by Matt Carter
“You can tell when he was replaced?”
I didn’t want to end up arguing more of the obvious, not when the obvious was so awful, so I just said, “You tell me,” and read to him. “21st August, 1851: Edgar claims to be drunk on his own breath despite the caverns of air beneath us where none will venture, for fear of another collapse. Others are joining in his delusion. There is no sound of rescue, yet I remain confident in the success of our escape tunnel. This paper will not be my last will, and when you wish to know how these long days have been for me, my darling, I will be the one to place the answer in your hands.”
It went on that way for several pages, all more or less the same, divided into entry breaks with sequential dates, until the gap between the third and the sixth. I pointed this out in case the numbers weren’t enough.
“It stops for two days and then picks right back up again, still in the mine.”
“What, like he had something better to do there?”
“Something like that.”
“What if they were just trying to conserve the lanterns?” Ben suggested.
“Then it would be unlikely for the next entry to mention one of the other miners regressing to shadow puppet making and babbling about all the shapes his older brother had taught him to make, which it does. But it’s not just the time that’s strange.”
I reread the next few pages to myself, trying to pin down what was wrong with them.
“Afterward, he’s just repeating himself.” That wasn’t good enough. That was most of what he’d been doing from the beginning. I tried again. “He hardly mentions any symptoms from being trapped in the mine anymore after the gap, at least not as if he’s worried about them. The turns of phrase are the same, but the entries are twenty percent shorter on average, he mentions his wife and daughter less than half as often, and when he does, he only uses the same terms of endearment from earlier in the book.”
Ben was on his feet, leaning on the back of my chair and squinting over my shoulder. As usual, his shape was much clearer in my awareness than its level of complexity and detail should have made it.
I tried to use the space it filled in to help me think of something more to say if he proposed that Ambrose was just dehydrated or oxygen deprived or desperate. This didn’t turn out to be necessary.
“He writes like he thinks he’s expected to,” Ben analyzed, less precisely, but somehow more accurately than I’d been able to. “It reads like a boring school assignment.”
“Yes!”
“Okay,” said Ben, “that’s creepy, but it doesn’t get us any closer to the mine.”
I pulled myself away from the Splinter entries and finally scrolled further back into the human ones.
“Right. Does anything there look like ‘twin peaks of twin devils’ bulge?’ ” I asked, rereading to double-check the miner’s terminology.
Ben turned back to scan the sheets of symbols and shadings. “Well, if ‘devils’ bulges’ are anything like Devil’s Elbow, he probably means outward curving formations of rock that make them hard to climb. These two look pretty likely, but you’d be able to see them from almost anywhere near Prospero.”
“He says he can see them beyond the mine on his way out from town.”
Ben put more minus marks next to the two sites out farther than the two highest tree-covered outcroppings. “Anything else?”
I was sure there had been one more. “He also mentions ‘four miles’ headway into the sun at morning,’” I read further back.
“Okay . . .” Ben leaned closer over the sheets. “Relative to the town, the main forested area is north by northeast.” He put another double minus next to the one site to the west of the interstate. “So, assuming the town hasn’t gotten smaller, he lived somewhere inside it; he took the straightest possible path, walking within forty-five degrees of due east; didn’t go farther than the ‘devils’ bulges,’ and ‘four miles’ in old-timey prospector speak means at least ‘three to four miles’ . . .” He put single minuses next to the four northernmost sites, leaving six unmarked.
“It’s a start.”
12.
A Miracle Wouldn’t Be So Bad Right About Now
Ben
A few weeks before, I’d have found a hike in the forests around Prospero something to get excited about. Peaceful even. When you get past the city limits, you’ve nothing but redwood trees as far as the eyes can see, trees that stretch so high into the sky they blot out the sun in some places. The air is clean and crisp and smells richly of pine, and every clearing where the sun shines through looks like it belongs in a nature club calendar.
That was before I knew about Prospero.
Knowing the horrors this town hid underneath its surface, even a day hike in the woods had me on edge. Every snap, every birdcall in the distance would put me on the alert. Every shadow seemed to hide a monster, and even the trees seemed wrong, like the light didn’t fall through them correctly, or they leaned just slightly in the same direction.
The first of the bigger scares came when we were investigating the second mine site and were nearly knocked over by a group of a dozen bicyclists rocketing through a forest trail. I wasn’t surprised when Kevin Brundle skidded to a stop, apologizing for almost running us over, and recommended some better hiking trails than the one we were on. I politely nodded, saying I’d consider his suggestions, then sent him back on his way.
That guy was really beginning to annoy me.
In her own odd way, Mina tried to be reassuring, saying there wasn’t much to be afraid of, that most Creature Splinters only really came out at night because they had a hard time with the light.
It didn’t help.
