The night was deathly still, as London was plunged into darkness under the dim amber glow of the gas lamps scattered along the narrow cobblestone streets. A thin veil of fog drifted through the city, casting looping shadows that danced in the flickering light. Somewhere, Big Ben tolled eleven times, the deep, sonorous bells reverberating through the misty streets.
In a remote corner of the city stood the looming edifice of the city mortuary, a silent sentinel to the mysteries of mortality. Behind the wrought iron gates and beneath the flickering gas lamps, the mortuary kept its lonely vigil, little disturbed by the living.
Inside, the mortuary was steeped in shadows, the rooms lit only by the faint glow of candles and oil lamps. The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive, laden with the cloying scent of formaldehyde, decay and death. Victorian sensibilities dictated that grieving relatives were seldom allowed inside these chambers of morbidity. Thus, the dead were attended by the coroners and mortuary keepers alone.
On this night, a solitary figure was hunched over a desk in the far corner of the examination room. Dr Reginald Hargrave, coroner and anatomy lecturer, had been working for nine hours straight, poring over medical reports and dissection notes related to a recent spate of gruesome murders that had gripped the city.
The case was extraordinary, not only due to the violence inflicted upon the victims, but because of the bizarre and ritualistic nature of the killings. Over the past fortnight, the bodies of three local women had been discovered in the back-alleys of Whitechapel at different locations. Although from varying backgrounds, they appeared connected by the savage and meticulous manner in which they had been murdered and... dismembered.
The murderer's modus operandi was chillingly precise. All three victims had their heads cleanly severed from the neck by a single sweep of an extraordinarily sharp blade. Yet there were no other mutilations to the body. It was as though the killer had taken only the heads as macabre trophies, leaving behind the defiled corpses to be found by some hapless soul.
Dr Hargrave observed the mortal remains of the last two victims, slain just the night before. The bodies lay side by side on granite slabs in the mortuary's dissection room, pale and lifeless under the bright glare of the gas lamps. The skin already showed shades of alabaster white and faint purple, as the blush of life and vitality had drained rapidly from the corpses.
The doctor clasped his hands behind his back, his gaze moving clinically over the cadavers. Both women had been young - probably no more than thirty years old. One was a brunette, her features refined and delicate, marking her as perhaps a governess or tutor. The other, a petite blonde, most likely earned her living as a seamstress or shop attendant, based on her simple linen dress and calloused fingers. Such lives of potential, so cruelly cut short.
Dr Hargrave's eyes were then drawn to gruesome sight between the cadavers. Resting on wooden blocks were the severed heads belonging to the deceased women. They had been carefully laid to face upwards, mouths closed and eyes shut, as though they had simply fallen into quiet repose. Yet, the skin around the gaping neck wounds were ragged and torn indicating the immense brutality with which they had been separated from the body. Dark, coagulated blood encrusted the ragged edges, contrasting violently against the alabaster hues of the skin.
Why were only the heads taken? What message was this malevolent killer trying to send? What possible deranged motive could underlie such vicious blood-letting?
The overworked coroner sighed and returned to his desk. The weight of this case troubled him greatly but he was determined to make progress tonight. Hidden in the locked bottom drawer was the one balm for mortality's strain - a small vial of opium dissolved into a sweet sherry wine. Dr Hargrave slipped off his coat, cravat and shoes, settling into his armchair as he took several long draws from the vial. Almost immediately his world blurred into serene, disconnected calm. Softly refracted halos of light shimmered around the lamps and candle stands. His mind drifted through realms of vivid imagination, as fantastical creatures and vaporous ghosts emerged from the shadows.
Amidst the comforting embrace of his elixir, Dr Hargrave's gaze settled on the severed heads, as he contemplated them with a new sense of scientific inquisitiveness. The macabre remnants possessed tragic dignity despite the violence of their endings. Reclining on their pedestals, dark hair fanned around pale, angelic faces that seemed to float ethereally in the misty gloom.
"Dr. Hargrave..."
