Where Darkness Dwells

by Glen Krisch

  "Betty, come here please." Her mom looked tired and sweaty, as if she'd just mowed the front lawn with their push mower.

  "How did it go? Did you tell Hank Calder?" They'd agreed they should let the town know what had happened to Gerald Harris, doting father of two, generous and loving husband, lies and all.

  "Yes, I did. I also stopped in on the doctor, and he respected our wishes for privacy. They'll help spread the word," she said. As if saying the words had taken up the last of her energy, she slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, then stared off at the floor.

  "That's it?"

  "We got our credit. Hank gave me too much for the lettuce, but he's a kind man underneath it all. I think he did that instead of talking to me. He understands; he's lost his wife, you know. He understands what it's like."

  "But it's not the same. Not with Daddy."

  "You can't let on it's not."

  "It makes me sick, Momma. I don't know if I can do this."

  "Someday we'll see your father again. Then it'll be worth it. Just think of that. Seeing your father again."

  "I guess."

  "There's something I heard in town, Betty-Mae. I'm not sure how to tell you this…"

  "What?" Betty approached her mom when she saw tears in her eyes. "What is it?"

  "It's George."

  Sensing her bleak tone, Betty's heart thrummed forcefully in her chest. "What about George?"

  "He's dead. He died last night."

  Betty let out a pent-up breath. Dead? The term didn't mean much anymore, did it? She let out a sharp laugh.

  "Betty, I'm serious. It's not like your dad. He was mauled. By some animal. Out in the swamps."

  "George? George Banyon?"

  "Yes. I'm so sorry."

  Her mom stood from her chair and stepped toward Betty, her arms extended in comfort. Betty pushed by her and out the back door, the screen snapping shut.

  14.

  The sun was falling from its highpoint when Cooper woke. His muscles ached, but he felt rested for the first time in many weeks. He hadn't recovered from the many months on the road, but was heading in the right direction. He washed his face in the basin on the nightstand, and then changed clothes. He headed down the narrow stairwell to the dining area, letting his nose lead him. The air was infused with different aromas. Freshly baked bread and apple cider. Cinnamon sprigs. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The dinning room was empty. Crumbs littered the tablecloth, chairs were askew, but people weren't enjoying the food that went along with the phantom aromas.

  He heard a clattering of dishes, and without thinking, he headed toward the noise, passing amateur paintings of placid Midwestern landscapes, portraits of severe-looking pioneers. A recessed curio cabinet filled a wall, so prominent it seemed as if the Calders had built the entire house around a preexisting structure. Framed family photos lined the cabinet, packed as tight as fish scales. In one photo, Henry Calder was actually smiling. He sat in a chair and held a beautiful doe-eyed baby in his arms. A woman stood beside him, her delicate hand resting on his shoulder. Thea's mom matched his seated height. Her small mouth formed a slight Mona Lisa smile. Cooper could understand Bo Tingsley's harbored feelings for her.

  "What are you doing?"

  Cooper nearly jumped at Thea's shrill voice. "Sorry, I was just looking." He stepped away from the curio display.

  "Just looking? Without permission to come back here, you might as well be a criminal." Thea's apron was wet, as if she'd been washing dishes for hours. Even so, plates and silverware were stacked in unstable towers behind her.

  "I didn't mean any harm. I came down to eat, and when I didn't see anyone… I heard a noise, so I came this way."

  "You missed lunch, obviously. I could shoot you for trespassing, and no court would convict me."

  "I'm sorry, Miss Calder," he said as he turned quickly. "I'll be out of your way."

  "Wait a minute."

  Cooper faced her as she dried her hands on her apron.

  "Maybe I shouldn't be so cross, especially with you being kind enough to at least drop off your payment last night."

  "I didn't think I was going to wake for breakfast--"

  "I heard what happened. It was all anyone could talk about at the supper table. George Banyon used to come in to buy penny candy, he and his sister. Such a shame. What a waste of a young life."

  "I know. I'd never met him and it has me shaken. We didn't get back until the sun was starting to come up."

  "Technically, you signed our contract, so I should boot you for breach." In the flash, Thea's spiteful side surfaced.

