ONCE BITTEN

ELEVEN: RAVEN HART

Raven Hart chose to go home via the alleyway, and she regretted it almost straightaway.

            The alleyway remained poorly lit, and had become sanctuary for every sort of low-life in the East End of London.

            At first, she hadn’t been sure whether she had heard the noise, behind her correctly and just carried on walking.  But, when she heard it again, closer, and clearer she turned to confirm her worst fears.

            Of course, she had heard the other girls on the street, talk about a beast prowling the streets at night hunting its prey.  Raven had laughed it off as too much gin, or opium making some of the girls hallucinate. 

And yet, when she turned to check the source of the growling behind her, she somehow knew her fate had been sealed.

The silhouette stood rigid in the moonlight, Raven stared at it in fear as the eyes began to change to an insane yellow glow. The figure screamed in agony as the knees reversed direction and the bones shifted inside. The face contorted as the long wolf's muzzle extended out in front, and it fell forward onto the hands. The screams turned into a long howl as the dark fur sprouted from the body, and the clothing ripped itself as the muscles increased in size.

Raven lifted up her outer-garments, revealing her narrow ankles and ran as fast as she could. Behind her, with the transformation complete, the werewolf gave chase.

Raven pushed through a dilapidated old gate without breaking her stride. The werewolf smashed without breaking stride, the hinges rusty and it couldn’t stop. She turned left, dodged an overflowing rubbish, and crossed the road, leaping a hedge as she cut the corner of an adjoining road.

The werewolf kept running, now down on all fours getting closer with every stride.

She disappeared into a crowd of late-night drinkers.  The werewolf, now looking more like a large dog, headed, to where a group gathering outside the pub blocked the pavement.  They  parted like the Red Sea at his approach, allowing a glimpse of Raven emerging on the other side crossing the street.

As the werewolf cleared the crowd, one brave drinker, went to kick it, but one swipe of a claw, removed his foot, leaving the drunkard slowly bleeding to death on the pavement behind him.

Raven barged through another group of drinkers further down the street.  One of them stumbled as she pushed past and called after her.  But when she looked back it wasn’t to apologise, it was to see how close the beast was.

The werewolf tried to move faster, putting its head down for a second, and losing her.  She’d gone behind another queue.  It crossed the street where a narrow back alley showed close to the queue.  As it got closer, Raven burst out from a knot of people about halfway down, glanced at the werewolf once and then disappeared into the alley.

When the creature got to the mouth of the alley, it had underestimated how dark it would be.  Even with its nocturnal vision the beast couldn’t see her, but acute hearing picked up the echo of her footsteps in the distance.  She sounded a long way ahead, almost on to the next street.

  By the time the salivating beast reached the end, she was gone.  Sniffing the air, the lycanthrope stood for a moment, looking both ways, sniffing the air.  Trying to pick out the scent of pure fear. There were crowds on both sides of the street, and horse and carriages passing along , with shadows everywhere.  Doorways to disappear in, tiny vessels of lanes and alleys that would hide her for as long as she needed.

  A sudden movement caught his eyes.

  He could see her, heading out of town.  Heading out towards the countryside and the trees.

The werewolf went after her, and even though hundred yard start it knew it would catch her.

  She took the footpath route to the woods.  Running on uneven ground.

  The shapeshifting beast, remained sure footed on the ground which was full of dead leaves and disturbed earth.

Suddenly, Raven veered off the path into dense forest on the right, where the ground started to rise, sloping upwards through the undergrowth.

The deeper they went the darker it became.  The full moon carved through irregular gaps in the canopy, forming pale tubes of light.  Where it couldn’t penetrate the foliage, the forest as black as oil.  Beneath its paws, the grass, and uneven ground, the sort of ground you could break an ankle running across.

But not the werewolf.  It ran as if the whatever the state of the ground, didn’t have any affect on the animal’s balance.

  For a moment, the wolf-walker thought she might be getting away.  It cleared a tree stump with ease, trying to take longer strides, in an attempt to swallow up as much ground as possible.  Huge trees lurched out of the darkness, but the creatures sense of balance remained, and had no effect on it at all.

