This chapter contains details of a terribly gruesome crime, real details. Please do not proceed if this will make you uncomfortable.
Merick
Part 3: Annie
People came and went at all hours of the day and night in Whitechapel. And many houses didn't even lock their doors. Not that Pam could gain access without an invitation, (and she rarely sought one, houses were crowded places with far to many witnesses; ironically, the streets were much safer, at least for her.) It didn't mean that Pam never hunted in those back streets, but for the last week she had been even more cautious than normal, the corpse she had come upon, and the breath in her ear had left her unsettled and she moved very carefully, staying aware of all the differing noises around her. The sound of two people conducting some kind of transaction behind the house at 29 Hanbury Street gave her pause, and she faded into the shadows as Eric had taught her, listening. The woman had dark brown hair, about five feet tall or so, and looked as though she had lived a difficult life, the effects of alcohol were visible on her face and in the way she stooped her shoulders forward; she looked so much older than Pam knew she likely was. The man standing in front of her, no taller than she, was disguised in a dark overcoat and a deerstalker hat. Not atypical for a man negotiating with a woman for her services, trying to keep the truth of his identity hidden. But there was something in the way he carried himself that struck Pam as wrong.
It wasn't that he didn't seem like the type of man who would venture out to find the intimate congress he desired in Whitechapel, frankly he looked the part. The coat and hat weren't new, and though he stood tall his mannerisms were not from one with breeding. His darkened skin betrayed a non-native background, though the exact one escaped her, eastern European perhaps? Pam had not yet ventured too far from the isles with Eric, not far enough to make a proper judgment as to ethnicity. But the way he held the rapt attention of the woman was almost the same as the hypnotizing that she knew as one of her powers as a Vampire. But he was most certainly alive.
He was playing with something in the left hand pocket of his coat, and finally drew out a scarf of sorts, Pam listened as he offered it to the lady, who twittered just a little as he draped it over her shoulders. But far from it being part of the payment the woman was expecting, it suddenly became a weapon as the knotted fingers tightened it with a quick tug, hands went up to pull it loose, but there was no power in them and as she slumped to the ground Pam saw a gleam, a long knife, emerge from the assailant's inner coat pocket. She could feel its silver element even from her distance, and being so young, she could only watch as first it cut the woman's throat, and next, it hacked at the abdomen of the supine body, feet put flat, legs splayed, its master working rapidly but precisely, tossing internal organs that did not appeal to him over the corpse and pocketing something else. Only her Vampire stamina kept Pam from vomiting right there.
"Stop!" she hissed into the darkness as she came to understand what the man was doing, and to understand that she was witnessing the same butcher as August 31st.
The man whirled his head, lost perhaps in the moment of his kill enough that he did not sense the being watching him. Black on black eyes seemed to shine in the gloom and he glared straight at Pam. But instead of running scared at the fanged visage that met his, he smiled in a knowing, evil grin, and waved the silver blade at Pam as if he understood completely what he was facing. He stood slowly, focused on her, not even looking back down at the body, and addressed her.
"Walk away." He said, very slowly, in a rhythmic tone that reminded her of a chant.
"What are you doing to these women?" Pam stepped from her shadowed hiding spot. He had already seen her fangs, and she felt suddenly empowered by her nature, enough that she took the chance of exposing herself.
He laughed at her, not at all frightened. And that was disturbing in and of itself. Pam felt a shudder run unbidden across her chest but it did not stop her curiosity, or turn her away.
"Nothing you need to concern yourself with bloodsucker." And he waved the silver blade at her again. It prompted another hiss, though now coated with gore it seemed to affect Pam to a lesser degree. She moved towards him.
"Bitch!" he exclaimed in a harsh whisper and ran off. She could have pursued him, but there were suddenly many more voices coming; voices he had likely heard as well. Pam faded away just as quickly as he had, sensing the sun, and the impending danger that came with it. Though she knew that the mangled corpse left on the ground, just beyond her reach to conceal, was also contributing to the sense of unease. Leaving bodies laying around the streets of London was never a good policy, because it aroused peoples' fears, and the interests of the police and vigilante gangs; never good when you needed to hunt those streets.
Annie Chapman was killed in the early morning hours of September 8th. Like Polly, she had found herself without enough money for a bed, and had gone to the streets to earn it. The coroner found no trace of alcohol in her system, so she had not been drinking away her money that night, even though she was an alcoholic. Of course, what the coroner had found was far more disturbing. Her tongue was protruding from her mouth and she had the look of someone who had been strangled. Of course the gash across her throat made a precise assessment problematic. It had been cut just as deeply as Polly's. The assailant had bent her legs at the knees, and rigor was beginning to set in when the police found her. Deerstalker Hat had slashed open her abdomen and thrown her intestines over both of her shoulders. Blood was discovered everywhere about, from all the wounds inflicted by the 6 to 8 inch knife, wounds and a weapon that were eerily similar to the ones observed on Polly only a week earlier. Once transported to the corner, body on a pushcart, it was discovered that part of Annie's uterus had been cut away, and was nowhere to be found in the gore that remained of her innards.
Now wary, the police released fewer details of this second murder; which left the press to speculate wildly about the identity of the assailant. What information Pam could get from the papers she dismissed, having seen the man at work herself, knowing he was no 'leather apron' or mentally ill cook. She knew, that though he was human, he was much more than simply that; and he knew what she was. She began to miss Eric a great deal.