A Beast Well Tamed (The House of Jack the Ripper Book 5) Page 6

  Again he waits, and again Jack ignores him.

  “You will answer me!” Culpepper continues, grabbing the book and pulling it away, only for Jack to grab it back and slam it forcefully against the desk.

  “Leave me alone!” Jack sneers at him, with enough ferocity that Culpepper takes a step back. “Your constant babbling whine is causing my head to hurt! Nothing you say is important, nothing you say can help anybody in this room, so please try to keep your infernal mouth shut!”

  “Did you hear that?” Culpepper turns to me, his face drained of color. “Did you hear what your man-servant just said?”

  “I heard,” I reply, “and I think it would be best for everyone if you were to leave.”

  “Are you insane? Have you completely taken leave of your senses, Charles?”

  “I cannot explain right now,” I tell him. “Thomas, please, your wife is crying and she needs to be taken home. Do not answer one unfortunate situation by creating another. I shall discipline Jack in an appropriate manner, but your wife needs rest.”

  “I will not leave,” he blusters, “until I have received an apology from both of you!”

  I cannot help sighing. The man is becoming tiresome. And then, as I blink, I am momentarily shown a vision of Catherine's rotten body still lumbering toward me across a beach. The image vanishes as soon as I open my eyes, yet it leaves me somewhat shaken.

  “I have the right to an apology,” Culpepper continues, evidently unaware of my discomfort, “and I intend to pursue that right!” Clutching his lapels, he steps toward me and puffs his chest out, as if he is filled with a sense of his own importance. “Charles, you might be temporarily dispossessed of your senses, and you might not see the seriousness of the situation, but my wife has been besmirched by the beast you invited into your home. This requires redress, and frankly I am astounded that you cannot understand this for yourself. How would you feel if it was Catherine's leg that had been touched? Would you accept such an awful thing?”

  “Touching her leg is a crime,” I reply, “yet striking her about the face is good manners?”

  “Do you question me?” Culpepper roars. “Delilah is my wife and I shall deal with her however I see fit!”

  “Be quiet!” Jack hisses.

  “And now he talks to me in such an awful manner,” Culpepper adds, keeping his eyes fixed on me but pointing toward Jack. “Why, it is as if he believes that he is my equal. What kind of ideas have you allowed to get into his head?”

  “Be quiet!” Jack roars, still looking through the book.

  “That is intolerable!” Culpepper continues. “You have become almost a parody of yourself, Charles! By allowing this brute into your house, you risk destroying your own reputation! When I tell the others at the club, they're going to ask some very serious questions about your behavior, and I'm afraid I shall not know how to defend you! My wife is sobbing because of this brute, and it is your actions that have allowed the situation to occur! I intend to -”

  “BE QUIET!” Jack shouts, slamming his fist against the table. “I am trying to read! Do not speak one more word, or I shall be forced to make you stay quiet!”

  “Please,” Delilah sobs, “can't we just leave?”

  “It is perfectly deplorable,” Culpepper continues, “that this situation is allowed to persist. My wife's leg remains sullied by the hands of that monsters, and frankly Charles I am shocked that you continue to just stand there doing absolutely nothing. Delilah's honor has been challenged and I expect better from you!”

  Behind him, Jack sighs and steps around the desk, coming this way.

  “Perhaps I shall go to the club,” Culpepper tells me, evidently oblivious to Jack's approach, despite the thudding footsteps that are getting ever closer, “and inform the others of what has happened. How do you like that idea, Charles? All of polite society shall know of the beast in your home, and believe me, they will question your sanity. Why, I rather think that I must ensure that all of polite society is informed of your awful -”

  Suddenly Jack takes hold of Culpepper's head from behind and twists it violently, snapping the man's neck in an instant before letting go and leaving his body to crumple to the floor, where he lands quite dead at my feet. Delilah lets out a horrified gasp and faints against the side of the chair. Jack storms back to the desk and starts looking once again through the book. I stare down at the corpse on the floor, unable to avert my gaze from its eyes. In death, Culpepper wears an expression of faint, unfinished surprise.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maddie

  Today

  “It was just a joke,” Alex says with a sigh as she follows me down the stairs. “Maddie, where did your sense of humor go?”

