Doomsday Wonderland

The pitter-patter of rain continued outside. This night seemed neverending.

The candle lights wavered against the rainy backdrop. There was a grave silence in the apartment.

Lin Sanjiu sat on the floor. Her fingers trembled slightly. Her heart palpitated as she stared at the woman in front of her. The low coffee table had been knocked over by Lin Sanjiu after she was startled. After she called out to the woman a few times without a response, she finally dragged the sofa aside revealing the pale-faced woman.

Annie Chapman’s face was still covered with a thick layer of make-up. Her crimson red lips were slightly parted. Her eyes bulged from her eye sockets as if they were about to pop out.

She didn’t look any different from before except for the deep purple bruises around her neck. As her bruises had already begun to swell, Lin Sanjiu had to scrutinize them to see the two handprints around the woman’s neck. The corner of Anne’s skirt was still wet due to the rain and she was missing a shoe. The toenails on her wrinkled barefoot were covered in mud.

Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help drawing a quick breath before she averted her gaze. When she looked at Anne again, she saw the woman’s statuesque face, frozen by death, staring blankly back at her.

“How did Annie die? Why is her corpse right here at Dalton’s house?”

Lin Sanjiu stared at the female corpse on the floor. She was befuddled. Just when she was at a loss for what to do, she heard the door unlock. Someone entered the apartment.

“So, you’re back,” the young man said harshly. As he spoke, he approached Lin Sanjiu until he suddenly noticed the female corpse on the floor. His expression instantly changed. He staggered back and knocked over the coatstand by the door. Voice quivering, the young man pointed at the corpse and asked, “What… what’s that?”

“I didn’t kill her!” Lin Sanjiu retorted hurriedly, “I just came back and found her under the sofa.”

“Under the s-sofa?”

The young man froze. At that moment, a bewildered expression crept across his face. It was almost as if three words he repeated were a huge mystery to him.

“Yes,” Lin Sanjiu stared hard at the young man. “Only the four of us have been in this place—”

“I didn’t do it!” the young man yelled suddenly. It startled Lin Sanjiu. The anger he showed while he was at the front door gradually returned. His veins on his forehead bulged, “Why would I waste my time to do this! I… I…”

The explanation of his extremely odd behavior soon revealed itself. The young man kicked the coatstand on the floor. Along with a thud from his kick, he grumbled furiously, “I can’t believe I missed Jack the Ripper!”

Lin Sanjiu immediately read the situation.

The dead body on the main street was not far from the alley which they entered when they chased Annie. If he didn’t chase Annie, he would also have seen Jack the Ripper, like Lin Sanjiu. For the young man, probably nothing else mattered more than that. Now that four people had already died, he didn’t have much time left.

The young man cursed quietly under his breath while he glanced occasionally at Annie. It took quite a while before he could calm himself down. Then, he began muttering something under his breath.

“There are a few horse carriages next to the corpse,” Lin Sanjiu had no idea if he was talking to himself or if he was talking to her, “Yes, yes, yes… that’s right, this is it. Before coming in, I kept thinking that Jack the Ripper is a coachman. The body we found on the road must have died a long time ago; the woman wasn’t killed tonight. This is the same as what I have thought. After he killed his target, he kept the corpse in his coach so that he could move the body without anybody noticing. Besides, coachmen are usually bigger, and they are pretty strong…”

Without giving Lin Sanjiu a chance to talk, he grabbed the raincoat on the floor and turned out of the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” yelled Lin Sanjiu as she followed after the young man.

But the young man paid no heed to her call. He kept striding forward. Just when Lin Sanjiu was going to go after the young man, the potato brothers returned. They pushed the gate opened and hurried inside.

The two duos met each other midway, and they stopped. The rain was getting heavier. The raindrops were so big that they stung their eyes. Wiping his face with his hand, the younger brother stared blankly at the duo and asked, “What are you two doing out here?”

“Nothing,” the young man replied solemnly. He walked around them towards the gate.

“Are you going after the murderer?” The elder brother asked.

“Yeah,”

“It’s too late,” the younger brother added, “Jack the Ripper has made his move again. Another prostitute, but somebody heard the woman’s cry for help. He dropped the woman and ran away.”

Lin Sanjiu was momentarily stunned, then the scale dropped in her eyes. Since Jack the Ripper failed to kill her, it was natural for him to search for his next target. She walked closer to the young man and realized that the young man was blue around the gills. It was apparent that he couldn’t believe that he missed Jack the Ripper again.

“The woman is dead,” the younger brother continued after stealing a glance at the young man, “The murderer stabbed her before running away. Maybe he did not want anybody who has seen his face to live to tell the story.”

In other words, five people had died!

The moment the thought surfaced in her mind, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help sighing. She had long been confused by the game, and she wanted nothing more than to leave this simulation as soon as possible. However, she seemed like the only one amongst the group who was relieved. The elder brother cursed aloud out of frustration, while the young man’s expression was as gloomy as the cloudy sky above the city.

