by Holly Hook
“This is weird, man,” Travis says. He sounds like he's underwater.
“I agree,” Shawn says. “What's going on here?”
“I don't know. I don't like it,” I say. The whine gets worse, like that ringing ears sound has found a way to escape the heads of everyone in the world. Colors dance around me. The light of Shawn's phone shoots rays everywhere as if I'm trying to blink water from my eyes. I can't even hear our own footfalls anymore. Are we walking into some weird magnetic field? I've read that they can mess with your brain and cause hallucinations.
And then the world stabilizes. Shawn snaps back into solid form. The electric feeling vanishes and the whine stops as if someone's stepped on the source. I still can't hear the men coming from behind us. It's weird.
“What did we just pass through?” I ask. The rock's different down here. It's gray now, lined with strange green streaks and speckled with bright blue and red. We've entered a new layer in the ground, but the stairs keep spiraling down. I feel like we're walking through the innards of some alien planet.
“I don't have an answer this time, babe,” Shawn says. He shakes his head as we continue. Travis pushes into us. Shawn keeps his hand linked with mine and I'm glad he's here. If he wasn't, I'd break down.
“There's still the cave smell,” Travis says. “Why can't we hear those guys now? They should still be behind us.”
“Maybe they're scared of whatever weirdness we just went through,” I say. They could have been warning us about that.
After another minute of descending the staircase, Shawn stops. I smack into him. “Here’s a floor,” he says, shining his phone down on it. It's still the same gray stone with the freaky streaks and spots. Then he lifts the phone to shine it on the room ahead. It illuminates a wall right across from us. He shines it up and down. The wall stretches on forever in either direction.
“We are coming down,” the old man says. “You have gone too far.”
And then I hear his footfalls. It's as if he's just burst through some doorway and we haven't been able to hear him until now.
“Move,” Travis whispers.
Shawn shines the phone left and right, illuminating the room more.
We're in a tunnel.
A long, square tunnel that leads forever into darkness on either side of us.
“Run,” Shawn says. “To the right.”
He keeps my hand locked with mine and we do.
Our footfalls echo down the corridor, giving us away. We have no other choice. Shawn's light bobs as we run into eternal darkness. The old man's footfalls grow louder and reach the stone floor behind us. I wait for a shot to ring out, but it never comes. I hope the old man can’t move very fast, or we’re doomed.
“Where do we hide?” I manage. My sides start burning. I'm not used to this. I gasp for breath. We approach another pair of tunnels, branching off in two directions. The entrances are held up by wooden beams. We're in a mine. Judging from the cobwebs, an abandoned one.
“Roger!” the old man shouts.
Footfalls come after us.
“Turn,” Travis says, cutting in front of us and bolting down the left corridor. Shawn’s phone barely illuminates him. He's a ghost in the black.
We do.
“Who’s there?” the old man asks.
This tunnel's narrower than the last. The light from Shawn's phone bounces up and down as we run. Yes. It’s an old mine and we’re running under wooden support beams. Something small scurries out of our way. It could be my panic, but it looks like something wearing a yellow and red pointed hat. It makes no sense.
The cobwebs thicken and we plow forward. “Keep going,” Shawn huffs. “There has to be another way out of here.”
The ground here is old, crooked. “What if we get lost?” I breathe. The thought sends panic down my spine. That's even worse than the thought of facing those men. Maybe he doesn’t want to shoot us after all. Maybe he just wants to yell at us and tell us to get out of here, and rightly so. We have no business running around abandoned mines.
The shaft grows narrower. Older. We have to dodge under a fallen support beam. It’s getting more difficult to go through. I spot an old lamp on the floor along with a broken handle to a rusted pickaxe. The footsteps of the men fade behind us.
“Follow my voice,” he orders. He's much farther away. “You do not want to be here. You don’t want them to find you. This is your last chance. If you want to see your world again, you must show yourselves now.”
We slow.
And stop, catching our breath. I lean on Shawn. He lets the light of his phone fall to the floor, casting a circle on the rock. Travis is just a shadow in front of us.
“Them?” I whisper and cough.
“Our world?” Travis asks. “This guy's smoking something.”
We stop.
“He doesn’t know where we are,” Shawn whispers, trying to catch his breath. He extinguishes the flashlight app and darkness closes in. “He can't keep up with us. If we stay here and don’t wander, we can find our way back to the main tunnel once he’s gone. All we have to do is follow all the ruined cobwebs.”
I huddle close to him. “He must have seen our light turning this way.” The air down here is dry and stale. Now that we're not being chased, my mind wanders to other things. Aren't there toxic gases in mines? I breathe into my shirt to shut out any fumes that there might be. My panic rises. My heart hammers. Now I can add depths to my list of fears, right above heights.
“Show yourselves,” the man repeats.
“No,” I whisper. “These people are connected to Talia going missing.”
“Shhh,” Shawn says.
Travis jumps and whirls around, his arm bumping into mine. “I heard something move,” he says.
“Don’t say that now,” I tell him. “That’s the last thing I want to hear.”
“Something did move,” he says. “It ran across my foot. It's probably some of those mice that were up in the house, but it didn't feel like one.”