A voice seemed to whisper through the fog enshrouding his mind, soft as a lover's caress yet cold as the grave. Dr Hargrave started violently, the vial slipping through his fingers onto the bearskin rug. Heart racing, he peered through the gloom, unsure if reality or fantasy had produced that faint utterance.
"Dr. Hargrave..."
The voice came again, more insistent but no less spectral - an eerie susurration that raised gooseflesh along his arms. This time, Dr Hargrave thought he caught a slight movement from the corner of his vision. With a growing sense of unease, he turned slowly to the dissection slabs.
Impossibly, both heads were now gazing right at him, clouded eyes glittering in the darkness. The carefully sewn eyelids had opened, somehow, to reveal cold orbs that held his heart in an icy, petrifying grip.
"Who goes there?" Dr Hargrave demanded, though his voice trembled with sudden dread.
"Do you not recognize us, doctor?" The first head spoke, her delicate mouth unmoving yet undoubtedly the origin of the whispered words. A ghostly draft stirred her chestnut tresses, sending them coiling softly around her neck and shoulders.
"This cannot be! Surely you are but inanimate matter," Dr Hargrave exclaimed faintly, though he could not pull his horrified stare away from the severed yet miraculously vital head.
"Oh, but in death we see all, doctor, and come to know the greatest of secrets..." the second head uttered in a chilling tone. Her small mouth remained motionless, though her eyes of glacial blue seemed to spear his very soul.
The room seemed to darken, the lamps dimming to a hellish red glow as though the light itself was being leeched away. Shadows sprang up around the two heads, wreathing around them until only their ghostly faces seemed to float in the darkness like pale lamps. Strange susurrations and spectral sounds filled the room - agonized moans, frantic muttering and tormented wails of the dead.
Heart hammering against his ribs, Dr Hargrave leaned forwards, fingers digging into the leather arms of his chair until the knuckles gleamed white. "The secrets of what, tell me! Of death? Of murder?" His voice was a rasp of unfettered fear and morbid anticipation.
“The one you seek...” the first head whispered sibilantly. “The one whose hands ended our mortal lives... He walks amongst you shrouded in righteous skin, but comes to us at night to wallow in his feasts of depravity..."
Dr Hargrave gasped, sweat beading his brows despite the deathly chill pervading his chamber. "The murderer! Tell me, reveal to me his identity!" He was on his feet now, robe swirling as he stepped toward the ebony plinths bearing the two disembodied ladies.
The blonde head turned fractionally toward him, eyes narrowing to milk-white slits. "He wears... a guise of virtue and propriety by day but by night... when the pale moon rises... " Her voice faded to a sinister sigh.
When she remained stubbornly silent, Dr Hargrave grasped her head by the hair, peering wild-eyed into her icy orbs. “Tell me, phantom! Who is this psychopath?"
When no answer was forthcoming, he turned desperately to the chestnut-haired cadaver, only to find her skeletally pallid features transformed. While one decayed orb glared malevolently at him, black lips peeled back over rotten teeth in a monstrous parody of a grin.
With a strangled cry, Dr Hargrave released his hold and staggered back till he collapsed into his chair once more. The thing on the slab continued its hellish cackling, as maggots and worse poured from her open maw. Shadow-wreathed hands scrabbled brokenly against the wooden pedestal, as though attempting to lift the entire body after its liberated head.
Meanwhile the blonde's whispers grew to a susurrating drone that overlaid the awful gobbling coming from her companion. “We are damned... damned to walk between worlds for eternity... Seeking the justice denied to us..."
When Dr Hargrave emitted only thin mewling sounds of panic, the susurrations turned angry. The lamps flared blood-red once more and the room’s very dimensions seemed warped by the shadows.
“You must bring him to justice, doctor...” The voices seemed to circle him, whispering accusations from every corner of the room. "Only you can end our torment... Only you..."
Their baleful gazes transfixed him as he cringed helplessly in his chair, waves of stark incredulous horror and heart-freezing dread threatening to drown his sanity completely. The spectral emanations were clearly some machination of his opium-deranged mind ... and yet - the voices were so real, so close he could feel their chill breath stir his hair, raising gooseflesh on his clammy skin.