  "So, do you want me to leave?" Cooper wondered where he would stay if the Calders had the only housing in all of Coal Hollow. He could always hole up how he normally did. Wrapped up in his blanket, hoping the hard ground wasn't too damp.

  "You know, with all that's gone on since last night, and with you just arriving, why don't we make a little compromise?"

  "What did you have in mind?"

  Thea stepped aside and extended a hand to the piled dirty dishes as if revealing a prize.

  15.

  Gerald Harris cheated death as he crawled through the numbing darkness. His time had come, had been hovering over him like a malevolent cloud since last year. He stubbornly ignored his fate when his burning cough started dredging up blood, and in recent weeks, bloody tissue. But ignore it he did. When stubbornness could no longer mask his fear, it was too late. He could do nothing to change his fate. Except, possibly, entering the Underground.

  When they first entered the kitchen to take him from his family, he thought they were a bunch of coloreds bent on some kind of misguided revenge. But after a moment's hesitation, Gerald Harris recognized them for what they were. They weren't a bunch of crazed Negroes starting up a race war. Their skin was coal-blackened. Ashy dust coated their skin, clung to their curled mustaches and bushy sideburns. The melted candles at the crest of their helmets remained unlit. When they blinked, the whites of their eyes flickered like flinty moths in a dusky backdrop. They were white men stained black by their profession. His tension eased off to a steady hum.

  Gerald knew about the Underground. Most of the old-timers could sift fact from fable easily enough. The three men who he had so easily followed into the hollows of the earth weren't alive, but they weren't exactly dead, either. They were the Collectors. Miners trapped years ago--long before Gerald first doffed his miner's helmet--trapped in some perpetual cycle of escape and rescue. They should've been dead, but weren't. They should have suffocated in their mining accident, should have long ago rotted and crumbled to nothing. But they hadn't.

  The Collectors. With primal desperation they forged through their freshly cut tunnels, seeking out those who they could save. Their single-minded focus drove them to chip away at bedrock, layers of limestone, veins of coal, through topsoil and the foundations of houses, to at last save lives. The Collectors were myth when the mine was still open, a myth given a wink and a nod by the local miners as their patron saints. They were guardian angels looking out for them when they were at their weakest, guaranteeing their safety and survival as they toiled in the mines. In the bars after quitting time, the miners would tip a glass to the Collectors, followed by equal parts reverential silence and rowdy good cheer. Gerald never believed the stories, but respectfully tipped his glass, just in case.

  When the mine closed, the young and able-bodied either signed on with other mining companies scarring the prairies of the middle-west, or wended their way back to the Appalachians, from which many of them originally emigrated. Those who remained in Coal Hollow accepted their burdens of diminished physical capacity and the poisoned lungs that accompanied a coal miner's old age. Over the years, the myth gained credibility as the old-timers closed in on their dying days. People were disappearing. Sick people. Sick miners. Last night had been Gerald Harris's time. The Collectors entered the Harris household with the promise of eternal life. He wondered what ultimate price they would exact as c
ompensation for such a gift.

  He couldn't see a thing, and only the shuffling ahead prevented him from colliding with the Collector leading the way. They had yet to say word one to him. The two trailing miners dragged their shovels and pickaxes, grinding the metal against the cold stone with every stride. In their silence he felt alone, as if he were a blind mole burrowing down into its den. They were moving at a generous clip, yet he couldn't hear their gusting breath. Maybe they didn't need to breathe. Gerald considered himself, and yes, from the gentle pull of his lungs in his chest, he was still breathing, still alive. But these other three men… being stuck in a lightless tunnel with these unbreathing, undead… Collectors, Gerald felt a surge of panic, the tight clench of claustrophobia. Thirty-six years in the mines and he had never felt so trapped; never to such an extent had he ever felt the weight of the world above him, the gravity of the cold stone earth pressing down as if to crush him.

  He then heard a grunt from behind, a discordant friable voice lost in an undead chest cavity. Did their blood still flow? he wondered. Did they have any thoughts other than to dig, shovel and pick their way through this lightless Underground maze? Again, the grunt sounded from behind him, insistent and irritated. Ahead, the shuffling sounds ceased.

