Gaslight Fantasy: The House of Dead Whores by Jaqhama

For those of you who enjoyed my Ripping Yarn at BG, here's another tale of eerie going's on.

I knew it was John.
Not at first of course
But as the atrocities continued…I began to suspect.
How many times had he insisted that he could do it?
How many times had he gnashed his teeth and wrung his hands and cursed the fact that the items he needed to complete his experiments were not readily available to him?
“Fresh, Tobias. I need ‘em fresh. Do you see?”
And I, in grim humour had replied. “Any fresher and they’d still be walking and talking, old chap.”
He had looked at me strangely. Then he nodded. “Aye. You’re right of course. Walking and talking. Indeed.”
I had chuckled and shaken my head and bid him good night.
The first murder occurred later that week.

* * *

Now I found myself standing in the shadows opposite John’s house.
Five murders now.
Each more gruesome than the last.
Five women.
Killed and sliced up and internal organs removed.
The last one, poor thing, almost completely plundered.
I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
Absently tapped the base of my cane upon the stone of the pavement.
Could I be wrong?
John was no maniac. I’d known him since we went to Oxford together.
Yet the evidence was there.
He had insisted he needed fresh organs. Not those removed from dissected corpses, but ones removed from a person dead but a short time ago.
And how much fresher could they be than sliced from the body of a woman whom he had only seconds ago murdered?
Because of my work I had the confidence of a certain police detective. He it was, who had assured me that the motives behind the killing were a complete bafflement to the constabulary.
“If only we knew why he was killing them, Tobias? Find the why and you can often find the who.”
The why leads to the who.
Those spoken words had echoed around in my mind for a number of days.
Then the last killing had taken place. Another woman, in one of the poorer quarters of the city. All but hacked to pieces, by, it would seem, some madman.
But I heard the whispers, the stories.
Not random violence at all. But deliberate, methodical. Meticulous.
The suspicions I had by the time the killer had struck for the third time made me uneasy.
I realised I had not seen John for some weeks.
I paid a visit to his place of work. I was informed that John had taken a leave of absence.
I went to his house, to find it locked up tight. Neighbours’ told me that John was away in the country.
Then the fourth murder was committed.
I returned to John’s house. It was still locked up, tight as a drum. I peered through the windows, past an opening in the drawn curtains…sheets were thrown over the furniture. The kind of thing one would do if one did indeed intend to be away from one’s home for a length of time.
I felt better after that.
John had left the city. Therefore he could not be the person responsible for the murders.
Then another killing. The worst of the lot, by far.
When I heard the shocking details, the condition of the corpse, I felt that unease once again.

* * *

So now, here I am.
Standing my lonely vigil, opposite a house that has been vacant for a month or more.
A glance at my pocket watch shows me that is 2 a.m. in the morning. The fog, as it always does these days, swirls about me. I can barely discern the front door of John’s house, and it but a short distance in front of me.
The fog, of course, well disguises the wisps of pale smoke that rise from the chimney.
So, someone was in residence.
I first noticed it about an hour ago.
Yes. I have been standing here that long. Debating with myself.
Once I start on the course of action I have set myself, there will be no turning back.
Am I afraid?
I suppose so.
Else why did I bring the pistol and the cane?
Am I sure that what I will discover, is what I suspect?
An inner voice says, yes.
I take a deep breath.
Standing here, in the fog, the dampness seeping into my bones, is not going to solve my dilemma.
I walk out of the shadows and across the road, directly up to the front door of John’s dwelling.

