A Study in Ebony

The Fire, the Flesh and the Learned Menial

14 October 1898

Dear diary,

I should either be the happiest man alive, or the most terrified. Perhaps both. I have learnt today that I have surpassed human frailty, and that my terror of the pursuer which drove me to run two kilometers yesterday was not unjustified. I have also acquired new pursuers.

Today I woke up in the ungodly hours when the sun has not yet risen, yet the cold winds that herald it are already in an agitated state. One moment, I was in the deepest sleep. The very next, I was utterly wide awake. The transition from one of these states to the other was as sharp as the edge of a blade.

Once I awoke, I realized that my body was not cramping in the cold of the morning. I was able to rise and perform my ablutions, even wash my body without fear of the cold. I was physically more resilient than I would have imagined.

I decided to test this resilience. I stepped outdoors in little more than a mild sweater. In the October cold, with the billowing winds of the wee hours, trudging over ungodly heaps of snow, I could feel nothing short of calmness.

My mind was oddly calm ever since I had allowed the whispered incantation to escape my lips yesterday in Jennifer's home. In the calmness of my mind, the singular phrase was once again reverberating like a mystic drumbeat - 

"Kuth naag whszipfr suwhzaus thwa?"

I was worried about this tinnitus, but at the moment I had better things to do. I readied myself and began to run. I proceeded to run until I panted, but the more I ran the more I felt joyous and energetic. It was as if my human form was a mere limit within which my body had nestled for pure convenience, while in truth it was the body of a stallion!

As I ran, I got quite far from my lodgings in Mr. Taylor's. I would have lost my way too, were it not for the uncanny clarity of my mind and the sharp responsiveness of my thoughts. I was ever aware of the situation I was in, no matter how thrilled I was to be able to run so far and so fast.

For I was fast! I was running at a pace I had not believed myself capable of running in. Only soldiers who had trained themselves for years could attain such critical speeds. I was running down the cobbled streets - and then the bare ones, after I took a risky turn away from the thoroughfares - and buildings flew past my sight as my heart was hammered inside my chest, its beating paced but not overwhelmed.

It was a long time before I was finally panting. I was near the docks. I had run not less than fifteen kilometers to the Thames, and the sun was beginning to rise. I knew it was fifteen kilometers, because I had noted my route, and with the crystal clarity of my mind I can now penetrate the confusion of calculating the total distance I had then traversed.

As I stood in the dockyards under the paling sky of dawn, I panted quietly. My panting was muffled. I was not very tired, only just so. It was incredible! I looked at the early workers who were arriving to spend their day at the dockyard, unloading the goods which came by ship and loading new goods into the ships.

I am proud of my erudition, but at this moment I did not care for it! For the first time in my life, my physical abilities have surpassed normal human capability and at the moment I wanted to know how much physical effort my body can handle. I looked at the dock workers heaving and panting as they pulled off the heavy wooden crates from the ships, and I began to walk towards them.

There was a ship docked at the moment, named the Stanton Supreme. It was a trading ship of the Stanton & Co. timber traders. Their heavy wooden crates were, I mused, packages of wood with wood within. I strolled towards the ship and the unloading effort going on there.