From: drsivana99@yahoo.com   
      
        
      
         
         
         
     The Ripper Returns   
   by Chuck Miller   
   this work is not for profit   
   all copyrighted characters are the property of the holders of said copyrights,   
   duh!   
         
     (NOTE: The opening sequence of this story is of course the final ten minutes   
   of “The Ripper,” the first broadcast episode of the ABC series “Kolchak: The   
   Night Stalker,” 1974-75.)   
      
   CHICAGO ILLINOIS   
      
   WILTON PARK   
      
   JUNE 2, 1974   
      
      
      
   POV 1:   
      
      
      
   The little girl wasn’t bored any longer. She was   
   scared, a bit, but not too much. She was eight years   
   old and she was braver than she used to be. She was   
   also a detective, so she had hung around outside the   
   creepy old house after she’d seen the man in the black   
   suit carry the woman up the porch steps and through   
   the door. He was probably a criminal. He was going to   
   tie the woman up in there and hold her prisoner. For   
   kidnapping ransom, maybe. If Sherlock Holmes were   
   here, he would sneak up and get into the house   
   somehow. But she wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, she was just   
   a kid detective, and she didn’t have a Doctor Watson   
   to go in with her and protect her with his revolver.   
   Sometimes she thought maybe it would be better to be a   
   doctor than a detective. Watson did both, didn’t he?   
   She acknowledged how scary police work could be, and   
   then settled in to do her job properly.   
      
   She stood and looked and looked at the house and strained   
   her ears, picking at all the little sounds she could   
   hear and trying to find one that could have been   
   coming from the house. But it was so quiet and so   
   still, nothing but crickets chirping, and that wasn’t   
   really a noise, it was part of the scenery and you   
   didn’t even notice it unless you were thinking about   
   it.   
      
   She had awakened in the dark time past   
   midnight, which she loved because the world was   
   different then. Quietly, she had pulled on her dirty   
   clothes and crept downstairs to her aunt’s kitchen,   
   because she had been forbidden to do so. Everyone else   
   was asleep, her brother, her parents, her aunt. She   
   was the only person awake, maybe in the whole world,   
   and she was not afraid of the dark and she was doing   
   something she wasn’t supposed to. Her breathing was   
   quick and shallow and the inside of her chest tingled   
   with the thrill of it. There were cookies in a jar on   
   top of the refrigerator.   
      
   Once down the stairs, she began to look at and think about the kitchen   
   door. Her   
   chest tingled harder, and so did her arms. If she   
   wasn’t even allowed downstairs at this hour, going   
   outside would be the ultimate in heroics.   
      
   The idea had taken hold, and for the girl to decide a   
   thing was to do it. It seemed like it took her hours   
   to move silently across the kitchen door and put her   
   hand on the knob and undo the lock and twist ever so   
   slowly.   
      
   And then, all of a sudden, there she is,   
   and the night world is not the same as it is during   
   the day. When her legs quit trembling and her   
   breathing got slower, she issued herself another   
   challenge. I have to walk all the way around the   
   block, she informed herself. I have to do it. Just one   
   time and then come back in.   
      
   She had made it halfway, to the street, maybe the very house   
   behind her aunt’s, when she saw the dark man and his burden.   
      
   Once he and the woman had disappeared inside, the   
   little girl dashed across the street and got behind   
   some bushes. There she calmed herself and began a   
   vigil. She wished she had got a bottle of Coke from   
   the refrigerator to bring with her, but of course she   
   had been so intent upon her escape she hadn’t thought   
   of it. She wondered how long she would be obliged to   
   stand here, and what she would do if anything   
   happened, and what kind of things might happen anyhow,   
   and then the man came back out. Alone. He locked the   
   front door, moved across the porch and down the steps   
   with no noise at all. She could not see his face, he   
   had a black hat pulled low, and he was wearing a cape,   
   like Dracula. A cape! Nobody wore a cape in real life.   
   This marked him as a suspicious character that was   
   worth investigating. He also carried a cane, which was   
   not as weird as a cape, but still out of the ordinary.   
   He was up to something. She would have to learn   
   everything she could, at least enough to write a   
   report for the Captain. And it would have to be an   
   excellent report, because she was already in trouble   
   on the force for taking too many chances and shooting   
   too many people. This assignment might be the only   
   thing that would save her job. The girl lived a rich   
   and exciting life inside her head. On one level she   
   knew these things were only make-believe, but on   
   another she knew they were just a different kind of   
   real.   
      
   Now that she had a task, she felt   
   professional and authorized. She was a secret   
   detective and she knew all kinds of things that   
   regular people didn’t know, and she went on important   
   jobs that only she could do. She began to sidle ever   
   so slowly around the tall bush so she could approach   
   the house, when the other man appeared.   
      
   He too was quiet, just like everyone else abroad on this   
   night in this place. He was nothing like the first   
   man. For one thing, he wore a white suit rather than a   
   black one. And she could see his face in the glow of   
   the streetlight. He wasn’t scary. Under one arm he   
   carried a thick black cable of some sort, and a funny   
   pair of giant yellow gloves. For just a second she wondered if all this   
   apparatus meant the guy was a spaceman. She had certainly never seen any   
   earthly gloves like those. But of course there was no such thing as spacemen,   
   she knew that much.    
        
   She stayed behind the bush, poking out just   
   the part of her head from the top down to just below   
   her eyes, and watched the man—she thought of him as   
   a good guy because he wore white, while the first man   
   had automatically been classified as a bad guy—mount   
   the wooden stairs, which creaked under his feet, as   
   they had not done for the dark man. Silently, so that   
   no one could hear, she shooshed the good guy, trying   
   to make him be quieter. She gritted her teeth when she   
   heard the sound of a breaking board on the porch. She   
   looked wildly up and down the street to make sure the   
   dark man was not coming back, and he wasn’t. Not yet.   
   The good guy came back down from the porch and walked   
   around the house peeking and poking at windows and   
   doors. After he had gone on around to the back of the   
   house, the part she could not see, it was very quiet   
   again for a minute, and then CRASSSH! She jumped and   
   almost peed, looking frantically around, and then she   
   whispered, “Duh! You dumbass,” insulting herself for   
   her failure to immediately recognize the sound of a window breaking. The good   
   guy was going to get in the   
   house that way, and she hoped he would find the girl   
   that had been carried in earlier, and set her free. By   
   now, she had appointed herself the good guy’s   
   assistant. He, too, was a great detective. The Captain   
   had sent him along to take point. She was just keeping an   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)