If he had been trying to reassure me, well, he hadn’t been successful. What did those men think I had brought to their village?
About an hour ago, the old lady brought me another bowl of soup, but this time one of the men accompanied her. He waited in the doorway, watching me, as she put it on the table by my bed.
I reached up weakly to take it and she grabbed me suddenly, holding my face tightly in her gnarled hands. She stared into my eyes with such intensity that I almost cried out.
After thirty long seconds or so she released me and stepped backwards, her face a mixture of revulsion and more than a little fear. I tried to speak to her, but she would have none of it, instead muttering under her breath – some kind of incantation or prayer – as she returned to her companion in the doorway. She said one word to him – I heard it clearly, even though I had no idea what it meant.
They closed the door and this time I heard the key turn heavily. They had locked me in.
It is dark now, and I should be sleeping. I am still exhausted and the small candle is nearly burned out. However, I cannot relax; I keep thinking about how the man’s face had changed when the old woman had spoken that word:
Upir.
18th June, 1886
Yesterday I was left alone for the whole day, except for two bowls of soup being shoved through the briefly opened door. I was forced to rise from my sickbed to retrieve them. My legs were weak, but I was pleased to find that I could stand now, and make it across the room and back without dropping my food. I could not afford to waste any potential energy.
The coughing fits are still gripping me. At one point, after leaving a bloom of blood on my pillow, I tried calling out for help, but none came. Instead, once my breathing was restored, I had to fetch the jug of water to ease my throat myself. To say that I felt uneasy would be an understatement. Not even Josep had visited me. I felt entirely abandoned and more than a little afraid.
What had I done to offend these people so? If they did not want me here, why not just send me on my way? I tried the door several times, but it would not open. During the previous night’s fitful sleep I had been awoken by the sound of nails hammering into the wooden window frame, and when day came the room was patterned in streaks of sunlight and gloom, and full of shadows. They had sealed me in. The window had been my only means of escape and I had failed to use it while I had the chance. As I lay there in that strange halflight I wondered what they had done to my guide. The poor man had wanted to provide for his wife and child by leading me into the countryside and then setting me on a course for home; he had no bond with me. I hoped I had brought no ill fate onto him.
My stomach churned, my anxiety fighting with my hunger as my recovering body cried out for nourishment, and slowly the hours passed, one bleeding into another until night fell once again. I felt calmer in the darkness though I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was the thought that these people who were both my saviours and my captors were asleep. I also felt oddly stronger, as if the cooler air were energising me.
I was fully in the grip of the night when I heard the key turning in the door. It was a cautious sound, and I sat bolt-upright in my bed, my heart hammering in my weak chest. In the darkness I could make out only a dark shape as a man stepped inside.
‘Who is it?’ I hissed.
The man raised his hand to his mouth to silence me and to my great relief I realised that it was Josep. He hurried over to me.
‘We have not much time,’ he whispered, and handed me a small bundle of clothes – those I had arrived in. ‘Get dressed. We have to leave now.’
‘What is happening? I don’t understand what I have done to these people.’
‘They have called for a holy man. Quickly!’ He snapped the word; his urgency was obviously driven by fear.
My questions could wait. I was as eager as he was to leave.
Josep carried my small trunk, which had been in the room with me, and I paused only to leave a few coins on the table for the old woman who had fed and looked after me. Whatever had happened to make them hate me so, this was not an affluent village and I wanted to pay my debt to them.
It was dark outside, the ground only a shade lighter than the sky, but here and there were torches marking the ends of the roads and placed around chicken coops, no doubt to fend off any hungry foxes. It was bright enough that I paused to stare at the wooden doors of the villagers’ ramshackle homes: every one had a strange sign daubed on it, and some had trinkets and crucifixes crudely affixed to the wood.
‘What is that?’ I whispered, ‘that sign on all the doors?’ In the still air I could still smell the acrid fumes of the paint: this work was fresh.
Josep said nothing for a moment, but my refusal to move finally prompted an answer. ‘It is to protect against evil. They want to stay safe until the holy man comes.’ He walked on ahead and I followed, my curiosity overwhelming my desire for safety.
It was only when we had retrieved our horses and cart and quietly left the village for the safety of the woods that Josep spoke again.
‘We will move quickly through the night. We will be safe – they will not come after us. I will take you as far as the next railway, and from there you must travel alone.’ He did not look at me.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For what you’ve done. I was worried that perhaps they had harmed you, or that you believed whatever madness has gripped them about my illness.’
‘It is not madness,’ Josep said, ‘but if I helped them, then the holy man would kill you and cast the devil back into the river.’ He kept his eyes on the barely visible black track ahead. ‘And that would mean the devil would still be in my country.’ He hawked and spat. ‘This way, it will be gone. You are strong enough to last until you are home, and then it will be your England’s problem.’
I was starting to tire and I shivered. I pulled the cart’s rough blanket round my shoulders, finding comfort in the smell of horses ingrained in its fibre. It was a natural smell. Earthy.