And then there's more noise.
Skittering.
It's the same mini stampede we heard earlier.
The noise grows louder and louder like thunder. I tense. We're going to be trampled by rats. The man calls for us again, but I barely hear it over the sound.
I scream. There must be a tsunami of rodents coming right at us.
“What the--” Shawn asks.
He shuffles next to me and his phone lights again, just enough for us to see a little. He points it in the direction we came right as the sound stops.
The dull light falls on the most horrifying sight of my life.
I scream again. I can't help it.
We face an army of six-inch-tall gnomes.
At least, that's how my brain has to process it.
They cover the entire floor and they're all staring at us. They're wearing pointed hats, hats striped in yellow and red and their bodies are the same way. Disgusting, frog-green eyes take up their entire faces. They're eyes like balls of slime with pits in the middle.
I'm going to vomit.
Shawn curses and drops his phone. The things skitter back as if the light's blinding them. I lean against the stone wall and right into a cobweb. I'm going to be sick. Are those things doing something to us?
Shawn groans and slumps next to me. My ears ring. I'm going to pass out right here and no one will ever find us.
“Shawn,” I manage.
“What were those?” he asks. He sounds weak. “What are those?”
And then he falls to the floor.
My ears ring louder and I want the torment to end. I break out in sweat. I'm so sick. So lightheaded. So helpless. This is worse than the time I passed out from the flu last year. I slump to the floor and lie over Shawn. At least we'll be unconscious if those things want to eat us. Travis groans next to me and I close my eyes.
* * * * *
“This might be a problem.”
It's the voice of the old man, cutting
through heaviness. He's found us. I'm still lying down, this time on my stomach. The stone is cold. My ears ring, but it's getting better. I'm coming to. I'm still alive.
I reach out for Shawn, but he's gone. Instead, my hand scrapes the chilly floor. There's nothing else. A memory of sickening green eyes and pointy hats flash across the darkness of my closed eyelids along with something about an old mine.
“This will be three more kids missing, if we decide to sell them,” another man says.
Sell them.
Missing.
Talia. She's missing, too.
I open my eyes.
The gray floor stretches out into darkness. Feet from me, there's a lantern on the floor with a flame inside. I'm lying in a circle of light. Beyond it, there's nothing but black. And there's a draft in here. I'm in a large, dark room. My knees hurt like someone's dragged me for some time. Those men must have found us.
Next to me, Travis lies on his back. He blinks once like he's coming to.
Shawn.
Where is he?
I don't want to shout in case the men realize we're waking up. My heart pounds but I bite in my calls for help. I turn my head. Where are the men, anyway? I can't see them. They must be standing somewhere outside the light.
Shawn.
He's on the other side of me, also on his back. He's still out. Did those little creepy things make us lose consciousness?
The moist smell is there. We're still underground.
“The two boys will be good workers,” the other man says. “They're strong. That one must be an athlete. They can swing a pickaxe. I don't know about the girl.”
“That's the problem.” The old man speaks now. My eyes adjust. Two figures move just beyond the circle of light. I recognize the pistol still on the old man's hip. If I get up, he can shoot me before I can even wake Shawn and Travis. “I don't know if they'll even want her for anything. I hate to kill anyone.”
The other man—it must be the fat one—speaks. “I don't want to, either."
My heart explodes with terror.
They want to sell Shawn and Travis to someone else and murder me.
These people must be in league with Lily Abner. They like to sell kids to underground gnomes and make them work in these mines. My heart hammers. This might be the end for us, even if they let us live. We might never see the sun again.
“We might have an even bigger problem than that.” The old man approaches. He comes into view and I squeeze my eyes most of the way shut. I can see the man's tie through my eyelashes. He stops a few feet away. He could pull the gun any second. “This will make four people missing from the same area if word gets out. These are the kind of kids that the media will care about. They might even cover this on the mainstream news. For starters, we need to erase the fact that these three ever went to Badwater. No one can know. We'll just have to explain the situation to the boss. He'll sort it out. We shouldn't make any decisions until we speak with him.”
Then the fat man whispers something to the old man, something that I can't make out. It must be about me. Plead for my life, I think. I just want to live even if I have to work in some mines. Please.
“Oh,” the old man says. “I agree. We speak with the boss first. But where do we keep these three in the meantime? I never expected such good kids to be associated with the other sort, you know? I hate to see them sold.”
I breathe out. They're not going to kill us—yet.
“The Dwellers can keep them here. It's not like they're going to find the way back to that gateway on their own."
The Dwellers. Are those the things with the gross eyes?
The skittering noise comes again, the soft thunder of thousands of tiny feet.
They're here. The things. They're all around us. For some reason, they're not coming into the light. These two men are going to leave us at their mercy.
The old man shuffles closer to the lamp and stops again. It's the only thing keeping the Dwellers back. He has his back turned. He must still think we're asleep.
We need to get to that lamp before he grabs it, or we're done. We're never going to find our way out. There's no way I can wander in this darkness for days and days until I die.
