Albie's Tale

By Steven Williams

Thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, in the pitch black, dirty world that is modern coal mining, Albie, a newly qualified surveyor, discovers old mine workings; old mine workings where none should be… old mine workings that cannot possibly exist.

Fae, Giants, Imps and Warlocks, not to mention the obligatory murderous villain in the form of Jimmy Blackhand, all thrown together in a tale of good versus evil in a world where fantasy, dreams and reality collide… and belief is the only hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Williams
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311149848

Steven Williams

Steve Williams was born in the small town of Aberdare in the South Wales valleys quite some time ago. Encouraged by his mother, herself a prolific reader, he began reading at a young age, and long before his teens was a lover of all things science fiction. At some point in his early teens he was introduced to Tolkien, and thereafter his head would be found more often than not in a fantasy novel. Steve attended Aberdare Boys Grammar school ( a big clue as to age) where he excelled, or at least did well, in maths and the sciences. In English language and literature he achieved a grade six at 'O' Level (another clue as to age) which anyone of a similar age will know is one level above a fail. He now fervently hopes that his appalling childhood grades are not readily apparent in his current work. Steve has been a paperboy, a labourer in both a Brickworks and a Dairy, a Coal Mine Surveyor, all before he moved into his penultimate career in Information Technology, where his final role was that of the Technical Manager in a Data Warehouse. What on earth is a Technical Manager you may ask. Steve himself, two years retired from the role, has still not a clue – somewhere between general dog's body and Jack of all trades was the nearest he got to an accurate description. Up until his first novel, A Man Returned, Steve has written nothing but technical documents and emails, thousands upon thousands of emails – but that is now changing big time. Steve lives in Staffordshire with his wife and childhood sweetheart, Pauline. They have two grown up sons and two wonderful grandchildren, Luke and Ella. Besides writing, Steve's hobbies are reading, badminton, an occasional walk around a gym, spending time with the grandchildren, and last but not least, making excuses for not going out shopping with the wife – writing comes in really handy there. Steve is currently furiously at work on his second book in the Dark Light series – watch this space!

Book preview

The V24 Coalface

Albie sat on the wooden plank as far back in the manhole as he could, in an attempt to keep out of the dust. A dust mask was pulled up over his mouth and nose, but he could still taste the coal dust with every breath he took. He was at least fifty yards back from the coal face but, despite the distance, the air inside the manhole was black with the dust hanging in the air. The light from his cap lamp barely managed to light up the far side of the roadway, and that was only five yards away.

He inwardly groaned at his predicament – he never quite managed to time his walk in to coincide with the shift's end. It was almost three miles from pit bottom to the V24 face, and for much of the journey it was not pleasant, not pleasant at all. Bent over double for most of the way, walking through tunnels driven years ago that had long since crushed down to that really awkward height that made walking a constant stoop, for fear of banging your head on a crossbar or taking your eye out on a projecting wooden sprag. It was only for the last three or four hundred yards, once he reached the more recent work, that the arches began to rise up to their full twelve foot height. And even that wouldn't last for more than a few weeks as the relentless pressure of the overlaying strata crushed the new work lower and lower until some form of equilibrium was achieved, and that always seemed to be that bloody back killing, bent over double walking height. To top it all off, he always got here too soon, and had to put up with this god awful dust. Tonight was the eighth night in a row it had fallen to him to make the slog from pit bottom all the way into the coal face, spend an hour and a half charting the progress of the fault through the face, and then make the long slog back out again. He was really pissed off with it all. The other two surveyors should take a turn, they could chart this fault just as well as he. But no, they used the excuse that he had spent time with the geologists, had been trained by them for work just like this. Bollocks he thought, not for the first time, Lazy bloody shits.

Lights flickered outside, and suddenly Ken stuck his head into the manhole.

Early again tonight, Albie, Ken said. How long have you been here this time?

Only about five minutes, Albie replied. How much longer to go? he asked the overman.

