Fear Of The Dark

The story begins on Friday August 31st 1888, a day that, had either Sarah or I lived till we were over a hundred years old to see it, would become one of the most infamous dates in history. Of course at the time the Pigs running around the streets of London was nothing to us two or to any Londoner for that matter.

Either way it was warm and the streets were buzzing with the news of the discovery of a body in Buck's Row early that morning. However for two young eighteen year old women such as Sarah and I, this news washed over us and fazed us not a jot since our American friend Jonathon Seward was quite happily entertaining us where we were sitting almost an hours walk through London on the banks of the Thames.

Jonathon was a peculiar young man. Sarah and I had met him when we were fourteen and he was fifteen, having just arrived fresh from the western coast of America, a place he named Huntington Beach in California. He was not what one would call a charmer, for he wore a piece of metal around his nostril and looked somewhat like a sailor with the tattoos his skin bore.

Jonathon was an oddball but he was our oddball and we kept each other company. Sarah and I were considered beautiful young women amongst the people of London and if ever we were to climb up the social ladder it would be because of that alone. Otherwise, apart from the fact we weren't exactly rich, we were oddball's ourselves. We often claimed to drunken men in the pubs how much we would rather be reading about vampires and the like instead of swooning over well-to-do men like normal girls did.

Like I said the three of us were considered weird, but to each other we were friends and the closet we had got in our lives. Friends were important to have, something I would especially have advised if I ever could have predicted the events that would creep up on us. As it is, I am not psychic nor can I look in a glass ball and tell the future. I was merely an eighteen year old Londoner with nothing going for her but her looks.

"Johnny if you fall in there, I am not fetching you out," Sarah laughed as he walked up and down the wall separating us from the murky, mysterious depths of the Thames only just on the other side of our grass patch we'd claimed under a tree.

"Never fear Kirsty is here to save me!" He yelled dramatically before loosing his balance and almost toppling in. Had it not been for Sarah and I leaping from our seats and grabbing one of his hands each, he would have been swimming with the fishes by now. If there are even any fish in that water.

"I too, shall not be going in there after you," I informed him as I rested my hands on my waist and looked up at him, thankful that right about then he was blocking the sun from my view. "It is not at all lady like," I added, to which Sarah nodded in a agreement, the pair of us both grinning slyly at him as he sat on the wall and we sat back down on the grass.

"And since when did either of you partake in lady like activities, huh?"

"Jonathon dearest there is a time and place for lady like activities," I began, smiling innocently as I shielded my eyes with one of my hands. "Jumping in the river Thames after you does not qualify under either, however watching you fall in and letting somebody else jump in after you does."

"Besides, if you came all the way here from America by ship, surely you would be able to swim and save yourself?" Sarah then asked.

Jonathon hopped off the wall and moved to sit in the shade of the tree with us. He sat facing Sarah and I, his face deep in thought whilst opening then closing, then opening and closing his mouth again, a response an ever elusive thing to him. We laughed; he pouted. So we laughed some more until Johnny couldn't help but laugh too.

The three of us - two eighteen, one nineteen - should have been looking for eligible young men and a woman to marry and start a family with. Most of the girls Sarah and I had grown up with, though not very rich, had already married and many were already mothers to boot. Yet we liked to wander around London, not so much as batting an eyelid to the opposite sex as we poked fun at life and everything in it. Or sat on the banks of the Thames, like we frequently did to the point of almost everyday, and laughed at Johnny when he almost fell into the river.

Once he was sure he couldn't answer to Sarah's statement he stood up and went to his wall again. I rolled my eyes at Sarah who just shook her head with an amused grin. Johnny stood on the wall then turned to look along the grassy bank, his eyes focusing on something. I turned to look, seeing two black dogs quite a way down the bank from us, sitting side by side and watching us.

However they seemed too big for dogs, but too clean to be any stray I'd ever seen in London. Sarah now looked too and we watched with curiosity as they just sat there, their eyes focused on us till they stood and walked away slowly every now and then glancing back in our direction. "They look a bit big for dogs," she commented; Johnny and I nodded in agreement.

"Maybe some toff has some Raja staying here. They have weird looking animals, maybe they brought them," I shrugged, looking away from them and thinking no more of the matter. It was extremely common for the wealthy upper class to acquire strange animals from foreign shores to bring back to London and have it's people marvel at them.

I climbed to my feet and dusted grass from the skirts of my dress. Then I moved my hand up to my head and swept my dirty blonde hair back into it's messy bun. "We probably should be making our way back to Whitechapel now."

Sarah and Johnny both moved over to me, either clearly agreeing or just not wanting me to walk alone through London - I'm not sure which, and we began our walk up the bank towards the street. As we walked it was buzzing with gossip of this murder.

We'd begun our walk knowing barely anything, except it had happened in Bucks Row sometime early that morning. By the time we were nearing our homes from the gossipers we'd passed we knew it was a prostitute by the name of Mary Ann Nichols - a familiar name by all means, but saying that Whitechapel was a close knit community and everybody knew everybody else's business - and that her body had been brutally slaughtered.

"Maybe it was Frankenstein," Johnny mused. I cast a glance across him from where I was on his left arm to Sarah who was on his right, and we both rolled our eyes.

"Frankenstein is a book," I informed him.

"Who say's it's not real?!" He protested.

"Because it is fiction. It's a book Johnny," Sarah answered.

"Next thing you'll probably say is Dracula!" I declared loudly, laughing at the thought and they laughed too.

"Be quiet small person," Johnny retorted, poking his tongue out at me as we got to the end of our street. "Now, I shall bid you ladies farewell," he then said, putting on a London accent as we let go of him and he bowed to us.

"Just go home Johnny," I laughed before linking arms with Sarah and walking down the cobbled street that led us to our respective homes.