  The sweat clinging to his skin dried unnervingly. He realized he was no longer crawling. He had stopped in order to catch his panic-stricken breath, questioning why he had so willingly followed these monsters into their lair, knowing it was far too late at this point to change his mind. There was a scraping sound from behind as a shovel was thrown forward, followed by a cold pinging sound as the shovel slammed into his right ankle. He screamed, his voice absorbed by the surrounding tons of solid rock. White hot pain burst from the impact and up his leg. After the initial pain subsided, all he heard was the Collectors' angered grunts. He couldn't find his voice--he choked on any words forming on his lips--rubbing the barbs of pain from his ankle. He blinked in the darkness, searching for clarity or understanding to this situation, but was left wanting. A shovel prodded his calf, urging him on.

  "Okay, okay." Wondering if his ankle was broken, Gerald pressed on, following at the pace of his Collectors, not wanting to further anger them.

  He lost all sense of time, but hours had passed, surely, since he first entered the dark tunnel. He hadn't coughed since they reached a certain level below ground, a level at least a half mile deep by his educated guess. In fact, he didn't even feel the urge, which had rarely happened in the last decade. Hand over hand he crawled through the lightless void, his knees going numb and his calloused hands sanding down to more sensitive layers for all the friction, yet with all the motion and effort, still no coughing.

  He inhaled deeply, his lungs expanding to what he thought was their physical limit, then expanded more, taking in more chilly air. With every fraction of an ounce of additional air, his energy was building, and he could have sworn he felt a tingling in his chest. A good tingling. Warm and… healing. Yes, healing. A wood fire was close, and also, the warm doughy sweetness of… apple pie? In the darkness, Gerald Harris, though tentative and beyond confused, felt a smile crease his lips.

  16.

  Cooper finished the last of the dishes, and was wiping down a water spill around the sink's edge. How did she do that? he wondered. Thea Calder was beautiful, but he'd encountered beautiful women before. She hadn't blinded him by batting her eyelashes or offering him a charming smile. He couldn't pinpoint it beyond an unnatural ability for manipulation.

  A heady swirl of pipe smoke let Cooper know he wasn't alone.

  "She got you pretty good, didn't she?" Henry Calder stood against the doorframe, his thick arms folded across his chest. He offered a knowing smirk. His cob pipe bobbed as he gnawed on its tip, his teeth clicking along its well-chewed surface.

  "I suppose she did, Mr. Calder." Cooper worked the dishrag around, chasing spilled water. "I'm sure if I stay for any length of time, I'll wind up cooking for everyone, too." He tossed the dishrag in the sink, finished with his end of the "deal."

  Henry Calder laughed, the gruff tenor sounding uncommon for him, as if his voice had long ago forgotten that facility. "I think my daughter could convince a beggar to give up his last penny, and feel good about it, too. Thea's got a good heart, it's just sometimes hard to see." His expression hardened back to what Cooper expected of him. All scowl and jowl.

  "I better get going."

  "Before you do, can I ask you something?"

  "Sure." Cooper had a suspicious feeling. Whenever someone from Coal Hollow asked him a question, it always seemed to lead him to regret.

  "If you're going to stay a while, I was curious if you had any leads on what you're going to do?"

  "Actually, I was hoping to find out today."

  "Well, I might help you with that. It's not much, but it's something."

  "You've piqued my interest." Cooper was relieved at Calder's innocuous line of questioning.

  "Then follow me."

  Cooper followed Henry through the general store and out the front door. He just now noticed the man's limp, how he favored his right leg, shortening his left stride to compensate.

  Henry surprised him by heading toward the icehouse. Inside the first door, Calder noticed his pipe had died, so he tapped it empty against his shoe, stowing the pipe in a pocket. Shy of opening the second door, he grabbed a coat from a hook in the corner. He threw it to Cooper. "It's not the greatest, but once inside, you'll be glad for it."

  He smelled sour sweat and sawdust as he pulled it on.