All finished mate, Ken replied. Give it a few minutes and the last of them will be gone, and the dust will have settled some too.

Albie jumped up. Nope, it’s job and finish for me. The sooner I get started, the sooner I can crawl into my bed, he said. As he eased out of the manhole past Ken he asked, How's the fault looking today, still as hard as ever, I suppose?

Almost used up another set of picks cutting through the bloody thing again tonight. If it carries on like this we'll have to start drilling and blasting ahead of the shearer. It is moving down the face quite quickly now, though. A few more days and it should be a thing of the past, you'll see for yourself when you get in there. I'm off to check the pumps now, so I'll see you later when you’re on the way out, Ken said as he turned to walk away down the return road. He only got a few strides before he stopped and spoke again, Hey, that was some stunt you pulled in the club last weekend. Thought old Tom was going to have a fit when you started spluttering and gagging, and Marge was on the phone calling an ambulance right up until you grinned at her. How did you do that anyway? Thought that glass would’ve cut your throat to ribbons.

Albie smirked inwardly to himself. Got a strong constitution, he said. Don’t half make you run to the toilet, though, he added with a laugh.

Ken laughed back and walked away none the wiser, and Albie grinned at his retreating back. Eating that pint glass all the way down to its base had paid for his drink the whole night long, and was something he could pull off time and time again. I’ll be dammed if I’m going to let anyone in on that secret he thought, as he strolled the last fifty yards to the coal face.

The dust was lessening but he knew that he’d still have to scrub like buggery to get clean once he was in the baths. He looked up at the strata in front of him, marvelling at the sight. Even after three years as a trainee and a year qualified, looking at the lines of strata, the shiny black coal streaked with layers of mud-stone and crosshatched with thousands of minute fractures, overlaid with that so very hard sandstone roof, still left him with a sense of awe. Here he was almost nine hundred yards underground, looking at something very few would ever get to see, and very few of those that did truly appreciated what they saw. The coal miners just saw it as coal to be mined and bloody sandstone to be cut and shifted out of the way to meet today's target as set by this months productivity bonus, while the other surveyors saw it as strata to be charted and catalogued to help predict the tonnage mined in the week. But Albie saw nature at work – spending millions of years to compress dead vegetation with the weight thousands of tonnes of sediment deposited by the inland seas and rivers. In his minds eye he could see it all playing out before him, slowly coming together to form the five foot high coal seam that stood before him .

Albie shook himself. No time for daydreaming he thought, as he pulled out his yellow, hard backed geologist’s notebook. That was one small benefit from his time with the geologists – he was allowed to order these specialist notebooks. The other two lazy shits had to make do with the cheap, bog standard measuring books. Unfortunately the books are not sufficient recompense for these back to back nightly visits to the coal face he thought, as he began to sketch the scene in front of him, ready for the measurements he would need to take.

The coal face, that joined the two advancing roadways together, was 250 yards long and he needed to take detailed measurements every ten yards or so, and probably every yard at the scene of the fault itself. Though it wasn't actually a fault, it was a washout – an area where all the coal was gone, replaced by mud-stone and extremely had sandstone bands. Washouts were formed millions of years ago when the vegetation, which would eventually form the coal seam, was washed away by a stream or river, and replaced by the silty deposits left in the river’s wake. Such washouts meandered through the coal seam following the course of the ancient river that formed it, and they created havoc with coal mining, and had often forced a coal face to be closed down because so much coal was lost, or because the washout material was too difficult to cut through.

Fortunately this particular washout was nowhere near as extensive, but it was causing havoc with the coal shearer, ruining picks at a rate of knots and slowing production dramatically.

