“All right,” she said at last. “Let’s go.”
***
Jody pulled the Blazer to a halt thirty yards shy of the mine entrance, hidden in the trees in case anyone from Spider Camp came hiking down toward the mine. She swiveled in her seat to address her two passengers.
“Now listen, I’ll take you guys up there for a quick look, but it has to be quick. There’s some sort of shindig going on just up the hill from us. Brad Boy and all his sort of ilk will be there. That means we need to be fast and quiet. When I say it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Am I clear?”
“Crystal,” Steve said, and he jumped out of the car with the professor. Apparently some of the older man’s excitement had leeched into him. Jody lingered inside for a moment and reached beneath the driver seat where she fished around to find the last gift her father ever gave her, a Ruger 8-shot .22 revolver, loaded with bird shot. She double-checked that all the chambers were filled and that the safety was on, then took a page from Brad Boy and tucked it into the rear waistband of her pants, making sure that the drawstring on her scrubs was pulled tight. The little pistol wouldn’t do her much good if it slid down into her butt crack or dropped into one of her pant legs.
Satisfied that she was as ready as she could be, she hopped out of her K5 and led the way up the hill toward the mine entrance. She could tell right away that something was different. It had been years since she’d last been here—since middle school, probably—but she remembered distinctly that there had been warning signs and two separate fences around the perimeter of the mine opening. There were neither anymore.
“Something’s not right,” she whispered, but the professor had already caught sight of the mine entrance, and he and Steve rushed past her. She followed slowly behind and with each step was consumed by the same sense of dread she’d had in the Lake Town church.
The fear and the sight of the mine before her brought it all back, the déjà vu moment. She had felt like this before. It was the last time she was here at the mine. She and some friends—all boys—had snuck out one summer on a dare. She hung back at the first fence, but the boys climbed through to stand at the perimeter of the second fence and throw rocks into the mine shaft. She still remembered the sound of the rocks echoing as they ricocheted off the sides of the shaft for three, four seconds before finally plunking into the black water a hundred feet below. While her friends dared each other to climb past the second fence and look into the mine, she found herself mindlessly climbing through the outer fence, moving toward them from behind, intent on pushing them in, compelled to do so without any conscious effort. Thankfully, her friends had chickened out and when they turned in her direction to get out of there, she snapped out of it. She’d forgotten about it all until this moment. She had fully intended on pushing her friends down the mine shaft. Why? Why would I even think to do that? Dad was still alive still. There was nothing for me to be angry about. I liked my friends…
“I’m going in.”
“What?” Jody came back to the moment and saw that the professor was lowering himself into the shaft. “No, wait! What are you doing?”
“It’s fine,” the professor said. “There’s a ladder, freshly made. It’s perfectly safe. Aren’t you coming, Steve?”
Steve snapped a photo, but Jody saw that whatever excitement he’d had a few moments before was gone. He glanced from the professor to Jody and then back to the professor again. “I think I best wait up here, you know, in case something happens. You give us the all-clear when you get to the bottom if everything looks okay, then I’ll come down.”
“Suit yourself,” the professor said and began climbing down into the shaft.
Jody tried to say something to stop him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even bring herself to get within five feet of the mine. Steve glanced up at her again and then gazed down into the darkness after the professor. The only sound was the professor’s boots scraping on the wood steps of the ladder, but even that sound slowly receded to nothing. Overhead, the sun had passed its zenith and continued its inexorable journey to the west, no more than a few hours from sundown. It didn’t seem like they had been exploring Lake Town that long, but Jody must have lost track of time. It was so warm, it was hard to remember that it was late fall and that the days were shorter.
“Seems to be a day of dispelling stereotypes,” Steve said after a while. “The anonymous Lake Town blogger I’ve been following turns out to be younger than me, and a woman. And my gay professor is the only one of us with big enough balls to go into the mine.” He forced a wry smile.
The joke cut the tension and Jody found herself able to think again. “He’s gay? I mean, I sort of figured he was with the pink shirt and the VW Beetle and all, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.”
Steve grinned for real this time. “He’s as gay as a unicorn shitting Skittles. Great professor, and he’s been a good mentor to me. His boyfriend split up with him recently. When I heard, I thought I’d invite him on this trip for Thanksgiving break. I was already planning on coming up solo. Didn’t think he’d actually agree to come.”
“Are you…”
“Gay? No. Pretty not gay, in fact.”
Jody returned the smile. “So not gay, and not a ninja. Got it.”
“Exactly. And I’m no good at math and know how to drive.”
They both went silent again. It had been several minutes since the professor went down, and they had heard nothing. No “all-clear,” nothing. Jody summoned the courage to step forward and kneel down next to Steve so she could peer down the shaft. The sunlight still illuminated the ladder and walls about ten feet down into the shaft, but beyond that it was pitch black. There was no sign of the professor. Should we call down after him? The thought of speaking down into the hole terrified her almost as much as the thought of going down into it.
Suddenly, Steve’s head cocked to one side. “You hear that?” he whispered.
Jody leaned down closer to the mine shaft.
