“What in Heaven’s name is that thing?” Jenkins stuttered.
“It lived inside the South Chamber.” Jonathan hugged himself. “We woke it.”
“We?” Hickok asked. “Where’s Sullivan?”
“Dead.”
“He won’t be the last, if it keeps smashing them beams.”
The stag pounded the ground. The whole shaft trembled so violently girders broke and crashed on the creature’s sparkling back, its lower body so enlarged that it blocked the whole bottom of the shaft, twisting at impossible angles as its upper half continued to grow upwards.
“What’s going on down there?” Clinton Eadds yelled from the upper level.
Jonathan placed his hands around his mouth. “Stay away from the edge! Get everybody out of the mine!”
“Move it!” Hickok added.
Two tremendous silvery hooves flew forward, skipping like stones across the second landing. Jonathan and Hickok lunged back, while Jenkins rolled on the floor to avoid the beast’s stomps.
“Don’t touch it!”
The stag’s limbs kept growing. The miners scrambled back and ran to the ladder that led to the uppermost level of the mine. Jenkins climbed first, followed by the foreman, and Jonathan took the rear, glancing down at the shining monster, now so stuck between the walls of the shaft that the whole cavern trembled if it did as much as slide.
A piece of debris fell down on the climbing men. The first two moved aside, but the falling rock hit Jonathan on his shoulder. He lost his step and gasped. He closed his eyes, ready to plummet down the monster’s gorge.
Hickok took him by the elbow and pulled him to safety. “I got you, kid.”
Another miner didn’t share Jonathan’s luck, and Jonathan watched the poor man plummet down, screaming and waving his arms in fear. The man turned into liquid metal as soon as it hit the creature’s gleaming muzzle.
The three miners hurried up the ladder and reached the uppermost landing, shivering and out of breath. The gargantuan deer bellowed louder as its quicksilver body filled every empty corner of the shaft, swelling between the girders to the point of deformity. Its antlers scraped the walls as it tried to break free, causing more violent tremors.
Jenkins grabbed the straps of Jonathan’s overalls and pulled him in. “What did you do, Tucker?”
Jonathan’s heart pounded so strongly he felt the beats on his temple. He looked away.
Hickok squeezed Jenkins’ shoulder. “Calm down, Buford. How could the kid now what he’d find? How could’ve any of us imagined that thing even existed?”
Jonathan’s eyes followed the flames that engulfed the silver deer’s skull and antlers, dancing and flickering, swirling with blazing reds and blues. The firelight bounced off the stag’s fur and illuminated the cavern with sparkling circles, like jewels or shooting stars in a dark sky.
What a beautiful nightmare. What a mesmerizing sight to ease one’s guilt when the end is so near.
Hickok grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Snap out of it! Either that thing gives in or the whole mine will.”
Long forgotten images played on Jonathan’s mind: the broken glass of a thermometer, gray bubbles of mercury on the table. The patient smile of his father.
“Snow,” Jonathan said. “We need the snow”.
VII
“This mine’s the heart of Souls Well,” Jonathan took a breath. “If it goes, we all go with it. Our town will dry up and die. You all know it.”
A rumble followed Jonathan’s words. Hickok and Jenkins stood by him, one on each side of the wooden archway. The few miners that remained exchanged some troubled glances.
“I don’t know about you lot, but mining is the only thing I know how to do,” Hickok said. “I’ve been in Souls Well for half of my life, going down those tunnels day after day. That silver payed for my house and my family’s wellbeing. I’ll be damned if a wild beast takes that away from me.”
“If we stay, that thing will kill us all like it did Sullivan,” one of the miner’s replied.
Another deafening rumble echoed his words.
“If we don’t, it’ll break the mountain in half.” Hickok wiped his brow. “Just imagine the size of avalanche. It’d bury the whole town, I can tell you that much. We and our loved ones would be swiped by the snow.”
Jenkins clapped Jonathan’s back. “But the kid knows how to stop it before it’s too late. Ain’t that right?”