Raven arched further to the right, deeper into the forest.  The werewolf tried to up the pace, every bone in its metamorphosized body aching, every nerve prickling, and notice the foliage thickened about twenty feet ahead.  It became dense quickly, most of it hidden from the moonlight, making for a difficult chase.  The creature followed, ignoring the thorny branches scratch against the fur.  The darkness seemed all around.  It moved through the shrubbery as fast as it could. Beyond the noise of the branches, cracking and splintering the beast expected to hear Raven ahead.

Nothing.

But the only sound the lycanthrope could hear was of itself sniffing the air for Raven’s scent.

ii

For a moment, all Raven could hear was blood being pumped through her body, a thumping sound, so loud it felt like it was echoing through the trees.

Something cracked to her right.  She turned and narrowed her eyes, willing herself to see into the enclosing gloom.

There rose out of the vast gloom of the surrounding trees, a strange cry.  It came through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away.  Again, and again, it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing.

Raven held her hands over her ears, until it died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon her.  She stood behind a big oak tree, staining her ears, but nothing came.

Until, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising, and falling like the low constant murmur of the sea.

Blindly Raven ran through the gloom, blundering against trees, forcing her way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always away from the direction of whence those dreadful sounds had come.  At every rise Raven looked eagerly around her, but the shadows were think within the woods, and nothing moved upon its dreary face.

As the air cooled, a dense white fog drifted slowly in Raven’s direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of Raven, low but thick and well defined.  The moon shone through the trees on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the huge trees borne upon its surface.

Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the wood drifted closer and closer to where Raven hid.  Most of Epping Forest appeared to be invisible, and the trees stood out of the swirl of white vapour.

As she watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling along the forest floor and rolled slowly into one dense bank.

With visibility now almost nil, Raven heard a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling mist.  The cloud was within fifty yards of where she stood, and she glared at it, uncertain what horror was about to break from it.

Her mind paralyzed with fear by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon her from the shadows of the fog.  A werewolf, complete in its transformation, something that not many mortal eyes had ever seen.  Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its snout, hairs, and longitudinal flap of skin that hung beneath the lower jaw or neck were outlined in flickering flame.  

Never in any gin-soaked or opium enforced dream had Raven dreamed of seeing anything more savage, appalling, or hellish than the dark from which broke upon her out of the wall of fog.

With long bounds the huge creature was leaping across the ground towards her.

Before Raven could react, she felt like she had been hit by a train.  Something closed over my upper left arm, just above the elbow, with all the power and brutal savagery of a sprung bear trap.  In agonizing pain, she staggered and lurched and almost fell her arm being crushed.  She swung round in a vicious half-circle hooking with all the strength of her right arm but all she did was to make a hole in the night.  She almost dislocated her right shoulder, but she had more to think about than that as lurched sideways again, fighting for her life. 

If she fell the creature would be upon her and her fate would be sealed.

Within seconds the inevitable happened and Raven crashed to the ground with the werewolf, on top of her and slashing relentlessly at her clothes, and tearing at her skin, as pleaded for mercy and for her death to come quickly.

iii

Nature abhors waste, and a body lying outdoor soon becomes a food source of the local wildlife.  They will attend the feast, detaching and carrying away whatever they can.  But the torso is too big for all but the largest scavengers to move and it tends to be eaten in situ.  So, the ribcage usually marks the location where the body lay. 

 The forest floor was covered with a thick mat of pine needles, like coir matting, pebbled with fallen cones.  The clean scent of pine that seeped through my mask was a welcome relief from the usual smell that greeted me at a serious crime scene. 

 But it was short-lived.  The air was thick and still underneath the pines, untouched by the breeze from the sea.  Detective Inspector Bitten felt himself sweat as he made his way towards the crime scene. 

 Branches scratched at him, showering him with needles as he pushed through the trees,  sweat running down his face, and he had cramp from walking in a permanent crouch.   

He found Dr Loup examining an undulating line of maggots and a blanket of discarded junk.  The spot was maybe sixteen or seventeen yards away from where the Hansom cab had dropped him off.

Bitten crouched down again over grubs, wrinkling his nose at the ammonia smell.  He wanted to see where they were coming from.  He set off, heading towards the yellowed tufts of marsh grass from which the larvae flowed and noticed the smell first and then the flies, a somnolent buzzing that filled the head.  But the body he discovered was not the sheep or deer, or even dog, he expected.  Naked, the female corpse was full of movement.  A rippling infestation that boiled under her skin and erupted from mouth and nose, as well as the other less natural openings in her body.  

