“They must have found this cave, and somehow triggered the cave-in when they broke through.” Billy Joe said. “They could have survived for days in here. There’s plenty of water, and . . . “
Tavvy knelt down next to him. “Don’t think about that, William. Just know that once we find a way out of here, that we can give them a Christian burial and set their souls to rest.” Tavvy looked up at me and neither one of us said what we were both thinking — that if six healthy miners couldn’t dig their way out of this cave, there wasn’t much chance in us doing it, either.
I left Billy Joe and Tavvy to themselves and kept walking the walls, occassionally tapping on the wall with my knife. I’d gone about forty feet from them when I heard something tap back. I tapped, then I waited a second, and it tapped. It had a dfferent sound to it than the first tapping, less hollow and more sharp, like it wasn’t an echo but was something actually trying to communicate. I stopped walking, and tapped three times. Three taps came back to me. I tapped out three short taps, then three long taps, then three short taps, the Morse Code for “SOS,” or “help get me out of this stupid hole in the ground.” It tapped back F-O-L-L-O-W, “follow.” I wasn’t sure what it meant, then I heard the tapping from a little ways ahead of me. I walked forward and tapped that spot. The tapping sound moved ahead again, about twenty feet in front of me this time. I followed, and tapped on the wall. By now I was halfway back to where I was when Bill found the remains, and no closer to an exit. But something was tapping on those walls, and it wanted me to follow, so I followed. I stopped at the northwest corner of the huge cave, a couple hundred feet from where Tavvy and Joe now knelt praying over the dead miners.
I tapped on the wall, and the tapping came right back at me from where I was. “What now?” I tapped.
“D-I-G.” It tapped back. I looked around, and the wall ahead of me did look different. Where solid rock made up most of the walls of the cave, this was a pile of loose boulders and dirt, and it looked like it had recently shifted. I pulled a few of the bigger rocks aside from the bottom, and more cascaded into the cave.
I jumped aside and hollered for Billy Joe and Tavvy. They came running, and I pointed to the wall, where a tunnel opening was taking shape around the fallen rock. “This must have been the old Tunnel Three, the one that fell in and . . .” I didn’t want to finish my sentence, because it ended with “and killed your uncle.” But Billy Joe knew what I meant.
“It looks like the new cave-in shook a bunch of this rock loose and maybe made it so we can dig our way out through here.” Tavvy said. She aimed her light into the hole. “I think I can see through the blockage. It may only take a few minutes for you boys to dig us out of here!”
“Good eye, Bubba. How’d you ever see this?” Billy Joe asked me.
“I didn’t.” I admitted. “I followed the tommyknocker.”
“What?” Billy Joe took a step back from the tunnel.
“I heard a knocking, so I followed it. It led me here. I think all them old legends might be right, tommyknockers might be the souls of lost miners trying to look out for their own.”
Bill looked down at the pocketwatch in his hand. “Yeah, I can believe that. Now let’s dig this rock out of the way and go tell the men we found gold!”
“There might be a few things that people need to be told when we get out of this hole.” Tavvy said. I looked at her, expecting her to finish, but she just shook her head.
Billy Joe and I set to digging, and Tavvy even helped out, carry out as much small rock and dirt as she could using the dead miner’s hats as buckets. It was a tough slog, but after a couple hours we made a big enough hole for all three of us to get through. Well, it took about two and a half hours to make a hole for Tavvy and Billy Joe. The last thirty minutes was making the hole big enough for me to fit through. It’s an occupational hazard of being a giant. We scrambled out the hole and into old Tunnel Three, and it only took Billy Joe a couple minutes to get us back up to the main mine shaft. We were traipsing right along toward the entrance when Tavvy suddenly stopped us.
“I need to go look at the cave-in at Number Four, Beauregard.” She said as we were walking.
“Why? We didn’t die. What more do you want to do, Tavvy, look at the rock and say something smart to it?” I asked.
“No, I saw some irregularities in the timbers as we crawled out of Number Three. I want to see if those same irregularities exist in Number Four.”
“What do you mean, irregularities, Octavia?” Billy Joe asked.
“I am not quite prepared to present my findings as yet. William. Once I have gathered sufficient evidence, believe me I will not hesitate.”
“So shut up and do as I’m told?” Billy Joe asked.
“You catch on fast.” I said.
We turned down the tunnel to Number Four, and Tavvy switched out the lenses on her hat again. This time she bathed the walls in a deep green light, and certain minerals in the walls stood out or faded away depending on how she looked at things. She came to the point of the cave-in, and clambered up the mountain of rock to the very top.
“Be careful, Tavvy.” I felt obligated to say, even though I knew she only half heard me. She had the scent of something, and nothing was gonna throw her off now.
“I am always careful, Beauregard. May I remind you that I have never set any of my body parts on fire for any reason?”
“May I remind you that at least three of the times I have been set on fire has been because of something you built?”
