Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Like the miner we sent up—” gasped Declan—“yet this carcass is ancient, and he… his corpse only hours old.”

“I suspect that O’Toole and McAffey had some reason to dig this thing out of the wall, and things went bad from there.” Alastair poked at the monster with his cane. “Likely placed the tarp over the thing, then boarded the lift, readying to find the surface, but you saw where the one had fallen or been forced over the side of the lift, then caught on a ledge until we landed on the man’s body. If it’s McAffey we sent up, O’Toole got out and into the world.”

“You think they fought over a damn fang?”

“I don’t know that it was the fang they fought over, but do you see the second miner here?”

“Well… no.”

“I saw a chain with a hook hanging on a peg behind us,” continued Wyland, taking the lantern back to the spot where he’d seen the chain dangling on one wall. He returned with it, saying, “We hook this monster and send it up ahead of us, Declan, and then we get the devil outta here.”

“I’m with you. Place gives me the creeps.”

They soon had the crook-hook on the end of the chain attached to the strange discovery, and yanking on the chain which snaked up alongside the lift, they got a response, presumably from Walter, who began winding the crude winch which begged to be replaced. The animal carcass had been light in weight, dehydrated and ancient as it was, and it rained down a dust over the men below as the chain echoed a metallic screech down the shaft. The dry animal dust created a ghostly, curtain-like veil in the lantern light.

In the interim as they were discovering the beast in the mine shaft, topside Walter had had the presence of mind to return the lift back to them.

“Let’s get out of here, now!” Alastair shouted to Declan, and they leapt onto the lift platform. Declan and Ransom had both begun to cough in the confined shaft as they rode up below the animal carcass overhead. As they did so, Alastair’s cane tapped at an edge of the boards near Declan’s feet; so close came the tip of the wolf’s head cane that Declan jumped to avoid it.

“Look there!” said Alastair, tapping still. “More evidence the second man got out and away.”

“How can you be sure?”

He lifted the cane and pointed to where it had rested. “Do you see the swath of cloth caught on that nail, the concentration of hair? Someone—presumably O’Toole, who I learned from Walter was a heftier man than myself—kicked his superintendent off this platform as it lifted. Here, stop the lift.”

Declan immediately brought them to a halt. “What is it?”

“The rock face here… smeared with blackened flesh. It’s where the body had been resting before we hit it and sent it to the shaft floor.” Alastair placed his lantern close to the ledge he pointed at. “I’d noticed on the corpse, on the arm—a bad scrape but no redness, no blood. In fact, did you look at his eyes?”

“No, I did not, sir.”

“No, of course not; who looks a dead man in the eye? Only a fool, my mother would say.”

“I am proposing to be a doctor; I should do exactly that when confronted with a corpse.”

Alastair shrugged. “You’re not a doctor yet; you’re young. It’s natural to look away.”

“I’ll be a doctor in a few years; I’ve got to learn to be more observant. I should’ve looked into his eyes.”

“In this case, perhaps not.” With his cane, Alastair indicated up—signaling Declan to continue to send the lift upward again.

Declan swallowed hard and turned the switch for up. “What did you find in the eyes?”

“Dried pair of prunes, shriveled to nothing, yet intact—and yet with the level of decay to the body… makes no sense. There shouldn’t be anything whatsoever left of the soft tissue of the eyes.”

“But then in so short a period, the body shouldn’t be so far along in decay either, Mr. Wyland.”

“The eyes looked like shrunken little heads like those made by cannibals. Come to think of it, the entire body looked like those crazy shrunken heads I saw once at a huge fair that represented every race on the planet to us fairgoers.”

“The Chicago World’s Fair?” guessed Declan. “You saw the 1893 Columbian Exposition? Damn, I’d give anything to’ve seen that!”

“Yes… quite a show it was, too. Like all the world in one place.” This much was no lie, he thought, pleased with himself and the memory of being atop the Ferris Wheel with the love of his life, the woman he’d left behind, Dr. Jane Tewes, one of Chicago’s first female surgeons.

“You are old, aren’t you? I mean 1893—wow!”

“Come now, not that old. I am here, aren’t I? Climbing around in the rubble, breathing in this rotten corpse. God help us, son. If indeed this is the Black Plague come back to haunt mankind—figures it would start in Ireland.”

They fell silent with the thought. All around them the mechanical sound of the winch and the groaning boards of the lift below their feet filled their senses: the smell of earth, the dry, subtle stench of the corpse and its change of color as they rose toward the surface where Walter shined a light down to reveal others who’d taken an interest, peering down the shaft as well.

Wyland secretly worried who this might be alongside Walter topside. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his cane. He feared now that his little missing-persons case involved a corpse, he’d exposed himself far too much. The authorities could well focus on him, a thing he had so far avoided here in Belfast. He felt like kicking himself for having gotten involved. He feared the men with Walter were the local police.

They were soon topside, feet planted on terra firma, breathing easier, and Walter was gasping over the body and saying that it looked like Superintendent McAffey, yet not at all like the man. “It just doesn’t look like the man.”

Private Detective Alastair Wyland slapped Walter on the shoulder, a reassuring gesture without effect. “Quite… quite understandable, my friend.”

Still, Bartholomew corroborated that it was indeed McAffey just as Alastair pulled his pockets inside out, finding a tobacco tin with the initials TM engraved on it. At about this time, Bartholomew turned to vomit his last meal, and between retching he muttered, “It’s McAffey but like Walter says, it’s not McAffey.”

“And what in God’s name is this monster you had me haul up?” asked Walter whose eyes had gone wide with anger. “Scared me to prayer, it did, this animal carcass!”

Alastair apologized. “We need to have the thing examined, Walter.”

Even though night had fallen, with the body in the better light, both Declan and Alastair felt as if they were seeing the destruction to McAffey for the first time. The horrible impact to their senses was compounded.

“Can we get a tarp to place over the remains?” asked Wyland.

“It’s gruesome what happened to this man,” said Declan, “and not even explained by the Black Plague, Mr. Wyland. Think about it; he was seen alive twenty-four hours ago, and now look at him. There’s something unnatural about this whole affair.”

“We needn’t invoke supernatural means here,” replied Wyland. “Has to be some sort of disease, a parasite perhaps, an organism invisible to us.” Wyland stepped away, lit his pipe, and hoped the tobacco would staunch the awful odor that had set up residence in his nostrils. He weighed up his choices—remain or go now. If he disappeared, the authorities might more readily be curious about him and his past. If he remained, played out his part in this sordid matter and acquitted himself well, the same authorities might leave his past his alone to focus instead on the obvious crime before them.