The Crimson River

I have revised this work with the help of a wonderful review from Vivian St. Crow.  Her critique was most enlightening.  Thank you Vivian.

The Crimson River

Willie loved the roof.  He could look out over the smog and over the fetid streets, across the London roof tops and dream that he was somewhere else.  The South Seas, maybe.  He leaned his chin on his hands. They were so drenched in blood they slid off his chin.  He had forgotten about the red, slick liquid.  He wiped his hands on his jacket.

Willie looked down at his hands.  He recalled the actions of the night, the knife sliding into soft flesh.  How smooth his knife sliced, releasing silent rivers.  How he relished the feeling of that warm current over his hands.

Now it was drying, flaking and falling off onto the roof pavement. 

Willie pulled off his coat, removed his trousers, shirt and shoes, and retrieved  a Gladstone that he stashed earlier.  He pulled out a large jar filled with water, a sponge, soap and a rag with which to wash himself.  He dressed in the clothes he had packed in the bag and laced the shoes on, still remembering how her skin was as smooth as the river, the red, red river . . . he'd drifted off.  Lost in the memory of the kill.

After cleaning up, he wrapped the bloodied clothes in brown paper, tied them with twine and shoved them down a randomly selected chimney.  He hopped from roof to roof until he reached the one he knew had a flight of stairs leading down to the street.

Willie pulled his cap low across his face and with his Gladstone in one hand and the other deep into his pocket, fingering his "special prize", he disappeared into London's foggy streets.

***

Along the London wharves, ships bobbed rhythmically with the evening tide.  It had rained for the past three days. A murky fog settled when the rain gave way. The chill permeated every inch of the ship's hold in which she sat.

She did not know where she was, or what day this could be.  She hugged her knees, her bare feet tucked in close to her body to keep them as warm.  She spoke no English, but she recognized the language.  Two men who had thrown her a filthy crust of bread spoke in English to each other earlier.

She sang a song her mother used to hum to her when she was little.  Her voice quavered shaking with the cold.  A shiver ran through her body as powerful as the fear she felt.  What would become of her?

A light shone through the outline of the door to the hold.  She knew that someone was going to open the trap.  She pushed herself as far into the corner as she could, waiting.

"Where are ye?"

The girl held her breath.

"Ye'd better come out!  I don't wanta come down dere and get ye!"

Something in the man's tone made her obey.  She inched her way into the cast light while another head leaned in over the edge of the hold.

"Aye . . . she's a right fancy one awright!  Ten pound, and not a ha-penny more."

"Take her."

The second man paid the first, counting out the money; the tinkle of it familiar and somehow frightening to her.  He leaned into the light and looked down at her, "Get on up 'ere."

"She don't savvy English, Willie."

"Aah!  It don't matter.  She hain't gonna  'ave 'nuff time to learn it anyways.  If ye knows what I mean . . ."

Climbing into the hold until he was an arm's length away, he plunged his hand into the girl's long hair.  He dragged her to her feet up the stairs to the deck.

She cried.  Willie studied her face.  He liked to see people cry.  Their expressions were so very interesting.  He shoved her toward the ship's side and pushed her overboard into a dinghy.  He rowed her away tied hand and foot.  A thick gag clogged her words.  Willie could hear the sobs and occasional muffled screams of other women on board the ship he left behind.

***

Just off the docks, a row of houses stood connected by adjoining roofs, underground passageways and back yard entries.  They tilted beneath the weight of age and sin.  Known locally as The Caverns, they stretched across the ends of five blocks.

Dark, foreboding, and filled with the stench of decay and death; The Caverns played a unique roll in the lives of London's Upper Class.  For a price they could have the ultimate thrill.  While ladies feigned fright behind fluttering fans, gentlemen coughed into their  monogrammed handkerchiefs; watching men and women meet their deaths in The Pit.

Willie steered the row boat toward a shadowed building that jutted out onto the water.  Built to the very end of the pier, he slid the boat beneath it into a tenebrous patch. Using an oar, he banged three sharp strikes on the wood above them. 

Willie knew the dark; it was his medium.  It was the canvass on which he painted his atrocities. He was preparing his brushes and spreading his paints in his mind's eye.  How he would slice, when he would go for the kill.  He turned these things over in his mind as a gourmand would delight in the foreshadowing of a meal.

The girl whimpered.  He forced her to her feet as a trap door opened emitting a cone of yellow lantern light which was quickly extinguished.  She heard some whispered words between her captor and another.  Then, she was on  her feet and pulled up a rope ladder into utter blackness.

