I Am Jack

A Story by G. D. Logan

this is a ghost story, more of a campfire story really.

Long ago in London in what was the Whitechapel district of the West End, Jack the Ripper stalked the night and struck fear into the hearts of the city’s population. He was one of the first and perhaps the most famous serial killers of all time.

Between 1888 and 1891 Jack the Ripper brutally murdered from six to eighteen people by ripping them apart with a knife. He tore their throats open and dismembered their bodies saving the choicest parts for his own demented reasons. Then in 1891 the killings abruptly stopped and Jack the Ripper disappeared never to be heard of in England again.

Some say Jack the Ripper was a Prince of the Royal family who was committed to an asylum in that year. Others say that he was a doctor who drowned in the River Thames. Some historians even say it was a mysterious man who was struck by a carriage and killed shortly after the last Ripper murder. Years later in the United States a convicted murderer screamed “I am Jack the…” As the trapdoor was sprung and he was hung before he could finish the sentence.

Now after 100 years Jack the Ripper’s true identity is still a mystery. All that is known of him is that he had some knowledge of anatomy and that he may have been left-handed. But I know who Jack the Ripper is, and I will tell you how I know.

It all began years ago. I was about fourteen; it was the early 50s, and rock ‘n roll had just begun. Elvis had just recorded a song called “That’s All Right, Mama” and “I Love Lucy” was the hottest thing on TV, if your family could afford one to watch it. Unlike today, when I was a child there wasn’t a TV in every room. We didn’t have computers and there were no video games to rot our brains.

There were five of us back then, names don’t matter, I’m not even sure I can remember them all. We did all the things kids do today. We played baseball, rode bikes and we formed a club and what a club it had been.

We called ourselves the Bloody Hand for no other reason than a red hand painted on a white T-shirt looked cool. At our meetings we would sit in the dark telling stories about ghosts, vampires, werewolves and any other creepy crawly night stalkers that popped into our imaginations. On Saturdays we would find ourselves crowded in the darkness of the local movie house scared out of our wits by whatever monster was running rampant across the screen that week.

We held our club meetings at the home of a boy I’ll call TJ. He lived in an old two-story house that was built around the turn-of-the-century. It stood on about three acres of wooded land and was the only house on that side of the street. It was a large house, maybe twelve rooms and his parents used all of the rooms but one.

That room had once been a ballroom. It was big and unheated and even on the hottest days of the summer the room remained cold. It was the perfect place for the five of us to hold our meetings on a humid summer’s day especially in the years before central air. I spent so much time in the old ballroom when I was young that every detail of its interior is still etched into my brain even now all these many years later. Many of my fondest memories as a young man were spent in that room and of course it is also the scene of one of my most vivid and terrifying nightmares.

The basement of the house was filled with stacks of old newspapers and broken things that were too good to throw away but not good enough to use anymore. There were boxes of old jars, books, and magazines. We spent hours down there looking at the old pictures and laughing at the way people used to dress. But it was the attic of the house where we truly loved to spend our time.

The attic was a wonderland of things left behind by previous owners. Trunks filled with old clothing, clocks that no longer worked, strange things the use of which we could only imagine and in an old leather doctor’s bag was a set of tarnished medical knives now rusted beyond use. And of course it was in the attic that we found the Ouija board.

An Ouija board is a flat board with letters and numbers printed on it. By putting the tips of your fingers on a small three-legged tool called a planchette the Ouija board will answer simple questions usually with yes or no answers. With practice however sometimes it would spell out words and sentences. The Ouija board is a notorious liar. Often the planchette would be controlled by the subconscious twitches and prods of your friends without them even meaning to. Other times one of the members of the club would guide the planchette on purpose to set us up for a joke or try to scare us. But sometimes the Ouija board tells the truth.

It was early spring, May, I think, and we were all sitting around the table with the Ouija board between us. The room was dark except for two candles that cast their flickering light across the Ouija board’s surface. In the dark even familiar objects took on shapes of monsters waiting to pounce. It was a perfect place to play a game that relied more on our imagination than rules, or facts. Chills ran up and down our spines as we shivered with anticipation of what questions we might ask, and what answers the board would give us tonight.

