Mark Hodder - The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack

"What affair?"

"Don't play the innocent! I don't want to kill you, but I swear to you, if you don't keep your nose out of it, I'll break your fucking neck!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" protested Burton.

His head was shaken violently, causing his teeth to clack together.

"I'm talking about you organising forces against me! It's not what you're meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?"

The creature rammed its forearm into Burton's face.

"I said, do you understand?"

"No! "

"Then I'll spell it out for you," growled the stilt-man. Dragging Burton around, it slammed him against the wall, drew back its arm, and sent a fist crashing into the explorer's mouth.

"Do what-"

Again. Crack!

– you're supposed-"

Crack!

– to do!"

Burton sagged back against the bricks. He mumbled through split lips, "How can I possibly know what I'm supposed to do?"

The fingers in his hair jerked him up until he was looking directly into the thing's eyes, which stared down, inches from his own. They burned redly, and Burton realised that his attacker was completely insane.

Blue flame leaped from the thing's head and licked at the explorer's brow, scorching his skin.

"You are supposed to marry Isabel and be sent from one fucking miserable consulship to another. Your career is supposed to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are supposed to write books and die."

Burton braced his legs against the wall.

"What the hell are you babbling about?" he demanded, in a stronger voice. "The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday-but he's not dead!"

The creature's eyes widened.

"No!" it whispered. "No!" It gritted its teeth and snarled, "I'm a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know-"

A look of bemusement passed over its gaunt, horrible features.

"God damn it! Why does it have to be so complicated?" it whispered to itself. "Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this-?"

Burton, feeling the fingers loosening, took his chance. He jerked his head free, shoved his shoulder into his attacker's stomach, then threw himself sideways.

The apparition teetered back to the opposite wall. It clutched at it for balance and glared at Burton as he regained his footing. They stood facing each other.

"Listen to me, you bastard!" snapped the creature. "For your own good, next time you see me, don't come near!"

"I don't know you!" objected Burton. "And, believe me, if I never see you again, I'll not regret it one iota!"

Lightning exploded from the apparition's chest and danced across the ground. The stilt-man cried out in agony, almost falling.

Suddenly, its wild eyes dimmed and Burton saw a brief glimmer of reason in them. It looked down at itself, then at him, and in low tones said, "The irony is that I'm running out of time. You're in my way, and you're making the situation much worse."

"What situation? Explain!" snapped the explorer.

The uncanny, spindly figure stepped forward and the irises of its eyes narrowed to pinpricks.

"Marry the bitch, Burton. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave me the fuck alone!"

It crouched low, glared at him, and suddenly straightened its legs, shooting vertically into the air.

Burton twisted his head to look up. His assailant soared high above the top of the warehouses, and, in midair, vanished.

Great Scott, man!" exclaimed Lord Palmerston. "What have you been up to now?"

Burton lowered himself gingerly into the chair before the prime minister's desk. His body was bruised; his right eye blackened; his lips cut and puffy.

"Just an accident, sir. Nothing to worry about."

"You look perfectly hideous!"

You're a fine one to talk! thought Burton.

For the past two years, Palmerston had been receiving Eugenicist lifeextension treatments. Though seventy-seven years old, he currently had a life expectancy of about a hundred and thirty. To match this, he'd received a cosmetic overhaul. The loose skin of his face had been tightened, the fatty deposits removed, and the discolorations eliminated. Paralysing toxins had been regularly injected into the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth, smoothing them out and giving his face the clean contours of a young man-or, thought Burton, of a waxwork, because, in his opinion, the prime minister appeared to have wandered out of Madam Toussaud's. There was nothing natural about him; he was a shiny mockery of himself, a freakish caricature, his face too white and masklike, his lips too red, his sideburns too bushy, his curly hair too long and black, his midnight blue velvet suit too tight and foppish, his eau de cologne too liberally applied, and his movements too mannered.

"I say!" declared the prime minister. "It's not the first time you've been knocked around, is it? I remember when you came back from Abyssinia with those dreadful wounds on your face. You seem to have a nose for trouble, Burton."

"I think it's more a case of trouble having a nose for me," muttered the adventurer.

"Hmm. Be that as it may, when I look back over your history I see one disaster after another."

Palmerston leafed through a report on his desktop. The desk was an extremely big, heavy affair of carved mahogany. Burton noticed with amusement that, just below its lip, there ran around it a horizontal band decoratively carved with scenes of a highly erotic nature.

There were not many items on the desk: a blotting pad, a silver pen in its holder, a letter rack, a carafe of water and a slender glass, and, to the prime minister's left, a strange device of brass and glass which sporadically emitted a slight hiss and a puff of vapour. Burton could make neither head nor tail of it, though he saw that part of the mechanism-a glass tube about as thick as his wrist-disappeared into the desk.

"You served under General Napier in the East India Army and undertook intelligence missions for him, I believe?"

"That's correct. I speak Hindustani, among other languages, and I make up well as a native. I suppose it made me a logical choice."

"How many languages do you speak?"

"Fluently? Twenty-four, so far, plus a few dialects."

"Good gracious! Remarkable!"

Palmerston pushed on through the pages. Burton found it astonishingand ominous-that so much had been written about him.

"Napier speaks highly of you. His successor, Pringle, does not."

"Pringle is a cretinous toad."

"Is he, indeed? Is he? Bless my soul, I shall have to be a little more rigorous in my choice of appointments, then, shan't l?"

Burton coughed lightly. "My apologies," he said. "I spoke out of turn."

"According to these reports, speaking out of turn is another of your specialisms. Who was Colonel Corsellis?"

"Is, sir-he still lives. He was acting CO of the Corps when I met him."

Palmerston tried to raise his brows but they remained motionless on his taut face. He read aloud:

"Here lies the body of Colonel Corsellis,

The rest of the fellow, I fancy, in hell is."

The corner of Burton's mouth twitched. He'd forgotten that youthful doggerel.

"To be fair, he did ask me to write something about him."

"I'm sure he was delighted with the result," replied Palmerston, witheringly. His fingers tapped impatiently on the desk. He looked at Burton thoughtfully. "You were on active service with the 18th Bombay Native Infantry from '42 to '49. It appears to have been seven years of recurring insubordination and frequent sick leave."