Chapter 2 – The Matter at Hand
23rd January 1887
While Mr. Gladwells trust in your ability to find an explanation, perhaps even a solution, was rather flattering, you knew no more than him. A mans flesh turning into coal was akin to something from the more fanciful books you had read. Those that were more a product of the authors active imagination than careful observation of the world. Thus, all you could do at the time was to reassure him that you would look into things and then sent him back off to the mines with an order to keep the shaft closed and the workers calm.
Losing the production of shaft number twelve was more an annoyance than a threat for now, the other shafts still producing more than enough to keep your income up, but you had not ordered the new shaft drilled on a lark. The shallow deposits would run out within the year and then shaft twelve was supposed to be the first foray into the deeper coal seams. A solution had to be found before that happened.
However, no amount of urgency could conjure a lead on the matter from thin air. You had to do research and with how little information you had, that was daunting prospect. Well. There was one lead at least. Briefly you considered taking the hand straight to the Royal London Hospital and call in a few old favours to have some of the surgeons look at it. However, the thought withered as quickly as it had come. You still remembered other
debates you had with them, back when your interest in medicine had first been kindled. They would have not taken well to the notion of something abnormal having happened in your mine.
That left you with only one option. The time had come to put to the test what you had read about so much. You even had the right tools around the house, bought on a whim a year or so ago, and they were just as pristine and unused as they were on that day. When you had dreamed of the day where your theories and learnings would be put to practical use, you had always seen yourself standing before distillation columns and alembics, trying to brew the one true elixir as generations of alchemists and apothecaries before you.
But fate had another plan, and so you found yourself taking up scalpel and forceps on this fine Sunday morning. Not in a operating room, but right at home in your study with only a folded bedsheet beneath the hand to protect the fine writing desk. You had read about this countless of times, could name every bone and sinew, and yet there was a sense of trepidation as steel met flesh and slid in with little resistance.
A few times you had to pause and gather yourself as your own hands began to itch and hurt in sympathy to what you did to the one that Mr. Gladwell brought you. Skin was peeled from the palm, muscles cut apart to reveal the bones beneath for inspection and while the first cuts were unsure and amateurish, you found it to become much easier as time went on. Unease and the distaste for the task got replaced by curiosity and soon enough your cuts were sure and swift.
In the palm you already found the first strangeness of the hand. No blood was found within the veins, not even dried up, but instead a fine black powder coated veins and arteries from within. Once you felt more confident in your abilities, you moved on towards the wrist and found more such strangeness.
Both tibia and ulna were fully made from coal, white and solid bone replaced by brittle black, yet the muscles above were only partially changed. Lengthwise, some fibres were likewise turned to coal, while others were still supple flesh. The skin above was the opposite, with the border between man and mineral so sharp that you could separate them with just a light tug.
Part of you had still not wanted to believe the tale that Mr. Gladwell had spun, but as you carefully noted down your observations, there was no denying it. The coal was not just pressed onto the body and neither was it the result of charring like from a boiler incident. The dead man had turned into coal from the inside out and nothing in the medical texts you kept at home had the slightest hint to what could have caused this.
The only reference that barely matched was a retelling of the story of king Midas in which the man had dabbled in alchemy and made a philtre that could turn things into gold. According to that tale, he drank it in the belief that it would make him immortal, but just turned him to gold from the inside out before his greedy court hacked him apart to make coins of him. A ghastly and yet entertaining tale written by some long dead Roman poet, but hardly applicable to your issue.
There were certainly other things. Black lung disease. Anthrax was causing black and hard patches of necrosis. You were dimly recalling of some affliction that caused a person to excrete coal. Something had there to be to make sense of this, even though you could not quiet the nagging voice that you were wasting your time. No disease could act so fast. And even if it did, why was there no body? '
It was dragged into the coal seam,' Mr. Gladwell had told you. Diseases did not drag people into solid minerals.
Out of the corner of you eye, you looked at the still wrapped package laying on the side table where you had put it when you needed your desk for the impromptu dissection. Perhaps you had a book that could help you after all? The codex of Abd-Shadar allegedly contained a veritable compendium of strange occurrences and legends. Maybe the man had heard of something similar as what happened in the mineshafts of Willerton. Just a quick peek and you might have had your answer.
No. You shook yourself and tore your eyes from the book, instead focusing back onto your notes. They were legends. Tall tales to share at a campfire in the desert. You needed more solid information and not to dive for the next best explanation like a superstitious fool. First you would read the science on the matter and then the legends to discern truth from fiction. Just because your library did not contain a good theory, it did not mean that there was none to find. You just needed a bigger library. Preferably with a focus on medical matters. And you knew just the right place to find the right book.
26th January 1887
You had not found the right book yet and even with the towering bookshelves of the Royal London Hospital's library around you, the hope that you would find it any time soon seemed dimmer with each passing hour. If anything, it felt as if the tall shelves stacked with paper and leather were taunting you. So much knowledge. So many volumes of research notes and dissertations. And yet nothing that could explain what you had seen with your own eyes.
Something had to be there that could help and if not, maybe at least knowing about all the things that could not explain the severed hand now resting in formaldehyde in your study. Dozens of books on necrosis and infections of all kinds had yielded nothing. There was no parasite or bacterium that could have acted fast enough. You even had given some of the coal to a chemist the day before to verify its nature and the man confirmed that it was perfectly mundane coal and not some strange form of dead flesh.
