Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

Jack
by Charlotte Nash

West End, London, 1924

James Kelly's boots had scarce touched English soil again before he found himself drenched in the gorrawful wailing Jazz that had so infected New York. The West End rain was doing its fair best to compete; yet the Jazz was winning, and spawning all manner of vain, painted, sleeveless forms dribbling about the pavement.

"Well, hey cutie, don't you look the big cheese?"

James started with the horror of being snuck upon, and by one of the dribbles, a blue-eye painted harlot dripping pearls onto a filmy shift barely passing for an undergarment. Her scarlet red mouth gave him a sassy, tight-slipped smile. James shrugged his shoulders inside his suit-jacket, shifted his necktie as if he might just be taking directions. But he put his hand in his pocket, covering his valuables lest this whore try to lift them. He was a man given to judgements, which his own mother had not enjoyed and his late wife even less, but he remained self-assured in his disposition despite the places it had led. A man of sixty-four was quite entitled to whatever vice he wanted.

"I'm fine, thank you," he said brusquely, and almost moved away but for the fact he had presently nowhere fixed to go. The harlot lifted her chin to the Jazz-infested club growing up from the foundations behind her. James supposed she was an employee, walking the curb to bring in the business.

"You in for some hooch, baby? Play a little snuggle pot?" she suggested, winking, and undeterred. She had an American accent. She lit a cigarette, and had eyes like a cat in the match-strike.

James certainly could use a drink, the chief reason for his return from the States where prohibition was tiresome for a man partial to both scotch and High Morals. He'd avoided the East End, because he'd known and hated it before going across the Atlantic. He was not policeman or priest, but his mind walked a narrow road. He did not frequent the houses of whores, he made his opinion known on the subject. But he was somehow drawn to moral corruption, as if to see how close he could dance to the fire before it caught him alight. He was a man with a powder keg core, but his fuse length was different every time. And that was part of the allure.

He wavered, and looked towards the club, at the slip-clad bodies hanging out of windows and dancing masses in splattered half-light. The place was cast in the New York speakeasy mould, but legal in prohibition-spared London. Again, he scrutinised the harlot from her dark bob and no-teeth smile, all the way down her slender bangle-ringed arms that finished in deep red nails.

"Hooch?" she whispered coyly, knowing him more plainly than he would admit. That got his fuse started.

"Alright," he said stiffly.

"Follow me," she said, leading him into the fray.

She told him her name was Mae, installed him at the bar and pressed into his hand a scotch glass tinkling with fresh ice. James found once one was in the middle of it all, the Jazz became a background he could ignore. He perched on a high stool and looked about. The downstairs was overly dark, dotted here and there with gas lamps, one above each patron cluster. There were men about who looked, at least superficially, like himself. Business suits cut tight in the old style, neckties still done up, and being entertained by at least two flappers, each done up in slicker things than Mae and laughing uproariously between drags on dangling cigarettes. James averted his eyes and took a bolt of Scotch and water. His fuse was burning, fanned by the whores' puffing cheeks, by their spines under their slip dresses. He didn't want to be excited by them, and was in danger of becoming so. He must muster his disapproval, so he tried to think of the inevitably awful whore's teeth behind Mae's tight-lipped smiles. He didn't think to notice a lack of young men; he was far too focussed on censure and himself. But he did notice the drink on his second gulp.

"Hey, listen!" he bellowed indignantly at the bar. "This scotch is fair cut with water—!"

A girl behind the bar was over him in an instant, all copper hair pinned down with a feather band and big pale blue eyes. "Shhhhh," she hissed, exuding menace that shut James's jaw with a hollow clank. He stared at her, trying to fix the problem he had with her features. At first, her nose was too long, then it was her lips, a shade too black to be pleasant. Then he took exception to her hairline, which was low on her brow and extended too far down her neck. Then, it was that she didn't blink. And all the while, none of that was quite it.

"Is there a problem?" she asked, too aloof and loudly, as if knowing any problem was certainly trivial. James felt a brush against his suit sleeve and found all-lips-smiling Mae attached to his wrist. A few men looked up from their slapper hi-jinks, faces dazed and vaguely unhappy at interruption, until one of the girls recaptured their attention and they slammed home another hi-ball.

Mae squeezed his wrist, her nails digging in tight crescents of pain that only fanned his fuse. He put his hand in his pocket again, finding his valuables still in place, lowered his voice. "I can pay for the proper stuff," he said. He just wanted a damn drink. A stiff one. So the night wouldn't need to end as so many in the East End had.

Mae remained parasitically in place. "Our apologies," she soothed. "Lilian?"

