Feminine shapes rose out of the mist behind the Ripper and reached for it. It shrieked at their touch and stumbled back, clutching at itself. Hands reached down from the ceiling and up from the floor, plucking at it. It struggled with the phantom shapes, swiping and clawing at them. St. Cyprian stepped forward, narrowly avoiding a thrashing limb. His eyes met Gallowglass’ and he said, “Ready?”
She cocked the Webley-Fosbery. He pressed the Monas Glyph to the back of what might have been the Ripper’s head, and the tar-black shadow stuff stiffened as if it had been struck by an electrical current. It peeled back from the shrunken remains of the man called Eddowes, and Gallowglass pressed the barrel of her revolver to the man’s withered brow. She fired, and he pitched backwards. The Ripper’s essence tore away from him in a sloughing deluge, and it splashed to the floor. It slithered through the ectoplasm, losing some of itself as it squirmed with desperate speed towards Andraste, where she sat, head thrown back and hands in her lap.
St. Cyprian pursued it. “Now, Aife,” he shouted as he flung himself on the black shape. For a moment, he was struck through by cold, the purest cold he’d ever felt, colder even than January in the trenches, and then he could hear the rasp of scales and the rattle of wheels. The garret faded, replaced by cobbled streets, narrow alleys and pale, flickering gaslight. A dark shape surged up around him, and iron claws fastened themselves about his throat. He felt brick bite into his back.
Where am I? What is this, the Ripper said. Its voice no longer boomed or burned, but was now no louder than a man’s. It was shaped once again like the Victorian bogeyman it had chosen to mimic, but it twitched and shuddered like someone afflicted with ague. For a moment, its real, terrible shape was visible and then it was once again crammed back into its archaic costume. The stuff of its material shape was no longer under its control.
“A different angle, a dark alley,” St. Cyprian choked out as he tried to break the Ripper’s grip on his throat. A fog rose up, oozing up from between the cobbles and through the bricks. He didn’t know whether the Ripper had noticed it. “Angles intersect here, again and again, like cracks. That’s what you managed to squeeze through—a crack. It was just a little crack, perfect for a little flea.”
The Ripper leaned towards him with a hiss. Its eyes glowed dully and it shivered. It looked around, head cocked like a hound’s. I can smell her, it said. You cannot hide her. I will find her. I hunger. I…I… It shook its head, as if confused. It looked around, eyes narrowing. What is this? Who are they? It gestured at the shapes that had started to form in the fog.
“You’re not the only one who’s hungry,” he said. The Ripper slammed him back against the wall. His teeth clicked and he could taste blood. He spat into the entity’s face and said, “Time’s up.”
The fog billowed up, revealing shapes, far more solid than before, more real. Men and women and children, sailors, prostitutes and match-girls, all the souls gobbled up in the East End in the years before and after the original Ripper had preyed on the women of Whitechapel. There were hundreds of them. Easy to rouse, they had come swiftly, scenting a meal. Soul-stuff was like blood in the water to such tattered, spectral striges. More and more of them packed the narrow alleyway, blocking it off from either end. They stared at the Ripper hungrily.
No, it said, and its voice was more like the squeal of a rat than the growl of a lion. I eat, I am not eaten! The Ripper released him and backed away. It turned around in a circle as it tried to keep all of the advancing shades in sight. Stay back! Stay back!
“I don’t think they’re listening, chum,” St. Cyprian said, rubbing his throat. “Even a cat can feed the rats, if he’s slow enough.”
With a sigh, the striges lunged as one. Hands and mouths latched onto the Ripper, who wailed like a dying beast as it struck out at its attackers. Its substance thinned and tore like paper beneath their assault and the greedy phantoms devoured the gobbets of spirit-stuff they wrenched from the Ripper’s quivering form. The Ripper shrank beneath the attack, bowled under by the swarming ghosts. Its screams rose in pitch, spiralling higher and higher. St. Cyprian closed his eyes and looked away. When the noises had stopped, he turned back, and saw the ghosts of Whitechapel staring at him. A thin, black sludge was all that remained of the Ripper. Whether the entity had fled, or had been devoured, he did not know, nor in truth did he care. Swallowing bile, he held up the silver amulet. The ghosts looked away as one, and with another communal sigh, they blew apart, like sand sculptures in a strong wind, leaving him alone in the darkness. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was laying flat on his back in the garret, and his mouth tasted of blood and ashes. Something black and powdery stained his clothes. He made to sit up and groaned. Gallowglass was kneeling beside him, and she helped him to attain a sitting position. “How do you feel?” she said.
