| Featured Review |
 |
| Featured Review |
 |
| Featured Review |
 |
| Featured Interview |
 |
| Featured Interview |
 |
| Author Interview |
 |
| Author Interview |
 |
|
| The Last Priest of London by Matthew Burgess (Issue 7) |
I extend my arm as high as it will go while using the post for balance. For an instant I think I am a few inches too short, but finally the candle in my hand ignites the gas powered streetlamp with a pop like a tiny firework. The beam from the light spills into an egg shaped pattern onto the sidewalk as if I’m being haloed. A halo in a place such as this? I laugh at the thought, but it is the most amount of light I’ve seen in a week so I stand and bathe in what little warmth it can offer against the freeze of the fog weighted night. The buildings around me are covered in soot and grime, even though the chimneys are no longer spewing thick curled smoke at their peeks. Wooden window covers bang open and shut with the rhythm of the wind funneling down the tight street.
A horse clops steadily by, an empty red and gold trimmed carriage in tow. The horse’s head is bowed in search of food amongst the cobblestone street. Its harness is cutting into and rubbing the skin raw across its neck and shoulders. Dried blood cakes its mane. I turn away from the street and the debris that riddles it. I kneel before the crumpled woman. Her face is locked in a permanent twist of fear and horror, her once sky blue eyes are wide and faded and starring up at me as if I’m supposed to explain to her…to justify to her…why she is laying half in a gutter with her insides tossed about like scattered clothing from a broken dresser.
Her assailant had once been known for his experience in cutting and dismembering his victims in a precise almost surgical manner. Skillfully and delicately, this creature of the night would remove the inner workings saving those he chose and leaving others decoratively placed on silk handkerchiefs beside the bodies. Often times a liver would be missing from a crime scene or a coil of intestines, and, more than once, a woman’s uterus had been taken as a trophy. This morbid showcase is what had led law enforcement into believing the killer was someway linked to the medical field and they had investigated as such…back when Scotland Yard was still on the case. But, of course, none of that is relevant now, not since he had escalated beyond prostitutes. The demon, as the whispers between neighbors called him, seemed content at this point to simply rip and tear into a mangled mess of blood and gore with no rhyme or reason to the mayhem.
I take two coins from my pocket and place them onto the woman’s eyes to weigh down her eyelids. I then whisper a prayer over her body trying not to gag from the smell of death and decay wafting through the air. I doubt this particular victim will find any peace inside my prayer. I doubt that any of my prayers are doing any good now. I take the blame for her death and let it settle on my shoulders as I have for so many others.
“I’m sorry,” I say under my breath while crossing myself. “If the Virgin Mary is out there…I no longer think she can hear me.”
Someone screams in the distance, I try to ignore it, but I feel it bite with more ferocity than the fangs of the icy air around me. Even though I know I cannot make a difference, I am pulled toward the sound as if by an invisible hand. I trudge past Buck’s Row where this hellish nightmare first began. It had been August when the body of Mary Ann Nichols (Or Polly as many of my congregation knew her) had been discovered nestled against a gate. Just another London murder, I’m not even sure the newspaper spent much time on reporting it. Who would have thought things would spiral out of control the way they had.
I try not to look down the street, but like everything else I’ve attempted as of late, I fail. The darkness makes the street look like a gapping mouth stretching to consume me. I pause before the mouth hoping that it finally would clamp down and drag me away. When I do not feel the pain of teeth, fingers, or knifes, I continue towards the source of the scream. Walking along the sidewalk out of habit even though the middle of the street was far less crowded with random obstructions like tables, chairs, crumbled clothing and suitcases, and shriveled mangled bodies. I move out of Whitechapel and into Charing Cross, an area of London where the residents took the time to board up their homes against their inevitable fate. Above my head the body of a man and woman swing listlessly from the third story of a structure which looked like it had had its entire first floor torched during the short lived riots that had erupted in the streets in response to “Scotland Yard’s lack of action”. During the riots I had spent most of my time amongst my parish trying to put their restless minds at ease.
Even though the city has been drenched by a dozen misty rainfalls in recent days, I can still see the darkened trails of blood snaking like the web of a spider all throughout the streets and sidewalks.