* * *

The front door is still locked.
I see little point in knocking.
I have knocked before, at a more reasonable hour, and gotten no response.
I walk around the side of the house, following the garden path.
Like the majority of homes in this street, John’s house stands on its own block of land. Completely separate from the houses on either side.
Following the garden path leads me to the back door.
Like the front, this is locked.
I turn my head from side to side, looking carefully about myself.
I can see little through the fog. But thus is the same true for anyone else.
I take a two handed grip on my cane, raise it up, and strike hard with the base against a pane of glass in the back door.
The glass shatters and, using a gloved hand, I tap some more shards out of the broken pane.
I stop and look about myself again. I cock my head and listen carefully.
I see, and hear, nothing untoward.
Satisfied, I reach through the pane and find the internal door handle. I twist it this way and that, but it refuses to unlock. My little finger brushes against something. I feel blindly about with my questing hand.
Ah. A key.
Awkwardly I turn it and am rewarded with the soft click of the lock opening. I turn the door handle again. The tongue of the lock draws back and I am able to push the door inwards.
I take another deep breath.
I can still turn away. I can still go back to my own, snug, warm home. None will ever be the wiser.
Except me.
Having come so far, been so bold, I cannot turn back now.
I began this course of action and I must carry it through to its conclusion.

* * *

The inside of the house is pitch black.
I have been a visitor in John’s home many times before. I have a good idea of the interior layout of the house.
My hand brushing gently along an unseen wall, I guide myself through the back door and inside the darkened house.
I feel my way along the short corridor. I follow the wall to my left. My gloved fingers brush against a painting. It moves slightly. This reassures me. I am exactly where I want to be.
I peer intently at the blackness in front of my face. Seeing nothing. I look down in front of my feet.
There. A light. Emanating from underneath a closed door.
I run my left around in the dark, tracing the doorway, finding the door handle.
I twist it, slowly and silently.
It is not locked.
Gently I push the door open.
In the light coming up the stairs from below I can easily see the wooden steps that lead downwards.
Into the basement, or cellar if you will.
I realise I am sweating. Profusely. And not because it is cold I suspect.
Slowly, trying to step as carefully as I can, less the wooden boards beneath my feet creak, I begin to descend into the basement.

