He sat up in bed and the disorientation of the dream left him. The dream was still fresh but recollection of that dream fleeted in the morning air. He concentrated on the images in his mind that desperately tried to dissipate.
Then, it hit him. It was not just a dream, he said to himself. My memories of the night in London are coming to me. The blow must not have knocked me out entirely but was enough to cause me to suppress my memories of what I actually saw.
Jasper was excited. The figure in the darkness was not revealed but he knew if he was patient, the reminiscence of that night would come to him. He knew the man he saw in his dream had to be the Ripper leaving the last victim.
Perhaps I saw his face, he thought. Then, he thought on Jack for a moment. If I saw the man, then maybe Jack did also. I’ll have to remember to ask him.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
London, England – in the Near Future
He had never killed anyone. He had never been a hunter and had never really wanted to be as he had no interest in killing something else. Then, the encounter with Jack happened and the feelings he held of killing changed.
He never thought he had the ability to kill anything. But at that moment he knew that he possessed that ability. He could definitely kill.
Many years prior, he had traveled with Jack to 1888 London. There he had been hit in the head and had blacked out, but only for a moment. Then, he came out of it just in time to see Jack for who he really was. It took some time for the memories to revive in his stricken head but eventually they returned.
“You’re Jack the Ripper,” Jasper had accused Jack.
Jack had tried to interrupt him but he would not be disrupted.
“Jack, I saw you. You came from the house covered in blood. You’re the Ripper. You killed those women in London.”
He knew he had to stop Jack.
He didn’t let Jack react to the accusation. Instead, he leveled the handgun in his hand and fired once. The gun was aimed at Jack’s chest. He had time to aim steadily. He was angry and yet he was calm. As he pulled the trigger, he knew the bullet would fly true and would hit Jack in the chest, exactly where he had aimed.
He looked at Jack as he pulled the trigger. He saw the shocked expression as Jack watched the gun rise and the trigger being pulled. But Jasper didn’t see the one reaction for which he had been hoping. He didn’t get to see Jack’s face as the bullet hit his chest, killing him. The moment that he pulled the trigger, Jack disappeared.
Over the next few years, he was aware that Jack had come back periodically. Jack would leave newspaper clippings of the murders he had done or handwritten notes of murders he was planning.
After some time, Jasper moved back to his hometown of Chepstow, England. He married Marni and they had a daughter. It was there that Bagster Phillips visited him.
“Are you Jasper?” Phillips had asked opening the conversation.
That conversation had reawakened something inside of Jasper. For weeks he tried to shake the feeling but it wouldn’t go away. “I can’t give in.” The temptation seemed harmless enough but the consequences were too great.
He made it three months before he succumbed. He told Marni that he needed to get away for a period of time to work on something. He wouldn’t explain what it was only that his meager laboratory in Chepstow didn’t have the capacity for the type of research he would be doing. That afternoon he made the trip to London.
He spent the next six months redeveloping the technology for time-travel. He had destroyed all of their notes and therefore completed the new device by memory and experimentation.
He was mindful of the complexity of Jack’s troubles with the time-travel device and was determined not to repeat those mistakes.
He almost got it right.
The new device was one that did not have to be implanted in the brain as Jack’s device had been. The new device resembled a small hearing aid.
After months of work, Jasper tested the device and found it worked. It was not perfect as he later discovered.
In the end, the device captured his subconscious just as their original device had imprisoned Jack’s subconscious. It was not as severe as Jack as Jasper had made some improvements on the device but it took the primitive instinct of murder that was exposed when he tried to shoot Jack and exploited it.
The effect didn’t take place immediately as it had with Jack. It took just long enough for Jasper to convince himself that he was okay before the rage set in.
Jasper did not kill right away. His process began as homicidal thoughts. They started as dreams and then worked their way into everyday thought. The dreams terrified Jasper at first but soon he became used to them. It wasn’t long before he was enjoying them.
Jasper toiled with time travel for many months and learned how to do it well. As the six month timeline arose, he made the decision he would not return to his family. He knew he had become a monster and there was just enough love left in his heart to not want to share who he had become with his wife and daughter. He knew he would break their hearts but wasn’t sure how he could avoid that.
In the end, the love for Marni and his daughter gave him the rational thought that he could spare their pain (even though it would cause them great pain in the
