Happy Jack thought he could see blazing white pantalettes and bloomers hanging in the dark, with just ever‑so‑much soiling. He thought of dead bodies casting off their clothes underground, like snakes shedding skin, all them unmentionables leeching to the top… barbed black legs and antennae raking at him passionately… Happy Jack could not escape from Hell. He could not love enough. Where was the lad now? He stumbled into one hidden court after another looking for him. No kingdom of peace for Happy Jack. No smiling family. No loving wife. No child to carry on his face. Just the dead mothers, always in his way, stopping him. So he’d turned around and gone a different way.
“Don’t be a mewler, Jack,” the lad said out of the soup just ahead. “You’ll need some dash-fire in your belly if you’re to survive the chapel.”
Jack went off his onion then, couldn’t believe the boy’s bloody cheek to speak that way. To Jack of all people, who’d had to endure the fires of Hell afore he got to that babe’s age. He commenced a run into the fog, bellowing like a bull and mad as hops. Course he couldn’t find him, the boy having enough brains to run off by then.
He run into the usual collection of beggars and whores instead, his boots mashing the softer bits of them unfortunates, and the times being what they was he heard more than the usual portion of screaming, what with the whole populace down with the vapors over this Jack the Ripper affair, and just for a spell he forgot it was him they was referring to. He weren’t no big toad—he was just doing what he had to do. They all had their own stories about what he done.
Had he really eaten the kidney of that Eddowes woman? He didn’t think so. He was disgusted by the very notion. They was saying he cut open the bodies and made off with his little souvenirs, and maybe sometimes he did. Sometimes he’d find things he didn’t understand when he’d opened them up, things what made him curious. So maybe he’d put em in a pouch and take em home with him. He’d usually forget about em afterwards, or lose em. He thought probably the rats what was always visiting him made off with them souvenirs.
Sometimes he’d smell the bits, putting em against his face to see how soft they was. They smelled the way he spected women to smell. Sometimes he’d look for any dead babies they might be hiding. Something about sorting through all the pieces made him feel like he wasn’t all by hisself. He’d loved nary a woman alive.
He might ha’ eaten that kidney. Sometimes he liked the taste of piss. But probably not.
Daniel swam up, gagging. Jack stumbled on his way through Hell. Mandibles tore open the back of his head. Mandibles and antennae and sharp sharp barbed legs dry hardened wings sharp as a razor for slicing off sections of the brain. In a frenzy they bore him down into the filthy street, their quick jabs growing fainter as they injected him, the memories and the stories and the speculations feeding back into his head, the sap rising up his spinal column easing him, erasing him, until Daniel was swallowed up in his own bile and he was Happy Jack once again.
Happy Jack. From Hell.
So excited he was that he quite bit through his bottom lip on the right side, and spent several minutes sucking the blood, almost desperate to keep the salt and iron taste flowing, priming his taste buds. He had never known a woman completely. They couldn’t all be nasty whores. He had never known pleasure. He had never known a life outside his own skin.
The women in the street taunted him, dared him, their invitations framed in lace and painted lips. It was the paint that infuriated him most, making it obvious they knew all too well what they was doing, what they set out to do. Their special crime was that they made it all too obvious what it was all about, all that tedious waiting for your final hour and the death neverending. They drifted in and out of the dark alleys, the shadow holes, as in a fever dream. Sluts and pus‑wells all.
Confronting the harlots had become gradually more difficult. Their dirtiness fascinated and repelled him—how unbelievably, beautifully dirty they was. The ground made into flesh. Like they had to dig themselves up every night for their lust time. Each time it was more of a chore to get the same ecstatic effect. They seemed far more in control of the event than he, drawing him further and further into their enticements. The death‑mothers weren’t likely to release him anytime soon.
He’d been watching Mary Kelly for months. Something special about this one, his feelings for her. Most of the judys was plain, washed‑out things. Not her—she still had a freshness and good looks on her. He’d spent many a night sitting across from her lodgings at Number 26 Dorset Street. Or following her in the shadows as she left The Queen’s Head pub. The lodging‑house keeper, John M’Carthy, knew his pa, and had told Jack quite a bit about the woman, thinking Jack was less than he was, and the man liked to hear hisself talk. Her room was number 13 and had its own entrance onto the narrow street.
It was the fact that he found her so attractive that threw Jack off; he couldn’t make himself go in and just dispatch her. Not like that. And that drove him mad. For in all other ways she was like every other whore what brought a poor whelp into this world, and everything what was wrong about the chapel. She was dead, she was walking around meat; she just didn’t know it.
Most of the houses around her was full of whores, most of the windows boarded, and opposite Miller’s Court was that doss with three hundred beds, filled every night. Her pretty face kept her busy—Jack counted several customers a night. She was always working Aldgate and Leman Street. She had a broken window, stuffed with a rag, and Jack had seen her reach through, push back the ragged muslin, and unlatch the door several times the past few days. Looked like she’d lost the key.
Maybe he best be careful; never afore had he hung around so long. But no one knew what he looked like. He’d heard he was pale, then he was swarthy, slight moustache, heavy or none, long dark coat, red coat, hunter’s coat, light waistcoat with a thick gold chain, trousers and garters, red handkerchief, a foreign look, a twinkle in the eye—every man Jack of em seed something different, suspected a different neighbor or renter, father or doctor or reverend or husband‑to‑be. Anyone could ha’ done them crimes—that’s what drove em all crazy.
Jack had visited Mary Kelly’s window the past few nights for a peek, when he knew she was gone. A bed, a chair, two tables. That was all. Some lace hung up by the window, a touch of the girl still in her. He caught himself wondering what it might be like to be living there with her. It made him angry with hisself; he might as well hope to be an angel up in Heaven.
He thought she might be pregnant. He had a special sense about such things. He could smell it on her.
Here the babies was all dying and the slut was bringing another dead child into the world. Jack could see it dangling blue‑faced from its cord, wrapped around her waist like some prized belt. He reminded himself—this harlot was like all the rest.
In the darkness of the filthy street a child was softly crying. Jack looked around but could not see the babe. He wondered if it was drowning, half‑dead under a pile of filthy rags, left abandoned in some darkened doorway, or what. The young ones had no chance. Their dead mothers was raising a nation of children with no one, a nation of staggerers wandering them alleys alone. They had to be stopped.
Teeth grinning a blade, scummy eyes shining under the gaslight. The lad had returned, standing in the darkness behind him. Happy Jack whirled about and reached for him. The boy was starved, and the largeness of his hunger stopped Jack. The boy’s eyes burned, pushing him.