The Boogens

by Robert Weverka

  She screamed as the first tentacle whipped itself around her bared waist. An instant later, the scream was choked off as a second tentacle snapped around her head and a third yanked her legs from under her. She struggled hopelessly for a minute. Then her head was completely enveloped and her limp body was being dragged deeper into the closet.

  The last place Mark would ever have picked for breakfast was a quaint little bakery with ruffled tablecloths and waitresses in Dutch bonnets and wooden shoes, but it seemed like just the thing Trish needed right now. Mark asked for a double order of bacon and eggs with a stack of hotcakes, and Trish had a soft-boiled egg and toast.

  “You feel like you’re back in the real world again?” Mark asked after the waitress left.

  She smiled. “Well, at least it’s clean and cozy.”

  They had gone to the sheriff’s office in Summit, but the place was locked up, with no indication of when he would be back. Ken’s car was still sitting on the side of the road when they passed by.

  “I think it would be a good idea if you guys packed up and got out of that house as soon as Roger gets back. It doesn’t make any sense to spend a vacation in a place that makes you a nervous wreck. Get a cabin somewhere else. Or even a motel.”

  “Would you go with us?”

  Mark smiled and touched her hand. “I’d love to. But I have to find Ken first. And I have to go back to work tomorrow morning.”

  “What would we do about Tippy?” she asked.

  Mark quickly dropped his gaze to the salt shaker and turned it idly with his fingers. “I suspect Tippy has gone over the hill somewhere. I wouldn’t worry about him.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said as the food arrived.

  It had not been raining very hard in Pineglen. In Summit, however, all the surrounding mountains were enveloped in a shroud of lead-gray clouds, and it was still pouring. When they arrived at the sheriff’s office the second time, it was still locked up and dark. Mark parked in front and sighed with irritation.

  “I wonder what happens if there’s a robbery in Summit?” He shrugged and smiled. “On the other hand, I don’t suppose any robber would be stupid enough to come here.” He peered through the windshield again and pushed the car door open. “I’m going to take a look through the window. Maybe he’s asleep in there.”

  The window was almost too grimy to see through. Mark leaned forward and cupped his hands to the glass. There was nobody sitting at the desks, and the jail cells at the back appeared to be empty. He straightened from the window but leaned forward again immediately and peered closely at the sheriff’s desk.

  An orange backpack was leaning against the side of it—a pack exactly like one Ken Myer owned. It was even the same brand name, Sierra Design.

  Mark straightened again, uncertain what to think. Did that mean the sheriff had found Ken? Or had he found only the backpack? He looked again. It had to be Ken’s. It was a small day pack, not particularly popular with hikers. Mark moved back to the truck and climbed in.

  “Ken’s pack is in there. I’m sure it’s his.”

  Trish brightened. “Then maybe they’ve found him.”

  “Maybe. But why would the sheriff have the pack if that were the case?” Mark glanced in the rearview mirror, then quickly pushed the door open and jumped out. The sheriff’s patrol car had turned the corner and was coming to a stop behind the truck.

  The sheriff didn’t look especially happy to see Mark as he pulled his heavy bulk out of the car.

  “You’ve got Ken’s backpack,” Mark said.

  Tolivar gave him a grim look and continued toward the office door. “Maybe,” he said. “If it belongs to your friend, it’s not very good news.”

  Trish climbed out of the track and followed them inside. Tolivar switched on the lights and pulled off his rain slicker. “You want to take a look at that thing?”

  Mark went through the swinging gate and lifted the backpack. There was nothing on it to positively identify it as Ken’s, but the pack was identical to the one Ken owned. Mark had been with him three months ago when he bought it. “It has to be his, Sheriff. It’s the same color and the same brand. Where did you find it?”

  “I didn’t,” Tolivar said. He eased down in his chair and got out a cigarette. “There’s a couple people lookin’ around up in the old Hatcher mine. They found it in one of the stopes about a mile inside.”

  “What’s a stope?” Trish asked.

