Prologue
“One day, men shall look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century.” -- ‘Jack the Ripper’
Salty air stung Frederick Abberline’s eyes as he pulled his front door open. The wood was as gnarled as the joints on his hand, but that’s where their camaraderie ended; the door was much heavier and much stronger than he was, these days.
The old man’s vision was failing him, in these final days of his. Spectacles were little more than a habit to him. As he looked out to see who had been knocking at his door, he saw only light, at first, before shapes began to form. A person, on their own. A man? Yes, it seemed a man.
His face began to form. Blurred, for sure, but Abberline was used to that. A young man. Another one of those terrible wretches, selling cheap maritime shares? No. No, his clothes were wrong. His face was wrong. Everything was wrong. This boy had a face that Abberline knew. How could that be?
“No,” he said, fog heavy on his brain. “How are you here? How can it be?”
“Hello, Inspector Abberline,” said Tommy.
***
The beach at Bournemouth was long and empty, and the wind blown from the sea touched Abberline’s bones, cold fingers playing his spine like a piano. He stood close to Tommy, though leaned only on his stick. They moved slowly. The boy didn’t seem to mind.
“The Doctor left me here, rushed off before I could follow him without even realising,” he was saying. “He said something about New York. A monster made of money, would you believe it? Something about the projection of value getting out of control. Left me stranded right on the other end of the beach.”
The boy chuckled to himself, as though his abandonment mattered not one bit. “He’ll be back soon, once he realises. But I saw your name in the local paper. They seem to love you, around here. So I thought I’d come and see you.”
“You thought you’d frighten an old man, did you?” Abberline never looked at Tommy, only ever down, at the grains of sand. Just ahead lay a dead seagull. Its mouth wide open. Choked to death. “Forty odd years and you’re still just a boy. How is that possible?”
“Is that so weird? The Doctor told me what you saw together. In the asylum.”
“People see lots of things. People are always seeing things.” Abberline poked the throat of the dead gull. It made a wet sound. Something seemed to come out its mouth, only to slide back down into the dark, dark gullet of the bird. “There’s an election soon, you know. They say Labour will win. I doubt it. My family were working class, we always voted Tory. Lees told me Labour will win, right here on this beach. You know Robert Lees?”
“The psychic guy?”
“That’s right. Said to me right here, right on this beach. ‘Mr MacDonald will win the election. I have seen it.’”
“He might be right,” the boy said.
“You would know, Tommy, I’m sure,” Abberline flipped the seagull over. It quivered momentarily. “You know what he said to me right after? ‘I’m a fraud,’ he said. He wept. ‘I made it all up. Everything I claimed to see, all false.’ Then he sat down. And he said: ‘the queerest thing is, it all came true, anyway.’”
Abberline pulled his stick away from the bird. “I’m sure there was a bird, just like this one...”
“The Doctor said the future depends on how you look at it,” Abberline looked at Tommy, finally. The boy was staring down the long stretch of sand. “Different parts in time can look different, depending how you see them. It’s like...changing where you stand, looking down a long beach.”
“Looking.” Was Abberline crying, or was it the salty air again? “Please Tommy. Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“I went to America, after we met. I worked with the Pinkertons. I thought I might find something there, something new.” The old man pulled a handkerchief from his heavy overcoat, wiped his eyes like he wished to wipe his memories. “Tell me, my boy. All those years ago. Back in Whitechapel. Tell me what the Doctor was looking for.”
Salty air stung Frederick Abberline’s eyes as he pulled his front door open. The wood was as gnarled as the joints on his hand, but that’s where their camaraderie ended; the door was much heavier and much stronger than he was, these days.
The old man’s vision was failing him, in these final days of his. Spectacles were little more than a habit to him. As he looked out to see who had been knocking at his door, he saw only light, at first, before shapes began to form. A person, on their own. A man? Yes, it seemed a man.
His face began to form. Blurred, for sure, but Abberline was used to that. A young man. Another one of those terrible wretches, selling cheap maritime shares? No. No, his clothes were wrong. His face was wrong. Everything was wrong. This boy had a face that Abberline knew. How could that be?
“No,” he said, fog heavy on his brain. “How are you here? How can it be?”
“Hello, Inspector Abberline,” said Tommy.
***
The beach at Bournemouth was long and empty, and the wind blown from the sea touched Abberline’s bones, cold fingers playing his spine like a piano. He stood close to Tommy, though leaned only on his stick. They moved slowly. The boy didn’t seem to mind.
“The Doctor left me here, rushed off before I could follow him without even realising,” he was saying. “He said something about New York. A monster made of money, would you believe it? Something about the projection of value getting out of control. Left me stranded right on the other end of the beach.”
The boy chuckled to himself, as though his abandonment mattered not one bit. “He’ll be back soon, once he realises. But I saw your name in the local paper. They seem to love you, around here. So I thought I’d come and see you.”
“You thought you’d frighten an old man, did you?” Abberline never looked at Tommy, only ever down, at the grains of sand. Just ahead lay a dead seagull. Its mouth wide open. Choked to death. “Forty odd years and you’re still just a boy. How is that possible?”
“Is that so weird? The Doctor told me what you saw together. In the asylum.”
“People see lots of things. People are always seeing things.” Abberline poked the throat of the dead gull. It made a wet sound. Something seemed to come out its mouth, only to slide back down into the dark, dark gullet of the bird. “There’s an election soon, you know. They say Labour will win. I doubt it. My family were working class, we always voted Tory. Lees told me Labour will win, right here on this beach. You know Robert Lees?”
“The psychic guy?”
“That’s right. Said to me right here, right on this beach. ‘Mr MacDonald will win the election. I have seen it.’”
“He might be right,” the boy said.
“You would know, Tommy, I’m sure,” Abberline flipped the seagull over. It quivered momentarily. “You know what he said to me right after? ‘I’m a fraud,’ he said. He wept. ‘I made it all up. Everything I claimed to see, all false.’ Then he sat down. And he said: ‘the queerest thing is, it all came true, anyway.’”
Abberline pulled his stick away from the bird. “I’m sure there was a bird, just like this one...”
“The Doctor said the future depends on how you look at it,” Abberline looked at Tommy, finally. The boy was staring down the long stretch of sand. “Different parts in time can look different, depending how you see them. It’s like...changing where you stand, looking down a long beach.”
“Looking.” Was Abberline crying, or was it the salty air again? “Please Tommy. Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“I went to America, after we met. I worked with the Pinkertons. I thought I might find something there, something new.” The old man pulled a handkerchief from his heavy overcoat, wiped his eyes like he wished to wipe his memories. “Tell me, my boy. All those years ago. Back in Whitechapel. Tell me what the Doctor was looking for.”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 2 - Episode 10
From Hell
Written by James Blanchard
The crowd around Goulston Street was thick, and angry, and Inspector Frederick Abberline felt their rage. The energy flowed around the place like blood, like a heart beating hard, between the police officers, and the men and women of Whitechapel, and of the street itself. Two in one night. Two more women dead. They didn’t know their names yet, but London itself felt aggrieved.
The streets of London had always been tight, but Abberline never quite felt like he had nowhere to go as he did on this grey September morning. He leaned against the black brick, staring at the wall adorned with its chalk taunt.
THE JUWES ARE THE MEN
WHO WILL NOT BE BLAMED
FOR NOTHING
Though the letters were crude, the words laughed as Abberline read them. Genius, they were. Was the man who did this a Jew? The Inspector did not know. But everyone knew he would not be blamed for nothing.
He stood there, staring at the words, hypnotised by their presence. They meant nothing, truly, but still they could spark a fire that would engulf London. Abberline shivered. The skies of the great city were becoming darker by the day, and with every fresh new murder, the difference between sunset and bloodshed turned harder to see.
A sloshing sound brought Abberline from his trance. Some young constable was heading towards the chalk graffiti, carrying a large pale.
“Constable! Constable! What on earth do you think you’re doing?!”
“Orders, sir,” he replied as Abberline launched himself from the wall, all red hair and dull eyes. “Just orders.”
“Whose orders? No one should be so stupid as to get rid of such important evidence, you jabbering dupe.”
“The Commissioner’s, sir. Commissioner Warren’s.”
He should have known.
The Commissioner stood stooped and closed-eyed near the bakery that had been co-opted as the temporary forensic headquarters. A reporter was being hurried away from him, still shouting questions as the constable dragged them back -- some unwashed girl, it seemed, bound up in a tight jacket to flatten her chest, no doubt, to make street navigation easier.
“Mistah Warren!” she cried. “Who were it that interrupted tha Rippah, Mistah Warren?!”
It was a question Abberline wanted answering for himself. The Commissioner had his eyes closed, breathing heavily through huge nostrils, inside which the grey hairs were indistinguishable from his huge moustache. Abberline strode towards him.
“Commissioner Warren.”
“For heaven’s sake, I said no more-!” Warren opened his eyes. “Oh. It’s you. What do you need, Inspector?”
“The graffiti on Goulston street. I just saw a Constable with a mop and bucket going to clean it all off.”
“I don’t know of any such graffiti, Inspector.”
Abberline hardened. “Commissioner. That is evidence. I need it. This man is going to keep on killing and killing and killing until we stop him, and to do that, I need a full investigation.” He paused. “That or the army.”
“I outrank you, boy, don’t you forget that. Perhaps you’d be happier working the Arson Desk. Or maybe I could speak to the Home Secretary, and tell him I found radical socialist literature in your offices...”
“Sir! I need that evidence or more blood will be-!”
The Commissioner’s arms leapt out from behind him -- long, gnarled things like the branches of a tree -- and grabbed Abberline, forcing him around with the strength that should’ve been impossible for a twisted old man. He pinned the Inspector to the wall of the bakery like a mantis with its prey.
“There are ten million Jews in this city, Abberline! Ten millon!”
All became quiet on the street. The Constables turned, second-floor curtains twitched. Only the street girl, still resisting her marching orders, made a sound: “Go on, Sir, deck ‘im!”
“You want blood, Abberline?” The Commissioner was shaking viscously. “Then tell this rabble that the Jews have been murdering their women. Go on. I challenge you. Go before the crowd outside and say the innocent gentiles are under attack. You’ll know blood then, Abberline, on the front line of a bloody civil war.”
The Commissioner was breathing deep, his chest heaving. Beneath his thick velvet coat Abberline saw something move and glitter. Something gold, a gold chain, with an ancient symbol engraved upon it.
“I think you’re protecting someone, Commissioner Warren.” He kept his voice a level whisper. “And I don’t think it’s Jewish communities of London.”
Warren dropped him, and moved to walk away. “Take the rest of the day off, Inspector. That is an order. And if you ever say that again, I’ll have you thrown in the Thames.”
***
Scotland Yard stood square and squat in the middle of its London surroundings, out of place, and out of time. The place was running out of life -- this was the second headquarters of the Metropolitan police, and already it was becoming too small. Workmen were building its replacement, dubbed New Scotland Yard, at the very moment. Abberline wondered how long it’d be new, as he strode towards the uncompromising structure.
Inside no sunlight penetrated. Lamps were kept burning, men kept smoking, the dark wooden décor kept the place in a state of permanent night. Scotland Yard was a place time did not seem to touch, Abberline reflected as he climbed the stairs to his office. If the world were a body, he thought, then this corner was simply the bowels. Somewhere dark and unknown, where the wretched refuge of the age came to shelter.
At last the Inspector reached his floor. His men did little to even pretend to be busy. The Ripper Case had brought a heavy depression on them, and the events of last night had not lifted their spirits. With impunity this man murdered over and over again, and each time the men stood around the office failed to catch him. It was like with each slash of his knife, he hacked away a bit of their purpose.
Abberline hung up his coat.
“Alright everyone, listen close,” he called. Attention moved to him as he went to the evidence board. “Victims three and four came last night. Do we have confirmation of their identities yet?”
“Victim three is Elizabeth Stride, guvnor,” called one of the deputies. “And we’re pretty sure number four is Catherine Eddowes.”
Pretty sure. It would be hard to tell, considering what was done to her.
“Very good. But are we properly sure Stride was done by the same killer?”
“I think it’s safe to say, guvnor. All of ‘em were cut the same way, sir, left to right on their throats, as a right-hander would. Stride too. I think he were interrupted.”
Elizabeth Stride. Poor Elizabeth. Spared, in a strange way, but what did it matter? “Alright. Alright, so he cut Stride’s throat, but was walked-in on and moved onto Eddowes. Fine. I want to know why. And I want to know who interrupted him, so find and work any witnesses you can get your hands on.” He almost brought up the graffiti, but decided against it. The room was too crowded, and he didn’t know what to say. “Get back to work.”
Men returned to their desks, back to their solemn duties, trawling through endless statements, reports, and fragments of information, looking for the tiniest details. Abberline felt their fatigue. It was almost pungent, like a smell; it circulated through the room, and the Inspector felt himself begin to succumb to it. And he strode to his office, ignoring everyone, and collapsed into his chair, not even bothering to close the door behind him.
He closed his eyes. He didn’t let sleep take him, but he made a passing acquaintance with it. Strange half-dreams formed in his mind, the same vague nightmares as ever; a tree stood alone a burning field; a woman with black face and huge eyes wandered in a ruin; the sun failing to rise, instead four terrible arms crawled across the horizon. The taste of iron formed in his mouth, and in his heart...
“Inspector?”
Abberline jolted awake. How long had he dosed?
“Inspector Abberline, sir?” His young personal secretary stood at the door, poised to knock. He was only a slip of a boy who barely fit in his uniform.
“What is it?”
“There’s someone to see you, sir. Well, two people, actually, sir. Well, three, if you count the witness they’ve brought. Sir. They’re in the interview room. He says they’re from Special Branch.” The boy paused. “Sir.”