"Light that lantern."

A match was struck and flared. In the sudden light she saw her captor and some other man standing in a room that was void of any furnishings.  Willie grabbed her tied hands and led her stumbling, through a doorway and into a hall.  From there he pulled her along passages and up and down flights of stairs.  When she stumbled he dragged her by hands or hair; when she attempted a scream, he slapped her

She could hear the murmur of a crowd of people some distance away.  It was toward this assembly Willie herded his prey.  They stepped across a threshold and darkness surrounded them again.

Suddenly the crowd was silent.  They drew near to a light that shone brighter as they approached.  Only the noises of impatience as people shifted in seats preparing for what came next. 

Willie pushed open the double doors.  They led into a wide, saw dust covered, circular arena.  Around the circle's periphery, like sentinels set at regular spaces, posts had been erected.  She saw two other women tied there and struggled against Willie.  He slapped and punched her, finally getting her across the threshold and into the center of The Pit. 

She looked around in wide eyed terror.  People dressed in their evening's best lined this theater in the round's perimeter.  They watched unmoved as she was tied to a post; her eyes imploring the onlookers for the one shred of the humanity she hoped was there.

Willie left the arena for a while and she twisted and turned, desperate for freedom.  The other women hung motionless, their eyes filled with resignation.  Willie returned with a black case.  Opening it he took out a sharp steel implement that glinted in the torch light.  The crowd cheered and applauded their appreciation. 

Willie smiled at one of the women on a post and went about his work.  His recent captive watched as he destroyed her body, her screams exciting the crowd to a frenzy.  At last it was her turn.  She squirmed, begged with her eyes, twisted to look into the faces of ladies that raised their fans and avoided her gaze.

The first cut, deep and smooth; that river once again flowing over him in warm, lustrous waves, and  . . . blackness!

***

Willie washed and cleaned himself up in one of the empty rooms which The Caverns lent to its denizens.  He could smell the scent of meat pies, the dubious contents of which no man should partake.  The smell of decayed flesh, unwashed bodies and the turgid river were things Willie had become used to.  He termed it "the perfume of death". Willie smiled at that name; it was perfect; rolling off his tongue, spoken to no one and overheard only by the aged boards of the walls and floor.

His Gladstone in hand, and his prize wrapped in cloth in his pocket, he stepped down the stairs, plunging into the darkness in the bowels of  The Caverns.  Other men passed him by, some with captives, some there for the viewing, all of them of the worst sort.

This was Willie's paradise.  His license to do as he pleased with whomever he  desired.  He was vibrantly alive tonight.  He would not need the roof tops to calm him.  It had been his first "performance" at The Caverns and it had proven so satisfactory that he would return.  A place like this, where he could hone his craft unimpeded, try different approaches and methods was a boon to his ego.  He had pleased the crowd and they had thrown money and jewelry to him in appreciation.

Yes, he loved the place.  Yes, he would return.

***

It was a rare occurrence; a clear night over London town.  The full moon sent silvery fingers into the cracks and crevices of crime.  Willie could not hide from its light.  Even the dim back streets were made brighter by his sky companion.  Willie looked up at it in disgust.  He wasn't scheduled for The Caverns until much later tonight.

He sighed as he walked along, sliding his finger over the trophy he had taken earlier that week that nestled like a tiny bird in his pocket.  He had wrapped it securely in  dark cloth and  he could feel the outline of the finger against his own.  How satisfying  he thought as he walked.  He rambled along, impatiently waiting for the hour to strike when he would once again set sail on the crimson river.

The full moon's light seemed as bright as the sun to him.  He ducked into the shadows of a house that was set a little back from the road.  Soft candle light shone from a window attracting him nearer.  On tip-toe, he peered inside.  Lit by the candle's dancing flame he saw a young woman.  Her golden hair pulled discreetly back in a thick bun, accentuating the fine lines of her face.  She laughed at someone's comment and Willie saw a young man come into view.  The man bowed to her in mock courtesy and she laughed again.  Willie had to have her.  Had to see the river form around that perfect face.

He ducked back into the shadows as the young man drew near the window.  Willie heard the soft tinkle of a music box as the fellow wound it and set it down by the girl. 
Oh! Willy thought almost aloud, I must have her.  What a work of art she will be!"
Willy slunk away into the deepest shadows cast by the house and fingered his trophy.  She would be well protected, the rich always were.  How he would get her, he did not know.  The when of it, the where of it eluded him as well.  He only knew the "why".

