Page 135 of If Looks Could Kill
Pearl—Your Murders and Your Sins(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
By the light of her burning pile of papers, Pearl watches Twomblety lie on the ground, convulsing. He gestures at nothing and bleats in fear. A man possessed by the ghosts of the past.
She clutches her side and grinds her fist into the place where blood still oozes forth. Miss Stella’s voice echoes in Pearl’s mind.He can be killed in more ordinary ways.
She reaches for his knife and grasps it tight.
As she looks into his soul with her Medusa eyes, she sees a cowering, cringing child, mewling pitifully for his mother.
No. She will not pity him.
He killed. He maimed. He mutilated a Medusa, even. Now he has killed her. Left to revive, he’ll kill again. If ever a man deserved to die, it is this man.
Jack the Ripper—Francis Twomblety—twitches and cries out in terror.
No, no, no. No mercy. Not now. Not for him.
Such a pathetic, writhing maggot of a life. But it is still a life.
A vampire life. A parasite life. A life that will keep on consuming other lives.
It’s time to end it. God spared her these few minutes to allow her to finish this task.
Even so, something stays her hand.
Pearl closes her eyes, and in the darkness, with her snakes still hissing and her blood still oozing from her side, she offers one slim word of prayer.
Help.
As if God would hear the prayer of a demon girl.
Against all thought, the face that comes to mind is Tabitha’s.
Oh, Tabitha. Salvation Army bungler. Gazing up at the boardinghouse. Trying in vain to rescue a Pearl who didn’t want to be rescued.
And yet… Tabitha. Bewildered. Grieving. Grieving a Pearl long gone, a Pearl who never was, who was only ever an illusion she tried to project. A beautiful dream. A Pearl who was good, and whole, and true.
If it was only a dream, it had been Pearl’s favorite dream.
Near the stairs, the fire spreads to a pair of wooden crates. They hiss like snakes as they burn.
To kill this man, as he deserves, as justice demands, to plunge a cold knife into his beating heart, is to shatter that dream forever. Let Pearl herself be broken, disillusioned, dashed against the rocks; it hardly matters. But the image of shattered love and broken faith in Tabitha’s eyes, at how she must recoil from Pearl the Killer, is more than Pearl can bear.
Even more than the pain of coming this close only to fail.
Tears drip down her cheeks. A pair of snakes mournfully rubs them away.
All right, then. So be it. For Tabitha’s sake.
God will judge whether she chose rightly. Perhaps she’ll soon find out.
With her last strength, she leans forward and seizes the man by both sides of his collar and drags his head up off the cellar floor.
He blinks in horror. His eyes start to roll back in his head, but she shakes him awake.
“Every woman you touch will rise up and hunt you.” Her voice ripples. “A swelling army of them will stalk your waking hours and deny you sleep. If you do sleep, in your dreams, they will claw at you for vengeance for your murders and your sins.”
He holds up a trembling hand to block her face. She shakes him once more.
