Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #42: "The Silent Judge": A Tale of Jack the Ripper

I respond to calls for submissions a lot, especially ones that touch on an period of history I liked and about which I know something. I had written in response to a call for stories on Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized London in the late 1800s. I knew a lot about that era from spending hours reading Victorian novels in graduate school:  Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and a whole parade of lesser lights. These gave me a feel for the era and the culture of the time. I thought I would try my hand, read up on Jack the Ripper, and sent the story off. Like so many stories, the publisher rejected it. But, like Winston Churchill, I never, never, never give up. I sent it out to a magazine called Alt Hist, which deals in variations on well-known historical incidents. The story made it into this journal.

Newspaper illustration of a murder victim of Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper is one of those perennially fascinating figures. Maybe he's so fascinating because we don't know who he was. There are endless speculations on the matter, and some fantastical candidates have been put forth in the attempt to identify him and solve the murder mysteries that have never been solved. My story, "The Silent Judge," attempts the same thing, though it carries no claim whatsoever of being true. It is entirely a fiction. But, when the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer described village women crying when straw dolls were thrown into the raging river at harvest time, and speculating that once real live young women were the objects of this practice, he has one of the women muse, Was straw all that different from flesh? Is speculative and imaginative writing all that different from forensic investigation?

I don't know, but I like the story. A man who was a customer to Mary Jane Kelly, a prostitute and the last victim of the Ripper, finds out about her death. Like many Victorian men who consorted with "free women" (as prostitutes were euphemistically referred to) he is respectably married, in business, and the father of children. But Mary had held a place in his heart. When he reads of the brutality of the murder, he resolves to do something and begins his investigation.

He finds a young woman who shared a room (and a common occupation) with Mary and manages to track her down. She has a letter the killer wrote to the murdered woman. It gives some leads, though not many. He notes the angry down-slant of the handwriting, the educated vocabulary, and, most importantly, a location, Notting Hill—though it does not supply an address.

Using techniques he learned from reading Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," he begins to collect evidence. The same man who wrote the letter patronized whores, so he decides a brothel would be the best place to start looking. He finds one in Notting Hill that caters to high-class men and pays for one of its younger women.

Whore in the Killers video "Mr. Brightside"

I got the idea for the brothel from the video for "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers. The exotic girls sumptuously dressed and made up in sexy, exotic costumes inspired the high-class place the narrator goes to. He does business with several of the women there, returns one night and sees one is missing, asks, and is told the girl has been beaten. He finds her and she tells him about a man who comes every two of three months and beats and chokes her. She says that if he plans to kill the man, she will tell him no more. After he tells her about Mary and says the man will eventually kill her, his informant tells him all she knows: that the man lives in Saint David's, a section of London.

He finds the killer, trails him, and is puzzled that he visits Mary's grave. After analyzing other behavior, he realizes that Jack the Ripper wants to be caught. He wants to be identified so his deeds and name will be known forever. This, the narrator resolves, will never be.

He follows Jack into a sleazy, run-down section of London—the kind Dickens wrote about in Bleak House and Hard Times—and confronts him. The Ripper asks him if he is from the police. He says no and then this exchange takes place:

            Private investigator?”

            “A lover of Mary Jane Kelly,” I replied.

His smile faded. He looked fearful.

“Are you arresting me?”

I shook my head.

“No. I am going to kill you—right here and now. No one will ever find out who you are. You will not have the notoriety of which you have dreamed. No one will ever know your name.”

Several factory whistles go off and the narrator shoots, making certain he kills the man. He absconds and is never a suspect. The police cannot identify the body and assume it was a robbery and murder. The matter ends there.

The story is being written as the narrator near the end of his life. His wife has gone on. He has the satisfaction of having left a better world for his children, one in which the name of a brutal serial killer is not spoken. He writes of Jack the Ripper, "His name will ever be unknown. The name of Mary Jean Kelly lives on in peoples’ hearts and peoples’ sympathies."

The issue of Alt Hist featuring 

"The Silent Judge" is available in print

at this link.

