Ripper & Rayne - Episode 4: Ashes and Honey
So sweet that even the dead can't rest.
London, 1979
It was just an old office building, a few minutes walk from Russell Square. Boarded up since the war, just the occasional groups of squatters moved on by the police. But lately it had been picking up a new reputation: a place where you could hear a building sing to itself.
Passers-by reported a low hum from inside. Like a choir under water. One man swore he’d smelled something sweet and rotten drifting out from behind the broken windows.
Special Branch called it “possible environmental contamination”. Ethan rolled his eyes when Giles told him.
”This is charming,” Ethan said, pushing through the rusted back gate. “Nothing says ‘romantic evening’ like a condemned building and the tang of mould.”
“It’s not mould,” Giles said. The air was thick, cloying. “It’s honey.”
They walked through the deserted corridors, torches swinging across faded notice boards and crumbling tiles. The hum was clear, at the edge of hearing but also deep in the bones. Not a tune, just a pressure, like somebody humming through their clenched teeth.
“You hear that?” Ethan said quietly.
“I’ve been trying not to,” Giles replied.
They found their first bowl in the shadow of an old, wooden reception desk. An enamel basin on the floor, crusted at the rim, and half-filled with a viscous, amber sludge. Ash floated in it - grey islands.
Giles crouched, shining his torch. “I think it’s bone ash,” he murmured. “Mixed into the honey. And graveyard soil, if I had to guess.”
“An offering?” Ethan suggested. “Or someone’s very grim tea service.”
Giles dipped his gloved finger, bringing it close to his nose. “Something’s a binding element. Sweetness to attract. Ash to anchor it here. “Someone’s trying to bring something here. And then make it stay.”
The hum pulsed, a fraction louder. The liquid’s surface shivered.
Ethan’s hand closed around Giles’ wrist, steadying him as the floor started to vibrate. Honey smeared against Giles’ sleeve where Ethan’s thumb brushed him. For a moment, neither of them moved.
“Be careful you’re not the one who sticks,” Ethan said softly. “That’s what honey does.”
Giles glanced at him. Ethan licked his finger and gently wiped away the honey. The contact lingered a half-second too long. “Let go.”
Ethan did, eventually.
There were three more bowls further down the corridor. Each of them were close to reception desks with Bakelite phones, or broken-down switchboard offices. Cables snaked out from the switchboard. A jury-rigged connection to a cracked PA, a contraption bolted to the wall - a mesh of radio parts, valves, and broken pipes.
“Someone’s building a harmonic engine,” Giles said. “Feeding it with emotional residue.”
“A translation?” Ethan asked.
“They use it to replay…what’s left of people. Grief. Memories. Ashes to hold the echo. Honey to anoint it, keep it preserved.”
As if on cue, the speakers crackled into life. Just for a heartbeat, the hum resolved into something different, almost words.
“Henry?” came a whisper. A woman’s voice. Stretched thin, like old tape. “I’m still-”
The sound warped, quickly, and dropped back into the static.
“Wonderful,” Ethan said. “You’ve found the world’s most depressing radio station.”
In a utility room toward the stairs to the second floor, they found the architect of it all.
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by more bowls, more ash, more honey. There was a tape deck resting in front of her, the reels turning slowly. Her hands were sticky and flecked with grey.
She looked up at them.
“They fade,” she said, without looking up at them. “There’s church bells, songs, the sounds of laughing. It fades. I’m keeping them.”
Giles kept a careful distance. “What’s your name?”
“Margaret,” she said. “Margaret Field. Maggie.” Her eyes were rubbed red. Exhausted, and furious. “He went, before I could say goodbye. And I couldn’t even remember his voice properly. I didn’t want that to happen to other people. So I kept those voices safe. Followed what they said, wrote it down.”
She held up a notebook. The pages stained with her honey thumbprints. Neat handwriting on crumpled paper. Under the incantations and notes were other hands, different writing. One stood out, a looping serif, precise and old-fashioned. Other inks with corrections.
Ethan’s breath hitched.
Giles noticed. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Ethan said, too quickly. He stepped forward and took the notebook, flicking past the amended lines before Giles could linger. “Poor penmanship.”
Maggie was talking again. “They come back when I play them. When the machine hums. It helps.”
“No,” said Giles. “You’re stopping them from moving on. Holding them here in a half-state. That’s why living people can hear them.” He was gentle, calm, “The dead shouldn’t be this loud.”
“I just wanted something sweet. Honey doesn’t spoil,” she whispered.
The hum was climbing, and the pitch rising. The bowls were starting to vibrate on the floor. So much that honey was oozing over the rims, dragging ash with it in sticky streaks.
“Ethan, the machine,” said Giles.
Ethan moved to the wall of equipment, eyeing the cords and the valves. “Which one? I don’t want to turn central London into one big accidental séance.”
“Just do it.”
The sound was growing, like it had teeth. Voices were surfacing, escaping the noise. Some half-formed, or overlapping. Pleading or shouting. Giles heard names, snatched confessions, a laugh that turned into a sob.
Below it all was a single phrase, as clear as a knife.
“Rupert. We shouldn’t have-”
Ethan grabbed a cable and pulled it violently from the wall. It came free with a spark of blue. The hum keened briefly, then collapsed into silence.
Sparks were dancing along the cables and the lights were flickering for a moment before they steadies. Maggie was sobbing, casting her hands around the shattered bowls of honey. “They’re gone.”
Giles looked to Ethan, blinking. “Did you hear-”
“A lot of very annoyed ghosts,” said Ethan quickly. “Too loud, you can send them a strongly-worded letter.”
Later, they stood on the steps from the back yard up to street level. They stood for a moment in weak daylight. Smuts of ash still clung to Giles’ coat. The honey left on his wrist was syrupy, sticky crystal. A faintly golden smear.
“Do you ever think about him?” Giles asked suddenly, not looking at Ethan.
“Which him?” Ethan said, though the tone suggested he already knew.
“Randall.”
Ethan smiled, slight and strange. “Only when I breathe.”
Their eyes met. Something old and raw and fragile sat between them. Like one of Maggie’s bowls of honey - full to the brim, a careless movement away from spilling over.
A bus rumbled past, and Giles looked away first. “We should file the report.”
“We should,” Ethan agreed. He didn’t move.
It looked for a moment like he might reach for Giles’ wrist again, to brush away more dried honey. Instead, Ethan slipped a hand into his jacket.
“Come on, Rupert,” he said lightly. “London’s still full of people who want to keep the past alive. We shouldn’t disappoint them.”
They walked the last few steps out onto the Euston Road. Into the city’s noise. The traffic. The living world.
Leaving the sweetness and ash behind in the dark - for now.
Stories from Ripper & Rayne are available in my Alternate Frequencies section.