Abberline’s mood darkened. “Kidney,” he mumbled. Ben Kidney was one of the cabal that surrounded Commissioner Warren and his ilk, a merciless thug who cut his teeth brutalising tribesmen in West Africa, who was forever coming to Abberline to disrupt his investigation.
“No, sir. Not Mr Kidney.”
He frowned. “If not Kidney, then who?”
***
The man in the interview room was, indeed, not Ben Kidney. In fact, Abberline suspected few men in England could be so un-Kidney like. Whereas the Special Branch thug was short, broad and bald, like some savage oxen, this man was tall and willowy, with short hair and a face that the Inspector deduced smiled easily.
Whilst the tall man stood, his companions sat at the interview table. The first was a young man; a boy, in truth, good-looking and well-groomed, with well-light brown eyes. He smiled at the Inspector.
The other was a woman, clearly of lower social standing than the two gentlemen. She was pale and stark and clearly spent the week unbathed, and her crooked smile was a sharp slash across her face. She wore a tight shirt, to flatten her chest, no doubt, exactly like the woman from...
“...Goulston Street.”
“Ah, you are as perceptive as your reputation leads us to believe, Inspector Abberline,” the tall man said, and strode towards Abberline, handing him a wallet which contained credentials. “My name is the Doctor.”
“Doctor what?”
“Who. But, what will do for now,” he smirked. “We’re from Special Branch, which I’m sure you already know.”
“Mr Kidney is our...usual...Special Branch liaison. Is he unwell?” He tried to keep the hope from his voice. “You are a doctor, after all.”
“Very good! But we’re a different branch. The special...Special Branch.”
“The Special Special Branch?”
“Er, yeah,” the boy stood up from the table. “We deal with the really special stuff. Like you wouldn’t believe. That loser Kidney so far down the ladder we can’t even see him.”
Abberline rather liked this boy.
“Ah yes, this is my apprentice, Tommy Lindsay,” said the Doctor. “He lacks good decorum and often gets into trouble, but his maverick ways are an asset I couldn’t be without.”
“Projecting much?”
The Inspector cleared his throat. “My secretary told me you had a witness?”
“That’d be me, guv,” said the woman. “Nice to be remembered. Emma Wilder, at yer service, Mistah.”
“You were a reporter at Goulston street. Harassing Commissioner Warren.”
“I’d say you know a fair bit about ‘arassing yerself, sir,” Emma grinned. “Enjoyin’ a bit of the local culture, were we?”
Abberline turned his address to the Doctor. “Is this what this is about? The graffiti?”
“No,” Tommy explained. “Our investigation is separate to yours, but...there’s a lot of overlap.”
“We hoped we’d be able to help each other,” continued the Doctor. “Miss Wilder has been giving us a lot of important information. However, I fear we’ve come to something of a dead end. We need your help to complete our profile of the Ripper murders.”
“The murders are well-profiled, Doctor. It’s the murderer I’m interested in.”
“You’re not wrong. But as Tommy said, our investigations are different.”
Abberline sighed. At least this man’s riddles were more eloquent than Kidney’s. “What exactly can I help you with?”
“Emma thinks you have some information you can share with us,” Tommy said.
“And what is this information?”
“You, Mistah,” Emma crowed. “You’re the information.”
“I...I’m sorry?” Abberline looked around the room, from Emma, to Tommy, to the Doctor, and back to Emma, searching for some reasonable answer. “What do you mean, I’m the information?”
“Inspector Abberline,” the Doctor moved forward, placing a hand on his arm. “Do you know anything about time?”
“Sir, if you have just come to my department to babble nonsense at me...”
“You ‘ave dreams, Mistah?” Emma asked. A sudden quiet fell on Abberline’s mind as he turned to her. “Nightmares, more like? You see strange things, things that don’t make sense. But they feel so real, don’t they, Mistah? You can sense ‘em. Real things, just out of time.”
His core began to shake. The Inspector sturdied himself. “Doctor. I will not have my time and facilities wasted on delusion women, spouting this...this rural gypsy gibberish...”
In the corner of his eye, he saw Tommy flinch.
“Inspector Abberline,” the Doctor said, calmly. “Emma here believes you to be someone of true historical significance. I have never known her to be wrong.”
“She’s what we call Time Sensitive,” Tommy interjected. “That means...she can work things out. Whether certain things, or people, are important. It’s a rare ability, usually it only affects children, but Emma is very good at it.”
“’Scuse me!” retorted the woman. “I’m the best in the Empire, and you don’t forget it.”
The Inspector’s head swam. “What does this have to do with my dreams? Dammit, someone explain!”
“Yer dreams mean things, Mistah,” Emma said, unimpressed. “They tell you things about where yer livin’. Where yer life’s goin’. Every dream and nightmare you’ve ever ‘ad tells you somethin’ about where you’ve been.” She cracked her neck. “Or where yer goin’.”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn. “You’ve been at the centre of the Ripper killings. You’ve experienced his work more than anyone else. It’s bled into you. We believe that Emma can use that experience to find out precisely when his next victim will die.”
“We already know a lot,” Tommy offered. “But we need to know exactly when.”
Abberline brushed the Doctor away. What were these fools talking about? Yet he was drawn to them. The woman knew of his dreams. Perhaps she could tell him about the four terrible arms, what it was...how to stop it...
Nonsense! Nonsense! His head screamed. But the Doctor and Tommy seemed sincere, and Emma’s confidence seemed powerful. He remembered the way Commissioner Warren had thrown him against the wall, and how small he felt in that moment, and how afraid of ‘Jack the Ripper’. Much of his hope had been washed away with that graffiti on Goulston Street. Could these three, deluded as they were, offer him some anew?
“What, exactly, do you need me to do?”
“Just, sit down opposite Emma, Inspector,” Tommy smiled, gesturing to the chair. “And let her touch your hand.”
“A palm reading?”
“No, no, not at all. She just needs some contact with you.”
“Feel ye pulse,” Emma said, her flippancy forever strong. “See what dreams run through yer veins.”
“You are a deeply unnerving young woman,” Abberline finally made his decision. He took his seat on the interview table, opposite Emma. She grinned wide.
“Aw, thanks!” She extended her hand, the left. “Don’t worry, I don’t bite. Usually.”
The Doctor and Tommy moved to the side of the room, standing directly behind Abberline. They whispered to one another, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“If you’re lying to me,” the Inspector said, managing to just about keep his wavering voice under control. “I will have you thrown in the asylum.” He laid his hand in hers, and she covered it with her right.
“I believe you.” She smiled. All Emma’s paraphernalia fell away with the words, leaving behind something vague, but kind. For the first time Abberline felt he was seeing the truth of her.
Emma closed her eyes.
There was a noise. Like a gentle pop, or rush, like the air was leaving the room. Abberline was suddenly aware of the starkness of the room, surrounded by grimy cream tiles and nothing else. The lighting seemed to become darker. No. No that wasn’t right. The walls seemed to be moving back...
Emma’s face was less passive now. She frowned, lines visible on her forehead, as if searching for something...
The walls had disappeared into total darkness. Abberline looked over his shoulder, and could no longer see the Doctor and Tommy. It was like sitting in a long and dark alleyway; something was deeply wrong.
“I love my work,” Emma whispered to herself.
The Inspector snapped back to her. “What did you say?”
“I love my work,” she repeated. “Those words circle through your head. Like a merry-go-round...”
“You mean the letter? The letter from hell?”
Footsteps. Footsteps all around. The room turned a dreadful cold.
“One day...” Emma spoke, but the words did not seem her own. “One day, men shall look back...”
“I know what the letter says, Emma, I know the words,” The footsteps were getting closer, ever closer. “The footsteps I hear. Are they the next victim’s? Can we save her?”
“Kelly...”
“Kelly?”
“Mary...Jane...Kelly...”
“Is that...is that three people, or just one?”
“They’re words.”
“What?”
Emma opened her eyes, drowsily. Something seemed changed her; her pupils dilated; her whites bloodshot. “Mary Jane Kelly. They’re just words. There are loads of words.”
“Emma, I don’t...”
Suddenly she found energy, leaning towards him with incredible speed, gripping his hand like steel.
“So many words! Words like a pattern, like a trail, like a big long path, that’s all words are, a journey, all the way to the end of time. Let’s say them all!” She drew a deep breath. “Mary, Jane, Kelly, Elizabeth, Stride, Autumn, Rivers, Rose, Tyler, London, Empire, Earth, Earth’s a good one! Star, space, ship, gun, hyperdrive, I don’t even know what a hyperdrive is!”
“Emma, listen to me...”
“Fire, glory, iron, steel, death, doctor, not-doctor, warrior, hate, blood, time, lord, Jack, the, ripper,” she let go of Abberline, throwing her arms wide, cracking back her head and sucking in air like a drowning man, and screamed: “Ex-ter-min-ate!”
The light returned to the room. The walls came back. The footsteps stopped. And Emma Wilder fell out of her chair.
Tommy rushed to her at once as Abberline stood. He put his arm around her as she brought herself up.
“Did you go too far again?”
“Yeah,” she said, struggling for breath and rubbing her eyes. “It’s gettin’ ‘arder not to. Whatever this future problem of yours is, Doctor, I really ‘ope you solve it.”
“I hope so too, Emma,” the Doctor was at Abberline’s side. “Did you see a time?”
“9th November, or maybe 10th, in the earliest ‘ours. Marry Jane Kelly is goin’ to die.”
“I’ll set my men on finding her,” Abberline said, taken aback by his ability to so quickly believe what he was hearing. “Perhaps we can save her, or at least catch him as he kills her.”
“I’m not sure it will work out like that, Inspector Abberline,” said the Doctor, solemnly. “But, I hope you will do everything you can. Right now, it’s time for us to go. We have a lot of preparing to do.”
Tommy helped Emma to her feet and linked arms with her. She had gone paler than the Inspector thought possible, yet she found a way to blush all the same. The Doctor shook his hand. “We can see ourselves out, Inspector. I know we’ll see you again.”
The three left quickly. Startlingly quickly, leaving Abberline alone in the interview room, bemused, and wondering if he’d just experienced another one of his dreams.
***
Days passed. Soon enough they snowballed into weeks, and before Abberline and his men could so much as mark the passing of the autumn sunshine, the bitter cold of November was upon them. It might’ve sapped the energy from them, if they had any left.
Morale had become an abstract concept within the investigation. They’d searched endlessly, day after day for Mary Jane Kelly, but with no luck. It was almost certain that it was an assumed name, or if it were real, she went by a different one; the distrust of the police amongst the Whitechapel people was bone-deep, and the woman had no faith in them to keep them safe.
Many of the investigators shared in their atheism. Some of the men had quietly moved to different investigations, or different departments, whispering to other ranking officers, promising favours or cashing in cultural capital to get moved to somewhere, to anywhere, that wasn’t the Ripper murders. It was becoming harder and harder for Abberline to persuade his officers to keep looking for the allusive Kelly -- some suspected that he was losing his mind, dogmatically pursuing one prostitute that no one had ever heard of, driven to the edge by this killer in the dark. None said it to his face, though a few failed to lower their voices when saying it, these days.
And all the time Kidney remained on his heels, violently rolling in each new failure of the investigation, wrestling like some savage animal to draw some blood that he could bring back to his masters, Commissioner Warren and the others. He did not fight fair, and Abberline did not have the energy to chase him away. He kept his encounter with the Doctor a secret from Kidney, however; that was something that belonged to him.
The Inspector still dreamed the same dream, the burning tree, the woman in the strange mask, the four terrible arms, but now the Doctor and Tommy and Emma were mixed in, too; running, always running, always on the very edge of the horror around them. How did they always seem to survive? Always seem to move on? One night he saw the Doctor in the London -- a different London, one with brighter skies and brighter people -- facing a metal creature that burned with hate and screamed with Emma’s voice, ‘Exterminate!’ Yet the Doctor did not flinch. Abberline’s own nemesis prayed on his nerves. When, or if, the time came for their confrontation, would he remain unbent?
Sometimes Abberline prayed that the three would return to him, just for a few minutes, just for a moment, even, and help him to find Mary Jane Kelly, and save her from her fate. Or try, at the very least.
One November 9th, his prayer was answered.
The night was late, and just as darkness settled on London, so it smothered Abberline’s mind. They had failed; Mary Jane Kelly would be found dead tomorrow, and Jack the Ripper would escape into the night, as always.
The Inspector told his men to go home, which they did, promptly and without question. Abberline settled down in his office, too depressed even to drink, and wished his mind to any other topic than the poor girl with the terrible fate. He shut his eyes and let darkness cloud him.
“Inspector,” said a voice from somewhere. “We need your help again.”
Abberline jerked awake to see who spoke. In front of him stood a young man, a boy with brown eyes.
“Tommy!” The boy wore the same clothes as before. “But what...but how...?!”
“It’s good to see you again,” he smiled. “But we’ve hit an obstacle. Will you help us?”
“Of course, of course!” Abberline’s mind raced. Of course they’d return just as the right time, that’s always what happened in his dreams, and Emma said herself that dreams speak truth. “Can we save her? Mary Jane Kelly, I mean?”
Tommy darkened. He cast his eyes to the floor. “You best ask the Doctor about that.” As the boy left the room Abberline felt dread descend on him. He followed.
The Doctor and Emma were sat by the desks in the middle of the office, pouring through documents so quickly and haphazardly as to leave them strewn all over. When Emma heard them approach, she looked up and beamed.
“Here ‘e is, the man of the moment. ‘Ow’re you sleepin’, guv?”
“I suspect you know,” Abberline cleared his throat. “Doctor. What can we do?”
The Doctor looked up, though despite looking straight at the Inspector, he barely acknowledged him. “We need your help, Inspector. We need to get into a building.”
