names; terms and descriptions of things she did not understand surfaced and rode the conduit that now existed between herself and Stride—hyssop, the six colours, Tesla’s bulwark. His mind was less an open book than a voice shouting from across a vast canyon. Her heart’s rhythm felt off and there was an ache in her head and bones that seemed to emanate up from the very stones of Whitechapel itself. The room blurred and spun and faded. The garret was stripped away, like a portrait from a frame, revealing the darkness on the other side. She’d never seen that darkness, had never wanted to see it. There were things like stars in it, but they were not stars, but something else, and there shapes, shapes as wide and as long as London itself, heaving and undulating in the darkness and she quailed, afraid that she would be crushed by their obscene bulk. She could feel Stride nearby, and she heard him shout into the void, again and again, calling out into that crowded darkness.
He was calling out a name.
The name had a weight attached to it. There was a raw, psychic force to it, like a fine vintage gone sour, and it thundered through the darkness, causing the angles of time and space to shiver in sympathy. Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t do it. But she couldn’t. She could only sit and watch, unable to even close her eyes as in that darkness, something turned towards them and—sprang free of the vast, indescribable corpus that it had been drawing nourishment from and—the ectoplasm thrummed as if it were being struck by great, invisible fists and she—hurtled through the void with all due haste, loping through the angles, trailing the night-black call back, back, back, to pounce—screamed as something ripped its way free of the ectenic womb and was born, howling, into the world.
It was all shapes and no shape, at once a light and a colour and a liquid and a shadow. It was a nonsense geometry that tore through her soul on its way into Stride’s, in answer to his call. She felt it hook her as it swam past, like a cat taking a casual swipe at a mouse as if to say, ‘I see you’. She knew, with the certainty of said mouse, that it had marked her.
It exploded upwards, like some beast surfacing from the blackest depths of the ocean, splattering the room with ectoplasm. It tore apart the Flea and reshaped it, like a body rising from beneath a shroud, pulling the tattered fragments of her ectoplasm about itself as it became something new and something infinitely more abominable than Blake’s grotesquery. Pain surged through her, as if it were using her own flesh and blood to clothe itself, and she could feel the echoes of its thoughts, cosmic and cold and hateful, smashing against hers like the wings of an enraged raptor. She could see what it saw, taste what it tasted, and feel what it felt, and a wave of indescribable vileness swept over her and bore her under.
She fell backwards as—their pale, frightened faces, staring in shock—a gun roared, again and again, the sound of it lost amidst the screams as something vast and horrible slithered in amongst them, and painted the damp air red.
She could hear it in her mind as it rose up before her and as its eyes met her, she knew that it was no longer an ‘it’, but a ‘he’, and that he had a name—the Ripper.
And he was very, very hungry.
2.
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea Embankment, London
St. Cyprian yawned and knocked back the last swallow of coffee in his mug. Through the window, he could see that the sun was rising over the Embankment, and the Thames reflected the sunlight like a mirror. It wouldn’t last. There were clouds already gathering to spring a pall of grey over the January morning. He set his cup aside and leaned back in his chair. His desk, carved from teakwood, was, as ever, covered in heaps of paper. Some of it, mostly the lower strata, was bound in book form.
Other than the desk, and the two chairs—his, and one in front of the desk—there was little furniture in his study. There simply wasn’t room, what with the bookshelves which occupied three of the four walls and the assorted bric-a-brac which had begun to migrate upstairs when the sitting room downstairs had grown overfull. Egyptian tomb figurines warred for space with Zuni fetishes on the shelves and glass cabinets held ancient Babylonian and Sumerian tablets of baked clay, inscribed with cuneiform. Mounted on the wall behind the desk was a large, grotesque mask of carved wood which had long since fossilized to dark solidity. The mask depicted a bestial, bear-like face, pug-nosed, with open-fanged jaws.
St. Cyprian set his mug down on top of an unsteady pillar of parchment and vellum, and closed the book he’d been perusing since he and Gallowglass had returned from Maida Vale the night before. The whole affair with Gladstone and his pet would be hushed up. No one who was concerned about such things would profit from the revelation of the murderer’s true nature, or the double-lives led by its victims. And if the Order of the Cosmic Ram didn’t see to it, then the Ministry of Esoteric Observation certainly would. He’d overseen the disposition of the Roman remains himse
lf, however. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust His Majesty’s government with a murderous cadaver, but, well, there were some things it was best to handle personally. The Ministry wouldn’t thank him, but then, when had they ever?
Idly, he clinked together the trio of strange rings that adorned his fingers. Each of the rings was inscribed with a series of characters that might have been Cyrillic or Hebrew or something else entirely. He turned his chair about, set his feet against the wall and leaned back, looking up at the mask. “Well Matunos old boy, how’s tricks? Hanging in there, are we?”
The bear-god, as ever, did not answer. “Small favours,” St. Cyprian muttered, still gazing at the mask. The totem-mask, like many of the decorative oddities which cluttered his space both upstairs and down, was a trophy of sorts. It served as a reminder of something that a more practical man would likely rather forget, and wisely so. But forgetfulness was not a luxury he could afford to indulge in, in his line.
Said line was the investigation, organization and occasional suppression of That Which Man Was Not Meant to Know—including vampires, ghosts, werewolves, ogres, fairies, boojums, boggarts, barguests and the occasional worm of unusual size—by order of the King (or Queen), for the good of the British Empire. St. Cyprian was the latest in a long line of men to hold the post of the Queen’s Conjurer, since the devilish Dr. Dee had been named Royal Occultist by Good Queen Bess some several centuries previous.
If she lived long enough, Ebe Gallowglass would have his job in her turn, and be welcome to it, given that he’d likely be dead. Few in the job lived to collect the pension, though more than one had defied the odds to die alone, unsung and unremembered at an unseemly age in a debtor’s prison or a hospice ward. He liked to think he’d make it long enough to write his memoirs, but he doubted it. There was a reason Carnacki had allowed that fellow Dodgson to write about him for The Idler, after all.
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