The Whitechapel Project

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Previously on Whitechapel

Mister Rich, Six’s mysterious benefactor, was shot and fell unconscious in a gunfight, before Six himself was stunned with a taser shotgun shell. Three days later, Six awoke in a hotel room under the name “M. John Druitt,” which turned out to be the name of one of the suspects for the notorious Jack the Ripper back in 1888. As Six struggled to cope with the revelation that he’s somehow connected to the serial killer, a strange woman mutely informs him that he’s once again being looked for, and beckons for him to follow her. He goes with her to her rental car, when he hears the engine on a black van start in the hotel parking lot.

Episode Twelve – Lacuna

She puts a key in the ignition and starts the car. I ask her what’s going on, but she revs the engine and puts a finger to her lips again before putting the car in reverse and slowly backing up. Fuck it – I settle back into the passenger’s seat, letting the pain meds settle in me like a fuzzy blanket. Mysterious car rides with mysterious people are almost becoming old hat for me.

She carefully guides the car out of the icy parking lot and onto the main road. I glance at the rearview mirror, watching the black van pull in behind us. I look over to the woman and point it out. She catches the motion and looks up at the mirror herself. She shrugs, and turns left out of the parking lot. I go back to watching the van, and it turns right, away from us. As it turns I catch a glimpse of an advertisement for a carpet company on the side. False alarm. I guess after you get hospitalized for a few days by a couple of guys in a black van, you start seeing enemies in every black van.

I glance over at the woman to see if she noticed my unease, but she’s concentrating on the road. I realize that I don’t even know her name, and I don’t have any way to ask her. I remember the notepad and pencil that I took from the hotel, but they’re in my bag, which I put in the trunk. I open up the glove compartment and rummage around, but all that’s inside is the owner’s manual for the car and a copy of the form from the rental agency. I close it back up and consider looking in the backseat for a pen or something, when I notice that we’ve already pulled in somewhere – an automatic car wash.

A car wash? In winter? I point to the car wash and look at her, trying to ask what’s going on. She just gives me a cute little smile and pulls up to it. The car wash is made up of a huge tunnel covered by a series of dangling plastic strips, with a small screen and touchpad mounted on a thick metal pole off to the side. The driver’s side window purrs down, and she pulls out a credit card, swiping it through a slot on the side of the touchpad. She punches a few keys, and the screen starts flashing the words PULL FORWARD. I hear loud machinery start up inside as the hood of the car parts the plastic strips.

A set of rotating brushes hovers over us, ready to descend on the car like a bristly Sword of Damocles. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel flashing the same instruction as the keypad – PULL FORWARD. As soon as the wheels make it over a bump in the floor, the light changes to read STOP. Something pulls on the wheels, and the car lurches forward to be slowly dragged through the tunnel. The brushes descend, and I can hear the sound of heavy air whipping over the car.

She puts the car in park and turns to me. “A car wash is a great place to have a private conversation, don’t you think?”

I’m surprised when she finally speaks, but the drugs take the edge off my confusion, and I decide that it just doesn’t matter. “Who are you?” I ask.

A look of sadness flickers over her face for a second, but she quickly replaces it with a small smile. “I’m Liz. We used to be… quite close at one point, Jack.”

Jack. The name takes me back to the revelation of my nature, to the images I’m trying to keep buried. I imagine the thick bristles of the car wash wearing the skin off of her face, and shudder. “Don’t call me that,” I say.

“Why not? I think it’s a good name for you,” she purrs.

Power and rage well up inside of me, ready to burst out in a spray of meat and bone. I look into her eyes and speak, very calmly. “I said, don’t call me that.”

She tries to hold my gaze, but soon enough she glances away. I could see that, for a brief moment, she was utterly terrified by what she saw in my eyes. The car feels cramped and stifling, and I try to change the subject. “How close were we? Before, I mean.”

She covers up her fear with the sex kitten act again. “Close enough that you wouldn’t mind taking off your clothes for me if I asked you to.”

“And is that something you’re likely to ask me to do?”

“Yes, but not for the reasons you’re hoping for. I have it on good authority that you have a tracking device in your clothing somewhere. The coat should have dampened the signal a bit, but we need to get it off of you as soon as possible, before Lacuna finds you.”

“Lacuna?”

Liz smirks again. “You can ask me questions as long as you’re changing. There’s a package under your seat with new clothes. You need to be completely changed by the time we get out of here.” She glances to the end of the tunnel. “Which is probably about three minutes.”

The insanity of the situation is overwhelming. I’m sitting in a rental car with a woman I’ve never met before, one who claims I’ve slept with her, and she’s telling me that I need to take my clothes off in an automatic car wash in the middle of winter because some unknown entity may have put a tracking device on me. I try to remember the last time anything was sane in my life, but Liz just glances at her watch and tells me that I have two and a half minutes left.

I struggle with my clothes in the confined space while struggling to keep my thoughts in order. “What’s Lacuna?”

“The organization that thinks they own you. They fund a research group called the Whitechapel Project that was created to study your unique condition.”

“By ‘condition,’ you mean the fact that I’m a serial killer that’s over a hundred years old.”

“More or less,” she says.

I get stripped down to my underwear, and start to reach for the package under the seat, but she motions to my crotch. “Not yet. Take everything off.”

Shit. I try not to look at her as I slide the underwear off. The package under the seat is covered in a large sheet of brown paper that’s been taped together. Inside is an entire outfit of carefully folded clothes that reminds me a little of the stack I found in my hotel room. I dig out the underwear and slip them on, trying to keep my growing erection hidden from Liz. She seems amused by my attempts as she openly watches me work.

I look up. The car wash was almost over. I scramble to finish putting everything on. “So how did they get a tracking device into my clothing?”

She looks back up at me and shrugs. “Not sure. Could be something that Marsh slipped in at some point.”

“Marsh?” I manage to get the shirt over my head just as the car is leaving the tunnel. She takes the pile of hastily discarded clothes and rolls down her window. The clothes land with a muted thump in a metal garbage can just outside the car wash.

“Richard Marsh,” she says as she makes her way out of the car wash. “Also known as Mister Rich. He works for Lacuna.”

Where are we heading now?

Back to the hotel

To a house here in town

To a restaurant

Or to a parking garage?

The choice is yours.

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