“Which building?”
“Oh nowhere important, just the Home Office.”
Abberline blinked. “The Home Office?”
“Mhm.”
“But...” He looked to Tommy for some reassuring look, but got none. “You’re Special Branch, aren’t you? You could see the Home Secretary any time?”
“We’re the Special Special Branch, remember?” The boy was clearly trying to inject some levity, and falling spectacularly. “Some things are just really so secret.”
“There’s information, documents and other things, inside the Home Office that we need,” the Doctor explained, standing from his desk at last. “But requesting them will take too long. We need them tonight. We’ve tried getting in once but the building is deadlocked, and well-guarded -- your Commissioner Warren has some very advanced technology for 1888. So we need a man on the inside.”
“Me,” Abberline said. “You want me to deceive my superiors and help you break into Her Majesty’s Office for Home Affairs, to steal information. Is that right?”
“’Bout sums it up,” Emma said. “You up for it?”
“It’s treason.”
“It’s a chance to learn the truth about the Ripper,” Tommy said quietly. “We need to get in there, and we need to do it tonight.”
“Because of Mary Jane Kelly? How will this information save her, exactly?”
Everyone in the room looked away from Abberline’s eyes. Only Emma had the courage to speak.
“I don’t think it will, guv,” she said sadly, the sincerity creeping into her once again. “’Er death, it’s...It’s like ‘er life was so complicated, so full of things that ‘appened, and looked at by so many people that ‘er death...I can’t describe, not properly, I’m not clever enough.” She rubbed her eyes, as if the effort of explaining was exhausting her. “But if you come with us, ‘elp us, you might be able to understand?”
She looked to Tommy, perhaps hoping for applause. He gestured to the Doctor. “You do this stuff a lot better than he does.”
“Yes, well said, Emma,” the Doctor moved to Abberline’s side. “I know you want to stop this man, and I know you want to know whether he even is a man. I can’t promise you all the answers. But help us, and I can promise you that his killing will reach an end tonight.”
Abberline studied the Doctor. For a month there was nothing but dreams and anxieties, and the name of Mary Jane Kelly, and the words of the terrible letter from hell. Now this man came before and begged for his help, in return for what seemed very little. But all the same, Tommy and Emma were true enough, at least in his judgement. Which so much horror already, what did he have left to lose?
***
The Reception to Her Majesty’s Office for Home Affairs was far grander than the one to Scotland Yard. Darkness insulated the latter, but here, large glass windows and the finest English décor made the place seem like, despite the night outside, the day would never be lost on it.
Abberline strode to the front desk, nerves jangling inside his mind, but he did not let on. The young policeman manning the station did not raise his head as he approached.
“I have an appointment with Mr Benjamin Kidney,” he said as boldly as he could. “Quickly, if you please.”
“Mr Kidney isn’t here at the moment,” the officer said. He sported a close beard, but the blonde colour of it simply made it look like dirt.
“Well, I have an appointment tonight, all the same. Will he be back soon.”
“I couldn’t say, Sir.”
“Well. I shall go and wait in his office, then.” He turned to head up the stairs.
That prompted him to look up, sharply. “Sir you must not go upstairs without permission, that is for authorised persons only!”
“I am authorised, I have an appointment.”
“Sir,” the officer was becoming flushed. “You simply must wait down here if you wish to see Mr Kidney tonight.”
Abberline narrowed his eyes, hoping to intimate the boy, but to no avail. He moved away from the stairs. “Very well. But note I am not pleased. I shall be having a word with Mr Kidney about this, Officer...” He peered at the name tag on his uniform. “...Ryan.”
The boy didn’t respond, his head sinking back down to its original position. Abberline moved to one of the large glass windows, looking out into the London streets beyond. The signal would come soon, and he would need to act quickly.
“Good lord, what is that!” Abberline said, after waiting minutes. Officer Ryan pulled himself from the desk, sluggishly at first, but once he noticed the twinkling red and orange light dancing through the courtyard outside, he moved much quicker.
“Is that...fire?” he asked as he got to the Inspector’s side.
“Get to the door boy, quickly, see what it is!”
Together they rushed to the main door and looked out. The light no longer twinkled, but instead burned; a lit barrel, flaming and rolling down the courtyard, sending embers and white smoke into the sky. This was Emma’s signal.
“Free Ireland!” called a voice from the distance. A female voice, with a deeply unconvincing Irish accent.
Suddenly the barrel cracked open with a loud and terrible bang like thunder, and the wood came apart in a bright flash. Ryan and Abberline flinched back, despite the fact the bomb was all spectacle and no danger; the Doctor had designed it deliberately that way.
This fact was lost on Officer Ryan, however. After recovering from his shock, he pulled his whistle from his pocket it and blew as hard as his little lungs could manage, the piercing screech penetrating the Inspector’s skull.
Once he was finished (and red-faced) Ryan rushed out into the courtyard. The other officers in the reception followed straight after, all eager to share in the glory of catching a terrorist, and within moments the outside was fit to bursting with guards and officers, all desperately barking orders over each other like dogs in the kennel.
Abberline, in contrast, was left all alone.
Quickly he shot up the stairs, taking them two at a time, flight after flight until he reached his floor. It was high up, and cold, and eerily silent -- the commotion outside did not penetrate the thick glass windows up here. Starlight poured through them, seemingly annulling the orange casts of the burning gas lamps, turning the place a strange and terrible silver. As Abberline took breath he exhaled large clouds, and he began to wonder whether he was truly seeing frost on the furniture, or if his imagination was running away from him. He pulled his coat tighter, not just to shield the cold, but alleviate the feeling that eyes were on him. Eyes that looked deep.
He drew his revolver for extra comfort.
Methodically he moved around the floor, finding no other souls, until at last he came to the door of Ben Kidney’s office. He placed his hand on the freezing brass knob, curling his fist around it in a strong grip. He dreaded to think what he might find on the other side; Kidney? The Commissioner? The Ripper himself?
He pushed his shoulder up against the door defensively, drawing his revolver upwards, near his face, ready to swing forward and fire. Nerves grabbed him as he tested the door -- unlocked, it wouldn’t need much force to push through.
Abberline breathed deep, and made a small prayer, and forced through the door, pointing the end of his pistol into the room.
Empty. Empty and uninteresting. The room was cold and silvery like the rest of the floor, but was barely decorated; a plain desk and plain chair stood by a plain wall, adorned only with another glass window. It was the first time in all the times he’d been here that Abberline realised just how bare the place was. Perhaps Kidney himself was normally a key feature.
The Inspector swept the room quickly, keeping his gun outstretched, to check no one was hiding in dark corners. Satisfied, though not exactly happy, he lowered the firearm.
Rap-rap-rap.
Abberline swung around to face to the window. There, silhouetted in the starlight, was a hand, gentle knocking on the glass. It was a slender, feminine hand -- Emma’s.
He rushed over and with some force pulled open the latch on the window, pushing the glass up. Reaching through he grabbed Emma by the waist, and hoisted her into the office.
“Tommy, shimmyin’ up a flamin’ steel drainpipe in the middle of a November night ain’t my idea of a good first date.”
Tommy and the Doctor followed her through, rather less elegantly, arriving in a mess of limbs on the floor. Tommy just sighed.
“Well, we’re in now, that’s what matters,” the Doctor said, untangling himself and leaping to his feet. “Now, let’s see what we can find.”
He reached into his jacket and fumbled around for a moment, before drawing out a metal tube, like a pen, but different somehow. The Doctor held it up, and it emitted a strange whistling sound, which oscillated as he scanned around the room.
“What is that?” Abberline asked.
“It’s a...Special Branch thing,” Tommy said, finally on his feet, clearly having given up.
“I thought we were looking for documents?”
“We’re looking for information,” the Doctor said, never taking his eyes from his tube. “But not physical information, not numbers or language. That’s why Emma is with us.”
“So, something of a...spiritual nature?”
“That’s a good way of puttin’ it,” Emma added.
“Doctor,” the Inspector started. Again his head was swimming, just like in the Interview Room, when Emma touched him with her mind. “All this...all this talk, of spiritual things...I will not pretend to understand, nor press you to explain, but...please answer me this: is Jack the Ripper of this world?”
“I believe he is, Inspector. But unless we act fast, he may not be for much longer.”
With that, there was a loud click, and the Doctor put away his metal tube. From out of the wall he was facing, a door swung -- a tiny, narrow door, that lead to somewhere dark.
Together the four of them crowded around the tiny dark doorway, and looked into the abyss. It housed a staircase -- narrow and spiral, heading straight down like a cylinder in the depths. They did not exchange words, only glances, and one by one they entered the staircase, and descended to the depths.
***
The starlight coming from the room above lit the dark descent for longer than Abberline anticipated, however within minutes they were making their way in a pitch darkness, their hands all clinging to the central column as they went round and round. The Doctor led the front, whilst Abberline followed in the rear; in the middle, the Inspector could just make out Tommy and Emma holding onto each other.
“Doctor,” Tommy whispered, breaking the silence like it was sugar glass. “Doctor, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” came the answer. “But I get the feeling I know what you’re going to say.”
“Why are we here?”
“That’s the one,” the Doctor sighed. “We’re here to test my hypothesis, Tommy.”
“But why here? Why Jack the Ripper? What are we watching five women die? Why aren’t we solving it? Stopping it?”
The Inspector wondered if he should add to the conversation. He decided against it -- right now, he would just listen.
“It’s not as simple as that, Tommy. Right now, right here, in this year, in this moment in time, incredible things are happening. Terrible things. Wilhelm the 2nd is becoming Kaisar of Germany. Adolf Hitler is being conceived. Hell, the first work towards the atom bomb is being made. And one brutal murderer is working his way through the women of Whitechapel.
Those things might be linked. The horrors here might be...might be bleeding into the fabric of time. Corrupting it, undermining it. But we’re just looking at one moment in an ocean of time, a flashpoint, one quantum molecule of air in an atmosphere. The history of Jack the Ripper is so complex, it’s like a thousand tracks and layers all riding over each other. Anything about this time could be true or not true, you understand? Like Schrödinger’s cat. The truth of this depends on how you see it.”
The Inspector worried he might trip in the darkness, so confused as he was. Were they not going to find the identity of Jack the Ripper? Was it even possible?
“That doesn’t explain why we’re leaving Mary Jane Kelly to die,” Tommy said, with mourning in his voice.
The Doctor, unhappy with the response he was about to give, sighed: “Because we don’t know who killed her.”
Silence fell for the rest of their journey. Abberline could not say how long it took -- minutes? Hours? Everything but his own mind was gone down here, but even that seemed to be slipping away too; sometimes his imagination drifted to the woman in the strange mask, or the terrible four armed creature, silently making the descent with him. How would he know if they were truly alone? After a time, he nearly convinced himself they’d find the burning tree of his dreams at the bottom of the steps.
A small clatter. Abberline stopped, but not soon enough not to bump into the back of Emma. The strange whistling sound of the Doctor’s metal tube came again.
“Don’t quote me,” he said. “But I think we’ve reached the end.”
“When you put it like that...” quipped Emma.
There was a loud crash, then a clunk, like a mighty leaver being pulled, then the scream of some great heavy hinges, as door opened in front of them, letting in a dim light that stung Abberline’s eyes.
Once the door of light was open far enough, the four them filtered through, into the chamber beyond.
This space was huge, and dark and reverberant, and each of the Inspector’s breaths seemed to bounce off the walls like footballs. The room was circular, perfectly circular, to the point that it seemed almost impossible. Five doors (including the one they entered through) lined the room, which were also curved, in perfect tandem with the walls. Ten equally spaced torches provided the only light in the room, but they were not especially interesting.
It was the floor that was truly amazing.
Painted onto the cold stone ground, beautifully, intrinsically, with painstaking scale and accuracy, was a map of the whole of London. It was constructed with amazing paints and bright colours; the whole thing seemed to teem with an intoxicating energy.
“Bloody ‘ell,” he heard Emma breathe.
“What the hell are you doing down here?!”
Abberline swung round and pointed his gun at the source of the voice. There Commissioner Warren stood in some ornate and arcane uniform, his whiskers turning almost black in the strange light, his face dark with anger.
“Ah, Commissioner Warren said,” the Doctor said. “It’s nice to finally put a face to the mildly historically significant name.”
“Abberline,” the Commissioner ignored the Doctor, his voice deep with the rage. “The things you are interfering with are so far beyond what you can imagine. What is it you want, hmm? What do you think you can do?”
“I think he wants to put you under arrest.”
“Shut up!” Abberline screamed at the Doctor. He did so. “It’s your turn to listen to me, Commissioner. I want him. I don’t care who he is. Or how powerful. I want him delivered to me with a bag over his head, or a bullet in the back of it.”
“I’m not sure the Commissioner can keep that promise,” the Doctor said. “You’ve lost control of him, haven’t you? Sent him on some special mission but now he’s gone too far, right?”
“He was...” the words stuck in Warren’s throat. “He was never meant to do...this.”
“But who is he?!” The Inspector was close to tears. “Tell me who he is, or I swear I’ll-”
“Doctor.”
Tommy’s echoing voice silenced the room. They each turned to him, and found him staring at Emma, who in turn was staring at the floor, right where her foot had landed.
“What’s wrong with her?” the Doctor asked.
“I don’t know, she’s just...she just stopped.”
Seconds that felt like hours passed, and finally Emma moved. She lifted her foot from the map, slowly and gently, to see what area she was covering. It was nothing of amazing importance, just an inn, just a tiny tavern room in the district of Whitechapel...
Emma collapsed. Tommy caught her just before she hit the ground too hard, and the Doctor rushed over. Abberline kept his gun trained of the Commissioner.
“Emma?” the Doctor said. “Emma, can you hear me?”