‘What devil?’ I said, wearily. He was making no sense to me. Was this some old superstition? These people were more backward than the more civilised European countries like England and France, and their beliefs in folklore and legend had persisted longer than ours, especially out here, in the middle of nowhere.
‘I think I have the consumption, nothing more,’ I said, as if that weren’t a worry enough in itself. ‘I have always been prone to illness in my chest.’
‘That is not consumption,’ Josep said. The horses’ hooves beat a steady rhythm on the uneven track. ‘That is the Upir. You woke it in the river. And now it has you.’
It was the word the old woman had used, and I refused to acknowledge the dread I felt on hearing it. ‘I don’t know what this Upir is,’ I said, ‘but I assure you, I am simply ill. These are modern times – there is no place for silly superstitions.’ I looked at him. ‘You live in the city – surely you know that.’
‘I know many things,’ he answered, ‘and I know, just as the old lady did, that you are cursed. I should never have told you the river was there. I shall pray for you.’
‘It is going to kill me, is that what you are saying? This devil – this Upir?’ My patience was wearing thin. I wanted to be home, or at least in civilisation somewhere. In the dark, with the trees hanging over us as if reaching down to tear me limb from limb with their jagged branches, it was hard to believe in my own logic. I had seen the symbols painted on the doors. I had seen the fear. If I were not careful, I could get sucked into believing their ridiculous legends, especially if even Josep was refusing to see reason.
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘it will not kill you. It will be far, far worse than that.’
And then he told me.
It is now past dawn, and even in the sunlight I shiver while writing down his words. I scoffed at him, of course I did, but my heart is filled with dread. It was awful, and I wish I had never heard a word of it.
25
London. November, 1888
br /> Dr Bond
‘So, these are your rooms,’ I said, as the priest moved out of the way to allow us entry. ‘You do not live elsewhere.’
‘I had a feeling that the only way you would return was like this.’ He looked at Kosminski, who was shaking and shivering the doorway. ‘Unless the members of the Metropolitan Police Force have lowered their standards.’
‘He is not well,’ I said. ‘He has taken some of the drug you use. It helped him …’ I did not know whether I wanted validate my next words by speaking them aloud, but I had no choice, for it was the truth. ‘It helped him to lead us here.’ I took Kosminski’s arm and gently led him inside, seating him on the wooden chair next to the blazing fire.
‘I have something that will calm him.’ From within his robes, the priest pulled a small bottle and held it out. ‘Drink this. One swallow.’
‘Liquid?’ Kosminski’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where from? Is it from the river—?’
‘Do as I say,’ the priest growled. He was a forbidding presence and the little hairdresser took a swallow before hastily giving the bottle back. The effect was almost immediate. He became calmer, quieter, and now I could understand how the priest could remain so in control when under the influence of the strange drug. When he had seen enough, he must have trained himself to take some of this liquid – but what was it? Another drug, of course. How could anything any man said be relied upon when he was so often not himself? But here I was anyway, searching out one madman because of the words of another.
I looked around the small room that was so bare of possessions. ‘You do not have a Bible?’ I said, frowning. I had expected to see one beside the bed, or at least on the table – I would expect as much in most gentlemen’s houses, let alone a priest’s rooms.
‘The Lord and I do not need words.’ He grunted and sat on the bed, forcing a groan from it as it took his heavy weight. ‘I am trained by the Church. I am part of an order of the Church – but the Church is not my home.’
‘I do not understand – you are a priest?’ I sat on the other end of the mattress and turned inwards, so that the three of us were quite huddled together with the stranger at our centre.
‘I come from the grey area between good and evil, born with an unnatural gift. Perhaps this gift came from God, or perhaps from the devil. For my part, I choose to serve the Lord with it, to join the order and fight the old evils that hide among us. But wicked deeds must sometimes be done in God’s name. I would not speak to the Lord and share these with him; the guilt is mine alone. If I must forego my place in Heaven for the work I’ve done in this world, then I will make that sacrifice.’
He cut a strange figure in the flickering firelight. It was as if the flames of hell were already burning around him. I did not wish to know more of the deeds of which he spoke. I was already more than slightly concerned that I might find out first-hand.
‘What unnatural gift?’ I asked.
‘The gifts come in many guises,’ he said. ‘Mine comes as visions.’ He nodded at Kosminksi, who was watching the priest with his mouth slightly open, as if he could not quite believe his own eyes. ‘Not like his,’ the priest continued. ‘I could not see into your head and lead you here. What I see – I see what is really there. I see creatures and people as they really are. I can sometimes manage them, bend them to my will for short bursts of time. At first, as a child, they all thought me mad, but then the priests came, and when they saw what burdened me, they took me and trained me. Now, like my brothers, I travel to where I am called, to hunt the evils that ordinary men find so hard to see.’
He stared into the flames for a while before carrying on, ‘Each one of us is different. But each brother has a skill; something that connects us with evil. That is why our souls are no doubt damned.’
‘I have to admit, I find it all very hard to believe,’ I said honestly. ‘Even with what I have witnessed tonight – how I got here. I am a man of science first and foremost. I believe in logic and reason.’
‘And yet, still you are here, with us.’ He smiled, his white teeth bared and sharp. ‘I think you are touched with the gift too: a damned soul.’
