by Scott Jäeger
“No, no. The renovations are fine,” I said, clutching the edge of his desk as if fearing a tornado might pluck me into the sky. “I’m glad you went ahead. But listen: there was a patient of mine and I was wondering how he’s getting on, a Mr. Jukes. Have you seen him?”
“Jukes? Can’t say that I have. Special case of yours, is he?”
“That he is,” I said quietly. “All this travel has me addled. I remember now. He was transferred to Sefton while I was away.” A damned lie if there ever was one. I would later learn that the housekeeper had said not a word about her charge. She had vanished the day after Tully’s death along with a large sum in cash which her master imprudently kept about the house.
Unconscionable I know, but there it is. In my defense, Jukes was in perfectly fine health, physically. Why hadn’t he put up a racket? He would have been heard.
The next night, I returned to the basement with a helper. He was a Chinese lad named Ming, very strong, and as a deaf-mute the soul of discretion. My hands were shaking so awfully, I could not have done the job without him. Once enough of the black space yawned open for me to pass, I signaled Ming to wait, covered my mouth with a handkerchief soaked in cologne, and entered.
By the light of my lonely candle, I witnessed Mr. Jukes’s final repose. He sat propped up on his cot as ever, his eyes were closed, his expression serene. The dust here too was undisturbed. The poor mad fool had not even stood from his bed to save himself. I returned the handkerchief to my pocket and tentatively sniffed the air. The room smelled of damp, but that was all. I bowed my head a moment in prayer.
“Hello, Doctor.” Mr. Jukes opened his eyes, and though he did not turn from contemplating the bare brick wall opposite, a slight grin creased his visage, as much emotion as I’d ever seen from him. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
I felt the blood drain from my face, and it seemed from my body as well, pouring out my feet and into the earth. If there had been some way of bricking up that corridor again in an instant, I would have done just that. But I could not have borne another moment so close to the thing in that room. Clutching Ming by one arm, I fled.
Three days later, my courage reinforced with a generous measure of scotch, I delivered my patient to Sefton Asylum along with a heavily edited dossier, including a diagnosis that covered his confused memories and feeble appetite, and a birth date that reflected his appearance.
That is all twenty-five years gone.
Yesterday, I was summoned to Sefton, a place I have always avoided, but especially after parting ways with Mr. Jukes. He had asked for me by name, and as the horrors of our past association had faded over the decades, I acceded. I found exactly what I expected: a quarter-century years later, Mr. Jukes looks the same as he did the day of his arrival at St. Mary’s. Not a wrinkle, nor a gray hair, nor any indication of the advent of time which all mortal men must face.
He told me he had found the mine. I asked him in a whisper what he meant. The Rusty Wheel, he said. He had finally found it and would be returning there. It was where his friends were, the only friends he had now. My brain reeled as he spoke of men whose very bones must be dust, and buried beneath a thousand tons of granite besides. But for the sake of expediency, I agreed that this was for the best, silently promising myself I would never again set foot within the Asylum’s stained gray walls.
The next morning I arrived at my office and saw that despite the locked door I was preceded by a young man who seemed to be idly looking through the papers on my bookshelf. As I was about to protest, he turned to me, smiled, and offered an ironic two-fingered salute. It was John Jukes. He then walked to a corner of the room by the window, where an open closet door hid him momentarily hidden from view.
All my years pressed down on me like so many blocks of masonry. I wished with every fibre to close the door behind me and never return, but I advanced those few steps to confirm what I must by then have known. John Jukes had vanished, as if into the air itself.
Once I had caught my breath, I went to the secretary’s desk and telephoned Sefton to inquire on Jukes’s status. When my call was returned that afternoon, there was much prevarication and grumbling before it was finally admitted that he was nowhere to be found. He must have escaped, they said. I did not press them for details and for that I assume they were glad.
****
And that was the doctor’s story.
“What do you think of it?” Pardee asked.
“What do I think of it?” I parroted. “I think it’s rubbish. Oh, you maybe could get it published in some serial for young boys. Seems you can get anything printed these days.”
