East End

Against the crisp canvas of the starlit sky the St. Giles rookery was nothing more than a stray mark. In the midst of its streets, a squat, ball of a man loitered, uneasily sizing up the slum’s looming buildings. His balding head was unaccustomed to the harsh sting of the winter winds; although he had draped a thin cloth hood over it he missed the warmth of his usual high parted wig and wide-brimmed tricorne hat. As he moved along the street-side, his baggy and tattered rags of clothing almost weren’t enough to conceal his regal, privileged gait. Anyone peering from within could have seen that this man did not belong here.

The man continued to creep along, stopping every few moments to nervously glance back at the carriage that had brought him there. He finally came to a definitive stop and edged around to face an alleyway that curled between two buildings on the other side of the street. He stood, frozen, soaking in the unfamiliar sights and sounds surrounding him. Although he hid in the deepest, darkest time of the night, when only mischief and vagabonds escaped sleep, he still heard the frequent wine of the wooden foundations and cheap, dripping cement decaying beneath the weight of the numerous hovels haphazardly plastered on top of one another. With wide-mouthed poles, bent nails, and stray planks thrusting out in all directions, the St. Giles slum was a warped nest, a swelling mass of twisted, ash-adulterated clay and damp timber. Only East End could cast a shadow on the dark, cloud swirled dome of the sky.

From afar the man scrutinized the broken windows and gaping holes foolishly patched with ripped linen and crooked boards. The wind ceased for a moment and he listened carefully to each drip as it fell into the shallow depths of the muddy, waste-filled moat that stagnated in the streets and sunk beneath the soiled floorboards. He half expected the entire structure to capsize into the earth. Just as he began to think that his senses could not possibly be any more offended, the wind renewed and wafted a stench so acrid and putrid into his nostrils that he lapsed into a fit of gasps and sputters. He continued to cough and wretch until he managed to cover his nose with a thick cloth that he produced from within a pocket. He began to regret his decision to come and would have turned to leave if he hadn’t heard a window open somewhere above his head. He glanced up and saw a young boy standing with his back turned to the window, talking animatedly with another person the man could not see. He managed to sneak to the parallel alleyway before the boy turned to dump the contents of a chamber pot into the streets below.

“Disgusting,” whispered the man to himself as he heard the waste splash against the pavement. Someday he would eradicate this corrupt bee hive, demolish the whole damned thing. He stood there, unaware of the advancing darkness, envisioning East End engulfed in flames. Suddenly, the slum’s perpetual creaks gave way to an utter silence that chilled the man’s breathe, as if the slum’s knew his intentions. The man, considerably terrified, whirled around to face the depths of the alley, expecting to meet faceless shadows. But he saw nothing.

He took one last look at the street. It now seemed almost hospitable compared to the dark tunnels behind him. His eyes lingered for a few brief moments and then he disappeared into the maze of St. Giles’ back alleys. He followed a steep dirt path that snaked between various stories of wooden shacks, stopping occasionally to duck beneath rogue planks and grope his way around piles of rubble. On one such occasion, he found that a pile of rubble was, in fact, a woman curled up beneath a weathered shawl. She shrieked as he trod over her fingers. The man gasped and turned to hurry away, but the woman had instinctively latched herself to the hem of his robes. He tried to wrench his legs from her grip, but she only clung tighter and peered into his face, sputtering abrupt, incoherent slurs of speech. She would begin to whisper something, only to cast her glance at the dirt and forget what she had been saying. As her finger nails dug deeper into the man’s legs her sunken eyes frantically roamed the area, until they landed upon a tattered pile of rags at her side.

She made sure to keep one hand gripped around the man’s robes as she snatched the rags up and thrust them into his arms. He immediately motioned to drop the rags, but the woman stood and forced them back into his arms. Her purple lips trembled and her gaze wandered, as if she was searching a jumbled mix of words in her mind for the right ones to say. Her entire body shook in rhythm with her lips. Her cheekbones stretched her cracked skin as her jaw shuddered. All the while the man frantically tried to free himself from her grip, but she clung to him with the strength of the desperate. As he looked in her eyes he found a hope abandoned, ousted by the crude motivations of sickness and poverty.

He stopped struggling, not out of pity, but out of shock. The woman seized this opportunity to move a portion of the rags aside, and the man’s forefinger brushed the cold, rough surface beneath. He looked down, expecting to find a stale piece of bread or even a stone, but instead found two tiny eyes, struck still beneath a perfectly preserved patch of almost invisible blonde hair. But even after he gazed into the open eyes of the dead infant, he felt nothing but disgust, nothing but a renewed desire to rid the world of this wasteland and its every inhabitant for good. He would suffer no more of these inconveniences.
The woman finally released him from her grip and looked into his eyes with a new expression of expectation. But he did not see her eyes; as soon as she loosened her grip he shoved the dead baby back into her arms, knocking her to the ground, and disappeared around the corner. After all, he could not bring the dead back to life.

Sometime later, after traversing several other back alleyways, all of them in the same state as the last, he came to a dead end. At the peak of a steep, terraced dirt hill he saw a tent; it was made from several large cloths draped over the timber boards that ran between two larger shanties. One cloth had been torn at the entrance of the tent and it flapped undecidedly to and fro, flashing glimmers of firelight onto the dirt terraces. By now the man had grown somewhat accustomed to the bleak alleyways and he strode up the terraced stairway with an undeserved confidence before ducking into the tent.
He crouched just within the entryway and surveyed the inside of the tent. On a stout table crammed next to him he found a pile of rusted tools fashioned from the debris of the slums. The tent’s stagnant air was tinted with a new foul stench, which the man soon found came from a bucket of mixed chicken parts on the floor next to the table. Near the center of the room a quaint fire crackled within a crude clay fireplace. The man squinted to see the vague outline of a shrunken body beneath another pile of rags next to the fire. This was the man he was looking for.
“Wake up” he ordered as he took a seat on a nearby wooden stool.

