by Sam Gafford
“I was not allowed to see Mary again. My movements were watched, and I was a virtual prisoner in my father’s rectory. He, being the vicar of the Llanddewi Fach parish, was positive that Mary had been possessed by the devil and that it was only divine Providence that prevented her from seducing or killing me (it was unclear which option he considered to be the more vile). The rest of the story is what I have told you before. Mary was sent away to an orphanage run by a strict order of nuns, where she was beaten in an effort to drive out her demons. I later heard that she’d run away from there and disappeared. Rumours would reach me occasionally that she had married but that her husband had died in a mine explosion, although I could not verify it. The last I heard was that she had become a ‘gentleman’s escort,’ which is just a euphemism for a high-priced prostitute.
“My family kept a close eye on me for many years, especially my father, who was always vigilant for any ‘lapse’ in my spiritual purity. My mother, I noticed, never quite looked at me the same way again, and I often wondered if she believed that I had, in fact, been carried away by the ‘little people’ and replaced with one of their demonic spawn. Our relationship was never the same again.
“After some less than stellar academic attempts (I even tried to sit for the medical school admission exams but failed), I eventually found my way to London, where I was spectacularly unsuccessful. I wrote many things that paid poorly, took odd jobs where possible, worked on translations, and married Amy last year, which was the same year my father died. We came into a small inheritance, and that brings us here and up to date.”
The way he spoke showed that he had reached the end of the subject, but I had too many questions to allow that.
“And you never saw Mary again?” I asked.
“Not until that night in the pub with you. When I saw her, I was not sure if she would embrace me or run me through with a knife. At first I was happy to find her again, but that did not last for long.
“Her demeanour and speech were off. Oh, I know that it had been many years since we’d last spoken, but something fundamental within her had changed. It was oddly confusing for me. I was both terrified and mesmerised by her. I suppose that, for a short week or two, I even loved her, but I cannot be sure what I felt or even if I felt it at all!”
“What do you mean?”
“Since the ‘incident,’ I have thought of her often. I’ve carried a great deal of shame with me because I was the one who introduced her to all this and, were it not for me, she would not have succumbed to it the way she did. Even more, without me she would not have known the painful life she had experienced. It was all my fault, and I suppose I felt that I had to make it up to her somehow.
“So I searched for her and tried to find her again. Slowly, though, I became convinced that what we were calling Mary Kelly was actually something far more dangerous. I grew to believe that the Mary Kelly I knew was dead and gone. She had died that day on the hill in Wales, and what looked through her eyes at this world was nothing less than Alala. This knowledge came too late, however. By then, she and her dhole had embarked on the murder of helpless women in Whitechapel in an effort to prepare for the Ceremonies.”
“How? What could this have to do with the murders?”
Arthur’s voice got very low. “I don’t know. At least, I don’t know how they would have connected with the Ceremonies that I knew, which I thought I had designed. I believe that Mary, or Alala, has changed them, corrupted them for some purpose that I cannot even imagine yet. That is why I have consulted everyone I knew who had even a smattering of occult knowledge.”
“Like the Golden Dawn.”
He nodded. “Them, the Beast, Lees, and many others.” He stood up and walked in front of his book-crammed shelves. “I have consulted every book I have or know about. I’ve been to the British Museum and have sent letters of enquiry far and wide, but in the end I have no more than I did when I started. I know nothing.”
A hideous thought occurred to me.
“Arthur, one of the threads that has run through the Ripper murders is that he has taken something out of the bodies. Could that be part of the Ceremonies?”
He considered the thought and nodded. “It could very well be. Perhaps they are searching for ‘the Inmost Light.’”
Arthur saw my confusion and continued “It is a theory that I have heard bandied about in various places and groups. They believe that the soul or essence, if you will, of a person resides inside them—that it is something which can be held, measured, and weighed. Part of this stems from the weighing of bodies just before death and then immediately after. In these studies (widely repudiated, mind you), six grams are always found to have been lost. Perhaps, at that precise moment of death, these people seek to capture the Inmost Light before it escapes the dying body.”
“To what purpose?”
Sighing, Machen shrugged. “That, I cannot say. Their motives are as mysterious to me as when this whole nightmare began. I’d hoped I was wrong there, at the start, and that this was all just some brutal campaign by some deranged madman. Then, when I was convinced that this entire affair only wore the guise of insanity to cover a deeper, more intricate scheme, I’d hoped that I could catch them in the act and put paid to the whole lot. I was wrong in that as well.”
“Before,” I began slowly, “you said that you thought Mary was trying to destroy this reality, our plane of existence. Why would she do such a thing? What could she gain?”
“Alala would gain chaos and destruction, which, I now realise, was her only true goal all along. And when she could not create it through me, she turned her efforts towards Mary and found a more fertile ground there. Perhaps chaos and the end of all things is reason enough.”
This was too much for me to comprehend.
“But, Arthur, if you truly knew what Mary was and what she was capable of, why did you allow Amy to go with her? Surely you must have known what would happen?”
