by Steve Toase

Jamie found the book in our second year at art school. I remember this because he never made it to the third.

We were living in a shared house in the center of town, the type of place where everyone felt sleepy when the gas stove was turned on, and the windows had a constant film of condensation apart from winter when the condensation turned to ice. My parents paid the rent so at least we had the place to ourselves.

College was a half-hour bus ride and we both did most of our work at home, either in our neighboring rooms, or in the shared living room. Lack of space was the reason Jamie found the book. Lack of space was the reason Jamie never finished his degree.

The house was haunted but only by the spectres Jamie carried behind his eyes. I never asked what happened before we met that first morning in the studio at the college, but I knew that everything he did was trying to give the ghosts a new home in canvas and chalk and oils, but they never left him. No matter what damage he carried, he was kind and gentle, and if he was quiet sometimes, he was always companionable. He was also very fucking talented.

By the time we were living together, I’d discovered photography, and Jamie became one of my main models. He always joked that I was trying to capture his soul. Nothing I shot was as soulful as what he could conjure from a few lines on a piece of old canvas. I use the word conjure intentionally, because there was magic in the way he saw the world. The problem was, there are different types of magic, and the one that took hold of him was not beautiful or delicate or transformative, but consuming and cancerous and ravenous.

“I’m going to go up there,” he said one evening as we sat in the front room, sharing a bottle of cheap sherry and the last of a spliff made from the last of the spliffs we’d salvaged from the ashtray. It took me a moment to realize he’d spoken and a moment longer to realize he’d spoken to me.

“Going up where?” I said, the candlelight in the room blurred his face. Or maybe it was the sherry. Everything back then feels like soft focus.

“Up into the attic. I reckon it’s big enough to use to paint in. Maybe even set up as a studio.”

“Reclaim the front room?” I said, passing him the last of the joint. He shook his head and I took the last few drags, stopping when I tasted the charring of cardboard.

I’m not sure how long he was gone. Maybe thirty minutes. Maybe three hours. I was ignoring time because everything seemed to last too long back then. When you’re a student there’s always too much time.

He reappeared covered in dust, carrying an old cardboard box.

“Any joy?” I said.

“The floor’s not boarded out, and the roof is a bit low. But I found these books.”

He put it down in the middle of the room, sliding his hands out from underneath.

“Have you looked inside yet?”

“I thought you’d want first dibs.”

The first thing I unpacked after we moved into the house was my collection of books and he respected my addiction to cheap paperbacks. I sat down on the floor and opened the top, lifting them out one at a time.

“Anything interesting?” He said. I shook my head.

“Just seem to be old notebooks of some kind.”

“No 1970s insect horror then?” I laughed.

“Maybe lurking below the pages,” I said, then stood up, balancing myself against the back of the sofa. “I’m off to bed.”

He nodded and I left him alone as I walked unsteadily up to my room. I wish I’d looked at the books more closely. I wish I’d taken all of the books outside and chucked them in the bin. I wish so many things, but we are where we are now, transformed by what he found.

The next morning, I came down the stairs and found all the books back in the box beside the door, ready to go to the charity shop. All the books except one. A grubby notebook about the size of a paperback, the handwritten title obscured by black smears of the fingerprints. When Jamie came downstairs for breakfast I asked him about it. He sat on the sofa, legs and hands pulled up into that huge jumper he always wore.

“I want to try something new. I want to experiment.”

That was what college was about in the nineties. Trying something new. Experimenting. People experimented with alcohol, drugs, sexuality, gender, cross dressing. Polygamy. Sometimes the experiment lasted a night, sometimes a lifetime.

“Experiment with what?” I said.

“With charcoal.”

Jamie had never found his medium, his way of expressing himself. Sure, he’d tried painting and collage and sculpture, and believe me, he was talented at all of them. Far more talented than I could ever aspire to be. With each one he always felt something was missing. You could see it in his eyes when he started a new project, a yearning he never showed for another person, and then the light dying in his eyes as he failed to make it work how he wanted. But the work was good, and there were a lot of jealous words whispered behind his back as he trashed another canvas some of the other students would have sold their mothers to produce.

“Is it something in that book?” I asked.

He nodded.

“An ex student, I think. I don’t know. I just read it and everything clicked.”

“Is it a work diary?”

Jamie shook his head.

“It’s like an instruction book, or a story, or a series of steps. I can’t quite remember now. I was reading it late.” I noticed his hands were smudged in black. “It’s called The Charcoal Sovereign.”

“Can I look?” I said.

That was the first time I saw him angry, like the ghosts behind his eyes had woken up.

“I found it,” he said. “At least for now, I don’t want anyone reading it.”

And I never questioned him, and I never looked at the book until later.

That sounds like I had some kind of opportunity. After that first morning, the book disappeared into Jamie’s room. I wouldn’t see it again until the end.

Over the next couple of weeks we didn’t see much of each other. Not unusual in itself. We often kept different hours when we buried ourselves in projects. Jamie was a night owl, his waking hours shifting around the clock with his latest obsession. I didn’t worry. I didn’t worry until I started seeing the black smudges around the house.