***

Lily Carstairs was an ingénue, a flirt who loved to flaunt her beauty.  Her suitors were many, though none could deny her chastity.  She teased, but held herself aloof.  She would not debase herself with common virtue-less doings.

Her carriage waited outside her house.  Lily left her door, kissing her Aunt with whom she lived on the cheek promising to return from her shopping within a three hour period.  Lily had plans to meet her friend Margaret for a light luncheon and then back to her house in time for James' visit.  Of all the young men who sought her company she preferred James.  He was quiet, intelligent and often quite comical.  She saw her days with him as a respite from constant repartee and social standards she was forced by her station to endure.  She was becoming tired of having to be perfect in all ways.  He would make an excellent match, his father was one of London's  premier bankers.

Miss Carstairs climbed into her carriage and watched as her driver mounted his station.  "Wilkerson's" she told the driver. In a moment the carriage lurched forward and rolled off. 

Willie observed from a shadowed alcove how her body moved as she climbed up the two steps to the carriage.  How she ever so daintily, slid her hand into the driver's for aid in ascending.  The way her slender fingers encased in lace gloves, folded around her skirt to lift it just enough to take the steps, revealing black buttoned shoes and a hint of petticoat.

Willie ran his fingers across the trophy he had taken last night at The Caverns.  It was more rigid that the other trophies, and he imagined it still warm from the river's confines.  This was something he never, ever did.  An appearance in daylight was unheard of.  It was dangerous, one never knew who may be watching.  Yet, he stalked a prey that would be the prize of his career.  She would be his crowning glory.  A woman of the upper class down in The Pit, all the members of her select society egging him on to cut and slice.

Willie smiled.  What a turn of affairs.  He ducked back into the alley that ran beside her house.  Crossing to the next street over he hailed a cab and told the driver, "Wilkerson's".

***

For a week he followed her.  He knew her friends now, her favorite places, which restaurants she preferred.  He discovered that her father was a chief of police and while it frightened him momentarily, he looked upon the abduction of a police chief's daughter as another feather in an already over-full cap.

At night in the Caverns' confines it was she he sliced into on the torture poles.  Every woman had her face, every scream her voice, every plea from her own lips.  Willie could think of nothing else.  She consumed him like the fires of Hell to which he knew he was surely headed.

Now under night's enfolding darkness, he watched as she left her carriage on the arm of her escort for a party in a grand house.  She mounted the stairs so delicately, Willie felt she floated.  A doorman opened to the pair and music wafted out to the shadows.  Willie licked his lips.  He had not been to The Caverns in two days.  The urge to swim the red waters was so strong he could hardly contain it any longer.  He was saving himself, like a virgin for the instant that he would pierce her flesh and loose a tide of blood.  He felt light-headed with the thought, though he still had not discovered a way to take her.

Willie stood outside the house for hours.  He could do no less.  Like an enamored sweet-heart waiting for a glimpse of his betrothed he licked his lips and stared as she came out of the door and down the stairs.  He listened to what the pair said.

"Oh, James.  I forgot my purse.  Be a darling and fetch it for me.  I am certain I left it in the lounge."

James smiled and  said, "Of course.  Would you like me to call the carriage first?  You could sit inside it and wait for me."

"No, you won't be longer than a minute, the lounge is right inside the door."

James kissed her gloved hand and took the stairs two at a time.  Inside he looked for her purse and saw it on the piano.  Smiling an explanation to his hostess he returned to the outside to find . . . Lily was gone.

***

Lily woke with an aching head.  She looked around her as best as she could trussed up like a goose about to be roasted.  She was dressed only in her pantaloons and camisole, the rest of her clothing hung on the back of a door over her head.  Her shoes and stocking lay by the door in a neatly laid out arrangement.

She wondered where she was.  A rag had been wound tightly around her mouth to keep her from calling out.  She turned onto her back and pounded her heels on the floorboards.  She made muffled noises through the rag trying in desperation to alert someone, anyone that she was here and needed help.

Lily remembered the fumes that flooded her nostrils from a cloth placed over her mouth.  She recalled nothing more.

Lily began to cry.  She pounded her bound feet on the floor, the walls, any surface she could that may raise suspicion and send a rescuer.  She lay back after a while, exhausted.  Tears streamed, her breathing was labored and fear tasted like iron in her mouth.  The light of day began to fail.  The room plunged slowly into darkness.

