Karl Wagner: The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII

A week after the murder, Gary received a small parcel mailed to his home address. It contained a dried lump of flesh. A bloodstained note enclosed said, “ Them is mi sonnges yu were playing. Never play them agin.”

The police were unable to trace the package, but their forensic joes matched the bloodtype to Jackie’s.

“The only thing they’ve really figured out for sure,” Gary told the surviving Rippers, “is that the killer is definitely left-handed.”

“Oh, that really narrows it down, doesn’t it?” said Dark Annie, shaking her head in disbelief. The shock of purple hair flopped down over her forehead.

“Yeah,” Liz muttered. She dabbed a tissue to her eyes. “Now it’s narrowed down to what? Only a few million, maybe a few billion suspects?”

Gary nodded slowly. “I know it’s not much to go on, but there’s one thing about it that’s sorta important—a hundred years ago the London police were pretty sure that the real Jack the Ripper was left-handed. The cops told me something about pursuing that angle.”

Dark Annie stomped on the floor with her bootheel. “Fuckin’ terrific. They’re gonna go out lookin’ for a left-handed guy who’s dead and buried? That oughta make it real easy to find the sicko who killed Jackie.”

“Yeah,” said Liz. “Somebody who’s left-handed and dead. Could be anyone from Billy the Kid to Jimi Hendrix.”

At first Gary tried to keep the story quiet, holding back the details from the rock press. But when absurdly distorted rumors began to surface in some of the more widely distributed fanzines—and when the band’s single suddenly became a nationwide sensation as a result of the attendant publicity—he switched tracks and decided to milk the story for all it was worth. A cassette of the final concert, recorded off the mix board, was remastered and immediately released on Moonlight Records. It sold briskly, and when Jackie and the Rippers were featured on the cover of Spin the next month, Gary’s phone rang off the hook with major labels making offers on the rights to reissue the record under their own imprint.

A deal was struck. Within 60 days, Warner Brothers put out The Final Encore by Jackie and the Rippers on their Sire Records affiliate. It hit the top ten on the Billboard charts just three weeks later, a feat accomplished with the aid of a hastily assembled video made up from publicity photos and a reel of sloppy camcorder footage that Karl had shot at one of their rehearsals. Tour offers poured in.

Gary licked his lips. “Call yourselves the Rippers. No Jackie. Just the Rippers .”

Anne nodded. “So far so good. What else? A new guitarist?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But the way I see it, for now anyway, it’s just the two of you. Liz can switch to guitar; we’ll scrap the drums for a little while. And I’m talkin’ acoustic here.”

A month later they were ready.

The house was full. The established fans, the recent converts, the curious, the ghoulish, the record company reps, and the press. The mood in the crowd was electric, but strangely subdued. Only a brief cheer passed through the hall as the lights went down.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” came the emcee’s voice, “Sire Records recording artists, the Rippers!”

Applause.

A large overhead spotlight cast a disc of light on the stage floor. Two black barstools stood there, each with a Martin acoustic guitar propped beside it. Long Liz and Dark Annie entered from opposite sides, each wearing a hooded black robe and moving somberly toward their instrument. They took their seats on the stools and lifted the guitars to their laps.

Dark Annie brushed her hood back.

There was a loud gasp from near the front of the crowd, and a buzz passed quickly through the multitude.

Dark Annie’s purple hair was gone. She was shaved bald.

And so was Long Liz, who pulled back her own hood a moment later. “Because we remember Jackie,” she said, “we’d like—”

Annie completed the sentence. “—to do some very special songs tonight, in her honor.” She ran her pick down the 12 strings of her guitar and slowly, beautifully, began to play the melody to Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart Again,” her voice heavy with emotion as she mimicked the breathy vocals of Joy Division’s suicidal singer, Ian Curtis.

Long Liz joined in, playing rhythm on a six-string and providing backing vocals. There were tears in her eyes.

The crowd watched in hushed awe. Hardly anyone moved throughout the entire 80-minute set.

And what a set.

Each song had been carefully selected—every one of them a haunting tune made popular by a rock star who’d died prematurely. “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochran (car crash). “Sad Mood” by Sam Cooke (gunshot). “Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding (plane crash). “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley (drugs). “No Matter What” by Badfinger (hanging). “Lost Woman” by the Yardbirds (electrocution). “Rave On” by Buddy Holly (plane crash). “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin (drugs).

And more.

Each song played with somber reverence on the two mellow instruments and sung clearly, with heartfelt passion by Dark Annie.

The crowd remained silent through the performance. The only sound they made was an occasional cough or, more frequently, a faint sob. Their applause didn’t begin until almost 15 full seconds after the two girls left the stage.

The chanting began very slowly, but it built to a tremendous roar. “We want the Rippers! We want the Rippers!”

Walking back onto the stage, gripping each other’s hands tightly, Liz and Annie faced the chanting multitude and beckoned for silence. When it finally came, Annie said only, “Listen and you might hear Jackie tonight.”

They played “Lonely Nights in Whitechapel” as an instrumental.

In the dressing room afterward, Dark Annie was the first to speak. “He was out there,” she said. “I saw him. The one who points. ”

Liz plopped down into a chair. “When?”

“Right there at the end of ‘Lonely Nights.’ He pushed up front and pointed. Just like Jackie said he pointed at her. He was pointing at me like that!” Annie started to cry.

Liz went over and put her arms around her. “Maybe it was just some sickie who read about that pointing stuff in the papers and figured he’d scare us.”

Gary shook his head. “No way. I anticipated that a long time ago. The pointing bit was one of the few things I managed to keep from the press.”

“Annie, I think you should have a good strong drink—but just one—and go straight home.”

She did.

The neighbors found her early the next morning.

She’d been tied to the back railing of her apartment building, her hands bound with guitar strings. The coroner estimated that the murderer spent more than a quarter of an hour working on her with his knife. The worst was what he’d done after he killed her.

The police couldn’t find him. What they did find was another note, written in the same ragged script.

It said, “I told yu to stoppe playing mi songges.”

A year later, having unearthed no further clues, they retired the case.

“Gary,” Long Liz shrieked, hysterical with anger, “get it through your goddamn concrete skull once and for all—I am never, ever going to play onstage again! You got that straight?”

“Okay, okay, okay. But just listen to me. Just listen.”

She did. Not at first, though. It took years.

Long Liz reverted to her birthname and became Pam Jones, a wildly successful session drummer. Her shaved hair grew back and she groomed it into a fashionable mohawk. She left Atlanta and took an apartment in Los Angeles, where Gary managed to get her some work right away doing percussion for the soundtracks of low budget movies. She played drums on two songs recorded for a Peter Gabriel tribute album, cut a hit single with Madonna, did a few sessions with Aerosmith, and filled in for an ailing drummer at a Barbara Streisand date when she happened to be hanging around the studio one afternoon. Sometimes she got credit on the records; sometimes she didn’t. But she always got paid. Handsomely.