Interchapter 1: April 27, 1907

 

William Gainsford hadn’t been able to sleep last night.

The meteor shower that seemed to pass directly over his house on the western edge of Dunsmuir had been unremitting, its countless bolts of penny-sized light and bewildering array of whizzing pellets awaking his newborn babe—a sturdy boy named Matthew whose already firm grip made him seem destined to follow his father’s footsteps in wielding the pickaxe in the Brashear Mine—and alarming his weary and sleep-deprived wife, Jane. From time to time William had stepped to the bedroom window and watched the anomalous display, his gaunt, angular face lit up by the successive glimmers that seemed so near that he momentarily wondered if a fire might erupt in the dense forest that bordered his meager property.

But the day dawned like any other workday, and William put the night’s turmoil behind him as he stoically ate the large breakfast his bleary-eyed wife dutifully prepared.

Before he made the mile-long trudge to the mine, however, he couldn’t help making a brief detour into the forest. It wasn’t every day the heavens bestowed such gifts, and he wondered if some remnant of the shower could be found. William’s imagination did not often extend to the boundless cosmos, but on rare occasions he did give thought to what lay beyond the confines of this terraqueous globe. His father had been an amateur astronomer and even had a 3″ telescope into which William had peered every now and then; but he had been unable to grasp the titanic distances his father claimed separated the earth from even the nearest stars visible in the sky, and subsequent financial hardships had caused him to sell the instrument to a more prosperous neighbor.

It seemed he was in luck. Almost the moment he ventured into the forest he detected what he took to be something other than an earthly rock or pebble. How he could be so sure, he would not have been able to explain to himself; but the fact that it was slightly warm to the touch was a good indication. So warm was it, indeed, that William had to cradle it in a tuft of earth to protect his fingers from being singed.

He dumped the tiny visitor from the sky, earth and all, into his metal lunchbox and proceeded to work.

The rigors of the job made him all but forget his prize; but when the lunch whistle shrilled, he opened his lunchbox and, after initially being puzzled why there was a clod of earth there, remembered what he had done.

It was only when he had finished his lunch that he took the pellet in his hand. It was not entirely circular, seeming to have almost indistinguishable protrusions here and there; and now he was convinced that the grayish-white surface masked a glow deep within itself that reminded him of last night’s shower. For a moment he wondered if money could be made from this minuscule object: maybe some scientist from a nearby college would find it worth at least a few dollars to possess it and subject it to whatever sort of analysis he might wish to undertake.

It was only after a few moments that William Gainsford began to scream.

As he held the thing in the palm of his hand, the flesh around the palm, and then around the fingers, began to melt away as if it had been doused with acid. Strangely enough, William did not experience any intense pain—or, indeed, any pain at all—but the horror of seeing his hand transformed in seconds into nothing but bone overwhelmed him.

He leaped up from his bench and, to the amazement and alarm of his colleagues, fled back into the mine. Wide-eyed and crazed—the destruction of his flesh had now proceeded up to his forearm—he careened against both men and equipment as he plunged sightlessly into the depths of his workplace. Slipping painfully against a piece of coal on the floor of the narrow corridor in which he found himself, he barged against a craggy wall of the mine and then, half-involuntarily, sent his body hurtling into a shaft whose impenetrable blackness and narrow confines caused his cry of terror and dismay to echo eerily before it was abruptly extinguished miles below.

William Gainsford was no longer aware that, in his mania, he had held onto that glowing pellet in what remained of his hand.