The Boogens

by Robert Weverka

  “Nope,” she said. “At least we didn’t find any.”

  A curly-haired kid about twenty-two was washing dishes at the sink. He was wearing short pants and hiking boots. An unusually pretty young woman was standing next to him, a drying towel in her hand.

  “Look what I found,” Jessica said. “A friend of the phantom house-opener. Mark Kinner, this is Trish Hallberg and Roger Lowrie. Roger is the one with the apron and the pretty legs.”

  The dishwasher glanced over his shoulder and smiled. The girl said, “Hi.” She was wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt, but there was obviously a nice figure underneath.

  “I think your friend took off in a hurry,” the dishwasher said. “He left his hat and didn’t bother to lock the door or turn off the lights.”

  “Maybe he headed back home,” the girl suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Mark said. “His car’s parked on the other side of town. He called me two nights ago and said he had engine trouble. He said he was going to spend the night here, then try to get his car fixed and go back to Denver.”

  “And he didn’t show?” Jessica asked.

  “No.”

  Jessica shrugged. “So he’s probably trying to find somebody to fix his car. From the looks of Summit, that might take months.”

  Maybe,” Mark said. “But I think he would have called me. We had a fishing trip planned for the weekend.”

  Roger pulled the plug from the sink and wiped his hands with a paper towel, pretending to give the matter some serious thought. “Well,” he said, “the only thing I can figure is that Trish here’s got him locked up in her bedroom. Come on, Trish, how about it? We know you’re hungry for a man, but this is going too far.”

  Trish reddened and turned away, putting a plate in the cupboard. “Really, Roger,” she said.

  Roger grinned and looked back at Mark. “We’ve gotta keep an eye on her. As you can see, she’s not too attractive. So sometimes she has to take extreme measures to get a man. It’s really very sad.”

  “Knock it off, Roger,” Jessica said.

  “I’m just warning the guy. It’s only fair, Jess. Remember how embarrassing it was last time when she kept that guy in her basement for three months?”

  Jessica looked at Mark and shook her head in resignation. Mark smiled. It seemed silly and somewhat irrelevant at the moment, but for some reason it pleased him to know that the girl named Trish didn’t belong to Roger. “Well,” he said, “I better get going. I want to check with the local police in case Ken was in an accident. Nice meeting you all.”

  Jessica moved back through the hall with him. “I’m sure he must be around here somewhere,” she said. “Maybe he spent the night down in Pineglen.”

  Mark nodded. “Maybe so. Did you say your dog was lost?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how he did it, but he must have gotten out of the house last night.” She shrugged. “The cellar door was open, and there were some of his footprints in the dust down there. But there aren’t any windows or doors down there where he could have gotten out. Anyhow, I imagine he’s chasing squirrels somewhere.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Mark said. Jessica leaned on the porch railing as he moved down the steps.

  “Say, your friend didn’t happen to use the cellar for crushing grapes or something, did he?” she asked.

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “There’s a lot of funny stains around the drain down there. Sort of gooey and sticky—like drying jello.”

  Mark shook his head. “I don’t think Ken came up here much. At least not in the last few years.” He pulled the truck door open.

  “You happen to know any good restaurants around here, Mark?” she asked. The dishwasher and the other girl came out and joined her at the railing.

  “Not really,” Mark said. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “I hear the best place is down in Pineglen,” Trish said. “A place called Jason’s.” She smiled, making her meaning clear. “That’s where we’ll probably be eating tonight.”

  “Oh, God,” Roger said with a sigh. “There she goes again. If you value your life, you won’t go to Jason’s tonight, Mark.”

  Mark smiled as he saw Trish give Roger a sharp elbow in the ribs. “Well, have a nice dinner,” he said and slid behind the wheel.

  They were an odd trio, he reflected as he drove down the hill and headed for town. And the invitation from Trish to join them for dinner was about as obvious as it could be. He almost wished he and Ken hadn’t planned the fishing trip.

  The sheriff’s office was at the upper end of town, at the side of a brick building that must have been the fire department fifty years ago. He never would have noticed the place if the patrol car hadn’t been parked in front.

  The office was cluttered and dusty, with two desks behind a counter and two empty jail cells at the back. The sheriff was on the telephone, his back to the open door, when Mark came in.

  “Well, dammit,” he was saying, “Otis told me to let ’em go on up there. There ain’t nothin’ I can do about it . . . Yeah, the guy’s a mining engineer from Denver, and she’s some kind of geologist or somethin’ from Houston. I’d say they were in there about an hour before they came out yesterday. The guy was bringing out a piece of broken timber . . . Yeah, well, that don’t necessarily mean nothin’, Charlie. Don’t worry about it.”

  Mark moved a few feet farther along the counter, deliberately scuffing his boots on the board floor. The sheriff swung around and gave him a cold look. “What can I do for you, boy?”

  “I’d like to report a missing person,” Mark said.

  The man studied him for a minute, then turned back to the phone. “I’ll talk to you later, Charlie.” He dropped the receiver in the cradle. “Who’s missing?” he asked. He drew a cigarette out of a pack lying on the desk and leaned back in the chair.