The game started as it always did, slowly. We took turns asking questions. Mostly silly questions, the same ones we did every night to give the board a chance to warm up, and us a chance to get into the proper mood. We asked questions like:

“Will I ever get married?” The planchette moved slowly to yes.

“Will I ever have children?” Again it replied yes.

“Will I ever kiss Jenny Ackart?” Slowly the planchette moved to no, much to my dissatisfaction.

“Will the Cubs ever win the World Series?” The planchette moved up to the word no. Although to be honest any of us at the table could have answered this without the help of some omniscient being from the other side of the grave.

The room grew colder as night wore on and the questions started to get more serious. Delving into the realm of life and death and what waited for us after we died. We barely noticed as the room grew so cold that our breath hung before us like clouds of smoke.

“Are there such things as vampires?” No.

“Will I live to be 100?” No.

“Are there such things as zombies?” No.

Then it happened. To this day I don’t remember who asked the question. But it was asked and the Ouija board came to life with enthusiastic fury.

“Are there such things as ghosts?”

The planchette didn’t hesitate as it normally did but shot to the left corner of the board like a bullet where it waited just above the word ‘yes’. We all laughed, after all, we knew this was just a game and not to be taken seriously. Besides it was most likely one of the others controlling the planchette and setting everyone up for a good laugh. I looked around the room. Everyone was trying to come up with the perfect follow-up question.

“Can we talk to one?” The planchette circled the board and placed itself again over the word ‘yes’.

“How can we?”

Slowly the planchette came to life. It wondered over the surface of the board as if studying the position of the letters. Then it began to move with a purpose spelling out words. It had been TJ’s job to write down all the letters as the Ouija board spelled out the words, and he did so frantically trying to keep up with the planchette as it answered our questions.

I-A-M-A-G-H-O-S-T the planchette spelled out before coming to a rest.

“When did you die?” Someone asked our laughter turning a little uneasy as we waited eagerly for the answer.

1-8-9-3 answered the board.

“How did you die?” We asked in unison, the air growing tense with anticipation.

I-W-A-S-H-A-N-G-E-D answered the board with haste. We stared down at the board. Could we really be talking to a ghost?

“Where were you hung?” Asked someone in the room although looking back maybe why would have been a much better question.

O-U-T-S-I-D-E-B-Y-T-H-E-O-A-K-T-R-E-E spelled out the planchette.

We all knew what tree the Ouija board was referring to. The old oak tree had stood at the front of the house as long as any of us could remember. There was a tree house in it now, and a shiver shot down my spine as I thought about how many times I had played in a spot where someone may have been hanged.

“Who are you?”

I-A-M the planchette sped faster over the letters now as if it had become accustomed to the board. We called each letter out aloud as it landed on them, J-A-C-, the planchette stopped abruptly over the K and a collective gasp went through the room. The Ouija board was in rare form tonight. Seldom did it give out so much information with so little prompting.

I was just about to ask “Jack who” when the planchette started to move again. Slowly it started to circle the board, speeding up as it went. Faster and faster the planchette went until it was moving so fast that none of us could keep our fingertips on it. We watched in horrified fascination as it circled the board of its own volition.

Suddenly the planchette flew off the board and buried itself in the wall where it hung vibrating slightly. Fear ran through us. None of us could have thrown the thing hard enough to embed it in a plaster wall. Besides, at the end none of us had even been touching it.

The feeling that we had stumbled onto something unearthly filled my consciousness, and for all the ghost stories we had told each other none of us had ever once thought we would find ourselves in one. Ghost stories were great when it came to scaring people, but everyone knew they weren’t real. Everyone knew ghosts only existed in stories. Ghost stories were just something you told at night to scare your friends. Ghosts simply were not real but if they weren’t real then what had just happened?

There were two doors to the room. One door led to the rest of the house and one led outside. Someone or something pounded on the outside door. We sat frozen in our chairs, eyes wide, and our hearts pounding in our chests. We looked at each other, each one of us silently daring the others to answer the door, but none of us rising to the silent challenge.

