The Boogens
Page 5
“Fine,” Chris said. Brian ordered the same.
“We seem to be the center of attention,” Chris said after the waitress left.
Brian hadn’t noticed. Now he saw men glancing over at them as if they’d never seen anybody from out of town before. He also noted that most of them seemed to be in their fifties or sixties. “Maybe they’ve never seen a pretty girl before.”
“It isn’t that,” she answered. “I have a feeling they’re not crazy about intruders in Summit.”
“Maybe the sheriff told them about our breaking and entering this afternoon. Miners are touchy about people high-grading.”
Most of the men were finishing their apple pie and getting up from the tables. There was more hostility than curiosity in their glances as they pulled on their jackets and headed for the door.
The waitress brought their beers, then returned a minute later with the dinner plates. While they ate, Chris gave Brian a brief synopsis of her life. She had grown up in Connecticut and graduated from Radcliffe College in Cambridge. After a year of graduate work, she had married a bright young man named Geoffrey Putnam, who was just graduating from the Harvard School of Business. They moved to New York, where Geoffrey became a stockbroker in his father’s firm, and Chris studied geology at the State University. Geoffrey’s interests in life, it seemed, revolved around corporate mergers, municipal bonds and tax shelters, and his ambition was to own a sailboat, have a summer house with a tennis court in Cape Cod, and raise three children with the same lofty ambitions as his own. After two years of country clubs and cocktail parties with people of identical interests, Chris decided she was dying of boredom. There was a friendly divorce, with Geoffrey convinced that she had become mentally unbalanced, and a month later she answered an ad for an “apprentice” geologist and ended up in Houston, Texas, working for the Loomis Company. She had been there a year and a half now, and although she was not particularly enchanted with the city of Houston, she spent most of her time elsewhere, exploring old mine shafts. And she greatly preferred an end cut of meatloaf in the Rocky Mountains to côte de Boeuf Bordelaise at the Four Seasons in New York.
Brian laughed and ordered coffee, still not sure what to make of her. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a pair of old Levis now, but she was still attractive enough that he doubted if she would be turned away from the Four Seasons. If he had met her at a cocktail party or at a casual business meeting somewhere, he would not have hesitated a minute to ask her to dinner. But they were already having dinner together. And they were here on business, with her in the position of being his client. Somehow that made everything awkward, and he couldn’t quite figure out where to go from here. Should he invite her out for a walk in the rain? Or a fast game of checkers in the lobby?
The coffee arrived and he was about to ask about her family in Connecticut when a white-haired man in a wheelchair suddenly appeared at the door. He was being pushed along by a tall man in a tan chauffeur’s uniform. The white-haired man glanced around, then smiled and nodded toward Brian and Chris’ table. The chauffeur pushed him forward, threading a path between the tables.
“Mr. Lockett?” the white-haired man said. He smiled broadly and extended his hand. “Don’t get up, don’t get up. And this lovely young lady, I presume, is Miss Hurley from the Loomis Company?” He glanced over his shoulder. “That’ll be fine, Victor.”
The chauffeur turned and left the room. Brian shook the man’s hand.
“Blanchard is the name,” the man said. “Otis Blanchard. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you this afternoon. Are your rooms satisfactory? I’m afraid we don’t have all the comfort and conveniences you’ll find in Pineglen or in the big city.”
“They’re fine,” Brian said.
“I think they’re charming,” Chris added.
The man looked to be in his mid-sixties but well preserved and energetic. His chest and shoulders were massive, which made his shriveled legs look even smaller. His thick neck suggested that he exercised a great deal, and the skin around his deep blue eyes was creased with smile lines.
“Well, it’s difficult to make any major improvements on these old places,” he said. “And it’s doubtful if we’d get any more business if we did. How was your dinner?”
“Excellent,” Brian said.
“Good.” He shifted in the wheelchair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke? It’s one of the few vices I can enjoy any more.” He fitted the cigarette into a long holder and snapped a lighter to it. Brian couldn’t help remembering the pictures he had seen of Franklin Roosevelt. He wondered if Blanchard cultivated the look.
“I heard about the little misunderstanding you had with Sheriff Tolivar up at the Hatcher mine this afternoon,” Blanchard said. “Ridiculous, of course. Tolivar should have known better. We all heard about the Loomis Company buying the property. Sometimes I think Ray Tolivar is a little slow in the brain department.” He lifted his chin and chuckled.
“It’s all right,” Brian said. “The documents will be here in the morning.”
Blanchard shook his head, “There’s no need to get any documents, Mr. Lockett. Tolivar won’t bother you any more. You can go in the mine any time you want. I told him the property belongs to the Loomis Company, and he’s not to go up there unless you ask him to.”
Chris smiled. “We appreciate that.”
“No trouble. We just have to be careful about the children around here. We don’t want them wandering into any of the mine shafts.” He smiled. “They have a tendency to do that sort of thing.”
“I’m surprised to hear there are any children here,” Chris said.
“Well, there aren’t many. About a dozen or so. But there isn’t a whole lot for them to do in Summit.” He smiled at Chris. “Tell me, Miss Hurley, is it the intention of the Loomis Company to reopen the mine?”