For more titles see my Writer's Page

Read The Prophetess for some New Testament horror,

exorcism, and suspense.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #41: The Welcome Song of Morrigan

The Celtic Goddess Morrigan is one of my favorite deities to vilify. Maybe I need to be careful, because if she exists she probably doesn't have a very good opinion of me—and she's not a supernatural being you want to be on the bad side of. She was the Celtic goddess of war and of discord. Like many deities, she is an ambiguous figure. In the ancient Irish languages, if you accented her name as Mórrígan it meant "great queen; if you did not accent it and called her Morrigan, it meant "phantom queen." Her totem animal was the crow and she was sometimes said to feast on the bodies of slain warriors through the form of the carrion crows who always hung around battlefields to eat the corpses when the fighting was done. All in all, she was a troublemaker and a goddess to be afraid of. She appears as a malevolent force in my book The Last Minstrel and my long story, "The Raven and the Forest Girl." In the story "The Welcome Song of Morrigan," you do not see her but she is an evil presence throughout the story.

I was still shooting for dark horror at this time. As the title to my story implies, it is about a song, and about a musician, Shane Evans. He plays and researches Celtic music and is following up some leads on an Irish harper who collected old tunes. After the man's death, his son moved to northern Michigan but one day the son's new bride killed him and two of the servants who worked for the family. Sentenced to life in prison, she killed two inmates, was put in solitary confinement, and eventually hanged herself. The house, controlled by a trust, has given Shane permission to go through the musical archives there. He is let into the house by a teenage girl named Tina who says she plays guitar and likes Celtic music. Her boyfriend, she says, plays in a rock band.

Shane is lucky that day—or so he thinks. He finds three pieces of music he does not recognize. One is written on velum, not paper, sealed, and titled "The Welcome Song of Morrigan." Shane is elated. Tina looks at the music and asks if she could perhaps have a transcription of it. Shane makes copies for her and drives back to his home in Grand Rapids, quite a ways away, leaving his discovery in his music studio. Wanting to celebrate, he goes to a coffee bar where he knows friends will be, finds them, and shares his good news. At the table is a young woman named Devona, quite beautiful, and interested in Shane's discovery. As they are talking, police appear and want to question Shane. He finds out Tina has killed her boyfriend, hacking him to death with an ax. When he goes back in, Devona identifies herself as one of the elven people and tells him what he has recovered is the Welcome Song of Morrigan—a song with a curse on it that welcomes people to madness, violence, and death.

After hearing about Tina and now meeting up with Devona, Shane wonders if all the psychotic women in the world have come to Michigan. He goes outside, a car screeches to halt, and Tina, looking demonic, attacks him. Devona validates her claim of being a supernatural creature by magically deflecting the ax. The police, who have remained (correctly thinking the girl might come there to kill Shane) confront her. She attacks one of them, wounding him with the ax. They shoot and kill her. Shane goes to the police station. When he sees Devona again, she asks where the music is. She plans to recover it and guard it, which is her task as a supernatural creature. They drive to his home. When they arrive, Shane is horrified to see Leah Roush's car in the driveway.

Leah is a friend who plays in a local rock band. Shane has given her a key to his studio so she can use his equipment. He and Devona rush inside to find Leah's severed head on a table. Shane thinks she found the music, played it, and someone, probably her boyfriend, heard it and killed her.

The police eventually find Leah's boyfriend's body (he has killed himself) and a note that says, "She killed her." They think he means Tina but Shane knows he meant Morrigan. The music is there. Devona seals it and says she will take it to the Temple in the lost land of the faerie folk where she is the guardian of the document. The Queen of Faeries, she says, has granted her a boon—anything she desires—as a reward if she finds the song and brings it back. She and Shane make love. She confides that the Faerie Queen made her leave her husband and children and become a guardian thousands of years ago (which is why she is so eager to make it with Shane). He suggests she use her boon to ask that she be freed from her task. She agrees and goes to present her petition to the Queen. She will become mortal when her request is granted but is willing to pay that price for freedom and for love.

Shane goes to the police station. The police conclude that Tina killed Leah and her boyfriend killed himself out of grief. Shane is exonerated and the Welcome Song of Morrigan is safely sealed away in the Temple of the Fairy Queen. When Shane returns to the 24/7 coffee house, he finds Devona waiting for him.