“You don’t believe a word of it, eh? That suits me fine, Mr. Wilson. It suits me down to the ground. But I believe the miner Jukes uncovered something deep underground, something that changed his makeup. At this late date, we know whatever he found wasn’t Radium, or at least not just Radium, but whatever it was gave him longevity beyond any normal man. It might even have given him eternal life.”
This last bit of earnest prattle was too much for me. I let loose a belly laugh that all but shook the house down. I laughed until I wheezed like a sixty-year-old man with Black Lung. The fact I didn’t roll right off the porch and into the ditch was purely good manners, which I thank the Lord my mother had raised me up to employ at all times.
Mr. Pardee waited. And waited. Whatever else you could say about him, he was a patient man. When the last giggle and snort had trickled to an end, I sat back to finish catching my wind.
“Mister, do you travel around like this all the time, telling jokes? ‘Cause I think that was the single best laugh I’ve had since I saw the preacher’s pants catch fire when I was eight years old.”
“Mr. Wilson,” he said, pausing until he had my attention, “your country bumpkin act might help you blend in here in this nowhere town, but it doesn’t fool me. Listen. I want a guide to accompany me to the Rusty Wheel silver mine, someone who knows how a mine is laid out, how to navigate underground without the benefit of a map and powered elevators. There‘s also gas, rotten shoring and other dangers, with which I know you are familiar. I’ve got fifty dollars for the man who will take me out there and spend a few days sussing things out.”
“Why me?” I didn’t ask how Pardee knew I had once been a miner. My flush of good humour was fading as something at the pit of my stomach told me I didn't want to know.
“I have good reasons, to wit: I don’t want to mount an expedition. I want one man I can rely on. Besides the cost, I can’t have a lot of gossipy small town types involved. You can imagine if– when I find what I aim to find, the discovery has to remain secret for a long time. I’ll have to get the substance, whatever it is, to a lab, then I’ll need to get funding to buy the land, set up a guard at the site, etcetera. The whole project may take months.”
“If this secret of yours is so precious, what makes you think it will be safe inside the head of a broken down old miner?”
“Ah. A very good question, Mr. Wilson. Very astute. Tell me, what do you know about West Virginia?”
“To the west, ain’t it?” I quipped. Truth is, this lollygagger really did have my attention now. I knew about West Virginia all right. I knew a piece more than I’d like to.
“Ha ha,” he replied. “My family is in mining, sir. I’ve never actually worked in a mine, but being around folks in the business, one occasionally hears stories, like the story of this ghost miner John Jukes. Like the story of a union organizer named Bernard Wolczak.”
Like a startled snake, my spine spasmed out of its accustomed slouch. The heat was rising up in my face, and no doubt Pardee saw it too.
“In the course of my research into the Rusty Wheel, I did a little asking around and discovered that you hail from West Virginia yourself, from the same town as this other miner in fact, place called Beury. Maybe you’ve heard of this Pole, name of Bernard Wolczak? Any man high up in the union makes a lot of enemies in a mining town, but Wolczak is a special case
. A union man who steals from his own hall…” He shook his head, baffled. “I do believe some folks would travel right ‘round the world to talk to that man, if they only knew where he’d got to.”
I lifted a hand to shade my eyes from Pardee’s brilliant smile.
“There’s one more reason I chose you for this job, Mr. Wilson: I like to hire cheap. Problem with men you get on the cheap is they’re slow, unmotivated, and often not too bright. Now I know you’re motivated to work for me; you must be smart to have so many enemies; and I have a feeling you’ll come cheap.”
I am not a man who will fight when he knows he’s licked. Battered pride recovers faster than a cracked skull. I speak from experience.
“Fifty dollars you say?”
We set out at dawn on the next, fortuitously cooler, day. Prior to our introduction, Pardee had already rented a mule at Faulkner’s and secured our equipment: rope, lamps, provisions for a week, and light climbing and digging gear. The kit looked fine to me. I was more skeptical about finding the hole than exploring it. I hadn’t ever heard of a working mine around Dunwich, and the only news I’d ever had about the Rusty Wheel was from my new boss.
