Ghost Mine

by Hunter Shea

  “Teta, you all set?”

  “Oh, I’m ready, jefe.” He’d given the rifle to Matthias. He had a pistol in one hand and the sword in the other. Angus gripped the machete, still muttering.

  I nodded at Franklin. “Lead the way, spirit man.”

  We walked another fifty feet, keeping our formation. Franklin paused at a sharp turn, then motioned for us to continue. There was a dull, pulsing orange glow against the far wall of the tunnel. When we rounded the corner, I had to swallow hard to keep my heart from leaping out of my throat.

  It was bad. Real bad.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Until this point, we’d been moles running through tiny burrows. What stretched out before us was so dizzying, it made me feel like an ant gazing up at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

  The tunnel was enormous. The ceiling was so high, it couldn’t be seen. Its width could have accommodated a dozen trains riding side by side. It was long, but we could see a wall of angry flame at the other end. The flames illuminated the tunnel with blinding light. I squeezed my eyes shut, reopening them slowly to give them time to adjust.

  The walls were covered in a thick layer of ice, but the air was hot and arid. Fire and ice.

  Death and damnation.

  Large, dark shapes moved back and forth, across the curtain of fire. Even from a distance, they looked big. Impossibly big.

  “I take it that’s the gate up ahead,” I said. Even Franklin stared at it with terror. “Yes.”

  More shapes walked through the flames and were gathering. The welcoming committee was getting itself in place.

  “I’ll take an army of entrenched Spaniards any day over this,” Teta said.

  “Yeah, but the food’s been better since we came to Hecla,” I said, nodding at Selma. “I’d even eat a hundred cans of that terrible beef and come down with malaria over this.”

  I noticed Angus had stopped chanting. Matthias let out a startled yelp. I turned around to see what had scared him. Selma and Teta turned with me.

  “Looks like the posse has arrived,” I said.

  Behind us, hundreds of luminous spirits filled the tunnel’s entrance. Some were on the ground, but more floated above us, swaying about and circling around our heads. Men and women, hardened miners and Teddy’s tattered troops swept about. Everyone who had ever been lured to Hecla only to find a fate even worse than death came to join our ranks. Behind them came a procession of the black-eyed kids. They walked in eerie silence, proceeding to our right and left until they formed two solid rows ahead of us.

  “I don’t want those kids on the front line,” I said, “Dead or not. It’s not right.”

  “Their innocence is our best shield,” Matthias said. “They may be stuck here, but the devil was denied full possession of their souls.”

  I still didn’t like it.

  More figures joined the ranks outside the flaming gates. My stomach tightened when I saw they were scampering up the walls like bear-sized lizards.

  A black explosion of foul-smelling smoke erupted between us and the spirit children. In an instant, a wall of wild men materialized. Wild men were perched on each other’s shoulders, reaching up well over thirty feet.

  The Djinn had arrived. I wondered if Djinn always looked like wild men, or, like the devil had said of himself, it was just a form they took so as not to rattle our feeble human senses. Were the wild men of legend all Djinn, or had the Djinn just copied them?

  It was a question that would have to wait for another day. “Is there anyone else coming to the party?” I said.

  Angus shook his head. “Every available soul is here. They want their freedom. They believe in us. We can’t let them down.”

  “Nothing like a little pressure,” Teta said, spitting against the wall. I knew Teta. He wanted the fight to start. Win or lose, he wanted to take action.

  Selma pulled on my shirt. “Nat, there’s something I want to tell you before we go down there.”

  I looked into her big brown eyes, leaned down and pressed my lips against hers. They were soft and sweet and trembling. “Save it for later. We’ll have plenty of time to talk then.”

  Turning to Angus, I said, “You might as well tell them to make the charge.”

  He smiled. “They answer to you now. You’re the fighter.”

  I’d never commanded an army of the dead and Djinn. I looked around at the strangest regiment ever assembled. From what I could tell up ahead, we were about to clash with hell’s most nightmarish creations. Even now, I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to show the devil what an old cowboy was capable of when you pushed him too far.

  I used what I thought was the universal language to plunge ahead. “Heyaaahhhh!”

  The tunnel rumbled as we ran, bellowing loud enough to split the world in two.

  * * *

  The adult spirits swept over us like a wave, jumping ahead of the children. It made sense. They had been their parents at one time, and were going to protect them even beyond death.

  The Djinn disassembled as we plunged ahead, running and snarling. Some moved so fast, they were able to sprint along the tunnel walls. Others moved to the rear, either to protect the back of the small band of the living or as a last line of defense should we fail.

  The demons ahead of us roared as one mad, angry beast. The shock waves of their howls pushed back at us like a hurricane wind. It didn’t so much as give the spirits and Djinn pause. For those of us still in possession of our flesh and bones, it was hard to keep our balance. Selma screamed. I reached behind and pulled her closer.

  A colossal report rattled the tunnel as the first wave of spirits slammed into the swarming mob of black, demonic bodies. My ears popped and rang with head-splitting intensity. The opposing forces met midway to the gates and transformed into a swirling mass of light and dark. We ran as hard as we could, but we were still too far to make out any detail.