A look of shame came across his face. “In truth, I had no idea they were meeting until you told me. I was so consumed with my own investigations that I paid no attention to what was happening in my own home. After I knew, I forbade Amy from having any dealings with Mary, but I fear that I could not watch her every minute. There were times when I would return from meeting you or consulting other occultists only to find Amy completely gone and not returning until the early hours of the morning. When I pressed her on this, she’d claim that she and Ann had merely been helping at the church but would say nothing else. Then her health began to fail. Is it so horrible of me that I was actually glad for such a thing? It meant that she could not go out and would be housebound, where I could be assured she would stay.
“Since then, she has scarcely been out of this house. Her strength is coming back slowly, but, as I’ve mentioned to you, something in her mind is broken. I am sure it has to do with her time around Mary. but she will not speak of it. So you see, Albert, I carry not only the blame for Ann’s capture but for Amy’s decline as well.”
I wanted to hate the man, I truly did. For months he had kept the truth from me when he was the one person in London, perhaps the world, who knew the dangers we were facing. If I had known, I would have taken Ann away that very night when we became engaged and we would be living happily in a cottage somewhere in Cornwall. Or perhaps everything would still have happened the same way. I knew only one thing for sure: Ann was still missing, and until I was given proof otherwise, I would continue to search for her.
“You have told me everything?” I asked. “You’ve kept nothing back this time?”
He looked at me, and it was with the eyes of a man who had been beaten down by the knowledge that he was the cause of so much pain and anguish. It may have started years before, but it was by his doing all the same.
“You know the truth now. All of it. I’m ashamed that I didn’t tell it to you before but . . . would you have believed me if I had?”
I thought about that.
“Well
,” I said as I stood up, stretched, and looked at the sun of a new day breaking through the windows, “most likely not. Now get Rose to bring us in some breakfast and a large pot of strong, black coffee. I’ve got to find someplace to spread out all these blueprints of yours. We’ve a lot of work to do.”
October 26–28, 1888
We virtually lived in that room for the next several days. I made camp in Arthur’s study while he took breaks to check on Amy and her progress. Although rallying, her strength was still suffering, and I could tell from Arthur’s face that he believed there was something else at the cause beyond Mary’s machinations.
I head began to hurt from staring at so many blueprints. Arthur got gotten copies of virtually every plan ever used for every part of London. There were blueprints for the East End, Lambeth, the City of London, Southwick, and virtually every neighbourhood in the city. We were drowning in rolls of paper.
Everything outside of the East End, I felt, we could safely eliminate, unless it was an area along the borders. In order for Mary and her confederates to operate so quietly and quickly, they would have to have a base that was quick to reach. Most likely, it would be somewhere in Whitechapel. This still left a large number of plans to consult.
To his credit, Arthur had brought not only the original plans but also the revisions, so we could see what was changed. I felt it would have to be a somewhat large space that was not in use, or had never been used, that would allow for quick and easy access not only to the trains but to aboveground as well.
After days of staring at blueprints, my eyes were blurry and I had a severe headache. We had found three possible locations. One was probably too far out of the way, in Bishopsgate, while another, in Aldgate, looked too small. The one that was off the line near St. Mary’s looked, to me, like the most likely choice.
The question, of course, was how to find it.
Arthur and I spent the better part of a day riding around the underground and roaming through the tunnels, but found nothing. We knew where the map said the room should be, but could find no way of identifying it. There simply were no entrances, hidden or otherwise.
We climbed up and down utility stairways all around, checked for hollow walls and secret passageways, but, if there was something down there, it was well and truly hidden. Defeated and discouraged, we limped back to Arthur’s home, covered in dirt and soot and grime. I coughed out at least a pound or two of black coal dust.
Amy greeted us happily but was somewhat confused by our appearance. Arthur whispered to me, “She’s having one of her ‘better days’ today,” and happily embraced her. We shambled back to Arthur’s study and the hanging gallery of blueprints to consider whether our entire theory had been wrong all along.
“We should have found something,” Arthur said, “unless that area was filled up later and just never notated.”
I looked at the most recent blueprints. The space we had been seeking was not on it at all. It was, however, definitely on the earliest plans. “It was meant,” I said, “to be a local station. But look here.” I pointed to the numbers on the sheet.
“What am I looking at?” Arthur asked.
“This here—these numbers. If I’m reading this correctly, this space is at a much lower level than the other ones. Look at St. Mary’s Station. The base is clearly twenty feet higher than this one.”
“Could it have been constructed and then abandoned?”
I shrugged. “It’s possible. Perhaps the bedrock was too impenetrable for it to connect to anything. Still, it’s odd that it was done at all.”
“There is a possibility that it never was, Albert. We may be completely mistaken about this.”
“No,” I said determinedly. “They have to have some sort of hideout. This is the only one that makes sense. With all the time I spent in the East End, I would have seen or heard something if they were just holed up in a building somewhere. They have to be out of sight and hidden.”
When Amy came in with supper an hour later, we were still just as perplexed.
She put the tray down on one of the tables but was transfixed by the sight of the blueprints pinned to the wall.
