Sinistrari

Chapter 2-4

‘These shoes ain’t no bad bit of stuff, neither, handmade to measure, I reckon. Wouldn’t mind a pair like this me self, they’re ’bout my size,’ Jenkins added meaningfully, and then wondered why he was whispering.

‘More than our jobs is worf, Jenks, me old son. Sir Bully Boy Bilious finds out you nicked ’em, it’ll be you be ’anging here next, you mark my words, s’not like this was any old geezer we crapped, s’not like you could do a quick swap and nobody notice no different. Stick your old ’ob nails in with the rest o’ his stuff and they’d stand out like a couple of boils on the Bishop’s arse come Sunday buggering time.’

‘Bleedin’ criminal you ask me, not allowing us to have his goods an’ that, robbing the working man of ’is just rewards, that’s what it is. Criminal – and ’im as what ordered it, Maffews, ’Ome bleedin’ Secretary, ’e ought to be locked up in ’ere an’ all and no mistake. Barstid!’’

Together the hangmen continued to strip off the remainder of Sinistrari’s elegant clothes, still grumbling about the loss of their traditional perk, tossing the garments to one side where they lay in a crumpled heap. As the clothing was not coming to them, the executioners saw no particular reason to take care of it.

Dennison was about to remove Sinistrari’s silken long johns when he stopped and sniffed loudly, three or four times. ‘Notice something, Jenks?’ Jenkins stopped and sniffed noisily as well, rumpling up the pitted skin of his big nose into crinkled creases.

‘Nah,’ he said and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘That’s it, there ain’t nothing.’ ‘So?’

‘He ain’t s**t his self. Nor pissed. They allus piss and s**t their selves. Never done one yet that didn’t.’

‘Well, ’e was a nob, weren’t he, gentrified and all that, p’raps the upper classes don’t s**t. In case it offends their long snooty noses.’

‘Aye, they prob’ly get the f*****g butler to do it for ’em.’

‘And carry it out on a silver tray.’

‘Still, it’s strange an’ all make no mistake, they always s**t and piss their selves, even the ladies.’

‘Specially the ladies.’

‘So why h’ant this bugger?’ Dennison asked as he began to strip off Sinistrari’s underwear.

‘Perhaps he didn’t ’ave no dinner or nothing, nothing inside of ’im to come out?’

‘Aye, maybes.’

Sinistrari’s body was now n***d, swinging slowly at the end of the rope, the movement caused by the manhandling of the executioners as they removed his clothes. Above them, the hempen rope creaked against the cross bar, a slow rhythmic creaking back and forth that got on the hangmen’s nerves, heightening the sense of unease that they still felt.

‘Let’s get this bastard down sharpish, Jenks, this place is giving me the bleedin’ creeps and I ain’t ashamed to admit it. Though you ever tell a soul and I’ll call you out for a f*****g liar, so help me, you hear?’

‘Fine by me, Jack, I don’t mind admitting I’ll be glad when we’ve done and out of here. T’aint natural in ’ere somehow.’

‘Right, I’ll hoist him and you get the rope off of around his neck.’

‘You was dead right about the drop, Jack, wiv’ his slender neck, I mean,’ Jenkins said, still hoping to sweeten a tip out of the notoriously tight fisted Dennison, but that seemed unlikely now that they could not sell the dead man’s clothes.

‘It’ll be a bit slenderer now, I should think, his slender neck,’ Dennison answered, ignoring the compliment – he was well out of pocket already and there was no way Jenkins was getting a tip, however much flattery he tried

‘Aye, you’re right; ’e’ll have a neck like a f*****g giraffe by now.’

‘Don’t know about the neck of a f*****g giraffe, Jenks, but ’e’s got a prong on him like a giraffe all right, come look at the size of his knob!’

‘Strewth, it’s pointed ’an all, look, it comes to a sharp point at the end.’

‘P’raps that’s what he stabbed them poor lasses with weren’t a knife at all.’

‘Aye! Poked ’em to death with his pointy poker.’

The hangmen continued to joke, hiding their disquiet behind a thin mask of ribaldry, but anxious glances cast around the damp chill brick walls of the execution pit betrayed their nervousness. Dennison took the folded shroud sheet from the trolley and wrapped it around Sinistrari’s body, reluctant to touch his cold flesh and then bent his knees, grasped the swaying corpse and lifted it high enough to release the weight on the noose so that Jenkins could release it. Panting with their efforts the hangmen laid Sinistrari’s flaccid body on the trolley, placing his arms down by his sides. Behind them, the gas lighting in the globes on the wall hissed ominously and flickering shadows danced across the walls like writhing black ghosts.