  “It’s a big dug-out area. Like a cavern inside the mountain.” He lit his cigarette and gave Mark a narrow look. “Your friend interested in old mines?”

  Mark shook his head, uncertain. “Not that I know of. I guess his great-grandfather was in the mining business. But Mark never talked about it much.”

  “Well, he must have wandered in there. That’s a dangerous mine—lot of rotten timber in it. Your friend use narcotics?”

  “No!” Mark exclaimed. “What do you mean by that?”

  Tolivar shrugged. “Kids get high, they do crazy things like that. I’ve seen ’em wanderin’ around here naked in the dead of winter.”

  “Ken didn’t use narcotics, Sheriff. He didn’t even drink anything stronger than beer.”

  Tolivar nodded. “Then maybe he took some cutie in there. A nice quiet place with no interruptions.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mark said. “A guy climbs up a dirt road in a rainstorm just to take a girl to a quiet place? He had a whole house to do something like that!” Mark felt his anger rising. “What the hell’s the difference why he might have gone up there? Why aren’t you searching the mine? My God, he could be trapped somewhere in there!”

  “Take it easy,” Tolivar said wearily. “That mine’s got twenty miles of shafts in it. And there’s some people up there right now lookin’ around.”

  Mark stared at the man, not sure what to think. If Ken had gone in the mine, why had he left his backpack somewhere? But Mark couldn’t believe he had gone into the mine by himself. It was hard to believe he would have gone into a mine shaft at all. He had other things to do. “Was there anything in the backpack?”

  “Nope,” Tolivar said.

  “How come the zipper’s ripped open?”

  Tolivar shook his head. “That’s what tends to make me think there might have been somebody with him. Maybe even some other kid, and they got in a fight.”

  “Or somebody attacked him someplace else and threw the pack in there.”

  “That’s a possibility I got in mind,” Tolivar said.

  “I’m going up there, Sheriff,” Mark said and moved toward the door.

  “Now, just hold it, sonny,” Tolivar said sharply. “Like I told you, there’s people up there lookin’ around right now. They’re people who know what they’re doin’. Soon as the phones get fixed, I’ll contact the rescue squad down in Bealton. You go trompin’ around in that mine and I’ll have another missing person on my hands.”

  Trish was sitting at the other desk, staring at the backpack. “What’s that amber stain on the side?” she said.

  Tolivar shook his head. “I don’t know, miss.”

  “That’s funny,” she said and picked up the pack. “There’s some stuff just like that in the basement of that house.”

  Tolivar gave her a narrow look and frowned. “You mean the old Myer house?”

  “Yes. It’s just like this. There’s a big patch of it around the drain in the basement.”

  “How big a patch?” Tolivar asked.

  “I didn’t see it very well,” Trish said. “About five feet across, I’d guess.”

  Tolivar stared at her for a long minute, then shook his head again. “I don’t know what it is, miss. Maybe pine pitch or something.” He turned back to his desk and pulled some papers out of a drawer. “You still want to file that missing person report?” he asked.

  Mark filled out the forms and the sheriff looked them over. “You’re not a relative of his, huh?”

  “No. Does that make a difference?”

&nb
sp; Tolivar shrugged. “Not necessarily. But soon as the phones are fixed, I’ll have to call his parents. You got an address or phone number for their home in—” He glanced at the form. “Santa Barbara?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Tolivar sighed. “Well, I’ll do what I can. You check back with me later this afternoon.”

  When they got back in the truck, Mark let out a sigh and stared thoughtfully out at the rain. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why would Ken leave that house with the lights on and the door unlocked and walk a mile and a half to an old mine shaft? There must have been somebody else involved. Either somebody went up there with him, or somebody took his backpack up there and left it.” He frowned at Trish. “When did you see that amber-colored stuff at the house?”

  “When we first got there,” she said. “I went down in the basement to light the heater. It was all around a big grating on the floor.”

