The Spirit Room - Act III

In the final act, Adam Cole confronts his own ghosts and seeks truth from amongst the dead...

The Spirit Room: An Adam Cole Mystery

London

October 1885

ACT III

            Morning rushed in and Cole again found himself winking under a harsh light. And who the hell was slapping his face now?

            He cursed and swatted the hand away.

            “Don’t curse at me, lad, er’else I’ll slug your bloody gob right shut.”

            Who was that?

            A face came into focus, old and worn and creased with the stresses of a long life. Untidy wisps of grey hair framed the lined forehead and the large ears while tiny eyes strained to see without the aid of spectacles. They peered closely at Cole.

            It was the pensioner, Cole realised – the old man who had stumbled out of the Salazar sisters’ den the night before and gotten sick in the gutter. The pensioner seemed not to recognise him.

            “You all right now, lad?” he asked as Cole slowly sat up.

            They were both sat in the recessed doorway of a shop along the Whitechapel Road. Morning traffic was already thick, but the murky light suggested it was barely yet dawn.

            “I am alive,” Cole replied, then turned and spat the acrid taste from his mouth.

            “You very nearly smothered me in my sleep, boy.”

            Cole vaguely recalled climbing into the doorway in the darkness and collapsing over some slumbering body. “Forgive me, old man,” he said, “I was not in the best of mind after…”

            He paused, reflecting on those final horrific moments in the Spirit Room, and of the sisters crouched over him afterward, restoring him to life.

            “A bender, was it?” The pensioner chuckled. “My liver won’t allow me such a night now.”

            “No, it wasn’t drink. It was the same fit of madness you experienced.”

            “What?”

            Cole looked at him: “The Spirit Room.”