  “That was not a joke,” I mutter, fuming with anger but somehow managing to keep from screaming at her. “I can't believe you think it was funny.”

  “Maddie...”

  She tries to grab my arm, but I pull away. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I make my way to the center of the hallway before stopping as I realize that I have nowhere to go. I could leave the house, but then I'd be back out on the streets. I basically have no choice but to stay here, even though right now I want nothing to do with Alex or Nick. If they think scaring the life out of me is funny, then I can't even begin to imagine what they might pull next.

  “Maddie, listen,” Alex continues, starting to sound genuinely contrite now. She touches my arm from behind, and this time I turn to her. “Maddie, I'm sorry, okay? I had no idea that you'd get so scared. Nick and I thought it'd be a fun little prank, but obviously we misjudged the situation. And I guess I can see that we were dumb. I swear, it won't happen again.”

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Nick came up with the idea and I went along with it. I shouldn't have done that, Maddie. Please, can you forgive me?”

  I'm still shaking, and to be honest I'm absolutely furious, but at the same time I can't stay mad at Alex. She's my only friend, and maybe she's right that I've become a little too serious. Besides, it was dumb of me to even entertain the possibility that there might be a ghost upstairs. I should never have fallen for their 'joke' in the first place.

  “I'll get over it,” I tell her cautiously. “Just tell him not to do anything like that again, okay? It's going to get really tired, really fast. What's he even doing here?”

  “Nick and I have been sorta tagging along together,” she replies.

  “Since when?”

  “Since a day or two ago.”

  “But... why?”

  “Why? Why not? It's not like there are many people to choose from out there.” She shrugs. “Anyway, what's the big deal?”

  I open my mouth to tell her that I really don't like Nick, but then I hear footsteps above and I look up just in time to see that he's at the top of the stairs. He's looking through an old book, and after a moment I realize that he's found one of the notebooks from the hatch in the bedroom. I guess I didn't give them all to Jerry after all. I must have missed a few. I know I have no right to feel this way, that the house isn't my domain, but somehow it feels wrong to have him here. It's almost as if he's an intruder.

  “Now this,” Nick says with a smile, as he continues to flick through the notebook, “is some quality stuff.”

  ***

  “It's just a bunch of notebooks,” I point out, as Alex and Nick sit poring over the pages at the desk in one of the downstairs rooms. “I promised I'd give them to the guy next door.”

  “Got yourself a boyfriend, have you?” Nick asks, without looking at me.

  “He's researching the house's history.”

  He smirks. “Sounds like a fun fella.”

  “Just don't damage them, okay?” I continue with a sigh. “I want to give them to him later.”

  “Why doesn't he just come in and get them himself?”

  “He doesn't like the house.”

  He casts a glance at me. “What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

  �
��He doesn't want to come in.”

  “The old guy's scared,” Alex explains, as she grabs another notebook. “I heard him earlier. She practically had to drag him to the door, and then he chickened out.”

  “He has some fears, that's all,” I tell them. “There's nothing wrong with that, but I promised I'd give him the notebooks.”

  “If I'm holding them,” Nick mutters, as he turns to another page, “then I reckon they're mine, aren't they? These are some sick pictures. It's like some psycho was doodling things he wanted to do to people.”

  He tilts one of the books so that Alex can see.

  “Look!” he continues. “There's even one about cutting open a woman's belly.”

  Alex squints as she looks closer at the book.

  “Delilah...” She hesitates, clearly struggling to decipher the old-fashioned handwriting. “Something something, and then a name. I think it says Delilah Colepepper, or Culpepper, or something like that.”

  “I've heard that name before,” I reply, heading around the desk and taking a look at the page. I'm just in time to see a crude sketch of a naked woman, before Nick turns the book away from me as if I'm not allowed to see.