The maggots that spilt from her pooled on the ground before crawling away in the line that now stretched beyond where he stood.   

The remains of what had once been Raven Hart had been partially camouflaged by fallen pine needles.  A few ants scurried busily over it, foraging for flesh.  Some of the bones had been picked clean, and the sternum and some of the smaller ribs were missing. 

Bitten had seen enough crime scenes to know, that scavengers generally eat the face first, and the teeth could easily have been dislodged from the missing mandible, but he had learned from hard experience not to take anything for granted. 

He called the doctor straight away and then for Constable Wilk, who he had left at the carriage.  High Beach is a village inside Epping Forest and is located approximately eleven miles north east of central London. It is the only settlement inside Epping Forest, and fell within the civil parish of Waltham Abbey.

Situated in the uplands of Essex, it reach heights of 110 metres above sea level on the western fringes of Epping Forest. Areas of the surrounding forest are also named High Beach or High Beech. However, individual smallholdings of land are given over to residential, agriculture and mixed uses, particularly beside the straight road which bisects it. Many of the forest paths are naturally gravel-lined with underlying deposits of Bagshot Sands. It is believed that the name High Beach came from an early description of the localized sand and gravel exposure in this part of the forest.

Doctor Loup joined the Detective Inspector and crouched over the body.

“What do you think then, doctor?”

“Of all the killings we have witnessed lately, I have never seen anything like this before. I mean who or what would chew a rib down to half its original size?”

He had to agree it the killer this time had been brutal to the extreme.

iv

In 1888, the Eastern section of the High Street was overshadowed by the church of St Mary, which in the Middle Ages had been a lime-washed structure. Its resultant gleaming white exterior led to its being dubbed the White-Chapel the name which was eventually passed on to the neighbourhood around it.

            Detective Inspector Bitten did feel that the Virgin Mary had seen better days.  Her face was pockmarked and worn, her features without the distinction they might once have held.  With her bowed head, she seemed to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders.  Yet there was something noble about her resignation, as though, unwelcome as it was, her lot was one she nevertheless accepted. 

            The statue had drawn my attention during the church service.  He couldn't say what he liked about it.  Mounted on its stone pillar, it was roughly hewn, and even to his unschooled eye, the sculptor had a poor sense of proportion.  But whether it was the softening effect of age or something less definable, there was something about it that appealed.  It had endured for centuries, seen countless days of joy and tragedy played out beneath it.  It would still be there, watchful, and silent, long after everyone else had faded from memory.  It was a reminder that, good or bad, everything passes. 

            The old church was cool and musty, even on a warm morning.  The light fell through the stained-glass window in blues and mauves, the ancient glass warped and uneven in its leaded frames.  The central aisle was flagged with uneven stone slabs now worn smooth, interspersed with ancient gravestones.  The one nearest to him was engraved with a skull, beneath which some medieval stonemason had inscribed a sombre message. 

As you are now, so I once was.   

As I am now, so you will be. 

Bitten moved his weight from side to side on the hard-wooden pew as Reverend Samuel Augustus Barnett’s insidious baritone echoed off the stone walls.  What had set out to be a Solemn Eucharist had predictably become an excuse for the vicar to inflict his own brand of piety on a captive audience. 

"Even as we pray for the souls of all these fallen women, there is a question all of us want to be answered.  Why would this have happened?  Is it a judgement that these poor unfortunate children of God have been taken from us so brutally?" 

Gripping the aged wooden pulpit in both his hands, Barnett glowered down at his congregation. 

"Judgement can fall upon any of us, at any time." 

Barnett paused for breath.  More police had been drafted in that morning and the national press had finally woken up, descending on Whitechapel giving the area the feel of being under siege. 

Barnett had allowed the press inside the church, adding to the unreality of the situation.  By the time Bitten and Wilk arrived the pews were full, and they forced our way through to the back.  

The reverend was beginning to wind down.

"Perhaps there is no reason, no prevailing wisdom behind our universe." 

He paused, dramatically.  Bitten wondered if he were deliberately playing to the press.

"Or perhaps we are too dazzled by our own arrogance to see it."

He leaned forward, thrusting his fleshless head at us.  

"We should all of us, everyone, look into our hearts.  Evil doesn't cease to exist just because we choose to ignore it.” 

