The "Person" in the Shadows

When Lin Jie's thin back disappeared through the reading room door, the old patrolman Weston seemed to awaken from a long dream.

He looked down at the discarded newspaper on the table, marked with a huge black cross. It felt like a branding iron, so hot that he did not dare touch it.

A "prophecy."

An unknown young man from the East had given him—a Scotland Yard officer who had served Her Majesty for thirty years—a "prophecy" about where Jack the Ripper would strike next.

Absurd! Insane!

Weston's first instinct was to crumple the paper into a ball and throw it into the fireplace.

This was an open provocation against Scotland Yard's dignity. What right did he have? On what grounds? A few incomprehensible scribbles and a bold guess?

He reached out, ready to do exactly that. But his hand stopped in midair.

The young man's terrifyingly calm eyes flashed through his mind, along with the word he had written—"Sulphur."

At Scotland Yard's internal case meetings, Weston had repeatedly pointed out that every crime scene carried a strange sulfurous smell. In return, he received only polite yet distant smiles from his colleagues and impatient dismissals from his superiors.

They blamed it on the chemical factory fumes everywhere in Whitechapel District, or some other insignificant coincidence.

No one was willing to take the clue seriously.

And then there was the theory of "feeding."

That, too, touched upon the deepest suspicion in Weston's heart, one he had been unwilling to admit even to himself.

The killer's methods were too precise, too calm. It did not resemble the release of some twisted desire, but rather a biologist collecting specimens or a butcher processing livestock entrails.

It was a pure "operation," beyond the realm of human emotion.

In their brief encounter, this Eastern man had accurately identified the two strangest, most irrational, and most neglected core elements of the case.

This was more than coincidence.

In Weston's heart, reason and experience waged a fierce battle.

Should he trust the investigative system built over half a lifetime on evidence and logic, or believe in a baseless, mysterious prophecy?

In the end, a feeling stronger than pride—responsibility—overwhelmed everything else.

He could not gamble an innocent woman's life on whether his judgment was right or wrong. Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance, he had to verify it.

Weston took a deep breath, folded the newspaper bearing the cross, and solemnly tucked it into his inner coat pocket.

He hurried out of the reading room. Instead of returning to Scotland Yard headquarters, he headed directly for the area marked with a black cross on the map.

It was a place in Whitechapel District called Mitre Square.

It was a small square enclosed on three sides by buildings. One side was the rear wall of a synagogue, while the other two were warehouses. Only one narrow exit led out to the street.

During the day, merchants used it as a temporary place to pile their goods. At night, it became eerily quiet, a corner occasionally chosen by vagrants and prostitutes to spend the night.

This place... the more Weston looked, the more alarmed he became.

It almost perfectly matched the traits of all the previous crime scenes: semi-enclosed, dimly lit, difficult for sound to travel through, and with only one exit. It was extremely easy to trap prey in a jar.

If he were that terrifying Jack the Ripper, this would absolutely be one of his favored hunting grounds.

Could that young man's prediction truly have been based on some pattern of analysis?

For the entire afternoon, Weston wandered around Mitre Square like a ghost.

He did not draw attention to himself. As an ordinary patrolman, he silently observed every detail, committing the terrain, lighting, possible hiding places, and everyone entering or leaving the area firmly to memory.

Night fell.

London nights had always belonged to thick fog and gas lamps. Mitre Square sank into a deathly stillness woven from sickly yellow light and darkness.

Weston did not report his discovery to his superiors. If he dared request additional officers based on a piece of waste paper with a cross drawn on it, they would take him for a madman.

He could only rely on himself.

He found an excellent hiding place overlooking the entrance to the entire square—behind a second-floor window in an abandoned little building.

He took out a piece of dry bread as hard as stone and ate it with a flask of cold water for dinner. Then he began his long, agonizing vigil.

Time passed second by second.

Cold seeped through the gaps in the window and invaded his no-longer-young body. Yet he did not move. Like a stone statue, he stared fixedly at that narrow entrance.

He did not know why he was doing this.

It was completely against regulations. It could even be called dereliction of duty.

He should have been patrolling his own district, not staging a baseless, Quixotic "ambush" here.

He began to wonder whether that Eastern young man had somehow cast a spell on him, or whether the pressure had driven him into hallucinations.

Just as his confidence was about to waver, a blurry figure appeared at the entrance to the square.

Weston's breathing stopped at once.

It was a woman in a tattered dress, thin and unsteady on her feet. She had clearly drunk too much. Leaning against the wall, she seemed to be looking for somewhere to rest.

She was the kind of typical prey Jack the Ripper favored most.

Weston's heart leaped into his throat.

He gripped the baton at his waist and his old revolver. Adrenaline surged through his body.

One minute, two minutes... ten minutes...

Nothing happened.

The woman seemed to sober up a little. She cursed, then staggered away from the square.

The tension in Weston's nerves suddenly eased.

He leaned against the wall, overwhelmed by exhaustion. So he had been overthinking it after all. How could there possibly be such a miraculous prediction? He was simply insane.

He gave a self-mocking laugh and was about to abandon this foolish vigil and return to the station to write a late patrol report when—

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught an abnormal movement.

In the shadowed corner where the woman had just stood, the darkness there seemed somehow "deeper" than the darkness around it.

That darkness seemed to be alive.

Defying the laws of physics, it slowly and silently wriggled across the wall like a spreading pool of thick ink.

Weston's blood froze.

The worldview he had built over decades as a police officer shattered completely in that instant, then burned to ashes.

He saw it clearly.

That was no shadow.

It was a lanky humanoid shape made of pure darkness and malice, something beyond description!

Its limbs were impossibly long, spider-like, and it clung to the wall in a twisted posture.

It wore no clothing at all. That "black trench coat" and "top hat" were merely disguises imitated by the shadows of its body!

Lin Jie's hint had become a cold and cruel reality at that moment.

Weston's mind went blank. Only the three symbols the young man had drawn echoed over and over in his head.

The victim, the location, and that line representing death, pointed at the prey's throat!

Like a madman, he rushed out of the abandoned building, blowing the silver police whistle on his chest as he ran.

The shrill, urgent whistle, filled with utter terror, tore through the deathly night sky over Whitechapel District. It was Scotland Yard's highest-level alarm, meaning that a patrolman had encountered a deadly threat.

The Jack the Ripper UMA clinging to the wall was startled by the sudden whistle. It slowly raised its head and "looked" in Weston's direction.

Weston saw no facial features. He only felt a pure, emotionless malice pierce his brain like an ice spike.

Then the shadow began to contract and fade. Within a few breaths, it completely merged into its surroundings and vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.

Only a faint sulfurous smell remained in the air.

When other patrolmen arrived at Mitre Square a few minutes later, panting for breath, all they saw was Arthur Weston, pale and distraught, bracing himself against the wall as he dry-heaved.

"Arthur? You saw him? The Ripper?" a young patrolman asked nervously.

Weston raised his head and stared at his colleagues with vacant eyes.

He opened his mouth, but could not say a word. How was he supposed to explain it? Tell them he had seen a monster made of shadows? Tell them the killer was not human at all?

They would only think he was mad.

But he knew it was all real. That young man from the East had not lied. He had not been making a prediction. He had been stating a fact.

Tonight, because of one insignificant decision he had made, a living, breathing life had been saved from that monster's claws.

The realization filled Weston with lingering fear, but it also made him reach a momentous decision.

He had to find that young man again.

At any cost.