Lilian reached for an under-bar bottle and filled his glass. James picked it up and threw back the shot while they watched him with their big, still eyes. The scotch was even weaker than the first, but James placed the glass back on the bar. Mae's nails were still at his wrist, pressed into the pulse. He had a dark, involuntary thought in that moment, of a sharp blade and blood. He arrested it promptly with a more troubling notion: was this a Clip Joint? Like he'd heard tales of in New York? Where they'd sell him watered whisky and roll him later if he couldn't pay? The ceiling bounced with dancers above, disrupting the thought. He looked again. This club wasn't busy enough, and these whores looked two potatoes from starving. They were milking profit, like all whores. Just the way it was. He pushed his glass forward.

"There you are, honey," said Mae approvingly. "Another?"

James nodded, but she was too still for his liking. He started to look about. He wasn't afraid of this place, but he wanted to leave and without a scene. He was therefore startled, when he next looked up, to find the clock hand had moved itself three hours forward, the bar ringed with sweat from his mostly-ice glasses and laughter in his throat at something Mae had said. Even Lilian had lost sullenness in all the drink, though not the odd features. And still, she hadn't blinked.

Mae laughed again. "Well, Mr Kelly, that's a riot! And you must have missed London handsomely, and it you!"

James's mouth smiled, but it was like someone else's face. He couldn't remember what the hell he'd told her—obviously something about his time in the States. "I suppose," he found himself saying. "But I didn't overly enjoy the East End. I won't go back there."

"Lilian's from the East End," said Mae. Then, "Were you in business there, Mr Kelly?"

"Furniture and upholstery," said James. This was getting thoroughly out of hand. He had no desire to speak of anything about his life in London, the States, or anywhere between. Especially with whores. They should have been afraid of him, not enjoying extracting information.

He tipped himself off the stool. "I must be getting along," he declared.

The two girls exchanged a glance. "I'll get you the bill," said Lilian, diving off into a dark hole at the end of the bar.

James fished for his wallet. Distractedly as he dug, he looked around the room and found all the other men had vanished. He cursed himself even as he found his valuables. This was how depravity began. Getting cockeyed in a bar, too brave for sense, and who knew what would come after? Would he succumb and pay for their services? He was shaking, his fuse burning bright.

"Will we see you again, Mr Kelly?" asked Mae, lips pressed and lifted in enquiry, handing back the jacket he couldn't recollect taking off.

Not on your life. But he smiled vaguely, wanting to be gone.

"There you are," said Lilian, pushing the hand-totted bill paper across the bar. James had to sit back on the stool, fuse momentarily forgotten. He squinted and added, and squinted again. But however he summed it, the bill was extraordinary, more than three weeks' wages. It was a Clip Joint. His resolve hardened faster than his sense.

"I'm not paying that!" he exclaimed. "That's extortion!"

"But Mr Kelly, our rates are printed here quite clearly," said Mae, gesturing towards a creamy faced menu on the bar that James hadn't touched all night. "Private entertainments, drinks ... all had by you."

"I'm not paying. I can't," said James finally, getting up from the stool.

"Well ... that's just fine," said Mae slowly.

What happened next, James broadly felt was a matter of drink telling him lies. For what he thought happened was that Lilian streaked across the bar and seized him by the collar. Then, these two slips of women dragged him out the back, down stairs into a dark room and sat him on a hard chair. A door closed and a lock turned, then he was alone with them and a single gas lamp.

"Who goes first?" It was Lilian, James knew that much.

"You, sister, of course," said Mae. "You have waited longer than me. I don't need it."

James's head cleared and he looked up. Neither woman was taking pains with their lips anymore, and both had brilliant white teeth. James therefore wondered why the no-teeth smiles, until Mae caught him looking and grinned.

"God damn!" cursed James. Mae had a pair of fangs, huge things nestled in her upper jaw. A quick look at Lilian and James decided she had 'em too. He decided to bolt, and found himself tightly strapped. His illusion of whores and Clip Joints collapsed; the fuse went out. For comfort, he patted his pockets as far as the bindings would allow, and found that his valuables were, at least, still in place.

"I don't like him," Lilian was saying. "I've seen him before. Somewhere."

"Who cares?" demanded Mae. "Feed is feed. Do him and let him go. The drug'll wear off in an hour and then he won't remember at all."

Lilian folded her arms and pouted. "I don't trust him. Something ain't right."

"So watch his mind through the blood-sight! It lasts about as long as the drug and you can see where he goes and thinks. You'll make sure he doesn't tell anyone. You can't wait another day, sister."

"I guess so," said Lilian. She leaned in to James's eye level, her pale blue irises tied to her eyeballs by a fine web of spidery blood vessels.

James wanted desperately to get his hands free. This close, creature or no, he still smelt a whore, a moral corruption poisoning the air. His fuse relit. "I can pay," he said, waggling his bound hands. "I'll pay. Let me pay."