There was an uneasy silence as people tried to digest his words.  Barnett didn't give them a chance.  He lifted his chin and closed his eyes, as the camera flashes cast shifting shadows on his face. 

 "Let us pray." 

 After the service there was none of the milling around outside that normally follows.  Despite the attempts of the press, few people felt inclined to provide interviews.  This was all still too raw, too private for that.  It was one thing watching coverage of other communities that had been struck by tragedy.  

Being part of it was another matter. 

Bitten and Wilk, watched Barnett preaching to news-starved journalists in the churchyard, while behind him excited children played in the graveyard, trampling the wilted flowers that still decorated it.  His voice, if not his actual words, carried to where we stood on the other side of the street.

 "I've never heard so much rubbish in all my life, sir."

Wilk said angrily. 

"What was it, God's judgement on our sins?  We've bought this on ourselves?"  

"Something like that, Constable."

Bitten admitted. 

 Wilk snorted. 

"Just what Whitechapel needs.  An invitation to fear."

 Standing behind Barnett as he continued his impromptu press conference, Bitten noticed the ranks of his hardline parishioners had been swelled by new converts.  Many known prostitutes had been joined by many less regular church-goers.  They looked on in mute, approving chorus as the vicar raised his voice to drive home his point to the cameras. 

 Wilk shook her head in disgust. 

"Look at him.  In his element.  Man of  God?  Hah!  This is just a chance to say, ‘I told you so', sir." 

 "Still, he has a point."  

 Wilk gave Bitten a sceptical look.  "Don't tell me you've been converted, sir." 

"Not by Barnett.  But whoever's behind this must be local.  Someone who knows this part of East London.  Knows us." 

 "In that case, God help us, sir. If Barnett gets his way things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better." 

 "What do you mean?" 

 "Have you ever heard about the Salem witch-hunts in America, sir?" 

 "Yes." 

 "Well, that's going to be nothing to what goes on here if this carries on much longer."

Bitten thought Wilk was joking, but the look he gave him had been entirely serious. 

"Keep your head down, sir.  Even without Barnett stirring things up, the mud-slinging and finger-pointing are going to start soon.  We must make sure SID don't walk into any of it, sir." 

 "You're not serious, Constable?"  

 "No?  I know what our good friends and neighbours are like in this part of East London.  The knives are going to be sharpened already, sir" 

"Come on, don't you think that's stretching it a bit?" 

 "Is it, sir?" 

 Wilk watched Barnett, who had turned back towards the church having finished whatever he had to say.  As the more persistent of journalists tried to follow, the verger Dave Saw stepped to block them with his arms outstretched, a vast barrier of flesh none of them felt inclined to pass. 

Wilk gave Bitten a meaningful look. 

"Something like this brings the worst in everyone.  Whitechapel is a small place.  And small places breed small minds.  Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic.  But if I, were you, I'd watch your back all the same."  

Wilk held Bitten’s gaze for a moment to make sure he’d got the message, then glanced over his superior’s shoulder. 

"Shall we go, sir?" 

And, so thinking, they passed out into the street, with the desire to refresh their remembrance of the squalid scenes of the original murders.

Three minutes’ walk takes one from the quiet light of the church, with its solemn thoughts and memories, into the midst of Wentworth-street, and what a change it is! There you see the most sordid life of London in everyday aspect.

To say that the street was crowded is but to give the very faintest idea of what it is like. A pedestrian can hardly screw his way through among stalls bearing wedges of cake, or cairns of loaves, apparently all crust, or great heaps of stockings, which appear to be all single, or fruit, or jockeys’ caps, or trousers, or underclothing.           

It is like Brick-lane, save that there are fewer of the sellers of elastic bands and cheap jewellery, beautiful gold rings.

‘See the ‘all mark inside.’

Shouted the vendor.

‘And the perfect finish only one penny each.’

The women crowd round and buy the rubbish, three or four at a time, to be worn on their fingers, and often torn off after death, as was the case with Annie Chapman.

            It seems a trifle, but the Whitechapel thief does not despise trifles.

Enter the houses, and you will see that they have been denuded of whatever will bring the price of old iron.

            In some cases, the very locks of the doors are torn off and sold.

