Phillips looked at Jack and waited for something else to happen. Nothing did. Phillips reached down and checked Jack’s pulse but did not feel one. He cursed again, this time out loud. It was too late. Jack was dead; and with him the secret of Jack the Ripper.
Phillips ordered the body taken to the station for autopsy. There, Phillips ordered the body of Jack onto the table and cleared the room. He turned his back to make preparations for the autopsy but when he turned back around to begin, he discovered something that should have surprised him but didn’t. The table was empty. Jack’s body had disappeared.
CHAPTER SIX
Chattanooga, Tennessee – June 2124
Jack woke up in the hospital. He did not know exactly what year it was but he did know that he was alive. He had lost a lot of blood after being shot by Phillips and had lost so much that his body went into shock. His pulse became very weak as he neared death.
Phillips could have detected the pulse if he had not been so emotionally involved. Jack smiled weakly. His breathing was so shallow that it was barely discernible. He had passed out due to blood loss and shock and when Phillips didn’t detect Jack’s feeble pulse, Phillips pronounced Jack’s death.
Jack remained unconscious as he was placed on the autopsy table at the police station. It was not true unconsciousness and a moment after Jack was laid on the table, his awareness transitioned from darkness to a world of indistinct shapes and subdued sounds. The transition was only momentary and he was on the verge of passing out again when something inside of him pressed to maintain consciousness. Perhaps it was the inner-desire to survive. That most basic of instinct kept him conscious long enough to remember that he could travel through time.
Jack didn’t know where he would go. He thought back to his old life. In that world there were doctors that could fix him, keep him alive. But also in that world was Jasper. He wouldn’t risk being discovered.
He focused on one of the hospitals in Chattanooga but deliberated a time one hundred years in the future. He didn’t know if the hospital or even Chattanooga would still be there but he did know if he stayed in London, he would die.
The next thing he remembered was waking up in a white room surrounded by unfamiliar machines. He waited for his eyes to adjust and when they did, he attempted to sit up. He grunted and managed only to raise his head; the effort provided him the knowledge that he was in a hospital. A screen on the wall revealed the date to him: June 8, 2124. Jack smiled and then groaned at the pain in his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be trying to sit up,” he heard a voice say.
Jack looked and saw a nurse rushing towards him. “Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re in a hospital.”
Jack nodded his head. “How long have I been here?”
“You’ve been here for about an hour. You lost a lot of blood. The surgery was successful and we should have you out of here in about thirty minutes,” the nurse replied.
In and out in less than two hours for a gunshot wound? Jack said to himself. He looked at the nurse. There was a soothing quality to her and he could tell she cared about her work and her patients.
She went over what had happened to him and how they had never seen a wound of that nature. The doctors weren’t entirely sure how the injury occurred.
Jack started to tell her it was gunshot wound but wasn’t sure if guns even existed in 2124. Instead, he kept his mouth shut and listened to her talk.
As she continued, Jack tuned her out. Inside, a familiar feeling came over him. Jack smiled inside as he felt the coldness begin to spread. He watched the nurse as she spoke but he didn’t hear a word she said – all he could think about was how much he wanted to kill her.
He followed her home that evening (he first confirmed that she lived alone and there was no significant other to surprise him) and had his way with her. At the end of her ordeal, her blood covered Jack and he relished in the feeling of macabre.
Afterwards, he used her shower to clean up (he was not worried about his prints being on file a hundred years in the future). He dropped his wet towel on her disfigured face and walked around her apartment naked, letting his body dry in the cool apartment air. Then, he laid down on her bed and slept until late the next morning.
In the morning sunlight, he stretched and rubbed the night from his eyes and walked into the living room to check on the corpse. His creation was even more stunning in the daylight than it had been under the moon that radiated through the skylight.
He made coffee and drank it while admiring the body of the nurse who had the day before, tended to him as he recovered from Phillips’ gunshot. He stayed there until that night, enjoying a leisurely day. At midnight, he broke into a neighboring apartment and stole some clothing. Then, he left the complex and melted into a new world.
It didn’t take him long to realize he didn’t belong.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anderson, South Carolina – August 1897
The future wasn’t the place for Jack and with his proverbial red carpet in London drawn, Jack had to look elsewhere. As such, he recalled that in the late 1800’s, a town in South Carolina was one of the only cities in the nation with continuous electricity: Anderson - The Electric City. The town had