Albie quickly finished off in the roadway, ducked down into the coal face proper, and began to crawl along the steel conveyor that carried the cut coal out into the roadway. The coal seam was about five foot high, hence its name – it was called the Five Foot seam, but the crawl space was considerably less. A great deal of the space was occupied by the steel canopy that was formed by the Walking Chocks, as they were called – enormous steel platforms with hydraulic legs to push themselves forward. Over two hundred in all, linked together to effectively form a steel tunnel that protected the face workers from falling stones and a potential cave in. Each of the chocks was linked to its neighbours and would move forward as the coal was cut to support the newly exposed roof.

Albie crawled along, cursing and muttering to himself each time he knocked his head or banged one of his knees, until he reached chock ten, where he quickly drew and measured the coal section before moving on another ten chocks. Eventually, at chock 153 he reached the beginning of the washout.

Ken was right he thought. It’s moved down twenty yards since last night. Soon be gone, thank God.

He then proceeded to take detailed measurements across the whole of the area affected by the washout. Running his hammer over the sandstone fill that was the washout, he could tell that it was much more coarse than the night before, and harder too. No wonder they're using up picks, he said aloud to himself. Just as well the coal isn’t as volatile as in the Nine Foot seam, or we'd have to close the face down for good he thought. He made notes regarding the change in sandstone fill, and then moved along to the next sample point.

Finally, after well over an hour, Albie dragged himself up out of the face into the intake roadway. As he did so, he promised himself that he would get a new pair of knee pads before his next visit. The strap had broken on one last night, and he'd not bothered to change it. His knees were killing him after all the knocks he'd taken crawling through the face, and he still had to crawl all the way back down if he wanted to avoid what was a four mile trek out of the intake road.

He sat on one of the conveyor plates for a moment, looking up at the coal seam in front of him. Again he marvelled at the scene. A geological miracle, millions of years to transform trees into coal. It was amazing really, he still could not take it in. He knew what all the books said about how coal was formed, but still could not really understand how it could be here, almost a thousand yards below where the surface now lay. The theory and what lay before his eyes, did not quite add up for Albie. It was one of the many quandaries surrounding the wonders of geology that really did keep him awake at night – he really was a bit of a nerd, and knew it.

Two minutes rest, and then he was up again sketching and measuring. Should take four or five minutes he thought Rush down the face, another 15 minutes, an hour to walk out, a quick shower and home. Be in bed for two. Right enough, five minutes later he snapped his book shut, looped an elastic band firmly around it, and put the book into the top pocket of his so very orange pit overalls. Time to go, he said aloud, marvelling at how strange his voice sounded in the absolute silence that surrounded him.

Albie swept the roadway with the light from his cap lamp one last time to be sure he hadn't missed anything, and turned back to the face to begin his long slog back to pit bottom. Just as he ducked under the girder supporting the face entrance, his mind’s eye replayed what his cap lamp had shown, and he stopped dead. Oh shit no, not another one! Turning back again, he walked over to the far side of the roadway and knelt down to look at the coal seam as it met the side of the roadway. Sure enough there was a stone intrusion in the coal angling downward from the side of the road to the floor. It was only about ten inches at its widest, but that was enough to give warning of yet another washout to come.

Bollocks, Albie said. Another report he'd need to make first thing in the morning rather than spend a few extra hours in bed. The last washout was sweeping left to right, was this one going to sweep its way down the coal face in the opposite direction, or would in join up with the existing one? If the latter was true, then almost a quarter of the coal face could be taken up by this bloody hard sandstone. That would really cause problems, and the mine had enough problems as it was without it. Oh well, he was just a surveyor, come wannabe geologist, so he’d report his findings, and let his betters worry about what was to come.

Taking out his hammer, he began to chip away at the surrounding coal to expose as much of the intrusion as he could to get an idea of its bearing across the face, and a better idea of what it was made of. After ten minutes of hacking away, he could make out that the new intrusion angled down the coal face at about forty degrees and was almost exactly the same composition as the existing washout fill. Albie concluded that this was almost certainly an extension of the existing washout that was just fifty chocks away. He sat back on his haunches to ponder the situation before him, casting his minds eye back millions of years, trying to picture the river formation that would account for what he believed would be revealed once the coal was striped away. He could see the path of the meandering river, some thirty yards across he estimated, flowing through the already silt covered vegetation that would eventually form this five foot coal seam. He saw the path it would take relative to his sitting form, reviewing and adjusting his previous mappings to fit what he now believed. Two tributaries he thought. Merging here, or at least a few hundred yards from where I'm sat.