“And the other five times?” Tavvy asked.
“I don’t want to talk about them.” I said.
She poked around the top of the rock pile for a few minutes, then climbed back down.
“Well?” I asked.
“That is a very deep subject, brother. Now let’s proceed to the mine office and discuss my findings with Mr. Baker. I believe he will be most interested in what I have to say.”
I followed Billy Joe and Tavvy to the mouth of the mine, but we didn’t make it to the mine office. We heard voices as we were coming around the last bend before the mine exit, and talking over all of them was Mr. Baker, the mine boss.
“Now I understand that y’all are worried, but there is no way to get to them. I went down there myself, and I’m sorry to say that the mine has claimed another set of lives. It is a tragedy, but Billy Joe and the Brabhams have been lost in the mine. Now go home, and we will let you know when the mine will re-open.” Baker’s voice filtered back to us. Tavvy motioned for us to stop, and she waved us over to the side of the tunnel. We did as she said, and stood there listening.
A new voice chimed in. “I don’t give a damn when you think this mine is gonna open again, I ain’t going back down there. Tommyknockers got Billy Joe, just like they got his uncle, and they ain’t going to get me!” A chorus of agreement swelled around the speaker, and I heard a faint tapping on the wall.
I tapped back, and listened as the tapping spelled out “w-a-s-n-t-m-e” on the wall.
“We know.” Tavvy said to the air.
“Who are you talking to, Tavvy?” I whispered.
“I believe I’m talking to William’s uncle. Am I?” She asked.
“Y-E-S,” tapped the tommyknocker.
“I reckon I didn’t have to bang on the wall, did I?” I asked.
“N-O” was the response.
“How’d you figure this all out so quick?” I asked Tavvy.
“Now, Beauregard, you know a lady never reveals all her secrets.” She said to me, then stepped forward heading for the mouth of the tunnel. “Follow me, boys, and be ready for trouble.”
I stood back in the cave staring at Billy Joe for a second. “That there is a hell of a woman.” He said. “No offense, of course.”
“None taken, Bill. But you even think an impure thought about her and I’ll twist your head around on your neck like a chicken.”
“Fair enough.” Billy Joe replied, and we followed Tavvy out into the light.
&n
bsp; She stepped out of the tunnel and walked right up next to Mr. Baker before he ever knew she was there. She cleared her throat, and the big mine boss jumped about three feet in the air. If his hair hadn’t already been white as snow, that would have turned him grey on the spot.
“Miss Brabham, I am delighted to see you alive!” He reached forward like he was going to hug Tavvy, but she held up a finger and he stopped cold. I always admired that. She could stop men with one finger that I had to use a whole fist to slow down.
“I wonder how happy you will be to see me alive when I tell these men how diligently you worked to kill me.” Tavvy said.
“What?” Baker spluttered. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about. Them damn tommyknockers brought the mine down around your ears. I did my best to dig y’all out, but I couldn’t get to you.”
A tapping started from deep in the mines, then it moved all the way up to the mouth of the tunnel, coming faster and faster and louder and louder until it sounded like thunder rolling across the mountains. Baker looked around at Tavvy, then at me, then at the assembled miners, then back at the mine.
“I think you might want to apologize to ‘them damn tommyknockers,’ Mr. Baker.” Billy Joe said, stepping forward. “‘Specially since one of ‘em’s my Uncle David.” When Bill started speaking, the knocking cut off like it was on a switch.
I stepped forward. “There are tommyknockers in this mine.” I said, loud enough for everybody to hear me. “They are the spirits of the men who died in the Tunnel Three collapse. But we found their bodies, and we’re gonna lay those men to rest. That oughta send the tommyknockers on to their final resting place, but even if it don’t, these dead fellers don’t mean y’all no harm.”
Baker held up his hands for quiet as the miners started yellin’ questions at me. “Now, hold on. Bubba and his sister have been through a terrible ordeal, and they don’t know what they’re saying right now—“
Tavvy cut him off. “An ordeal that you put us through, Mr. Baker, when you carried that axe into Tunnel Four and cut the support timber holding the roof up.” She pointed to a double-headed wood axe leaning against the wall of the mine. That kind of axe was no good for shaping timbers, it was only used for cutting through trees. It had no place in a mine. I walked over to it and picked it up. There were fresh nicks in the blade, like it had glanced off a rock or something like that.
Tavvy kept going. “Just like you cut the roof timber in Tunnel Three thirty years ago and buried six men inside a giant cavern. And for the same reason — you had a secret to hide.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve worked here forty years, I’ve given my whole life to this mine. And now you come here accusing me of trying to what, sabotage it so the mine will close? That doesn’t make any sense. I’d lose everything.”
“Not if you bought the mine when it closed.” I said.
“We’ve all heard it, Mr. Baker. For the past four years or more we’ve been hearing bout how the mine’s gonna close if we don’t produce more, that the ground is all played out and you don’t know what the owners will do.” Billy Joe said.