“She’s...” the girl whispered, tears streaming down her face. “Mary Jane Kelly, she’s...oh god, what he did to her!”
Abberline turned cold. “The five...” Commissioner Warren breathed. “He’s completed the five. Now he can do anything.” The Inspector went to ask him what he meant, but the Doctor spoke first.
“Emma, do you know where he’s going? Can you feel him?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can.” she said bravely, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “He’s become something new, like a spirit. Now he’s going back to where it all began. Someplace...dark. Full of madness and suffering.”
“The Asylum.” Warren said. “Mortomb Asylum, on the edge of the city. It’s closed now, but that’s where it all began.”
“Why would he go there?” Tommy asked. “What started there?”
“A birth,” the Commissioner answered, cryptically, and sombrely.
“Each of the murders has made a wound in time. That’s what deaths do,” the Doctor explained. “He’s been absorbing all the bleeding energy, trying to find a way to force himself through the tears to become something. If there’s some kind of big break in time at the Asylum, something of historical significance, he might be able to push through it, enter onto the next plane of existence.”
None of this made sense to Abberline, but he did not question.
“How quickly can we get there?” the Doctor asked him.
“Not that quickly. An hour, at least.”
“An hour we don’t have,” the Doctor stroked his chin, thinking. “Inspector, please handcuff the Commissioner to something.”
He needed no further instruction on that front. He grabbed the Commission and chained him to one of the five doors, ignoring all his protests.
The Doctor turned to the girl on the floor, who seemed to finally be regaining her strength. “Emma,” he said gently, and with that word it was all wiped away again.
“No,” she said, new tears forming in her eyes. “No. No, you can’t. I said I’d never do it again. You can’t!”
“Doctor!” Tommy hissed. “You can’t ask her to do that!”
“We need to get there now.”
“It tore me up!” Emma cried. “Last time I did it, it was like someone had stabbed at my insides with a red hot poker. I couldn’t stop crying for days. It was agony!”
“Emma. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you to. I really, truly wouldn’t.”
She grabbed her hair and thrust her head between her legs. Abberline thought she was about to scream. After a time, she lifted it back up, and her face had turned to stone.
“If I do this for you,” Emma said, her tone level. “Then I never, ever, want to see you again. Either of you.” She didn’t say it to Tommy’s face, but all the same, he seemed hurt.
The Doctor took a moment. “Understood,” he said finally. “Tommy can stay here with you for now, then we’ll leave you.” He stood up, and turned to the Inspector. “Inspector Abberline, we’re about to go on a trip.”
“I don’t...” the Doctor grabbed the elbow of his gun arm, and pulled him close.
Emma pulled herself to her knees, facing the two men. Tommy knelt behind her. She closed her eyes and reached out with her hands, like she was grabbing some invisible force. Abberline felt something take hold of him. Was it just his imagination again?
Emma’s face was straining. Her brow furrowed, tears coming thicker and faster. Her whole body seemed to shaking with an agony she could barely control. Something seemed ready to burst out of her.
Then Emma screamed.
A sound. Like air leaving the room, only much louder this time like thunder. Abberline felt weightless, and lost his grip on the Doctor, and then was falling, through endless blackness...
***
Cold concrete touched the Inspector’s face as his eyelids fluttered open, straining with little futile energy, like tiny butterflies beating against a hurricane. Something wet and cold dripped with incredible rhythm against the back of his neck, each drop of stagnant water sending cold kisses down his spine. He felt as though he were in bed; a hard bed, that gave no true warmth or comfort, that he shared with his lover, Lady Death, her long freezing fingers running through his hair, and her blue dead lips touching his neck, though of course he felt no breath.
“Abberline...”
He fantasised about his sweetheart’s looks. In Abberline’s mind she was tall and pale and her long and graceful arms reached out like the branches of a willow. On her face she wore a black mask, that was frightening and alien to him, possessing huge glass eyes that reflected that at which they looked, and the mouth of the mask was long and rubbery and puckered with tiny holes like the snout of some dreadful sea creature. When she removed the mask to kiss him, her face looked like Emma’s, though her skin was so white as to barely seem there at all, her eyes were black and wet like pools of oil, and the thin crooked lines of her smiling lips were sky-blue.
“Abberline...” came the whisper again.
“Go away,” he told the voice, drowsily. He wanted to be left alone in his cold bed, in the arms of his cold lover, enjoying her cold kisses.
“Abberline...!” the whisper was more insistent, getting closer, the nuance of the voice become more defined. And then, cutting through the fog of his dreams: “ABBERLINE!”
The Inspector was awake, and flailing, unconsciously trying to roll away from the awful, bitter water that was spilling down his face. He’d awoken somewhere dark, faint in light, quiet in sound. The Doctor crouched just to his side, watching over him.
“Abberline,” he said. “Unprotected warping can be upsetting. Are you okay?”
He was nauseous and dizzy and wanted to sleep, but Abberline lied to the Doctor all the same. “I’m fine,” he said, sitting himself up. He looked around his location -- he was in a corridor, made of concrete, lit only by tiny barred windows high above that syphoned off some moonlight. Lined all along Abberline’s sides were cells, cell after cell after cell, heavy metal doors wide open to empty confinement spaces. “The asylum,” he realised. “We’re in the asylum. How is that possible?”
“Emma,” the Doctor said. “Emma sent us here. It’s called warping; she reached into time, pulled open a tiny hole, just big enough for us to fall through.” Shame played on the Doctor’s face. “It’s not an easy thing for her to do.”
He put out a hand, and helped the Inspector to his feet. Abberline still gripped his revolver, turning his knuckles white, and the Doctor pointed to it. “I don’t approve,” he said. “And if you’re not careful, it could cause more problems than it’ll solve.”
“How so? Once I find this murderer, I intend to put him down like the dog he is. I have the final solution to Jack the Ripper, right here in my hand.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But he’s already in this asylum, which means he’s already changed, which means not everything here is going to be as it seems.” The Doctor reached into his coat and pulled out his strange metal tube. He held it straight up in front of him, and the strange whistling sound began. “Time here is bleeding like an open wound. Images and ideas from the past and the future are leaking out. Which means you’re going to see things. But you have to remember: none of them are real.” He paused. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Alright, alright -- generally. But just don’t start shooting willy-nilly, you don’t know what you might hit.” The Doctor moved his strange tube, following some invisible trail across the air. He pointed down the corridor. “That way,” he said, then span on his heels and started walking in the opposite direction.
It took Abberline a moment. “You’re suggesting we split up?”
“We can cover more ground,” the Doctor called back, following the noise of his strange device. Already he was disappearing into the darkness. “Find him quicker. And remember: whatever he’s done to himself, he’s still just a man.”
With that, the Doctor disappeared.
Abberline steeled himself. He was frightened -- God, he was frightened. He was gripped with a greater terror than he ever imagined. But all the same he turned, and carried on down the strange moonlit corridor. The Inspector knew a little something about time himself; he knew when the right time had come.
For minutes, he walked aimlessly, following the endless rows of empty cells, not knowing what he was looking for. The rooms were terrifying confines. Despite their silence, they seemed to scream at him, the emptiness of them calling out like dead and desperate souls.
Time went on, and Abberline’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. The asylum had been out of use for only a year, and yet it was derelict already. Pipes rusted and mould grew up the walls. After a while he noticed something on the floor -- three painted lines, green, blue and red -- all leading in the same direction. He decided to follow them to a junction in the cells, where the green departed to the left, and the red and blue to the right. Hoping he would be lead to the centre of the complex, the Inspector took the right.
His decision was rewarded. Soon enough, he came across a sign pinned to the wall, that read:
MALE INFIRMARY: BLUE
FEMALE INFIRMARY: RED
Commissioner Warren’s words seemed to float through the air. ‘A birth...’ they said with sorrow. The Ripper was here because of a birth. An important birth.
Abberline followed the red line.
Another turn, this time to the left. Once again, Abberline found himself staring down a huge line of cells. But at the end stood his prize: the Female Infirmary. There he would learn the truth.
That feeling again. That sound, like air leaving the room. Abberline knew that sound now, and he knew that it meant something was changing. He remembered the Doctor’s words: the things he would see would be simple illusions, nothing more.
He pulled up his gun nevertheless.
The Inspector’s pace felt terrible to him, but all the same he kept it slow, scanning every way he could for traps. He came past the first cell.
It was bigger on the inside.
A whole world was crammed inside that room. A clear and beautiful blue sky stood proud above a golden field, that seemed to go on forever and ever and ever. Despite himself, Abberline stopped and stared. A tall tree stood in the field, an amazing and majestic specimen, the species of which he could not place, and the red-and-green leaves touched with orange sunlight seemed almost Oriental in their beauty.
Something moved. Across the blue sky, a trail of white, like a thin cloud, or long wisp of smoke. Then came the light. A bright light, white and brilliant, that drained away the wonderful blue and gold and green and red, and left only the black silhouette of the tree. Abberline shielded his eyes. Then came the heat, a dry and harsh wave that could burn anything. The tree caught aflame, and within seconds was burned away to nothing.
The Inspector moved on.
He passed several empty cells before he came upon the next vision. Again, the open cell door acted as a window into another world. But this world was grey, and in the gun-metal sky rolled clouds of noxious yellow. Abberline could see ruins in this world, like the remains of a small, now-gone castle. In these ruins wondered a woman, in nurse’s garb, with that strange mask upon her face. She seemed lost.
“I understand,” Abberline said aloud. He raised his voice. “You can’t use my own dreams against me, Ripper. I’m coming for you all the same.”
The woman stopped. She turned, shaking, as if scared, to look straight in Abberline’s direction.
“Who said that?!” she called.
Abberline went cold. Then he moved on.
In time, his slow pace took him to the last cell before the Infirmary. He saw no huge world or amazing vista in this cell, only two ordinary, down-beat people; a woman, with lank brown hair, and a swollen belly, and a man, who punched her across the face.
As his fist impacted he turned to smoke, and the woman fell to her knees, blood and tears pouring down her face. She clutched her pregnant stomach. And it began to glow.
White light poured through her green-brown dress. It seemed to move through her veins, making her whole body glow a strange translucent pink, like when one held their finger up to a candle. It grew stronger, more bright, the white light in her stomach becoming a perfect, white circle, whilst the woman herself became lost in her own glow. She was no longer in a human shape, instead only a coloured blob of a background, a red so bright it was almost cartoonish.
In her stomach, or the circle, or the white light, four arms appeared. Not twisted things, Abberline could see that now. They were perfectly straight, perfectly angular, spearing out in four directions. Spears of iron, they were, ready to reach out and stab anything and everything around them.
The Inspector stood and gawked at this strange symbol for as long as he dared. It filled him with a terror he could not describe. He committed the symbol and the colours to his memory, and vowed, should he ever see a human use it without irony, he could mark them as evil.
He tore his eyes away from the dreadful spectacle, and moved to the door of the infirmary.
He took his time in pushing open the metal doors that opened to the room, that screamed as they scraped across the floor. Abberline hoped to find the Ripper in there; damn what the Doctor said, there was a gun in his hand, bullets to be fired, and the heads of murderers to go through.
At first look the infirmary was empty. Tens of beds, all lining up like neat little soldiers, but no patients. Save one...
An operating table squatted, dead in the centre of the room, bright halogen lights and thick leather straps surrounding it, making a mockery of the surgeons who had once done the same. And the patient, was no more than a bear.
A child’s teddy bear, small and battered, with only one and hundreds of stitches, perched in the centre of the operating table, the white lights piercing into it. Abberline stared at the bear, and the bear stared back.
Something moved behind it. The vaguest of shadows. For a moment, it looked like a man.
Then the room tore apart with fury and lightning.
The noise was deafening to Abberline. He reeled back, pointing his gun even as he covered his eyes with his free hand. Beds and equipment flew around the room, and tiles were ripped from the walls.
When the Inspector finally dared look, he saw the bear was gone, replaced by a tall and angry column of red smoke, swirling, filling the room with light and noise and the smell of sulphur.
I told you, came a voice. It was everywhere, and nowhere, and inside Abberline’s own head. That I would give birth to the Twentieth Century.
Something warm ran down Abberline’s leg.
He wanted to run. To bolt and run and never, ever, ever look back. He wanted to be a child again. He wanted to be asleep in the arms of his fantasies. However twisted and terrible they were, they were not real. But no one could deny the existence of this satanic thing.
You fear me.
“No,” Abberline blurted. No, he would not run. Months he had tried to stop this beast. Man or demon, he would do his job.
All fear me.
“Those who cannot defend themselves, maybe. Those who cannot see into the shadows where you lurk. But we can all see you now, Jack. You’re in the light, and that means you’ve lost.”
You believe it matters. I have created something more than you can understand. The future, carved into my image. A perfect circle. Heaven on Earth.
“You-”
Where do you think we are? What do you think this place is, little man? It is a place where men eat each other and the smoke of their torment rises into infinity. Go on. Name it. Name this place, Inspector Abberline. Name. My. Kingdom.
Dread washed over him. Dread, or numbness, or both. He both felt everything, and nothing, and knew he was being lied to, and he believed.
“No. We are not there. Not yet.” His throat was as dry as the desert. “That is your place. Where you belong. It is not here.”
It does not matter. The birth is complete. I have brought forth my world.
Abberline’s mind raced. What to do? What to say? Two words. That’s all he could manage now. He prayed they would be enough.
“Go back...” he whispered.
Go back?
“Go...back...”
Who are you to command me?
“Go back...” The Inspector scrunched his eyes shut, and willed himself strength. “Go back...go back...go back TO HELL!”
He did not look. He did aim. He did open his eyes, even to peak. He just pulled up his gun, aimed towards the noise, and fired.