“Like someone buried me alive and then set the coffin on fire,” he croaked and coughed. He looked at what was left of the silver amulet. It looked as if it had been dropped into a fire, and it was shrunken and melted and all black. He handed it to Gallowglass. “Do something with that.” The garret was devoid of ectoplasm, and he felt nothing, no electric thrill or sour vibration, on the air. The Ripper was gone, as if it had never been.
She stuffed it into her pocket and helped him to his feet. He stepped back and nearly stumbled over Eddowes’ body. The dead man stared up at him accusingly and he looked away. “Tosser deserved whatever he got,” Gallowglass murmured.
“Deserve has nothing to do with it,” St. Cyprian said. He felt as if he’d been through a bout of malaria. Sweat had soaked through his clothes and his vision was blurry. He looked towards the circle. Andraste sat slumped in her chair, weeping softly into her hands in relief. She looked up as he approached, and flung herself from the chair, into his arms. He held tightly for a moment, and then pushed her gently away. “We don’t have long. How quickly can you pack up your belongings?”
“What—I don’t understand,” she said. “We killed it. It’s gone. I felt it!”
“Yes, but it wasn’t the only one after you,” he said intently. He motioned to Morris, who lay where the Ripper had flung him. He wasn’t quite unconscious, but he was close enough to it to buy them some time. Or so St. Cyprian hoped. He looked back at Gallowglass. “Go watch the street. If any of Morris’ minions survived, keep them distracted.”
“What about if the coppers show up,” Gallowglass said.
“Oh show them up, by all means,” he said before snapping, “What do you think?”
She stuck her tongue out at him and sauntered towards the door. He looked back at Andraste. “Do you remember what I said about coral reefs,” he said. He nodded to Morris’ groaning shape. “There are predators in the reef as well as out. I admit, he’s not the most fearsome looking beast, but he’s dangerous all the same. Do you have somewhere to go? Not the bakery,” he added quickly.
“I—I think so,” she said. “Jadwiga and I, we talked about going overseas, to America maybe or Australia.” She looked at Morris. “Won’t he just follow me?”
“No, there’ll be no reason.” He turned and went to Eddowes’ body. With a grunt, he hefted the shrunken corpse and carried it to the chair she’d been sitting in. He began to divest it of its clothes. “Strip,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“Strip, skin off, hand me your knickers, please,” he said. He looked at her. “This body is in such a state that when I tell Morris that it’s you, he won’t question me.”
“And what about when he looks at it for more than two minutes and realizes that it’s not a bloody woman?” Andraste said, peeling off her clothes.
St. Cyprian gawped at her for a moment before hastily averting his eyes. “I meant in one of the rooms,” he said, in a strangled voice.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, I’d wager,” she said. “He’s going to know that’s not a woman, Charley.”
“We’ll just tell him you were a man,
pretending to be a woman.” St. Cyprian finished undressing the body.
“And he’ll buy that, will he?” she said, thrusting her clothes to him, over his shoulder and jolting him out of his reverie. He snatched them, suddenly far too aware of her proximity. Alternate scenarios ran roughshod over his certainties, and he wanted nothing more than to offer her the sanctuary of No. 427, for however long she wished. But that wouldn’t end well for anyone, least of all her. No, the only safe option for her was flight. It was out of sight, out of mind, where the Ministry was concerned.
“Morris is a bureaucrat of the first order. Mysteries are my patch, paperwork is his.” Quickly, he dressed the withered corpse and stood. “He won’t question it, because that’d only add to his paperwork.” Andraste was lacing up Eddowes’ discarded braces when he turned. He smiled. He’d always had a soft spot for a woman in trousers.
