by James Hunt
Slowly, Amy’s soul was ripped from her body, drawn by the desire to hold onto the one memory that had kept her afloat over the past three months, the one memory that her soul couldn’t live without.
More of her soul took shape the higher it reached for the memory. Her arm was gone, then her head, then her entire upper body. Amy remained glued to the floor, that tearing sensation running through the entirety of her body and leaving behind that ravaged and broken feeling after experiencing trauma.
Finally, her soul stood, completely severed from Amy’s body, and reached high enough to clasp its hand around the memory. For a moment, Amy saw the brilliance of the soul, an all-illuminating golden light. It was the most beautiful thing Amy had ever seen.
And then the light was extinguished with the snap of a finger, and the glimmering wonder of the unknown dulled into the practicalities of reality.
Amy gasped, her body lunging upward as though she had been holding her breath for the past five minutes. She coughed and hacked, rolling from side to side on the blue blanket.
“Easy,” Running Water said. “Stay calm. Breathe. You did well, Amy. You did very well.”
But his words were full of sorrow, and as Amy finally caught her breath, she felt different, almost like she was sick.
“It’s best if you sit up now,” Running Water said.
The motion was slow, and a tingling numbness accompanied the movement, almost like there was a lag between Amy’s commands and her body’s willingness to receive them. She finally managed to stand, wobbling on both legs.
Slowly, Amy brought her hands to the side of her head, cradling her jaw in her palms. She shut her eyes, trying to get her bearings, and she felt the bass in her heart radiate through the rest of her body. Something was different now. She was… emptier.
“Amy.”
She opened her eyes and saw the medicine man at the tent’s entrance. It was there he waited, watching, holding a small, clay-colored jar in his lap. She didn’t know how he had gotten into the wheelchair so quickly, and she blinked as she stole a quick glance behind her.
“It’s done,” he said, his voice pulling Amy back toward him. He scooped the jar from his lap and held it up with both hands, presenting it to her like a sacred item. “You have what you need. What he wants.”
Amy stared down at her feet. Taking a step seemed too monumental, even though she had already stood up. So to test herself, she first wiggled her toes, watching the small phalanges move up and down on the end of her foot.
Capitalizing on the confidence, she lifted her foot, still plagued by the sensation of moving in slow motion, and then delicately set her foot down ahead of her. She fell into a rhythm and stopped just short of the medicine man’s wheelchair.
Amy examined the plain jar, the lid fitting loosely on top, looking as though it would crash to the ground at any moment. She reached out a hand to grab hold of it, but the medicine man pulled it back, his eyes offering a warning.
“Once you hand over your soul, you will be cast into the darkest realms of the spirit.” The warning in Running Water’s eyes transformed into sadness and worry. “You will suffer. Beyond anything that you have ever known. And it will be a suffering that lasts for all eternity.”
Amy let the old man’s words sink in, and an unexplained breeze entered the tent, transforming the fire into a dimly lit rush of embers that glowed. She turned from the dying fire, back to the old man who still had his arms extended, with the jar displayed precariously in his bare palms.
Amy reached for the jar more assertively and this time grabbed it in her hands. Running Water simply nodded.
“You are a good mother, Amy Holloway,” Running Water said. “I hope you find comfort in that.”
Amy stared at the jar. “I’ll find comfort when I get my daughter back.” But as she left the hut, Amy felt a chill when she heard Running Water say, “No, you won’t.”
63
The family was quiet on the drive back to Ghost Town. Amy focused most of her attention on the jar in her lap. She didn’t dare open the lid, keeping one hand firmly clasped over the top.
Running Water didn’t say that she couldn’t open it, but she didn’t want to spoil the goods before she had a chance to use them.
Despite holding the jar, Amy still couldn’t wrap her head around what she held. Her soul. The very essence of her being was bottled up.
It was ludicrous. The idea that something existed, and that it could be extracted from her in the manner in which it had.
She had never been a religious woman, never gone to church, never prayed. She didn’t instill any faith in her children because none had ever been instilled in her. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been wrong.
After all, she had been able to hear the dead speak, and her youngest daughter was currently being held for ransom by a man who had been dead for two hundred years, cursed by a tribe of Native Americans that only wanted the land that had been stolen from them in the first place.
Terry placed a hand on Amy’s knee, pulling her from the distractions of her own mind. He smiled. She smiled. She placed her hand on top of his and squeezed. They didn’t speak and just held onto one another.
She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder, suddenly feeling tired, the clay jar rattling in her hands. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment of rest.
It was like the string of days since the accident three months ago had linked together, creating one long day that she could never escape. She couldn’t sleep, and what precious hours of rest she managed to have only exacerbated the desire for more before it was taken away from her. She had stumbled around like a zombie, and it wasn’t until she arrived here that she was finally awake.
“We’re here,” Terry said.
Amy opened her eyes and lifted her cheek from Terry’s shoulder, instinctively removing her hand from his and placing it back onto the lid of the clay jar. She stiffened in her seat, and a heightened sense of awareness surged through the inside of the van.
The brakes squealed as Terry brought the van to a stop. Everyone remained in their seats with their seatbelts on, even after Terry had turned off the ignition, cutting the headlights that had illuminated the darkened entrance of the mine.