And yet, for all your work over the past days, you could only note down your frustrations as you sat in the drafty library with only the petroleum lamp to keep you company at the late hour. With a thud you closed the last volume you had meant to read that day and one of the last ones that seemed in any way helpful found in the index of the library. The last page of notes went into your folder and you were ready to leave, but when you look back up from your bag, you were no longer alone.
A young women in a nurses uniform had snuck up on you, standing right next to the reading desk and curiously peering at the cover of one the journals still splayed out around you. "It is rare to see someone this late in the library at this time of the year," she spoke without looking at you. "And you don't have the air of a student cramming for an exam either way."
For a moment you wondered how she could be so quiet on the marble tiles, but banished the thought for now. "Ah, I am not a student in this fine hospital," you replied evenly while getting up, though the woman just kept reading the book titles. "My name is Horace Barnham and I am merely a guest who wanted to do some research in your library and apparently forgot the time."
Finally, she turned to you and smiled while holding out her own book. "Then you would be the one who pestered the librarian for this earlier today. I took it yesterday to have some light reading during my shift."
You glanced down on the title and frowned as you took it. "Not many would not call a dissertation on a grisly topic like spontaneous self-immolation cases light reading Miss…"
"Miss Scott. A pleasure to make your acquaintance Mr. Barnham. And I can assure you that this work is fairly tame compared to my usual fare. This library is full of rather vivid dissections of the human anatomy after all, and I do need something to pass the time at night."
"Not the most exiting shift I assume?" You asked her lightly while sorting the remaining books you had splayed out on the desk.
"No. Occasionally a patient wakes up at night and needs some tending, but most nights it is rather quiet." While she spoke, she shorted a stack of journals and handed them to you. "Say, Mr. Barnham, what is it that you are researching? I can see the newest work of Mr. Koch on Anthrax and some textbooks on burns in your pile."
You briefly paused and glanced at her from the corner of your eye. It was hardly something illicit you were looking up and yet you felt rather self-conscious about chasing what increasingly looked like a ghost story turned flesh and coal. "Just a strange injury I came across. Unfortunately it seems hard to pin down what caused it."
"Maybe I could help you? It seems to be urgent." She asked with a bright smile again, stretching out her hand. "I do read a lot and might know something that could help you with that riddle. And I can assure you that I am much less judgemental than many others here that would offer their aid."
"It is not something of… ill-repute," you tell her while holding your bag tight. "Merely an oddity. Nothing that would be concerning to talk about."
She briefly pursed her lips before grinning, her hand still outstretched. "And yet you spend three days researching on your own instead of asking for the help of whoever got you past the porter and prevented the librarian from throwing you out in the evening."
Perceptive of her. An admirable quality, even though it was mighty inconvenient for you in that moment. Or perhaps it was the lucky break you had been waiting for. "If I shared the details of the case, could I also be assured of your discretion?"
"Certainly," she answered without hesitation. "What kind of nurse would I be to gossip about people's ills and injuries?"
You took a deep breath and sighed at what you were about to do. With some trepidation you took the folder out of your bag again and handed her the notes you had made during the autopsy of the hand. "The hand was the only thing found. The body is missing." It was the only thing you were willing to share beyond your notes.
Contrary to your first fears, she did not seem concerned or dismissive of what she read, instead studying the notes carefully and occasionally asking for some clarification when what you wrote was unclear. Then she became quiet and pensive, staring at the crude drawing you had made the summed up your findings.
"I agree with your conclusion that whatever happened worked from inside out, but I am afraid that I can't recall anything helpful either." She handed you the notes back with a frown. "This sounds more as if the Soot Man got the poor sod than any disease I ever saw."
"The Soot Man?"
"Just a story I've read somewhere. It was about a boy that did not do his chores and made up wild tales as for why. One thing was that he should have scrubbed the soot from the fireplace, but he said there was a man living in the soot and looking out at him. It would be like tearing down his house if he cleaned up the soot and so he didn't. The tale ends with the boy disappearing and only a stain of soot on the ground near the fireplace being left because the Soot Man took him."
She chuckled lightly at the end of the brief tale. "Just a story to make unruly children do their chores."
For you though, it was anything but. Soot was just dust of ash and coal. "Sometimes there is a grain of truth to such stories," you said idly while staring at your notes. Something that lived in coal dust and could drag people away. Why did this fit so well? The feeling of unease returned as if to gloat that you wasted time on a stubborn attempt to find a solution with the sciences first.
"Maybe," she replied after a moment of thought. "It is an intriguing mystery you have there, Mr. Barnham and I must admit that I got quite curious about the matter too. It's a shame I can't help you more, but I wish you luck in solving it. Maybe you will come back and enlighten me too once you found an answer."
And then she turned and walked away, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
What now?
[] Travel to the mines in Willerton and look for more clues. There is likely nothing more you can learn while in London.
[] Read the codex and see if you can find anything about a Soot Man. It is far too good a clue to ignore it.
[] Speak to the surgeons and doctors. Maybe they will know more than a random nurse you have met in the middle of the night.