“Looks like a pretty good plan, Baker.” I said. “You find out about the underground cave, which by the way is full of gold.” A murmur went through the crowd. “But you’re a young man, and you don’t have any money to buy your way into ownership. So you stage a cave-in and kill off the only other men who knew about the cave.
“Then thirty years later, after you’ve scraped and saved every penny, it’s time to put the next part of your plan into play.” Tavvy said. “So you start staging tommyknocker visitations in order to scare the men away from the mine. If the men won’t work a mostly played-out seam of coal, it’ll be easy enough to convince the owners to sell to any interested buyer.”
“Even you, you fat, dirty bastard.” Billy Joe stepped right up to Baker, and drove a fist into the mine boss’s expansive gut. Baker dropped to one knee, and Billy Joe laid a right cross on his cheekbone that spun the older man around and drove him face-first into the dirt. “That’s for my Uncle David. God rest his soul.”
A loud knock came from the back of the tunnel, and I turned around. Standing there, in the mouth of the mine, were six glowing forms. I couldn’t make out faces, but they all had the stooped posture and the canvas caps of the Georgia mountain miners. I raised a hand to them, and the one on the far end raised a hand back to me. Then they faded out into nothingness, leaving just the echo of a knock on stone behind.
“I would have done it, too,” Baker said from the ground. “If it hadn’t been for you meddling bastards!” He struggled to one knee, and I reached over and punched him, sending him back onto his face in the dirt.
“Yeah, us and the tommyknockers, you ignorant bastard. Don’t you know not to mess with a mountain man, dead or alive?”
“Or a mountain woman.” Tavvy added.
“Damn straight.” Billy Joe said, and we left Baker lying in the dirt for the sheriff to come collect.
The End
For information on appearances, signings, autographed copies, etc. please visit
http://www.johnhartness.com
@johnhartness on Twitter
Copyright 2015 by John G. Hartness
Moonlight & Magic by John G. Hartness is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
About the Author
John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the best-selling author of EPIC-Award-winning series The Black Knight Chronicles from Bell Bridge Books, a comedic urban fantasy series that answers the eternal question “Why aren’t there more fat vampires?” He is also the creator of the comic horror Bubba the Monster Hunter series, and the creator and co-editor of the Big Bad series of horror anthologies from Dark Oak Press and Media. 2015 has seen John launch a new dark fantasy series featuring Quncy Harker, Demon Hunter.
In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and recording new episodes of his ridiculous podcast Literate Liquors, where he pairs book reviews and alcoholic drinks in new and ludicrous ways. John is also a contributor to the Magical Words group blog. An avid Magic: the Gathering player, John is strong in his nerd-fu and has sometimes been referred to as “the Kevin Smith of Charlotte, NC.” And not just for his girth.
For more information about appearances, signings, and other silliness, feel free to follow John on Twitter (@johnhartness), or on his website www.johnhartness.com.
Also by John G. Hartness
Bubba the Monster Hunter Stories
Voodoo Children
Ballet of Blood
Ho-Ho-Homicide
Tassels of Terror
Monsters Beware - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 1
Cat Scratch Fever
Love Stinks
Hall & Goats
Footloose
Monsters Mashed - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 2
Sixteen Tons
Family Tradition - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Prequel
Final Countdown
Monsters Everywhere - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 3
Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - The Complete Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1
UnHoly Night - A Skeeter the Monster Hunter Short Story
Love Hurts
Dead Man’s Hand
She’s Got Legs
Dead Man’s Party - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 4
Fire on the Mountain - A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Story
Howl
Double Trouble
Elf off the Shelf
Casket Case
Bark at the Moon - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 5
Stone Cold Crazy
High on that Mountain
Bad Moon Rising
Trouble in Mind - Bubba the Monster Hunter Vol. 6
Grits,
Guns & Glory - The Complete Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2
White Lightnin’ - A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Story
The Black Knight Chronicles
Volume 1 - Hard Day’s Knight
Volume 2 - Back in Black
Volume 3 - Knight Moves
The Black Knight Chronicles Omnibus Edition
Volume 4 - Paint it Black
Volume 5 - In the Still of the Knight
Movie Knight - A Black Knight Short Story
Black Magic Woman - A Black Knight Short Story
Gone Daddy Gone - A Black Knight Short Story
Knight UnLife - Collected Black Knight Shorts
Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter
Raising Hell
Straight to Hell
Hell on Heels
Co-Edited with Emily Lavin Leverett
The Big Bad: An Anthology of Evil
The Big Bad 2
Other Work
Queen of Kats: Book I - Betrayal
From the Stone
Headshot
Balance - Tales of Alternate Reality
Genesis - Return to Eden Book 1
The Chosen
Returning the Favor and other slices of life
Red Dirt Boy
The Christmas Lights
Moonshine & Magic: A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Collection Page 8
