Page 20 of Across Space and Time

That thought chilled Hugh despite the warm fire only a few paces away. “How many are there?”

“I do not know,” Jack said with a frown that etched darkness into the sharpness of his forehead and cheeks. “Besides the one we encountered tonight, I have seen one other. Whomever killed that first boy.”

“Christopher?” Hugh asked in surprise.

Jack nodded, taking another large swallow of the hot tea.

“You saw him kill Christopher?”

“No, but I saw him running off when the man with the big mustache approached. I didn’t get a good look at his face, but he had a long, whippy tail. He looked different than the man who attacked the red-haired boy.”

“Toby Kelly,” Hugh supplied, and Jack nodded.

“But I do believe whomever attacked Toby Kelly is also the creature we encountered tonight,” Jack said thoughtfully.

He had so many more questions pertaining to the thing in the alley, but he realized he knew almost nothing about the man sitting across from him that he had just invited into his home. “You knew my name, before I had ever introduced myself to you,” Hugh said. “You said that you knew more about me than I would expect. So, tell me, Spring-Heeled Jack. Who are you, and why have you been following me?” Hugh set down his teacup and looked up at Jack curiously.

Jack laughed in his musical way. “Alas, my powers of concealment were not as stealthy as I had hoped. You are an observant man, Hugh. Or I am terrible at sneaking.”

Hugh suspected it was probably a bit of both. Hopefully he had not been observed jumping up to Hugh’s bedroom window. “When did you first start following me?”

“The night of that Christopher’s murder. I arrived here, and I was drawn to a commotion that turned out to be someone running away from Christopher’s body.”

“You ‘arrived’ here? From where?” Hugh asked.

“Tell me first. Do you believe in magic?” Jack asked, gazing at him with intrigue.

Hugh blinked, then really thought about the question for a moment. “If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said no. But after some of the things I’ve seen recently with these killings and transformations, I am very much reconsidering my position on it.”

Jack smiled, the firelight catching his pointed teeth. “That is a fair assessment. If you believe in magic and the supernatural, it will make what I’m about to tell you make a lot more sense.”

Hugh nodded, waving his hand for Jack to continue as he picked up his tea again. Jack was thoughtful for a moment. “I will try to explain as best I can. Beyond this world lies hundreds of other worlds. They all exist at different times and in different places. You can’t see them unless you have very special magic. I have the ability to travel through these different times and places. I am not from this world and this time originally.”

The universe beyond London suddenly had gotten much bigger in the last few seconds, and Hugh swallowed a bit of tea down the wrong tube, coughing and clearing his throat. “You are magical?” he asked when he was able to speak again.

Jack’s smile was a little self-indulgent. “I am.”

“So where are you originally from?” Hugh asked, as if Jack would say that he was from some place he knew like Ireland or one of the Americas, and not some place outside of the planet they currently resided on.

“That is also a little difficult to explain,” Jack said. “This body is a form I have been given to emulate yours. But my natural form would not be recognizable as human. It would appear to you as… I think you might call it a will-o-the-whisp. A sort of figure of light, similar to the flame you saw earlier.”

“What do you mean, to emulate my form?” Hugh asked.

Jack took another sip of his tea. “I am not human, obviously. I suppose the closest equivalent that you might understand is to consider me a corporeal soul.”

“You mean, a ghost?” Hugh said with a bit of a frown.

Jack laughed. “Ah, yes, we do live in such times. Not a ghost, though many may believe so based on my appearance. Allow me to try to explain. In my original form, I do not have needs and desires the way you do. I simply exist, with knowledge of the many worlds at my disposal, as do the rest of my kind. Our… essence, I suppose, is a good way to put it. Our essence is drawn to specific events in various places and times. When that place and time beckons each of us, we travel to it.”

This was much more existential than Hugh had ever considered himself to be, and he wondered if this was like trying to understand the existence of God before there was anything else created. “What beckons you?”

Jack smiled a little, setting down his teacup and saucer with a soft clink. “Our soulmate.”

Hugh blinked. “You used that word before. But I still don’t understand what it means.”

“The reason for our existence. When the time comes, we are drawn to that individual, wherever they may be, and it is our sacred duty to protect our soulmate and help them with the problem assigned to them.”

“Assigned to them?” Hugh said, raising a brow.

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