With neither men being an experienced slummer’s, they could make little of Wentworth Street. The crowd was too great, and almost all women. Wonderfully fresh complexioned they seem to be up to a certain age, after which they appear to wither up as suddenly as She, from the 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard, in the Fire Fountain, or take the appearance of putty.

            The conversation is Polyglot, with a preponderance of guttural Hebrew, and as intelligible as the inscriptions on the windows.

            To study them in detail, they walked up Hanbury-street, with its sanguinary memories. And what strikes one there is the plentifulness of the instruments with which the commission of crime is possible.

Before an open door a bullet-headed rascal, whose hair has a suggestive clip, is splitting firewood with a cleaver, in the light of a window a shoemaker is paring the heel of a boot with a knife nearly as large as a Venetian dagger.

That such instruments are readily used there is plenty of evidence to show.

A stout and rather pretty girl, with a brown shawl and an uncovered head, was coming down the street. Bitten estimated her age at 19, when she stopped at a door and knocked, and he had a back view.

Dear me.

He thought,

She is certainly older than she looks; she is bald!

Another glance, however showed his mistake. Her scalp had been partially removed by some bruiser’s axe, and it was the unhealed wound he had seen.

The number of those of both sexes who bore similar scars was almost incredible. It suggested much that the chance daylight visitor has no opportunity of seeing.

The worst district covers but a small area, and Bitten made careful inquiries as to what was really the worst, with the result of ascertaining that the most iniquitous dens are to be found in George Street, George Yard, Flower and Dean Street, and Thrawl Street.

Bitten believed if any adequate attempt is to be made to deal with the evil, these should be taken as a starting point.

The origin of the evil, Bitten believed lay very far back. Indeed, it dates from the time when Essex House stood close by, and the neighbourhood became inhabited with doubtful characters.

Then thieves who preyed upon the City came to live here, and the police came to look upon the place as a preserve in which to hunt for notorious criminals. So, it obtained a bad name, which attracted bad characters to it and kept good people away.

Bitten did not find it unsafe to go about the area, and he had never been disturbed, but crimes are of constant occurrence. Yesterday afternoon one of his friends had his watch taken in broad daylight, and robberies and assaults art common at all hours.

He had frequently see a man or a woman in the street all gashed and covered with blood and only a few days ago, someone wrote to the newspapers giving an account of outrages committed in the daytime.

Bitten and Wilk knew the remediable evils of the area, and decidedly worst of all is the system of under-letting. It works in this way, one gets it from another till it falls into the hands of a person who invests in a sack and rough iron bed and lets it as a furnished apartment.  All this to escape the law compelling common lodging houses to be registered, Bitten presumed.

Most of the rooms are then let at eightpence a night to anyone who comes, regardless of s*x, and it is theirs for the night, and Bitten and his team knew what that led to.

These dens must be worse than ordinary houses of ill fame. But how could an overstretched and untrained police force remedy this?

Bitten felt the only way to stop this depravity would be to encourage by private purchases. These properties – if the old houses were pulled down and new ones built – would easily yield about four percent to the proprietors. The Mayor of London’s office have already spent nearly £100,000 is this way, and found it works well. All the  rents are taken by lady collectors, and they experienced no difficulty.  Bitten strongly advocated an extension of the system.

He felt it was possible that something might be done by holding the proprietor responsible, and thus obviate the evils of under-letting; but that is a question for politicians.

The condition of the streets, were filthily carpeted with refuse and fish scales. They could be cleansed more frequently. And the lighting might be increased. Stepping the distance between the lamps Wilk discovered the result that the lights were an average distance of about forty yards apart, and completely different to the lamps in the City.

That in itself could make a great difference, and help to counterbalance the evil that arises from one house communicating with another, so that a man enters at one place, and, if anything alarming occurs, slips away through another street.

The other problem to the investigation had to be the slaughter-houses.  As they walked, they felt the smell of blood in the street and were just about to turn round and head back to the station when a frantic looking Dr Loup came racing down towards them.

“Found you at last, Detective Inspector.”

“Doctor Loup.  How can we be of assistance?”

“We’ve got another one.  But this one seems slightly different.”

“In what way, Doctor?”

“She’d been reported missing in August, and now her body has been discovered, nearby in the docklands.”

“Lead on, Doctor.”

Bitten said.

“And as we walk, give me what background details we have on the murder.”