Jack the Re-animator
Chapter one
"So what does it feel like?"
"It feels like drowning. You're struggling to breathe; you're fighting for your life.
You're in agony.” The woman swallowed, her voice tense. “But then you realise…
you're aware that you're in agony. You must be awake if you're fighting for your life.
And you must be alive if you're struggling to breathe.”
Detective Isaac Wollenscroft removed his spectacles and began to clean them on his
shirt tails in a desperate attempt to buy himself time. This imagery was having a worse
effect on him that he had anticipated.
“And… then what happened?”
The woman’s face was calm and serene. She seemed somehow detached from her
story, like she was recounting the events from a book, rather than her own experience.
Maybe she was making it all up. Or maybe she’d just told the story too many times
before.
“Well… then it hits you. My consciousness returned suddenly, all in one go, like an
explosion going off behind my eyes, just in time to feel agonizing needles of pain
piercing my skin – I suppose this was the sensation of hot blood flowing back into limbs
that had been left frozen for far too long. They speak of growing pains, but magnify them
ten thousand-fold and you won’t even reach the heights of hell I was in. I could feel my
flesh putting forward new growth, faster than thought, swelling to fill the cavities of the
ribcage and eye sockets. Thinking about it, this must have been the decayed tissue
returning to its living state. At first I tried to move, but found to my horror that my body
was not my own, my muscles convulsing to some secret whim, refusing to obey my
mind's instructions. I felt a floating sensation, maybe for seconds, maybe for a lifetime.
Then, all of a sudden, everything was tangible."
“What sort of things?”
“Well… the grains of dirt on the pavement, the feeling of the rough cobblestones
beneath your body… the sound of horses’ hooves echoing on the street, the sound of
people shouting and running… and no memory of how I got there, whatsoever, just a
blank blackness between dying and waking up in an anonymous side street.”
Isaac felt faintly nauseous. This woman’s talk of drowning and decayed tissue were
bringing on feelings of panic and claustrophobia: he couldn’t help thinking about what
his own beloved Cassie must have gone through on her death bed only three months
before. And, worse, what state her mortal remains were in now, as they lay in her grave.
He could feel the start of a headache forming like a tight diadem around his temples. He
strongly desired a cup of tea, but felt it would be impolite to ask for her to make more.
Instead, he breathed upon the round lenses of his glasses and polished them again, as if
this might lend more clarity to the situation. This was going to be a difficult investigation.
He could not believe that, only this morning, he had been furious at the triviality of the
case they’d foisted upon him.
•
•
•
The mist had created another pea-souper that morning, the almost opaque smog reaching
in tendrils into every crevice and creating an unhealthy corona around the street lamps, as
if they were submerged underwater. Since no cab could be found, Isaac was walking to
the cemetery, and seething with annoyance all the way.
Maybe it was his youth, or his swarthy complexion, or his junior position in the force,
but the investigation they’d tasked him with seemed downright insignificant - almost
insulting. Grave robberies? That was a simple enough job for a conventional copper,
surely? Sit him behind a nice big headstone with a mug of hot chocolate, get him to wait
a few hours and – bob’s your uncle! A whole troop of “resurrection men” caught red
handed. Isaac’s frustration increased when he thought of all the good he could be doing,
the lives he could be saving on some of the other cases his colleagues had been given.
Finding that missing girl, for example, or finally working out the identity of The Ripper.
The fact that his first ever quarry, a notorious serial killer dubbed “The Angelmaker”, had
finally been hanged that week should have reminded them of his capabilities. But instead,
he was investigating possibly the most victimless crime he had ever encountered.
Isaac checked himself – it was frustration that was making him think this way. That,
and the creeping sorrow at the memory of his lost fiancée that often came back to plague
him on gloomy days like this. Of course grave robberies had victims: there were the
feelings of the mourning families to take into account, for one. And, as his mother would
probably say, it was against God to remove a resting body from its rightful place in
consecrated ground. Resentment would only make him bungle the job and decrease his
chances of promotion. No – he would put as much effort into this as he would anything
else, and hope that the Superintendent would put him on a better job next time.
It was with this worthy resolve that he was striding down Park Lane when a black
hansom cab pulled up alongside him and a the voice of his Superintendent issued from
the window:
“Wollenscroft, please step inside. There’s a gentleman here to talk to you.”
The inside of the carriage was lavishly (if misguidedly) decorated in fleur-de-lys flock
wallpaper and silk hangings. The windows were covered with thick black blinds and, in
the lamp light, Isaac did not at first notice the presence of another man in the corner of
the carriage.
The Superintendent smoothed down his wiry brown mutton-chop sideburns in the
infuriating, nervous manner he always betrayed when in the company of men of higher
status than him.
“Detective Wollenscroft, may I introduce, er…”
“Given the secrecy of the situation, Superintendent, I’m afraid we shall have to make
do with initials: ‘M.H.’ will be fine from now on.”
“Very well, sir. Mr. M.H. works for Her Majesty’s government, and contacted me
with a very interesting case indeed.”
Next to the Superintendent’s large, imposing form, M.H. looked strikingly angular and
poised, an impression only exaggerated by his meticulously smart yet understated attire.
His cravat was tied with mathematic precision and the straightness of his parting was,
frankly, terrifying. In his sharp, granite grey eyes Isaac recognised a spark of startling
intelligence. It was the same spark he sometimes glimpsed fleetingly in his own eyes
when he was on the brink of cracking a case.