“What’s all this, Arthur?” she asked, moving closer to see them better.
I was about to explain exactly what they were when Arthur cut me off and attempted to move her away from the plans. “Oh, they’re nothing, dear. Just a curious little puzzle Albert and I are working on. Where’s Rose? Shouldn’t she have brought in our supper?”
Amy shrugged him off with a wave of her hand, but her eyes never left the sheets.
“I’ve given her the night off. You’ve had her here entirely too long, Arthur. There’s no need for it. These look like blueprints of the underground, am I right?”
I saw my chance and leapt at it.
“You’re absolutely correct, Amy! That’s exactly what they are. We’re trying to figure out what happened to this space here.” I pointed at the blueprint. “It’s on the original prints but not on any others. It’s near St. Mary’s Station. Does it look familiar?”
Once again, Arthur tried to deflect Amy away from the pages.
“Oh, Albert, what could Amy possibly know about any of this? Now, dear, why don’t you go and lay down? You’re looking a little pale.”
He was right. Some of the colour had drained from Amy’s face, and I could detect a slight quiver in her stance.
“I know this place,” she said dreamily, as if in a trance.
“No, you couldn’t possibly, Amy,” Arthur said. “Now, that’s enough of this. You need to leave.”
He went to grab her and pull her away, but I thrust out my arm and kept him back. I felt that, at last, we were actually on the trail of something.
“How do you know this place, Amy?” I asked.
“Mary,” she said, never taking her eyes from the blueprint. “Mary Kelly brought us there.”
“Who, Amy? Who is ‘us’?”
“Ann and myself. It’s a funny little place. It almost looks as if it were built in Roman times, with a high vaulted ceiling and those columns. There’s a river there, too. One of those they covered over long ago but which still run out to the Thames. There was no light except from the torches that hung along the walls. And the sounds . . .”
Arthur tried to break by me, but I pushed him back. I wasn’t about to allow him to stop me now and, shamefully, I didn’t care what it might put Amy through.
“What sounds? What did you hear?”
“Like a chanting. I couldn’t tell if it came from above or below, but there was some hidden chorus all around us. I never could recognise the words. Mary would walk up some stairs to a mound made of marble blocks, and there was a large table on top of it.”
“An altar, Mary? Was it an altar?”
“Yes, that’s what it looked like. And Mary would sing—and then there would be all these hideous little dwarfs around us, their flesh looking like wet mud. And there was another man there whom Mary ordered around. And—and you were there, Arthur. Don’t you remember?”
Arthur was standing frozen in horror now. The true impact of what Amy was saying was beginning to dawn upon him. Amy had been in that place, that cathedral, and the dhole that had stolen his face and form had been there too.
“What did you do there, Amy?” I asked, almost pleading. “What did Mary make Ann and you do?”
“We took off all our clothes and lay on the altar. Heads to feet. Everything went dark. Mary chanted and the voices grew louder. I could feel the air spinning around us as if something were running at a terrible speed. I felt us rise into the air. Then there was something else in the dark. Mary tried to get us to chant along with her, and I could hear Ann singing along, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t! I didn’t want to sing that song. Then something reached out from the dark, and I could feel it touching me. It was cold and slimy, and it moved like a snake or an eel. But—but then it started talking to me! The voice was like Mary’s, but it was older and terrible. It called
to me and—and, God help me, there was a part of me that wanted to answer as Ann was doing, but I couldn’t. I opened my eyes and saw it and I screamed and screamed!”
Amy let out the most blood-curdling scream I had ever heard in my life and kept screaming. Her hands went to her face; she would have clawed her eyes out if Arthur and I hadn’t stopped her. Suddenly her body went rigid and her eyes bulged wide out of her sockets. I was afraid they were going to explode. Instead, a voice came out from her: it was not her voice, but something else. My blood ran cold as I recognised that voice, for I had heard it in that very house a few months previously. It was the same voice that spoke through Robert James Lees that night he had held the séance at Arthur’s party, and I had had that unspeakable vision of a naked Mary luxuriating over a crowd of cannibalistic orgiastic subjects.
The words poured out of Amy over and over again until she finally collapsed unconscious in our arms. Arthur leaned over her, sobbing and calling her name. She was still alive, but her mind was in a state of shock. We carried her back upstairs and put her to bed, where Arthur watched over her.
I’d written down what the voice had said:
“Mae’n bryd i’r Seremonïau Scarlet i ddechrau.”
In a final insult to Arthur, it had been in Welsh. Later he translated it for me, although I already had a suspicion about what it meant. From somewhere else, something was using Amy to say:
“It is time for the Scarlet Ceremonies to begin.”
Chapter 77
Hell is a city much like London— A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
November 3, 1888
Amy was prostrate for nearly a day.
She had developed a fever after we put her to bed, but it passed quickly. For the better part of twenty-four hours she was insensate, but she would scream pitifully at intervals. I guiltily felt that each one of those screams had been my punishment for pushing her too far, and I could tell that Arthur believed that as well.