A knock came from the inside door. We could see the door shake as the blows fell against it. Now a knock came from the outside door again, the blow so hard it seemed the door would shatter under the force. The pounding rotated between the two doors coming so fast and hard that the knock became a continuous drumbeat. A horrible drum solo played by a madman. Then as suddenly as the pounding had begun, it stopped, and the room was filled with the silence of the grave. We stared in frozen horror as the doorknob began to turn.

“Is it locked?” Someone asked in a frightened tone. We all knew it wasn’t and that whatever was out there was going to get in. The door opened a little at a time, inch by inch. We were so scared we couldn’t breathe, as if the oxygen in the room had been sucked out creating a vacuum of fear that the five of us were powerless to escape.

Finally after what seemed like a year had passed the door was open all the way and behind it, nothing. There was no monster there waiting to tear us apart. No ghost floating in the darkness, just the emptiness of the outer porch and empty field beyond. We could see the old oak tree silhouetted black by the moon through the empty doorway and my blood ran cold in my veins.

Minutes passed in silence everyone staring at the doorway waiting for something to happen. A few uneasy laughs broke the silence as if some grand joke had been played on us and this was a punch line.

Nothing was there; perhaps the door hadn’t been closed tightly. Maybe the noise had just been the wind, or the odd creaking’s of an old house. None of us truly believed this but believing it was the wind was far better than believing that some supernatural being had been trying to get into the room. I’d started to get up to close the door when a cold wind howled into the room blowing out the candles and leaving us in darkness.

I was hit hard in the stomach and doubled over in pain as I fell back into my chair. Something grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head back. A sharp object passed over my throat. It was as cold as ice and smelled of rot and decay. A heavy weight bore down on me and I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating. My life was being squeezed out of me, as if something was trying to force its way into my body. It was like my soul was slowly and painfully being pushed out of my body to make room for something new to take its place.

Even though the room was ice cold my body was bathed in sweat. I fought for air as terror filled my soul. My mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. There was intense pain. It felt like I was being forced through a strainer feet first; as if my flesh was being stripped from my bones one painful strip at a time. Cold black nothingness was slowly closing in on me and just when I was sure I was about to die… The darkness swallowed me and there was peace, at least for a short time.

I was standing in a dingy storefront peering through the London fog. In the distance I watched a figure by the light of a gas lamp. She was to be my prey, but not yet. The Bobby made his round every 15 minutes on this corner and I could hear his footsteps approaching. I stepped back into the shadows as he passed by unaware and the night became quiet once more. I moved out of my hiding place and walked slowly toward the figure standing under the gaslight. She saw me coming and smiled.

“Evening Govner, looking for a friend for the night”? She asked and then her smile faded and she screamed. They always screamed. Suddenly there was a knife in my hand, the light of the gas lamp gleaming off the blade as I brought it down into her soft flesh and the warm beautiful blood spilled out onto the cobblestones at my feet.

I became aware. It was no longer cold and the pain was gone. I felt as if I were weightless. I seemed to be floating near the ceiling and below me my body still sat in the chair. But it was no longer me. Something was different, the right side of my face seemed disfigured, my back was bent forward and hunched, and my right arm was drawn up, the hand looking withered and useless.

It was not me in the chair, not anymore. It was my body but whatever inhabited my body wasn’t me, and when the creature spoke the voice wasn’t mine. It was deep, raspy, and spoke with a heavy accent.

“The bloody fools thot’ they done in ol’ Jack, they did. They thinks ‘es dead an in the dirt under these ‘ol floorboards, but ‘e ain’t. The blighters think they bested ‘ol Jack but I showed ‘em. Jack ain’t ne’er goin ta die. Ye can’t kill ‘ol Jack, e’ came back e’did. They thot they could stop ‘ol Jack by ‘angin ‘im and burying ‘im ‘ere under the floor but I worked too ‘ard to get ‘ere. Stowed away on a ship when the Bobbies got too ‘ot in London. I packed up me knives an’ made quiet of the whole bloody business. It was nice here, so many warm bodies for me blades. But they caught me an ‘anged ‘ol Jack up in a tree to die. They didn’ know you can’t kill ‘ol Jack. Ol’ Jack ‘es just been waitin ‘ere all them years for the right body to come along. An now that I got me a new body, it’ll be back ta business as usual. It ‘as been far too long since my knives ‘as tasted blood. They won’t get me again. ‘cause I’m Jack the Ripper an I am back.”

