Chapter 2 #4
“For coal mines, engines like this one ran the pumps that brought water out of the mines,” Ted said. “Some of them could even use the dangerous methane as fuel.”
“They were built to last,” he went on. “You see that one over there?” He pointed to a similar engine that looked very hard-used.
“It survived the Darr Mine explosion because it was up near the mine mouth, but you can see that it got beat up pretty good from flying rock. Not everyone is happy I brought it—some folks say it’s haunted. ”
“Oh really?” Travis exchanged a glance with Brent.
Ted chuckled. “If you believe in that sort of thing. I bought it off a guy whose great-grandfather handled the sell-off of whatever assets were left when the mine shut down. Funny thing is that I’ve been over every inch of it and there’s nothing wrong with it, but it won’t run.”
He leaned forward. “But sometimes at night, I’ll be in the house and I hear the engine running. I know it isn’t, and I go out to check, and it’s quiet and cold. Usually happens in December, right around the time of the disaster. Like it remembers.”
“Do you hear a lot of stories about the mines being haunted?” Travis managed to sound off-handed.
“Sure, plenty of them,” Ted replied. “It was a dangerous way to make a living, and there were a whole lot of ways to die. The history books remember the big disasters like the explosions and the cave-ins, but the truth is that dozens of men died every week in those big mines. Some of their spirits moved on and some didn’t. ”
“In the stories you’ve heard, did any of those hauntings turn dangerous?” Brent asked. “There are some tales going around lately that sound like the ghosts might have decided to get revenge.”
“After all this time? Wow, that’s interesting, although I’m not surprised.
The Darr engine probably could have been fixed up to work again, but it’s what folks call a ‘hoodoo engine.’ Any locomotive or engine like this that was involved in a tragedy or just never ran quite right got a reputation for being unlucky, like a hoodoo curse,” Ted told them.
“You don’t seem worried,” Brent observed.
Ted shrugged. “I’m not very superstitious, but I take precautions.
Never tried to start the Darr engine, never will.
Haul it all by itself, on an iron bed, blessed by a priest with holy water.
I store it in its own corner, not near anything that could catch fire or fall down, and there’s a ring of rock salt around it, just in case. ”
“Why bother? Travis asked. “Why take a chance, in case the superstition is true?”
Ted sighed. “I get asked that. Closest thing I can tell you is that those miners deserve to be remembered, and keeping the engine gives me a reason to tell their story. Their bosses cut corners, and hundreds of men died. I don’t think we’ve learned the lesson yet.”
Brent and Travis thanked Ted and walked through the display to the Darr engine. Both men kept their distance from the machine, staying several feet away.
“Do you see anything?” Mark asked.
Travis nodded. “There’s a swirl of spirits around the engine. They don’t seem angry or dangerous, but they’re staying close to the Otto, so they’re not just ghosts from the park.” He paused. “There’s one in particular, a man in his young teens, who seems particularly connected.”
Travis closed his eyes and concentrated. “Sadness. Loss. Despair.” He opened them to look at the engine. “It belongs in a memorial. I understand Ted’s reasons for keeping it, but I certainly wouldn’t want that energy near me all the time.”
“Look: salt.” Brent pointed to where a faint ring of white could be seen through the park’s crabgrass.
Travis looked out over the rest of the display. Brent heard people talking, children laughing, and live music from the direction of the food court. Either they weren’t picking up on the psychic residue, or it didn’t bother them.
They moved on, following Mark to stroll around the grounds. “I don’t know if other people have engines from different disasters, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Although they might not be as willing to talk about it,” Mark told them. “Thought you ought to hear his story for yourselves.”
“Yeah, thank you. Not sure what to make of it, but it’s another piece to the puzzle,” Brent replied. “And just in general, this show is pretty cool.”
“I know, right?” Mark grinned. “Once we make the rounds, we’ll get you fed and send you on your way. The food is awesome.”
The frontier village was a set of storefronts made to look like an Old West town where craftspeople sold everything from handmade soap to leatherwork and more. Women spun yarn on spinning wheels while talking to customers, who reminisced about the past.
Outside, a fiddler struck up a lively tune near where people carried plates of grilled meat and all the fixings to picnic tables.