Pardee unfurled a hand drawn map assembled, he explained, from several other maps and surveys, and a few written accounts. He had marked his masterpiece with what he deduced to be the exact location of the site, as well as the winding route between us and it. It wasn’t far as the crow flies, but we would have to navigate the labyrinthine tangle of the ravines. A single stream which, according to the map, watered the mine was to be our guide almost the entire way.
Two hours outside Dunwich, after scrambling ourselves and our animal down a slope of loose talus, we were confronted with a wall of dark green. The forest seemedw unwholesome somehow, lush and resilient, yet rank smelling. Tacitly understanding that this plainly was not going to be a pleasure hike, we set to work. My arms soon grew tired, then hot, then plain numb from attacking thorny vine, scrub and saplings. The undergrowth bounced back from our blades as if it personally resented our intrusion.
After our first long day of fighting the strange greenery, we stopped in a cramped clearing. Though the sun would not set for another hour, we already sat in the cliffs’ shadow, sipping camp coffee which was almost, but not quite, strong enough to mask the bitterness of the creek water from which it was made.
Having sufficient breath to talk for the first time in hours, Pardee asked, without preamble, “What did you tell your wife about the job?”
“I told Sadie I had got some work in Partidgeville, but not the honest kind so she should keep quiet about it. No need to worry about her.”
It was an unexpected blessing that this was all the talking Pardee wanted to do.
I bolted upright in my bedroll just before dawn. I had woken from a horrible dream about a black hole in the earth, perfectly round and going down forever. Whether it was a real pit that scared me or a metaphorical pit I cannot say. Both the mule and my boss were working on their breakfasts, and both looked pointedly in my direction.
The first swing of the machete was the hardest. Once we got into the rhythm we made good headway and keeping the stream always on our right, broke through to the conjectured location of the mine an hour or two before sunset.
Pardee almost panicked, rushing rushed up and down the rock wall, parting the scrub and massaging the stone with his hands, as if searching for a secret switch. “This is it. We’re at the stream-head. It’s here! It has to be here!”
Right away I saw that the land had at one time been leveled out and the undergrowth cleared away, leaving a bare area that still resisted the jealously encroaching forest. There was something else as well, but I let his spring run down a bit before I hawked phlegm and pointed: a chunk of rust in the shape of an antique mine cart, cloaked in a tattered cloth of vegetation. The entrance was nowhere in sight, but I had an idea about that too.
“These ravines flood in springtime,” I said. “The water doesn’t stand for long, but it rises awful quick during a storm. I reckon the entrance was elevated and accessed by a platform and ramp, a wooden platform and ramp. Today you’d find nothing but a handful of nails and braces.”
He laughed –more like barked– once with relief, and called me over to help him unload our beast. Once the mule was comfortable we took about an hour to find the big hole. It was almost invisible from the outside, but the floor inside was paved with flat, mason-cut stones and the support beams were all still in place.
“I’m going to take a little look-see,” Pardee said.
“Not without me,” I replied. “First rule underground: no solo exploring. These short handled shovels ain’t going to dig you out of ten tons of rock. And I’m about in for today.”
“I just want to find the foreman’s office, see if any of the records survived.”
“Like as not the foreman’s office was in a shed outside. This hole in the ground has kept for a hundred years. It can keep until tomorrow.”
“Please, Wilson, just give me fifteen minutes.” Against my better judgment, I gave in. Pardee was like a kid at his first country fair.
I lighted a bulls-eye lantern and took the first step under the heavy oak lintel, fancifully carved with a broken toothed cogwheel. It was cool and dry and there was a breeze from deeper within. This meant limited rot in the shoring and some extant form of ventilation, good signs. A few yards inside the entrance a corridor on the left had fallen in, but the damage was limited. On the opposite side we discovered a chamber containing nothing but some rusty pegs and two mostly disintegrated footlockers. I guessed it to be a coat room.
Two more rooms yielded a mountain of rusted pick heads and spades, gears and parts, and a couple of unidentifiable machines, all junked by Father Time. At the main shaft, the headframe had fallen partway into the hole and the hoist was ruined, naturally.