“You're right,” the old man says. “We can leave them until the boss can get here. But I don't like this. Even if we let them go, we need a way to keep this whole operation a secret. We can't let anyone know about the Flamestone Society.”
Flamestone Society. It doesn't make any sense. Is there a secret society of old dudes kidnapping people and giving them to creepy little gnomes that live under the ground?
The old man shuffles closer and I close my eyes again and force myself to breathe slowly. Shawn will go for the lantern, won't he? Or Travis. They're big guys. They might be able to tackle these two freaks and we can get that light and get the heck out of here.
I flatten my arms against my body. My phone is still in my pocket.
My hand brushes it as I keep it by my side. I'm amazed they didn't take it. Why didn't they? Don't they realize we can call for help?
There's another round of clicking and rushing and this time, squeaking, like those things are getting impatient with the two men. Like they're waiting for a decision. Are we fresh meat or not? I don't want to imagine how disgusting little gnomes will treat us, even if we don't get worked to death in some part of this mine.
If the three of us can't escape, we might never see the surface again.
“Larconi,” the fat man says.
“Yes?”
“We need to figure out something soon, or the Dwellers might take us instead. I don't like the way they sound right now.”
They're squeaking louder. Their feet tap faster and I open my eyes. There's a moving swarm outside the circle of light. I make out a flash of yellow. Green. Bloody red. Another wave of sickness washes over me and I study the floor. Yes. Just the sight of those Dwellers is making me ill. I have to avoid seeing them.
Larconi sighs. “We can sell them the boys,” he says. “At least for now. You will have to go out and move their cars away from here. Far away. Make them look like they got drunk and drove into the river. I don't care what you need to do. We can't have the authorities searching out here.”
“I will,” the fat man says. He snaps his fingers. “The boys,” he says, his voice filling the room. “You may have them.” The skittering grows closer and I make out little shapes moving in the dark, a sea of yellow and red. There must be thousands of them.
And if they take Shawn and Travis, they'll never escape. One gaze from those things and we're down.
“Take the boys,” the fat man orders. “I expect our payment soon. Dump it here. I want those gemstones by this evening. In your time, that is.”
The soft thunder grows louder, more frenzied as the things wait at the edge of the light. They won't enter the circle.
“Oh,” Larconi says, lifting the lantern. The circle grows smaller and they move in closer. “I'm sorry, good friends. You may take them now.”
He opens his coat and starts to tuck the lantern inside.
I understand.
These Dwellers can't stand bright light. It must hurt their huge eyes or something.
I get up. “No!”
Larconi freezes. Shawn springs up in front of me. He's been waiting for someone to make a move. “Stay away from her,” he says, spreading his hands in front of me. “I don't know who you are, but please, let her go. Let Elaine walk out of here unharmed. I don't care what you do to me.” His voice is shaking. The things all stop and silence like they're afraid of him.
“Move, young man.” Larconi gets the lantern back out again and the light swings, making the sea of Dwellers recede like some living shadow. It illuminates the figure of the fat man for a second. “You do not know what you've gotten yourself into. Try to run, and you'll find out that's quite useless.”
“I'll be glad to move. By getting Elaine out of here,” he says.
Larconi's reaching fo
r his gun.
Shawn leaps and gets him in a tackle. The lantern falls to the floor and goes out.
Darkness swallows all. Thousands of Dweller feet roar as they move in, closer, closer to take away Shawn and Travis and make them work these merciless mines. The sounds of a struggle sound only feet away. Larconi curses. Something rubs against my legs and I stagger. The Dwellers are all around me. They rush past my shoes, over my sneakers and over towards Shawn and Larconi struggle on the floor. I can't see a thing. The lack of light is the only thing keeping me from seeing those horrible eyes. It's the only thing keeping me conscious.
“Elaine, run!” Shawn shouts. “Get out of here!”
A shot fires and I scream. The room flashes and the fat man's there, pointing his gun at the ceiling. Sparks fly and the Dwellers all squeal in pain. Shawn and Larconi still wrestle. Dwellers perch on Shawn's back. The stampede starts again and Shawn curses. He hasn't been shot. Larconi's shot at the ceiling instead. I smell smoke. Dampness. Stone and hopelessness. Someone big brushes past me and pushes me back. Travis. He's joining the fight.
“Elaine, get out of here!” Shawn yells. He sounds more distant now, like someone's dragging him away. Like a bunch of somethings are dragging him away.
“Shawn!” I jump forward and reach for him. The floor's clear now. The Dwellers have vacated the area. They're getting farther away, too. Their feet hit stone like a fleeing swarm of giant insects. Travis grunts and there's a thud somewhere across the room. The sound's swallowed by more feet. They're taking Shawn. Travis, too.
They're taking them deeper into the earth and as soon as they leave, Larconi and his friend are going to deal with me. “Shawn!” I shout. How do I catch him? Where have they gone? There must be tunnels here. I can't see a thing.
“Go!” Yes. He's farther away and his voice echoes towards me. They must have him in a tunnel. Nothing runs around my legs now and I can move forward. I put my arms out, searching, searching for anything that might lead out of here and to Shawn. I can't leave him here.