  “Shoot anything that moves!” I shouted, barely able to hear my own voice.

  We got closer, and the first line of black-eyed kids darted with lightning speed into the fray. Demons wailed and the ground shook.

  It wasn’t until the wild men broke their formation ahead of us that we could see what we were up against.

  Nothing in Sunday school could have prepared us for this.

  The demons grappling with the spirits were enormous, at least twice the size of Angus. They resembled fat-bodied spiders, except they had eight long, multiple-jointed human arms in place of legs. Their mouths were crammed with deadly incisors, dripping with some kind of fluid that smoked when it touched the rock, frying the ice along the walls.

  A pair of Djinn jumped onto one of the demon spiders’ back, plunging their arms into its sides. The spider’s mouth stretched wide in a scream of pain. The Djinn extracted their arms, yowling as whatever acid that lived inside the spider chewed away at them. The spider and the Djinn collapsed, the spider melting into a pulpy puddle and the Djinn bursting into smoke before the acid finished eating their arms up to their shoulders.

  A spider leapt over a row of black-eyed kids, headed straight for us. Selma pumped a round into it, catching it square in its single, green-glowing eye. It flipped in midair, crashing to the floor and knocking over another demon.

  “Holy shit!” Teta shouted. His pistol went off and another spider dropped from the wall. Above us was a tempest of madness. A host of spirits had gathered up as many of the spiders as they could hold and circled around them like a tornado. I don’t know what went on in the eye of the storm, but it didn’t sound like things were going well for the spiders.

  Parts of their bodies shot out from the cyclone, splattering against the frozen tunnel walls.

  We pressed on.

  The demon spiders were reluctant to touch the black-eyed kids, stepping back every time the kids stepped forward. As the spiders paused, the Djinn
shrieked and scampered on top of them, ripping arms, pulling out incisors and tearing into their pregnant bodies with abandon.

  A machete sang to my left and I saw Angus cleave a spider’s head in two. He put his foot on its eyes for leverage as he pulled the machete free. The eye gave way with a loud plop.

  Matthias prayed above the din, shooting at any spider that got past us. Turns out, he was a good shot.

  If hell was worse than this, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get closer to the gates.

  Thanks to the spirit children, we were able to keep a steady pace forward, never stopping, never going back.

  A spider galloped toward us, leaping over the kids. I fired one shot in its open maw, and another into its eye. It skidded to a stop by my feet. We kept formation as we skirted around the body, careful to avoid stepping into the gelatinous goo that pooled from its fangs.

  “Nat, look out!” Selma screamed.

  She pointed over my left shoulder. A spider, chewing on the remains of one of the Djinn, flexed its arms like it was about to pounce. Teta shot out two of the joints in its front arms and it rolled down the side of the wall. He hacked at it with the sword for good measure when it hit the ground.

  The spirit tornado broke apart, and with that, a rain shower of spider bits sprinkled to the ground. I put out an arm to stop everyone. I didn’t want us to get caught in that poisonous mess.

  As the spirits settled to the ground, I could see what lay ahead.

  The flames guarding the gate flared a hundred feet high, higher. We’d made good progress, but there was still a ways to go. The demon spiders had been reduced to scattered piles of coagulating blackness.

  But hell wasn’t done with us. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  “Teta, Selma, Matthias, how are you on ammo?”

  “I have two shells left,” Selma said, her voice quaking. “Four bullets, one sword,” Teta replied.

  “Three,” Matthias took a break from his praying to answer. Angus tapped his machete against my leg.

  We were going to need a lot more than what we had to get past the next part.

  Before us stood a dozen gray, knobby creatures. Each stood well over twenty-five feet high. Their heads were flat-topped, with eyes on each side. An opening under their heads held long, lashing tongues. Their bodies were a cross between a man and something from the sea and open range. Their chests were ten feet wide, and from them flowed a series of tentacles and antelope legs with cloven hooves. It was as if the devil had taken a little bit from every living creature and molded them into one hideous, enormous creation.

  A tongue whipped out, wrapping itself around one of the black-eyed kids. It scooped the silent spirit child into its mouth and went for another.

  “No!” I shouted, creasing its fast-moving tongue with a bullet. The tongue snapped back, and the kids moved from its feeding zone.

  For a moment, there was a complete break in the fighting. The appearance of these monstrosities even made the dead and the Djinn stand still, taking them in with dreadful awe. In the stillness, I thought I heard a man laughing.

  I shouted, “It’s too late to turn back! Show them you’re not afraid! Let’s make hell fear us!”

  That stirred up the spirits, who took to the air once again, flowing over the beasts. The demons rolled out their tongues, catching two, three, four spirits at a stroke before stuffing them into their mouths. I didn’t want to think what happened to the spirits once they were inside the demons.

  The Djinn went for the demons’ legs, clawing and biting and chewing anything they could get their hands on. One of the massive demons was brought down, crashing next to us and almost flattening Teta. He and Angus leaped onto its monstrous head and went to work with their blades.

  “Guys, get back!”

  By breaking formation, Selma was exposed. It seemed a lost cause to try to protect her through all of this, but I wasn’t going down without giving it everything I had.

