There she was—beneath the gnarled tree with the twisted trunk. She caught sight of me and waved. “Hurry, Jackie! You’ll be too late.”
A looming creature stepped out from behind the contorted trunk. With fingers too long for a man’s, the creature caught Mum by the neck. The laughter left her eyes, replaced with panic. The creature opened its mouth, baring teeth dripping with blood.
“Jackie, don’t look,” Mum whispered.
But I couldn’t turn my head away as the creature unhinged its jaw and sank its incisors into Mom’s neck and shoulder. She screamed, and the creature moaned in delight—
“Let it go, Jack.”
Evelyn reached over from her side of the bed and brushed my hand away from my laptop. I hadn’t known she was awake; the sun wasn’t up yet, and she was a usually late sleeper. Unable to find slumber—the nightmares kept coming back every time I closed my eyes—I’d been up half the night lightly stalking Matthew Thompson. Generally, it was easy to find records of a teenager’s life online. They posted everything to their favored social media sites, and while I’d located Matthew’s Instagram without much issue, it wasn’t doing me much good.
Evelyn spotted how many tabs I had open, each one dedicated to a different online aspect of Matthew’s life. “This is probably illegal,” she muttered sleepily.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “All his accounts are public. Anyone can look at these things.”
“The question is should you?” Evelyn rolled out from under the covers and stretched her good arm. Tentatively, she tried to do the same with the other side and then grimaced. “Boy, I’m stiff today. Must have slept on the bad shoulder. Did you make breakfast?”
“Not yet.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be feeding me?”
“During business hours,” I quipped. “After-hours care is an extra charge.”
She thumped me with a pillow. When I didn’t defend myself, she regarded me with extra scrutiny. “What’s wrong? No more dirt on the kid?”
I closed the laptop and rubbed my eyes. “Nothing. He hasn’t posted on his social media accounts in six months. I can’t find any reason why he would have been in Whitechapel that night.”
“He probably snuck out and didn’t want to get in trouble,” Evelyn said. “Didn’t you say he was on academic probation?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there you go.” She made to roll out of bed but caught sight of me again. “Something else is bothering you. Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Not much,” I answered weakly.
“Another nightmare?”
The violent, rushing river washed through my head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s nothing.”
Evelyn squeezed my shoulder. “We’re friends. It’s my job to worry about you. Was it about your mum again?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She lifted her hands in defeat. “Fair enough. You know what? I’m feeling particularly kind-hearted this morning. Why don’t I make you breakfast?”
That got me out of bed. “No, thanks. I don’t find charred eggs and burnt toast as charming and delicious as you do.”
As I got breakfast going, Evelyn did her best to help me. Mostly, all she could do was collect ingredients or hand me cooking utensils, but I appreciated the effort all the same. Once she was rendered useless in the kitchen, she turned on the TV and switched it to the news channel. She knew I’d want to see if the police had made any progress on the Ripper case. Sure enough, the bolded headline at the bottom of the screen announced: Oxford student arrested in conjunction with latest Whitechapel murder.
“Hey, look at this,” Evelyn said. “Some kid named Henry Alcott taken into custody.”
Two pictures appeared of Henry on screen. The first was his student ID. He looked no older than twenty. He was rather skinny, wore thick-framed glasses, and smiled goofily into the camera with palpable excitement for his first day at Oxford. The second photo was Henry’s mug shot. He did not particularly look like a criminal. He appeared almost identical to the first photo, except his enthusiastic grin had been replaced with a confused expression. If I had to guess, Henry had no idea why he had been arrested.
“He didn’t do it,” I said.
Evelyn turned to face me. “How do you know?”
“Look at that kid.” The news was now showing footage of Henry, impeccably dressed in a neat sweater and slacks, being led from the Oxford campus and into a police car. His wrists were so bony that they almost slipped out of the handcuffs on their own. “Does he look like he has the strength to take down a person and gut them?”
Evelyn wrinkled her nose. “I suppose not. He’s a bit skinny. That doesn’t mean you should rule him out.”
I went back to frying eggs. “Does it say why they arrested him?”
She turned up the volume.
“Police say they have reason to believe Alcott was at the scene of the crime,” the reporter stated, “but refuse to release any more information because of the strange nature of the investigation. Questions have come up regarding the police’s effectiveness, especially since this is the second time they’ve claimed that CCTV did not capture the crime. The public suspects the authorities are withholding information, which results in a lack of trust from the community. Keep checking back for updates on this story. We’ll be releasing information on Henry Alcott’s arrest as we receive it.”
Evelyn muted the TV as the reporter moved on to another story about a corner shop break-in. “Maybe you were right.”
“About what?” I muttered, distracted by the eggs. In a second, they could go from over-easy to totally gross.
“Remember that book you found at Oxford with the writing in it?” Her high-pitched tone gave away her enthusiasm’s insincerity. She was placating me. “And now an Oxford student’s been arrested. It totally makes sense!”
“Like I said, he didn’t do it.”
“But the police said he was at the crime scene,” she pressed.
“No, they said they have reason to believe he was at the crime scene,” I