The only thing that really helped was knowing that if things got bad, rescue wouldn’t be too far away. Billy had an evening shift and no Twist Endings practice, so he’d spent the better half of the morning driving us up the various access roads that would get us closest to the mine locations. Even though our first two stops yielded disappointing results (one mine was caved in after fifty feet, the second was covered in steel shutters that hadn’t been disturbed since the 1970s), he remained as upbeat as ever, still drumming on the wheel to the radio whenever he wasn’t enlightening us on his own unique philosophy of the world or showing off the ancient revolver he kept in his glove compartment “in case things got hairy, man.” Normally, being in a windowless van with a strange guy who wants to show me his gun would be one of those things I wouldn’t do—with Billy I just took it as part of the experience.
We were on our way to the third mine location, holding on for dear life as the seatbelt-free van jolted back and forth violently with every minor bump in the road, when Billy suddenly swore loudly and slammed on the brakes. The engine groaned and squealed in complaint, and the van stopped with a lurching jolt. I braced myself, catching Mina as she was flung out of her seat. She looked up, annoyed, and walked up toward Billy.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A problem,” he responded. I walked up behind them, looked out the windshield.
It was a problem, all right. A wrought iron gate built across the road with several large “No Trespassing” and “Danger!” signs bolted to it. It wasn’t insurmountable, we could walk around or over it easily, but I got the impression we weren’t entirely welcome.
“This wasn’t on the map,” Mina said.
“A lot of stuff wasn’t on the map,” I said.
“Not that big a problem. If you’re in a hurry, I got some bolt cutters that’d go through that in no time. If you’re not, I got some locksmithing tools in the green satchel in back. They’ll take longer,” Billy said, motioning to the pile of bags and toolboxes that formed a large wall in the back of his van.
“Locksmithing tools?” I asked.
Billy smiled. “Everybody needs a hobby.”
I didn’t argue this point. I did argue when he and Mina started talking about using the bolt-cutters. While it would have been faster, it would also be pretty obvious
that someone had broken in, and we wanted to keep a low profile. On top of that, well . . . I had a bit of a problem with breaking the rules. If I intended to keep up an association with Mina Todd in this battle, I knew I’d have to get past that. Still, old habits . . .
We got out of the van, stretching and trying not to think about what hid behind the trees. Mina looked out of her element, blinking heavily and shielding her eyes from the sun. I reached back into the van, pulled my old, battered “3 of a Kind” baseball cap from my backpack, and tossed it to Mina. She caught it out of the air easily but then looked at it, confused.
“For the sun,” I said.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, staring at the cards in the hat’s design.
“It’s more comfortable than it looks, I swear.”
“Don’t waste your breath, Superman. Jailbait here doesn’t wear hats any more than she knows what ‘3 of a Kind’ really means,” Billy said as he rifled through the back of his van.
Mina huffed, indignant. “I know what it means. Poker, right?”
Billy laughed. “I stand corrected.”
It was hard to keep from laughing with him. “You’ve never played poker?”
“I haven’t played a lot of things,” Mina explained.
“We all keep trying to teach her to live a little, but she’s one stubborn little monster-hunter,” Billy joked.
“I’ve been busy,” she tried to explain.
I was still trying to wrap my head around it. Before my dad died, one of the many things he wanted me to know was all the important card games. Some of the best memories I had were playing poker for peanuts with Mom and him. He’d gotten hats for each of us because we were “3 of a Kind.” For a while at least, we were.
I felt bad for Mina. Dad had always said that a healthy understanding of gambling was a rite of passage into adulthood, and because of her crusade, she’d missed out on it.
I promised myself that if we got even a moment of downtime, I’d teach her the basics. It seemed the only responsible thing to do.
Of course, that was a pretty big if.
Billy went to work on the heavy padlock on the gate with his bag of mismatched, rusty locksmithing tools, humming to himself and occasionally cursing. Mina looked antsy, bobbing around on her feet slightly before reaching into the van and pulling out the compilation map we had made. At its core it was still a copy of the topographical survey map we’d retrieved from the Historical Society. Since then we had traced over it several hiking trail guides, some official, some retrieved online (mostly from sites promoting UFO and monster sightings) as well as making our own notes for things we had discovered. She traced the dirt road we had been on for the past half-hour before adding a jagged hash mark across it and writing the word GATE next to it.
“It’ll take some time for Billy to pick the lock. If we start walking now, we can make it to the next location in about fifteen minutes,” she said firmly, showing me the map.
“How long will it take, you think?” I asked Billy.
He shrugged. “Been a while since I’ve done this. Could be sooner rather than later. If I were a betting man, I’d probably say later.”
“Then let’s get walking,” I said. I grabbed my backpack, checked to make sure the necessary supplies were there (water, snacks, flashlights, first-aid kit), and slung it over my shoulder, pulling my baseball cap low for good measure from the sun. Mina grabbed her massive Bag of Mystery and carefully folded the map into it before joining me in climbing over the gate. Billy said he’d drive up to the trail break as soon as he could and asked us not to Blair Witch it up too much in the meantime.