  “Suddenly interested, are you?” he asks.

  For a moment, I try to remember where I've heard a name like Delilah Culpepper before, and then I realize that Matt Wallace mentioned it when he was telling me about the alley. That's a pretty huge coincidence, especially since some of the other drawings had already reminded me of the woman I hallucinated. Whoever this Delilah Culpepper woman was, she just keeps on showing up. Still, coincidences do happen, and I'm not about to start believing in paranoid theories. That way lies real madness.

  “There are kidneys and livers and things being transplanted in these pictures,” Nick mutters. “This is some Jack the Ripper level stuff. Did they even do transplants back when these pictures were drawn?”

  “It's medical,” I explain. “It was all above board. There was a doctor who lived here, his named was Charles Grazier.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nick replies, turning to me with a grin. “Maybe he also went by the name of Jack the Ripper!”

  “That's absurd,” I point out.

  “Why?”

  “It just is.”

  “But why, Maddie?” He's clearly enjoying taunting me. “These pictures are savage.”

  “I'm pretty sure that if he was Jack the Ripper, Jerry would have -”

  “You can't deny that it's possible,” he continues, interrupting me. “Man, there's a lot of Jack the Ripper in the air right now. It's totally insane how there were those murders, and then we come to this house. It's almost like something got woken up.”

  Rolling my eyes, I look over at Alex and wait for her to acknowledge that Nick's out of his mind, but instead she seems engrossed in one of the other notebooks. She's muttering to herself under her breath as she reads, and I honestly don't think I've ever seen Alex so interested in a book before. In fact, I definitely remember her saying a few times that she doesn't even like reading. Something about too many words and pages.

  “I'll tell you one thing,” Nick says after a moment. “Whoever drew these pictures, they had a pretty sick imagination. Doctor or not, they really seem to have had an eye for disgusting imagery.” He turns to another page. “I mean, in this one, some poor bitch is getting her guts scooped out, and then there's one that looks like...”

  His voice trails off, and he stares at the page for a few seconds before tilting the book toward me.

  “That's a fetus!” he proclaims.

  “You don't know that,” I reply, although I have to admit that he might be right. The drawing does look like a very early-stage fetus.

  “Maybe the doctor here was performing back-room abortions,” Nick continues. “Either that, or he was experimenting on them. It's pretty crazy to think of all the sick stuff that must have gone on in this place. It'd be a miracle if there aren't ghosts here.”

  “Shouldn't we be thinking about leaving?” I ask, hoping against hope that Alex will agree with me. “Alex?”

  She mumbles something, but I can't make out a word of what she says.

  “There's some valuable stuff here,” Nick points out. “Earrings, necklaces, stuff like that. Plus these books. It looks like nobody's been here for years. We oughta take this house apart from top to bottom and make sure we get it all. We could get some serious cash. Even if we split it three ways, we'll still all come out on top.”

  “We can't steal,” I tell him.

  “We're not stealing,” he replies. “You can't steal if there's nobody to steal from. We'll just be taking stuff that's been abandoned. Stuff's supposed to be used. If you ask me, it's criminal not to take it all and use it properly. If I was an earring, I'd want to be hanging from someone's ear. Anyway, it's not like this joint seems to belong to anyone anymore.”

  “It must belong to someone,” I point out. “The stuff here belongs to someone too.”

  “And you're seriously not tempted to take anything?”

  I'm about to tell him that of course I wouldn't do that, that I'm not a thief, but then I remember that I did take one thing. I guess I don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to moral things. And as Nick continues to stare at me, I can't help wondering whether somehow he knows that I did something wrong, that as a thief he can recognize someone who's just like him. It's almost as if he's looking right into my soul and seeing the stain.

  “This place is pretty cool,” he says finally, looking back down at the notebooks. “The way I see it, we need to take our time figuring out what used to happen here. And it's not like we've got anywhere else to be, right?”