I stop before the infamous Charing Cross Hotel where two thousand of her majesties best had been stationed to put an end to the reign of terror that had overtaken London. It is one of the only buildings around without its front door nailed shut or boarded over. I do not have to enter the hotel to know what I will find inside. Most of the soldiers never survived their first night here in Central London. The few that hadn’t had their throats slashed in the night awoke to find their friends and leaders lying in pools of their own blood. These men ran for their lives through back doors and service entrances only to find death waiting on them in the alleys behind the hotel.
I see a fresh body flat on its back in the middle of a cul-de-sac, ribcage spread exposing the inner workings that are still marinating in warm blood. As I approach the body I whisper prayers from memory. I no longer carry a Bible with me, having left mine lying next to the bodies of two children that had starved to death while hiding under their parent’s beds. The sight had been so crippling I had been unable to find my voice to utter my prayers for the children, so instead, I had left the bible open to the appropriate passage hoping it would be enough to steer them towards Heaven’s gates. A newspaper blows by and catches on the body’s gnarled fingers. I see the headline written in greasy black lettering.
Jack the Ripper’s body count: 1,463
I snatch at the paper, but the wind pulls it from my grasp. I watch it flip and spin, colliding with an overturned bench before disappearing along West Strand. That headline was old…a year or more. Before falling silent the newspapers hadn’t printed much more than nightly body counts or estimated body counts. The last headline I remember reading was “With Revelations on our doorstep we wish you all well”. There had been no byline or article of any kind underneath just blank gray paper that seemed to mimic what our city had become.
A scream comes from close by, drawing me away from my reverie. Like an obedient servant, I make my way towards the source of the scream, a clothing shop that, from the sign overhead, once sold “The Finest Women’s Garments and Apparel in all of London”. The board over the front door peels away with ease. I toss the plank, marked with the South Eastern Railway logo aside. My way inside is obscured by an upturned couch. As I squeeze between the cushions and the doorframe another screams fills the shop but quickly fades as if squelched by a firm hand or a sharp blade. I move through the exhibits of clothing, crossing myself every time I am startled by a shadow I mistake to be a person. A glass display case has been pushed before the open doorway leading into the backroom. The case is easily traversed by climbing upon an arm chair and leaping through the doorway. I can smell fresh blood wafting, but I do not allow it to give me pause.
The woman is sprawled across an overturned rack. A fur coat crumpled underneath her is soaking up her blood like a wild animal drinking her life away. I go to her and her eyes flick upon me recognizing my robes. I see hope flicker across her face, but before I can even kneel at her side she is gone.
“Still following in my wake, I see, father,” a voice says from somewhere over my shoulder. It is gruff and breathy almost as if it is trapped in a moment of pure ecstasy.
I say nothing in response and bow my head so my forehead is touching the woman’s. I only do this for the freshest of victims, those whose soul I believe may be close enough to hear my whispered voice.
“Why do you bother with impractical actions such as prayer?” the voice says.
“I am a man of the cloth,” I say, keeping my head firmly pressed to the woman’s.
“Is that even an answer? Or a lie to try and convince yourself that your actions serve some sort of purpose?”
“Every man, woman and child you’ve murdered in cold blood deserves a rite of passage.”
“Murdered? You think what I do to these people is murder. No, father, I am liberating them. I am allowing their souls to become part of something bigger, something greater than your mythical heaven,” the voice says and I can feel it closing in behind me. Its proximity tingles on the nap of my neck.
“Only God has a right to mankind’s soul,” I say. Somehow the darkness before me thickens as the voice casts a shadow over me and the body lying like an oversized porcelain doll.
“Do you still believe in a God?” the voice says.
I say nothing. I lean back and stare off into the concentrated darkness away from the voice behind me. I think back to my days when I preached before a congregation of adorning, nodding heads. They had all believed, as I myself had, in the purity of life and the beautiful promise of a world beyond. How naïve. How ridiculous. This is a world so tainted with evil it has degraded into a hell beyond which the bible speaks. The devil has come to London and there is no escaping his clutches.
“With each death, I grow stronger. Do you know why you’ve lost your faith after a life devoted to it? Because you see my potential, you see how I will soon surpass God himself and consume him like a lion devouring an antelope,” the voice says.