Satisfied with his take on the situation he stood, and once more readied himself for the long slog back out to pit bottom. That was when he saw it. It was only a glimpse, but enough to make him snap his head around to the side to look. Modern mine roadways are made up of pairs of curved steel girders that when joined together form a semi circle, each pair are also joined to their neighbour, a yard apart, by steel struts, and together they form the tunnel, or roadway as it’s called. The gaps between the arches are filled with wooden boards to stop debris falling through. It was to these wooden boards that Albie's attention was drawn, or at least to the lack of them – two boards were missing between the last pair of roadway arches, next to where he had been stood only a moment earlier.

What the hell, he said, quickly followed by, Please God no, don't do this so me. I'll be here all bloody night trying to draw this up. But as he stepped forward his curiosity grew, pushing away his concern over a long shift. This is no normal washout he thought, What have I found?

He knelt, and taking his cap lamp from his helmet, shone the light through the gap in the wooden boards. The stone he saw was certainly not the same as the dull grey sandstone of the washout. This was a much darker colour, black almost, and close to coal in colour, and probably why he hadn't noticed it earlier. But it did differ from the coal seam, certainly close up it was nothing like coal. For starters, it didn't gleam like coal, didn't have the myriad of fractures that reflected light. It was dull black to look at, and somehow seemed almost metallic. Reaching through the boards, Albie ran his hands over the surface. Shock and panic took over his emotions as he felt the surface. Gone were the wonder and geological aspirations, simply replaced by What the hell is this? The surface was covered in coal dust, but underneath it was smooth, smooth with a regular pattern of grooves, almost like brickwork. What the hell is this? he repeated, but this time aloud. Man made was the thought that flashed through his mind, quickly replaced by, Well at least definitely not natural. His panic reached near fatal proportions, and he sat back down onto the floor, staring at the gap in the boards that threatened to change all he knew about the world. His heart hammered in his chest and his mind raced. Then he thought Some prick has put a sheet of steel behind the boards. It made him feel a little better for a second or two, but that was all – he knew it wasn’t that simple, knew that what his fingers had felt could not be explained so easily. Slowly, very slowly, he leaned forward again, took out his hammer and began to leaver out the adjacent wooden boards. Let’s see what we’ve got he thought, but all the while praying that Ken would return and tell him to bugger off home.

Ten minutes and six boards later, Albie had striped a section between the first two arches revealing a gap almost four feet high. He had long since concluded that there was no way that this was natural, and no way was it something just put there by one of the workmen. This was solid and smooth, but not metal as he had first thought. It was masonry of some kind; the indentations were where the various segments fitted together, like brickwork only far more intricate, far more precise and meticulous. Now he could see it, there was no doubt it was a wall of some kind, but a wall the likes of which he had never seen before, a wall a thousand yards below the surface. God, he wished he knew what was taking Ken so long on his rounds. He wanted, no he needed someone here now to see this, if only to tell him he wasn’t going bloody insane. How the hell could there be old workings here? He didn’t even have to picture the mine plan, the whole area was virgin, no workings at all. To the south the area was riddled with old workings, at least in the Nine Foot seam, but even there, the Five Foot was untouched – it was far too deep for the old drift mine to get at. Out here in the north, nothing was shown on the plans at all. So how the hell was he sitting staring at a stone wall that was at least four miles from the nearest know mine workings. On top of that, all the old workings Albie had ever seen, were wooden props and beams, not bloody brick walls. The access drifts might have some brick to reinforce them