His body hadn’t fully recovered.
The stab wound from the Dancing Lady still pulsed with a quiet pain—deep, cold, and sharp, lodged somewhere near the bone.
Vespera was not home that day.
Where the demon had gone, he didn’t know.
Charles draped a long coat over his shoulders, descended the stairs slowly, and stepped out into the street.
“Just the library,” he told himself. “Not far. I won’t be long.”
The overcast sky loomed above like an unhealed wound.
The city felt strangely quiet.
Too quiet for this hour of the day.
As Charles passed through a narrow alleyway between a butcher shop and an abandoned brick building, his eyes caught something unusual.
Someone… crouched.
A man in a tall top hat, wearing a tattered overcoat, knelt over a pool of dark blood.
Charles only caught a glimpse—but it was enough.
The man appeared to be… eating?
Feasting on something.
Bones…?
Charles quickened his pace. He didn’t want to know.
Didn’t need to know.
Yet a gnawing sense crept up his spine.
Something was terribly wrong.
He stepped out of the alley—and just as he turned to glance back—
The man in the top hat was already standing atop the rooftop.
Still.
Watching him.
His silhouette loomed in the shadows, stiff and unnatural like a statue.
Only his outline was visible.
His face was veiled in darkness.
And yet… something in that unseen gaze scraped across Charles’s chest like a razor blade.
The stare of a predator.
Charles looked up, narrowed his eyes, then turned and continued walking.
No footsteps followed.
No sound of a leap.
Only… silence.
---
The Victoria Library stood two blocks away, its lamps casting a dim yellow hue against the gray mist.
Charles slipped inside quietly and gave the old librarian a polite nod.
His goal was clear: to learn more about the Dancing Lady.
The memory of her knife’s arc still haunted his thoughts. Her movement that night had been too fluid, too graceful for a mere killer.
Like a dance.
As if murder itself had been her choreography.
He sat in one of the creaky wooden chairs and pulled out book after dusty book, flipping through pages filled with folklore and ancient horrors from the Balkan region. Then, on one yellowed page, a passage caught his eye:
In ancient Serbia, sacrificial dances were held under moonless skies. Women were forced to dance until their bodies broke… and their blood became the gateway to the realm of demons.
Charles took careful notes.
But his body remained weary.
Drained.
He leaned back slightly in his seat, eyelids growing heavy...
And slipped into sleep.
---
He woke to the sound of a grandfather clock striking seven.
Light crept in through the stained-glass windows—soft, pale, and cold.
“It’s morning already...”
Charles packed his notes and exited the library.
The morning fog still clung to the streets, but unlike the night before, the silence had vanished.
A commotion echoed from the direction of the alleyway.
The same alley where he had seen the man.
Charles’s heart pounded faster as he approached.
A crowd had gathered.
Some were crying out.
Policemen stood guard.
“Another body,” someone whispered.
“But this one… wasn’t just killed.
It was eaten.”
Charles moved closer, slipping through the murmuring crowd.
And when he finally saw it—
His breath hitched.
The corpse was barely recognizable.
The abdomen had been ripped open.
The right arm was missing.
The neck—almost completely severed, but not by any blade. The bones looked… crushed.
The victim’s eyes were wide open in death—still frozen with the final traces of fear.
On the wall of the alley…
There were knife marks.
Not words.
Just lines.
Three vertical slashes and one long horizontal stroke cutting through them—
Like a tally.
Charles stared at the mark, then lowered his gaze.
“Last night… he was…”
He couldn’t finish the thought.
---
By noon, all of London was buzzing.
Newspapers flew from corner stalls into eager, trembling hands:
“Jack the Ripper Returns!”
Corpse Found in Whitechapel—Has the Legendary Killer Risen from the Grave?
Police Investigation Yields No Leads – Citizens Advised to Stay Indoors at Night.
Charles stood silently before one of the newspaper kiosks, the headline bold and violent in black ink.
His face remained blank.
“Jack…?”
The name echoed in his mind like an old curse.
A legend.
A ghost that was supposed to have died ten years ago.
Or perhaps… never died at all.
---
That same night, Charles returned home with slow, deliberate steps.
The streets were darker than usual.
The fog, thicker.
The shadows, heavier.
When he closed the door behind him, he felt it—
Not a presence watching him from outside...
But from within.
Something… stirring.
Like a beast awakening in his bloodstream.
The demon that slumbered in his veins…
Was beginning to open its eyes.
---
Comments (0)
See all