When Dr Hargrave squeezed his eyes shut against the nightmarish apparitions, sharp nails scored over the back of his hands in icy admonishment. Gasping with shock at the sudden agony, his eyes flew open to behold the blonde head now hovering directly before him. Flesh and bone had melted away leaving only a bleached rictus stretched tight over an ebony skull. Empty sockets flared with unholy green flames as she opened her mouth impossibly wide in a silent shriek.
The doctor's own shriek echoed hers as he flailed backwards over his chair and crashed to the floor, robe pooling around him. He kicked desperately away from the hell-spawned thing, his heels catching on the rug’s edge to overturn his chair with a loud crash.
"No more! No more!" he cried hoarsely, scrabbling backwards until he cowered against the far wall. But even as he shielded himself with his arms, the whispering faded abruptly away. The room became very quiet, very still.
Mustering his last reserves of courage, Dr Reginald Hargrave raised his head warily to look about. Normality had returned to his surroundings as suddenly as it had fled. The severed cadaver heads rested innocuously on their pedestals once more. Locks of hair draped softly over alabaster cheeks while clouded eyes gazed sightlessly upwards beneath closed lids. The lamps shone brightly over the examination room, gleaming off the tiles and granite. No shadows stirred, no eldritch voices sounded. Only the faint drip of a leaking ceiling pipe and the creak of the old mortuary building punctuated the silence.
Shakily Dr Hargrave rose to his feet, embarrassment warring with the lingering dread curdling his guts. Obviously he had experienced a particularly vivid opium hallucination. He cursed himself for sampling the perilous drug here, in the wee hours, surrounded by the departed. Their very presence must have influenced his lurid imaginings.
Yet... the doctor’s hands trembled as he examined them closely. The skin over his knuckles was broken as though scratched deeply by jagged nails. He peered confusedly at the cadaver heads but their limp hands were safely accounted for. As he brushed down his clothes, he realized the bearskin rug had been badly rumpled as though a heavy object or body had crashed upon it. The autopsy tools had even been scattered from the surgical tray which itself lay overturned upon the tiles.
Utterly bewildered now, Dr Hargrave backed away. His foot scattered something metallic - the vial that had contained his precious opium, now lying empty near the gas lamp's base. Heart beginning to thud with panic once more, the doctor turned to flee towards the sanctuary of his office. His breath came in ragged gasps as his eyes darted apprehensively into every shadow-draped corner he passed. He could have sworn he glimpsed shapes - amorphous and spectral - coalescing from the darkness before dissolving with his passing.
Finally, after negotiating several gas lamp-lit corridors that seemed to stretch longer than he recalled, Dr Hargrave reached the closed door of his office. Scrambling inside, he slammed it shut and locked it firmly for good measure. Finally allowing himself an exhalation of profound relief, he all but collapsed into his leather chair behind the large oak desk.
As the night wore on, the doctor lit every gas lamp and candle in his office till he could banish the last vestiges of shadow from its confines. The dancing flames soothed his shattered nerves though he started at every creak and groan of the old mortuary. At one point, he even fancied he heard faint whispers at his locked door accompanied byspectral scratching. But gradually, as dawn's light began filtering through the curtains, heralding morning, he finally succumbed to exhaustion. Laying his head upon his desktop, surrounded by his gruesome research, Dr Reginald Hargrave lapsed into a restless slumber broken by dreams of bodiless heads chanting promises to reveal the murderer... for a price.
Over the next few days, Dr Hargrave tried to convince himself that the bizarre events were simply figments of his overloaded, overwrought mind. But a growing sense of unease needled insidiously at him. He could not erase the memory of those baleful stares or the icy dread that ran fingers down his spine whenever he gazed too long at the women's vacant faces.
During autopsies, he began working with his back deliberately turned towards the cadavers’ heads. When colleagues enquired about his obvious discomfort in the dissection room, he offered mumbled excuses about migraines or a sensitive constitution. In truth, the distance gave him no peace from the constant feeling of being watched by cold, dead eyes.
