The Final Act Read online

  “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

  “Or to any of the women you murdered, Maddie.”

  I turn to him, shocked by what he just said.

  “I don't know exactly how many there have been,” he continues. “I guess there must have been a gestation period, right? Or something like that, anyway. Some time had to pass while the thing grew stronger and came to understand its powers. As far as I can tell, you didn't kill anyone for the first four and a half years after you left this basement. It was only in the past half year that the thing inside you has begun to stir and...”

  His voice trails off, and I swear I can actually see tears in his eyes.

  “I know it's not your fault,” he says suddenly, coming closer and staring down at me. “Maddie, I promise you, I know you're not actually the one who's been killing these women. Not really. It's the thing inside you, it makes you commit these terrible acts, it's driving you and you don't even have a choice. You don't even remember, do you? As far as you're concerned, none of this has even happened. That's why you have to understand that I'm not going to hurt you. I'm doing this to help you!”

  “You're insane,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Matt, please, you have to realize that you've lost your mind. I know you almost died here, I know you must have been through hell, but right now you're rambling about things that are impossible.”

  “Nothing would make me happier than to believe that,” he replies. “There have been times over the past five years when I've almost convinced myself that I'm wrong, when I've come so close to giving up. Somehow, though, I knew that this day was going to come.”

  “Please untie me,” I whimper. “Matt, I can't be here, not again. Don't you remember what happened to us last time we were in this house? Don't you remember that last night?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Turning, I look toward the far end of the basement, and I feel a rush of fear as soon as I see the open door. I remember breaking that thing down five years ago, smashing the wood until I managed to get through and find the old woman. Then she crawled out and...

  Then Mum showed up and...

  And...

  Then everything went crazy. It's all a blur, really, as if my memories are sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness at the bottom of my mind. Maybe it just hurts too much to remember.

  “I've been studying the house a lot,” Matt says, and I turn to see that he's still staring down at me. “After Jerry killed himself, I took his -”

  “Jerry didn't kill himself!” I snap, turning back to him.

  “Yes he did, Maddie,” he replies. “Deep down, you know I'm telling the truth. Jerry knew a lot more about this house than he ever let on. He claimed it was contained, that the evil here couldn't leak out, but that was a lie. It had leaked out, and one of the places it had leaked to was his mind. The thing in the basement needed someone who could help, and it chose Jerry. I don't even know how much he was aware of what he was doing, but I think he realized in the end. I guess that's why, the day after you and I got out of here, he hung himself in his home. I was the one who found him, Maddie. I went there later. That's how I ended up getting all his books and papers. All his research.”

  “Why would Jerry do something like that?” I sob. “Jerry was a good person!”

  “Jerry lived next door for decades,” he explains. “I doubt he had any idea how his mind had slowly been invaded during that time. Even the weakest of influences would have built up over all those years.”

  I shake my head, but deep down I know somehow that he's right. I always meant to come back and see Jerry, or at least to contact him, but I was too scared to come anywhere near the house. I wanted to know why he'd turned against me, why he'd tried to keep me here, and now I'll never get the chance. Then again, maybe Matt's right, maybe Jerry really was being controlled by the thing in the basement.

  “When you got out of here, you ran,” Matt continues. “I managed to cover things up as best I could. I did that for you, so you wouldn't have to face any awkward questions.” Reaching down, he unbuttons his shirt a little and pulls the edges aside, revealing the scars on his own chest. “I guess I have Doctor Charles Grazier to thank for this. Or his ghost, at least. I don't know why he chose to save me and not Alex or Nick, but I think maybe he had his reasons.”

  He re-buttons his shirt before turning and looking around the basement.

  “He must still be here, too,” he says after a moment. “Can you hear us, Doctor Grazier? Are you watching us right now?”

  He waits, but there's no reply, and finally he looks back down at me.

  “I think I've managed to figure most of it out,” he continues. “I had to fill in a few gaps with guesswork, but I think I've straightened the main parts so that they make sense. Doctor Grazier was conducting experiments to resurrect his dead wife. He didn't succeed, at least not in the way he expected. He resurrected her body, but something else had taken control of her, something powerful and evil but also something that, at least at the start, was very weak.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, shivering with cold and fear. “None of that's possible.”

  “Somehow the thing got trapped down here,” he explains, “in that storage room at the far end of the basement. I found markings that were used to seal it inside, markings that were part of some lost ritual. They almost did the job, too, but there were a few gaps, and the creature managed to dig up through one of those gaps until it was able to reach out into the garden. It couldn't physically crawl through the gap, but it could reach through with a hand. It could deliver something out into the world.”

  I shake my head, convinced that he must have lost his mind.

  “And that's how, when it gave birth to its child, the creature was able to push the baby out into the mud.”

  “What baby?” I ask.