  “His name is Ken Myer. He came up here the night before last, and nobody’s seen him since.” Mark told him about the phone call at two in the morning and about the house being left open with the lights still burning.

  The sheriff stared at him, then lit his cigarette. “That the old house up on Hatcher Mine Road?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  The man took a puff on the cigarette and gazed thoughtfully at his desk. “Well, your first problem is I can’t take no official report until somebody’s been missing forty-eight hours or more. That means not till two o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Why?” Mark asked. “He’s obviously missing.”

  The man shrugged. “Not necessarily. Sounds to me like your friend left the house in a hurry. Maybe he ran out for a beer. Maybe be went to Pineglen, got lucky and shacked up with some cutie down there. Hell, we take missing persons reports on every guy that’s gone less than forty-eight hours, we’d be up to our asses in paperwork around here.”

  “But he couldn’t have run out anywhere. His car’s broken down.”

  The sheriff gave him a sharp look. “That his old Pontiac about a mile down the road?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, I saw it down there. If your friend don’t get it moved by tomorrow morning, you better tell him I’m gonna have it towed away.”

  “But he couldn’t have run out somewhere, Sheriff, if he didn’t have a car.”

  The sheriff sighed. “Listen, son, I appreciate how you feel. But any number of things could have happened, none of them bad. Maybe your friend hitched a ride to the house, and the person that picked him up also drove him back down to Pineglen. Maybe that person was a nice-lookin’ broad who wanted to have some fun after they got to the house. Maybe the two of ’em went to Bealton.”

  It was obvious the sheriff wasn’t the least bit concerned about the situation. Mark wondered if the man might not be right. Ken was not a heavy drinker, nor was he totally irresponsible about making phone calls. But it was conceivable that he might have met a girl somewhere and ended up in her apartment. It was even possibl
e that he might have called Denver after Mark had left this morning.

  “What I’d suggest,” the sheriff said, “is that you go on down to Pineglen and ask around some of those bars and restaurants down there.”

  Mark nodded and moved for the door. “Yeah. Thanks a lot, Sheriff. In the meantime I’d appreciate it if you kept an eye out for him.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Tolivar watched Mark go out, then stared at the door for a long minute. “Shit,” he finally muttered, and picked up the phone. He dialed and waited. After four or five rings, the phone at the other end was answered.

  “Tolivar,” he said. “I think we got trouble. This thunder and lightnin’ musta got those goddamned things riled up again. That Myer kid was up at the old house a couple nights ago, and it seems like he disappeared.” Tolivar listened, then shook his head. “I don’t know, but we sure as hell better do something.”

  6

  It seemed ridiculous, but it was impossible to find any kind of digging equipment in the town of Summit. The general store had an assortment of new snow shovels and a few rakes and hoes, but nothing for digging dirt. The man did not know where they might find anyone interested in working three or four days in the Hatcher mine, either. After asking the gas station attendant and an old man sitting on the porch of a broken-down house, Chris and Brian drove on down to Pineglen and found a hardware store. The place didn’t open until ten o’clock, so they spent an hour and a half in the restaurant next door drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

  They bought a pick and two shovels, along with fifty feet of rope and a box of dynamite. By the time they had started back for Summit, the clouds were darkening again and the first crack of thunder had rumbled through the mountains.

  “Great,” Brian said dully. “It looks like we’re going to get another drenching.”

  Chris grinned. “I love it. When it rains in Houston, the temperature is usually ninety-five. Up here it seems very refreshing.”

  Brian laughed. “Good. Then I’ll wait in the car while you pull those planks down and get all the equipment into the mine.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to do it, Mr. Lockett, but I know your male ego would suffer a terrible trauma if you let me do such a thing.”

  “I’ll risk it,” he said.

  The rain started as soon as they passed through Summit and started to climb into the canyon. At first it was a soft patter; two minutes later they were being battered so hard that the windshield wipers scarcely gave them more than glimpses of the road ahead. When they reached the dirt road, Brian dropped the gearshift into low and climbed carefully up the long switchback beyond the fork. At the mine he drew up close to the plank-covered entrance and switched off the engine. “Give it a few minutes,” he said. “It can’t keep this up very long.”

  As he spoke, a flash of light illuminated the clouds directly over them. Less than a second later, a resounding crack seemed to envelop them and then rumble away into the higher canyon.

  “My God, what’s that?” Chris asked.

  “It’s called thunder and lightning,” Brian answered.

  “No, I mean that,” she said and pointed off at the pine trees.

  The deluge suddenly stopped as quickly as it had started. And coming toward them through the drizzle was the tall figure of a man with a gray rain slicker pulled up over his head. When he drew closer, he circled to Brian’s side of the car and lowered the slicker. Brian rolled down the window.

  It was not a man. It was a kid about seventeen or eighteen. His long, narrow face ended in a knobby chin with a sparse growth of whiskers. His soaked blond hair was sticking out in all directions from under a blue stocking cap. “You Mr. Lockett?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Brian said.

  The kid grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “I’m Tim Lucas,” he said. “I heard you was lookin’ for someone to help you do some digging. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it is. You want a job?”