The smoke screamed. It was an unholy, monstrous noise, like man and woman and child and metal and chalk on black board all being dragged through the inferno. The bullet took hold in the centre of the column, in the centre of the heart of the thing that claimed to have once been a man, and the room pulled inward, an incredible force that sucked Abberline, and his gun, and the beds, and the smoke itself inwards, bending the space of the room.
There was a sigh. Then a crack.
Then there was nothing.
The Inspector lay on his back, alone, in the silent room. God, his eyelids were heavy. He couldn’t feel the warm wet patch on his trousers any more. But then, he couldn’t really feel anything.
He didn’t hear the Doctor running down the corridor to get to him. He didn’t hear the Doctor speaking to him, spewing out endless meaningless words. All he heard was his own long, silent apology, to five dead women from Whitechapel.
***
Tommy crouched down in the sand of the beach, picking up a pebble and fiddling with it as he spoke. The tears clouded the old man’s vision even further; he could barely see anything.
“The Doctor was testing a hypothesis,” Tommy said. He didn’t look at the old man.
“What hypothesis?” Abberline asked.
The boy sighed. “I didn’t really get it. It was about...how the actions of people affect the progress of time. How the good actions beget good things. How the bad actions...well, you get the idea.”
“I understand. The Whitechapel killings, they bled into time. They caused the War, didn’t they?”
Tommy nodded.
“God,” Abberline was crying heavier now. “My God. If you knew, that that awful war was coming...couldn’t you stop it?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think it worked like that.”
“I see. I do. So the Doctor just wanted to confirm the truth of the time, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“But what for? I’m not what I was, Tommy. But I’m still a detective at heart. The Doctor was looking at this hypothesis because he believed something new was going to happen. Some new horror, that he wants to pre-empt. Am I right?” Abberline leaned back on his cane, hard.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Inspector.” Tommy stood up, and scratched the back of his head. “He called it a Time War.”
Abberline sighed. He’d given up on waving away the mists in his vision. “What of Emma? I never heard of her again.”
“Neither did we,” Tommy didn’t try to keep the hurt from his voice. “We kept our promise.”
“I hope she found something that fit her. Lived a good life. I think of her often.”
“Me too.”
Across the beach, all the way down the other end, there was a light groaning sound, like a wheezing of some old tramp that littered the Bournemouth streets this time of year. Abberline looked down to see the source, and saw, just about, something small and blue that wasn’t there before.
“That’s the Doctor,” Tommy said, and he could hear the smile in his voice. “He’s remembered me, bloody finally. I bet he’s not even fixed what he set out to fix.”
The boy laughed. The old man smiled in solidarity.
Tommy extended his hand. “Thank you, Inspector. It’s good to see you again.” Could he really think of nothing else to say?
Abberline shook. “Indeed. Enjoy your adventures, Tommy. Treasure them.”
“I will.” With that, their hands parted, and Tommy made his way down the beach, towards the blue speck. Abberline watched him go, until he could no longer distinguish him from all the other blurs on the beach.
Abberline turned to go home. The strangeness of the day was over for him now, and he could let his sad memories rest again. His vision failed him still, save for one moment, when the sea air blew just right, just enough to blow the mist away, and his glasses rested in just the right spot.
And he saw her. Emma Wilder, looking out to the water, her pale face passive, her straw hair blowing around. Could it truly be her? Not ageing a day, just like Tommy? Was the old man’s imagination running away with him again? For a tiniest fraction of a tiniest second, he thought he saw her turn to him, and give a faint, thin, crooked smile.
Then the mist returned, and Emma was gone.
The streets of London had always been tight, but Abberline never quite felt like he had nowhere to go as he did on this grey September morning. He leaned against the black brick, staring at the wall adorned with its chalk taunt.
THE JUWES ARE THE MEN
WHO WILL NOT BE BLAMED
FOR NOTHING
Though the letters were crude, the words laughed as Abberline read them. Genius, they were. Was the man who did this a Jew? The Inspector did not know. But everyone knew he would not be blamed for nothing.
He stood there, staring at the words, hypnotised by their presence. They meant nothing, truly, but still they could spark a fire that would engulf London. Abberline shivered. The skies of the great city were becoming darker by the day, and with every fresh new murder, the difference between sunset and bloodshed turned harder to see.
A sloshing sound brought Abberline from his trance. Some young constable was heading towards the chalk graffiti, carrying a large pale.
“Constable! Constable! What on earth do you think you’re doing?!”
“Orders, sir,” he replied as Abberline launched himself from the wall, all red hair and dull eyes. “Just orders.”
“Whose orders? No one should be so stupid as to get rid of such important evidence, you jabbering dupe.”
“The Commissioner’s, sir. Commissioner Warren’s.”
He should have known.
The Commissioner stood stooped and closed-eyed near the bakery that had been co-opted as the temporary forensic headquarters. A reporter was being hurried away from him, still shouting questions as the constable dragged them back -- some unwashed girl, it seemed, bound up in a tight jacket to flatten her chest, no doubt, to make street navigation easier.
“Mistah Warren!” she cried. “Who were it that interrupted tha Rippah, Mistah Warren?!”
It was a question Abberline wanted answering for himself. The Commissioner had his eyes closed, breathing heavily through huge nostrils, inside which the grey hairs were indistinguishable from his huge moustache. Abberline strode towards him.
“Commissioner Warren.”
“For heaven’s sake, I said no more-!” Warren opened his eyes. “Oh. It’s you. What do you need, Inspector?”
“The graffiti on Goulston street. I just saw a Constable with a mop and bucket going to clean it all off.”
“I don’t know of any such graffiti, Inspector.”
Abberline hardened. “Commissioner. That is evidence. I need it. This man is going to keep on killing and killing and killing until we stop him, and to do that, I need a full investigation.” He paused. “That or the army.”
“I outrank you, boy, don’t you forget that. Perhaps you’d be happier working the Arson Desk. Or maybe I could speak to the Home Secretary, and tell him I found radical socialist literature in your offices...”
“Sir! I need that evidence or more blood will be-!”
The Commissioner’s arms leapt out from behind him -- long, gnarled things like the branches of a tree -- and grabbed Abberline, forcing him around with the strength that should’ve been impossible for a twisted old man. He pinned the Inspector to the wall of the bakery like a mantis with its prey.
“There are ten million Jews in this city, Abberline! Ten millon!”
All became quiet on the street. The Constables turned, second-floor curtains twitched. Only the street girl, still resisting her marching orders, made a sound: “Go on, Sir, deck ‘im!”
“You want blood, Abberline?” The Commissioner was shaking viscously. “Then tell this rabble that the Jews have been murdering their women. Go on. I challenge you. Go before the crowd outside and say the innocent gentiles are under attack. You’ll know blood then, Abberline, on the front line of a bloody civil war.”
The Commissioner was breathing deep, his chest heaving. Beneath his thick velvet coat Abberline saw something move and glitter. Something gold, a gold chain, with an ancient symbol engraved upon it.
“I think you’re protecting someone, Commissioner Warren.” He kept his voice a level whisper. “And I don’t think it’s Jewish communities of London.”
Warren dropped him, and moved to walk away. “Take the rest of the day off, Inspector. That is an order. And if you ever say that again, I’ll have you thrown in the Thames.”
***
Scotland Yard stood square and squat in the middle of its London surroundings, out of place, and out of time. The place was running out of life -- this was the second headquarters of the Metropolitan police, and already it was becoming too small. Workmen were building its replacement, dubbed New Scotland Yard, at the very moment. Abberline wondered how long it’d be new, as he strode towards the uncompromising structure.
Inside no sunlight penetrated. Lamps were kept burning, men kept smoking, the dark wooden décor kept the place in a state of permanent night. Scotland Yard was a place time did not seem to touch, Abberline reflected as he climbed the stairs to his office. If the world were a body, he thought, then this corner was simply the bowels. Somewhere dark and unknown, where the wretched refuge of the age came to shelter.
At last the Inspector reached his floor. His men did little to even pretend to be busy. The Ripper Case had brought a heavy depression on them, and the events of last night had not lifted their spirits. With impunity this man murdered over and over again, and each time the men stood around the office failed to catch him. It was like with each slash of his knife, he hacked away a bit of their purpose.
Abberline hung up his coat.
“Alright everyone, listen close,” he called. Attention moved to him as he went to the evidence board. “Victims three and four came last night. Do we have confirmation of their identities yet?”
“Victim three is Elizabeth Stride, guvnor,” called one of the deputies. “And we’re pretty sure number four is Catherine Eddowes.”
Pretty sure. It would be hard to tell, considering what was done to her.
“Very good. But are we properly sure Stride was done by the same killer?”
“I think it’s safe to say, guvnor. All of ‘em were cut the same way, sir, left to right on their throats, as a right-hander would. Stride too. I think he were interrupted.”
Elizabeth Stride. Poor Elizabeth. Spared, in a strange way, but what did it matter? “Alright. Alright, so he cut Stride’s throat, but was walked-in on and moved onto Eddowes. Fine. I want to know why. And I want to know who interrupted him, so find and work any witnesses you can get your hands on.” He almost brought up the graffiti, but decided against it. The room was too crowded, and he didn’t know what to say. “Get back to work.”
Men returned to their desks, back to their solemn duties, trawling through endless statements, reports, and fragments of information, looking for the tiniest details. Abberline felt their fatigue. It was almost pungent, like a smell; it circulated through the room, and the Inspector felt himself begin to succumb to it. And he strode to his office, ignoring everyone, and collapsed into his chair, not even bothering to close the door behind him.
He closed his eyes. He didn’t let sleep take him, but he made a passing acquaintance with it. Strange half-dreams formed in his mind, the same vague nightmares as ever; a tree stood alone a burning field; a woman with black face and huge eyes wandered in a ruin; the sun failing to rise, instead four terrible arms crawled across the horizon. The taste of iron formed in his mouth, and in his heart...
“Inspector?”
Abberline jolted awake. How long had he dosed?
“Inspector Abberline, sir?” His young personal secretary stood at the door, poised to knock. He was only a slip of a boy who barely fit in his uniform.
“What is it?”
“There’s someone to see you, sir. Well, two people, actually, sir. Well, three, if you count the witness they’ve brought. Sir. They’re in the interview room. He says they’re from Special Branch.” The boy paused. “Sir.”
Abberline’s mood darkened. “Kidney,” he mumbled. Ben Kidney was one of the cabal that surrounded Commissioner Warren and his ilk, a merciless thug who cut his teeth brutalising tribesmen in West Africa, who was forever coming to Abberline to disrupt his investigation.
“No, sir. Not Mr Kidney.”
He frowned. “If not Kidney, then who?”
***
The man in the interview room was, indeed, not Ben Kidney. In fact, Abberline suspected few men in England could be so un-Kidney like. Whereas the Special Branch thug was short, broad and bald, like some savage oxen, this man was tall and willowy, with short hair and a face that the Inspector deduced smiled easily.
Whilst the tall man stood, his companions sat at the interview table. The first was a young man; a boy, in truth, good-looking and well-groomed, with well-light brown eyes. He smiled at the Inspector.
The other was a woman, clearly of lower social standing than the two gentlemen. She was pale and stark and clearly spent the week unbathed, and her crooked smile was a sharp slash across her face. She wore a tight shirt, to flatten her chest, no doubt, exactly like the woman from...
“...Goulston Street.”
“Ah, you are as perceptive as your reputation leads us to believe, Inspector Abberline,” the tall man said, and strode towards Abberline, handing him a wallet which contained credentials. “My name is the Doctor.”
“Doctor what?”
“Who. But, what will do for now,” he smirked. “We’re from Special Branch, which I’m sure you already know.”
“Mr Kidney is our...usual...Special Branch liaison. Is he unwell?” He tried to keep the hope from his voice. “You are a doctor, after all.”
“Very good! But we’re a different branch. The special...Special Branch.”
“The Special Special Branch?”
“Er, yeah,” the boy stood up from the table. “We deal with the really special stuff. Like you wouldn’t believe. That loser Kidney so far down the ladder we can’t even see him.”
Abberline rather liked this boy.
“Ah yes, this is my apprentice, Tommy Lindsay,” said the Doctor. “He lacks good decorum and often gets into trouble, but his maverick ways are an asset I couldn’t be without.”
“Projecting much?”
The Inspector cleared his throat. “My secretary told me you had a witness?”
“That’d be me, guv,” said the woman. “Nice to be remembered. Emma Wilder, at yer service, Mistah.”
“You were a reporter at Goulston street. Harassing Commissioner Warren.”
“I’d say you know a fair bit about ‘arassing yerself, sir,” Emma grinned. “Enjoyin’ a bit of the local culture, were we?”
Abberline turned his address to the Doctor. “Is this what this is about? The graffiti?”
“No,” Tommy explained. “Our investigation is separate to yours, but...there’s a lot of overlap.”
“We hoped we’d be able to help each other,” continued the Doctor. “Miss Wilder has been giving us a lot of important information. However, I fear we’ve come to something of a dead end. We need your help to complete our profile of the Ripper murders.”
“The murders are well-profiled, Doctor. It’s the murderer I’m interested in.”
“You’re not wrong. But as Tommy said, our investigations are different.”
Abberline sighed. At least this man’s riddles were more eloquent than Kidney’s. “What exactly can I help you with?”
“Emma thinks you have some information you can share with us,” Tommy said.
“And what is this information?”
“You, Mistah,” Emma crowed. “You’re the information.”
“I...I’m sorry?” Abberline looked around the room, from Emma, to Tommy, to the Doctor, and back to Emma, searching for some reasonable answer. “What do you mean, I’m the information?”
“Inspector Abberline,” the Doctor moved forward, placing a hand on his arm. “Do you know anything about time?”