* * *

Perhaps I am completely wrong?
Perhaps my suspicions are completely unfounded?
Carefully I descend a few more steps.
I can see into the basement now.
I have been here before.
It is John’s laboratory.
He often practices his surgical techniques here, alone and undisturbed. I have even assisted him sometimes.
I another step.
I can see John now, moving around a long wooden table, his operating table.
He is dressed in a white shirt, black trousers, a white apron worn over the top.
In the gas lamps that clearly illuminate the area where John is working I notice something odd.
The floor around the operating table is marked out in black paint. At least I hope that it is paint. From where I am standing it has the strangely unsettling appearance of dried blood.
Another step down the stairs.
The board I step on creaks very loudly.
John turns and gazes over at me.
“Tobias?”
“Hello, John.”
“Good Heavens, man. What are you doing here? Creeping about my house at 2 o’clock in the morning?”
“I came to see you. I’ve called a few times in the last couple of weeks. In the daytime, during more civilised hours, but either you weren’t here or you were disinclined to receive visitors. I understand you’ve been away to the country? On holiday? Yet now I find you here, working, while the house still has all the appearance of being closed up?”
“What I do with my time, and my house, is my business, Tobias. You have no right to be sneaking around, checking up on me. And how did you get in I should like to know? I’m sure I left all the doors locked?”
“I broke in,” I admit.
“You broke into my house?”
“What are you doing here, John. I mean right now, here in your laboratory.
“Tobias,” John says. “Tobias, I must ask that you leave immediately. I am about to begin a most serious experiment. I don’t have the time to chit chat right now.”
While we have been talking I’ve been casting glances around the large room. The shelves are as normal. The bookcases. The glass specimen jars.
“John,” I say, as calmly as I am able. “John, what’s floating in that specimen jar there?” I point to it.
I can already see what is inside it. I simply want confirmation that what I see is real.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Tobias.” John tells me.
Within the clear fluid inside the jar floats a human head. The head of a young woman, her long tresses floating gently about her severed neck.
I take one last step and find myself on the stone floor. I swivel my head and take it all in. I swallow hard.
There are more specimen jars down here than I’ve seen previously. Each contains a part of a human body. All of the parts are female in origin.
I also see, clearly now, on the operating table, the naked corpse of another young woman. Her chest is split open from the base of her neck to her lower abdomen.
“What in the name of God are you doing here, John?”
“I am creating life,” he tells me.
“Not from the chopped up bodies of corpses you’re not,” I assure him.
I walk closer, my right hand wrapped firmly around the pistol in my pocket. I have seen something else. In a steel pan, on the operating table is a human heart.
And it is still covered in wet, fresh blood.
I stare in shock at the body of the girl on the table. Though much of it has been washed away, I can now see that the huge wound sliced down the centre of her body produced a great deal of blood. Which means that, until a short time ago…the young woman was alive!
In other pans and trays sitting atop the table, I now discern other organs. Here a kidney, there a liver, there a mass of intestine. All separated, all obviously removed from the deceased body of the recently murdered young woman.
I look at John in stunned silence.
“She was just a whore, Tobias. No one to worry about. She won’t be missed. It’s why I always take the whores, do you see? No one really bothers about them. Plenty more where they came from, hey?”
“You’ve murdered a young woman, John…do you understand what you’ve done?”
“Of course I understand. I’m not a bloody moron you know. Oh, I know, I know, you’re a bit surprised.” He laughs. “Not half as surprised as she was though.”
“Anyway,” John continues. “It’s easier offering the bitches money and getting them to hop into my cab, than it is killing them and getting their bits on the streets. Did that a few times. Wasn’t hard. But almost got caught a couple of times. Too risky I decided, much better to get the specimen to accompany me of her own free will.”
So now I knew.
I was right all along.
“You’re the Ripper,” I exclaim.