I stared in horror at the creature that inhabited my body and I knew if I waited the thing inside me would become too strong to fight. So with all my strength I threw myself at my body below and prepared to wage war with the ghost lurking inside me for possession of my body.

The fight at first was nothing but a strange sensation of pressure as my soul seemed to break apart and assaulted the ghost’s defenses looking for any way back into my body. The pain grew turning intense as my soul fought the ghost’s defenses over and over giving it no time to rest, no time to truly claim my body as its own. Attack and counterattack, small wins and brutal losses as the creature shored up its fortifications and I did my best to tear them down. It was starting to look hopeless, the ghost seeming to always be one step ahead of me, always ready, waiting, and prepared for my futile attacks.

This went on for some time with little effect. Then from somewhere deep inside myself from that primal part of the mind that was only interested in survival came a voice “he can’t keep you out”. The voice was almost a whisper but in my disembodied state I could hear the words as if they were in Dolby Digital sound, and I paused confused by the primitive voice’s simple statement.

“It is your body, and the soul and body are one. One cannot exist without the other, they are joined. He cannot keep you out.” Said the lizard brained voice of my subconscious as if it was a professor imparting knowledge to a dimwitted student.

As this thought settled in the forefront of my mind my soul slipped past the ghost’s defenses with ease, the creature helpless to keep my soul from rejoining its body and I found myself standing on a cobble stone street in London. It was night and the street was dimly lit by gaslamps causing the shadows of the London night to sway and move with rhythmic threat.

A carriage rolled past me on the street, its wheels thudding against the stones as it disappeared into the darkness of the city. Fog slowly drifted in obscuring my vision and I could feel the damp of the night seeping into my flesh. Instinctively I knew I hadn’t stepped through some magic portal and onto the streets of London in the 1800s. But rather I had stepped into my body and into my mind which the ghost and I now seemed to share.

This was a world of the ghost’s creation. A representation of the ghost’s memories, of Jack’s memories, a battlefield set in my mind and I had stumbled right in completely unprepared for what was about to happen. There is no class in grade school to teach someone how to defend against a mental assault. There is no teacher to prepare a child for what he should do if a ghost attempts to possess his body. I had literally entered into a battle of wits unarmed for the fight.

This was my mind but I could feel my consciousness throbbing as Jack’s thoughts and memories invaded mine. I could feel Jack’s mind, his essence, his very soul intertwined with mine shoving at my soul like an errant child trying to push someone out of a seat so he could take it for himself. His mind squirmed in my consciousness like a snake. His soul felt slimy and it burned hot with hatred as it tried to push my soul away from it. Jack the Ripper was an alien creature trapped in my head, lodged under my subconscious like a splinter.

Jack had chosen this memory. He had chosen it because it was a place of power and pleasure for him. He had chosen his old hunting ground on the streets of London as a place for us to battle. A strange perverse pleasure filled me at seeing the old streets of London and I knew that this pleasure was not mine but Jack’s at seeing the beloved streets he had killed so many unsuspecting people on. It was a place that Jack knew all too well, a place for him to make a last winner " takes - all stand for possession of my body and I shuddered uncontrollably at the evil that filled my thoughts like gas vapors.

Jack stepped out of the shadow of a shop front and I remembered that Jack liked to hide; Jack liked to leap out from the shadows and catch his prey by surprise. I remembered that Jack liked to lower the blade and slice the flesh before the prey had a chance to fight, or flee. I remembered in shocking clarity the blood and the smells of a fresh kill and I fought the urge to throw up. Although I suppose remembered wasn’t exactly the right word to use.