“Sir, if you have just come to my department to babble nonsense at me...”
“You ‘ave dreams, Mistah?” Emma asked. A sudden quiet fell on Abberline’s mind as he turned to her. “Nightmares, more like? You see strange things, things that don’t make sense. But they feel so real, don’t they, Mistah? You can sense ‘em. Real things, just out of time.”
His core began to shake. The Inspector sturdied himself. “Doctor. I will not have my time and facilities wasted on delusion women, spouting this...this rural gypsy gibberish...”
In the corner of his eye, he saw Tommy flinch.
“Inspector Abberline,” the Doctor said, calmly. “Emma here believes you to be someone of true historical significance. I have never known her to be wrong.”
“She’s what we call Time Sensitive,” Tommy interjected. “That means...she can work things out. Whether certain things, or people, are important. It’s a rare ability, usually it only affects children, but Emma is very good at it.”
“’Scuse me!” retorted the woman. “I’m the best in the Empire, and you don’t forget it.”
The Inspector’s head swam. “What does this have to do with my dreams? Dammit, someone explain!”
“Yer dreams mean things, Mistah,” Emma said, unimpressed. “They tell you things about where yer livin’. Where yer life’s goin’. Every dream and nightmare you’ve ever ‘ad tells you somethin’ about where you’ve been.” She cracked her neck. “Or where yer goin’.”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn. “You’ve been at the centre of the Ripper killings. You’ve experienced his work more than anyone else. It’s bled into you. We believe that Emma can use that experience to find out precisely when his next victim will die.”
“We already know a lot,” Tommy offered. “But we need to know exactly when.”
Abberline brushed the Doctor away. What were these fools talking about? Yet he was drawn to them. The woman knew of his dreams. Perhaps she could tell him about the four terrible arms, what it was...how to stop it...
Nonsense! Nonsense! His head screamed. But the Doctor and Tommy seemed sincere, and Emma’s confidence seemed powerful. He remembered the way Commissioner Warren had thrown him against the wall, and how small he felt in that moment, and how afraid of ‘Jack the Ripper’. Much of his hope had been washed away with that graffiti on Goulston Street. Could these three, deluded as they were, offer him some anew?
“What, exactly, do you need me to do?”
“Just, sit down opposite Emma, Inspector,” Tommy smiled, gesturing to the chair. “And let her touch your hand.”
“A palm reading?”
“No, no, not at all. She just needs some contact with you.”
“Feel ye pulse,” Emma said, her flippancy forever strong. “See what dreams run through yer veins.”
“You are a deeply unnerving young woman,” Abberline finally made his decision. He took his seat on the interview table, opposite Emma. She grinned wide.
“Aw, thanks!” She extended her hand, the left. “Don’t worry, I don’t bite. Usually.”
The Doctor and Tommy moved to the side of the room, standing directly behind Abberline. They whispered to one another, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“If you’re lying to me,” the Inspector said, managing to just about keep his wavering voice under control. “I will have you thrown in the asylum.” He laid his hand in hers, and she covered it with her right.
“I believe you.” She smiled. All Emma’s paraphernalia fell away with the words, leaving behind something vague, but kind. For the first time Abberline felt he was seeing the truth of her.
Emma closed her eyes.
There was a noise. Like a gentle pop, or rush, like the air was leaving the room. Abberline was suddenly aware of the starkness of the room, surrounded by grimy cream tiles and nothing else. The lighting seemed to become darker. No. No that wasn’t right. The walls seemed to be moving back...
Emma’s face was less passive now. She frowned, lines visible on her forehead, as if searching for something...
The walls had disappeared into total darkness. Abberline looked over his shoulder, and could no longer see the Doctor and Tommy. It was like sitting in a long and dark alleyway; something was deeply wrong.
“I love my work,” Emma whispered to herself.
The Inspector snapped back to her. “What did you say?”
“I love my work,” she repeated. “Those words circle through your head. Like a merry-go-round...”
“You mean the letter? The letter from hell?”
Footsteps. Footsteps all around. The room turned a dreadful cold.
“One day...” Emma spoke, but the words did not seem her own. “One day, men shall look back...”
“I know what the letter says, Emma, I know the words,” The footsteps were getting closer, ever closer. “The footsteps I hear. Are they the next victim’s? Can we save her?”
“Kelly...”
“Kelly?”
“Mary...Jane...Kelly...”
“Is that...is that three people, or just one?”
“They’re words.”
“What?”
Emma opened her eyes, drowsily. Something seemed changed her; her pupils dilated; her whites bloodshot. “Mary Jane Kelly. They’re just words. There are loads of words.”
“Emma, I don’t...”
Suddenly she found energy, leaning towards him with incredible speed, gripping his hand like steel.
“So many words! Words like a pattern, like a trail, like a big long path, that’s all words are, a journey, all the way to the end of time. Let’s say them all!” She drew a deep breath. “Mary, Jane, Kelly, Elizabeth, Stride, Autumn, Rivers, Rose, Tyler, London, Empire, Earth, Earth’s a good one! Star, space, ship, gun, hyperdrive, I don’t even know what a hyperdrive is!”
“Emma, listen to me...”
“Fire, glory, iron, steel, death, doctor, not-doctor, warrior, hate, blood, time, lord, Jack, the, ripper,” she let go of Abberline, throwing her arms wide, cracking back her head and sucking in air like a drowning man, and screamed: “Ex-ter-min-ate!”
The light returned to the room. The walls came back. The footsteps stopped. And Emma Wilder fell out of her chair.
Tommy rushed to her at once as Abberline stood. He put his arm around her as she brought herself up.
“Did you go too far again?”
“Yeah,” she said, struggling for breath and rubbing her eyes. “It’s gettin’ ‘arder not to. Whatever this future problem of yours is, Doctor, I really ‘ope you solve it.”
“I hope so too, Emma,” the Doctor was at Abberline’s side. “Did you see a time?”
“9th November, or maybe 10th, in the earliest ‘ours. Marry Jane Kelly is goin’ to die.”
“I’ll set my men on finding her,” Abberline said, taken aback by his ability to so quickly believe what he was hearing. “Perhaps we can save her, or at least catch him as he kills her.”
“I’m not sure it will work out like that, Inspector Abberline,” said the Doctor, solemnly. “But, I hope you will do everything you can. Right now, it’s time for us to go. We have a lot of preparing to do.”
Tommy helped Emma to her feet and linked arms with her. She had gone paler than the Inspector thought possible, yet she found a way to blush all the same. The Doctor shook his hand. “We can see ourselves out, Inspector. I know we’ll see you again.”
The three left quickly. Startlingly quickly, leaving Abberline alone in the interview room, bemused, and wondering if he’d just experienced another one of his dreams.
***
Days passed. Soon enough they snowballed into weeks, and before Abberline and his men could so much as mark the passing of the autumn sunshine, the bitter cold of November was upon them. It might’ve sapped the energy from them, if they had any left.
Morale had become an abstract concept within the investigation. They’d searched endlessly, day after day for Mary Jane Kelly, but with no luck. It was almost certain that it was an assumed name, or if it were real, she went by a different one; the distrust of the police amongst the Whitechapel people was bone-deep, and the woman had no faith in them to keep them safe.
Many of the investigators shared in their atheism. Some of the men had quietly moved to different investigations, or different departments, whispering to other ranking officers, promising favours or cashing in cultural capital to get moved to somewhere, to anywhere, that wasn’t the Ripper murders. It was becoming harder and harder for Abberline to persuade his officers to keep looking for the allusive Kelly -- some suspected that he was losing his mind, dogmatically pursuing one prostitute that no one had ever heard of, driven to the edge by this killer in the dark. None said it to his face, though a few failed to lower their voices when saying it, these days.
And all the time Kidney remained on his heels, violently rolling in each new failure of the investigation, wrestling like some savage animal to draw some blood that he could bring back to his masters, Commissioner Warren and the others. He did not fight fair, and Abberline did not have the energy to chase him away. He kept his encounter with the Doctor a secret from Kidney, however; that was something that belonged to him.
The Inspector still dreamed the same dream, the burning tree, the woman in the strange mask, the four terrible arms, but now the Doctor and Tommy and Emma were mixed in, too; running, always running, always on the very edge of the horror around them. How did they always seem to survive? Always seem to move on? One night he saw the Doctor in the London -- a different London, one with brighter skies and brighter people -- facing a metal creature that burned with hate and screamed with Emma’s voice, ‘Exterminate!’ Yet the Doctor did not flinch. Abberline’s own nemesis prayed on his nerves. When, or if, the time came for their confrontation, would he remain unbent?
Sometimes Abberline prayed that the three would return to him, just for a few minutes, just for a moment, even, and help him to find Mary Jane Kelly, and save her from her fate. Or try, at the very least.
One November 9th, his prayer was answered.
The night was late, and just as darkness settled on London, so it smothered Abberline’s mind. They had failed; Mary Jane Kelly would be found dead tomorrow, and Jack the Ripper would escape into the night, as always.
The Inspector told his men to go home, which they did, promptly and without question. Abberline settled down in his office, too depressed even to drink, and wished his mind to any other topic than the poor girl with the terrible fate. He shut his eyes and let darkness cloud him.
“Inspector,” said a voice from somewhere. “We need your help again.”
Abberline jerked awake to see who spoke. In front of him stood a young man, a boy with brown eyes.
“Tommy!” The boy wore the same clothes as before. “But what...but how...?!”
“It’s good to see you again,” he smiled. “But we’ve hit an obstacle. Will you help us?”
“Of course, of course!” Abberline’s mind raced. Of course they’d return just as the right time, that’s always what happened in his dreams, and Emma said herself that dreams speak truth. “Can we save her? Mary Jane Kelly, I mean?”
Tommy darkened. He cast his eyes to the floor. “You best ask the Doctor about that.” As the boy left the room Abberline felt dread descend on him. He followed.
The Doctor and Emma were sat by the desks in the middle of the office, pouring through documents so quickly and haphazardly as to leave them strewn all over. When Emma heard them approach, she looked up and beamed.
“Here ‘e is, the man of the moment. ‘Ow’re you sleepin’, guv?”
“I suspect you know,” Abberline cleared his throat. “Doctor. What can we do?”
The Doctor looked up, though despite looking straight at the Inspector, he barely acknowledged him. “We need your help, Inspector. We need to get into a building.”
“Which building?”
“Oh nowhere important, just the Home Office.”
Abberline blinked. “The Home Office?”
“Mhm.”
“But...” He looked to Tommy for some reassuring look, but got none. “You’re Special Branch, aren’t you? You could see the Home Secretary any time?”
“We’re the Special Special Branch, remember?” The boy was clearly trying to inject some levity, and falling spectacularly. “Some things are just really so secret.”
“There’s information, documents and other things, inside the Home Office that we need,” the Doctor explained, standing from his desk at last. “But requesting them will take too long. We need them tonight. We’ve tried getting in once but the building is deadlocked, and well-guarded -- your Commissioner Warren has some very advanced technology for 1888. So we need a man on the inside.”
“Me,” Abberline said. “You want me to deceive my superiors and help you break into Her Majesty’s Office for Home Affairs, to steal information. Is that right?”
“’Bout sums it up,” Emma said. “You up for it?”
“It’s treason.”
“It’s a chance to learn the truth about the Ripper,” Tommy said quietly. “We need to get in there, and we need to do it tonight.”
“Because of Mary Jane Kelly? How will this information save her, exactly?”
Everyone in the room looked away from Abberline’s eyes. Only Emma had the courage to speak.
“I don’t think it will, guv,” she said sadly, the sincerity creeping into her once again. “’Er death, it’s...It’s like ‘er life was so complicated, so full of things that ‘appened, and looked at by so many people that ‘er death...I can’t describe, not properly, I’m not clever enough.” She rubbed her eyes, as if the effort of explaining was exhausting her. “But if you come with us, ‘elp us, you might be able to understand?”
She looked to Tommy, perhaps hoping for applause. He gestured to the Doctor. “You do this stuff a lot better than he does.”
“Yes, well said, Emma,” the Doctor moved to Abberline’s side. “I know you want to stop this man, and I know you want to know whether he even is a man. I can’t promise you all the answers. But help us, and I can promise you that his killing will reach an end tonight.”
Abberline studied the Doctor. For a month there was nothing but dreams and anxieties, and the name of Mary Jane Kelly, and the words of the terrible letter from hell. Now this man came before and begged for his help, in return for what seemed very little. But all the same, Tommy and Emma were true enough, at least in his judgement. Which so much horror already, what did he have left to lose?
***
The Reception to Her Majesty’s Office for Home Affairs was far grander than the one to Scotland Yard. Darkness insulated the latter, but here, large glass windows and the finest English décor made the place seem like, despite the night outside, the day would never be lost on it.
Abberline strode to the front desk, nerves jangling inside his mind, but he did not let on. The young policeman manning the station did not raise his head as he approached.
“I have an appointment with Mr Benjamin Kidney,” he said as boldly as he could. “Quickly, if you please.”
“Mr Kidney isn’t here at the moment,” the officer said. He sported a close beard, but the blonde colour of it simply made it look like dirt.
“Well, I have an appointment tonight, all the same. Will he be back soon.”
“I couldn’t say, Sir.”
“Well. I shall go and wait in his office, then.” He turned to head up the stairs.
That prompted him to look up, sharply. “Sir you must not go upstairs without permission, that is for authorised persons only!”
“I am authorised, I have an appointment.”
“Sir,” the officer was becoming flushed. “You simply must wait down here if you wish to see Mr Kidney tonight.”
Abberline narrowed his eyes, hoping to intimate the boy, but to no avail. He moved away from the stairs. “Very well. But note I am not pleased. I shall be having a word with Mr Kidney about this, Officer...” He peered at the name tag on his uniform. “...Ryan.”