The stranger placed his white-gloved hands on his gold-topped cane and addressed
Isaac directly.
“You are the boy who solved The Angelmaker, are you not?”
“That is correct, sir. May I add, however, that I have since been working in the force
for three years. I might have been a boy back then, but now I am a fully qualified junior
detective.”
“My apologies, Detective Wollenscroft. To an old man like myself, the age of twentyone can be likened to that of a babe.”
The stranger looked no older than forty, but Isaac refrained from commenting. He
detected in his tone none of the usual slurs implied when people called him “boy”. The
Superintendent jumped in eagerly to promote his charge.
“Wollenscroft is quite the prodigy, sir. Do you realise he hadn’t had a single scrap of
training when he solved the Angelmaker case? Straight out of school, he was, and
cracked it using nothing but public records and newspaper coverage. Got the fellow
locked up within a week when Scotland Yard had been scratching their heads for months.
And did you hear, they finally hanged the villain last week? I have no idea why it took
them so long. A murderer like that should have been executed straight away, with none of
that squeamish dilly-dallying about. Anyway, we were so impressed that we hired him on
the spot, despite his youth and… er… background that other employers might have
looked askance upon. But we knew straight away he was for us.”
Isaac was always cross when people made ambiguous allusions to his heritage. He
knew exactly who he was descended from:
“My employer is referring to my father, an African naval lieutenant. He died fighting
for our Queen and country when I was four years old.”
M.H. nodded understandingly. “I am aware, detective Wollenscroft. But it is not of
death that I am here to talk to you about. It is of a far more… disconcerting matter.”
“Mr M.H. contacted me about it just this morning. Asked me to put my best detective
onto it,” said the Superintendent. “The situation is highly confidential – hence the
necessity for your colleagues to see you leaving on the grave robbery case, setting off to
the cemetery.”
Isaac sighed in amused disgruntlement. Why had they made him walk all that way
before picking him up, then? He’d gone a good four miles at least. His feet were in
agony.
Curiosity hadn’t quite outweighed Isaac’s annoyance at that point. It soon did,
however, when M.H. handed him a sheet of paper with a long list of names.
“What I am about to tell you may sound deranged, detective Wollenscroft, but this is a
matter of paramount national importance. The fact of the matter is, there have been a
number of reports over the past weeks of people reappearing in society who had
previously been thought dead. In some cases, their doctor or family report actually having
seen them dying. In others, their death certificates had been officiated, undertakers had
overseen the embalming and burying of the corpse, and still the deceased person is
reported to have returned.
I see you look sceptical. And that is good: it is right to question claims of these
magnitude. But this is what I want you to investigate. If it turns out they are all a bunch
of charlatans and frauds, then all the better. We can forget about it and move on. But do
bear in mind that these reports have all come to my attention from completely different
sources, and there is no reason families of such different rank and social class would
know each other or have cause to collaborate. I have many sources. One came to me via
the medical community, through the accounts of an absolutely astonished doctor. One
from a priest, concerned about a family who had come to him for help. One particularly
rancorous court case piqued my suspicions when a family accused their very father of
staging his own death. The only thing these cases have in common is that they are all
located here in London.”
“And you wish me to disprove these claims?”
“If they can be disproved, then yes. What I wish is for you to find the common
denominator in all these cases. If this is a spiritualist conspiracy, or group of
mountebanks using lookalikes of the deceased to try to squeeze money out of their
mourning families, then you will have prevented a virulent social menace.” M.H. leaned
in confidingly. “But I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions in this case. You might
not be aware of some of the more recent procedures in modern science – procedures that,
given time, could make raising the dead not an utter impossibility. I don’t want you to
rule out this eventuality, no matter how unlikely, because if these instances are true cases
of re-animation then it is a matter of serious national urgency that you find their
perpetrators.” M.H. straightened up again and continued authoritatively. “In short, I need
you to seek out the people behind these reports and, if you are unable to detain them
yourself, at least provide us with sufficient information for us to do so. The location of a
central group or kingpin is almost impossible to triangulate from these addresses –
believe me, I’ve tried – so I was hoping you would have more luck interviewing those
who claim to have been brought back to life in person. Disclosing my identity by meeting
them myself, you understand, would be impossible.
I will see to it that your efforts are richly reimbursed, of course, and provision will be
made for you to source and employ an assistant, should you feel the need for one.”
Isaac still had his reservations. What If all this case amounted to was disproving a
group of charlatans? It was probably the current craze for spiritualism that was giving
these families false hope, encouraging them to believe their dead had returned. On the
other hand, he certainly didn’t want to turn down a request from such a high-status
member of Her Majesty’s government. And such a lucrative sounding one, too.
“Sir, I would be more than willing to assist in any way I can. My only misgiving is
that I usually specialise in murder cases, and this seems quite the opposite.”
“My friend, they are one and the same! Think of these fraudsters – or whoever they
are – as a scourge on society of equivalent magnitude to Jack the Ripper. Finding them is
just as important as finding a murderer. You could put a stop to an insidious new kind of
blackmail before it has even started.” Then M.H. once again became conspiratorial, and
Isaac wondered if he had some extra information he wasn’t letting on. “Needless to say,
Detective, if re-animation exists, then just think about the repercussions it could have. It
would alter the very fabric of society; destroy the foundations on which Her Majesty’s
empire is built. If there is a chance this is real, no matter how small, then it must be acted
upon.”