Something stirred in the corner.  A man came forward, slithering toward her, slowly, deliberately.  With horror she realized he had been  there all day.  Standing, or sitting just out of her line of site.  Like some spring activated toy he approached her, livened by the fading twilight.

"You're so bootiful, my girl."

Lily stared her eyes wide, filled with fright and tears.

"I'd cut those ropes, but ye'd run away.  I will take this . . ."  He pulled the gag from her mouth and she screamed. He slapped her so hard her head slammed back into the wall.

"Scream all ye want to!  Hain't nobody gonna come runnin' in 'ere."

Lily studied her captor. He was an innocuous looking man, someone you would pass by in the street and never give a second thought about.  He was small in frame, but his movements were quick and practiced.  He moved more confidently now that the daylight was almost completely over taken by the dark.  For a moment she felt she could persuade him to set her free.

"I am Lily Carstairs.  My father is Chief Detective Eugene Carstairs of Scotland Yard.  If you want money, my father will pay any sum."

"My name's Willie.  Willie Snide.  Yoo are the prize!  I don't want no money."

He squatted down beside her and ran his finger along her jaw line.  She shook her head, not permitting him that familiarity and he smiled.

"Such a lovely thing, full o' spirit too."  He tied the rag around her mouth once more.  Lily kicked at him, twisted away trying to evade the gag to no avail.

Willie rose and disappeared from the room.  He returned with a dirty, torn blanket and wrapped the foul smelling material around her, covering her face.  Then, he hoisted her up onto his shoulder and left with her kicking and wiggling.  Willie punched her hard in her thigh, "none o' that now!  Ye'll come without a move, or I'll cut yer throat right now and dump ye in the river!"

The thought of the river made him smile.  His river would run red tonight with fresh waters.  He smiled to himself and headed down stairs that lead to a back yard.  Across the yard there were short docks where little dinghies were moored.  He plopped Lily into one and took the oars.  He whistled a tune as he rowed toward the Caverns.

***

"You ain't bringin' 'er in 'ere!"

"What?  You've gone mad Tom!"

"I'm usin' me senses, Willie.  Every copper in London is on the look out for that girl.  Some of the crowd's gonna know who she is.  You ain't bringin' 'er in 'ere!"

"Nobody knows 'oo she is.  We puts a sack on 'er 'ead, see?  That way won't nobody know  'er."

"No!  You ain't bringin' 'er in 'ere!  Take 'er somewhere else and 'ave yer fun."

The man stood with arms folded, his back against the ladder. 

Willie nodded and hoisted Lily up onto his shoulder.  He tried to push the man aside and ascend the ladder, but the man stood his ground firmly.  Willie curled his fingers around the sharp knife in his coat pocket.

The man eyed him suspiciously and said, "none 'o that now. Willie  . . ."

Willie returned to the rowboat and lay down his squirming captive.  He pulled the blanket back around her head and sang slowly, deliberately, "Row, row, row, yer boat, gently down the stream . . . merrily . . . merrily . . . merrily . . ." his voice faded as he rowed into a fog bank while the man returned inside closing the trap door.

***

Lily shook her head as he pushed her down on her rump on the wooden floor.  She sat against the wall, her hands and feet still bound.  Willie knelt as if in prayer and opened a box before him.  He took out his tools, looking them over, shining them, displaying them while looking at Lily's face and the horror there. 

She was his reward, her blood was his reward.  He lay the implements out in a fan display before her and left the room.  He lay his ear against the door to hear her sobs.  It soothed him, these sounds of distress. 

Soon, Willie returned.  He saw her sitting against the wall and hauled her to her feet.  He removed her pearl earrings and a ring from her right hand.

"I need these. It'll pay me passage to the South Seas." 

Willie lay a scalpel along side her cheek.

"Dis will cut ye an' ye won't even know it."

Her eyes widened as he flicked the scalpel back and forth on the side of her cheek. 

"Aw, now look what I done!"

A small red bead dripped down from the nick he'd made in her cheek.  She emitted a muffled scream, more in fear than in pain.

He lay the scalpel on the opposite cheek and she closed her eyes.  Tears sprung from beneath them and she inhaled sharply. 

"Naw, I hain't gonna cut ye right now.  Naw, we'll wait a while fer tha' sort o' thing.  Wonder what it's like to walk wid a beauty like yoo on me arm?  Wouldn't I be the envy of every bloke in London?"