  The rifle cracked as Matthias whirled around to blast a tongue that was a few feet from connecting with my head. It retracted, and two Djinn jumped onto the tongue, tearing it to shreds as it tried to pull back to the safety of its mouth. A blur of spirits carried the Djinn to safety before they were consumed.

  Angus and Teta rejoined our sides, but we couldn’t move. The monsters were too big and the spirits and Djinn were in a hell of a fight. The black-eyed kids could do nothing against them, so I ordered them to the rear, hoping the Djinn back there could watch over them better than us.

  These demons were too big for us to handle. At best, we could defend ourselves when they attacked. It was hard to find a weak spot when your opponents were the size of city buildings.

  “I don’t know about this,” Teta said.

  “And what’s behind them?” Matthias said.

  “Just keep pressing. Until we get to the gates, we fight like Kilkenny cats,” I said.

  We stood our ground, watching the battle explode. The spirits and Djinn were doing a good job pestering the giant demons, but only the one had been taken down. A tongue lashed out at us and Selma filled it full of buckshot. The tongue made a sharp left over our heads and pulled back.

  Another was right behind it. I fired but missed. It went straight for Selma. She jammed the hot barrel into its soft flesh and I heard it sizzle. It smelled like flaming shit. The shotgun fused itself to the monster’s tongue and it reeled it back, gun and all.

  “Nice work,” I said, keeping an eye out for more hungry tongues.

  “The rest is up to you,” Selma said, hooking her fingers through my belt.

  A second creature was brought down by the weight of the spirits that had collected on its head. Immediately, the wild-men Djinn went for its eyes, kicking them in and tearing through the sockets like wolfhounds.

  This time, one of its beastly brethren reached to help it back to its feet. Teta emptied his pistol in its face. Nothing slowed it down. The creature whipped a tentacle leg at him, wrapping its tip around his arm, and pulled.

  Teta’s scream ripped through the war cries. We watched in revulsion as his arm tore free from his shoulder. A geyser of blood painted the ground red. Teta staggered, his remaining hand clutching the stump, trying to stop the flow of blood. He fell to his knees. His eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped onto his back. “Teta!”

  Selma and I ran to him, ignoring the creature hovering over our heads. “He’s going to bleed to death,” Selma said. Teta’s body spasmed with shock.

  The amputation ended right at his shoulder, so there was no way to tie it off. We had to stop the bleeding.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, handing Selma my pistol. I ran to the demon spider bodies, catching sight of Angus as he chopped off the end of a tongue while Matthias shot the beast in the eye. A fountain of iridescent green flowed from the socket.

  I put on my leather gloves and kicked through the broken bits of the spiders. I found a fang, its end still dripping and steaming.

  I ran back to Teta and Selma. “Hold him down. This is going to hurt worse than having his arm yanked off.”

  Selma straddled his chest. Teta, for the moment, was out, but I knew the pain would bring him right back.

  I touched the tip of the fang to the gaping wound in his shoulder. His flesh and muscles and tendons hissed. It smelled sickeningly like barbecue. Teta woke up screaming and bucking, but Selma kept him down.

  Sure enough, the acid did the trick, stopping the flow of blood and sealing everything up. At best, I probably saved him enough time so we could say goodbye properly. He passed out again.

  “We have to hide him,” I said.

  We picked him up and placed him within the jumble of legs of the fallen monster. “I’ll come back for you.” I bit back the bile that splashed against the back of my teeth. I took the remains of his lucky sombrero and
put it on his chest, draping his arm over it. “Stay lucky for just a little longer.”

  Selma handed my pistol back to me and we regrouped with Angus and Matthias. “We’re never going to get past them,” I said. The spirits and Djinn fought wildly, but even they couldn’t escape becoming food for the beasts.

  “It doesn’t look like it, no,” Matthias said. He took aim at a beast and the hammer clicked. It was empty.

  “Did you say the Djinn were shapeshifters?” I asked.

  “Yes, that is one of their powers.”

  I pulled Angus’s shirt to get his attention. “You need to talk to the Djinn for me. We need some from the rear to come up and get us past these things. They need to be big, and fast. You see where I’m going with this?”

  Angus nodded, and deadspeak flowed from his lips.

  “Selma, I want you to stay back here. If things don’t work out, stay close to the black-eyed kids. They can keep you safe and may even help you find a way out of here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you!”

  “Listen, what I need to do next requires my total attention. I can’t give that if I’m worrying about you. Be wary of the Djinn. They may turn on you if we get taken out. Now go!”

  She ran reluctantly to the waiting flock of spirit children. Her eyes shimmered with tears. I had to put it out of my mind for now. She was safer with them.

  Angus tapped my shoulder and pointed. Three Djinn appeared next to us.

  Yep, he had understood exactly what I meant.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  These Djinn were not the wild men of Indian lore. Now they were exactly what we needed.

  Horses.

  But not ordinary horses. The Djinn were double the size of Clydesdales, with heads like battering rams. They pawed the floor with hooves the size of anvils.

  Matthias looked at them nervously. “What are we supposed to do with them?”

  I ran and jumped onto one of their backs. The flesh was cold, the texture nothing like horsehair.