  “Was the grating loose? I mean, could a person open it? Or was it cemented into the floor?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t touch it. It seems to me there were hinges along one side.”

  Mark frowned through the windshield again. “Maybe we ought to take a look at that grate.”

  “Could we stop at the store first? There’s nothing in the house to eat.”

  12

  The explosion seemed to come in two separate parts. The first sensation Chris experienced was that of the air. suddenly moving. It was as if the wind had built up a great amount of pressure somewhere and then a door opened, suddenly releasing it. She felt it on her neck and the back of her blouse, and for an instant her ears hurt. A half second later the jarring whomp echoed through the shafts and almost knocked her off her feet.

  Dirt and dust and pebbles came raining down from the ceiling of the cavern in a momentary shower, splattering into the lake and across the ground. Then there was silence again.

  Chris stood frozen for a minute, too startled to move, a thousand frightening thoughts racing through her mind. Then she heard the ticks and clicks and squeaks and scraping of movement all around her. She swung the flashlight around the earth and backed up a step, as she saw dozens of insects and unrecognizable creatures squeezing out of holes and cracks and tiny fissures.

  A louder, more ominous sound came from the direction of the lake. A splashing and gurgling was accompanied by a mass of squeals and rasps of heavy breathing. She lifted the flashlight and stared incredulously at the dark mound that was rising above the surface and slowly moving toward the shore.

  It was not a single animal. It was a writhing tangle of slimy, tentacled forms that were climbing and sliding over each other in what seemed like a frenzied effort to get out of the water. As quickly as the first ones touched the shore, they were buried under the writhing mass of movement, the others sliding forward over an ooze of yellow gelatin. Their tentacles were whipping out and grasping at anything they touched, pulling themselves relentlessly forward. Some were no more than two feet across. Others were giants, with tentacles that stretched out five or six feet. Even on the largest ones, the bodies at the hub of the tentacles were less than a foot and a half across, flaccid, pillowlike areas covered with crusted, gray-black skin. The bodies seemed to expand and contract, as if they were breathing, and on one side were two small lumps with orange, irridescent eyes no more than an inch in diameter. They were like immense spiders with flexible, octopuslike tentacles in place of legs.

  Chris stared, her heart pounding wildly in her throat as she edged backward. Then she turned and ran for the mine shaft, taking no notice of the crunch of smaller creatures beneath her boots. Halfway up the slope, she stumbled and sprawled face down into a puddle of water. She was not hurt, and the flashlight was still working. She pulled herself up and ran on, suddenly more concerned about the explosion than the creatures coming out of the lake.

  The main shaft was still hazy with dust. When she reached it, Chris hesitated for a moment, uncertain about which direction the explosion might have come from. Then she turned left, thinking about Brian and Tim.

  Fifty yards deeper into the shaft, she came to an abrupt halt. The area was packed solid with rubble, several pieces of timber jutting from the rocks and dirt still smoldering from the blast. Chris stared at the blockage, stunned for a minute. Her first thought when she had heard the explosion was that it had been an accident, that Brian or Tim might have inadvertently caused a spark that had ignited some explosive gases. But they would be a mile deeper in the mine!

  “Brian!” She climbed up on the rubble and pushed rocks and dirt aside. “Brian!”

  It was hopeless. As fast as she dug, more rubble dropped down from above. “Brian!” she shouted again. There was no answer. She pushed the hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand and stared at the smouldering rubble for a minute.

  She had to get help. She clambered down from the slope and hurried toward the entrance, wondering what had caused the explosion. It must have been deliberately set. Someone must have set some charges of dynamite and blown up the shaft. But why?

  Outside, the thunder was booming and rumbling up the canyons, and the rain was coming down in torrents. Chris ran for the Bronco and grabbed the door handle. It was locked. She hurried around to the driver’s side and then stopped, gaping at the road about a quarter of a mile below.