  Donning a jacket and leather gloves, Calder opened the inner door. After the outside heat, the cold air felt harsh against his face. Cooper couldn't imagine working in the icehouse or for Henry Calder for that matter. He couldn't stop thinking about last night. They'd taken George Banyon's body into the icehouse.

  Henry grabbed a lamp from a hook, lighting it with a long stick match. He waved the match like a magician's wand, extinguishing the flame. "Watch your step. Granddad cut those steps himself. It doesn't embarrass me admitting he was a better businessman than stonemason." Henry took an unsteady downward step, gripping the wall as he went.

  Cooper thought back to the sight of George Banyon's face after Jane Fowler pulled him from the swamp. Cooper had touched the boy's skin when righting his leg after it had fallen from the makeshift stretcher. The skin had felt impossibly cold in the muggy July night. The boy's gashed cheek had spread wide like a second set of lips. The dead eyes flickered open--

  His eyes never flickered, he corrected. He was dead when I found him. Mud filled his eyes. I never saw them.

  They climbed down more stairs than he thought possible. The steps weren't close to level, each one beveling at a different angle, as if they climbed the spine of dead and buried monster.

  "It's getting harder for me to move around, you see plainly, and I can't expect Thea to lift all these supplies. We store perishables and block ice down here. If I can't get down these steps, there's no way my business can stay afloat. I'd need you to move stock to the storeroom as needed, and on an odd day, help around the store. Also, the ice needs cutting."

  It felt colder as they descended. Cooper never imagined seeing his breath in July, but it gushed from his nostrils, quite visible in the lantern glow. Behind them, a crack at the closed door let in a pencil-thin band of sunlight, but it was getting narrower, weaker. The hand-hewn stone and mortar walls disappeared. Bedrock cold as frozen February surrounded them as they left the stairs and entered a subterranean room.

  "Granddad might've cut the stairs, but for the most part, the dimensions of this icehouse are God's work," Calder said with a flourish. The room's ceiling hardly allowed for Cooper to stand upright. Henry's lamp illuminated the room. Rows of rough wooden shelves held boxes and crates. The floor was bare and nearly as smooth as a man-made surface.

  "How come it's so cold down here?" Cooper's teeth verged on clattering.

  Henry limped down an aisle and appeared to be takin
g note of the stock levels of certain perishables. Without looking, he ducked a low stretch of ceiling. "I don't know all the particulars, but Granddad was on his way from Ohio to California to make himself rich. Somehow, when he stopped here to re-supply and rest his horses, he discovered the shaft leading to this room. No one's figured out the reasoning behind the cold. I'd rather not open it up for world discussion, neither. This land's allowed my family to live comfortable for three generations now. I'm not going to let nothing spoil that."

  "I don't blame you."

  Calder continued his tour. Large ice blocks filled nooks in the stone walls. Ice hooks as long as Cooper's arm hung on nails driven below one of the wooden shelves. He also noticed work gloves and thick-toothed ice saws.

  "Usually right after New Years, we harvest the ice from the Illinois River. I hire on local boys, mostly. They work hard, the older ones, and you don't need to pay them much. But then again, they aren't the most responsible people on the planet."

  "I know what you mean."

  "Ice doesn't melt a bit once we lug it down here, only shrinks some from evaporation," Calder said, then paused. His voice dropped in pitch as he continued, "Now don't get me wrong, I can understand Sheriff Bergman thinking it was a good idea to bring George's body down here last night, but I want him buried soon as possible. This is an icehouse, not a morgue."

  Cooper followed Henry down the last aisle into a small open area beyond the last wooden shelf. A waist-high workbench lined the wall. Burlap sacks covered an oblong mound the length of the table. Cooper didn't need to ask what lay hidden beneath.

  "What do you say?"

  After letting the words sink in, Cooper responded. "Oh, the work, the ice cutting and stocking. Sure, I'm up for it," he said, not sure if he meant it.

  "Great. Can you start tomorrow?"

  "Sure. Whenever you want."

  "It's a deal then." Henry Calder seemed relieved Cooper had accepted his offer. He clamped him on the shoulder with a gloved hand and let out a short laugh. "Let's get our asses out of here before we freeze them off."