The Ripper Affair

Chapter Forty-Five A More Difficult Problem

“Curse the man,” Aberline muttered. “Curse him, I say.” Creaking, groaning sounds. “I am not venturing into that hole.” He lit another lucifer. He was using them recklessly, having a pocketful of them–perhaps it was part of an inspector’s duty, to have one when necessary? “Clare, your pistol—”

“Five shots.” He lifted the Bulldog calmly. “Then they will swarm us as I seek to reload. Pico?”

“I’ve a blade or two.” The youth spat aside, still bracing Aberline from the side. The whites of his eyes gleamed. “I don’t fancy being suffocated by Thin Meg’s children, mind you.”

Who is this Meg? She sounds atrocious. Then again, Londinium was full of such creatures. Had he not seen a dragon in Southwark, once? The irrationality of the memory no longer bothered him overmuch, in the face of the current situation.

Clare tilted his head. They were drawing closer, those light, unholy, dancing footsteps. “We may have a more difficult problem in a few moments, gents. To the coal-pile, quickly!”

“What about him?” Pico’s chin jutted toward the hole.

Perhaps he shall solve that problem for us. Or be solved himself. “He is well-equipped to handle himself, and he will find Miss Bannon. We are not so durable, and I can hear that thing coming. To the coal, now. Come, Aberline!”

Groaning sounds, scraping, from overhead. The starvelings had patiently, inch by inch, pushed the blockage at the door aside. Or they had found some other means of entry. Even the skeletons had some weight, and enough of them could work their way around every obstacle. Those fingers of theirs, dead-white and squirming…

A rustling, and a thump. A pale shape fell past the lath-ladder, hit the packed dirt of the cellar floor, and lay there twitching.

Tiptap. Tiptap. Tip tip tap tap tip tap tip tap—

They reached the coal. Aberline flung himself upon its hard pillow with a grunt, and Clare whirled, his Bulldog’s stout nose coming up. He would at least sell their lives dearly. “Climb the coal,” he hissed, fiercely, as the starveling made a convulsive, tired movement. It was insane, to think of anything so skeletal moving, a glitter of mad intelligence in its yellowed, sunken eyes. “Climb, damn you!”

Tiptap. Tiptaptiptaptiptap.

The Coachman burst from the dark hole Mikal had vanished into, its eyes red coals, and Clare bit back a cry. The thing was terribly solid now, and its face was no longer mercifully obscured. A ruin of runnelled flesh, broken glass-sharp teeth, wide sunken nostrils, hands of clawed monstrosity. It ran with a queer lurching grace, one shoulder occasionally hitching higher than the other as if it was a hunchback, and as it ran its bones crackled.

It paid no attention to the men on the hillock of cursed coal. Instead, it hurled itself on the single starveling that had fallen down–a pebble in the face of a larger avalanche–and buried its face in the skeletal creature’s midriff. The howling that rose was a broken-glass scraping against sanity, but Clare, for once, did not look away.

He watched the irrationality unfolding before him as Aberline cursed, Pico let out a strangled noise, and several small soft plops sounded as more starvelings fell through the hole to swarm the unholy thing consuming one of their number.