Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Smash it with a pick axe or something,” suggested Declan.

“Yes, you do that, Thomas. I suspect Walter will know where the man’s house is?”

“Most likely; the miners are a close knit bunch,” said Declan.

Thomas lingered to determine what Wyland was up to.

“Can I trust you to get this into Walter’s hands, and can we trust Walter to get it to the man’s wife?” Wyland extended a money purse he’d found on the corpse. “Things like this tend to get lost real fast when police arrive.”

Thomas had held himself in check to witness this exchange, and he nodded appreciatively before asking, “Nothing in the purse to identify the poor devil?”

Wyland shook his head and complained of how his shoes would never be the same, adding, “Purse is just shy of forty pounds, I’d say. No paper. Now be off with you both—Declan to see to the paltry sum, you, Thomas, to make that call.”

Thomas rushed off in search of the phone.

“We should get Dr. B to look this over,” said Declan, who had not budged. “See if he knows what killed this fellow, McAffey.”

“Dr. B?” asked Wyland.

“Bellingham, an excellent physician and inquest expert—teaches surgery at the Mater Infirmorum—our teaching hospital.”

“Whatever is going to work—and Thomas—do hurry. Getting ranker by the moment here.”

“Frankly, Mr. Wyland, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t remain here any longer.”

Declan’s remark halted Thomas who held the lift. “Are you two coming?”

“Need to do a bit of a walkabout,” said Alastair, but you go with Thomas, lad,” he added for Declan’s sake as an out for him.

Still Declan didn’t budge. “This man looks the victim of some awful disease—perhaps some form of a Bubonic Plague.”

Wyland added, “Oh dear, the Black Plague, you think?”

“Here in Belfast in 1912?” said Thomas from the lift platform.

“Not likely but who can tell, really.”

“Looks nasty enough to be a new strain of Black Plague; the disease took people’s lives overnight. Terrible scourge from all the etchings I’ve seen,” remarked Thomas.

“Can’t rule it out from down here, but it could as well be something else.”

“What else can you be talking about?” Wyland poked at the body with his cane.

“Something new, diseases crop up in the strangest of places.”

“Damn nasty business this underground work,” Wyland mused, looking at the sheared off ceiling and flashing his light about the wet, black reflecting walls.

“Wonder where the other miner is?” Declan muttered as if to himself.

“We’ll search the terminus of the shaft. But first, let’s get this man onto the platform so when Thomas goes up for help, we have the body at the surface for this Dr. Bellingham to examine.”

The three of them took careful hold of the absolutely stiff man who seemed more like a log than anything human, and they placed the corpse onto the lift. “Get him topside while we investigate further,” said Wyland to Thomas who needed no second telling. While riding up to the surface with the awful corpse, Thomas cupped his hands and shouted to Declan and the detective, “Damn thing looks like a blackened mummy!”

But Alastair Wyland had already set out searching about the mine, thinking the second missing miner—at very least—must be down here and whoever claimed to have seen him leaving the shaft had it wrong; as to the shipyard watchman, Thomas’ uncle, he hadn’t a clue.

Declan followed in Wyland’s wake as now there was only one lamp, and every corner here was blacker than an Irish midnight.

The lantern picked up the area where the shaft roof had collapsed, and at the base of the scattered loosened rock fall, lying in a silence as deep as an empty forest grave, there lay the body—covered in a tarp. “See that? It’s gotta be the other miner.” Alastair was excited, and he momentarily wondered if the families of the men might spread the word about his powers of detection, although he had done nothing save travel down into the mine shaft that others feared. The thought made him silently chuckle.

“Is he… is he like the other one?” asked Declan, shaken on seeing the prone misshapen figure below the thick green tarp.

“We’ll have to get him topside with the other one, sort ’em out. Figure which is which.” Wyland then noticed something distinctly different about this corpse and wondered if the tarp cut the odor. “You notice that?” he asked.

“What? What is it?”

“This one doesn’t smell so awful as the other fellow.”

“What killed them?” Declan asked, ignoring Wyland’s confusion.

“That’s the real mystery, now isn’t it?” Wyland snatched the tarp away in his best magician form, fully expecting to have found Anton Fiore lying here dead if not O’Toole, but instead he and Declan were shocked to find a furry-faced, pained-looking, hoary wolf creature with a huge, ugly decayed snout, its eyes like dried prunes. The sight sent Alastair staggering back—and given his limp, he fell into Declan, almost losing his feet and taking the young man to him.

“What in God’s name!” gasped Declan, staggering back, now welcoming the dark corners.

“It’s some sort of beastie, I’d say.”

“Look at that snout; it’s no dog—yet it seems like a large dog, maybe a wolf?”

“I’ve not ever seen the like of it, but look at how dry the skin, and the eyes—like the fellow we sent up, two dry, hard orbs.”

“Mummified—both this animal and the miner.”

“Mummified? I saw no bandages!”

“I’ve seen mummies in the museum in Edinburgh and London, sir, unwrapped mummies. They appear like petrified wood.”

“We had Egyptian mummies represented at the great fair in Chicago, but they were well wrapped.”

“It’s as if…”

“As if what, Declan?”

Declan took the lantern from the detective and stepped closer, examining the dead creature. “It looks like some sort of prehistoric wolf or saber-toothed dog.”

“That’d be my guess—and look here.” He positioned Declan’s lantern and hand up to illuminate the wall to his right. I’d say it was buried here for a long time, entombed in this wall. Notice the shape of the remaining, scooped out section?”

“The miners dug it from the wall and here it lies, yes.”

“And if it’s carrying some ancient disease or organism?” asked Alastair, his nerves shot. “We’ve been exposed.”

“Almighty’s will be done if it’s to be done.”

“You’re fine with it at your age, but I intend to live a long life.” Alastair’s dark joke got no laughs. “Declan, I appreciate the difference in our ages—and should’ve insisted you get topside with your friend.” Alastair fell silent, contemplating the results of a plague rampaging through the already filthy streets of Belfast’s ghetto areas long before reaching out to other parts of the city. The poverty stricken would die in droves at the outset, and when finished there, it might well devastate the entire countryside, biting at the gentry and heads of state, at which point they might attempt to do something about it. He imagined that Declan, being a medical man, was giving into the same fears.

“If the corpse we sent up with Thomas is diseased and virulent,” began the young intern, “then it could spread about the city.”

“Yes, afraid we’ve made some bad choices for being such intelligent men.”

“The jutting shoulders of this thing,” said Declan of the beast. “And you see the size of the fang there? Wonder where the other fang might be.”

Using his cane, Alastair tried to turn the monstrous snout here in the dark shaft, but he found it stiff as cord wood, unmoving. “Dry and stiff as bone,” he muttered.