“Who? Oh, yes, him. Jack the Ripper, as the newspapers say. Bit of a romantic name, what? Had a bit of a chuckle about that, I did.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
“You won’t be saying that when I bring this girl back to life in a moment or two, old son. The laugh will be on you then.”
Clutching the hidden pistol in my pocket even tighter I shake my head. “Nothing is going to make that poor girl live again, John.”
He stares at me as though in surprise. “Really? You don’t believe me? What about Mary then. There behind you. She was dead yesterday and she’s up and about now.”
“There’s no one behind me, John.” I pull the revolver from my pocket and point it at him. “I supposed you guessed I had this?”
I hear movement behind me.
I turn my head slightly and see a naked female form bearing down on me. I spin around, pistol raised.
The female figure crashes into me. She has one hand about my throat, the other holding my right hand away from herself.
We struggle.
She is incredibly strong.
My trigger finger jerks and a shot fires harmlessly against a wall. I flail with the cane in my left hand against her face. To no avail.
I cannot get any air down my throat. The feminine hand that holds it has a grip of steel. With mounting horror I see that the female figure choking me has the eyes of a dead fish. They are covered in a slimly film. The open mouth emits a terrible stench of rotting carrion. I see the sutures around her throat, where her head has been sewn onto her body.
I try to scream, but only a feeble croak emerges. My vision grows dim, the room around me swirls. Black spots dance before my eyes.
I pass out.

* * *

When I open my eyes I discover my hands are bound behind me.
I lay against a wall, from this position I can see John standing before the body of the girl on the operating table.
Opposite him I can see the naked female form of the walking corpse called Mary.
She (or it?) stands motionless. I fail to detect any sign of the breasts rising or falling. She is not breathing. Apart from the stitches around her throat more are visible on her shoulders and thighs. The hands and feet.
She has, quite literally, been sewn back together.
To my horror I see that another female corpse, also sewn back together, rests, in its entirety, in an upright tank of green liquid. The eyes are open. Do they move about, or is it just my imagination?
“I see you’re back with us then, Tobias?” John asks.
I jerk my head in the direction of Mary. “How?” I croak. My throat is swollen and sore.
“How did I give life back to her you mean?”
“You call that parody of a thing life?”
“Oh don’t be so sarcastic, Tobias. I have done what no other man before me has done. I have brought a dead body back to the land of the living.”
I stare at him in astonishment. “That is not ‘living’ John.”
“As you wish. I admit she’s not the most perfect of creatures, but early days yet. Another couple of weeks and I believe I’ll be able to re-animate a dead body without anyone being able to discern her from the corpse she was before.”
“You’ll need to improve on your needle work then,” I mutter.
“I’m a scientist, not a bloody dressmaker!”
“Science has no part of this atrocity.”
At which John laughs. “How many times, throughout the centuries, have men of science and their experiments been criticised and looked upon with scorn? Really, Tobias, I gave you more credit than that.”
I shift myself about, managing to slip my right hand into my rear pocket. John is busy extolling the virtues of his genius in this horrid affair and doesn’t seem to notice.
My fingers have reached that which I sought. I fiddle with it and speak only to keep John’s attention focussed on his tale. While he continues to speak the walking corpse of Mary remains motionless. If she follows our conversation in any way it certainly doesn’t show on her pale features. She doesn’t even blink.
“I was on the right track. Running electricity through the corpse was enough to make the nerve endings twitch and dance, but wasn’t successful in bringing it back to life…but…but, with the addition of some occult knowledge and potions…information that I discovered in an arcane book of black magic, I have done it, Tobias. I have reawakened a dead body. And not just dead, mind you. A body made up of parts from different specimens, different donors. An arm from a girl here, a leg and a head from someone else. The internal organs sourced from various subjects. It wasn’t enough to simply bring a dead ‘un back to life. To prove the procedure works I needed to make my own, pieced together body. And so I have done. And, as you can see for yourself…it lives!”

