2
“ A bout two months ago, my cousin Oscar went to Hollow Elk Mine in West Virginia,” Denton said, “looking to see if there was any coal left.”
I sipped my gin and tonic and waited. His mention of lights in the deep had taken me back, forcibly, to Usher’s lake, to the brilliant, terrible stars that glowed in the depths of the tarn. It was not a memory I cherished.
“Everything here runs on coal,” Ingold explained.
“During the War Between the States, the South ran their warships on coal from the Carolinas. The North ramped up production in West Virginia to compensate, and never stopped. Now you’ll hardly find a hillside that somebody’s not sinking a mine into. ”
“But this one was abandoned?” I asked.
Ingold nodded. “Hollow Elk Mine is a bit east of Shaversville, dug in the 1700s. Old place, but the ground was bad. Rockfalls, cave-ins, the lot. Miners said it was unlucky.”
“Some of them said it was haunted,” put in Denton.
“Any unlucky mine is haunted,” said Ingold dismissively.
“You kill enough men with bad food and bad air, the earth soaks that up. What my mother’s people would call bad medicine.
I doubt Hollow Elk is worse than any other in that regard.
No, there was more at work here. Miners reported strange lights in the deep, not just the usual knocking and tapping one gets in a working mine.
It was abandoned about forty years later.
The owners couldn’t get enough people to work it, and by the end they were losing money on it.
It reopened briefly during the war, but closed right up again. ”
“Who are the owners now?” asked Angus.
“You’re looking at him,” said Denton. He leaned back with a sigh.
“Oscar, God love him, always liked digging, whether it was papers or actual dirt. He was going through our family’s old papers when he found the deed to the mine.
I hadn’t even known I’d inherited it. No one’s given it any thought for at least a generation, I imagine.
Hollow Elk had been abandoned, and hadn’t been worth much even when fully up and running, according to the papers.
Oscar was curious as to why it had been abandoned.
” Denton took a gulp of whiskey. If I didn’t know better, I’d think his eyes were getting misty, which was surprising, because Denton was not a misty-eyed type.
“When Oscar and I were kids, he was always looking for caves. Got stuck in one when he was twelve and it took the fire department three hours to get him out again. Then he was back in there the next week. So when he asked if I’d mind if he took a look at the old mine, I didn’t think twice.
He said he wanted to see if there was any money to be made from it, with more modern mining techniques, but I knew mostly he just wanted an excuse to go poking around underground.
Caves, mines, that sort of thing—he was mad for them.
” Denton looked up at me, a wry, unhappy twist to his lips.
“So you see, this is ultimately my fault.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. “Did he have experience underground?” Angus asked. “Other than getting stuck?”
“Quite a lot, yes.”
Angus and I exchanged a look. “Then I don’t see how you could be blamed, unless there’s a lot more to the story,” I said.
The line between Denton’s eyes didn’t smooth out.
“He sent me a number of letters,” he said.
“The first few aren’t particularly noteworthy.
He reached the mine, set up camp there, and began mapping out the details.
Then, almost a month after he arrived, he sent me this.
” Denton nodded to Kent, who extracted a sheaf of notes from his valise and handed them to me.
I unfolded the letter. It was written in a neat, even hand, the sort of lettering beloved of clerks and teachers.
James —
I must apologize for what I am about to commit to paper, for it must seem as if I am springing it upon you without warning.
In truth, I have been observing these phenomena since the very beginning of my exploration of Hollow Elk, but I have been reluctant to mention them.
They were easily dismissed at first as the tricks a man’s mind plays on him in the dark, and I did dismiss them as such, until the evidence began to weigh too heavily against it .
Ah, I thought. The sort of person who talks about “observing phenomena.” I actually quite like people like that, because if you can get them talking about their particular specialty, they will tell you the most fascinating anecdotes about botflies or ball lightning or things they have extracted from some unfortunate soul’s rectum.
They can be immense fun at otherwise stuffy parties.