  “I'm going to check something out,” I mumble, turning and heading to the door. Right now, I feel like I'm in the cross-hairs. I need to get out of this room for a few minutes.

  “Don't go too far!” Nick calls after me. “The fun's only just beginning, Maddie! We're gonna make this house give up all its secrets!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Doctor Charles Grazier

  Tuesday October 2nd, 1888

  “In the name of all that is merciful and good,” I mutter under my breath, as I drag Thomas Culpepper feet-first from the study and out into the hall, “when will this madness end?”

  Stopping for a moment, I realize that I have no idea where to put this unexpected corpse. The man is quite dead, of that I am certain, yet I cannot exactly toss him out onto the street. I hesitate for a few more seconds, looking around, before spotting the door to the basement. That would be the obvious place to put the man, at least for now, yet there is also the small matter of Catherine.

  Realizing that I cannot hear anything from the other side of the door, I drag Culpepper over and then stop again. This time I'm just about able to make out a faint scratching sound that seems to be coming from some distance down the steps. I had not intended to open this door just yet, not until I have a better idea of Catherine's condition, but right now I fear I must take matters into my own hands before the entire situation spirals out of control.

  Letting go of the corpse's feet, I remove the key from my pocket and then I unlock the basement door. Then, taking great care lest there be a surprise on the other side, I pull the door open just a crack and stare down into the darkness.

  My heart skips a beat as soon as I see Catherine down at the bottom of the steps. She's still trying to crawl up, still filled with furious desperation, but she seems to have made absolutely no progress. A moment later she looks up at me and snarls, as if the mere sight of my face is enough to fill her with hatred. Certainly my Catherine would never look at me in such a manner. I instinctively start to shut the door, before forcing myself to keep it open as I realize that I really must find some place to put Culpepper, at least temporarily.

  After all, if another unexpected visitor arrives at the house, I will surely be undone.

  “This is just for a short while,” I explain, somewhat superfluously, as I take hold of the man's legs
once again and haul him through to the top of the steps. “I shall come up with a better plan shortly. Please rest assured that I mean no indignity to your person.”

  I take a moment to arrange Culpepper, in an attempt to balance him on the steps, but his body is heavy and I do not find it easy to maneuver him. I keep working, and then – just as I am about to call Jack for help – I lose my grip on the corpse's shoulder and he begins to slip.

  “No!” I cry out, attempting to grab him again, but I'm too late.

  I watch in horror as the lifeless body bumps down the steps, clattering into the darkness before it lands directly against Catherine and flattens her against the cold stone floor. The impact is so great, and so sudden, I cannot help but worry that Catherine's already damaged body might have been irreversibly broken. After a moment, however, I hear a faint snarling sound, and I watch as Catherine struggles to clamber out from beneath Culpepper's corpse.

  “I'm sorry!” I tell her. “I did not mean to do that! I only -”

  Before I can finish, she leans closer to his face and bites hard on his cheek. I can scarcely believe what I am seeing, but then I hear a tearing sound and I realize that she is indeed attempting to rip away some of the man's skin and flesh. Blood bursts down the side of Culpepper's face as Catherine twists her head to one side, and I am shocked to see stringy meat ripping away from the side of the man's skull as more blood runs down Catherine's chin. I had already seen her as a savage beast, but now the image is complete. She looks like a true monster.

  “Dear God,” I whisper, invoking a deity in whom I do not believe, “what madness is this?”

  I watch for a moment longer, but then suddenly I am overcome by a terrible sense of nausea. Barely even capable of thinking properly, I step back and slam the door shut before starting to turn the key in the lock. My hands are shaking so violently, however, that I am unable to grip the key properly. Only after several failed attempts am I finally able – more through luck than any other factor – to get the key turned, and then I drop to my knees. As I do so, I realize I can still hear a kind of low splitting sound coming from down at the bottom of the steps, and I am quite certain that Catherine continues to feast upon the dead man's body. My hands are still shaking, and after a moment I realize that I can hear a strange, unnatural wailing sound coming from nearby.