Chris shrugged. “That depends. If there’s enough ore to make it profitable, I presume Mr. Loomis will want to open it.”
He smiled again. “I’m afraid your chances of finding anything are rather slim. The Hatcher mine was the most heavily worked mine in the whole area. That mountain is so honeycombed with shafts, I sometimes wonder that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.”
It hadn’t looked that bad to Brian, but he decided to skip it. “Do you happen to know why the mine was closed during World War II?”
“Probably because it was flooded,” Blanchard said. “They were working the eastern section of the mine in those days, about eight hundred feet down. That section is all flooded now. From what I understand, five or six men were drowned at the time.”
“But they didn’t make any public announcements?”
“No, they didn’t. I don’t know why not.” He chuckled and puffed on his cigarette. “I’m sure neither of you was around in those days. You would be amazed by the number of things that were classified as secret during the war. No doubt some Washington bureaucrat was afraid Hitler would find out about the Hatcher mine being closed and would announce it as a great Nazi victory.”
Chris smiled. “Do you happen to know if two men named Hitchings and Thomas ever worked the mine, Mr. Blanchard?”
“Oh, yes,” Blanchard said and put out his cigarette. “They were here for a couple months in . . . fifty-four, as I recall. But I wouldn’t say they worked the mine. They were a couple of veterans from the Korean War. Nice young fellows. Hitchings had lost a leg in the war. But they didn’t know much about mining. They camped up there at the mine, and they got that rusty old stamp mill operating for a while. But I think they spent most of their time chasing the girls down in Bealton. Then they packed up and left one day. They told Charlie Lucas they were going down to Arizona to look for the Lost Dutchman mine. I guess that’s the last anybody saw of them. Two or three weeks later, the Arizona police found their truck down in the Superstition Mountains.”
“Nobody ever found them?” Chris asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“How terrible.”
Blanchard shook his head. “If there ever were any, I imagine they were kept in the little office they used to have just outside the mine shaft. That burned down back in forty-four, just after the mine was closed.”
“The main shaft seems to run off to the southwest,” Brian said. “We followed it about a mile this afternoon, then it was blocked by a cave-in.”
Blanchard nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everything beyond that point has caved in. That water down there has probably rotted most of the timbers.”
“It really didn’t look that bad,” Brian said. “If we could get some help, I think we could dig our way past that first blockage.”
Blanchard shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“Do you know where we could hire a couple of men to help us?”
Blanchard got out another cigarette. He inserted it in the holder and smiled. “I doubt if you can get any local men to go into that mine, Mr. Lockett.”
“Why not?”
He snapped the lighter to the cigarette and chuckled. “This may sound silly to you, but the people around here have an idea that mine is haunted. A lot of men have died in that mine, and a good many of the bodies have never been recovered. Personally, I think it’s a lot of foolishness. But stories tend to grow and get more colorful and more mysterious over the years. There’s a general feeling in Summit that there is something evil about the Hatcher mine.”
“What kind of stories?” Chris asked.
“Well, some of them were probably started to scare the local children and keep them away from the mine. They say there are some kind of monsters living in there—something they call Boogens.” He smiled. “No doubt the word derived from the idea of bogeymen. In any case, there are stories of men having gone into the mine alone and never coming out. Or they have gone into the mine, and within a matter of hours their skeletons have been found completely stripped of flesh.”
“Good Lord,” Chris murmured.
Blanchard smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Miss Hurley. All of the stories are singularly lacking in specifics. Nobody seems to know whose skeleton was found or when such things happened. On the other hand, I wouldn’t discount the fact that that mountain is very unstable. Some of the timbers in there are more than a hundred years old.”
Chris glanced uneasily across the dining room. Only one other table was still occupied. “Is that why people have been looking at us so strangely?” she asked.
Blanchard lifted his chin and laughed. “Probably. No doubt they think you are very courageous or very foolish to go into that mine. But of course people in small towns are always suspicious of strangers.”
“According to the old records in Denver,” Brian said, “the original shaft was near that old house just to the west of the mine. Is that shaft still open?”
“It wasn’t near that house,” Blanchard said. “It was under it. I doubt if there is any access to the mine any more. From what I understand, the house was built there because the old mine tailings formed a nice flat area for the foundation. So rather than dig out a new niche in the side of the mountain, the man used the pad that was already there. Of course, that was almost a hundred years ago, so the mine tailings are pretty well grown over with trees now.”
The man in the tan uniform suddenly came through the door again. When he reached Blanchard’s side, he leaned close to his ear. “You’ve got a phone call, Mr. Blanchard.”
“Ah, thank you, Victor.” Blanchard snubbed out his cigarette and smiled. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Hurley. Mr. Lockett. I wish you the best of luck. I don’t think the possibilities are very great, but it would be nice if Summit could come back to life again with the reopening of the Hatcher mine. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.”
After the chauffeur had pushed the wheelchair through the door, Chris smiled and lifted her eyebrows. “Boogens?” she said.