Dennison removed the white hood from the head of the corpse. Sinistrari’s head lay awkwardly to one side, sure sign of a broken neck. Around his throat, a vivid weal completely encircled his neck like the scarlet collar stock of a guardsman’s uniform, the marks of the rope so clear in the stretched flesh of the neck that the imprints of the individual strands of rope were clearly visible.

‘Ugly bastard, weren’t he?’ Dennison said.

‘No bugger looks pretty after an hour or two on the gallows.’

‘Too fuckin’ good for ’im, a nice quick ’anging, they should’ve hung, drawn and quartered ’im like they used to in the old days. Strangle him real slow, but not to death. Then chop off ’is donkey prong and bollocks and pull ’is rotten guts out through his arse with a red-hot corkscrew, all done before his very eyes while ’e’s alive and then burn his heart. Then nail bits of him to the city wall so’s all could see ’e’s got his just deserts. That’s what they should’ve done, not a quick ’anging like this, not after what ’e did to them girls an’ that.’

‘And ’e gets to get a Christian burial now, an’ all, s’not like ’is body gets sent to the surgeons to practice on, like they used to, an’ all. T’ain’t right. Surely to God that ain’t right?’

‘Noffin’s right in this world for the likes of us, Jenks, noffin. Nor ever will be. So let’s cover the ugly barstid up, wheel ’im next door for the doc and let’s get out of here.’

As Jenkins moved to cover Sinistrari’s torso and face with the shroud, the eyes of the corpse suddenly opened wide, the eyes flaring hideously yellow in the gas light, feral and slitted, like those of a wild beast trapped in torchlight.

‘I think not hangman, I think not,’ Sinistrari hissed with a vile grate, his long pale tongue flicking across his blue lips like a swollen maggot. His arm shot out from under the sheet and he seized Jenkins with one hand around the throat, raising himself to a sitting position as he did so, and his strength enormous. ‘Just deserts hangman, now feel how it is to choke out your miserable life gasping for breath.’ Still holding Jenkins by the throat Sinistrari swung round his legs and got to his feet.

Dennison yelped like a beaten dog, all colour drained from his face and his legs turned to rubber, refusing to work. He stumbled and fell back into the corner, cowering and gibbering, rigid with shock and fright; thin snakes of yellow urine wriggling in delta tracks across the cell floor where he had pissed himself in fear, his gullet working frantically, trying to recover the power of speech, unable even to scream in his terror.

Jenkins gurgled deep in his throat as Sinistrari lifted him bodily from the floor and pinned him to the wall like an exhibit in a museum, the heels of his hob-nailed boots drumming against the brickwork, echoing like gunshots around the walls of the hanging pit. His eyes popped, bulging wide as though thrust out from their sockets from within, hands scrabbling at Sinistrari’s wrist and fingers in a vain effort to ease the pressure swelling inside his brain, choking, fighting for life. Sinistrari lifted him even higher, still holding him only with one hand. The stench that clogged the pit as Jenkins voided his bowels was noxious and foul, trickles of urine splashed down from the tips of his boots and splattered against the wall as Jenkins still feebly kicked and struggled.

‘See, they always s**t and piss,’ Sinistrari said conversationally. ‘Never done one yet that didn’t.’ A final convulsive heave in a vain effort to draw air into his bursting lungs and Jenkins was dead. Sinistrari tossed him aside like a petulant child with a rag doll. Jenkins’ head hit the brick wall with a sickening thud that reverberated in dull crumps like that of distant artillery fire.

In the corner, Dennison still whimpered; frantically crossing himself before scrabbling across the stone-flagged floor of the hanging pit towards the locked door; his eyes staring in terror as Sinistrari approached, looming large over him. The fiend was n***d-his erection huge and swollen, curving and aciculate, jutting out before him like the horn of a fighting bull about to hook into the body of a matador.

‘Blood will have blood, hangman,’ Sinistrari spat, his voice deeply sibilant, frighteningly reptilian.

‘No, please. Please,’ Dennison begged, finding his voice at last, scuttling backwards on his hands and feet like a broken legged spider. ‘I meant nothink by it, just doing a job, is all. A job. Please, guv’, I’ve a wife and kids, Jenny she is. Jenny. And little Jack. PLEASE NO,’ he screamed as Sinistrari reached for him.

‘Remember Genesis, hangman, Chapter IX, verse 6, “Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”.’ No one heard Dennison’s solitary scream as Sinistrari lifted him up, forced open his jaws and then tore out his tongue with his fingers. ‘Welcome to Hell, hangman. Welcome to Hell.’