The man beneath the rags sprung to attention. After a few seconds of struggling, an ancient man emerged from the tangled rags. Spontaneous wrinkles crowded around his smoky eyes and patches of forlorn white hair erupted from his chin and the sides of his head. He stared wildly at the adjacent wall of cloth and turned his ear towards the intruder, who watched from the comfort of the stool at the tent’s entrance.
“What do you come for at such a time?” the old man questioned, still staring at the blank wall of cloth.

“You are Blind Edmund” replied the man at the door, more as a statement than a question.

“Yes” answered the old man, waiting for the other man to say more. He began to wander around the room, his grey, crazy eyes fixed on the cloth ceiling. As he walked, his head and eyes began to gyrate in irregular patterns.

“I come seeking your services.”

“My services?” chuckled Edmund. “If you want your fortune told, just say so.”

The man at the door did not laugh.
“I have compensation” he said, tossing a small brown sack to Edmund’s side. Edmund loosened the sack and poured the coins onto the floor. His head stopped moving just long enough for his ears to flutter at the sound of the coins clanking together and sliding to a stop. A toothless grin spread across his face.

“Come in, come in.” Edmund continued to wave his hand after the man had crept further into the tent. “Where do you hail from?” he casually asked as he limped across the room to open a drawer.

“No matter” replied the man, a hint of impatience in his voice. Edmund stopped for a moment, but then continued to move about the tent.

“Sit by the fire.”

After initially turning his nose up at such a request, the man finally decided to sit on the dirt floor. Edmund waddled back to the fire and tossed a pinch of powder into it, reinvigorating its flames. Now the man smelled a strong mixture of raw chicken and cheap perfume. He scoffed as the scent aerated throughout the tent.
“No worries,” said Edmund, “just to help you relax.” He limped to the other side of the fire and, after prodding it a few times with a crude fire poker to rearrange the coals, sat directly across from the man. At this, the man showed some concern.

“Where are your cards?” asked the man.

“No cards” replied Edmund.

“No cards?” erupted the man in disbelief. He continued to grumble to himself as he stood and motioned to leave the tent.

“Surely a man such as yourself wouldn’t expect cards” said Edmund just before the man exited the tent. The man stopped and turned to retort, but before he could, Edmund raised his hand, effectively silencing the man.

“What then?” asked the man, spit flying from his mouth. “Surely you do not plan to scry?”

“If you doubt me because I am blind, then you are sadly ignorant.”

“You dare call me ignorant?” spat the man before he could catch himself. Edmund raised an eyebrow.

“Sit” offered Edmund, nodding towards the area where the man had sat moments ago. After much hesitation, the man finally sat on the other side of the fire.

“You will stare through the flames into my eyes” explained Edmund. “You must keep your eyes open until the end.” He then placed a wooden cup over each of his ears and began to scratch the bottoms of the cups with his fingernails.

The man observed Edmund from across the fire; he stared at the old man’s blank, white eyes and felt that familiar feeling of disgust. He saw in Blind Edmund everything that was wrong with the slums: incompetence, mutation, frailty. As the man watched, Edmund’s eyelids grew heavy and his head began to lean closer to the fire. The wrinkles around his eyes smoothed over, his cheeks drooped, and his breathing became rhythmic. As the man’s eyes began to water, he began to think that Edmund had fallen asleep. But his fingers continued to busily scratch the bottoms of the cups. Suddenly, Edmund’s eyes shot open, his body erected, and a deep gasp escaped his mouth. He frantically looked across the fire into his visitor’s eyes.

“I know you” whispered Edmund.

“What?”

“I know who you are.”

“You are no blind man!” bellowed the man, starting to his feet.”Tell me, what did you see?” he demanded, advancing towards Edmund.

Edmund glanced around the room. He took quick, shrill breathes and nervously ran his hands up and down his thighs.

“You must leave” he croaked, shrinking away from the man.

“What did you see?” yelled the man, grabbing Edmund by his shirt collar.

“I…I…” Edmund stammered, “Nothing!”

“LIAR!” shouted the man, shaking Edmund. “Tell me!”

Edmund began to whimper and mouth inaudible words. The man reached behind him and took hold of the fire poker that Edmund had left in the fire. Tightening his grip on Edmund’s collar, the man held the red tip of the fire poker within inches of his face. Feeling the intense heat near his cheek, Edmund threw his arms out and knocked the scolding tip of the fire poker against the man’s neck. The man screamed, but was able to catch Edmund by the hood of his rags before he could stumble for the exit. Holding his neck, the man threw blind Edmund against the wall with his other arm.

“Tell me” gasped the man, his face pulsing with anger as he picked up the fire poker and edged it closer to Edmund’s cheek. Edmund turned his face away from the fire poker and renewed his whimpering. The man grabbed Edmund’s hair and wrenched his head back, pressing his body into the wall with his knee.

“Okay!” cried Edmund, blood now dripping from his forehead. “Okay.”

“Out with it” demanded the man.

After taking a few deep breaths, he spoke.
“Mr. Walpole, you are a murderer.”