Brian laughed. “And things that go bump in the night.”
“Well, at least we don’t have to wait until the messenger gets here from Denver tomorrow. And if we’re going to have to do the digging ourselves, I think I’d like a good night’s sleep.”
Brian signed for the meal and they climbed the stairs again. After he left Chris at her door, he went to his room and stood at the window, looking out at the rain. The thunder and lightning had stopped, but a gusty wind was splattering raindrops against the windowpane.
He thought about Sheriff Tolivar and the man’s insistence that he return the piece of broken timber to the mine shaft. There was something odd about that piece of wood. Brian had intended to have a closer look at it when they got back to the hotel. He could still examine it in the morning.
What seemed even more odd was the whole history of the Hatcher mine. There was no single thing that made him uneasy, but all the facts put together made a strange collection of anomalies: the excessive sickness and death rates of the miners, the closing of the mine without notice and the dissolution of the company during the war, the strange animals in there, the disappearance of those two kids in Arizona. Was there such a thing as a jinxed mine? Or evil spirits? Boogens? He smiled.
He finally turned away from the window and unbuttoned his shirt. In the morning they would have to find a hardware store and buy some tools. He wondered how good Chris Hurley was at swinging a shovel.
5
Mark Kinner breathed a sigh of relief as he finally spotted Ken’s old brown Pontiac parked off to the side of the road. For the past three hours he had been looking at every car going in the opposite direction, scared to death Ken might have started down the mountain this morning and they might pass each other without noticing. Mark eased his pickup truck to the side of the road, then rolled to a stop behind the car.
There was no doubt about it being Ken’s car. The rear window was cracked, the trunk was caved in and rusting from some previous owner having been rear-ended, and a faded bumper sticker said “Go Broncos!” There certainly couldn’t be two such highway menaces in existence.
Mark swung down from the cab and moved to the left side of the car, trying the door. It was locked. He cupped his hands to the window and peered into the back seat. Ken’s tackle box and the tube containing his fishing pole were on the floor. His rolled-up sleeping bag was resting on the seat. Mark circled the car and tried the other door. It was also locked.
Great. He had found the car. So what did that mean? He leaned on the roof and peered off toward the town of Summit, a mile or so up the road. So Ken had locked up the car and hiked into town to make the phone call two nights ago. Then he had hiked up to the house and spent the night. So what the hell had he done all day yesterday? And where was he now?
Mark went back to the pickup truck, climbed in and headed up the road again. Ken had to be at the house or somewhere around Summit. Or did he? Was it possible he’d gotten a mechanic to look at the car, and the man said it was hopeless? So had Ken abandoned it and tried to hitchhike back to Denver late last night? But if that had happened, wouldn’t he have had the sense to telephone? Mark wasn’t too certain about that. Ken Myer was a terrific guy and a great fishing buddy, but anyone who would drive a twenty-five-year-old car into the mountains during a rainstorm wasn’t burdened with an oversupply of good sense.
Mark had waited until six o’clock last night before he had started making calls. No, the highway patrol had told him, there had been no accidents reported in the area. Nor had any of Ken’s other friends heard from him. And then his three calls to the sheriff of Summit had all been answered with a tape recording: “Sheriff Tolivar is out right now. If this is an emergency, please contact the highway patrol.” Finally he had gone to bed, half-expecting to be awakened in the middle of the night again by a phone call from Ken. But no call had come, and Ken had not come pounding at his door. Mark still didn’t know whether to be mad or
worried.
The town of Summit was not exactly a thriving community. Mark passed a dozen boarded-up stores and buildings before he spotted a small market that seemed to be open.
Yes, the gloomy old man behind the counter said, he knew where the Myer house was. A mile and a half up the canyon to the Hatcher Mine Road. Keep to the right and you couldn’t miss it.
Mark checked his odometer as he left the town behind him and the road narrowed to a single lane of asphalt winding through thick stands of aspen. Five minutes later the sign announcing Hatcher Mine Road appeared. He followed it up the mountainside, took the right fork and the house suddenly appeared. A slender, red-haired woman was standing on the porch looking up at the black clouds that were hovering over them.
“Hi,” she said as Mark got out of the truck. She was pretty, wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt with no bra. In this chilly weather, she couldn’t have been standing out there very long.
Mark smiled as he moved up the steps, wondering if Ken was flaked out inside the house. “Hi. I’m Mark Kinner,” he said.
“Jessica Ford,” she answered. “You haven’t seen an ugly little dog around here anywhere, have you? About so big. Brown and white.”
“Afraid not”
“Hmph,” she snorted. “Then you must be the guy who forgot to turn on our heat yesterday.”
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. Ken Myer. He owns this house. I think he came up here the other night to open it up.”
“Ahhh,” she said. “Now we’re getting someplace. So he’s the culprit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your friend Ken is not a very good house-opener. When we got here yesterday, all the lights were on and the front door was unlocked. And he didn’t light the heater or turn on the hot water.” She smiled and pushed the front door open. “Come on in.”
Mark followed her across the living room and into the kitchen. “Did he leave a note or anything?”