by Gavin Wilson
A Gift in the Dark
by
Gavin Wilson
A short story based on Cornish Myth.
PUBLISHED BY:
A Gift in the Dark - Copyright 2012 Gavin Wilson.
The right of Gavin Wilson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
~~~
A Gift in the Dark
If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sounds that haunt my dreams. Not the booming whoosh of the steam powered pumps or the clattering of the picks and shovels, but the quiet sounds that whispered from the darkness when the men were resting.
With the Davy Lamps turned low to preserve fuel, the flickering shadows breathed life into the darkness which surrounded us. The gentle drips of water and steady hiss of the lamps; the distant rumble of the surf above our heads, and the knocks of stone and echo. These are the sounds that fill my nights.
1.
I grew up on the wild north coast of Cornwall. An area guarded by sea and gorse, a steeply winding road to low grey slate houses that stared at the sea. It was just me and Nanny Jago for most of my life. My father had died in the Carn Galne collapse of 1910 and my mother had thrown herself from the cliffs at Zennor soon after. From then on Morvah became my home.
We Cornishmen had tunnelled deep. A honeycomb of adits and shafts produced the finest quality tin anywhere in the world. It was a proud boast that at the bottom of any deep hole anywhere in the world you would find a Cornishman. 'Tis a proud miner who stands with his pick on his shoulder, Davy Lamp in hand and pasty cooling in pocket. I still have the photo on the mantel: I still bear the scars of the collapse which followed.
At 14, I joined the line of cap clad men as they wove their way across the gorse and heather, sheltering behind the stone walls and wind tortured hedges marking the cliff edge. On my first day Nanny J had pressed a coin into my hand telling me to leave it as a gift to the knockers.
“They're fickle boy, but if you gift them they'll look after you. They're tricksy folk, so beware: be true to your heart.”
Maybe I should have asked more, but she was always spinning tales of Knockers, the Small Folk and the Pixies. I did as I was bade rather than question the sense of her occasional ramblings.
Superstition was rife among the miners. The little sounds in the adits and the flickering darkness sometimes drove men mad, and they muttered and grumbled to themselves as they worked. Knocking sounds echoed endlessly around the adits and shafts, and if you listened they seemed to talk or reply in some sort of ancient signal, as if in mocking counterpoint to our own feeble efforts.
Every day we ate our crouse in the flickering darkness of the mine, listening to the pounding surf overhead, the steady drip of water and the gentle hiss of the lamps that provided a barrier of light against the encroaching nothingness surrounding us. The crimp of the pasty was held to keep the filth off the rest of the oggy which contained the still warm potato, onion and beef; the remnant was also gifted to the darkness. It was dark filthy work, but I was strong for my age, bred to dig, and soon earned the respect of my colleagues, some of whom remembered my father.
As the years passed, we had other boys who joined us in the mine. Some stayed, some went, occasionally one died.
One destroyed us.
A new lad called Wilf saw the small pile of offerings in the little pool inside the mine entrance on his first day, and temptation overcame caution. This was seen by one of the other young lads who mentioned it to his older brother during crouse time. An argument flared, loud voices echoed through the mine. Then, for the first time, the Knockers joined in.
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The argument stopped instantly. Other than the odd solitary arrhythmic knock of a stone falling, none of us had ever heard the insistent noises during break. All thoughts of food vanished. An older man who had been muttering for many years curled into a ball and started rocking to and fro, whimpering as the noises grew more insistent.
Wilf suddenly took off like a startled hare into the darkness. Through some odd instinct, I grabbed my lamp and sped after him trying to catch him and stop him running into an unbarred shaft or dropping into a pitfall. That action saved my life.
As we raced along the drainage adit, the noises of surf and men were drowned out by the ominous creaking of timbers, scared shouts behind me and the sudden boom of a rock fall. Lamp in hand, I ran for my life still trying to catch the vague figure of Wilf who was suddenly obscured by a cloud of dust and debris that picked me up and threw me unconscious into the dark.
I awoke to utter darkness, bruised and coughing up dust. The gentle dripping of water reminded me where I was and I called out softly into the funereal night. Nothing. I started feeling my way carefully, painfully aware that every step could potentially be my last if I found a pitfall. Instead, I found a foot. I checked the body, finding a candle in a pocket which I lit with one of my few matches. A sense of enormous relief assailed me as the feeble flickering light lit the area, showing an unconscious Wilf and a large section of collapsed roof. Going through the rest of his pockets as he lay there, I found a handful of coins and a ring he had pilfered from the gift pool. These I put in my own pocket, intending to replace them should I ever get out of the mine alive.
Wilf stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes blearily and wincing in pain. He started when he saw me and shrank back against the wall of the cave, wild eyed.
“What?” he started but stopped when he saw the look on my face.
“Quiet” I whispered “The whole area is unstable.” He nodded, and furtively checked his pockets.
“I have what you stole. And this is the only candle we have, unless you have one in your sock.”
Wilf looked down, shamefaced, and that was the last time I ever saw him in normal light as with a dismal little flicker the candle guttered out.
He panicked in the sudden dark, scrabbling around and whimpering in the utter blackness. I grabbed his coat and bade him be quiet, but it was too late.
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The sounds came closer and closer, getting louder and louder, each time an extra beat then a pause. We froze in the absolute dark, the knocking providing a steady but wholly un-reassuring counterpoint to the hammering beat of our own hearts.
Tap, tap. The knocking ceased with two final beats which drove me to my knees. A faint blue glow lifted the veil of dark and we could see again. I immediately wished we couldn't.
We were surrounded. A flickering mass of blue lit shadow swarmed around us constantly changing and obscuring the rocks. One area appeared to pause and stabilise, and a large head with massive dark eyes moved away from the cloud. It hung in front of our eyes, glowing with the same faint blue as the remainder of his swarming kin.
Where is the gift?
Without sound, the words whispered straight into my head. Looking at Wilf I could see he had heard it too. He started patting frantically at his pockets, forgetting in his
panic that I had relieved him of it. I reached into my pocket and mutely held out the small collection.
We need other things now to atone for the theft.
An arm flickered out from the blue swirling mass which provided the sickly light around us, a long multi-jointed finger extending as he pointed at Wilf.
You. Stand up.
Wilf stood, sweating and whey faced in the eerie blue light. Suddenly he bolted, breaking through the swirling mass of creatures. A group of indistinct glowing figures followed him, lighting the cave walls ahead of him as he ran. As he rounded a kink in the tunnel there was a sudden shrill scream which cut off with an audible thud. The distant blue glow winked out leaving me prone against the cave wall in my own private pool of fear.
That is one. Now you. Stand up.
I raised myself painfully to my feet and stood waiting. The impulse to run was high in me, but something made me stay where I was.
Run.
“No.” I managed through dry lips. “I will not.”
Then we will take something else.
“What can I offer?”
There was a pause. Tapping noises started in the depths of the cave, joining in rhythm and communication. The susurration increased, the movement around me intensifying. It stopped as a consensus