“I am beset by bluestockings,” he said. “Bobbie, Gallowglass and now you, my dear Miss Andraste. Whatever will people say?”
She smiled, and made to reply, when Morris groaned blearily. St. Cyprian hurried her towards her room. “Grab what you can, don’t come out until you hear us leave. Go out the window. They won’t be looking for anyone, so you should be fine.” He made to shut the door.
“I—I wanted to say thank you,” she said, holding the door open. “Charley, I…” She trailed off, at a loss for words. He knew the feeling.
He smiled and patted her hand. He hesitated. He wanted to say something as well, to ask her—what? He didn’t really know. So, he simply said, “Toodle-pip, Miss Andraste. Do send me a postcard.”
Then he shut the door and hurried to Morris’ side.
EPILOGUE
St. Cyprian slept through most of the remainder of the week. Using the Monas Glyph for such an extended period of time took a good deal out of its wielder. It sapped vitality and put the senses on a knife edge for days afterward. It had been with a great deal of relief that he had dropped it back into its box and closed the lid, before retiring to his bedroom and collapsing across the bed, still dressed and smelling of blood and gunpowder.
His dreams during that time were not, on the whole, pleasant. They were filled with red shadows and hollow-eyed ghosts, and he awoke more than once, his heart thudding in his chest and his pillow and sheets sodden with sweat. He thought he saw the Ripper’s grin, leering at him through the windows and from the mirror. He thought he could feel the grinding pain of the creature’s grip, and he heard the hiss of the athame as it swept towards his unprotected throat. In better moments, in softer dreams, he heard Andraste’s voice, but those didn’t last long.
He awoke on the third day, and looked around blearily. Gallowglass was sitting quietly in a chair near the window, her feet crossed on the sill and one of his shirts spread across her lap. She was cleaning her Webley on it. He cursed, loudly and virulently. She looked at him and smiled. “Feeling better are we?” she asked, jabbing a wire brush into the Webley’s cylinder.
“That shirt is expensive!”
“It’s ugly,” she said.
“It’s Bond Street!” he protested, swinging his legs out of bed.
“And you’re in the buff,” Gallowglass said, turning her attentions back to the pistol. St. Cyprian yelped and yanked his sheets up around his waist. “I got the door mended,” she added.
“And the bodies?” he asked as he tried to pull the remnants of his tattered dignity about himself. The Ripper had finished off his sparring partners before pelting after them, scattering their body parts across the ground floor like a deranged child flinging tinsel. It was not the sort of scene one would wish to be greeted by, upon a triumphant return.
“Morris came for the rubbish,” she said. She peered down the barrel of the pistol. “We were missing one, by the way.”
He froze. “What?”
“One of the corpses went for a bit of a ramble, innit?” she said. She gestured to her neck. “The one whose neck you broke, who came down the chimney like Father Christmas.”
“What happened to him?”
“How should I know? He didn’t run it by me, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “The door was off its hinges, and the house was open to anyone who wanted to come in.”
The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. The house had charms and spells aplenty to ward off the attentions of would-be thieves. Nonetheless, he resolved to inspect it from top to bottom, to ensure that nothing had gone missing, books or otherwise.
“Anyway, Morris took the rest. He took—ah—‘Andraste’s’ body as well,” Gallowglass added. “He wasn’t happy about that, by the by.”
Something in her tone caught his attention. “What is it? Has he rumbled us?”
She smirked. “Not that I can tell. But he does want to chat, at your convenience.”
“Of course he does,” he said as he sat down on his bed. Morris had probably figured it out. He wasn’t stupid. But nor was he the type to do anything more than snidely hint that he knew what was what. St. Cyprian ran a hand through his hair and, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “Have you heard anything?”
Gallowglass sniffed. “No,” she said.
“Really,” he said.
“No,” she said. She sighed. “I know a fellow what saw a lady what matched her description as possibly boarding a steamer bound for New York, didn’t I?”