“See this?” I indicated a narrow but deep crevice that started on the north wall and bisected the main shaft. “Whole hillside’s shifted. Looks more like an earthquake than an explosion. Nightmare for anyone caught below.”
Pardee peered past the wrecked headframe into the big hole. I noted, silently, that there was ample room for a man to fall here, if he weren’t careful. “How do we get down?”
There were three other, smaller shafts, adjacent to the main hole. Two were for ore lifts, and the third was the emergency access, where instead of a narrow iron ladder I found a square iron bracket, and nothing else. I figured it must have been removed after the disaster to discourage exploration. Or had it been made of wood and simply rotted away? A wooden ladder was against regulations now, but a miner’s life was worth less than a cart of raw ore in the old days. The amount of metal in a mine was finite; the number of men lined up for a job was not.
“The emergency shaft will be our best bet,” I said. “Anyway, that’s for tomorrow. No foreman’s office. Let’s get some grub.”
At the verge of that white rectangle to the outside world, I was distracted by a glint of light. Something shiny was hidden in the rubble opposite that first coat room. I stopped and turning my lantern caught it again. It was a few yards behind the broken rock and earth sloping down that side.
We began clearing away the blockage, me with one eye on the half-buckled shoring and the other on the day’s light. Luckily, the room beyond hadn’t completely caved in. Judging by the mostly intact furniture, three huge cabinets and an oak desk, I decided it must have been the foreman’s office. One of the desk drawers was locked, the others full of nothing but dust.
“Pass me that pry bar.” Pardee made short work of the lock and was rewarded with a heavy, leather bound day log, not much different from the ones still in use today. “What a find! Come on, let’s get out in the light.”
The day was almost done. I ended up making our camp while Pardee pored over his book. He squatted by a lantern, turning each brittle yellow page as if it were the Gutenberg bible, and not an eighty-year-old ledger of ore tonnage and payroll
for a defunct silver mine.
I was eating boiled potatoes from a tin bowl and thinking nothing in particular, when he exclaimed, “It’s all true, Wilson. The log confirms it. This is the ghost miner Jukes’s mine. This is where we’ll find our fountain of youth.”
He graciously allowed me to finish my supper before foisting it on me. By the light available, it was all I could do to make out the crabbed and faded handwritten entries. Pardee hovered nearby, helpfully pointing out the important parts.
Since Pardee left the ledger to me as a souvenir, I’ll excerpt the pertinent bits here.
****
Log Book – Rusty Wheel Silver Mine
William Corning, Chief Foreman
24 April
Word come down from HQ today: if we don’t produce a major vein by end of summer, the operation’s shutting down. I had a good gut feeling about this one, but now it looks like I won’t have time to prove it. We’ve been cut to a single work gang doing 16’s every day but Sunday, and that day off only because of the law.
10 May
Another letter from Boss Stellrecht. That boob left me no choice: I had to open up the third level. There aren’t enough men to do a proper job of the shoring, but no one will complain when we strike silver.
18 May
Third level coming along. No money yet, but I swear I can smell it from all the way up here. That idiot Paczini clipped off a finger rustling carts today. At least he kept on working.
19 June
Thompson came to me today, said he’d discovered a stone door of all things. It’s the entrance to some kind of buried ruin. He said the hinges worked as smooth as the door of the bank in Arkham. There was a room behind it, with a roof still supported by pillars, and in this room was a pool.
My first thought was that Thompson had been on the gin. Folks around here call it “clawfoot”, like the bathtubs they mix it up in, and it’s powerful stuff, powerful bad. But Thompson’s a good man mostly, so I went down to look for myself. Everything he said was true, but the pool weren’t full of water, but some glowy, shimmery substance, like I don’t know what. I saw right away that room needed to be shut up. I told Thompson to chain that door and mark off the passage as no good. Miners are an ignorant lot, God bless ‘em, and if they saw that devil glow they would call the mine haunted. Once that cry goes up, all profit will be lost and our jobs with it!