Amy unbuckled her seatbelt, pressed the jar to her chest to help keep it steady, and then reached for the door handle, letting herself out, the rest of the family following suit. She led the pack toward the mine’s entrance, and she didn’t break stride when she crossed the threshold of darkness. She didn’t stop until she reached the blockade at the end of the elevator, where she shimmied through the door.
Amy flung open the elevator’s metal grate and then stepped inside. She tried to close it, but Terry stopped her.
“What are you doing?” Terry asked.
“I’m the only one that has to go down there,” Amy answered.
“I’m not letting you go down there alone,” Terry said.
Liz appeared from behind her father, arms crossed in defiance. “Dad’s right, we can’t let you do this by yourself.” She stepped forward. “You don’t quit on family.”
By their expressions, Amy knew that it was useless to fight it. She stepped aside, they entered, and Terry closed the gate while Amy hit the down button.
Like the drive to the resort, the descent into the haunted earth was quiet. But again she found Terry’s hand, though she didn’t allow herself to lean against him. She knew that if she gave herself too much of a crutch, then she wouldn’t be able to walk out on her own steam, and she needed that strength.
The inertia from the elevator brought Amy’s stomach up quickly and down with a hard thud as their descent ended.
Terry heaved the sliding metal door open and stepped out first, followed closely by Amy and then Liz. The three huddled together by the elevator, the light from its ceiling the only illumination that it provided.
Amy broke from the pack first, walking to the light’s edge, the jar still clut
ched in her hands, trying to hide the shivers. She lifted the jar in her hands, presenting it to the darkness, and cleared her throat. “I brought it!”
A blast of cold air froze each of them in their place, and Amy pulled the jar tighter against her chest.
“You really are a foolish woman.” The raspy and rattling voice echoed from the darkened depths and preceded the miner’s silhouette as he emerged from the back of the mine. He stopped just short of being able to see his features, keeping himself in shadow.
Amy turned back to her family, both Terry and Liz wearing expressions of shock and fear.
“Brought me more than one soul, did you?” The miner chuckled.
Amy spun around. “I brought you mine. Now give me my daughter.”
The miner cocked his head to the side and stepped closer, the rags of his clothes swaying back and forth on the skeletal frame. “That’s not how this deal of ours is going to work. You show me the goods first, and then I’ll decide whether or not I let your daughter go.”
Amy narrowed her eyes but took a step forward, keeping the jar extended in her hand. The miner matched every step forward that Amy took and stopped when she stopped, the pair of each other just out of arm’s reach.
Just when the miner was about to reach for the jar, Amy pulled it back.
“The jar doesn’t leave my hands. Understand?”
Even in the darkness, Amy was able to see the curve of the smile that stretched the already-gaunt cheeks tighter across the miner’s face, the single gold tooth in the upper right corner of his mouth shining in the dark. “Smart girl.”
Amy once again extended the jar, clasping it firmly with both hands. The miner leaned forward, his movements slow, but eager nonetheless. If he still had any eyes left in that skull of his, Amy imagined that they’d be wide as saucers.
With her left hand, Amy grabbed hold of the lid and slowly slid it backward. The lid ground against the rim of the jar, the gritty texture of the two pieces of clay akin to the nails on a chalkboard, but the sound didn’t deter the miner’s intrigue.
When a gap in the jar opened, a beam of light escaped from the inside. It illuminated the miner’s face and brightened the gold of the single tooth. The miner brought a bony hand up to touch the light, and then Amy sealed it shut, clasped the jar close to her chest, and stepped back. The miner snarled.
“It’s there,” Amy said, her voice flat and emotionless, her expression that of a seasoned poker player. “Now, where’s my daughter?”
The miner grumbled to himself but stepped back into the darkness. “A deal is a deal.” The miner raised a hand and snapped his fingers.
The snap echoed throughout the mine, lingering longer than it should have, and then slowly transformed into a low, humming bass that rattled Amy’s innards like the medicine man had done when he had severed the soul from her body.
Deep within the darkness, another shape formed, darker than the black that surrounded them. It swirled inward like a vortex, spinning faster and faster, a wind pulling what little light remained in the tunnel toward it and swallowing it whole.
But as Amy stared harder into the darkened void, she saw a figure take shape. It was nothing more than a silhouette at first, small. Amy stepped forward, reaching out with both arms, the jar that contained her soul held loosely in her right hand. “Maisie!”
The miner slid in front of Amy, keeping himself between the mother and daughter. He extended a bony finger and wagged it playfully back and forth. “Not until I have what I want.”
The wind from the vortex behind the miner grew stronger, and Amy’s hair flapped wildly toward it, along with her clothes. She remained rooted in her stance, refusing to give up an inch.
“How do we make the exchange?” Amy asked, having to shout over the rushing roar of the wind.
The miner regarded Amy with the same cunning eye as an auctioneer looking for the best deal for his product. “I call her name and she is released from that realm.” He nodded to the jar in Amy’s hands. “The moment I have my hands on that jar, I’ll call for her, and once she starts walking, you let go.” What little muscle and skin remained to him hardened in preparation for any changes to his proposal.