  “I have no idea how the creature became pregnant,” he continues, “or who the father was. My best guess is that somehow it persuaded Doctor Grazier to impregnate it. Maybe it forced itself onto him. Anyway, someone heard the baby's cries and rescued the poor little thing from the house's garden. The creature wanted the child to come back once it was grown up, to release it from the basement, but the child couldn't do that. No child could have been born in such a way, and still grow up sane.”

  “This doesn't make any sense,” I sob.

  “Yes it does, Maddie. Deep down, you know it does.”

  Shaking my head, I feel tears streaming down my face.

  “Alice Dunn,” he continues, holding up a faded photo of a woman. “That's the name she was given. She was found in this area in 1888. She lived almost her entire life in an asylum, before dying at the age of 23 in 1911. By that time, though, she'd already had a child of her own. I guess maybe a porter or a doctor took advantage of her. After all, she was said to be utterly insane. From what I can tell, she spent her entire life chained to a bed. She was just too violent to ever be released.” He holds up another photo, showing yet another woman. “Mary Lewis. Born at the asylum in 1908. She did a little better, it was almost as if the madness had been diluted by another generation's gap. She was still institutionalized for most of her life, but at least she wasn't quite so dangerous. By the time she died at the age of forty, she -”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “I don't know who any of these women are!”

  “That's because you purposely avoided finding out the truth about this house.”

  “Matt, please, just let me out of here.”

  “With each new generation, the madness faded a little more,” he explains, “until finally your mother was born. Maddie, your mother was the great-great-granddaughter of Alice Dunn, of the baby that was born in this basement and then pushed out into the world. Your mother was still troubled, but she was by no means as insane as the women who came before her. She wasn't quite ready to be the one who came back to the house, so that had to wait one more generation.”

  He pauses, staring at me for a moment.


  “That had to wait for you, Maddie,” he adds finally. “You were the first in the line who was sane enough to do what the creature wanted. You were the first one who was sane enough to be drawn back here. You're the great-great-great-granddaughter of, I believe, Doctor Charles Grazier... and of the thing he created in this basement. Of the thing that inhabited his wife's body.”

  I shake my head again, even though somehow – deep down – I'm terrified that he might be right.

  “I'm not certain,” he adds, “but I think that thing was in the body of Grazier's wife Catherine. How it got there, we'll never know, although Grazier's notebooks hint at some experiments he was conducting. I think he was trying to bring Catherine back to life, but he got a lot more than he bargained for.”

  “None of this can be true,” I sob. “It doesn't make any sense!”

  “But to get away from the house,” he says, “the creature needed someone to come back and help it.”

  “There's no creature!” I shout, momentarily filled with rage. Why does he keep going on about this? “What does that even mean? You sound crazy!”

  “What about the old woman?” he asks.

  “I -”

  Stopping suddenly, I think back to the moment in the basement five years ago when I freed the old woman. And then...

  What happened to her?

  “And you did come back,” Matt continues calmly, clearly believing every word that he's saying. “The creature waited more than a century to be freed, but finally its plan worked. That's why you were drawn to this place, Maddie. You didn't realize it at the time, but the creature lured you here just as it lured Jerry. Although one extra thing I discovered is that it didn't have to be you. There was one other descendant from Alice Dunn, but her blood was too diluted.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “You and your friend Alex were very distantly related,” he explains. “She was drawn here too, although ultimately you were the one who proved strong enough to do what the creature wanted. So Alex was discarded.”

  “No, that's not possible,” I tell him. “You're wrong! You have to be wrong!”

  “It's also possible that other people were distantly related too,” he adds. “Maybe that's why people like Nick and others were drawn to the house.”

  Shaking my head, I refuse to believe that any of this is true.

  “And Doctor Grazier's ghost kept you alive,” he points out. “He worked furiously to save you, because he knew you were family. Despite anything else he might have done, despite any acts of cruelty, he cared about his family.”

  “I'm not family,” I whimper. “I'm nothing to do with any of this. I don't know where you're getting these ideas from, but you're wrong. I'm just a normal person who climbed through a broken window to take shelter in a house. It was completely random! I wasn't drawn here or lured here or anything like that! I'm not connected with any of it and I just want to leave!”

  “Maddie -”

  “I've got my life figured out!” I continue. “I've moved on from the wreck that I was back then. I escaped this house and -”

  “You didn't escape the house, Maddie.”

  “I escaped the streets and -”

  “You left the house, but you took it with you.”

  “No, I got over it,” I explain. “You have to understand, I -”

  “It's inside you, Maddie!”

  “No, I -”

  “I mean literally! It's physically inside you! I don't know exactly how it works, but that creature is in your body and it comes out to feed.”

  “That's nonsense,” I reply. “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.”

  “That's what I thought at first,” he says, before stepping over to the bench in the far corner. Where once there were lots of different old tools, now there's just a large black bag. “It took a long time before I could understand the truth,” he continues, “but now I do, and I know how to help you. I'm going to draw that thing out of you one more time, Maddie, and then I'm going to destroy it.”

