Chapter 2 #5
“Depends on what the witch was meant to do.” Brent wasn’t surprised that they had apparently been thinking along the same lines.
“If it was to control any creature or spirit that was part of the mine itself, that wouldn’t matter.
But if it was to bind the ghosts of the miners, then maybe magic from their home country worked better. ”
“We already put out feelers with our witch friends for help,” Travis said. “Guess this is one more for the list, looking for people with knowledge about those magical traditions. Still plenty of people who hail from those places in Pittsburgh. I’m hoping it won’t be too hard to find some.”
They changed clothes at a rest stop, exchanging their more presentable jeans and shirts for harder-used versions and grabbing small protective bags of salt from the trunk to tuck into pockets. Travis and Brent always wore silver protective amulets, but they added bracelets just in case.
Brent glanced at his watch and the position of the sun. “Not far from here. Might be done in time for supper.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Travis replied, only partly in jest.
Close to the turnoff, a historical marker commemorated the disaster, a raised granite square with the name and date of the event.
Brent figured it was better than nothing, but it seemed insufficient for a tragedy that claimed so many lives.
He knew that a Hungarian civic organization had donated a tombstone to mark the common grave at a nearby cemetery where the bodies had been interred.
The road to the old mine entrance showed up on antique maps, but just looked like an unmarked driveway on the electronic version. Brent had expected chain-link fences and warning signs, but nothing kept them from pulling the car far enough onto the approach to not be visible.
They loaded up on weapons and other equipment and hiked in. The forest had reclaimed the land, but a close look revealed the remnants of development.
“There’s the mouth of the mine.” Travis pointed to a rocky overhang in a hillside that had filled with debris and largely overgrown with roots.
“Glad we don’t have to go inside,” Brent said with a shiver.
“Me, too.” Travis nodded to a cracked rectangular slab of old concrete near the mine mouth. It looked like something had been ripped free despite secure fasteners.
“Want to bet that’s where Ted’s engine sat? One of the accounts said that a miner was found pinned beneath a ten-ton engine that had been thrown from its moorings,” Travis said.
“Jesus,” Brent breathed. “Guess that explains the man’s ghost you saw with the Otto at the show.” He concentrated. “There are a lot of spirits nearby. They’re watching us. Maybe they’re used to hikers.”
“Except something killed three visitors,” Travis pulled what he needed from his bag to handle the magical part of the banishment. Brent readied weapons in case the attacks involved something more corporeal.
“You ready?” Travis asked when he had everything in place.
“As much as I’m ever going to be,” Brent replied.
They had already agreed to focus on whatever creature resided in the mine, not banishing ghosts unless the spirits proved dangerous.
“The ghosts don’t want us here, but I think they’re trying to protect us,” Travis shouted as the wind grew stronger, stirring the branches overhead and raising dust and dead leaves.
“Creature of the mine! You have caused enough harm. Leave this place and do not return.” Travis repeated the invocation in Latin and then again in Polish, like Mark had taught him.
The temperature dropped, and now the wind carried the echoes of the doomed miners’ shrieks and screams.
“Show yourself and depart. Trouble the living no more,” Travis commanded. He drew a banishment sigil in the ground with an iron bar.
Brent’s Glock had silver bullets, and the shotgun slung over his shoulder held rock salt rounds. Silver and iron knives hung at his belt, and a rowan wood staff leaned against a tree within reach.
Loud thumps came from inside the old mine entrance. The ghosts had enough energy to appear like a gray cloud, a fury of moans and screams, interposing their whirlwind between the two hunters and the mine.
More thumps, louder now and closer. Whatever was inside had reacted to Travis’s incantation, heading toward them whether it intended to fight or depart.
The ghosts exploded from the mouth of the mine with gusts of wind that nearly knocked Travis and Brent off their feet. Whether the creature had contributed to the mine disaster or merely come later like a scavenger, the spirits clearly saw it as the enemy.
One second, the mine entrance looked undisturbed, and the next, a monster stood facing them, although the gateway remained sealed.
“Holy shit!” Brent shouted above the wind.
The short, squat creature only stood as high as Brent’s shoulders.
Wrinkled, leathery skin covered its powerfully built body, except for a shock of tangled brown hair on its head.
Its arms and legs were disproportionately long, and its hands and feet ended in wicked talons.
Broken manacles dangled from the creature’s wrists and ankles.
“That’s a tommyknocker, all right,” Travis said with a grim set to his jaw. “They’re a nasty piece of work.”
The tommyknocker’s eyes squinted as if unused to the light. A pointed nose and sharp cheekbones resembled drawings Brent had seen of gremlins, right down to the mouthful of vicious teeth.
The creature rushed at Brent, covering the distance faster than he expected. It swiped at him, and a talon ripped down his shirt, raising a trail of blood as it caught the skin beneath.
Brent shot at the monster, trying to buy time for Travis to finish his spell. The tommyknocker’s speed made it hard to hit, and the bullets that struck its tough skin didn’t slow it down.
The creature barreled into Brent, knocking him backward into a rusted section of old fence. Brent reached above his head, grabbed hold of the metal, and drew up both feet, kicking the mine monster in the chest with his full strength.
It staggered back, and Brent fired point-blank as it came at him again.
Brent knew magic couldn’t be rushed, but he feared that he might not survive long enough to keep Travis safe until the mine could be sealed and the creature banished.
Black ichor seeped from the bullet wounds, proving Brent’s shots had hurt it, but not enough to stop the attack.
Ghosts swept in like a gray tide, trying to slow the creature down and keep him from reaching Brent.
It swiped at the spirits with its long talons, and to Brent’s astonishment, the monster’s claws shredded the ghosts, who shrieked and vanished.
