Free Tales of Jack the Ripper by Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Walter Greatshell, Laird Barron, E. Catherine Tobler, Ed Kurtz, Mercedes M. Yardley, Stanley C. Sargent, Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Page A

felt something touch his foot from below. He kicked out savagely, dog paddling wildly all the while. Then the touch was gone and the sloshing water went immediately calm.
    Richards swam toward the broken stairway, tried to ignore the blond head that lurched by, now manned by a four-rat crew. He got hold of the loose, dangling stair rail and began to pull himself up. The old board screeched on its loosening nail, but held until Richards gained a hand on the door ledge, then it gave way with a groan and went to join the rest of the rotting lumber, the heads, the bodies, the faded stigmata of the God of the Razor.
    Pulling himself up, Richards crawled into the room on his hands and knees, rolled over on his back… and something flashed between his legs… It was the razor. It was stuck to the bottom of his shoe… That had been the touch he had felt from below; the young guy still trying to cut him, or perhaps accidentally striking him during his desperate thrashings to regain the surface.
    Sitting up, Richards took hold of the ivory handle and freed the blade. He got to his feet and stumbled toward the door. His ankle and foot hurt like hell where the step had given way beneath him, hurt him so badly he could hardly walk.
    Then he felt the sticky, warm wetness oozing out of his foot to join the cold water in his shoe, and he knew that he had been cut by the razor.
    But then he wasn’t thinking anymore. He wasn’t hurting anymore. The moon rolled out from behind a cloud like a colorless eye and he just stood there looking at his shadow on the lawn. The shadow of an impossibly large man wearing a top hat and balls on his feet, holding a monstrous razor in his hand.
     
     
     
     

The Butcher, The Baker,
The Candlestick-Maker
    Ennis Drake
     
     
    “There floats a phantom on the slum’s foul air,
    Shaping, to eyes which have the gift of seeing,
    Into the Spectre of that loathly air.
    Face it—for vain is fleeing!
    Red-handed, ruthless, furtive, unerect,
    ’Tis murderous Crime—the Nemesis of Neglect!”
    —John Tenniel, The Nemesis of Neglect
     
     
    Hey…
    Hey, Boss…
     
    I could be anyone. Anyone at all. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. I could be you…

    …you need to rip them. The whores. The sluts. The slags strutting round Whitechapel thicker than the garbage crusted round the mouths of the streets. Strutting round thicker than the Arabs and the Asians—who at least have the social conscience to cover their women.
    You know what I mean.
    You can’t not see them. And once you see them, you can’t look away. You can’t look away and you can’t forgive them.
    You see them all day long. Whores in their skinny jeans and fuck-me boots. With their clever hair. With their face paint. Plunge-cut tanks showing the soft, seeping fat of their tits. Everything about them begs LOOK AT ME!
    Everything about them begs… rip me.
    You want to oblige the filthy little pigs. It’s a need growing in your guts, in your mind; a misplaced fetus with a mouth full of teeth. And you know, as the anniversary of Sickert’s first “event” approaches…
    …you will oblige them.
    You have (them) one allllllllll picked out. Ha. Ha. And you’re going to give it to her. You want to keep the ritual—29 thrusts—but you don’t know if you’ll be able to. Your chest’s a kettle and your blood is whistling. The wad of flesh God cursed you with (cursed him, Sickert, with too) is hot in your pants. A straining, pulsing lump that sickens you.
    But the blade…
    (draw it from its sheath; the scrape of steel on leather)
    …the blade is perfect.
    Harder than hard.
    Eight inches.
    Beveled.
    (the fine, fine rasp of flesh as your finger moves along the razored edge; Papa always said a knife wasn’t sharp till you could run your finger along it and bring it away wet and sticky as fresh pussy)
    You pull the greasy satin panel back from the window. Dusk. Street still teeming. You look down on them.
    The blade, ever-hard, in