I knew these things for a fact and I could see the faces of the dead as if I were there. As if I had caused their pain with my own hands but I hadn’t been there, and I hadn’t done those things. I had not even been born when Jack the Ripper roamed the streets of London. It had been he who had done all those horrible things that were now visions trapped in my head like movie trailers playing out on a continuous loop. I was not Jack the Ripper, and I fought to remember this vital fact but in this place and at this time I knew everything about the monster who stood before me.

Jack stood silently about 10 feet in front of me the shadows wrapping around him like a shroud. He stared at me his face locked in a scowl as if he did not know what to make of me. I wondered if since he inhabited my mind was he able to see all my secrets. Did my memories play out as visions behind his eyes, and were my memories as foreign and alien to him as his were to me? I wondered if this strange link we seemed to share flowed both ways between us or if it was like a river flowing only one direction?

Jack was not a big man; he stood only about 5 feet tall. The right side of his face was deformed, a cruel birth defect that made his outer appearance as ugly and monstrous as his soul. His right arm was drawn up tight against his chest locked into a position of uselessness. His right hand looked too small and withered to be of any use, as if it hadn’t had time to be completely formed before his birth. His back was hunched and to look at the creature I couldn’t help but think of Lon Chaney in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Although unlike Quasimodo, there were no redeeming or gentle qualities to the monster that stood before me.

Jack the Ripper wasn’t the product of a heartless, unaccepting society. He wasn’t a misunderstood monster. Jack was simply evil, and reveled in the blood and pain of others.

He turned the small surgical blade that he held in his left hand and allowed the light from the gas lamp to glitter off it menacingly. Jack didn’t boast or rant as a comic book or movie villain might have but instead lunged forward swinging the blade, his face a mask of hatred as he attacked.

The attack had caught me by surprise and I wondered momentarily what would happen if I lost this fight. Would I die, or would I be a disembodied spirit cursed to walk the world helplessly watching as Jack used my body as a puppet in his search for new victims?

I was amazed at how fast Jack was able to swing the evil blade. It cut through the air as the Ripper went straight for my jugular hoping to end the fight with a single slash. I barely managed to dodge the blade as it swung past my cheek so close I could feel the breeze from its cold steel death. Jack’s momentum carried him forward and I kicked at him, a reflexive response more than skill on my part. My foot caught him hard in the side and I heard a small groan of pain escape from his lips as he fell backwards. Unfortunately, I also lost my balance during the kick and fell backward landing hard on the stones of the London street.

I jumped up as fast as I could only to find Jack rushing at me again, the silver blade held out before him like a talisman. I tried to think, to remember everything I could about the art of fighting but at the age of fourteen there was little experience for me to draw on. Mostly all I had to go on were movie fights which had little to do with the real thing. Movie fights were far more like ballets then actual brawls.

I held my hands out in a defensive posture and felt the blade slice through the flesh of my right hand, warm blood spilling out and down my arm. I swung out with my left hand catching Jack on the jaw and sent him flailing backwards. The hit had seemed to surprise him more than anything else and I wondered if any of his victims had ever fought back. Still, even if he wasn’t used to victims that fought back what chance did I really have against him?

We circled each other, Jack looking for his chance to attack and me waiting for the inevitable slice of the blade. Jack didn’t have to hurry; after all he had already cut me. He had already drawn blood and it spilled out of me onto the cobble stones as an omen of things to come.

It wasn’t fair. He had a weapon and this was London, his turf and it just wasn’t fair. Where were the Bobbies, and where was my weapon? How was I supposed to win if the cards were stacked so heavily against me? I wanted to scream and flail against the unfairness of it all. Why should Jack have it all his way?

“Maybe he didn’t have it all his way.” Said that same subconscious voice from somewhere in the back of my mind.

I lunged forward catching Jack off guard on his right side and pushed him backwards as hard as I could. I wasn’t trying to hurt him but to give me some time to think about the cryptic advice my subconscious was throwing my way. After all, the unknown voice had been right before, maybe it was right again. Jack fell backward and sprawled onto the cobbles his hand still clutching the blade tightly. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned but it would hopefully give me a second to think.