* * *

“A book of Black Magic? Oh God, John, what infernal knowledge have you been using to help you?” While I ask this question my fingers have found, and opened, the small pocket knife I habitually keep in my rear trouser pocket. With not some small amount of dexterity I begin to cut through the rope binding my wrists.
This goes unnoticed by John. He continues to speak. “I came across a grimnoire, when I was in a bookshop in Devon, earlier this year. As I understood it then, from my brief perusal of it in the bookshop, it claimed that one could raise the dead if one used certain spells and potions. Being a man of intellect I immediately dismissed the spells, but was intrigued by the accurate descriptions of the substances needed to formulate the potions.”
I feel the small blade of my knife cut through the last strand of rope that binds me. My hands are now free. I carefully return the knife to my pocket, and slowly flex my hands, that I might get the circulation flowing properly, before embarking on my next course of action.
“Strangely enough, most of the materials needed to concoct the potions mentioned in the grimnoire were easily had. Though some of them might fair turn the stomach of many a man or woman. I believe the spells were merely a symbolic way of recording the procedures that make the potions work. I have made Mary here live again, and I needed no spells. Just the liquid concoctions, pumped through the dead veins and organs, stimulated with massive bursts of electricity, that was enough to re-animate her corpse. The technique is not perfected yet, I grant you. Yet give me but a few more weeks and I believe I shall have one of my beauties walking and talking and none the wiser, as to their former condition. And I must say, an odd bonus of my experiments with Mary here, is that she obeys my every whim. Ah, we’ve had some fun together, I can tell you.”
I now know, from his words and the laughter that emanates from him; my friend John is truly insane. I shudder to think what commands he has given to his foul, undead creature.
“Got another one ready to go. Over there, in that tank. Only finished her yesterday. She’s alive also, take a look at her eyes, see how they move about, observing us?”
He now looks at me, supposedly still bound, lying in my corner, against the wall. “The question now of course, my dear Tobias, is what am I to do with you?”
“You could let me go?” I suggest.
A chuckle. “I don’t think so, Tobias.”
I cast my eyes around the room, seeking my revolver and cane. As though aware that I am plotting something, the thing called Mary shifts a little in my direction. The unblinking eyes stare sightlessly at me.
“Mary doesn’t seem to like you, Tobias. Can’t say I blame her. Breaking into a fellow’s home, disturbing his experiments, even attempting to forcibly bring them to a halt…it’s just not on, old chap. Not on at all.”
I spy my revolver and cane. They both sit atop a wooden chair, near the head of the operating table.
“What do you intend for me then, John?” I manage to utter these words with nary a tremble in my voice. A not inconsiderable achievement, considering I am in fear of my life, either from the madman who stands before me, or the monstrous creature that waits nearby. I can feel my hands tremble, a tic seems to have developed in my cheek. My bladder feels ready to burst.
In short; I am utterly terrified.
Yet I know I must not give in to this terror, for if I do, I am lost.
My ‘friend’ rubs his hands together. “It seems to me, Tobias, that the best way to win you to my side, is simply to kill you, and, when I’ve perfected my techniques on a few more whores…bring you back to life, as though you had never been deceased at all. What do you think?”
“I think…” I began…
I push myself up from the floor, legs gathered under me. I spring to my right, in the direction of the chair upon which sit my revolver and cane.
John steps in front of me, attempting to block my way. I only now notice the scalpel he holds. “How did you…?”
I give him a solid left jab to the nose. Not for nothing those once a week boxing lessons.
He reels backward, crying out and clutching his nose. Blindly swiping out at me with the scalpel.
Another three long steps and I snatch up my revolver. I glance quickly at the chambers, making sure they still have bullets in them.
And thank God they do, for the abomination that should not live but does…Mary…is pacing rapidly across the room toward me.
I raise my pistol and shoot her between the breasts.
She jerks, says nothing, misses a step…then continues to advance upon me. I fire another shot into her body, then another.
She does not stop!
The dead fish eyes stare into my own, the cold, pale hands reach for my throat.
“Kill him, Mary!” I hear John shout. “Kill the interfering blighter!”

