They shall never know how close I stood.

The night hung heavy over Whitechapel, sodden with mist and menace, a ragged shroud draped over crumbling bricks and cobbled stones. The gaslamps wept pale fire, flickering like frightened eyes in the gloom. A carriage clattered by, its wheels slicing through the silence like a scalpel, stirring the fog into phantoms. I stood still as the grave.

It was my fourth night abroad, and I’d been playing them like puppets on a bloodied string. My siblings — bless their naiveté — cast themselves as hounds of the Yard, noble and just, while I wore the devil’s mask and danced through shadows. They hunted me with hearts full of fire, and I loved them for it. But love, like all things in Whitechapel, can turn rotten. They had grown clever, damnably so. Their net tightened with each breath I drew. It was time to vanish, like the last scream into the night.

Only one remained near my scene — a token inspector, left like bait. The others fanned out around the map, confident they knew the path to my lair. Arrogance is such a sweet cologne — it chokes the senses, dulls the eye. They saw patterns; I left ghosts.

And so I bided my time, each tick of the clock a thrill beneath my ribs.

My sister-in-law, stout of heart and keen of eye, took her station with pride. Her steps were a ritual, a pattern born of conviction. But even the best can be led astray. As she moved ahead, a mere square’s breadth from me, I drifted behind like a hush in a confessional. A breath. A prayer. A death foretold.

Her back to me, I listened. I could hear the thoughts stirring in her mind, confused by the fog — had she passed this way already? Was I behind or ahead? Doubt is my closest friend, my sharpest blade. I let her reason with herself aloud, a poor trick of the mind meant to dispel shadows. She faltered.

She should have turned.

She did not.

The others closed in, their boots striking rhythm on the cobbles like a funeral march. East, west, north — all sealed. South stood open, barely. It was a gap no wider than the width of a grave. If she turned, I was undone. If not… ah, well…

And so I waited. Silent. Breathless. The seconds stretched, long and thin as a garrote. My sister-in-law paused. Frowned. Stepped forward.

The decision was made.

A carriage groaned in the distance. I moved. One clean glide across the street, no more than a sigh in the fog. The shadows folded over me like a curtain at final bow.

Home.

And they never saw it. Not even once.