Read Online Haunted Legends by Ellen Datlow, Nick Mamatas - Free Book Online Page A

did he get up there?” says Basil.
    “Don’t know, but when I looked back he’d gone.”
    “That’s the Spring Heel,” says Lass. “Everybody’s talking about him. You’ve seen Spring Heel Jack.”
    “Doesn’t that mean you’re going to die or something?” says The Runt. “Doesn’t he go round slitting prostitutes’ throats?”
    Basil kicks The Runt’s shin. “It means too much bloody gin in the tea, old boy. Besides, that’s the Ripper you’re thinking of.”
    “Well, they’re all the same, aren’t they?”
    Lass grips Basil tighter. “You should look for a beau like mine to look after you,” she says. “Or find another patch to work, somewhere away from the park.”
    Somewhere away from the park
. Ruth bows her head. She stares downward at the carpet and the top of The Runt’s head, both balding and tattered. What is there for her away from the park? She has nothing but the tuft of intrigue between her legs. What can she do but dodge the pimps and the sadists?
    She glances at Basil—a penniless tramp who believes himself aristocracy—and at Lass—simple and trusting but utterly devoid of self-esteem, who’d quite literally die were she cast adrift from the lifeboat that is Basil’s arm. And The Runt, well, hunched and dwarfed and painfully ugly, what hope is there for him? What hope for any of them?
    “I have to work the park,” says Ruth. “It’s all I know.”
    •  •  •
    That night business is slow. The path lamps are out, and there’s a damp curtain over the park, a blanket that’s more than the early September mists alone. The night is cool, and men aren’t so keen to drop their pants on cool nights. She’ll need to find somewhere inside soon, and that usually means paying a pimp. Pimps mean hidden bruises. Pimps mean the drug culture that’s always scared Ruth. Better to remember what she did the night before, even if it was to fuck balding old men who know they’ll never pull skirt any other way again. And better to have full use of the legs when one of the mad bastards holds a knife on her.
    Ruth walks slowly along the park paths. With the mist and the smothering silence, she thinks she could be back in Victorian days. Simpler times when even whores were treated as people. The gentlemen would tip their hat and thank you, Basil had told her, and throw a coin or two’s gratuity as they clambered aboard their hansom cabs. A world away, thinks Ruth. Now they just wipe their dicks on her skirt and run.
    Ruth pauses, convinced she hears footsteps behind. It’s not unusual for a punter to follow her for a while; to build up courage if it’s a first time, or to convince himself she’s not working with thugs, or the police, or both.
    “Looking for business?” Ruth stares into the gloom.
    There is someone there, lurking, ill-defined in the dusk. He’s wheezing, but that’s not unusual. They may be old men, lung-rattling ancients after afinal fling at death’s door. They may be young boys, panting as they ejaculate in their pants and run off with a story for their mates. It takes all sorts and Ruth’s seen them all.
    “Twenty quid for full; ten for hand; I don’t do oral and I don’t kiss. Anything else, well, it depends.”
    He looms from the darkness. He’s little more than a blur as he passes. Ruth staggers as she’s knocked backwards. The grass is muddy and she slips. The air smells sulphurous and rotten. Ruth’s dress clings cold and wet to her thighs.
    “Leave me alone,” she yells.
    The man returns, leaping gazellelike in front of her. As he jumps he turns his head toward her. His skin glows putrid green. His teeth are yellowed in an angular jaw. His eyes are bulging in his head. The sulphurous stench is a wind behind him. He laughs, cruel and guttural.
    “Go away. I have a pimp. He’ll cut you.”
    Thirty feet? Forty? Even in the pitch darkness Ruth sees him leaping lit from within like a will o’ the wisp for her. He turns and heads directly for