The Spirit Room - Act II

In the second of three parts, private investigator Adam Cole crosses the realm of the Salazar sisters and dares to enter the Spirit Room...

The Spirit Room: An Adam Cole Mystery

London

October 1885

ACT II

            The Whitechapel Road, near the London Hospital.

            Adam Cole stood on the pavement, and by the soft glow of one of the gas-lamps lining the busy thoroughfare he re-read the handbill and confirmed the number before folding and tucking it away.

            The – what would he call it? A shop? – of the Salazar sisters occupied one of the many flat-faced four-storey Georgian terraces along the north side of the road. There was no sign; no banner, no indication that there were any ghosts to be found inside. The windows were covered, all dark but two on the ground floor to either side of the door. Candles flickered on their sills.

            Someone was home.

            Cole crept along the shadows of the pavement out front, senses pricked, seeking some sign of life from within. He did not go to the door just yet.

            At the eastern edge of the façade a vaulted entrance cut into an alleyway that led past the rear of the building and onward toward infinite blackness. The whistle of a District train shunting out of the nearby Whitechapel Station screamed at him down the passage before fading into the night. Cole entered. His shoulders very nearly rubbed the brickwork on either side as he stepped into the yawning maw. Up ahead, invisible to sight, someone, some man, likely homeless and certainly drunk, snored fitfully from the alley floor. Cole could smell the piss and the beer on the man. The evil odours, together with the wheezing snore, guided him cautiously onward, aware that at any moment he might step on or trip over the sprawled alley-nester, wherever he may be.

            Cole clung to the left wall, the brick cold and slick like sickly, sweating flesh. While this may have helped steer him around the drunk, he instead banged his knee into a stout, wooden box. He reached outward and downward, patting at what he took to be a dustbin, its lid down. It blocked much of the width of the alley. Would it be the bin used by the sisters to dispose of the unwanted refuse of their business, whatever that might consist of? There was often much to be learned from what others put in the trash.

            His fingers found the edge of the unhinged side of the lid and it lifted freely an inch or two before it slipped from his fingers. It struck down with a dull thud, and with that came a miasmic gasp from out of the bin’s interior – a hellish stench of death that very nearly caused Cole to turn and retch.

            But he collected himself, caught his breath and held it.

            He knew that rotten scent for what it was. But might it be anything significant? Or just the remnants of an unwanted luncheon? No; it was much too potent.

            He fumbled at the collar of his coat, loosening his muffler and winding it around his mouth and nose. Then he fumbled at his pockets, found his matches and struck one of the Lucifers against the brickwork.

            It flared to life. The alley’s shadows jumped back, hiding at the edge of the sulphurous yellow pool cast by the match. Cole held it over the bin. The lid was rough and peeled. With his free hand he again gripped the lip of the lid and, holding his breath, yanked it upward.

            The second slap of stink from the bin’s interior rung his senses harder than the initial one. Lowering the stump of the lighted match, he threw a faint glow down into the pit of the bin. There, a wide, jaundiced eyeball, sunken into its socket and nestled behind a tangled mass of brown hair, glared up at him in the flickering light. Cole stared, frozen, but gave a start when the eyeball suddenly rolled. From out of the socket oozed a viscous, green pus that wriggled with maggots drawn out by the light. Then came a shriek from deeper down in the darkness of the bin. A startled rat sprung up and shot outward into the alley.

            Cole gasped and leapt back. The match dropped and sizzled out on the slick flagstones at his feet. The lid slipped from his hand and slammed home. The noise echoed like cannon-fire along the enclosed passage.

            “Who’s that?”

            The drunk, disturbed by the racket, had awoken. The rat shrieked again and Cole felt it scurry over his right foot in its haste to escape.

            Having enough of it, Cole stumbled back along the wall, following it through the archway and out into the Whitechapel Road. There he fell back against the jamb and gasped, ridding his lungs and nose of the offensive air of the alley in exchange for the less offensive scent of coal smoke and horse-manure from the roadway.

            He took a minute to collect himself.

            His mind’s eye still burned with the image of the staring, maggot-riddled eye and the greasy brown hair clumped around it.

            It had not been human, that much he’d discerned before losing his nerve and his match.

            “A dog,” he gasped. “A dead dog.”

            Odd in and of itself. What was the dog doing rotting away in a dustbin next to the Salazar sisters’ den? Jenny had mentioned hearing one bark when she’d knocked at their door the previous day. If it was indeed the same one, why had it wound up in the dustbin so suddenly?

            To his right, the door into the den clicked open, spilling light and voices out over the pavement. Cole eased back into the black mouth of the alley and watched. Moments later, a hunched figure lurched out and onto the pavement. The murmur of voices went silent and the door clicked shut, isolating the lone figure on the darkened street. A soft groan issued from the man as he began to stagger along, supporting himself with a hand on the wall as he went.

            What had happened to him?

            Cole slipped from the alley and followed. At the next lamp-post, as the man stumbled and caught himself on it, Cole rushed forward. He took the bent figure by the shoulders.

            The man gasped and whirled around: “What! Who is it?”

            In the dim pool of lamplight, Cole could see that he was an old man, his greased hair thin and grey, his creased face equally thin and equally grey.

            “Steady, old fellow,” Cole whispered. “What’s happened to you?”

            “Oh, Lord! My Lord! But my head hurts!” The old man squeezed his temples. “I cannot believe it,” he went on. “My dear Mary. Dead all these years, yet there she was, as plain as I see you now. And her voice – just as I remember it! All of her, just as I last remember her.”

            “You saw a ghost?” Cole asked.

            “Not a ghost. My Mary, my wife. Long gone, but there she was tonight!”

            The man groaned and shook his head:

            “I’m afraid I don’t feel so well.”

            “Just take it easy,” said Cole.

            The old man suddenly pulled from his grip and fell against the lamp-post where he doubled-over and vomited into the gutter. The smell of a half-digested fish supper nearly made Cole vomit, too. He turned away, allowing the man to stagger off across the road and fade from view. Cole returned to the door, beyond which lay the Salazar sisters and their spirits. He had to know what exactly was happening here.

            Without further delay, he went forth and knocked.