The boy didn’t respond, his head sinking back down to its original position. Abberline moved to one of the large glass windows, looking out into the London streets beyond. The signal would come soon, and he would need to act quickly.
“Good lord, what is that!” Abberline said, after waiting minutes. Officer Ryan pulled himself from the desk, sluggishly at first, but once he noticed the twinkling red and orange light dancing through the courtyard outside, he moved much quicker.
“Is that...fire?” he asked as he got to the Inspector’s side.
“Get to the door boy, quickly, see what it is!”
Together they rushed to the main door and looked out. The light no longer twinkled, but instead burned; a lit barrel, flaming and rolling down the courtyard, sending embers and white smoke into the sky. This was Emma’s signal.
“Free Ireland!” called a voice from the distance. A female voice, with a deeply unconvincing Irish accent.
Suddenly the barrel cracked open with a loud and terrible bang like thunder, and the wood came apart in a bright flash. Ryan and Abberline flinched back, despite the fact the bomb was all spectacle and no danger; the Doctor had designed it deliberately that way.
This fact was lost on Officer Ryan, however. After recovering from his shock, he pulled his whistle from his pocket it and blew as hard as his little lungs could manage, the piercing screech penetrating the Inspector’s skull.
Once he was finished (and red-faced) Ryan rushed out into the courtyard. The other officers in the reception followed straight after, all eager to share in the glory of catching a terrorist, and within moments the outside was fit to bursting with guards and officers, all desperately barking orders over each other like dogs in the kennel.
Abberline, in contrast, was left all alone.
Quickly he shot up the stairs, taking them two at a time, flight after flight until he reached his floor. It was high up, and cold, and eerily silent -- the commotion outside did not penetrate the thick glass windows up here. Starlight poured through them, seemingly annulling the orange casts of the burning gas lamps, turning the place a strange and terrible silver. As Abberline took breath he exhaled large clouds, and he began to wonder whether he was truly seeing frost on the furniture, or if his imagination was running away from him. He pulled his coat tighter, not just to shield the cold, but alleviate the feeling that eyes were on him. Eyes that looked deep.
He drew his revolver for extra comfort.
Methodically he moved around the floor, finding no other souls, until at last he came to the door of Ben Kidney’s office. He placed his hand on the freezing brass knob, curling his fist around it in a strong grip. He dreaded to think what he might find on the other side; Kidney? The Commissioner? The Ripper himself?
He pushed his shoulder up against the door defensively, drawing his revolver upwards, near his face, ready to swing forward and fire. Nerves grabbed him as he tested the door -- unlocked, it wouldn’t need much force to push through.
Abberline breathed deep, and made a small prayer, and forced through the door, pointing the end of his pistol into the room.
Empty. Empty and uninteresting. The room was cold and silvery like the rest of the floor, but was barely decorated; a plain desk and plain chair stood by a plain wall, adorned only with another glass window. It was the first time in all the times he’d been here that Abberline realised just how bare the place was. Perhaps Kidney himself was normally a key feature.
The Inspector swept the room quickly, keeping his gun outstretched, to check no one was hiding in dark corners. Satisfied, though not exactly happy, he lowered the firearm.
Rap-rap-rap.
Abberline swung around to face to the window. There, silhouetted in the starlight, was a hand, gentle knocking on the glass. It was a slender, feminine hand -- Emma’s.
He rushed over and with some force pulled open the latch on the window, pushing the glass up. Reaching through he grabbed Emma by the waist, and hoisted her into the office.
“Tommy, shimmyin’ up a flamin’ steel drainpipe in the middle of a November night ain’t my idea of a good first date.”
Tommy and the Doctor followed her through, rather less elegantly, arriving in a mess of limbs on the floor. Tommy just sighed.
“Well, we’re in now, that’s what matters,” the Doctor said, untangling himself and leaping to his feet. “Now, let’s see what we can find.”
He reached into his jacket and fumbled around for a moment, before drawing out a metal tube, like a pen, but different somehow. The Doctor held it up, and it emitted a strange whistling sound, which oscillated as he scanned around the room.
“What is that?” Abberline asked.
“It’s a...Special Branch thing,” Tommy said, finally on his feet, clearly having given up.
“I thought we were looking for documents?”
“We’re looking for information,” the Doctor said, never taking his eyes from his tube. “But not physical information, not numbers or language. That’s why Emma is with us.”
“So, something of a...spiritual nature?”
“That’s a good way of puttin’ it,” Emma added.
“Doctor,” the Inspector started. Again his head was swimming, just like in the Interview Room, when Emma touched him with her mind. “All this...all this talk, of spiritual things...I will not pretend to understand, nor press you to explain, but...please answer me this: is Jack the Ripper of this world?”
“I believe he is, Inspector. But unless we act fast, he may not be for much longer.”
With that, there was a loud click, and the Doctor put away his metal tube. From out of the wall he was facing, a door swung -- a tiny, narrow door, that lead to somewhere dark.
Together the four of them crowded around the tiny dark doorway, and looked into the abyss. It housed a staircase -- narrow and spiral, heading straight down like a cylinder in the depths. They did not exchange words, only glances, and one by one they entered the staircase, and descended to the depths.
***
The starlight coming from the room above lit the dark descent for longer than Abberline anticipated, however within minutes they were making their way in a pitch darkness, their hands all clinging to the central column as they went round and round. The Doctor led the front, whilst Abberline followed in the rear; in the middle, the Inspector could just make out Tommy and Emma holding onto each other.
“Doctor,” Tommy whispered, breaking the silence like it was sugar glass. “Doctor, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” came the answer. “But I get the feeling I know what you’re going to say.”
“Why are we here?”
“That’s the one,” the Doctor sighed. “We’re here to test my hypothesis, Tommy.”
“But why here? Why Jack the Ripper? What are we watching five women die? Why aren’t we solving it? Stopping it?”
The Inspector wondered if he should add to the conversation. He decided against it -- right now, he would just listen.
“It’s not as simple as that, Tommy. Right now, right here, in this year, in this moment in time, incredible things are happening. Terrible things. Wilhelm the 2nd is becoming Kaisar of Germany. Adolf Hitler is being conceived. Hell, the first work towards the atom bomb is being made. And one brutal murderer is working his way through the women of Whitechapel.
Those things might be linked. The horrors here might be...might be bleeding into the fabric of time. Corrupting it, undermining it. But we’re just looking at one moment in an ocean of time, a flashpoint, one quantum molecule of air in an atmosphere. The history of Jack the Ripper is so complex, it’s like a thousand tracks and layers all riding over each other. Anything about this time could be true or not true, you understand? Like Schrödinger’s cat. The truth of this depends on how you see it.”
The Inspector worried he might trip in the darkness, so confused as he was. Were they not going to find the identity of Jack the Ripper? Was it even possible?
“That doesn’t explain why we’re leaving Mary Jane Kelly to die,” Tommy said, with mourning in his voice.
The Doctor, unhappy with the response he was about to give, sighed: “Because we don’t know who killed her.”
Silence fell for the rest of their journey. Abberline could not say how long it took -- minutes? Hours? Everything but his own mind was gone down here, but even that seemed to be slipping away too; sometimes his imagination drifted to the woman in the strange mask, or the terrible four armed creature, silently making the descent with him. How would he know if they were truly alone? After a time, he nearly convinced himself they’d find the burning tree of his dreams at the bottom of the steps.
A small clatter. Abberline stopped, but not soon enough not to bump into the back of Emma. The strange whistling sound of the Doctor’s metal tube came again.
“Don’t quote me,” he said. “But I think we’ve reached the end.”
“When you put it like that...” quipped Emma.
There was a loud crash, then a clunk, like a mighty leaver being pulled, then the scream of some great heavy hinges, as door opened in front of them, letting in a dim light that stung Abberline’s eyes.
Once the door of light was open far enough, the four them filtered through, into the chamber beyond.
This space was huge, and dark and reverberant, and each of the Inspector’s breaths seemed to bounce off the walls like footballs. The room was circular, perfectly circular, to the point that it seemed almost impossible. Five doors (including the one they entered through) lined the room, which were also curved, in perfect tandem with the walls. Ten equally spaced torches provided the only light in the room, but they were not especially interesting.
It was the floor that was truly amazing.
Painted onto the cold stone ground, beautifully, intrinsically, with painstaking scale and accuracy, was a map of the whole of London. It was constructed with amazing paints and bright colours; the whole thing seemed to teem with an intoxicating energy.
“Bloody ‘ell,” he heard Emma breathe.
“What the hell are you doing down here?!”
Abberline swung round and pointed his gun at the source of the voice. There Commissioner Warren stood in some ornate and arcane uniform, his whiskers turning almost black in the strange light, his face dark with anger.
“Ah, Commissioner Warren said,” the Doctor said. “It’s nice to finally put a face to the mildly historically significant name.”
“Abberline,” the Commissioner ignored the Doctor, his voice deep with the rage. “The things you are interfering with are so far beyond what you can imagine. What is it you want, hmm? What do you think you can do?”
“I think he wants to put you under arrest.”
“Shut up!” Abberline screamed at the Doctor. He did so. “It’s your turn to listen to me, Commissioner. I want him. I don’t care who he is. Or how powerful. I want him delivered to me with a bag over his head, or a bullet in the back of it.”
“I’m not sure the Commissioner can keep that promise,” the Doctor said. “You’ve lost control of him, haven’t you? Sent him on some special mission but now he’s gone too far, right?”
“He was...” the words stuck in Warren’s throat. “He was never meant to do...this.”
“But who is he?!” The Inspector was close to tears. “Tell me who he is, or I swear I’ll-”
“Doctor.”
Tommy’s echoing voice silenced the room. They each turned to him, and found him staring at Emma, who in turn was staring at the floor, right where her foot had landed.
“What’s wrong with her?” the Doctor asked.
“I don’t know, she’s just...she just stopped.”
Seconds that felt like hours passed, and finally Emma moved. She lifted her foot from the map, slowly and gently, to see what area she was covering. It was nothing of amazing importance, just an inn, just a tiny tavern room in the district of Whitechapel...
Emma collapsed. Tommy caught her just before she hit the ground too hard, and the Doctor rushed over. Abberline kept his gun trained of the Commissioner.
“Emma?” the Doctor said. “Emma, can you hear me?”
“She’s...” the girl whispered, tears streaming down her face. “Mary Jane Kelly, she’s...oh god, what he did to her!”
Abberline turned cold. “The five...” Commissioner Warren breathed. “He’s completed the five. Now he can do anything.” The Inspector went to ask him what he meant, but the Doctor spoke first.
“Emma, do you know where he’s going? Can you feel him?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can.” she said bravely, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “He’s become something new, like a spirit. Now he’s going back to where it all began. Someplace...dark. Full of madness and suffering.”
“The Asylum.” Warren said. “Mortomb Asylum, on the edge of the city. It’s closed now, but that’s where it all began.”
“Why would he go there?” Tommy asked. “What started there?”
“A birth,” the Commissioner answered, cryptically, and sombrely.
“Each of the murders has made a wound in time. That’s what deaths do,” the Doctor explained. “He’s been absorbing all the bleeding energy, trying to find a way to force himself through the tears to become something. If there’s some kind of big break in time at the Asylum, something of historical significance, he might be able to push through it, enter onto the next plane of existence.”
None of this made sense to Abberline, but he did not question.
“How quickly can we get there?” the Doctor asked him.
“Not that quickly. An hour, at least.”
“An hour we don’t have,” the Doctor stroked his chin, thinking. “Inspector, please handcuff the Commissioner to something.”
He needed no further instruction on that front. He grabbed the Commission and chained him to one of the five doors, ignoring all his protests.
The Doctor turned to the girl on the floor, who seemed to finally be regaining her strength. “Emma,” he said gently, and with that word it was all wiped away again.
“No,” she said, new tears forming in her eyes. “No. No, you can’t. I said I’d never do it again. You can’t!”
“Doctor!” Tommy hissed. “You can’t ask her to do that!”
“We need to get there now.”
“It tore me up!” Emma cried. “Last time I did it, it was like someone had stabbed at my insides with a red hot poker. I couldn’t stop crying for days. It was agony!”
“Emma. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you to. I really, truly wouldn’t.”
She grabbed her hair and thrust her head between her legs. Abberline thought she was about to scream. After a time, she lifted it back up, and her face had turned to stone.
“If I do this for you,” Emma said, her tone level. “Then I never, ever, want to see you again. Either of you.” She didn’t say it to Tommy’s face, but all the same, he seemed hurt.
The Doctor took a moment. “Understood,” he said finally. “Tommy can stay here with you for now, then we’ll leave you.” He stood up, and turned to the Inspector. “Inspector Abberline, we’re about to go on a trip.”
“I don’t...” the Doctor grabbed the elbow of his gun arm, and pulled him close.
Emma pulled herself to her knees, facing the two men. Tommy knelt behind her. She closed her eyes and reached out with her hands, like she was grabbing some invisible force. Abberline felt something take hold of him. Was it just his imagination again?
Emma’s face was straining. Her brow furrowed, tears coming thicker and faster. Her whole body seemed to shaking with an agony she could barely control. Something seemed ready to burst out of her.
Then Emma screamed.
A sound. Like air leaving the room, only much louder this time like thunder. Abberline felt weightless, and lost his grip on the Doctor, and then was falling, through endless blackness...
***
Cold concrete touched the Inspector’s face as his eyelids fluttered open, straining with little futile energy, like tiny butterflies beating against a hurricane. Something wet and cold dripped with incredible rhythm against the back of his neck, each drop of stagnant water sending cold kisses down his spine. He felt as though he were in bed; a hard bed, that gave no true warmth or comfort, that he shared with his lover, Lady Death, her long freezing fingers running through his hair, and her blue dead lips touching his neck, though of course he felt no breath.