They dug into their food, leaving conversation for later. When they cleared their trays and headed back toward the parking area, Brent bumped Travis’s arm.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Travis chuckled. “You’ll get to hear them all the way back to Pittsburgh for free. But at the moment, other than thinking lunch was really good, I was considering how people take for granted things from the mine could be haunted. It’s not a new idea.”
“Given the death toll, the places should be lousy with spirits,” Brent replied. “My question is, why aren’t they?”
“Because the mines and mills and factories employed their own witches.”
They both turned to look at Mark, who shrugged. “I heard about it from my dad and grandpa, but other people heard the stories, too,” he said. “I guess it was cheaper to hire a witch to dispel the ghosts than it was to fix whatever safety problems kept killing people.”
“That makes sense…in a sick sort of way,” Brent admitted.
“And now, after all this time, the old protections are faltering,” Travis said. “If the rumors are right and someone or some group is causing trouble, or there’s a bad moon rising, breaking what’s left of those spells might have helped.”
“More dangerous for civilians, but also for the hunters,” Mark agreed.
They drove back to Mark’s place. Travis and Brent put their backpacks in Travis’s car. “Thanks for everything, Mark. Let us know if you hear anything else,” Brent said.
“Still going to the Darr Mine today?” Mark asked.
Brent looked to Travis, who nodded. “It’ll be early afternoon by the time we get there. Might be nice not to be tripping over tree roots in the dark for once,” he replied.
“You need me to follow you down and lend a hand?” Mark asked.
Travis shook his head. “Thanks, but I think we’ve got it. Be sure to tell Donny and Father Leo we said goodbye.”
“Of course, if we get thrown around too much, we might need to call you about those two other mines with ghost problems,” Brent added.
“You know where to find me,” Mark told them. “Unless something dire happens, I’m spending the next couple of days in the garage, catching up on some repairs and bodywork.”
Travis and Brent waved as they pulled out of his driveway and headed to the mine. They had everything necessary in the trunk, including shotguns, rock salt, holy water, and a grenade launcher, just in case.
They rode with just the music from the radio for the first while. Brent was thinking about everything they had seen and heard, trying to fit the new information with what they previously knew, looking for the all-important holes in what they were missing.
“You still think we’re dealing with a tommyknocker?” Brent asked after they had driven for a while.
Travis nodded. “Mine lore is big on trolls, gnomes, and those kinds of creatures,” he replied.
“Tommyknockers and coblyns show up in the lore from Cornwall, and the earliest miners at Darr would have been from Cornwall and Wales before the Poles and Slovaks came. For most of them, the remedy was the same: a binding spell and iron chains.”
“Like the kind we usually keep on hand?” More than one type of creature required sturdy restraints if Brent and Travis weren’t able to deal with them right away.
A locked box in the trunk held weapons and specialized gear.
A blacksmith not far from Pittsburgh understood the supernatural and supplied them with the kind of equipment they couldn’t find at the hardware store.
“Yeah. I found sigils that are supposed to drain power from mountain creatures, which would include tommyknockers,” Travis replied. “I carved them into the set of cuffs we have in the back.”
“The challenge is going to be putting them on,” Brent pointed out. “I don’t imagine it’ll stand still if you ask nicely.”
“Probably not. That’s where you come in. Distract it. Weaken him with salt, iron, and silver shot. Give me an opening to slap the cuffs on him.”
Brent gave him a side-eye look. “Sure. You make it sound easy.”
“Never promised that,” Travis said. “But the lore didn’t give me other options. They can be bound, but they can’t be killed.”
“If that’s the case, what are the odds that whatever or whoever is killing hunters broke the binding early?” Brent asked. “The timing could be a coincidence…but it’s suspicious.”
“Agree. And I don’t know,” Travis admitted.
“There’s no way to know how long ago someone bound the Darr creature, or how long the binding was supposed to last. It might have worn off…
or someone could have taken advantage of an old, weakened spell to end it early.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect our mysterious someone set the tommyknocker loose early. ”
“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing.”
They rode in silence for a while before Travis spoke up again. “Do you think the type of mine witches changed over the years? Because where the miners came from shifted over time. At first, way back, it was mostly from Wales and Cornwall. Later on, Germany, Hungary, and Poland.”