‘I am afraid I do not share your visions,’ I said. I felt suddenly defensive, and fought the urge to loosen my collar in the heat.
‘No, perhaps not, but you do not sleep, and you have become restless. You suffer anxiety. You know that it is among us.’
‘I have always suffered with bouts of insomnia,’ I protested, but he held a hand up to stop me.
‘This one is different. I know these things. I have seen you in the dens. More than all this, though, is your obsession with this killer. Everyone else seeks this flamboyant “Jack”, but not you. Somewhere inside, you recognise the work of true evil.’
‘Are you saying Jack is not evil?’ I wanted to transfer the focus away from myself. There was a limit to what I was prepared to believe in one go. My anxiety was simply a condition, as was my insomnia. I was not the first to suffer from either, and I would not be the last.
‘I think Jack is a result of this older evil – another like us, perhaps, who can sense the presence. Someone with a wickedness locked deep inside that has been set free. But Jack is human evil, and there will be others like him in the city who are pulled into the mayhem. The city is full of anger and crime this year, yes? More than others? The creature that has drawn we three together is not.’
‘There were stories of your Order,’ Kosminski said, quietly. I had almost forgotten the hairdresser was there. ‘The Roman one – the men of God who had no God. My grandmother told me, before she died, when I was very small. She had visions, and her grandmother before her also. It should only be in the women.’ His nervous tics had faded and he looked saner than he had in our entire acquaintance. I wondered again what was in the bottle the priest had given him. I also found myself wondering if it would help me sleep.
‘You two have never met before?’ I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be. There had been no recognition from the priest when we had arrived, and I could think of no good reason for them to concoct such an elaborate ruse.
‘Never.’ The priest shook his head.
‘Tell me more about this “Upir”,’ I said. ‘You spoke about it before.’
‘It is so old,’ Kosminksi muttered, his eyes lost in something only he could see, ‘and it stinks of the river. It is in the liquid.’ He spat at the flames suddenly as if terrified of his own saliva. ‘And there is so much blood. I can feel it.’ A trembling beset his body, and even though he was sitting close to the fire, it did not abate.
‘It is a parasite,’ the priest said. ‘An ancient wickedness. Something from a legend almost forgotten. It is rotten. Old, earthy – but it is sentient; it wants our reactions to it. It wants us to hunt it. It enjoys the game.’
‘I do not understand.’ I felt myself sinking deeper into the mire between what was real and what wasn’t. ‘What is it? What does it do?’
‘It feeds on us. When it is weak, it sleeps on the bottom of the rivers. It will not be far from one, in case it needs to flee there. It cannot live without a host for long.’
‘A host?’ He had said this the last time I had been in this room, but I had barely listened then, so focused as I was on my own disappointment. Now, even as I fought the suggestion that I was being sucked into their madness, I wanted to know.
‘It attaches itself to a host – someone unsuspecting. It either moves to another when that host dies, or takes refuge in the water to regain its strength.’ His eyes burned like dark coals. ‘It lives in the space between the host and its shadow. Its presence, for ever just out of sight, eventually drives the host mad. It will control him when it wants to.’
‘Control him to do what?’ Once again I knew the answer even as I asked the question. I had seen the limbs dragged from the Thames, the emptied and ruined torso in the vault at Whitehall.
‘To feed,’ the priest said. ‘It wants the soft flesh. The organs.’
&nb
sp; ‘And the river,’ Kosminski muttered, ‘it has to feed the river. It has to make the river its own.’
‘What do you mean, “its own”?’
‘In case it needs to escape there.’
In the hazy warmth of the room in the middle of the night, it all made a strange kind of sense. Part of me still screamed madness, but I was fascinated by what both men were saying.
‘But why leave the torso in the Scotland Yard building? Why would it draw attention to itself like that? Or does it not have thoughts?’
‘Dark mischief,’ the priest said, ‘just like all the other devils that my Order hunts down. It wants to taunt us.’
‘It brings chaos,’ Kosminski added, nodding just a little bit too fast. His tics would be returning soon. ‘Mayhem.’
‘And the strange opium allows you to see it?’ I asked.
‘Normally it is only visible in the moment it moves from one host to another.’ His eyes looked directly into mine. ‘Or when it is about to kill you.’
‘You know a lot about this creature, given that it seems a little shy,’ I said, but neither of them rose to my bait. Part of me had hoped to get some reaction out of them that would allow me to leave here, to storm away. Ancient demons? I was still not sure my belief could stretch that far.
‘There is a lot written, and there are myths and legends. The country people understand, those who live side by side with nature. I was sent by the Order to a village in Poland, where an English traveller was believed to have inadvertently freed the beast from the riverbed. He had escaped by the time I got there. I tracked him through Europe.’
‘How do you intend we find him in this heaving city if the police are having no luck?’
‘The host will have been sick after the Upir attached itself to him. The illness will still come in bouts between killings. The villagers also said he was a young gentleman – perhaps you can use your medical connections to see if any strange illnesses in such a man had been treated before the first of these murders that now plague you.’