David Golemon: Ripper

Inspector Washington slid to the floor to assist Abberline. The chief inspector had been slammed into a table and then to the floor, knocking free an oil lamp that had burst open, and its now freed flame had engulfed Abberline’s left leg. Washington quickly slapped at the burning material until the yellow flames were snuffed out. He kicked away the tin container that held the oil so it wouldn’t again engulf Abberline. As Washington raised his head he saw the large foot come down as even more bullets struck the Ripper from the front, back, and rear. One of the bullets struck the beast above the left eye and the thickened bone produced a ping as if the large round had struck thick plate. The Ripper then turned toward the two prone men. It charged.

“Oh,” was all Washington could utter as he tried in vain to pull Abberline free of the Ripper’s speedy attack. Young Washington knew it was too late, but instead of waiting for the death that came at them, he quickly reached out and took the shattered oil lamp’s base and threw it at the altered man that came at them. The oil hit and then spread on the once-formal shirt of the Ripper. As Abberline started to awaken he saw the young inspector reach his sleeved hand into the burning fuel that was still blazing brightly in front of them. As his hand and arms caught fire, he stood and actually ran at the beast. He struck and the world erupted before the chief inspector’s eyes like a lightning bolt. Washington rebounded and then fell to the floor as the flames coursing up his arm spread.

The Ripper roared as the flames erupted over its entire body. He slashed and spun, knocking over tables and chairs, breaking laboratory equipment as it tried in vain to extinguish the burning fuel.

“Open fire, damn you!” Abberline shouted at the remaining soldiers.

Ten, fifteen, twenty shots were heard as the beast spun in circles, sending pieces of flaming clothing in every direction. Then it suddenly stopped and ran for the windows fronting the river. With the massive body still flaming, the Ripper smashed the many paned window and vanished into the night’s fog.

Abberline slid quickly across the floor and started slapping and cursing at the flames that were now covering the body of young Washington. His whole left side was ablaze as he tried desperately to roll on the flaming floor. Abberline reached up and pulled a large barrel marked water over onto the inspector that had saved his own life just a moment before. The water and barrel hit Washington and the flames quickly vanished. Abberline reached the inspector and turned him over. He was still alive but in much pain.

“Easy boy, we’ll get you out of here,” he shouted as he stood and ran for the smashed window. As he looked into the thick fog all he could see was the swirling whiteness that was just now starting to thin.

As he turned away from the window he prayed that the Ripper had been too badly hurt to survive his burns, much less the fall to the river below.

As he faced the destruction that had been reaped in less than two minutes from beginning to end, he saw the body of Colonel Stanley lying next to that of the sergeant major. His head was no longer there. The large foot had smashed it into pulp. Abberline turned and looked down at his feet while bracing himself against the sill of the large window. Everywhere men lay dead and broken.

Chief Inspector Abberline ordered four of the surviving soldiers to get young Washington down to the remaining wagon, and then he turned to stare out into the lifting fog. He heard the river far below, but that was the only sound in this night of horrors.

The large coal-fired scamp eased to shore along the Thames River. A tall and very thin man stepped from the small wheelhouse as the river pilot held the little boat steady. The man with the blue turban waited at the railing. He turned and noted the secured barrels holding the seedlings and the ten thousand dried plants grown in the warehouse and nodded his head, satisfied they were safe.

After a few minutes he heard the noise emanating from the fast-flowing river. He saw the shaking, burned hand reach out of the water and take hold of the thick, wooden rail. The turbaned man gestured for several of the small boat’s deckhands to assist the man out of the Thames River a full mile from the East End docks.

A few minutes later the boat turned back south toward the sea where a large cutter waited offshore, its destination — America.

The Jack the Ripper case would be closed the following day and the death of the Black Watch soldiers and their colonel would go unread in any newspaper.

Young inspector Washington survived his severe burns and led a productive life in the Metropolitan Police force. He would be killed in the Battle of the Somme twenty-seven years later during the Great War, and would go to his grave never uttering a single thing about that night in the East End of London. And if the world knew the truth, he was all the happier for being as quiet as he had been for seventeen nightmare-filled years, and taking that night with him in death.

Frederick Abberline would eventually leave the London constabulary and head the office of the American-owned Pinkerton Detective Agency. And for years after that night in 1889 he would check the newspapers from around the world only to see if Dr. Jekyll had released his Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper had once more reared his ugly head in another country, for his nightmares always told the chief inspector that Jack was still out there somewhere.

Frederick George Abberline died in 1929, age eighty-six, at his home without muttering a single word about that long-ago night by the River Thames. He allowed speculation to flourish that Queen Victoria had been in on a cover-up of massive proportions to protect one of her relatives. Abberline didn’t have any sympathy for the monarchy — after all, it was on her orders that Jack the Ripper came to the shores of the British Empire. They deserved the dark rumor and innuendo that would hound her to her own death in January 1901.

Chief Inspector Abberline received one last letter that had not been intercepted by the government. It was a coded letter from a Mr. Steve Hanson and he had written it from, of all places, India. Abberline knew it was the last he would ever hear from the man as the only words written inside the envelope were these: “Our mutual friend owns quite a lot of property in South Texas and across the border in Mexico — if that should interest you.” It was signed Steve Hanson, but Abberline didn’t have to be much of an inspector to know it was from Stevenson. Robert Louis Stevenson. Abberline could only pray that if the Ripper was alive, he would be nothing more than a burnt-out hulk of a man. Robert Louis Stevenson died in September of 1894 at the age of forty-four years. He went to his grave never telling anyone the truth about his fictional characters being copied from the most brutal mass murderer in British history — Jack the Ripper.

It would take over 114 years for the world to receive the answer that Frederick Abberline feared most of all in his long life after the case had been shunted aside — that indeed, Jack is back.

A thick and rolling sea of fog came off the Rio Grande and partially hid the ninety-six men of B Company of the 8th United States Cavalry regiment. Sound was confusing inside the white gauze of mist as horses and men awaited the order to cross into Mexico. Bird songs and insect noises became one cacophony of blended night elements that added to nervousness among the troopers.

On a small rise above the northern side of the Rio Grande River an armored car sat motionless as men and horses awaited the command to move across the river. The large detailed map was stretched out on the hood of the car and was held in place by an old oil lantern as a medium-sized man placed an index finger on a small rectangular mark south of the border.