Jonathan gulped, the gazes of his peers piercing like burning arrows. “Yes.”
After a long silence, two of the miners stepped from the crowd and started shoveling snow into a rusty cart. Soon, more followed, though not all. Some lowered their heads and made their way downhill.
Hickok watched them go. “All right, Jon. We’re all in your hands now.”
Jonathan winced.
Jenkins handed him a shovel. “We all make mistakes, son. Now let’s save the mine.”
The warmth of his smile came as a surprise.
The miners worked like clockwork, silencing their fears and focusing on the task at hand. Some filled the iron carts with fresh snow while the rest pushed them into the tunnels in turns. When they reached the shaft, they emptied the carts on top of the trapped beast. Then they returned outside to refill them.
Jonathan grunted, pouring a pile of snow on the giant stag below. His muscles ached and his arms had almost ceased to respond after pushing cart after cart.
Only the top of the animal’s snout and the tip of its antlers showed under the layers of white. It breathed with difficulty, but even its deep exhales made the silver mine shake, and the mountains above groaned, as if they shared the creature’s pain.
The falling snow extinguished the remaining flames dancing on the deer’s antlers. Hickok was next in line. He emptied his cart in one strong move then looked down.
“Is it working?”
Jonathan nodded. “Look.”
The stag’s head had started to shrink. It bellowed as its distorted, gray antlers scraped against the wooden girders, its neck retreating down the shaft. Jonathan directed the miners behind him to empty their carts as fast as they could. He watched the deer’s shining, mercurial body deflating like a hot-air balloon with a tear on its envelope.
As its upper limbs regained some mobility, the animal became eager to break free, stomping the sides of the cavern in fear, causing another quake. The miners inside the tunnel ran to the exit, but Jonathan and Hickok stayed, eyes fixed on the condensing beast.
The foreman clapped his back. “Will you look at that! How did you know?”
“Mercury grows bigger when it heats, and smaller when it cools down. My father taught me that.”
“I’ll make sure to thank him later. Come on, Jon. Even if your plan worked, I’m not sure these tunnels will hold.”
“I’ll be right there,” Jonathan replied.
He kept his gaze on the quicksilver stag, watching its muscles swirl as its deformed body unstuck from the cracks and ledges, like a glittering waterfall, until it recovered its natural shape. During the transformation, the beast looked around, confused and frightened, waving its legs in the air like a baby bird learning how to fly. Jonathan pitied the incredible animal, and as much as he blamed it for Tim’s death, he considered himself guilty of a desecration.
The animal reached its original size at the bottom of the shaft, shaking the snow off its silver hair, then trotted around the cave. It was limping. One of its legs hadn’t recovered its previous shape and looked like a twisted bunch of brambles.
The shimmering stag licked its injured leg, then looked up. Its piercing, blue eyes stared at Jonathan for a long second. Even if the face of the beast was expressionless, those eyes carried anger and hurt pride.
The creature soon disappeared into the tunnel that led to the South Chamber. The tremors stopped. Jonathan dragged his feet outside, where Hickok, Jenkins, and the remaining miners waited.
“No more digging today. Let’s go back to our famil
ies,” Hickok said.
Jenkins took a last glance at the silver mine’s entrance as the miners started their slow march downhill. “I think no man should ever go down there again.”
The foreman nodded. “First time we agree without a battle, Buford.”
Jonathan didn’t hear any of their conversation. He stared up the mountainside, numb.
On top of a rocky ledge, a few feet above the wooden archway of the silver mine, the mercurial stag stood, shining so brightly under the morning sun that Jonathan had to shield his eyes to see it.
The beast’s blue eyes seized his mind. He saw the fury, the scorn, the fiery determination of an eternal warrior. Then it got up on two legs.
“Run!” Jonathan yelled.
The stag stomped the ground. The booming rumble ran up the mountain, growing louder, a thunder, a full-raging storm.
Jonathan was the first to see the rolling snow coming down.