At night, alone in his bedchamber, Dr Hargrave lay awake, gazing fearfully into the darkness as though expecting to glimpse ghastly faces leering back. Spectral whispers seemed to echo at the edge of hearing making sleep impossible without a strong dose of sedative. But oblivion brought no respite, as cadaverous faces and bodiless voices pursued him relentlessly through haunted dreams.
Soon coworkers and Scotland Yard detectives noticed a haggardness about the doctor, remarking upon his neglected attire and the deepening circles beneath his eyes. Dr Hargrave became sullenly taciturn, avoiding colleagues and conversations alike. He snapped irritably at friends until they learned to avoid him.
When the Yard appealed to him for updates on the serial killer investigation, Dr Hargrave could only shake his head distractedly, offering vague excuses about awaiting test results or lacking evidence. In truth, his notes had devolved into wild conjectures and fragmentary allusions to supernatural agents of retribution. Entire pages were filled with desperate scrawls to cease the unrelenting whispers in his head.
One morning, upon awakening after a mere two hours of nightmare-broken slumber, Dr Reginald Hargrave gazed sightlessly up at the ceiling of his humble bedchamber above the mortuary. For long moments, he contemplated the strange voyage his life had taken since encountering the eerie cadavers. Shadows still clung to the corners of his room despite the burgeoning dawn light. The nightly susurrations still echoed faintly in his ears. He realized then, with the certainty of one gazing into the abyss, that if he did not solve this mystery soon and silence the haunting voices, he would spiral down irreversibly into madness...
And so Dr Hargrave embarked upon a secret investigation of his own design, determined to unveil the identity of the barbarous killer. He reasoned it was the only way to grant peace to the restless spirits of the departed ladies, thus ending his nocturnal torment. With newfound resolve, the doctor delved meticulously into his case notes once more.
The deeper he dug, the more unsettled he became by the ritualistic nature of the murders. Three victims in under a fortnight - killed and decapitated on the nights preceding the full moon then laid out to be discovered with seeming deliberation. The heads - taken as ghoulish prizes but why? He buried himself in London’s newspaper archives studying similar slayings stretching back over the past five decades. To his dismay, he discovered at least twenty other murder cases following the same lunar cycle and ritual over the years. The slayer was obviously highly patient, sophisticated and experienced in his horrific craft – a predator haunting London’s streets for decades concealed behind a façade of normality.
Late at night as Dr Hargrave worked by guttering candlelight, poring over these gruesome details whilst fighting exhaustion, he would hear the ghostly whispers intensify around him. Frigid breath stirred the hairs on his neck and phantom laughter echoed sinisterly. Though he squeezed his eyes shut and stoppered his ears with wax plugs, the voices were inside his head - faint yet unrelenting.
"Have you discovered his identity yet, Doctor? Does his name grace your lips?" The first cadaver would question in disappointed sighs. "The full moon approaches once again..."
"You cannot hope to thwart The Bringer of the Tide without unmasking him," her companion warned ominously. Sometimes other voices - faint and anguished - would join this spectral colloquy. They pleaded for surcease or sobbed prayers and Dr Hargrave wondered whether they were the cries of other victims, lost souls taken by this relentless killer over the years. Their pain and desperation seeped into his every thought, mingling with his own growing terror and obsession.
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Here is the conclusion:
As the next full moon drew inexorably closer, Dr Hargrave became a haunted wraith of what the coroner once was, terrorized by alleged encounters with the supernatural that only he could experience or perceive. His obsession consumed every waking moment as he lurched huntedly through his task, despairing whether the mounting clues and his own threadbare sanity would suffice to halt this Otherworldly predator before the next infelicitous victim fell prey to The Bringer of the Tide.
Then, as if guided by an unseen hand, connections began falling into place. The taunting whispers seemed to rise in anticipation, hungry for justice, as Dr Hargrave closed in upon the human monster who walked as a man.
The night of the full moon found the coroner secreted in the shadows of a darkened side street, concealed behind stacks of refuse in the narrow passageways of Whitechapel. All senses were focused with fevered intensity upon the innocuous gentleman stealing furtively through the mist ahead, black bag in hand. To the ignorant eye, the killer appeared every bit a respectable surgeon hastening to assist some fallen drunkard or indigent. None but Dr Hargrave glimpsed the malevolent delight that surfaced behind those hooded eyes at the prospect of rending vulnerable flesh beneath the clouded moon.
