“Costume? You’re actually him, aren’t you? Spring Heeled Jack.”
“What a ridiculous name,” he snorts, removing his hand from my face. “People can be so stupid. Have you read some of those stories?”
“I don’t understand.” I need to keep him talking. As he does, I work one hand out of the shroud, slowly enough to escape his notice.
“You wouldn’t,” he sneers. His handsome face has long departed and I wonder if it was ever there in the first place. “It started as a way to be separate from it all. I could do these. . .” he waves at the grimoire, “thingsas someone else. The newspaper industry in London was booming then and as soon as they got wind of the attacks, they created a monster.”
I pat around frantically with my free hand and it lands on long, spindly fragments that can only be Jane’s fingers. I pull away automatically, a sharp, searing pain slashing into my fingertips.
Wait.
Bones are sharp, too.
“Sorry, Jane,” I whisper, gasping out a raspy cough to cover the sound of snapping bone as I wrench one finger off. Tommy ignores me, so I carry on, manoeuvring the now needle-sharp bone inside the shroud.
“But it was you all along?” I ask. “Spring Heeled Jack, the Terror of London.”
“I suppose so,” he mumbles, engrossed in his gruesome task. “Though I couldn’t scale ten-foot walls or breath blue fire. I might be immortal but I’ve had to do things the hard way. It’s all lies.”
I cough again and thrust the finger bone upwards. A small indentation appears in the cloth, but no hole, so I persevere, wiggling it around until a shard of yellowing calcium pokes through. Adrenaline floods through me as I feel the brittle material start to rip. I start to cough again, desperately trying to mask the tear of threads ripping through the little cavern-like room until my entire arm is free and I can see the outline of Jane’s remains curled up by my side.
“What are you. . .” Tommy leans over the casket again, his claws wrapped around the lip of the coffin, but I’m too fast for him this time. I lift my hand, wielding the spiked shard of bone and, before I can overthink it, I plunge it deep into the side of his neck. He looks at me for a second, his mouth a little circle of surprise, before I wrench it out.
Horror movie tip number one: never drop your weapon.
Dark, viscous liquid sprays out across the wall and Tommy clasps a hand to the wound, looking at the blood in shock. I take my chance and jump, throwing my full weight at him, thrusting my shoulder into his chest as hard as I can. I tumble myself and the contents of the casket down on top of him and watch in slow motion as the little, stoppered bottles and final mortal remains of Jane Alsop explode across the floor. Tommy gapes at me in horror, blood spurting from between his fingers.
“NO!”
I try to push myself off him, but I’ve landed awkwardly, my arm at a crazy angle. I stagger to my feet. My arm dangles down at my side, floppy and useless.
“No! Look what you’ve done!” His tears are genuine now, floods of salty regret mixing with the blood still trickling from his neck. He’s sweeping the fragments of bone into a pile, desperately trying to put her together again, smearing his blood across the floor, mixing it in with the dirt
“It’s over, Tommy,” I whisper. He looks up at me with huge, wet eyes. His skin is dulling quickly, his hair turning from sandy to grey right in front of me. “You need to leave her to rest. She’s not coming back.” I choke back a sob. “Youneed to rest.”
“Over?” he repeats, his lips thinning by the second. I nod and he fumbles in his pocket, pulling out something that he rolls across the floor to me. “It’s really over?”
“I think so. I think you just need to accept that she’s not coming back.” I pick the object out of the dust with my good hand and rub my thumb across it, lifting the lid with a click. It’s a small glass cylinder with a large lever on the top and I realize it’s an old type of lighter, like the one Geoffrey said had been stolen. I get it. I know what the girl in my nightmare – Jane, I remind myself, watching Tommy weep into her broken body – was trying to tell me. She wasn’t warning me to run, I just didn’t see at the time. I do now. The letters seem to merge before my eyes and rearrange themselves into another word as I stare at the lighter.
BURN.
“It was mine,” he whispers and I realize he’s fading by the second. “She had it made for me. I lost everything and when I saw the museum had them I had to take them back.”
“I understand,” I lie, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Tommy, what’s the secret meaning for Butterfly Weed?”
He gazes past me to the open door, the tiny orange flowers glowing. He sighs, his body sagging in on itself.
“Butterfly Weed? It meanslet me go.”
Of course.
I flick the lever with my thumb, but my hands are slick and nothing happens. I wipe my palm across my shirt, leaving streaks of desiccated flesh behind, and try again.
A beautiful little flame jumps up and smiles at me.
“Fire,” Tommy rasps, looking at me through cloudy, painful looking eyes. “For cleansing.”
I hold his gaze and stretch my arm out to the closest wreath, the one holding the grimoire and the cards. The dry locks catch like tinder and the sickly smell of burning hair fills the room. I watch, mesmerized, as flames begin to eat away the gold leaf and ancient parchment, breaking a spell that’s been binding him for almost two hundred years. It only takes seconds for them to go up in smoke.