“No, it’s not coming from down there,” Steve said. “I hear voices behind us.”
“Shit, get down,” Jody told him, and she scrambled on her hands and knees toward the cover of a nearby manzanita shrub. She could hear the voices now, too. Rowdy voices, making no effort to be quiet. They were coming from Spider Camp up the hill. Jody craned her neck to get a better view and spied several faces she recognized in the distance, clomping toward the mine through the ponderosa pines. There was Brad Boy and Ted. And Preacher Wilson. What the hell is he doing here? She didn’t have time to ponder that question long, because the next thing that caught her eye was the glint of Brad’s .38 in his hand.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Jody hissed, scrambling back to Steve. “They’re coming this way. We have to get out of here. Come on.”
She waved him in the direction of her Blazer, but he shook his head. “We can’t ditch Professor H. We can hide down there.”
Before she could protest, he lowered himself onto the ladder and disappeared below. She stole a glance back into the trees and saw that Brad Boy and his group were getting closer. Everything in her told her to bolt, but she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t live with herself if she abandoned the professor and Steve. Besides, she’d waited too long. Brad Boy and the others would see if she made a break for her Blazer now.
“Shit, don’t do this,” she told herself, but she did it anyway, sliding her legs over the edge of the precipice into the shaft. Her legs swayed helplessly in the void for a moment, but then one of her feet found purchase on a ladder step. She let out a deep breath and began the long descent, hand after hand, foot after foot. Above her, the sound of voices receded and the daylight shrunk into a sphere of light that was swallowed in the darkness. Her hands and arms began to ache and she panicked for a moment, certain she would slip and fall to her death below.
Steve’s voice broke her panic. “You’re almost there. Keep going.”
She glanced down and saw the blue LED light from his cell
phone illuminating the way. She only had another eight feet to go. With a relieved breath, she climbed the rest of the way down and set foot on solid, if mucky, ground.
“The professor?” she asked.
“I don’t see him. He must have gone that way.” Steve shined the light from his cellphone to their left, dimly illuminating the shape of a horizontal shaft sloping away from them. “Only way to go except back up.”
“Let’s find him then, and get the hell out of here.”
Steve led the way, leaving Jody to trail behind in darkness. She cursed herself for not bringing her own cellphone, or the Maglite she had in her truck toolbox. The thought of her cellphone made her think of her mother, who was probably wondering where she was, why she hadn’t called. Jody didn’t get along with her mother these days, but she was all the family she had. The thought of getting trapped down here—her mother never knowing what happened to her—was almost too much. It was as if Jody was certain she was never leaving this mine.
“Shine the light on the ground to see if there are footprints in the mud,” Jody said, as much to herself as to Steve. She needed to stay focused on solving the problem at hand, not on irrational fear.
Steve pointed his light down and scanned across the tunnel floor. “Yeah, there’s all kinds of footprints, going both directions. Someone must have opened the mine back up now that the water is drained out. Maybe there’s still gold down here.”
It sounded reasonable. Jody wanted to believe it, but she didn’t. With each step deeper into the mine, her sense of dread grew stronger.
The passage wound to the right and opened up into a wider tunnel. The main passage bore straight left, easily ten foot in diameter. A smaller passage went in the opposite direction. Steve scanned his light to the right down the smaller passage. The silt and muck on the floor was deeper and unmarked by footprints. Jody closed her eyes, trying to orient herself to the terrain outside.
“This passage must lead to Lake Town. Most gold mines have both a horizontal entrance and a vertical shaft for ventilation. This was probably the main entrance at some point.”
She opened her eyes to find that Steve had already redirected the light to the left. “Good to know, but no footprints that way. Professor H must have gone to the left.”
They continued on and the passage began descending, winding its way through one blind curve after another. With each step, the mud became thicker on the floor and the smell of wet decay became stronger. A groan, almost too low pitched to hear, thrummed in the air around them, then disappeared a moment later. A few steps—a few seconds—later, and the groan returned, like the earth itself was groaning in pain.
Steve reached out to Jody and took her hand. She didn’t know if he did it to comfort her or to comfort himself, but she didn’t protest. The groan returned in regular intervals, and the smell of rotting organic material grew stronger as they trudged forward. Steve shone his phone light onto the ground again to make sure they were still on the right track. When he turned it upward again, they realized quite suddenly that they had emerged into a cavern that swallowed up the tiny LED beam.
The moaning sound was louder than before, and it was joined now by another noise: something scraping in the mud. Jody moved in closer to Steve and grabbed hold of his free arm. “Over there,” she whispered pointing to their right.
Steve scanned his light in the direction she indicated and spotted movement, something on the ground. The scrapping noise intensified.
“Professor?” Steve whispered.
At first, Jody didn’t believe it, but when she looked closer she saw it was indeed the professor, covered in filth, half-buried in the mud. His hands were digging at the muck around him.
“He’s stuck,” Jody said and she rushed to him, Steve right on her heels.
“Hold tight,” Steve said as they both slid to a stop beside him. “We’ll get you out of there.”
