Trading on my weaknesses for volumes that hold the allure of alchemy and majic, corpulent Mr Skeeter, the bookseller has promised me a book of exceptional uniqueness. In his shop hung with the heady leathery scents of a thousand dusty volumes and strung with evil vapours of the riverside tannery's that cause him to curse every time one of his patrons leaves the shop door ajar he displays to me a volume with all the panache of a circus ringmaster.

'A book of uncommon curiosity, Mr Drood. Unique I would say.' With a flourish he pulls a wide leather bound tome from his shelves and rests it respectfully on his stained counter.

'But wait,' he petulantly pushes my hand away as I attempt to open the volume. 'The cover, Mr Drood, I believe to be human skin,' With a wink on his sagging face that draws attention to his opaque blind eye he caresses the cover with fingertips stained black as a Moor's by inks leached from the pages of the countless books that reside on his shelves.

'Mr Skeeter, you suffer, like most book sellers from an uncommonly prodigious imagination,' I say brusquely. 'It's calf skin and its condition is poor, the volume has been rebound at some point and exposed to damp. Hence the mottling you attribute to human skin. It is not so.'

Skeeters dissimulation discovered, he attempts to disguise a flicker of displeasure by quickly opening the volume to reveal a handsomely illustrated inner folio, an ancient Zodiac filled with majical signs.

My heart leaps, then I quickly don a mask of disinterest and to double its effect extravagantly draw my fob watch from my pocket, pop its cover and check the time. I sigh in the manner of one who supposes his time is better spent elsewhere and suggesting that Skeeter better make the best of the moment for I am nonplussed by this peculiarity.

'Mr Skeeter,' a shabbily coated man with slicked back hair calls across the shop. 'Might it be an opportune time to enquire as the province of this codex?'

I sigh again. 'Go on, Mr Skeeter. My morning is already lost, see to your client.'

Skeeter looks at me and then openly at the volume as if he suspects I might sweep it away like a thief and scuttle off into indistinctly dreary London morning. 'Mr Skeeter, your customer?' I say.

A prattling Skeeter disappears into his labyrinthine shop of tunnels of ancient sunlight and ghostly trails of shifting motes. I take stock of my situation. A few disreputable collectors lurk around the decrepit shelves, none appear to be giving me any attention. They are men in the mould of Skeeter, given to furtively withdrawing to dark corners to bargain on prices with curses and cries of outrage before setting on a figure with a surreptitious hand shake and leaving with volumes swaddled tight in their arms like a stolen babies. I check again. No one is looking in my direction.

Quickly I rifle through the pages, a collected of illuminated manuscripts with detailed descriptions in Latin. Wonderfully fine drawings full of odd devices shown in exhilarant colours; bizarre apocathary jars, crowned firebirds, mermen in glass display cases, three legged lambs. A joyous cacophony of gold flecked smiling suns and grinning pockmarked moons flicker past, all accompanied by long lists of ingredients in tight gothic scripts . Around the edges are handwritten notes, latter additions in spidery writing; alternately in Greek, German and Arabic. There is no doubt this is an alchemist's work with his own corrections and annotations. The date, no later than say, 1600. But who's book? Flamel, Agrippa, Paracelsus even? Mr Skeeter has indeed picked out a jewel amongst the detritus of the moribund pamphlets that can be found scattered across the dealers of London.

Skeeter bounces up from behind his counter like Punch, his ruddy nose with a globulus drip on it which he wipes away with the sleeve of his jacket. 'The British Museum has expressed interest, a strong interest, their representative comes to visit me this afternoon. The museum,' he states loudly to a now empty shop, 'is a valued customer of mine. They agree with my determination as to its rarity, Mr Drood.' He adds in determination to show his erudition on the matter. Then he lowers his voice and leans furtively over the pockmarked counter. 'I will have to defer to them of course should they wish to purchase it.'

'Will it be with or without the human skin covering, Mr Skeeter?' I prod gently.

We settle on two guineas, excessive but with an assurance that any future curios falling into his hands be shown to me as a preferred customer.

I rush from the shop with my prize bound in Skeeters cheap wax brown paper and hail a passing hansom cab and urge the driver home with all possible haste. The cab drops me outside, the driver whips his horse and clatters off. My house, a red bricked three story mansion sits well back from the road under a sky as grey as old linen. Beyond a line of overwrought yew trees, it revels in its own decrepitude of peeling paint and rotting wooden shutters that drop badly on their hinges. I keep it as such to discourage unwanted callers.

In my laboratory at the top of the house I examine the volume more carefully. It is not one volume but a collection of manuscripts, a codex. And as I examine it further it transpires not all dating from around 1500 but some evidently copied from much earlier esoteric works. Many of the originals will have been destroyed due to their heretical nature, so this is a rare and valuable find. I'm thrilled to discover the initials ST on the inner folio of the cover. I now feel sure that the volume did not belong to Paracelsus but his legendary teacher Salomon Trismosin. I now suspect Mr Skeeter has acquired the volume by nefarious means for even he could not have failed to observe the initials and ascertain its true value. I resolve to keep my purchase secret.