When the genteel murderer paused beside the slumped form of a sleeping vagrant, Dr Hargrave burst from concealment, revolver clutched tightly in a white-knuckled grip. “Stop! You, there! Bringer of the Tide!”
The expensively-garbed doctor whirled abruptly with an indignity and fear unsuited to one interrupted amidst innocent deeds. Alarm blanched his features upon recognizing the wild-haired coroner leveling a rusted revolver towards his heart.
In the gloom behind this sidewalk tableau of accused and accuser, shadows detached and coalesced into ghostly shapes. Eyes gleamed beneath hoods as they converged with haunted sighs. The whispers intensified to a susurrating drone.
"Yes..."
"At last, blessed release."
"The time has come."
Dr Hargrave cast a glance behind to behold the spectral audience filling the alleyway, their empty gazes fixed longingly upon him and the frozen culprit. Turning slowly to face the elegantly-dressed predator standing motionless before his revolver, Dr Reginald Hargrave intoned in a sepulchral voice which seemed to echo from the depths of his haunted soul.
“For your heinous crimes against the people of London... I swear, before these restless souls, upon my very life, that you shall pay with the forfeit of your own...”
A sneer twisted the refined features of the murderer revealed at last. “And do you presume to deliver their justice, Doctor?” he scoffed. Though his tone rang scornful, his posture was coiled with the tension of one prepared to grapple death itself.
“By my very life or death this night, I so vow,” intoned Dr Hargrave. His eyes reflected the hunger of the watching shades.
With scarcely a flicker of warning, the cornered villain spun and sprinted towards the deeper gloom swathing the alley’s end. But Dr Hargrave had anticipated the desperate gambit. His revolver cracked thunderously as a bullet took the killer mid-flight in the back of his thigh. With a belling cry of agony, the craven figure crashed earthwards, the cobblestones embracing him with brutal force.
In seconds, Dr Hargrave stood above the writhing body. Wasting no time, he stamped a heel viciously upon the wrist of the hand that groped instinctively for a stiletto amidst the gentleman’s fallen possessions. Bones splintered audibly beneath his blow. This time, the scream was raw and piercing before it choked off into frantic whimpering.
Deathly silence reclaimed the alley but for the pathetic mewling. The hovering specters ceased their whispers, the very air taut with anticipation. Gathering his breath in ragged gasps, Dr Hargrave leveled his revolver pointblank at the crumpled villain’s hooded visage.
“Please... mercy...” The cultured tones were reduced to reedy simpering.
Dr Hargrave gazed pitilessly down through the veil of his sweat-damp hair. “Did you spare mercy for the women whose lives you reft?”
When only low groaning answered, he drew back the hammer, the click detonating like a thunderclap in the stillness. “Then neither shall you receive mercy this night. May God have mercy upon your cursed soul."
The coroner’s oath thus honoured at last, Dr Reginald Hargrave exulted as he pulled the trigger to mete out long-overdue justice...
In the spreading pool of crimson, the broken body sprawled face down atop the grim tools of its vile nocturnal trade. Gas lamps glinted along the wet length of the ceramic surgery blade, tracing the etched inscription curving its length: Bringer of the Tide.
Above the gruesome tableau, the lingering shades began to dissolve as the first light of dawn suffused the alley with golden radiance. Their unearthly whispers faded upon the morning breeze. As Dr Hargrave stared down at the lifeless remains of London’s notorious century-old scourge, the numbness of his obsession thawed into overwhelming relief. Finally, the souls of the dead could rest peacefully beyond the veil, untethered from the anguish of lingering rage or grief.
Soon others would happen upon the scene – authorities investigating the echoed gunshot - to make of it what they would. But as Dr Reginald Hargrave relinquished the cold weight of his revolver beside its victim and turned to make his way quietly into the gathering dawn, he felt only the bittersweet balm of redemption.
At long last, blessed silence and solace filled his soul.
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