 The story appeared in Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror, 2011, which appears to be out of print now. Some of my Morrigan stories are accessible, though. You can read a lot about her in The Last Minstrel where she appears frequently and in all her nasty, malicious glory. The same is true in a my novella,  "The Raven and the Forest Girl,"which appeared recently in Silver Blade. In this particular story, Morrigan does her evil but finds out there are deities floating around who are much more powerful than she.  As I'm doing with many of my stories that have appeared in magazines no longer in publication, I'm going to find out about copyright issues and, if they are not an obstacle, resubmit and, hopefully, republish "The Welcome Song of Morrigan" to make it once more accessible to the reading public.

For more titles, look at my Writer's Page. 

I would love to hear your comments!

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #40: Horror Once More: "City Limits"

 

I have a love/hate relationship with horror. I'm drawn to the genre. As a pointed out in an earlier blog, my first story to appear in a print journal was a horror story. I've tried to write them and, sometimes, succeeded in getting such stories published. But my record is spotty. I don't like "dark horror." To me, the dark side isn't more powerful than the side where the light shines. I don't like to write about horrific things happening to innocent people. So I write "soft" horror. Usually the good guys (and girls) win out in the end. Evil, the twisting of good, does not have an ultimate ontology—which is to say, it is derived from good, and does not have an existence in and of itself.

Umberto Eco

 But I wanted to get a little more horrific and came up with the idea for the story "City Limits." Like all stories, it is derivative. I hear people say how William Shakespeare "stole" all his story lines. One writer said C. S. Lewis "stole" the idea of the kingdom of "Numinor," which he mentions That Hideous Strength, from Tolkien. But the idea of "stealing" is not exactly right. Story lines are public property. Italian novelist and critic Umberto Eco wrote, "Books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told." This story had some ideas from other authors.

One I got from Deep Rising, a horror film which involves an attack from creatures who live six miles down in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. At one point, someone asks if these creatures eat humans. Someone replies, "They don't eat you, they drink you"—meaning, they swallow you whole and then digest you by sucking out your body fluids—blood, lymph, everything. Not a nice way to die. This tied in with the idea in C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters that demons in hell drink and eat people—not physically, but spiritually. A quote from the story explains:  If … you can finally secure his soul, he will then be yours forever—a brimful living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please. Sounds pretty gruesome. But the idea of being drained—of your "precious bodily fluids" or of your spirit—came to be the center of this story.

My ongoing character, Sossity Chandler, accepts an invitation to play for an old college friend, Melinda, who now lives in a small town. She remembers how Melinda and how she got messed up with drugs and occultism in school and ended up dropping out. They are reunited, but Sossity is trouble that she is constantly followed by a creepy-looking guy who is friendly and cordial and identifies himself as a friend of Melissa's but always seems to keep Sossity in in sight as if he is guarding Melissa from her.

Later, she goes to her old friend's apartment. A pale-skinned woman joins them and Melissa murders her. Sossity is horrified, but Melissa cuts the girl's arm to reveal how a milky fluid runs in her veins instead of blood. She—Melissa—is a prisoner to a group of the undead who live in the town and feed off the people they have captured by enchantment. Melissa says she only occasionally is drained of her soul, but when the undead find out she has destroyed one of their number she says, “They’ll absorb me. I’ll live inside one of them. They’ll transfer me from time to time and leech the life out of me slowly. The way things are now, I at least live my own life most of the time. If they absorb me, I’ll never see the light of day. I’ll live until I die inside their gross, stinking bodies.” Melissa mentions that this has already happened to another girl named Caitlin.

Sossity comes up with a plan and the two of them manage to escape—and to rescue Caitlin. Once they are out of the city limits of the town, the undead cannot use their magic and they are free. But Sossity wonders if there are others, if the undead have a network, and if they will eventually track down Melissa, Caitlin, or even her. The turmoil of good and evil, of freedom and bondage, of parasitical life and genuine life, are themes in the story. It is horrific for us to think of being devoured or absorbed and of being helpless as this is done—which is why stories about giant spiders that trap someone in a web and then suck out their life is so disturbing to us. In my story, the women get away and are not absorbed. But will the story end there?