The marks were clearly fingerprints. I didn’t need to be a crime scene investigator to know they were Jamie’s. No one else lived with us. There was just me and Jamie and the black marks.

At first they were in obvious places. Places you would expect someone working with charcoal to leave fingerprints. Light switches. Bannisters. Door handles. Over time they increased in density. An archaeology of activity from someone I barely saw. I had my stuff going on and he had his. Then the charcoal marks began to appear on the walls.

To begin with they were just smudges, the type that might be caused by brushing against the wallpaper, and truth be told the wallpaper in that house couldn’t be any worse than it was (red velvet flock paisley, with a bad case of mildew over the years), but then they began to spread.

The same day I noticed the change in the marks around the house was the same day I noticed the vast number of drawing charcoal packets in the bin. That didn’t concern me. The new decoration did.

Like all students we put up posters to try and hide the dubious taste of whoever lived in the house before. The swirls of carbon did not differentiate between the two. Sweeping curves covering both artwork and wall, some high enough to suggest he’d used a chair to reach up.

There was no logic to it, no attempt to form a coherent message or design. Just an attempt to obscure and deface.

I was in the studio at the college that day and kept the anger inside until I went home. There was no way I could take it out on anyone else, so I buried myself in my work until the sun faded outside and I knew he would be out of bed.

When I got home, I had a bath, got changed and knocked on his room.

“What?” He said, opening the door a crack. From inside came the smell of burning and dust and too much sweat. There was barely any light, even when he moved out of the way.

“How’s the project going?” I asked. In the past getting him to talk about his work was always the best way of breaking down his shyness. Even though I was angry, I still played by those rules.

“I’ve not discovered what I need to yet. The instructions are there. The guidance. Some of the language is old. Hard to find within myself. And the charcoal. The charcoal isn’t right, and I don’t have the nerve to complete the stages. To do what needs doing.”

“And what needs doing?”

“The Charcoal Sovereign will tell me when the time is right. But only when the time is right. Too early and I will not be ready to ascend.”

The black marks were across his face and through his hair. I noticed small marks like hot rock burns on his cheeks.

The longer we stood talking, the more intense the scent of burning from his room became. Although we had a kitchen to share, I knew Jamie had bought himself a portable stove so he didn’t have to leave the room when he was obsessed with his latest project.

“Your dinner is catching fire,” I said, nodding toward the room behind him.

“Not catching fire. Just smoldering. That’s what you’ve got to let it do. Smolder. If it catches fire, I need to start again. First commandment of the Sovereign. Let the world smolder and find me in the ashes.”

I tried to latch onto something from him, to fasten my anger to something he said or did, but he was always so unassuming. Disarming. Distracted. His words sounded so off, but he was serious. So, so serious.

“The front room and the hallway. The dirt through the house. You need to clear them up. You can’t leave them like that.”

“But they’re waymarkers for when the Sovereign comes to hand over their crown. When I have done what needs doing. When I can take my place in the throne room.”

“I don’t care if Queen Elizabeth herself has agreed to come and see it. We can’t live like this. And if my parents visit, we’ll be homeless.”

Then Jamie grinned. I’m not saying he never smiled. Of course he did. When he smiled though, it was a shy smile, like he was allowing himself a little pleasure from the darkness he carried inside, but this? This was a vast thing, as if the skin and bones of his face could barely contain the expression. Like he might need to dislocate his jaw to let out the emotion.

“The Lords of the Land will all bow to the Charcoal Sovereign when even the soil burns as they char the world before them.”

You would think that was a red flag, but if you do, you’ve never spent time around Art College. At the time it just felt like more arrogance. Look, I loved Art College. The first year, before Jamie found the notebook, but I know full well what we were like. We were trying to justify why we could experiment with the world, and the college gave us the tools to do that.

One of the tools was The Artistic Statement, a way of explaining to anyone who would listen the reason why you had stapled three Barbie dolls together, or why you were deconstructing the bread aisle of the local supermarket. So, when Jamie started talking about a Charcoal Sovereign who would burn the world, I had no reason to question him. What followed showed how naive I was.

Until that week, I didn’t know it was possible to get into our backyard. Until that week, it was just a space visible out of the kitchen window, full of weeds and a type of green slime that clung to the paving slabs. Those that weren’t covered in broken furniture. The gate at the back never opened and the door from the cellar was jammed shut. Somehow, Jamie got one of them open.

The first fire he built was small. I don’t know where he got the wood. Or the soil he covered over the top. It smelt sweet as it burned. Fragrant. The burn was already underway when I got back from college that day. I’d started working there to get away from the scent of charcoal through the house. He was standing by the sink. I walked over and stood beside him.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to have fires,” I said.

“It’s not a fire. It’s a clamp. Some people make it in metal kilns. But that’s no good for what I want. It needs to be purer.”

“Can you not just buy it, or get it from college? They have plenty there.”