“New York,” he said. New York was as good as any place. It was firmly out of the Ministry’s reach, at least. That was good enough. He sighed and stood. “Get out.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I would like to take a bath and get dressed, if that’s quite all right with you,” he said stiffly.
“Who do you think undressed you?” Gallowglass said, as she gathered up her things.
“Leave the shirt, please. I’d like to give it a Christian burial,” he said.
He took less time than he would’ve liked for his ablutions, but his stomach was empty and insistent. He felt halfway to human as he walked down the stairs. He paused on the bottom stair to knot his tie and went into the dining room. Gallowglass was already there, with breakfast. Over coffee, kippers, a rasher of bacon and toast, he flipped through the Times.
There was no mention of the occurrence in Whitechapel, of course. The words ‘Whitechapel’, ‘garret’, and ‘slaughter’ did not as much as flit across the interior pages. The Ministry had the budget for that, at least, whatever Morris claimed.
Those men who had died delaying the inevitable might as well have never existed. Morris had refused to tell him who they had been, or whether they’d had families. He’d refused to admit that they had ever been there at all. For St. Cyprian, it was simply red in the ledger, if at a remove, to be added to all the rest.
There was a small notice regarding a disturbance on the Embankment, but even that was made to sound like high spirits and alcohol had been at fault, rather than a diabolical intruder from an alternate sphere of existence. He tossed the paper onto the table and leaned back. “So, what happened to it, then?” Gallowglass said as she slathered butter on her toast.
“The Ripper, you mean?”
“No, the other one,” Gallowglass said, “Yes, I mean the Ripper.”
“Gone,” he said simply.
“Dead,” she asked.
“I doubt it can die, at least not in any way that we can comprehend. No, I expect it simply relinquished its hold on Miss Andraste’s stolen ectoplasm and slithered back into the void from whence it came.” He leaned back in his chair.
“Think it’ll come back?”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “Good God, I hope not.” He rubbed his chin. “I doubt it, though. No, I’m more concerned about something Eddowes said, just before he got the chop. He mentioned something about the ‘men he worked for’. I assume Morris made an inquiry into the Whitechapel Club?”
“Right horror show that was,” Gallowglass said. “The Ministry confiscated everything.”
“Of course they did,
” he said, thinking of the noose-shaped lapel pin still sitting in a drawer in his desk upstairs. “I don’t think Eddowes meant the club anyway.”
“Does it matter?” Gallowglass said. “They’re done for, the Ripper’s gone, and the whole thing may as well have not happened.” She pointed to his plate with her knife. “Are you going to finish that bacon?”
“Yes, in my own time,” he said, trapping it with his fork. He was tempted to investigate further, but not enough to actually do it. If the Whitechapel Club still existed in some form, it would be in bad knick. There were consequences to dealing with Those Outside, even tangentially. Unless you took the proper precautions, you were invariably marked. If there had been any survivors, Ketch included, they were in for bad times. As was anyone who became involved with them, in whatever capacity.
Nonetheless, the temptation was there. But it was easily pushed aside. It was bad enough dealing with foreigners whose knowledge of the invisible far out-stripped his own; going up against the Sisterhood of Rats or the Si-Fan when, by and large, they adequately policed themselves, was not something he looked forward to. If some bunch of amateur, fifth form demonologists wanted to summon Mephistopheles via proxy without considering the consequences that was their business.
But sometimes it spilled over. And that was where the Royal Occultist came in. He closed his eyes, and saw the Ripper’s grin swimming towards him out of the darkness. It would soon enough take its place in the hall of horrors that squatted behind his happier memories, before being replaced by something worse. Nonetheless, he thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to get out of the city for a few days, at least until the memory had faded.
At least Andraste had gotten away. He felt a slight pang, and picked up a piece of bacon and chewed thoughtfully. He’d always wanted to visit New York. He wondered whether she would look askance at a visit. Just to check up on her, of course.
Not any time soon, though. There was too much to do in Blighty, and Royal Occultists rarely got holidays. It was probably too much to hope that his duties might take him to the former colonies. Still…
The Whitechapel Demon Page 17