Slowly, Amy extended her arms, inching the jar closer and closer to the miner. He would have licked his lips if he still had any, and he was practically salivating.
Amy peeled her eyes off the jar and miner and looked toward the darkened void where Maisie stood on the precipice. She was close enough for Amy to know that it was her, but still too far to tell the condition of her health.
She wasn’t sure what type of daughter she’d be getting back. She knew how much Liz had changed, and after listening to the horrors of what she went through, deep down she knew that Maisie had probably experienced worse.
Wind still whipping her hair around her face, Amy looked back to the miner who had his fingertips less than an inch from the side of the jar, and then—
The miner’s jaw opened with an almost euphoric gasp the moment his hand clasped the jar. But Amy held firm, knowing that until he spoke her name, Maisie would remain imprisoned.
“Say her name!” Amy screamed, snapping the miner out of his daze and back to the present moment.
The miner twitched his nose in a snarl, and he tightened his hold on the jar.
Amy tugged the jar back toward her a little, reminding the man that the deal wasn’t done until they both had what they wanted. And it did the trick.
“Maisie!” The miner’s voice boomed, Maisie’s name echoing through the tunnels as though it had been projected by a loudspeaker.
Amy turned her attention from the miner and toward her daughter. In that same moment, Maisie took her first step out of the void.
The sight swelled Amy’s heart twofold, and as her daughter drew closer, Amy released her hold on the jar, handing it over to the miner as she ran toward her daughter.
“Maisie!” Amy’s voice caught in her throat, and she skidded to her knees and wrapped her youngest daughter in her arms. “Oh my god.” She squeezed Maisie tighter, afraid that if she relinquished her hold, even for only a moment, that Maisie would be sucked back into the darkness and be lost forever.
“Finally,” the miner said, lifting the jar high with his arms outstretched, as if it were the holy grail of his existence. The smile had spread the width of his face. “I shall join you, my love.” He brought the jar down and then flung the lid off with a ceremonial flick of his wrist.
Amy’s soul sprang forth in a luminous explosion, lighting the darkened tunnel.
But even with the commotion behind her, Amy kept her attention on Maisie. The light offered Amy a better look at her youngest daughter, and a tear fell when she saw no physical signs of torment. She gently cupped Maisie’s face, tears falling down both cheeks now. “How are you?”
Maisie furrowed her brow slightly, confused. “Am I home now? Is this real?”
“Yes, of course, sweetheart. This is real. I’m real.” Amy smiled and then kissed Maisie’s forehead, taking a quick moment to examine the rest of her daughter. “Are you feeling okay? Tired? Are you hurt?”
Maisie turned to look behind her, the light offering a deeper view into the tunnel, which ran longer than Amy imagined. She faced her mother again, her lips wiggling and her eyes watering with tears.
“It’s really you?” Maisie asked.
“Yes, baby, it’s really me.”
Maisie flung herself into Amy’s arms, sobbing and squeezing as tight as her little arms would allow. Amy hugged her little girl back with the same amount of vigor that she received.
Amy sniffled and adjusted her arms. “I’m so sorry for everything that happened. But things will be different. I promise that they’ll be different. We’re going to be a family again. I won’t let you get hurt again.” She finally pulled back and stared Maisie in the eye. “No matter what.”
Maisie’s expression was still scrunched up in tears. “Promise?”
Amy gently touche
d her forehead against Maisie’s and smiled. “Promise.”
But before Amy could open her eyes again, a sharp pain dug into her shoulder, and she was ripped from her daughter, which elicited a piercing shriek of pain.
“Mommy!”
Amy was dragged deeper into the mine, away from her daughter, her backside scraping across the uneven and graveled ground.
Maisie started to run after her, followed closely by Terry and Liz, but as fast as they ran, they couldn’t keep up with Amy as she was pulled deeper and deeper into the mine.
She looked at her right shoulder and saw the bony hand clamped on her flesh, penetrating both the shirt and her skin, drawing wells of blood. She followed the arm up and saw the profile of the miner, attention focused ahead. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer. He only moved faster through the darkened halls.
Amy glanced back down to her family, but they were no longer there. Only darkness greeted her eyes. And as she started to cry out their names, she felt the wind pulling her backwards, farther and farther from the daughters she had finally reconnected with, away the family that she had so desperately wanted to save.
64
Terry sprinted as fast as he could, easily passing both daughters within seconds. “Amy! Amy!” He couldn’t tell if she was screaming back, but since he heard nothing but the sound of his own voice echoing around the tunnel, he wasn’t even sure she was able to hear him.
And after she had completely disappeared, Terry turned behind him and found that he was alone in the darkness.
Terry skidded to a stop, panting and catching his breath. His chest rose and fell in rhythmic and hasty expansions and contractions as he looked in all directions in the darkness. Sweat dampened his body and arms and limbs, and he shivered from the cold.
“Dad?” Liz called out.
“Just stay there,” Terry shouted back, his tone harsher than he intended, but he didn’t want to her to come any closer. He needed a minute. This wasn’t part of the deal. Amy had given up her… soul. At least that’s how the medicine man had explained it.
