The Devil's Workshop

Jack smacked his lips and turned the skull this way and that in his hands. “You’re not being a good guest right now, Walter Day. I expect livelier conversation from you. Look at this skull, so similar to yours. But then imagine some mushy pink and brown bits on top of the bone and, voilà! A person is formed. When you kiss your wife, you’re pressing against the bone, the bone is the structure, but it’s the mushy bits you really like. Yes, those are the best part. People are made up entirely of the saggy flesh they carry around on their poor tired bones. How is that? Why should that be? Why is the hard part, the strong part, of a person not the best part? It’s the soft gentle parts that make you different from your friends and neighbors. Isn’t that awfully interesting? I think about this sort of thing a great deal.”

“Is that why you cut people?”

“Well, there are so many reasons to cut people, don’t you think? Really, there are too few reasons not to, when you think about it. Everyone ought to be running about cutting everyone else.”

“There’s decency. That’s a reason not to hurt people. Do you have any of that in you? Do you have any common human decency?”

“I don’t know. Let’s cut me open and take a look round for it.” Jack laughed again. “Is decency something you learned from your father, Walter Day? Your father, the valet?”

“Yes.”

“He taught you a great deal, didn’t he? Taught you subservience and putting others before yourself. He taught you to be unhappy and unfulfilled, didn’t he? What a wonderful man he must be. And what of your mother?”

Day said nothing.

“Oh, your mother’s a touchy subject. I quite understand. Did you know her?”

“No.”

“Why not? Did you kill her, Walter Day?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I see. May I take an educated guess? You transformed your mother even as she was creating you, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“I feel very close to you right now.”

“And what about you? What did your father teach you? And what about your mother? Did your mother teach you to murder women?”

Day heard Jack sniff. The atmosphere changed, like a breeze blowing in from another direction, and the tiny underground cell seemed to grow colder. Day felt fabric rustling against his right leg, the leg he could still feel. There was the sound, once more, of rending cloth, and then the feel of air against his skin.

There was another sensation that caused chills to move up his body.

“You don’t mention my mother,” Jack said. His voice was low and very quiet. So quiet that Day could barely hear him over the sound of blood pounding in his ears.

“You cut my other leg.”

“I’m sorry. I really am, but you made me do it.”

The realization that he’d had hope almost broke Day. He felt his throat close up and his eyes sting and he couldn’t breathe. He’d been holding on to some belief that he might make it out of the catacombs alive, and now that belief left him in a rush and he knew the hopelessness of Jack’s victims.

“This is what they felt at the end, isn’t it?”

“Who? Who are you talking about, Walter Day?”

“Those women, those five women that you murdered.”

“Only five? Funny how little you know, Mr Policeman.”

“How many, then?”

“Oh, so very many. I’m weary. But I slept in a bed today. Did I tell you that?”

“No.”

Day felt moisture trickling down his right leg and knew that he would soon lose the feeling there. Even if he managed to free himself from the shackles, he would be unable to walk back to the street above them.

“I slept, Walter Day, as men sleep. In a real bed. And I had the most interesting dream. Would you like to hear it?”

Day didn’t answer. Without hope of escape, there was no reason to talk to Jack or listen to his ravings.

“In my dream, I transformed five people. I don’t know whether they were men or women. I honestly don’t remember that part of the dream. But they died during the transformation, as they so often do. And then I brought them back. I brought them all back from the place I’d sent them. I forgot to say, three of them were bad people and two of them were good people. The good people thought that they were going to visit a magic kingdom in the afterlife. They thought they deserved such a thing because of the entirely unimportant little decisions they’d made on this sphere. But all five people came back terrified. What they had experienced on the other side was too much for them. And do you know, the bad people became good. They thought that if they mended their ways, the next time they died they would perhaps have a better experience. But the good people gave up all hope and became indifferent. They did bad things after that. Do you see? They all experienced the same thing, but their individual perception of who they were changed everything. Their perception of what they deserved changed how they lived their lives. Those two good people learned that there was no justice or consequence.”

Day raised his head and looked at the shadow next to him.