The miners dashed down the jagged slopes, shouting to the men in front of them, they screaming to the group that waited at the edge of the forest’s firs. But it was too late. Deadly snow soon engulfed them all in a cold embrace.
The last thing Jonathan would ever see was the sun reflected gray in the shimmering quicksilver.
And a pair of vengeful, piercing, blue eyes.
Thanks for reading!
This story serves as a prequel to my novel Silver & Bone, the first volume in the American Alchemy: Wild West series.
If you enjoyed Quicksilver and you’re curious about what happened in Souls Well after the avalanche at the silver mine, and what new mysteries the town’s sheriff had to face, I invite you to discover Silver & Bone.
Find out more here!
Also by Oliver Altair
AMERICAN ALCHEMY: GOLD
Is your soul worth its weight in gold?
California, 1849. Barton Saunders and his best friend Lewis arrive to Sacramento drunk with dreams of fortune. When a mysterious gold panner leads them to his secret creek, their dream of richness becomes closer than ever. But those murky waters carry not only gold, but madness, heartache and disease.
The call of the Gold Rush is strong. No hostile land or sacrifice will stop Barton from becoming the man he always wanted to be. Not even the ancient darkness lurking in the shadows of the West.
Will Barton escape the gold fields before his heart drowns forever in them?
Gothic horror meets the Old West in a tale of obsession, magic, and revenge. If you like Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado and Stephen King's Wizard and Glass, you will love American Alchemy: Gold.
Get this American Alchemy story for FREE!
Also by Oliver Altair
AMERICAN ALCHEMY: SILVER & BONE
Cowboys, magic, and zombies. Welcome to Souls Well, Colorado
After an avalanche decimates the population, it's up to sheriff Tiberius Tibbetts to keep his remote, mining town from falling apart. But it won't be easy. An infamous outlaw is terrorizing the streets. A snake oil salesman is bamboozling the townsfolk, aided by his seductive assistant. On top of all that, the dead are disappearing from their graves.
When murder comes to town and a mystical power awakens beneath the rumbling mountains, Tiberius will have to race against time to save Souls Well from a terrible cataclysm. His only chance is to open his mind to the ancient art of alchemy: an arcane magic that can lead him to his victory... Or his doom.
Oliver Altair's Silver & Bone is the first installment in American Alchemy: Wild West. The series offers a new twist on the American epic. From a graveyard under the moonlight, through the forests of the San Juan mountains, to the tunnels of an abandoned mine, Silver & Bone will take you on a ride you'll never forget.
If you're a fan of dark, historical fantasy and enjoy Weird Westerns like Stephen King's The Dark Tower, HBO's Westworld or DC Comics' Jonah Hex, you'll love Silver & Bone.
Get American Alchemy: Silver & Bone
Also by Oliver Altair
American Alchemy: Ice & Blood
When evil lurks in the snow it craves the warmth of a human heart.
Winter has arrived to Souls Well, Colorado, a place on its slow walk to oblivion. Merciless snowstorms threat to bury the streets, and new problems pile up on sheriff Tiberius Tibbetts’ desk. Does the town have enough resources to survive until the spring? Will the townsfolk push through the maddening isolation? And why would a group of travelers pick the worst moment possible to pass through their remote town?
When a local man is gruesomely murdered, and his body left outside in the cold, Tiberius will have no choice but to track down the killer before the body count increases, uncovering a plot of deep hatred and facing a new encounter with occult forces beyond anything he’s ever seen. With help from unexpected allies, and the imminent danger of a powerful foe, will Tiberius stop the crime wave before there’s nobody left in Souls Well to see the upcoming spring?
Now on pre-order! Get your copy of Ice & Blood here!
About the Author
Oliver Altair is a storyteller that dives into the beauty of the bizarre. Highly influenced by classic science fiction and fantasy, and the stories in the golden era of pulp magazines, Oliver loves exploring all sorts of uncanny possibilities.
Oliver lives between the United States and Europe and loves to travel.
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Say hello!
oliveraltair.com
[email protected]
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