I'm delighted to find a rare paper within the mysterious work, printed on vellum it is taken from the Liber Vaccae, the Books of Cows and contains the oblique instructions on how to create the mystical homunculus, that manlike creature whose creation is said to aid the Alchemists inquiries into the Dark Arts. But talk of Dark Arts and Alchemy are fanciful old bedfellows. We live in enlightened times and are men of science. We are the new Victorian renaissance men. Men who have created the steam engine, iron bridges, the new-fangled electric flux and proposed the theory of the origin of our species. None the less I am transfixed at the thought of attempting to create this strange creature and despite the sternest of warnings at attempting the replication in the text I resolve to undertake it.

The materials I gather with care. Being somewhat trained in the chemical sciences I manage to procure what I require without too many problems-a cows uterus, a sun stone, a flask of freshly killed animal blood, a philtre of sulphur green tutia and a large glass vessel.

At midnight in my attic workshop, under the vapid light of a full moon I mix together all the ingredients singing the incantations detailed in the scripts as best as my rusty Latin will allow. Keeping the flask warm by applying a low flame I add the last ingredient, the magicians semen. My own. Then I wrap the container it in the skin of a beheaded goat and leave it where the sun will fall upon it for the specified three days.

It's with considerable trepidation that I unwrap the swaddled flask three day later. And I barely suppress a gasp, for within the embryotic suspension a ghostly figure trapped in an amber sack rotates slowly in the lingering sunlight. I cannot contain my excitement and attend to my task with added vigour. The gestation period is six weeks, each night I add fresh blood to the mixture and repeat the incantations and each day I observe the creature taking a more substantive form.

And then after six weeks it moves! The tiny dolls arm flex and the spindly legs kick jerkily in their suspension. The skin chest, white as candle wax, heaves and the body sucks in its life sustaining fluid. In the following two days it grows rapidly. Digits form on its tiny hands, I can make out the elvish features forming on its face under a flume of black hair that graces its minute head, floating like thin seaweed in the suspension.

Spilled out of the jar, gasping like a fish pulled from water my creation is born into a world of huge bubbling flasks, books as large as houses, flies that could knock him down if they flew into him.

Its sex is indeterminate, he appears to have no recognisable organs, or I should say no organs at all. On examination his tongue appears fully formed but he appears mute which is contrary to the pamphlet from which I have created him for it assures me from birth he should be able to converse at ease with his creator. But none the less he is a joy, a delight. With his perfectly formed body, delicate white hands and tussle of hair fine as a sable paintbrush he is a wonder to behold.

During the following days while I work he takes to dodging round the table laughing with his soundless voice, his face alive with the thrill of the new. Late into the night I read him my books which I bring up from my library downstairs and helpfully turn the pages for him as he struggles with the weight of the paper.

Over time he grows, fed on fresh cows blood mixed with milk. He grows until his head reaches my knee and I surmise he will grow no more. He shows no sign of wanting to speak and only ever communicates to me in signs or through the precise notes he makes in his fine handwriting on the edges of the pages of the books we study together.

He lives in a large glass flask into which I drop him every night, onto a bed of soft cotton with a dose of blood and milk which sustains him. Leaving him to his own devices I turn the gas lamps down before retiring to my own room. In the morning as the shafts of light creep across the room I drop a string through the bottle neck and he scrambles up and we commence our daily labours.

I name him Johan, he is my son, my progeny and is turning out to be brilliant student apart from his speech difficulties. I take care to keep my creation secret. Mrs McKee, the Housekeeper is prohibited for entering my attic rooms and leaves my food at the top of the stairs with a brisk knock on the door and a, 'Your food is here Mr Drood, come quickly for it will go cold out here.'

Despite his inability to speak Johan is furiously bright, a brilliant reader and writer who excels at foreign languages and adeptness in practice of the Dark Arts. I open an account with Mr Skeeter who seems to have sourced a line in books of similar ilk to that which created Johan. And under Johan's written instruction he seeks out even more archine volumes from his dealers, the origin of which we never discuss. I appear to have entered into a devils agreement with the scoundrel but as long as he finds me what Johan asks for I ask no questions.

For two years Johan and I work ferociously hard together. I undertake the experiments, Johan deciphers the texts. Under our patronage Mr Skeeters shop flourishes, he takes on an educated young lady who welcomes customers into his shop and makes them tea while he, like an puffed up beetle scuttles to and fro fawning and petting his visitors. He even puts it about that Her Majesty shops there.

I buy Johan a suit, made under my commission by an expert doll maker. It is a fine set of clothing. Johan seems so pleased to be out of the coarse little breaches and cotton shirt that he had made from the rough cotton I supplied to him when he was born. He struts up and down on my table in his new attire beaming broadly in his new frock coat, tipping his hat to imaginary passer-bys. I clap my hands and laugh as he does a little sailors jig to show his appreciation of my purchase.