Out of bullets, Brent grabbed a length of steel pipe off the ground and swung two-handed, landing a bone-jarring blow to the tommyknocker’s head.
It bared its jagged teeth and screamed in fury, throwing itself at Brent.
The ghosts rushed between Brent and the creature, creating a whirlwind to slow its attack.
Travis switched to a new incantation, one Brent recognized as a defensive spell.
The monster slowed, then stopped as if trapped by an invisible force.
Brent switched to his shotgun and fired at the tommyknocker’s head and chest. The salt rounds affected the creature even more than the silver, and it stopped struggling.
“Cover me!” Travis rushed in with the new cuffs and chains, forged of iron. “I’m going to bind it.”
“By the power of iron and silver, I send you back into the deep places. Remain there, and do not trouble the living again.” Travis slammed the bindings closed on the tommyknocker’s wrists and ankles.
The monster’s image wavered, then blinked out. Appeased, the ghosts quieted, still powerful enough to make themselves seen even to those without special abilities. That meant Brent saw faces and forms in the cloud around them, haggard men and boys who died before their time.
“Thank you,” Brent told the ghosts. “Thank you for protecting me, and for trying to protect the people the creature killed. That should keep him bound for a long time. Go in peace and take your rest.”
The ghostly images grew fainter and then vanished on the wind. Brent blew out a breath and turned to Travis.
“Did you see that?”
Travis nodded. “Yep. You, okay?”
“I want to sleep for a week, but it could have been worse.” Brent thought of the tommyknocker’s sharp claws and shuddered.
“How long do you think that will hold him? Another century?” Brent looked for shell casings and other evidence, satisfied when he was certain they had left nothing behind but salt.
“With luck. Maybe we can find a heritage group to preserve the knowledge of what we did so the binding can be renewed before it completely runs out,” Travis said as they packed out.
“You think that’s what we’ll find at Mammoth Mine, too? It’s had the same sort of attacks.”
“Maybe, but the devil’s in the details. I need to look deeper into how the mountain monsters differ. Don’t want to find out that for the one particular type we come up against, the fix we’ve been using doesn’t work,” Travis replied.
“That would be…awkward.”
“To say the least.”
Brent knew they had been lucky today. Neither of them had been badly injured, which was a rarity. They couldn’t count on that, even when going up against a similar creature. A bit of bad luck could change everything in a matter of seconds.
Travis gave him a worried once-over. “You’re hurt. We need Matthew to clean those cuts so they don’t get infected.”
“Dinner before doctor,” Brent said. “We can eat in the car while we drive. I look like I lost a fight with a rabid bobcat.”
They grabbed burgers from a drive-through and stopped at St. Dismas long enough for Matthew to treat Brent’s wounds. It was dark by the time Travis pulled up to the curb in front of Brent’s house.
“Let me follow up on those witch contacts, and I’ll let you know what I find,” Travis told him as Brent grabbed his backpack.
“Sounds good to me. I could use a couple of days in the office, but I’ll be ready to go whenever you are.” Brent tapped the roof of the car in parting and headed inside as Travis drove away.
He flicked the lights on and dropped his backpack next to the couch, then went to the kitchen and pulled a beer from the fridge. Brent grabbed the remote and turned on a football game just for background noise.
Now that the fight had a chance to sink in, Brent braced himself for the aftereffects.
The crash from a life-or-death conflict was a wicked backlash from the heightened energy and senses a surge of adrenaline provided.
Despite being physically exhausted, he knew that even with a couple of beers, he would need several hours to relax enough to even try to sleep.
A flicker of movement made him look up. The ghost of his brother, Danny, sat cross-legged on the floor between Brent and the television.
Danny and Brent had always been exceptionally close as twins.
Then Danny died, and while Brent often sensed his brother’s presence, he couldn’t see or hear him without a medium’s help.
But after Brent’s fight with a demon and Danny’s sacrifice and return, something changed, and Brent had been able to see Danny’s ghost more often, although he still couldn’t summon him or hear him without assistance.
“We did good tonight,” Brent told him, hoping Danny could hear him even if he couldn’t hear his ghostly brother’s response. “Got rid of a real, honest-to-goodness mine monster. You’d have loved it.”
Danny rolled his eyes, but his smile tempered the dismissal.
Brent didn’t want him anywhere near their battles because he knew that ghosts could be damaged and banished even though they were dead.
And while Brent hoped Danny would eventually find rest, he couldn’t deny that his occasional presence soothed some of the loss and loneliness.
“Got to admit, I’m worried.” Talking to his brother’s ghost was easier sometimes than confessing his uneasiness to Travis.
“Something’s juicing up the monsters and going after hunters, and I’m afraid we don’t know the full story.
I think there’s more to it, a bigger bad, and we’d better figure it out fast or I’ll be seeing you sooner rather than later. ”
Danny’s easy-going grin shifted to a stern frown. Brent didn’t need words to know his brother worried about the dangers of hunting and wanted Brent to be safe.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not in a hurry, although I do miss having you around. I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s an enemy out there we’ve underestimated or aren’t seeing, and it’s going to bite us on the ass if we don’t catch on quick.”
Danny cocked his head questioningly. Brent had gotten good at guessing his intentions.
“I don’t know if you can help. Please don’t risk being hurt or sent away.”
Danny looked annoyed, and Brent had to chuckle at the familiar expression. “Maybe just keep your ears open around the other ghosts? I don’t know how much gossip there is in the afterlife, but if you hear something, let me know. Or better yet, you can always go to Travis.”
Danny grinned and nodded. He put his hand over his heart and then waved goodbye as he faded out.
While being able to interact with Danny’s ghost was a blessing, nothing made up for his absence.
“Love you too, idiot,” Brent grumbled before he tossed off the rest of his beer and headed for bed, resigned to yet another sleepless night.