“Let’s go in and wait until the game has ended,” the younger brother sighed. He walked towards the house, sounding a little unconvinced, “But I have to say that the murderer is fast.”

“Annie’s corpse is in the room,”

“The ones who killed Annie and hid her corpse in the room is you two, right?”

Everything was blurred in the rain. The younger brother stood silently in front of Lin Sanjiu. The rain distorted her vision, so she couldn’t see his expression well. The young man was shocked by her words, he turned around and stared at them.

“What are you talking about?” The elder brother asked brusquely.

“If you didn’t know Annie was dead, then why would you want us to wait in the room until the game ends?” Lin Sanjiu asked. She didn’t know if she was being oversensitive or what, but four of them were the only ones who could hide Annie’s body in the room. She and the young man had been together all this time, so the culprit had to be the potato brothers, “For you guys, the death toll should only be four!”

The potato brothers fell silent, and only the continuous patter of raindrops hitting the filthy garden could be heard. After a short while, the younger brother began talking, “Yeah, four people, so the game is ending soon, isn’t it? What’s wrong with me asking you all to wait in the room until the game ends?”

Stunned, just when Lin Sanjiu thought that his words made sense, she had a vague inkling that something was amiss. Her brows knitted together, Lin Sanjiu tried to reorganize the information in her head. At that moment, the door opened and a round-headed man popped his head in greeting the two brothers jovially, “Misters! Why are you standing in the rain? Why don’t you come to my house?”

He was, obviously, pimping out his wife.

Lin Sanjiu gave him a sidelong glance. It was at that exact moment that she realized what was wrong.

After she saw the corpse on the street, she met the potato brothers. She took another half an hour to search for the young man and return. When she was back, she met the balding coachman. When the latter told her that the Daltons had just left and asked if she saw the Daltons leaving, she simply assumed that the potato brothers left their dingy rented apartment half an hour ago. The term ‘just left’ didn’t seem out of context in that case.

However, she nearly forgot something. In this simulation, the night only lasted for a total of four hours.

A person who walked for half an hour in a four-hour night would probably mean 1.5 hours in real life. Would anyone use ‘just left’ to describe people who had been gone for more than 1.5 hours?

“He heard you when you were hiding the body.” Even though it was only her conjecture, Lin Sanjiu pointed out quietly to the brothers, not giving them any chance to refute her statement.

Lin Sanjiu had every intention to bait more information from the brothers but did not expect their reaction. The brother suddenly took a step back and sighed, “Yes. We hid the prostitute’s body under the sofa.”

Lin Sanjiu was shocked but before she could respond, they quickly added, “But, we didn’t kill her!”

“If you didn’t kill her, why did you spend the effort to hide her in the apartment? Do you know the killer?”

The two brothers suddenly fell silent.

“We don’t know him,” they muttered before they kept quiet.

The balding coachman stood at his door. He couldn’t really hear their conversation, but he saw ‘Carlo’ stood in front of the brothers, preventing them from entering the house. He became restless. Snatching a few old newspapers from his house, he braved the rain with the newspapers over his head and tugged at the younger brother’s sleeve with merriment, “Please come into my house. We can nibble on some snacks that I have bought…”

Greatly annoyed, Lin Sanjiu pushed the fervent pimp aside and stared at the potato brothers. The door was left ajar when balding coachman came out, giving way to the light from the lightbulb to escape into the garden. As a coachman, he had the luxury to install such an advanced accessory in his house. He must have had those installed so that his customers could see better when they were ‘enjoying’ his wife.

The potato brothers looked at each other before gazing at Lin Sanjiu in unison. Perhaps they were tired of Lin Sanjiu’s tenacity, they nodded at each other. Then, they smiled at the balding coachman, “Alright, let’s head to your house!”

The balding coachman was transported with joy. He turned around and snapped at Lin Sanjiu, attempting to chase her away, “Shoo, take your business elsewhere!”

The potato brothers seized the chance and bolted into the balding coachman’s unit, welcomed with open arms by his plump and fair-skinned wife.

Since he had gotten his job done, the balding coachman threw the newspapers on the ground and went back to his unit. He closed the door, shutting Lin Sanjiu out.

Lin Sanjiu and the young man couldn’t help walk closer to the balding coachman’s unit. They stood beside the door, but neither of them spoke.

“Perhaps they aren’t the murderers,” the young man’s voice came in a low tone, “… Otherwise, they could’ve just confessed to the murder when they admitted that it was they who hid the body.”

Lin Sanjiu did not reply, as something beneath her feet had caught her attention. The young man continued to mumble something, but she couldn’t hear it.

She stared at the newspaper, which was written in archaic English grammar. The headline reads, “A body was found near Whitechapel.” Below the headline, there was this line written in small font, “A fifty-year-old couturier was murdered.”