  A small black sports car was racing down the mountainside, skidding and sliding dangerously around the curves. Chris watched until it was out of sight, then turned back to the Bronco. She started to try the door, but she stared at the window. The glass was shattered, with a large hole at the bottom near the lock button. She pulled the door open and climbed inside. Looking into the back seat, she felt her heart sink. The box of dynamite was gone.

  She stared at the entrance of the mine for a minute and then at the ignition switch. She had no keys. “Oh, God,” she groaned and rested her head on the steering wheel. She had to get help. But where? Could she make it back to town in this rain? She had to. She had no other choice. She slid out of the Bronco and slammed the door, walking, then running across the pad to the road.

  Why? she asked herself. Why would anyone want to trap them in the mine? Was it the skeletons they had found? Or those creatures—did it have something to do with them? She pushed the questions out of her mind and stumbled onward, her clothes already soaked with rain.

  Three minutes before the explosion came, Brian had decided to close up the new crawl hole they had made. He and Tim had dug twelve feet into the pile of rocks, and there didn’t seem to be any point in going any farther. By Brian’s rough estimate they had already gathered well over a thousand dollars’ worth of gold.

  The first quartz Brian had uncovered had been hard and solid and almost impossible to shatter. As they dug deeper and deeper into the shaft, however, the fine lacings of gold had begun to appear. Through the last three or four feet, a single blow from the pick would crumble the quartz into pieces the size of golf balls, all of it mixed with high-gold-content ore.

  Brian had no doubts that the rich vein continued for some distance. It also seemed clear that somebody had gone to a great deal of trouble to hide it. The only questions were who and why? His first thought had been Hitchings and Thomas. But why would they hide a gold strike that was in their own mine?

  And where did the galena ore come from? He had seen no sign of such ore anywhere near the point where they were digging. Would somebody haul it in from somewhere else—through a half mile of mine shaft? It didn’t seem reasonable when there was plenty of rubble already available right here. Or did the shaft continue past the gold and run into some galena farther on, and somebody hauled the galena back to close the shaft?

  Tim had finally come up with the answer while they were replacing rocks over the crawl hole. On the other side of the mountain, on a level about a hundred feet above the Hatcher mine, there were several shafts where silver and lead were mined. “Is it possible, Mr. Lockett,” he asked, “that maybe somebody tunneled
into the Hatcher mine from over there?”

  Brian had stopped working and stared at him. It was not only possible, it was highly probable. Galena was lead sulfide, the principal ore from which lead was mined. “Who owns that mine, Tim?”

  “Mr. Blanchard,” he said.

  That came as almost as big a surprise as finding the gold. Aside from Tim, Otis Blanchard had been the only person in Summit who had been the least bit friendly toward Brian and Chris. “Does Mr. Blanchard operate the mine himself?” he asked.

  Tim shrugged. “I guess so. He goes over there almost every day.”

  “How many people work in his mine?”

  “Ten or twelve. About everybody in Summit.”

  “So it isn’t a big operation. Does Mr. Blanchard seem to have a lot of money?”

  Tim grinned at that. “He’s a millionaire. He owns everything down in Pineglen. And he’s got property all over Colorado, my dad says. I guess he’s one of the richest men in the state.”

  Altogether, Brian had gathered about twenty pounds of the gold-laced quartz. He was tying it up in his jacket, just tightening the last knot when the explosion came.

  Brian knew immediately what it was. He had spent too many years working in mine shafts to mistake the characteristic blast of air and then the quick thump and rumble of dynamite igniting.

  “Holy Christ!” Tim gasped. “What was that?”

  Dust and sand streamed down from the overhead timbers; the faint odor of burned powder reached them. Brian didn’t bother grabbing the gold or any of the tools. He picked up a flashlight and ran. “Come on,” he shouted.

  It took them ten minutes to reach the cave-in where they had dug the first crawl hole. The hole was no longer there. The explosion must have been farther along the shaft, but apparently the concussion had collapsed the hole.

  “Damn!” Brian muttered as he panted heavily and played the light beam over the rubble. Why hadn’t he brought a shovel along?