As we hiked, it struck me that Mina and small talk were two concepts that were very rarely in the same room together. Given how few interests she had outside of this quest, there wasn’t much for us to talk about. She didn’t seem to mind, but I found the silence to be deafening. My mom was always talking, always trying to fill silences, and though I hadn’t entirely adopted that trait from her, I did have trouble with uncomfortable silence. I searched for a safe subject to talk about.
“So, does that thing have a story?” I asked, pointing to the tattered, oft-re-sewn black bag that she carried everywhere.
“It’s a bag. I’ve had it for a long time. It carries everything I need,” she said.
“Like?” I prodded.
“Surveillance equipment. Weapons. Flamethrowers. Some standard purse stuff, too, I think,” she said as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Flamethrowers?” I asked. “As in more than one?”
“Of course. In case one runs out,” she said conversationally. For emphasis, she reached into her bag and tossed me a red, sixteen ounce metal spray bottle. Strangely, the words FIRE EXTINGUISHER were written in bold letters around the top.
I must have looked confused, for she quickly added, “A few years back there was a company that had the brilliant idea of selling aerosol fire extinguishers. They made very poor fire extinguishers, but excellent flamethrowers. I made sure to buy as many cases as I could before the company went bankrupt.”
I tossed the can back, looking at this girl in wonder. “How long have you been doing this?”
Without hesitation, she said, “A while.”
A small trail broke off from the main road up ahead. It wasn’t more than a foot wide and appeared to have been abandoned for some time, but it lined up with what we had found on the map. The heavy tree cover kept the undergrowth light. I still picked up a large stick and used it to beat the path ahead, making sure we didn’t run afoul of any snakes (or worse) hiding in the bushes.
“How much longer do you think you’ll be in town?” she asked out of nowhere.
The question hit me like a ton of bricks. Honestly, it was one I hadn’t put too much thought into recently. We were creeping into August. School would be starting sometime soon, and Mom would have to get back to work, but where and when . . . that was the question.
“I could be here for a few weeks, I could be here for a few hours. It’s hard to know with my mom sometimes,” I admitted.
“You have moved around a lot,” she said. Again, it wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I said. I wanted to say more, I really did, but I still barely knew her, and the way she tended to brush off anything not directly related to stopping the Splinters didn’t make her the easiest person to open up to.
For some reason she trusted me. She was telling me everything she could about what was going on here, and it wasn’t information that she gave away lightly. If she trusted me, it was about time I started putting some trust in her.
“I have moved around a lot,” I said. “I barely remember what it’s like to stay in one place anymore. We move into a place, we put down roots, Mom gets a job, I make friends, and for a while I wind up convincing myself that maybe this time it will be different, and maybe this time it will stick. Then she decides that things aren’t working out, and we start the whole process over again. I love her, so I follow her, and I don’t fight her. I just want some stability. I just want things to be . . . normal. Is that too much to ask for?”
Mina looked at me with something that might have been sympathy, “No. No, it isn’t.”
She was silent for another moment, biting her lip, clearly not wanting to hold back, but unfamiliar with sharing.
“My brain’s never worked quite . . . in the usual way,” she blurted out. The way she said it made it sound like a major confession, so I didn’t tell her I’d already figured that out. “Would you believe me if I told you there was a time when I wasn’t . . . this? When I might have been almost normal?”
I did believe her. Stranger, though, for the first time, I felt that maybe I understood her in a way that went beyond our fight with the Splinters.
Before I could think of a way to tell her, she looked up sharply, scanning the trees.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
I listened. I couldn’t hear anything. “What?”
It was beginning to feel a lot more like Prospero all of a sudden.
We walked through the forest with greater caution. The wind was picking up, almost making it sound as if there were faint voices hiding among the trees, whispering, watching us. The trees were darker, thicker, letting less sun through, many of them bearing jagged cut marks on them as if some wild beast had slashed at them. Out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw a figure running between the trees. By the time I looked, it was gone.
“We’re here,” Mina said as we entered a small clearing.
Once upon a time, this area had been cleared, but nature had done its best to reclaim what was rightfully its own. The remains of an old, wooden cart lay overgrown with ivy off to one side, and a pair of metal mine cart tracks stretched almost into the forest from the hillside. Odd bits of garbage, crushed cans of Coke, and cigarette butts showed that this area still had occasional, if not regular, visitors.
More than any of the other mine locations we’d visited, it held a vague feeling of wrongness. The ground beneath our feet was cracked and felt somewhat unsteady. Every so often we saw a gnarled bush of thick vines, bulging and spreading across the ground in an unnatural fashion. One particularly large bush, vibrantly green and dotted with sickly brown flowers, had a bleached deer antler hanging from it. That feeling of being watched was stronger than ever, and, for a moment, I was sure we had found what we were looking for.
That hope disappeared quickly when we saw the mine entrance.
At least, where the mine entrance should have been.
The rusted metal tracks in the ground led toward the hill, and certainly would have led into the hill itself, had a massive redwood tree not grown right in the way. We could see a few ancient wooden beams that made up the frame of the mine, but they were so compressed by the tree that I doubted even a monster could find its way around.
