Free A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper by kindels

riddled with uncontrollable psychoses, and seriously in need of the help which he so obviously would never receive in the world in which he lived. There was another significant difference. Whereas the previous pages had been written in what must have been a fairly standard black ink, the page before me was written in red, the colour of the blood which so clouded his life and his thinking!
    7 th September 1888
    They think they're safe, they all think they're safe, but oh no, I'll show them. They laugh and posture in their effete and lurid decadence. Yes, they're decadent; decadent and immoral, damned whores! They offer their putrid selves for a shilling a time, bending over in dark alleys, pigs in a trough. They spread themselves and their diseases for the price of a doss for the night, filthy, rancid, damnable whores! The chancre of the streets, a festering sore, the defilement of all things woman. The voices are calling, louder and louder, they're with me every minute, and we know what we must do. They make my head hurt, but the laudanum is my friend, and takes the pain away. Need more, shall have more, must hone my blades, sharpen my thoughts, let the voices speak clearly, together we'll make them listen, all of them. Blood, blood, and more blood, only blood will rid the streets of the pestilence.
    I'll slash you and rip you,
    and you'll die where you lie.
    I've sharpened my blades,
    so you'll die 'fore you cry.
    Look out little whores, I know where you are, and I'm coming, oh yes, I'm coming.
    This entry, dated the 7 th September was particularly chilling, no less for the use of perverse and terrifying little verse. It was like a clarion call, a battle cry, announcing, to himself and his journal at least, that the Ripper was about to stalk the streets once again.
    A glance at my reference notes confirmed the fact that on the night of the 7 th /8 th September 1888, the Ripper struck again. I couldn't escape the feeling that I was actually there, I was so wrapped up in the words of the journal. I was aware of the strangest feeling, as though I myself was being touched by the terror that stalked the streets of Whitechapel. I wished I could cry out, warn someone, put a stop to all this, but of course, such thoughts were stupid and illogical, I was removed from the scene by an insurmountable chasm, over a century of time, and yet, I could almost taste the chill of that night, feel the dampness of the early morning dew forming on the cobbles of Hanbury Street. As I placed the pages of the journal down on the desk in front of me, I shook with an involuntary shiver, for I knew, with the grim and unchangeable certainty of history, that time was rapidly running out for Annie Chapman!

Chapter Ten
    Leather Apron

    The evil that was Jack the Ripper brought fresh terror to the streets of London with the murder of Annie Chapman., the brutality and savagery of her murder far exceeding that of before. Her body was discovered by an elderly man, John Davis, shortly before 6 a.m. on the 8 th of September in the backyard of number 29 Hanbury Street. Her dress had been pulled up over her knees, and her intestines were clearly visible, draped across her left shoulder. He summoned James Green and James Kent, two acquaintances from nearby, and sent them for the police.
    The police surgeon, Dr. George Bagster Phillips, arrived at 6.30 a.m. and on inspection he found evidence of the most serious mutilations so far in the series of killings which were now beginning to appear as the work of one crazed individual.
    Chapman's throat had been cut, again the wound so deep as to almost sever the head from the body, the abdomen had been sliced cleanly open, and, most horrifically, certain internal organs normally present within the abdomen were missing. The killer had removed them! Her face was swollen and her tongue slightly protruding. Could the killer have suffocated her prior to inflicting the fatal wound to the poor victim's neck?
    A witness had placed