Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

She was going to send out as many runners as she could afford. She was going to send them to Scotland Yard and she was going to send them to HM Prison Bridewell. She wanted every policeman and warder in London to come and look at the tongues hanging in the parlor next door. She would only feel safe when they had caught the Devil and sent him back where he belonged.

J ack was hungry.

He sat at a table, far back in the main room of the pub, ignoring what went on upstairs, and when the wench came to ask what he wanted, he tipped his hat forward, dropped two of Elizabeth’s coins on the table, and asked for as much as that would buy.

He sat and waited and watched the people interact. He felt nothing but a distant fondness for their messy flesh. They were his life’s work, and he hoped to someday understand them.

When his food came, the wench had to pull over another table to make enough room for all the plates and bowls. She asked him if he wanted anything else, and he could see the smirk hiding behind her smile. He wanted to leap up and take a scalpel to the corners of her mouth, peel back her cheeks, and expose the ugliness within, but instead he smiled back at her and said, “No, thank you. This will do.” And watched as she walked away with a sway in her hips. He had money and she was advertising her like of it.

He took a bite of kidney pie. Delicious. It was too hot and it burned his tongue and made the roof of his mouth sore, but he ignored the pain and took a sniff of the blood sausage. That turned out to be cool and sliced wafer-thin. His mouth was still sore and so he ate it carefully, and it was perfectly spiced.

He took a deep draught of ale, wiped his hand on his sleeve-or, more precisely, Elizabeth’s sleeve-and took a look around the room. Many of the people there were watching him, but they quickly looked away when his gaze fell on them. One woman didn’t look away. Her hand was on another man’s elbow and she was pressed close against him, but when he looked at her, she raised her eyebrows and he licked his lips. She was his for the taking.

He wondered about the meaty organs grinding and churning inside her. He knew how beautiful they must be, glistening and wet.

And he looked away at the glob of pork on the plate in front of him, encased in fat, cold and dead and salty. And he ate it.

There was more than he could hold. He had not eaten, really eaten, in a year, and his stomach had shrunk. A few bites of this and that, and there was no room left in him. He turned his gaze inward and wondered at his own organs, wondered how well they were digesting the food he had just eaten. Wondered whether he should chew more thoroughly or whether he had done the job.

He did not look at the women again, but stood and walked out of the pub and away.

He hoped someone would finish his food. He hated to waste anything, but he clearly no longer had the appetite he’d once possessed.

Day!”

He was dreaming about a time when he was nine or ten years old, fording a brook in Devon with his trousers rolled up past his ankles. .

“Walter! Can you hear me?”

There was someone with him, another boy standing in the water, but the sun was behind him and the boy was a rainbow halo blur that was talking, shouting at him. .

“Walter, did he hurt you?”

His words made no sense because they were flavored like orange custards. Day was not fond of orange custards. He turned from the other boy and walked upstream, watching as the water broke against his shins and soaked the ends of his trouser legs where they were rolled and heavy. It became harder to walk and the boy behind him was hollering about something and the lovely sunny childhood afternoon began to seem tedious. His arms were sore and his legs hurt with the effort of pushing back against the streaming water and he wanted to go home.

And so he woke up.

“Walter?”

“I’m here. I’m awake.”

“Oh, thank God. I thought perhaps. . Well, I wasn’t sure you were still with us.”

Adrian March’s voice came from someplace nearby, behind the wall.

“I don’t know where I am,” Day said. “But I think we’re still in the tunnels.”

“We are. He’s got us in these cells we made in the catacombs.”

“Your gentlemen’s club, you mean.” So he was, as he had assumed, shackled in one of the alcoves underground. “Adrian, I think there’s a bag over my head. Something made of cloth. I can’t see anything.”

“It’s probably the hood we used on him. Has he hurt you?”

“I’m chained here. My wrists and ankles.”

“I am, too. But give me a moment. I’ve got my cufflinks on, the set with the lockpick hidden inside.”

Day bent his wrist against the shackle around it, curled his fingers, and strained until his fingers cramped.

“Funny,” he said.

“What is?”

“I’m wearing those same cufflinks, remember?”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t reach them. I’m trying, but my sleeve’s been pushed too far up my arm.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of here, if given the time.”

“Are we alone here?”

“I think so. Griffin stopped screaming more than an hour ago, if my sense of time hasn’t deserted me.”

“Who is Griffin? Is Griffin the one who did this to us?”

“No.”

“Is he one of the prisoners?”

“No,” March said. “Well, yes, actually, I suppose he is, but not in the way you mean.”

“Are you able to get at the pick?”

“I’ve already got it. It’s just a matter of bending my wrist properly so I can get at the lock on this shackle. Once I get an arm free, the rest will be simple. I’ll be over to fetch you soon enough.”

“Do please hurry.”

“Believe me, I’m doing what I can. Now be silent so I can work at this. It’s not easy picking a lock that is about one’s own wrist.”

“Godspeed, Adrian.”

“If he comes back, if he comes before I finish, keep him busy. Make him talk.”

“Saucy Jack, you mean.”

“He called himself Jack, but I never knew whether it was his real name. He seems to have taken a liking to you.”

“I can’t explain it.”

“It’s no great mystery, my dear boy. The man has been caged for months. You’re the first person to actually listen to him. You are, quite literally, a captive audience. You must continue to listen, to provoke, to distract him if you can. But do be careful.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Day said.

“Why not?”

“All he can do is kill me.”

“That’s not all he can do.”

“What else is there?”

“Don’t be so unimaginative, Walter. You really should be afraid of him.”

“How did you catch him?” he said. The sound of his own muffled voice echoing in the little cell was, at least, better than silence.

“After all those months of chasing Jack, he fell asleep in Mary Jane Kelly’s bed.”

“That was his last victim.”

“Yes. We found him there, covered with her blood, head to toe.”

“That was quite a stroke of luck for you.”

“It wasn’t luck.” There was a long silence before March spoke again. When he did, his voice was so soft that Day could barely hear him. “We used that girl. She was bait for Jack. We were supposed to protect her and we failed.”

“Your Karstphanomen make a lot of mistakes.”

“What we do isn’t very precise. It’s not a science, you know.”

Day said nothing.

“No,” March said. “You’re right. We failed poor Mary Jane and we failed last night. Our ideals are sound, but I’m afraid we are not all up to the task.”