GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER FIFTEEN_BROTHEL OF THE DAMNED

{“Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold :

Her skin was white as leprosy,

The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

Coleridge – RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.}

{Samuel Clemens - ghost, your guide here.

Trapped in Victorian London, we are being escorted by Death to a brothel where it is said the men who are Jack the Ripper are waiting for their next victim.

Me, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich and Roland – each of us is suspicious of Death’s offer to lead us back to the present and to the supernatural jazz club, Meilori’s.

Here is Roland’s account of it.}

We walked unnoticed onto the fog-choked sidewalk, packed with dozens of men and women, their faces weathered, wrinkled, and haunted.

I smelled alcohol on most of their breaths. So drunk, yet so plainly unhappy.

Death reached down, tapped the top of my head, and pointed to the dirty red, three story building in front of us.

An ornate but faded sign proclaimed it to be The Princess Alice. There was a hard-eyed redhead at the front door, calling out to each man that passed her.

"Mary Kelly," sighed Death, "where is that little girl of yesteryear?"

And then, without any warning at all, Death, Marlene, Mark, and I started to slide across the cobblestones, up the three steps to the door, and right on THROUGH the door as if it were no more than thin air. I started to shiver.

I looked over to my friends. They seemed unruffled. Apparently, Marlene and Mark as ghosts were used to this sort of travel.

But I wasn’t a ghost. It unnerved the hell out of me.

We slid right THROUGH the milling customers of the brothel as they made their way to and from the bar and the tables clustered all about.

We stopped at the base of the stairs leading up into the murky darkness and the sounds of coarse laughter, badly played pianos, and the squeaking springs of old, worn-out beds.

I turned to the customers. Were these men responsible for the terrible butchering of so many prostitutes? Their hard eyes certainly seemed up to the job.

The women who sat beside them or on their laps looked as if they would happily hand their “customers” the knives. I squinted at them through the gloom. Each table had only one candle … one very short candle.

Some were shorter than others. Some gave off so little light I found it hard to believe that flame could be so faint.

Mark Twain looked up at a somber Death. "What in blue blazes is wrong with this place? Can't they afford their gas bill? Damnation, you'd think this place would make enough money to buy new candles at least."

"Those are not candles, Clemens," Death murmured. "Rather they are the pathetic remains of the soul of each man that sits at the table."

I turned and looked in horror at the men, the flickering light of what little remained of their souls casting weird shadows across their faces. I started to shiver in spasms.

It was too much.

I started to breathe shallow and fast, not being able to take enough air into my lungs.

I started to make thin squeaky sounds deep in my chest. I pressed my hand to my heart which felt like an ice pick had suddenly been stabbed into it.

My fingers and lips felt numb. I was scared, yet felt outside of myself.

Things were beginning to grow dim. What was happening to me? And as soon as I asked myself, I knew.

I no longer thought all of this was some dream or nightmare. This was all real. As real as a rattler that springs up at you from the shadows. And it was all too much for me.

It had been the terrible death of the two year old girl that had been the last straw.

Now, these men burning up what little was left of their souls as cold-eyed women smiled, knowing what was happening and not giving a damn.

No, worse. They were glad of it. The wet squeaks got higher, faster. I leaned on the stained wall, fighting for a breath that wouldn't come.

Marlene took my arm and murmured, “Liebling, if you fall now, who will bring Papa’s killer to justice? You can push this horror to the back of your mind. You can.”

“I - I can?”

Marlene brushed her lips against mine. “I know because I did the same when I stumbled upon horror after horror at the front lines in World War II.”

“B - But you w-went on the front lines … d-despite the death sentence … on your head. Y-You’re a hero.”

Mark and Marlene said it together, “And so are you.”

I knew better.

Marlene leaned forward, kissing me with ghostly lips that had me re-breathing my own gasps. I smiled bitterly. She could have used a paper bag to do it. But this was much better.

Finally I could breathe again.

Maybe it was her kiss. Or perhaps Marlene’s and Mark’s faith in me did the trick. No matter. I could breathe on my own again.

I felt Death’s cold eyes on me.

How long would that breathing go on?
*********************

CHAPTER THIRTEEN : TO DRINK FROM THE NILE RUNNING

{"Smooth the descent and easy the way;

The Gates of Hell stand open night and day;

But to return and view the blissful skies,

In this task grievous labor lies."

- Vergil : AENEID.}

Gabrielle turned from her daughter to me. “You speak French oddly.”

“That I speak it at all is a surprise to me.”

Her eyes flicked to Marlene and Mark Twain and became worried again. “What brings you here, Stranger.”

I sighed. Now, that her enemies were dealt with, suddenly I was a stranger.

“Stranger enemies. I think they wanted me separated from my friends here.”

Her eyebrow arched. “Why would they want that.”

“I think they want me dead.”

Gabrielle’s eyes hollowed and went to her husband’s sword at her feet. “Enemies usually do.”

Marlene frowned. “I still cannot fathom who would want you dead, Liebling.”

Mark Twain gnawed his lips. “If we could stumble onto why, Valkyrie, it might just tell us who.”

I rubbed my face wearily. “Or who murdered the ghost of Hemingway and pinned it on me.”