It wasn’t all his way the voice had said. But how could that be true? He had his blade and here I was in his hunting ground on the streets of London. Then something happened that neither Jack nor I had expected. I smiled, I couldn’t help it, the Ripper was getting up preparing to carve me like a Thanksgiving turkey and I smiled a large goofy smile as the light dawned on me and I realized that the voice had been right. Jack was not going to have it all his way.

Jack hesitated when he saw my smile and I could see fear in his eyes. I had realized something that should have been obvious to me from the start. Something that Jack had been hoping I wouldn’t figure out. This wasn’t London. The London we stood in was all part of a monster’s memories. Just a shadow of a real place in a real time, a thought in the mind of a serial killer long since dead, but this was not Jack’s mind, at least not yet this was my mind and his memories had no power here.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the old baseball field up the road from my house on a hot July day. It was a place where my friends and I often went during the summer to while away the hours. I could smell the fresh cut grass, hear the sound of the birds chirping in the trees, and feel the chafed wood of the baseball bat in my right hand. I thought about the first time I had ever hit a home run. How I had watched the ball as it sailed through the air and over the right-field fence. I thought about how powerful I had felt at that moment, and how proud I was. I imagined the baseball diamond inside my head trying to recreate every detail with perfection in my memories.

Slowly I opened my eyes and watched as the darkness of the misty London night burned away replaced by the sunlit ball diamond of my memories. Jack may have been King of the night. Jack may have been the Prowler of London. He might’ve even been the stalker of the silent city streets but I was King of the baseball diamond. This was my domain and I held up the old wood bat, the blood from my cut hand staining it Crimson and dripping into the mud.

My smile widened and Jack recoiled in terror his good hand up in front of him in a supplicating manner. But it was too late for mercy; besides, he had never showed any of his victims’ mercy. He had struck them down without thought and without conscience like a wild animal on a hunt. Jack curled himself into a ball on the ground shaking as the realization of doom overtook him.

“No one invited you here, Jack, and it’s time for you to go.” I said calmly. Jack said nothing but growled like some animal who had just realized he hadn’t been the hunter after all but the prey.

I shrugged, raised the bat, and swung.

I woke up in the hospital three weeks later. My parents told me that the doctors were unable to figure out what had happened to me and thought that perhaps I’d had an allergic reaction to something in TJ’s house. I never told them how close that was to being true. The doctors said I had been more dead than alive, and they had not been sure I would ever wake up from the coma.

When I was released everything had changed. Although the five of us still saw each other and hung out from time to time, the club no longer got together. None of us ever spoke much about what had happened that night. A few days after I woke up TJ told me that after the door had opened I had gone into some type of seizure and they had run to get help. When they returned with TJ’s parents I was passed out on the floor.

None of us ever talked about the Ouija board, I think TJ destroyed the thing soon after that night. Mostly the events of that night became a club secret and we went on with our lives as if that day at TJ’s house had simply never happened. Everyone was content to believe that what happened was simply an allergic reaction and perfectly explainable.

In time TJ’s parents sold the house and moved away. I never saw TJ again. Sometime in the 70s the house burned to the ground. A Kmart store was built in its place. During the construction they found human bones which dated back to the late 1800s early 1900s. The bones were relocated to the local Cemetery and buried under the name of John Doe. The date of birth and death left blank.

Some could say that this had all been a dream. Something that my subconscious played out for me when I was in a coma but I know that isn’t true. This was just a lie I told myself to keep the fear at bay and if I ever find myself starting to believe in the lie I simply look at the palm of my hand and the angry scar that covers it.

When I started this story I told you that I was the only one who knew the true identity of Jack the Ripper. He was no doctor, no prince, no nameless man crushed by a carriage a hundred years ago. I know who Jack the Ripper is because I had fought him for my body and won. I know who he is because sometimes late at night when I let my guard down or I’m particularly exhausted, I can feel my right arm begin to draw up, my back begin to hunch forward, my head leans sideways, my voice begins to change and I know…

That I am…

The end.