“Tell me, what will happen when we are all dead and gone?” I say. “What will happen when there is no one left to fear you?”
“There will always be someone left,” the voice says, booming through the small room, bounding off the walls, spearing my chest. “I will always have you.”
“Why me,” I say, whirling around. It is too dark to see the source of the voice other than a blurred outline of a billowing cape and large top hat. “Why is it that night after night I follow you around the city, praying over those you’ve killed, and you have yet to end this misery for me? Why let me live? Why curse me so?” I fall before the figure and begin to cry. My body spasms as great overwhelming sobs ripple through my chest.
The figure in the dark laughs. “I have not cursed you.”
“Then kill me. Let me be done with this,” I say and reach out grasping his left hand where I know, because I have seen it over and over again, he holds his polished silver knife. The figure does not fight against my grip and allows me to raise his hand and knife to my throat. “Please.”
“If you see death so vigilantly, why not take your own life?” the figure says. “Plenty of others have found the courage to do so. What is keeping you? Because it’s a sin?”
I stretch my neck high and taunt, trembling at the feel of the metal against my windpipe.
“You fall to your knees before me, forsaking your holy creed,” the figure says. “Yet, you fear the sin of suicide.”
Suddenly, the knife was gone from my throat. I felt a billow of air as the figure turned, whipping its cape through the air. I fall to the floor, my sobs returning.
“Do you remember Thomas the street urchin?” the figure says.
“Thomas?” I say, seeing the small, innocent face of the six year old child flash inside my head.
“The boy you took in, fed and sheltered and found a home for?”
“Yes, of course, but that was years ago,” I say. The boy’s laughter echoed in my head. His curious smile and round plump cheeks. I had found him on the street trying to steal food from the market. The man he had been trying to steal an apple from had nearly beaten the boy to death. If I had not been there to take him under my wing, lead him back to my church where I found a room for him to rest a head that had never known love or friendship. “No,” I shake my head, “No…no…no. You can’t be. Thomas?”
The figure removes his hat and waves it in the air. “I am not your precious Thomas, you pathetic old man. But I want you to know that Thomas was my first. The authorities had it all wrong, that filthy whore over on Buck’s Row was simply my way of reintroducing myself to the world. Thomas was my very first kill when I was just a lad, youthful and inexperienced. And you want to know something…I took my time with him. We spent days together, just he and I trapped in a bloody heaven of peeling flesh and sharpened knifes.” The figure audibly sighs. “With Thomas by my side I realized what I could become with just a knife and enough willpower.”
“No,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you asked me, father,” the figure says. “You wanted to know why I’ve kept you alive and in a world that is decaying around us, it is because of that boy. While we were enjoying each other’s company do you know that he never once cried out to God? He never once spoke the name of his foster parents. In the most painful, excruciating times,” the figure pointed his knife at me and twisted, “he begged to see one person. You. Over and over he cried and screamed for you to help him, but of course you never did. And that is why I’m keeping you alive. You remind me of that first taste.” “You monster,” I say, turning my tears into rage and rising to my feet.
“I have single handily brought London to its knees and you call me a monster? I’ve grown beyond titles. Monster…The demon of Whitechapel…Jack the Ripper, these are hollow names. I am beyond them and beyond this world. I am the end times.” The figure spreads his arms as if expecting me to bask in his glory. “Now there is an old woman hiding herself in an attic just above our heads,” the figure says. “Care to join me?”
Like an angel ascending into the stars, the figure raises arms out stretched, his cape flittering like a crow’s wings. First his top hat, then his caped shoulder vanish through the ceiling. Finally, his body is gone, leaving me to find the stairs so I may whisper a prayer to the old woman once she is found.
|
|
| Login |
Not a member yet? Click here to register.
Forgotten your password? Request a new one here.
|
| Featured Review |
 |
| Featured Review |
 |
| NEW ANTHOLOGY |
 |
| Featured Review |
 |
| Author Spotlight |
 |
| Featured Review |
 |
| Featured Interview |
 |
| By Elvis Podvorac |
 |
| Author Interview |
 |
|
| 