Rip Tide

By Brian Bigelow

Footsteps in the darkness...
The flesh begins to crawl...
A madman with a blade...
This twisted tale visits the legend and evokes a new set of nightmares. Journey into the realm of horror and the macabre in...
...Rip Tide

Jack the Ripper will return and become someone's worst nightmare in this story of the macabre. From Whitechapel in 1888 he comes to the present day in this horror thriller. This is another twisted tale from the darkest recesses of a very warped mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Bigelow
• Release date: Apr 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301303977

Brian Bigelow

Author Brian Bigelow is originally from Minnesota and currently lives in Colorado with his wife Brandy. He is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, and fantasy and has for over 30 years also written poetry which has been published worldwide. His most recent release is the classic fantasy novel, "Beyond Realms." 2nd place winner in Erika Szabo's short story competition. On Twitter: @brianbigelow

Book preview

Rip Tide by Brian Bigelow

Published by Brian Bigelow at Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 Brian Bigelow

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced by any means without written permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and Incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover background image copyright Petr Kratochvil, digitally manipulated by Brian Bigelow

DEDICATION

There are many who deserve my undying thanks. First and most of all is my longsuffering wife Brandy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many that I would like to acknowledge, you offered support and assistance when I needed it. Thank you for being there.

Tammie Clarke Gibbs, Barbara Ivie, Aneesa Price, Wanda Hartzenberg, Kim Culbertson, Alan Mordhiemicus Place, Yezall Strongheart, Erika Szabo, Uvi Poznansky

Contents

Last breath (poem)

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

About the Book

Also by Brian Bigelow

About Jack the Ripper

Last breath

On the edge of darkness

Comes the flash of a blade

Blood begins flowing out

Vision begins to fade

Eternity beckons

A soul enveloping

The denizens gather

Realities last grasping

This one single moment

Time is at an end now

It's been completed

End of all tomorrows

One

Jeremy Downes had been very busy earlier during the wee hours of the morning. The act of relieving those two women of their suffering had been such a liberating experience for him. Excitement surged in his veins with the thrill of it all as he was caught up in the fervor. Closing his eyes, he could see everything so very clearly that had happened. As the dawn arrived, since he was still awake, he had brewed a pot of coffee in the porcelain percolator. Now he was sitting at the table drinking the contents, emptying the pot while he relived the fascinating events over and over, both of the women in one night.

Later today, he would pick up one of the newspapers and find out that the names of the most recent ones were Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. It seemed the papers couldn’t get enough of the macabre and the sensational. The more sensational they could find the better it seemed to be for them. The headlines would shout out in large print the dramatic events of the previous day.

Read all about it!

Madman on the loose!

While it didn’t matter what their names were, he just felt it was always good to put a name to the faces that were now indelibly etched upon his memories. Every time he closed his eyes he would see them again and could even talk to them including the others earlier that weren’t known about. Previously, he had met them and had obtained their services while out on one of his many nightly jaunts. His restless soul drove him to walk late at night through Whitechapel when he couldn’t sleep which was often. Just about every weekend as far back as he could remember was a sleepless one.

Those whores were all out there spreading their diseases as they spread their legs for every man they coupled with. It just annoyed him, even more annoying was the fact he couldn’t stay away from them when they would call from the street corners. They were such a temptation for him and obviously for many others. Now he was doing everything he could to help the master in eliminating them all from the area.

It really wasn’t right the things those women were doing in his opinion. Many of them had their bastards in their shabby little hovels in the tenements that they would be teaching the trade to next. Sometimes, as many as eight were all living together in one of the rooms like they were in the flat next door. Most of them only plied the trade part time and they were called ‘dollymop’s’ by those who utilized their services. The cramped conditions of the tiny rooms weren’t really a place for anyone to live, including himself.

His dingy little two room flat had most of the accoutrements that were necessary for living which included a stove and a small kitchen. There was even a bedroom, a twin bed and the large wardrobe that took up most of a wall which was much more than most had. It wasn’t very far from the place he had left Polly Nichols body to be found, just around the corner in fact. He had seen and watched her just about every day as she went about from place to place, mostly it was to the various taverns to obtain more grog.

Wherever you went out on the streets there wasn’t a lot of open space either, especially during the daytime hours. The gritty, narrow streets felt closed in and were filled daily with the area residents. They would leave their little one and two room flats to catch a breath of non-existent fresh air. Occasionally though, they would get a little breeze that hadn’t been blocked by the two story buildings on either side. With the difficulty to pass through unimpeded it was the perfect place for the children who were pickpockets to run rampant in amongst the crowd. The street urchins would run into you, and before you knew it the little monsters would have removed your wallet from your pocket. Some of the most assiduous ones would remove the coins from your pants pockets, he had seen some of them gloat about the Sovereign or watch they had lifted from some poor old drunken sot.

Commonly, in the little flats two families were living they would share a space where only one or two people couldn’t live all that comfortably. Many of them were starving as there often wasn’t enough food to feed everyone in the family. Rats would skitter through the walls and across the floors. Sometimes the little vermin would take a nip at a sleeping body in passing. Some of the kids would turn them into passable pets by feeding them the scraps that they could find. There were others, however, that would think of the rats as dinner and would make a stew out of the nasty disease ridden little buggers. It was just another indication to Jeremy that everyone in the neighborhood was rather shabby and a collection of undesirables discarded by society. Not too many of them would ever be missed if they happened to disappear and many did in the area never to be seen again.

Taking