"Sorry, honey, once you're back here, you can't pay with green, only red. Only an option to pay in the bar," said Mae.

"Definitely seen him before," said Lilian again.

James looked into her queerly conformed face. Yes, perhaps. He thought he might have seen her too, near forty years ago when he'd been a young man in the East End. Was she the one who'd come upon him that morning, in Whitechapel? Who'd startled him so that he'd run before finishing the work he'd been doing? He narrowed his eyes, remembering.

"Where did you live in the East End?" asked Lilian.

James kept his mouth shut. Fingered his pocket.

"Hurry up," demanded Mae. "Sun up's not far off and there's all the windows to board." When Lilian didn't move, Mae came around James and slipped a sharp finger inside his collar. His button and necktie fell open.

"Do it, or I'll kill him and neither of us gets any."

James swallowed, but didn't scream. This was all too surreal. A blunted reality he was sure couldn't exist. He told himself that right up until Lilian bit his neck. Then he could smell her skin, a rusty scent he'd had on his own fingers after handling old upholstery tacks.

It didn't last long and sounded like a cat drinking milk. There wasn't really any pain, James only became angry at the stuttered glimpses of consciousness. Whatever they'd put in the watery scotch was messing up his head. Mae was laughing at something, her pearls dancing, patting his cheek. Next thing, James found himself stumbling on the cobbles outside with a blur of early light touching the fog. His High Morals chose that moment to reassert themselves. Those women! He'd been used, taken in and done over, his own body imbibed and corrupted. They'd dragged him into their own immorality, and that made them worse than whores: they were monsters. And he knew how to deal with such things, as he had in the East End. His fuse burned through; the powder keg caught. They were monsters he knew from fiction: night creatures, day-sleepers, but it made no difference. His insides were on fire, and only blood could cool him.

So James reached into his pocket, past his wallet to the most valuable thing of all. He drew the scalpel into his hand and turned the handle over. The hard leather cover came away easily, revealing the sharp edge, nicked from heavy use and bright from polish.

Yes.

This was what London was to him, even more than New York. Cleaning house while his powder burned. Thirty years away had been too long.

#

Mae closed the last shutter and kicked her way happily through the off-cast wares of the night's dancers. Gloves, headbands, broken pearl strings. It was mess that spoke of money parted; besides, someone else would clean it while she slept. It had been a good night.

That was until she found Lilian, white and shaking, sitting on the bed in their windowless day-room.

"What?" she demanded.

"I told you I'd seen him before," said Lilian, in whispers. "In Whitechapel, forty years ago, you remember the killer? The Ripper?"

"Oh, you mean the thoughtful gentleman that made our activities so much easier?" said Mae, taking up a brush and starting on Lilian's hair. "Nothing like being able to actually drain them and blame someone else. Pull it together, Lil, you're boring me."

"I saw him doing it, Mae. Early before dawn one morning in Dutfield's yard. He killed a girl there with a scalpel, right through her throat. Then he saw me and ran."

"Fabulous convenience, I hope you drained her after he ran off." Mae brushed harder.

Lilian gave a small smile. There, that was more like it. She had. Mae was relieved her sister demonstrated such instinct.

Mae pressed on. "And yet you think it's the same man? After forty years, and he's aged so?"

Lilian shook her head. "Did you lock the door, Mae?"

"I always do, why?"

"Because I can hear him. And he's thinking about when he escaped from Broadmoor, when he made a key for a lock and got out."

Mae searched Lilian's face, which was far-away with the blood-sight. "The asylum? When was he at Broadmoor?" she asked in fascination.

"After he killed his wife," whispered Lilian.

"Forget it, who cares?" said Mae. "You fed, he's gone, we're sleeping, that's it. What's wrong with you?"

Lilian flashed around, stricken, grabbing Mae by the shoulders. "He's thinking about another woman he did in, in New York, Mae. And all the others in London. No one's ever caught him. And now he's thinking about how to kill us."

Mae scoffed. "He's a man, Lil."

"He's standing at the back door, waiting."

Mae actually got a chill then, all the way through her non-beating heart. "Why?"

"Waiting for us to sleep."

"Then what?"

A long moment passed, Lilian's eyes searching nothingness as she listened.

"Then he's getting a mirror, and coming back for us," she said finally.

A mirror. To bend the sun around corners. Oh, God. Mae flew to the room door and peered through the keyhole. It was already too light to go anywhere, the tepid dawn was already on the floorboards.

"How long 'til the drug makes him forget? Lil? Lil?"

Mae turned back, but Lilian was already asleep, the somnolent drive having taken her. Mae backed away from the door, imagining she could hear a blade being sharpened, a key turning, the hiss of fire.

Too late, she was asleep.

Too late for the footstep on the cobbles.

Too late to see the man's face, a grim smile.

Too late.

Jack was back.