“Abberline...”
He fantasised about his sweetheart’s looks. In Abberline’s mind she was tall and pale and her long and graceful arms reached out like the branches of a willow. On her face she wore a black mask, that was frightening and alien to him, possessing huge glass eyes that reflected that at which they looked, and the mouth of the mask was long and rubbery and puckered with tiny holes like the snout of some dreadful sea creature. When she removed the mask to kiss him, her face looked like Emma’s, though her skin was so white as to barely seem there at all, her eyes were black and wet like pools of oil, and the thin crooked lines of her smiling lips were sky-blue.
“Abberline...” came the whisper again.
“Go away,” he told the voice, drowsily. He wanted to be left alone in his cold bed, in the arms of his cold lover, enjoying her cold kisses.
“Abberline...!” the whisper was more insistent, getting closer, the nuance of the voice become more defined. And then, cutting through the fog of his dreams: “ABBERLINE!”
The Inspector was awake, and flailing, unconsciously trying to roll away from the awful, bitter water that was spilling down his face. He’d awoken somewhere dark, faint in light, quiet in sound. The Doctor crouched just to his side, watching over him.
“Abberline,” he said. “Unprotected warping can be upsetting. Are you okay?”
He was nauseous and dizzy and wanted to sleep, but Abberline lied to the Doctor all the same. “I’m fine,” he said, sitting himself up. He looked around his location -- he was in a corridor, made of concrete, lit only by tiny barred windows high above that syphoned off some moonlight. Lined all along Abberline’s sides were cells, cell after cell after cell, heavy metal doors wide open to empty confinement spaces. “The asylum,” he realised. “We’re in the asylum. How is that possible?”
“Emma,” the Doctor said. “Emma sent us here. It’s called warping; she reached into time, pulled open a tiny hole, just big enough for us to fall through.” Shame played on the Doctor’s face. “It’s not an easy thing for her to do.”
He put out a hand, and helped the Inspector to his feet. Abberline still gripped his revolver, turning his knuckles white, and the Doctor pointed to it. “I don’t approve,” he said. “And if you’re not careful, it could cause more problems than it’ll solve.”
“How so? Once I find this murderer, I intend to put him down like the dog he is. I have the final solution to Jack the Ripper, right here in my hand.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But he’s already in this asylum, which means he’s already changed, which means not everything here is going to be as it seems.” The Doctor reached into his coat and pulled out his strange metal tube. He held it straight up in front of him, and the strange whistling sound began. “Time here is bleeding like an open wound. Images and ideas from the past and the future are leaking out. Which means you’re going to see things. But you have to remember: none of them are real.” He paused. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Alright, alright -- generally. But just don’t start shooting willy-nilly, you don’t know what you might hit.” The Doctor moved his strange tube, following some invisible trail across the air. He pointed down the corridor. “That way,” he said, then span on his heels and started walking in the opposite direction.
It took Abberline a moment. “You’re suggesting we split up?”
“We can cover more ground,” the Doctor called back, following the noise of his strange device. Already he was disappearing into the darkness. “Find him quicker. And remember: whatever he’s done to himself, he’s still just a man.”
With that, the Doctor disappeared.
Abberline steeled himself. He was frightened -- God, he was frightened. He was gripped with a greater terror than he ever imagined. But all the same he turned, and carried on down the strange moonlit corridor. The Inspector knew a little something about time himself; he knew when the right time had come.
For minutes, he walked aimlessly, following the endless rows of empty cells, not knowing what he was looking for. The rooms were terrifying confines. Despite their silence, they seemed to scream at him, the emptiness of them calling out like dead and desperate souls.
Time went on, and Abberline’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. The asylum had been out of use for only a year, and yet it was derelict already. Pipes rusted and mould grew up the walls. After a while he noticed something on the floor -- three painted lines, green, blue and red -- all leading in the same direction. He decided to follow them to a junction in the cells, where the green departed to the left, and the red and blue to the right. Hoping he would be lead to the centre of the complex, the Inspector took the right.
His decision was rewarded. Soon enough, he came across a sign pinned to the wall, that read:
MALE INFIRMARY: BLUE
FEMALE INFIRMARY: RED
Commissioner Warren’s words seemed to float through the air. ‘A birth...’ they said with sorrow. The Ripper was here because of a birth. An important birth.
Abberline followed the red line.
Another turn, this time to the left. Once again, Abberline found himself staring down a huge line of cells. But at the end stood his prize: the Female Infirmary. There he would learn the truth.
That feeling again. That sound, like air leaving the room. Abberline knew that sound now, and he knew that it meant something was changing. He remembered the Doctor’s words: the things he would see would be simple illusions, nothing more.
He pulled up his gun nevertheless.
The Inspector’s pace felt terrible to him, but all the same he kept it slow, scanning every way he could for traps. He came past the first cell.
It was bigger on the inside.
A whole world was crammed inside that room. A clear and beautiful blue sky stood proud above a golden field, that seemed to go on forever and ever and ever. Despite himself, Abberline stopped and stared. A tall tree stood in the field, an amazing and majestic specimen, the species of which he could not place, and the red-and-green leaves touched with orange sunlight seemed almost Oriental in their beauty.
Something moved. Across the blue sky, a trail of white, like a thin cloud, or long wisp of smoke. Then came the light. A bright light, white and brilliant, that drained away the wonderful blue and gold and green and red, and left only the black silhouette of the tree. Abberline shielded his eyes. Then came the heat, a dry and harsh wave that could burn anything. The tree caught aflame, and within seconds was burned away to nothing.
The Inspector moved on.
He passed several empty cells before he came upon the next vision. Again, the open cell door acted as a window into another world. But this world was grey, and in the gun-metal sky rolled clouds of noxious yellow. Abberline could see ruins in this world, like the remains of a small, now-gone castle. In these ruins wondered a woman, in nurse’s garb, with that strange mask upon her face. She seemed lost.
“I understand,” Abberline said aloud. He raised his voice. “You can’t use my own dreams against me, Ripper. I’m coming for you all the same.”
The woman stopped. She turned, shaking, as if scared, to look straight in Abberline’s direction.
“Who said that?!” she called.
Abberline went cold. Then he moved on.
In time, his slow pace took him to the last cell before the Infirmary. He saw no huge world or amazing vista in this cell, only two ordinary, down-beat people; a woman, with lank brown hair, and a swollen belly, and a man, who punched her across the face.
As his fist impacted he turned to smoke, and the woman fell to her knees, blood and tears pouring down her face. She clutched her pregnant stomach. And it began to glow.
White light poured through her green-brown dress. It seemed to move through her veins, making her whole body glow a strange translucent pink, like when one held their finger up to a candle. It grew stronger, more bright, the white light in her stomach becoming a perfect, white circle, whilst the woman herself became lost in her own glow. She was no longer in a human shape, instead only a coloured blob of a background, a red so bright it was almost cartoonish.
In her stomach, or the circle, or the white light, four arms appeared. Not twisted things, Abberline could see that now. They were perfectly straight, perfectly angular, spearing out in four directions. Spears of iron, they were, ready to reach out and stab anything and everything around them.
The Inspector stood and gawked at this strange symbol for as long as he dared. It filled him with a terror he could not describe. He committed the symbol and the colours to his memory, and vowed, should he ever see a human use it without irony, he could mark them as evil.
He tore his eyes away from the dreadful spectacle, and moved to the door of the infirmary.
He took his time in pushing open the metal doors that opened to the room, that screamed as they scraped across the floor. Abberline hoped to find the Ripper in there; damn what the Doctor said, there was a gun in his hand, bullets to be fired, and the heads of murderers to go through.
At first look the infirmary was empty. Tens of beds, all lining up like neat little soldiers, but no patients. Save one...
An operating table squatted, dead in the centre of the room, bright halogen lights and thick leather straps surrounding it, making a mockery of the surgeons who had once done the same. And the patient, was no more than a bear.
A child’s teddy bear, small and battered, with only one and hundreds of stitches, perched in the centre of the operating table, the white lights piercing into it. Abberline stared at the bear, and the bear stared back.
Something moved behind it. The vaguest of shadows. For a moment, it looked like a man.
Then the room tore apart with fury and lightning.
The noise was deafening to Abberline. He reeled back, pointing his gun even as he covered his eyes with his free hand. Beds and equipment flew around the room, and tiles were ripped from the walls.
When the Inspector finally dared look, he saw the bear was gone, replaced by a tall and angry column of red smoke, swirling, filling the room with light and noise and the smell of sulphur.
I told you, came a voice. It was everywhere, and nowhere, and inside Abberline’s own head. That I would give birth to the Twentieth Century.
Something warm ran down Abberline’s leg.
He wanted to run. To bolt and run and never, ever, ever look back. He wanted to be a child again. He wanted to be asleep in the arms of his fantasies. However twisted and terrible they were, they were not real. But no one could deny the existence of this satanic thing.
You fear me.
“No,” Abberline blurted. No, he would not run. Months he had tried to stop this beast. Man or demon, he would do his job.
All fear me.
“Those who cannot defend themselves, maybe. Those who cannot see into the shadows where you lurk. But we can all see you now, Jack. You’re in the light, and that means you’ve lost.”
You believe it matters. I have created something more than you can understand. The future, carved into my image. A perfect circle. Heaven on Earth.
“You-”
Where do you think we are? What do you think this place is, little man? It is a place where men eat each other and the smoke of their torment rises into infinity. Go on. Name it. Name this place, Inspector Abberline. Name. My. Kingdom.
Dread washed over him. Dread, or numbness, or both. He both felt everything, and nothing, and knew he was being lied to, and he believed.
“No. We are not there. Not yet.” His throat was as dry as the desert. “That is your place. Where you belong. It is not here.”
It does not matter. The birth is complete. I have brought forth my world.
Abberline’s mind raced. What to do? What to say? Two words. That’s all he could manage now. He prayed they would be enough.
“Go back...” he whispered.
Go back?
“Go...back...”
Who are you to command me?
“Go back...” The Inspector scrunched his eyes shut, and willed himself strength. “Go back...go back...go back TO HELL!”
He did not look. He did aim. He did open his eyes, even to peak. He just pulled up his gun, aimed towards the noise, and fired.
The smoke screamed. It was an unholy, monstrous noise, like man and woman and child and metal and chalk on black board all being dragged through the inferno. The bullet took hold in the centre of the column, in the centre of the heart of the thing that claimed to have once been a man, and the room pulled inward, an incredible force that sucked Abberline, and his gun, and the beds, and the smoke itself inwards, bending the space of the room.
There was a sigh. Then a crack.
Then there was nothing.
The Inspector lay on his back, alone, in the silent room. God, his eyelids were heavy. He couldn’t feel the warm wet patch on his trousers any more. But then, he couldn’t really feel anything.
He didn’t hear the Doctor running down the corridor to get to him. He didn’t hear the Doctor speaking to him, spewing out endless meaningless words. All he heard was his own long, silent apology, to five dead women from Whitechapel.
***
Tommy crouched down in the sand of the beach, picking up a pebble and fiddling with it as he spoke. The tears clouded the old man’s vision even further; he could barely see anything.
“The Doctor was testing a hypothesis,” Tommy said. He didn’t look at the old man.
“What hypothesis?” Abberline asked.
The boy sighed. “I didn’t really get it. It was about...how the actions of people affect the progress of time. How the good actions beget good things. How the bad actions...well, you get the idea.”
“I understand. The Whitechapel killings, they bled into time. They caused the War, didn’t they?”
Tommy nodded.
“God,” Abberline was crying heavier now. “My God. If you knew, that that awful war was coming...couldn’t you stop it?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think it worked like that.”
“I see. I do. So the Doctor just wanted to confirm the truth of the time, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“But what for? I’m not what I was, Tommy. But I’m still a detective at heart. The Doctor was looking at this hypothesis because he believed something new was going to happen. Some new horror, that he wants to pre-empt. Am I right?” Abberline leaned back on his cane, hard.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Inspector.” Tommy stood up, and scratched the back of his head. “He called it a Time War.”
Abberline sighed. He’d given up on waving away the mists in his vision. “What of Emma? I never heard of her again.”
“Neither did we,” Tommy didn’t try to keep the hurt from his voice. “We kept our promise.”
“I hope she found something that fit her. Lived a good life. I think of her often.”
“Me too.”
Across the beach, all the way down the other end, there was a light groaning sound, like a wheezing of some old tramp that littered the Bournemouth streets this time of year. Abberline looked down to see the source, and saw, just about, something small and blue that wasn’t there before.
“That’s the Doctor,” Tommy said, and he could hear the smile in his voice. “He’s remembered me, bloody finally. I bet he’s not even fixed what he set out to fix.”
The boy laughed. The old man smiled in solidarity.
Tommy extended his hand. “Thank you, Inspector. It’s good to see you again.” Could he really think of nothing else to say?
Abberline shook. “Indeed. Enjoy your adventures, Tommy. Treasure them.”
“I will.” With that, their hands parted, and Tommy made his way down the beach, towards the blue speck. Abberline watched him go, until he could no longer distinguish him from all the other blurs on the beach.
Abberline turned to go home. The strangeness of the day was over for him now, and he could let his sad memories rest again. His vision failed him still, save for one moment, when the sea air blew just right, just enough to blow the mist away, and his glasses rested in just the right spot.
And he saw her. Emma Wilder, looking out to the water, her pale face passive, her straw hair blowing around. Could it truly be her? Not ageing a day, just like Tommy? Was the old man’s imagination running away with him again? For a tiniest fraction of a tiniest second, he thought he saw her turn to him, and give a faint, thin, crooked smile.
Then the mist returned, and Emma was gone.
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NEXT TIME
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