"City Limits" appeared in a book called Anthology of Ichor II put out by Unearthed Press, available through Amazon. It is one of my more horrific horror stories and the anthology is a good read.

 I would love to hear your comments on horror. What is your favorite horror novel or story? Do you like hard or soft horror? Do you write horror? Leave a comment!

 

For some horror right of the New Testament, read The Prophetess. 

The girl mentioned as a demoniac fortune teller in the Book of Acts has a backstory. 

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #39: "Ferity"

One of my favorite short stories in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, which is a book of tales about the Vietnam War, is one called "The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," a story about an American soldier who brings his girlfriend over from the United States to Vietnam. She is the "typical" American-type girl and adapts well to living in an army camp, but soon she begins hanging out with a group of Green Berets and disappearing for long periods of time. Her boyfriend eventually finds out she has joined the "Greenie" squad and is going on search and destroy missions with them. She begins wearing a necklace of severed human tongues and shows no remorse in killing and torturing the Viet Cong. She has gone from being the sweet, wholesome Suzy Creamcheese type to being almost an animal. In the environment of Vietnam, the girl has gone feral.

The dictionary definition of "feral" is "existing in a natural state, not domesticated or cultivated; wild;  having reverted to the wild state;  of or characteristic of wild animals; ferocious; brutal." We talk of animals (especially cats, it seems) as "going feral." They run away, cease being pets, and revert, more or less, to a state of wildness. My story "Ferity" is about this happening to a young woman who is an executive—though her reversion to wildness is not as extreme as the character in the story by O'Brien. Nevertheless, it is a decisive factor in her life. Writers have stories they like

Feral cat

more than many of the other stories they write. This is one of my favorite stories and, I think, one of my very best. Dealing with the subject of ferity opened a new window of insight into human experience. Exploring the topic proved enlightening.

The story centers on Gillian, a stockbroker who works at a frantic pace in a firm that demands all but her soul. She has done very well, both in the business world and the social world and is living the dream of many:  she is worth a couple of million, owns luxury cars, and spends weekends with her boyfriends on Marco Island and in Monaco. But at her friend Calli's bachelorette party, she is depressed and morose. Calli later asks her what the trouble is and Gillian shares her dissatisfaction. Calli suggests she go off alone to spend time in a remote cabin her family owns in Minnesota. There, she says, Gillian can "get feral."

Calli's talk suggests only clichés to Gillian. She does not particularly want to "get back to nature" or imitate Henry David Thoreau. Still, she hasn’t taken a vacation in two years and has just pulled off a lucrative deal with clients in Switzerland, so the firm owes her. Calli drops her off at the cabin and she begins to explore ferity.

Soon she hikes in the woods and sees foxes mating. She eventually drops off the layers of convention, as well as her clothing (for a naked hike in the deserted woods). She is able to feed a deer an apple, sleeps, like Odysseus, covered with leaves, and bathes in an icy stream in the morning like an ancient Native American warrior. She begins to understand what Calli had tried to make her see. She begins to understand her wildness, her ferocity—she begins to get in touch with ferity.

In the midst of all this, her boss begins to call her. She ignores his calls, but when she talks to her parents, she discovers he has called her parents trying to get through to her. He has also called Calli and, when she refused to make contact with Gillian, cussed her out. She surmises that a hostile takeover is transpiring where she works. And she owns the six percent of stock that can determine which way the deal will go.

Gillian ignores the calls both of her CEO and of the stockholder trying to get control of the firm. She goes to a country-western bar, meets a young man, gets laid, but like the vixen she saw making love in the woods earlier, then sends him on his way. When she returns to work, she has leverage, power, and a vital chip to play in determining the future of her workplace. She also has attained a degree of ferity. She is wild. She has cast off domestication with all its prescribed behavior. She is a much more dangerous animal.

The story appeared in Earthspeak, no longer in print, but they do maintain an archive. The story is in issue #3. You can find the issue here.

For other titles check out my Writer's Page.

And a happy New Year to all!