“I told you,” he said, through gritted teeth. I took a step back. “It needs to be pure. Regal. Good enough for royalty. It can’t be substandard. I need to be the best for what I’m working on.”

“Can I see what you’re working on?”

“No,” he said, and went back to ignoring me.

When I went to make myself a drink, he’d moved from the kitchen to go outside and crouch by the clamp kiln, occasionally moving the turf to look inside at the wood glittering and glowing, but never quite burning. I sort of understood. Fires could be mesmerising, but this was something else. This was more than a casual interest. He was burning himself away by staring into the flames.

I only noticed the sketch on the kitchen table by chance. I didn’t need to go searching for it. He’d left the paper out in full sight. I don’t think that was intentional, but he’d become so distracted by what was going on in the heat of the clamp kiln that he paid little attention to anything else. Forgotten I might see.

The drawing was rough, broad strokes, but was easy to recognize as a figure. Their limbs were stretched, a vast tattered cloak swirling around them. Where the hair should be, several points rose up into the air curling in on each other, and where you would expect a face was nothing but the scratch of charcoal swirled around and around over and over. At first, I wondered if they were marks of obliteration. An attempt to hide what was going on or mistakes too far gone to be corrected. The more I looked, the more I realized they were part of the original design.

I don’t think he ever knew I’d look at the drawing, but when I got up in the morning, the paper was gone and the pile of turf and wood outside had been torn apart and stretched. I hoped he found what he was looking for among the burnt branches. I hoped it would let him make the art he wanted to. My hope was misplaced.

The whole house reeked of charcoal. Every night he built a clamp kiln anew in the yard and then dragged it apart in the morning, during the day making more drawings that he discarded in disgust. The house was coated in them, like leaf litter, piled up on the tables and worktops and sofa. Every one he rejected and his anger burned at a volume I could hear, even through my locked bedroom door.

I don’t know where he got the first bones. I think he just went to the local butcher and told them he had a dog. When he built the next clamp kiln the smoke was scented with cooking beef as the last of the meat was burned off. He kept the kilns together for longer before he finally clawed them apart, picking up the blackened bone and disappearing into his room. I didn’t need to see him working to know that the cremation was not suitable for his purposes.

Over the next month he tried smaller and smaller bones, pork, chicken and lamb stinking out the house, and always the ever-present reek of charcoal.

You might ask why I never left. I asked myself the same thing. Fooled myself that it was to keep an eye on him. Look out for him. That was never the reason. I knew I couldn’t protect him from himself. If I’m truthful, I had nowhere else to go.

• • •

When I woke on that particular Wednesday the house was filled with the reek of burnt flesh. At first I thought he’d set another fire inside the house. I got up, got dressed and walked out onto the hallway expecting the worst. His bedroom door was slightly open, and the reek of burnt meat was coming from inside. I could hear him sobbing, and though I’m still not sure it was the best idea, I went inside.

Jamie sat in front of his easel cross-legged, arms resting on his knees. All the flesh and nails from the ends of his fingers had been burned off, just above where the tendons held the smallest finger bones in place. The skin of his hands was blistered and burnt, the tips of his fingers blackened to charcoal. None of this was what took my breath. That was the art on the easel. It was astonishing. Swirls of charcoal created from his own baked bone, a shadowed figure emerging from a dense mist, reaching out to grab the viewer.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Is it worth the sacrifice?” I said, pointing out the burns covering his skin.

“There are many hands in the world, but there’s only one of these. I am the only person who can draw the world as it truly is.”

I sat down on his bed and looked from the artwork to him and back again. Only then did I see that old dirty notebook lying on his duvet. Knowing he was too injured to stop me, I picked up the book and started to read.

The Charcoal Sovereign was short and when I reached the end I read through it again, pausing to make sure I understood the handwritten notes within in a way Jamie never could.

The Artist of the Burnt Bone was the herald for the Charcoal Sovereign, but not the sovereign themself. Jamie was right that his artworks would herald the changing of the world, that his talent was the catalyst that would make the world glitter with black dust and embers. But he was not the Sovereign. That was never his role in the changes to come.

• • •

Once I sold the first two artworks, I soundproofed the cellar, so my court artist, my dear Jamie, had somewhere to work in silence. Then I used the money from the next three sales to buy the house.

Jamie’s arms are down to the elbows now, the burnt ends of the bone protruding enough for him to still draw. I collect the remnants and wear them as signs of my office. My rank. My status in the coming world.

I don’t know how much longer Jamie will be able to work. Though I’m independently wealthy from selling his art (exclusive agent for a reclusive artist is not an unusual role in the art world), there will come a time when he will not be able to work anymore. I have a plan, a plan laid out long ago and written down in a forgotten smudged notebook. A notebook that only I truly understood.

As with any successful artist, there is no shortage of students wanting to learn from him. The first will be arriving later today. I have already prepared the cellar for them. I am the Charcoal Sovereign. I will introduce their art into the world, I will collect their discarded blackened bones for my crown and vestments, and I will char the whole of existence to glittering dust one willing artist at a time.