I shove my pistol inside my waistband and hastily grab my cane. As I do so Mary’s questing hand grazes the side of my face. I leap away from her and retreat a few paces.
John is on the opposite side of the table from me. He grins.
He reaches down and picks up a butchers cleaver. It is already covered in dried blood. He begins to circle the table in the other direction from Mary, doubtless hoping to catch me between the pair of them.
“There’s nowhere to go, dear Tobias.”
My intention is to reach the stairway down which I had descended into this nightmare, but to do so I will either have to pass John or the undead horror that is his unholy creation.
I decide to leap across the operating table. I will throw myself bodily over it, and hope thus to reach the foot of the stairs.
Mary has almost reached me again.
I back up a few more paces, gather myself and begin to run forward.
My foot slips in the fresh blood that pools on the floor. Blood from the body of the recently murdered young woman.
My feet slide out from beneath and I crash to the stone, landing heavily on my back.
Frantically I turn my head to discover Mary reaching for me. With a cry of sheer terror I roll and twist my body, avoiding her clutching fingers. I hold my cane in my left hand and twist the handgrip savagely as I pull against it. The long steel blade, concealed within the body of the sword-cane slides free. In a mad panic I hack the blade into Mary’s right ankle, the only target available to me in this position.
The blade cuts deep, yet no blood pulses forth, only a trickle of some horrid, greenish liquid. I scramble away, slashing out with my sword once more, at the same target.
The foot cut half off, the creature attempts to follow me, but the damaged part of her anatomy gives way and she collapses to the stone floor.
I scurry backwards, finding my own footing.
“Don’t hurt her!” screams John.
Hurt the thing?
Even as I watch it tries to climb back up, but again the hacked ankle gives way…so Mary begins to scuttle across the floor on her hands and knees.
“You bastard!” John hurls the butcher’s cleaver in his hand directly at my head.
I duck down and the spinning blade passes over me.
He looks about for another weapon.
I leap atop the operating table, pulling my revolver from my waistband.
John has found a surgeons saw.
Picking it up he advances toward me.
“You’ll pay for hurting Mary,” he snarls.
With absolutely no hesitation I shoot my former friend in the centre of his chest. Once, twice.
He cries out and clutches a hand to his wounds.
Blood bursts out of his twisted mouth.
His legs fold under him.
A hand grasps my ankle and jerks me from the table.
Falling onto the hard stone floor for the second time I kick Mary in the face as she tries to climb my body, to reach my throat.
My blow seems to have no effect.
I raise my sword and bring it down on the side of her neck.
A wide gash opens up, green ichor pours out, yet still she drags herself up my body.
My flailing left hand makes contact with the thrown meat cleaver. I grasp it as a drowning man grasps a branch from an overhanging tree.
With a terrific blow I slam the thick, heavy blade, into the wound in her throat that I have already created.
The head springs from the neck, as a cork pops from a champagne bottle.
From the severed neck that awful green fluid spurts over me.
Gasping, crying out incoherently, I kick the remainder of the body off me.
I twist and writhe and put distance between myself and the headless body.
Panting, crouched now…I see that the body is still animate. The hands still reach for a victim, they still grasp and clutch. It is beyond belief.
“Mary.” John, badly wounded, puts out a hand.
As soon as he makes contact, the headless creature grips his extended hand and drags him toward itself.
The clutching hands claw their way up his body until they reach his neck.
“Mary. No. It’s me, dear girl.”
A hand bypasses his throat and creeps, spider like across his face.
“Yes. That’s right. It’s me, John. Your creator.”
The fingers move over his face, then suddenly, with tremendous force, stab into the eyes.
John screams!
The fingers dig deeper, burrowing into his eye sockets, pulping the soft tissue they find there.
John screams and screams some more.
I hear a crack…surely not?...but yes!
The fingers, propelled by some inhuman power, have broken through the thick bone behind the eyes and are now digging into the brain itself.
I lurch away, my stomach threatening to vomit up its contents.
I almost trip on Mary’s severed head.
It lays on one cheek…and the eyes…the eyes are still dead and empty and covered in a slimy film…yet they look up at me and follow my movement as I stagger past it.
At last! I reach the stairway, that leads upward, out of this Hell, out of this nightmare.
I begin to take the steps, two at a time. But, hearing something behind me, I pause and look back down into the laboratory.
The headless body of Mary is crawling around on the floor, in the direction of the head itself.
No, it cannot be.
The head cannot be directing the body. It is not possible.
And yet, apparently it is.
The crawling body reaches the head and puts out a hand and touches it. It then lifts it up and turns it, this way and that.
Until it faces me, paused on the stairs.
Holding the head in one hand, by the hair, the body begins to move again. Now it has reached the first step…and lifting itself up, holding onto a banister for support, starts to drag itself upwards, one step at a time.
“No!”
Turning, I charge up the stairs.
The door I had entered through is still ajar. I hurl myself through it and spin around, slamming it shut. There is no key. I cannot lock it.
I dash through the dark, empty house. barging into walls and furniture in my haste, falling once, then half crawling, then back on my feet and stumbling blindly again.
I come to the back door, wherein I had entered this house of dead whores. Or rather, this house of undead whores.
I wrench open my exit, a gust of fresh, though damp, foggy air blows over me.
Something on the wall, just inside the door, attracts my attention.
An oil lantern.
Taking it up I shake it, discovering it half full. Fumbling in my topcoat pocket I locate my box of matches. It takes me three attempts to light one. I touch it to the wick inside the oil lantern. It catches alight immediately.
Now I can see back down the darkened corridor I have just fled. It is empty. Using the lantern for illumination I take a few steps back inside the house.
I listen.
Something is moving back there, in the dark, beyond the light of the lantern.
Something that staggers and lurches and drags itself across the thickly carpeted floor.
My heart in my mouth, wanting to do nothing more than flee like a bolting horse, I somehow force myself to wait.
Then I see it. A hideous shadow, scratching its way along the floor.
I take one long step, further back along the corridor, and hurl the torch with all my might against a mahogany chest of drawers.
Instantly, with the smashing of the lantern’s glass, the oil sprays everywhere, and likewise the flame follows it.
The carpet catches alight, as do the drawers.
In the light of the flames I watch something twitch and writhe on the floor, amidst the conflagration.
A pale hand, the flesh dripping and turning black, melting, roasting, reaches in my direction.
A round ball of flame sizzles next to that hand, blackened eye sockets meeting my terrified gaze.
I turn and run.
I run as fast as my feet will carry me.
Away from the nightmare.
Away from what cannot be, from what was never meant to be.
Gasping for breath on a street corner, some distance away, I can see a red glow in the night sky.
Those old houses are ever a fire hazard.
I secretly hope that it becomes a veritable inferno that will engulf the whole structure, and hopefully hide forever, all traces of my friend John, and his murdered, undead whores.