  “Sure do. How much you payin’?”

  “Union wages.”

  “Well, I ain’t in the union, Mr. Lockett.”

  Brian smiled. “That’s okay. You’re hired.”

  “When you want me to start?”

  Brian reached into the back and brought up the hammer and the big screwdriver. “Right now,” he said. “Pull three or four of those planks off.”

  The kid grinned and moved around the car to the mine entrance. Chris laughed. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

  “He certainly does,” Brian answered. “He saved my ego and saved you from getting drenched.”

  The kid had the planks off in two minutes. Brian and Chris gathered up the flashlights, lanterns and tools, along with the lunch the hotel chef had made for them, and hurried across into the protection of the mine shaft. A moment after they entered, another lightning bolt struck the mountain no more than five hundred feet above them. The deluge started again.

  The kid shook his head. “A regular cloudburst, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Brian agreed. “Where’d you come from, Tim?”

  The kid grinned and pulled off his rain slicker. “Oh, I been waitin’ under a pine tree over there since nine-thirty this mornin’. I heard you in the hardware store when you was askin’ about someone to help do some digging.”

  “Why didn’t you say something at the hardware store?” Chris asked.

  The kid lowered his gaze and rubbed his nose for a minute, then grinned. “The people in Summit don’t much like anybody goin’ in this mine.”

  “Why not?” Chris had already heard the story from Mr. Blanchard, but she was curious to see if Tim’s version would be the same.

  The kid shrugged. “Well, there’s all kinds of stories about the Hatcher mine bein’ haunted or havin’ some kind of monsters in it. A lot of crazy stuff like that.”

  “You mean the Boogens?” Brian asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of them?” Chris asked.

  The kid laughed. “I was afraid of ’em when I was six years old. I was afraid of a lot of things then. But I’ve been in this mine before.”

  “You have? When?”

  “A couple years ago. Me and Harley Crowder used to explore the thing in the summertime.”

  “Even the west section?” Brian asked.

  “No, that part’s all blocked off with a cave-in. You can’t get in there.”

  Brian smiled and switched on one of the big flashlights. He moved the beam across the ground just inside the lower plank. “That’s interesting,” he said after scanning the area a second time.

  “What?” Chris asked.

  “That piece of broken timber I brought you yesterday. When the sheriff told me to put it back, I dropped it just inside the planks. It isn’t here.”

  Chris frowned. “You nailed the planks up again, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.” Brian looked outside, but the piece of wood was nowhere in sight.

  “Is it important?” Chris asked.

  Brian shrugged. “I didn’t think so at the time. Huh,” he snorted. “Well, let’s go.”

  They followed the same course as the day before, sticking with the main shaft, once again following the ore-car tracks. This time Chris counted their steps and watched the small compass she had brought along. At each turn she made a note of the distance and new direction. The plotting would not be precise, but a rough sketch would be better than nothing. After ten minutes, she was a little surprised to note that they had turned almost ninety degrees. The shaft was running almost parallel to the surface of the mountainside.

  They passed the large stope with the pond on the far side but didn’t bother entering it this time. Tim swung his flashlight beam into the big cavern for a moment as they moved past.

  “You ought to see some of the weird animals in some of these shafts,” he said. “When me and Harley were down here in the early summer once, there was a lot more water in that stope. All kinds of
snakes and fish in it. Some of ’em you could see clear through, like they was made of glass or somethin’. Even some things that looked like jellyfish. That was about the scariest thing we saw down here.”

  “Like jellyfish?” Chris asked.

  Tim glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah. Some of ’em two or three feet across with long tentacle things hangin’ down. Me and Harley threw rocks at ’em. Sometimes they’d wiggle right out of the water and disappear into cracks and mudholes. They moved pretty fast.”

  Chris grimaced. She had seen some strange animal mutations in caves, but nothing quite like that.

  They reached the caved-in section and Brian leaned the pick and shovels against the side of the shaft and took his jacket off. Tim frowned at him, then at the sloping wall of rock and dirt.

  “You gonna try to dig through there, Mr. Lockett?”

  “Why not?” Brian said.

  Tim shook his head. “From what I’ve heard, this whole shaft is caved in for hundreds of feet. It’d take us a month to dig through that. And we’d have to shore it up along the way.”

  Brian moved to the right side of the shaft and played his flashlight beam across the loose rock. Then he knelt and brushed some dirt away from a broken side timber. “Huh,” he said. “It’s just like that piece I took out yesterday. It’s got burn marks on it.”

  “You mean they had a fire in here?” Chris asked. She moved to his side and looked at the timber. The broken end was driven partially into the side wall of the shaft.

  “I don’t think it was a fire,” Brian said. “I think it was an explosion. A localized explosion. Look how the wood is splintered and crushed inward. And if there had been a fire, the overhead timbers would be black and sooty from the smoke.”

  “What do you mean, a localized explosion?”

  “I think somebody set off a charge of dynamite in here. I think this shaft was deliberately closed.”

  Chris frowned. “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the shafts beyond this point were filling up with water. Maybe this was blown up to stop the water from spreading into the rest of the mine.”

  “Wouldn’t the water come in anyway?”