Like the whisper of useless regret, words of ice came from my pocket. "I am Death. I will not be the tool of an echo! Take out this box."

The birds stopped singing in the branches. The cool breeze wisped to nothing. Shadows filled the verdant glade. I nodded to Rafferty and her mother.

"Go into the cottage."

Rafferty pouted, "But --"

"Now!," urged both Marlene and Mark Twain.

Eyes gone hollow and deep, Gabrielle took Rafferty in a rush to the small cottage that reminded me somehow of Snow White. Death murmured from the dry-ice chill of the rune-etched box I held in my burning fingers :

"Now the play is near over,
The closing curtains are drawing nigh,
Shadows of death
Steal across the sky."

I placed the box on the grass, the blades crisping burnt and dead in a growing circle around it. A billowing black fog swirled from the opening lid.

"Step in, ghosts and mortal. All entrances back to Meilori’s are blocked except the path I take."

I managed to get my voice to work. “But your path is the one of death.”

Mark Twain shrugged. "The scalded child fears cold water. We aren’t children anymore, son."

Marlene smiled faintly at me. "Our fears make us traitors to our better selves."

"And wise dogs drink from the Nile running," I muttered, thinking of unseen dangers, and walked with my two friends into the welcoming embrace of the dark mists.

Death spoke softly, “Roland, how much do you know of Victorian London?”

“Not very –“

And in the middle of the sentence, the world changed around me. Just like that, no pop, no trumpet blast, no anything on Death's part.

Reality just flickered like a dying light bulb, then grew bright as a whole different setting billowed before my eyes.

Thick fog boiled around me, and somehow it felt unclean.

The cold, damp street smelled of unwashed flesh and decaying garbage. The cold drizzle made all my old scars throb and my joints ache.

Death, Mark Twain, Marlene, and I were standing in the middle of a dark maze of ooze-slick alleys, pubs, opium dens, and brothels.

Brooding, hungry men brushed right past us without even looking our way. I had a feeling that Death had made us invisible.

" --- much," I said, my voice trailing away.

“Behold the low-rent district,” grumbled Mark Twain.

"Welcome to Whitechapel, Clemens," sighed Death. "As you can see, this little clot of diseased humanity is packed to the suffocation point with the dregs of Cockney, Jewish, and Irish society."

Mark grumbled, “First, France. Now, Victorian London. Roland, there’s a pattern here if we can but ferret it out.”

The black fog took on form.

Death in black, form-snug robes and hood. Her upper lip curled. "Ferret? You must mean the high-class "toffs" out for a weekend of slumming."

She touched my shoulder, and I winced from the intense cold of her fingers.

"Here, down this alley. It is a shortcut to the intersection of Wentworth and Commercial."

"What's there?," I whispered as I slipped on a puddle of something I didn't want to look at too closely.

Death's shadowed face became a study in ice. "The Princess Alice."

"A princess here?"

"Not a princess but a pub.”

Marlene, showing she time-traveled more than once, sneered, “ A brothel is more like it."

"Weird name for a place like that," I said.

Death hissed, "Not so strange. DayStar named it to please Rev. Dodgson."

I went cold at the name of the worst character in all my novels, but the other name confused me. "Rev. Dodgson? You mean L-Lewis Carroll?"

Death murmured so angry that I shivered, "Yes, though you might know him better as Jack the Ripper."

"What? Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper?"

"One of them," murmured Marlene with her lips twisted in disgust.

"One of them? Do you mean to say there was more than one?"

Death laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Tonight, The Princess Alice’s every customer will have killed as the Ripper."

Marlene cried out as she looked over my shoulder. She started to rush forward. Mark Twain saw what she was heading for and joined her, alarm on his face.

Death, now in a black toga, held up her hand. Both Marlene and Mark were held as if caught in an invisible vise.

I turned and pulled up short. A two year old girl was clutching a stale crust of bread in one hand and pawing off a pack of lunging, biting rats with the other.

The little girl was losing the fight. I started forward, but Death stopped me with an icy palm.

"It is her time, Lakota."

She hustled me on, though I lunged forward to help in some way.

She wrapped two arms of steel around me and literally dragged me down the alley. I glared up at her. There were tears in the one eye of ice that I could see through the shadows.

"Why, Death? Why won’t you let me help her?"

"If you save her life, she will suffer even worse in the years to come. This death will open the door to a kinder, gentler plane of existence. Spare her, and hers will be a path of darkness that leads but to DayStar."

Mark Twain snapped, “Who’s this DayStar you keep talking about?”

“You know him as the Dark Stranger.”

“Oh, Hell.”

“Exactly,” nodded Death.

Marlene struggled against her invisible bonds. " I do not see this other plane of existence you babble about. All I see is a baby being torn apart by rats. Let me help the little girl!”

Death sighed, and sparkles of stardust trailed from her lips.

"Children do not last long in the East End of London. Cease your struggling, Magdalene, she is already gone from this plane of existence."

Marlene husked, “What need of a future Hell when Man makes his own here on earth?”

Marlene, Mark, and I exchanged glances. We had made a mistake trusting Death. Now, what to do? Hell, what could we do …

… against Death?
*********************