Our work continues. Johan translates the newly acquired codex's. Together amongst the bubbling flasks and noxious coloured fumes that belch from our test tubes we practice the Majical arts. A journey of strange discoveries, encounters with spirits, creation of magical flux's and abnormal things besides that I dare not record here. Johan has moved, from his flask to a majestic dolls house of four rooms I've had made for him. A kitchen, a lounge, a library of miniature books and a bedroom with a bed with a real sprung mattress. Every evening as I retire I close the front and lock it before lowering the gaslights and retiring myself.

My fame grows, my translations though Johan of ancient works earns me plaudits and numerous speaking engagements. I'm enrolled into the Royal Society. Still Johan and I work on late into the night, I retiring to my bedroom, him to his little house in the attic. About town I'm feted, a modern day magi, a sorcerer of darkest thoughts, an illusionist of the highest calibre, a great man of science. The ladies find me a tease. My stories of the magical arts, of raising dead men and the containment of genies in jars make them laugh and wonder that I'm not married. And while I relate my tales they flash their eyes unashamedly at me from behind their fans. If only they knew the truth of it.

In the spring of this year Johan seems to take a turn for the worse. I often catch him, instead of working, standing there looking though the circular window of the attic down onto the bustling street below. He has become lethargic and sometimes seems slow witted. I'm worried he has a malaise of some description and is regressing in some way. To enliven him I buy him new suits, now a neat row of them hang in his little cupboard in his dolls house. But to no avail. I wonder if small things live less long. I consider making him another Homunculus but dismiss the idea, he is my one and only and to make another would only diminish him further I'm sure.

This summer London grows hot, society types retire to their country homes, the sounds of London are smothered by the dry heat. The ferrymen of the river look like ghostly stygian figures as they drift across the water in the heat haze. The attic becomes unbearably hot and I countenance Johans entreaties to relocate our workshop to the cool of the basement. Presently the dissolute inhabitants of the city are gripped in a strange wasting illness that confines them to their beds for weeks on end. Mrs McKee falls sick and I can find no help in a city moribund in the searing sunlight.

I too soon take ill and am confined to the small attic bedroom at the end of the laboratory. The heat is untenable but soon I find I'm too weak even to get to the door of my room to make it downstairs to find some cooling respite from the suffocating heat.

But Johan is there for me. My lovely Johan, bringing bowls of soup so heavy that he struggles to lift them and bottles of cooling milk to reduce my fevers. How I would survive without him I do not know. He carefully administers small doses of laudanum from my medical chest to ease the pain and special potions he has made drawn from our alchemic volumes.

My illness worsens, my body is gripped by strange tremors and a delirium that means I'm unable to now even to sit up in bed. In my weakened state the blankets feel strange and course to my skin, the room seems to shrink and grow about me. I have wild dreams of floating on the sea then slowly drowning in my own bodily fluids. I'm convinced I'm dying. In the times of lucidity I always find a bowl of soup placed carefully by my bedside by the diligent Johan, which I lift, heavy in my weakened arms and drink then fall asleep. I'm eternally grateful to him.

For weeks the world seems to recede from view, I do not see Johan but always the soup is there for me. Occasionally I awake to banging of hammers and the grind of saws and conclude the neighbours are undertaking building works as the air is thick with the smell of fresh paint and sawdust. Then I drift and awake to the soft scent of fresh cotton where Johan has managed to change my sheets.

Then I'm awake. Lucid but weak I sit up in bed and call Johan's name. I feel able to move my legs and stand unsteadily by my bed. I call again for Johan's assistance. For a moment I'm confused for in my clumsiness I have kicked over the bowl by my bed and now the carpet is stained a rich red, the smell of warm blood and stale milk hit my lungs and makes me retch. Suddenly the walls of my room tremble and shake as if London has been gripped by an earthquake. In my panic I find myself back in bed clutching my bed sheets to my chin. The far wall falls away and there is Johan's huge face peering at me. Is this a delirium? Has some form of madness gripped me?

Fingers as large as my arms pull the bedcovers from my trembling hands. I'm swept into a palm that engulfs my upper body so tightly I cannot move. Far above, Johan's impassive face looks down at me. The attic room swings about me, suddenly I'm falling. My arms flailing I land in a thick sea of cotton. Knee deep in the yielding cloth I stagger up to a glass wall, it's cold to the touch and the room beyond has taken on the strange greenness of an aquarium. There stands Johan, Johan the giant. He looks so much like me I'm astounded. He truly is the son after the father. He has grown, I have shrunk.

About the room I see with horror an assortment of various sized boxes, each a differing sized facsimile of my bedroom, within each a bed of ever decreasing size, my curtains, the carpets, each expertly made and matched to my own room.

At the door of the attic Johan throws on his frock coat and hat. My frock coat and my hat, which he tilts at me and I'm astounded to hear him talk for the first time, in exact timbre and intonation of my own voice. 'Good evening Johan. I'm going out. I have a society dinner to attend. You must know my time is in much demand. I'll be back later tonight so drink your warm blood and milk, we will be busy tomorrow.'

He turns the gas light down and I'm plunged into darkness.

'Johan, Johan,' I cry for I'm now the little fool in the jar. I beat plaintively against the glass with my paltry palms. 'My son, please.......'