I have been hearing sounds in the mine. Not the creaks or knocks that are common to mines, but peculiar sounds, as of something moving around within it.
The mine entrance is large and the boards did not cover it completely, so I was not surprised by this either, suspecting only that some animal had taken up residence within.
But of late the sounds have gotten closer, and there is something damnably odd about them.
They are wet sounds, almost a squelching.
Roger hears them too, so I have at least that much proof that it is not my imagination .
Furthermore, things have been going missing.
Sheets of paper and at least two fountain pens have vanished, as well as several tins of stew.
Roger denies taking any of it, and certainly he is not a man to steal paper and pen.
Indeed, I should be overjoyed to find a newfound tendency to literacy in him, and would happily gift him entire reams!
(I do suspect him in the case of the stew.
He has lately acquired an enormous mutt from the nearby town, and I have no doubt that it eats like a horse.
I do not begrudge the dog the stew, though, as it is a comfort to have a watchdog about.)
Ordinarily I would not trouble you with such minor matters, as the noises have continued off and on for weeks, and may be nothing more disconcerting than a drip behind a wall, or a frog having taken up residence in some flooded subsection, and of course, things go missing everywhere, most particularly pens.
But yesterday, while I was mapping the lowest area in the third level—the last area excavated before the mine was abandoned—I saw something impossible in the depths. I saw light .
I cannot explain to you how unsettling it was.
When you are deep underground, light can only mean other people.
There was no possibility of a shaft from above intersecting with this one.
This level was not ventilated before being abandoned.
Furthermore, the light was red. Deep red, like a darkroom light.
I had turned off my own carbide headlamp to refill it, and at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but there was indeed a red light much farther down the tunnel.
It did not flicker like firelight, but was strong and steady .
I am not one of those men who carries a pistol wherever he goes, certainly not within a cave system.
But I tell you, James, I wished that I had one then.
There was something desperately frightening about seeing a light underground where no light should be.
I thought of a dozen improbable explanations, mostly involving lava—you’ll laugh at that, and I would too—but I could think of nothing that could realistically explain such a light .
Very likely I should have gone to fetch Roger to explore the tunnel with me.
But at the time, all I could think was that if I did not go at once, whoever made the light could follow me up the sloping shaft to the higher levels, lie in wait there, and then come down behind me the next time I ventured in.
I could not bear the thought, and so I redonned my carbide lamp and went forward toward the light .
I will spare you suspense. I did not find the source.
It went out almost as soon as my own light went on.
The main tunnel here splits into three passages, and I picked the wrong one initially, only to reach a dead end.
The central tunnel ends in a squeeze and I would have had to crawl through on hands and knees in order to continue .
I am nearly certain, however, that the red light was on the far side of the squeeze.
When I turned my own light off again and waited, I heard something moving down there.
It dislodged dirt and pebbles, whatever it was, and I do not think that it was the sound of further subsidence .
I would think that it was an animal, but animals do not wear lights .
At any rate, James, you doubtless think that I have gone off my head from bad air now, and I cannot say that I blame you.
Certainly Roger is skeptical, although he is too loyal to say anything of the sort, and the dog he’s acquired has given no indication of any strangers about.
The brute even barks at passing deer and rabbits, so I doubt any human could pass unmarked.
Nevertheless, I plan to get to the bottom of this.
The squeeze is a small one, as blasting on this level was not far advanced, and while the air is hardly pleasant, it is not so bad as to make one hallucinate.
No, I think some person has taken up residence in the mine itself.
I plan to investigate further, if it is possible to do so without the ceiling falling in on me.
Rest assured that I will take all due precautions, and shall update you as I can .
Yr devoted cousin, Oscar
I handed the last page to Angus, feeling an odd clenching in my gut. Not so much at the contents—I could think of a half dozen explanations off the top of my head, including very ordinary human thieves—but the word squeeze came and squatted inside my chest in a way that I didn’t like.