  He reaches into the bag and then, slowly, he takes out what looks like a large, swollen human liver.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, feeling a rush of fear as I see blood dribbling between Matt's fingers.

  “It's okay,” he says, although his voice betrays fear. “I swear I know what I'm doing.”

  “You're wrong!” I shout. “You're crazy! Matt, this is nothing to do with you! I can deal with it, but first you have to untie me!”

  “I'm going to draw it out of you,” he says again, as more blood runs from his hands, “and then I'm going to kill it. And this time, I promise it won't find a way back. This ends here, Maddie. It ends tonight.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maddie

  “You can't be serious!” I shout as Matt places some more organs on the floor, right next to the liver. “Matt, where did you get those from?”

  “You don't need to know.”

  “Tell me they're not human.”

  I wait, but he simply goes back to the bag and reaches in again, and this time he takes out a human heart.

  “Matt,” I say firmly, “please, tell me those are not human.”

  “I still have contacts from my time on the force,” he explains as he carries the heart across the room with an almost reverential expression on his face. “I was able to slip into a morgue one afternoon. These are from people who whose bodies had already been autopsied. I know it's wrong, Maddie, and when all this is over I'll go and admit that I stole these. I'll tell them everything, and I might even have to serve time in jail, but it'll all be worth it so long as you're safe, and so long as this creature is banished. It's a price I'm willing to pay.”

  He sets the heart down. His hands are trembling, and he takes a moment to adjust the heart slightly, treating it with almost reverential care. I can tell that he's scared.

  “Then why not call for help now?” I ask, trying to stall for time while I work out a plan. “Why are you doing all of this alone?”

  “That thing in your body is clever, Maddie,” he explains. “It'd hide, and nobody would ever believe anything I said. If we had a whole bunch of people here, it'd stay hidden, but it probably thinks it has a chance against just the two of us. That's what I'm counting on, anyway. Even if it can hear me right now.”

  “No,” I tell him, “you're wrong.”

  “It's inside you,” he continues, “and it can see and hear me. Like I said, it's smart, but it's also an addict. After a century without food, it can't be satisfied by a few killings here and there. I've read up on these things, and if I'm right, the creature must be starving. No matter how hard it tries to resist, it won't be able to hold back.” He pauses, staring at me as if he expects to see something shocking at any moment. “Can't you feel it already, Maddie? Can't you feel it stirring inside you?”

  “There's nothing stirring inside me,” I reply, although I have to admit that I can feel a strange scratching sensation at the back of my throat.

  “You don't remember the times it happened, do you?”

  “I'm just an ordinary woman now!” I shout. “I'm not mixed up in this sort of thing anymore!”

  “Why didn't you go to the police five years ago?” he asks. “Why did you walk out of here and never even look back?”

  “I didn't want to stir things up.”

  “That makes no sense. Try again.”

  “I didn't think anyone would believe me!”

  “So you could have brought them back and shown them. But you didn't, Maddie, and the world still knows nothing about the house of Jack the Ripper having been found.”

  “It wasn't the right time!” I say firmly, although deep down I know that I sound unconvincing. The truth, however, is that I'm not quite sure why I didn't get help back then. Nothing I did makes any sense. Maybe I could have stopped all this five years ago, but instead I made the most ridiculous possible decisions.

  Why did I simply help
Mum out of the house and then take her to the hospital with a made-up story?

  Why did I ignore everything Jerry had done to me and not report him?

  Why didn't I tell anyone about Alex and Nick?

  Why did I drag Matt out and then abandon him at a hospital?

  Why did I do any of the things that I did?

  Why did I even come to this house in the first place?

  “I don't have to explain myself to you,” I say finally, as the scratching sensation gets worse and worse in the back of my mouth, and as I start to taste peaches. “You're nothing!” I shout. “You're nobody! This is none of your business so -”

  Suddenly I feel a burst of pain in my chest. I try to pull away from the slab, but the ropes are holding me down and I can barely move at all. The pain is getting stronger, however, and I'm starting to feel as if I can barely even breathe. Something seems to be pressing down against my chest, while at the same time there's something shifting and wriggling in the back of my throat.

  “You have to get me out of here!” I gasp. “Please, something's wrong!”

  “This has happened to you several times before.”

  “It's never happened to me before!”

  “I've watched you, Maddie,” he explains. “I never actually saw you kill, I never managed to find you in time, but I've seen the aftermath of what happened. I pieced the rest together.”

  “No!” I scream, pulling harder than ever against the ropes. “This is insane! This isn't happening! It's just -”

  Before I can finish, a sharp pain rips through the back of my throat, causing me to start gagging and coughing up blood. I turn my head to one side and spit the blood out, but I feel as if something's starting to expand my throat, almost as if some kind of shape is forcing its way up from my chest. Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I try to ignore the pain, but finally I let out a low, agonized groan as I feel several sharp edges slicing their way up into the back of my mouth. I can taste more blood, and at the same time I can feel the skin on my face starting to tighten.

  This has happened before.

  I don't know how I know, but I know.