He sat down on the floor across from her and stretched his legs out crossing his ankles.
He had her.  He wanted to take time to admire her.  To plan out exactly how he would slice and when.  He smiled at her heightened distress.  This was just the sort of thing that gave him satisfaction.

***

She'd fallen asleep.  Willie studied her face.  He thought she was the most perfect woman he had ever been near to.  Too perfect.  He decided he would start with her face.  That would be the best way, cause her the most suffering.  Beautiful women always guarded their faces.

Lily stirred, turned and woke.  She gasped through the rag in her mouth and her eyes took on that familiar look of terror that excited Willie to no end. 

"It's late.  The whole night's almost gone . . ." Willie said, running his hands along her calves and up her thighs.  She kicked upward and caught Willie in the lip with her heel.

"Aw!  Yoo hain't nice.  Not nice a'tall . . . " and he sunk a scalpel deep into the ball of her foot.

"I wanted to wait . . . I wanted to keep yoo fer a bit.  Stupid idea!"

He hauled her up, dragged her through to another room.  No light penetrated these quarters.  Willie knew them so well he needed none. 

Lily struggled as he hooked her tied hands up onto something soundly driven into the wall.  She heard him walk away and a lantern was lit.  The room came into view.  Black wrought iron hooks decorated the walls.  Smudges of old incidents dripped beneath each hook.  Lily cried, her eyes pleading for mercy.

"Aw, yer a beauty!"

He ran his hands along her arms, down across her breasts and took hold of her waist.  Lily twisted trying to release his grasp.  She brought her knees up, landing them squarely in his crotch.  Willie backed off, doubled over in pain.

"See wha' I mean?"  He gasped, grabbing a sharp knife from his kit.  "Ye hain't nice!"
He slapped her several times across the face and cut the bodice of her camisole with his knife.  Her breasts were firm and round.  He grabbed them with both hands.  Lily pushed at him with her lower body, swinging to the side so that he lost his grasp.

"Yoo are a difficult subject.  No matter, I got yoo now."

The first cut along her jaw line sent the river running.  He placed his hands around her throat and felt the warm flow of blood across them.  He licked her chest where the liquid streamed.  Lily screamed through the gag, coughing from lack of air.

He pulled the ruined camisole away and tore at the pantaloons.  Lily hung naked before him.  Willie had never seen such a beauty.  He raised the wick in the lamp to better appreciate her.

Lily felt fear, loathing.  She screamed around the rag in her mouth and shut her eyes.  There was no begging mercy from this monster.

Her arms were slender, white.  The red of her blood shone against the alabaster skin.  He ran his hands along the cuts, smearing her upper body with her own fluid.  Lily cried and squirmed but the bonds attached to the hooks impeded her actions.  She kicked at him once more causing Willie to tie her legs spread eagle to two lower hooks in the filthy wall.

Lily cried.  She was lost and she knew it.  No one was coming, neither James nor her powerful father.  She was made sick by his touch and vomit rose in her throat.  The smell of the place and her attacker combined to further sicken her. She lost consciousness.  Willie revived her with smelling salts twice.  Her ravaged body bore dozens of cuts which oozed her life's substance slowly to plop on the floor below.  At last, she could no longer be revived and Willie finished.  Her waters had flooded him in satisfaction.  He lay before her ruined body looking at his work.  He would hold the image of her in his mind as long as he lived.  He especially liked the way he had done her face.  No one but he could love her now.  He rose and stood close to her, running a finger through the cascading waterfall of life that leaked from her wounds.  He had decided upon his trophy.

***

A small and insignificant man wound his way through London's streets.  The night air was bracing.  He huddled into his coat, his gloved hand holding a Gladstone bag.  He was on his way home.  The night's work satisfactory.

He reached his destination and entered a lobby.  Up two flights of stairs, turn to the left and into the room where his comfort and life lay waiting for him.  He lit the gas light and settled his bag in its place and removed his coat.  Looking in a mirror just inside his door, he thought, a fine nigh', Willie ol' man!

He put a tea pot on the grate in the fireplace and started a blaze.  The night was chill.  The newspapers he collected lay neatly folded in a stack before his chair.  He read and re-read the articles about her.  About how she was found; her mint green evening gown snagged on flotsam on the banks of the lower Thames.

He slid his arms into his housecoat, prepared his cup of tea and sat down, grabbing up one of the newspapers.

He read again of her discovery while he ran his finger through thick golden locks - the best trophy he had ever taken.


Word Count 4691