The professor’s feet and legs were completely buried in mud. Jody reached down to try and hook a hand beneath one of his knees to pull the leg free. Before she knew what was happening, the professor shoved her away with a feral grunt.
“What the hell are you doing?” Steve demanded, and when he shined his light onto the professor’s face, they both saw it. He held the coin in his mouth, covering his teeth, and his eyes reflected red in the LED glow. He wasn’t trying to dig himself free. He was burying himself. Steve reached out with his free hand to stop him, but the professor grunted again and slapped the phone out of his hand.
Everything went dark when the phone landed in the mud. Jody instinctively lunged at the professor, hands flailing in the dark to reach his face and get that dammed coin out. The professor flung her aside, though, and she rolled face down into the muck. The groan filled the cavern and her very being. Peripherally, she could hear Steve screaming, but all she could focus on was the groan. She forced herself up and opened her eyes. It was dark, but she could see it, the ten-armed serpent, shuddering beneath the surface of the mud in the center of the cavern. An eyelid opened before, revealing another eyelid beneath it, a membranous one that spiraled open. Dread filled her and she felt her head sag helplessly into the mud.
***
The screams are deafening, a chorus of pain, confusion. The only solace is in the center of it all, in the fleshy core, beneath the viscera, deep in the warm fluid that mutes away the screams. Sleep, sleep, she tells herself, though it’s not her own voice. Sleep with me, she tells herself and sinks deeper into the flesh, into the warm void. I’m so tired. Must make the screaming stop. The eye beckons her nearer. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
***
It was only instinct that made Jody react and awaken. Something warm and firm grabbed at her thighs, and her body reacted, slapping it away and punching at it.
“Get off me, fucker!”
A giant worm-like appendage slithered off of her, leaving her half-buried in the mud. It was pitch black, but she could sense the creature retreating from her, focusing its efforts elsewhere, several feet away. The scraping and slurping of mud told her where Steve was. She pulled herself to her feet and reached behind her, finding the revolver still safely tucked away in her pants. She clicked the safety off and strode toward the struggling noises.
“Steve!” She dropped to her knees and groped outward with her free hand, finding his outstretched arm. She pulled him toward her, but the creature had his other arm, tugging him toward the center of the cave. She leveled the pistol and fired blindly. The groan became a roar, but the creature let go, and Steve came loose with a startled gasp.
“Steve! Are you with me?”
“I’m here. What the fuck is happening? Where was I?”
“We have to get out of here.”
“The professor!”
“I don’t know where he is.”
She flailed around, one hand on Steve, the other still firmly gripping the pistol, but she was completely disoriented. She had no idea where the professor was, where Steve’s phone was, or where the exit was.
“My camera,” Steve said. “I still have it.”
His flash bulb filled the cavern for a split second, but it was too bright, too brief to be of any use. Screams and shouts were filling her mind again, but no, they were real this time, she realized. And the cavern was becoming brighter with flickering orange light. Brad Boy and Preacher Wilson!
She blinked her eyes to clear her vision and took in her surroundings. She and Steve were kneeling in the muck. Immediately beyond them was a pit of quivering mud, the place where the creature with the membranous eye lived. She yanked Steve to his feet and away from the pit, spinning around, searching for refuge. There was only one exit, the way in which they had come, and that passage was growing brighter as Brad Boy and his gang approached. The professor was nowhere in sight. The only place to hide was along the nearest wall of the cavern, where an old mine cart was overturned onto its side. That’s where she led Steve, and they ducked down behind the mine cart just as a crowd of people wi
th torches filed into the chamber.
“Where they at? I heard a gunshot and screaming.”
It was Brad Boy’s voice.
“There’s one,” someone else said.
Jody stole a glance from behind the cart and saw Preacher Wilson and another man yank the professor from the mud. The professor gasped, and retched out the coin with a choking cough.
“Is he one of us now?” Brad Boy asked.
Preacher Wilson grabbed the professor by the head with both hands, pressing his thumbs against the professor’s temples. He leaned his head back and began muttering in some unintelligible language. Every hair on Jody’s body stood on end at hearing it. The creature in the pit groaned in response to Preacher Wilson’s words.
At last it ended, and Preacher Wilson let the professor go.
“He is not ready yet. He needs more time with the Great One.”
“We throw him in the pit then,” Brad Boy said, stepping forward to grasp the professor by the shoulders.
Jody reacted without thinking. She jumped out from behind the cart with a feral scream and shot Brad Boy right in the head. The bird shot didn’t kill him, but it stung like a motherfucker and stunned him. It bought Jody enough time, at least, to run up and shove him into the mud pit. When she turned around, eight assailants stared at her in stunned fury. Preacher Wilson was the first to lunge toward her, so she shot him in the groin. He screamed and fell to writhe in the mud.
The next man nearest to her growled garbled nonsense and swung his torch at her, but she was well out of his reach. She shot him in the face, and shoved him into the pit.
Push them all into the pit.
She moved mindlessly toward the next nearest man, shot him in the face, and hurled him into the pit.
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