by David Wood
STILLWATER: A DARK HISTORY OF COAL AND HEARTS by Stephen Lumley, PhD, caught his eye as soon as he stood before the bookshelf. The book wasn’t in terrible condition, but even so he pulled it from the shelf as gently as he could, then went back to his seat. Once the book lay cradled securely in his lap, Kyle opened the cover and slowly turned yellowed pages.
The book, published in August of 1962 by the West Virginia University Press, was hefty, and Kyle only skimmed the first few pages. When he came to the table of contents he glanced at the chapter titles hoping something would pop out at him. But, instead of finding one or two titles that might be interesting, nearly all of them begged to be read.
“I hate to burst your bubble, Maya, but I think this Lumley guy was way ahead of you.”
Maya’s head popped up from the microfiche reader and turned his direction. “What do you mean?”
He held up the book, careful to not let the pages hang loose. “It’s a history of this whole area, even going back before the town was here. He’s got lots of chapters about murders, people going crazy, mining problems, the whole thing. The first chapter is about Native American legends.”
“Huh, so I’m not the only one who clued in to this place. Whatever conclusions he drew must not have caused too much of a fuss though. Unlucky for him, but maybe lucky for me. I don’t recall finding any ancient legends about this place though in my internet searches. Why not give that a read and let me know why you find.”
Kyle was glad to have something to do that might contribute, so he set to reading immediately. Two pages in and he wished there was a movie about it to watch instead. He just wasn’t much of a reader, and the dry style Stephen Lumley, PhD, wrote in only made it worse. Listening to a lecture was bad enough, but reading one… It was just too much. To save himself from falling asleep, he skimmed pages again, his eyes like fishing hooks dragging across the page in hope of catching something interesting. After ten minutes he’d only written down one actual note.
Well that wasn’t the fun sort of researching I’d hoped for.
Suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps broke Kyle and Maya from their work.
“Oh shit.” Maya’s eyes glowed blue from the screen in front of her. “I think the librarian is coming.”
Kyle set the book down on the table next to him, gingerly walked to the door, and put his ear to it. Sure enough the steps grew louder with each slow footfall. “I think you’re right. We’ve pressed our luck long enough. You got everything you need?”
Looking around at her notes, Maya nodded. “I’d love to dig deeper, but yeah, I think I’ve found enough to continue my investigation. There’s some spooky shit here.”
“I don’t doubt it. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
Maya gathered up her notebook, pen, stray sheets of paper, and phone, then shoved them in her purse and turned off the microfiche machine. She stood up and walked toward the exit door, but then turned back. “Crap, I forgot to take out the fiche and put it back in the drawer.”
“There’s no time for that.” Kyle grabbed her shoulder and steered her back around.
Maya resisted for a moment, but eventually nodded and opened the door she’d unlocked barely an hour ago. As soon as she was back outside he followed after, making sure to set the lock as he went. He made sure the door closed securely behind him, and as the last half-inch of space disappeared he thought the inner door opened and Ms. Kirkland’s face stared into the archive room. Whether or not she saw him or the door close, he didn’t know.
Chapter 10
Leaving the library parking lot as quickly as they could without drawing attention, Kyle turned onto Reservoir Road and gave the Jeep plenty of gas. A large dump truck roared past them, sending a spray of dark, filthy water in the air like a speedboat. Kyle had to flick his wipers into high to clear off the drenched windshield.
“That truck was going kinda fast.” Maya whipped her head up to follow it. Her bag lay on the floorboard behind her feet. She pushed her heels against it to keep it from spilling over.
“You get used to it. Back when a lot of mines were open they were probably a real menace, but now with just the one...not so much.”
As though to emphasize his point, a closed metal gate with the words “MINE CLOSED. STAY OUT!” passed by on their right, followed by another in quick succession. A larger gate with rusted chains lashed around it stood like a muzzled mouth between a pair of tall trees with a sign secured across it, but graffiti and time had made it unreadable. The point was clear though – yet another mine had closed its doors.
“What do you know about the mines?” Maya pulled out her notebook and leafed through it.
Kyle glanced at her for a moment before returning his focus to the wet road ahead of him. “As little as possible. My dad has worked in them his entire life, just like his dad did, but I tried to steer as clear of them as I could.”
“You're probably better off than you realize,” Maya replied as she settled on a page of notes. “According to what I found, over the past hundred years there have been over a dozen mines opened within twenty miles of the town of Stillwater. Do you know how many of those closed down?”
“All of them.” For a kid who grew up in the lengthening shadow of the mountains, that was an easy one.
Maya gave him half a chuckle. “Yes, but do you know how many closed down because the coal seam actually ran dry?”
Kyle powered up his memory banks and raked through them, seeing if that bit of information had ever filtered through the many layers he'd put between himself and the future that had been expected of him. After a few seconds he shook his head. “No idea. I'd guess all of them. If the coal was still there, why close?”
“Good answer. Wrong, but good. Half the mines closed due to no more coal. The other half because the companies that owned them went bankrupt.”
“Bankrupt?” That didn't make sense to Kyle. If there was still coal to be dug, then there was still money to be made.
“Uh huh. Several went belly up because insurance claims went too high from people being hurt in the mines. Others were sued into extinction because of claims of unsafe working conditions. One of them was dissolved when the owners disappeared. One day they were at the mine, working in the office, and the next...” Maya whistled like a wind blowing through a graveyard. “But not everyone who was hurt in the mines was wounded physically though. Some of them were committed to psychiatric hospitals. The diagnosis, you ask? What a great question. Sudden onset paranoid schizophrenia.”
“All of them?” A chill crept up Kyle’s spine.
Maya nodded slowly. “Uh huh. All them talked about hearing voices in the dark, seeing visions of demons burning the world, claiming they were being hunted in the tunnels by creatures they couldn't see. Pretty nasty stuff. I’m sure that spending too much time in the dark of the mines, working beneath millions of tons of rock, snaps a brain every now and again, but the number of cases for this area is way out of the norm. And that's not even getting into the higher than average number of suicides among miners.”
“Huh.” Kyle was a loss to say anything else. Growing up he'd heard tell of someone going off the rails every now and again, but hearing her lay things out like that put a sinister spin on it. It also sparked a memory – a recent one by the feel of it – but when he tried to grab for it, it fluttered away.
To the left, the Stillwater River came into view, poking along under the rain. The river ran next to the road, matching it curve for curve. The Jeep handled itself well on the slick road, and after a wide bow curve they passed the entrance to the Badger Mine, the only coal mine in operation in the area. The large truck they'd seen earlier was parked near a bulldozer. Kyle didn't get a chance to see much as they rounded the curve, but it looked like a group of men were having a less than friendly conversation near the truck.
“If things are so bad for mines here,” he said once the Badger parking lot was lost to view, “why did a company come in and give it a go?”<
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“I tried to find out the same thing. The company that owns Badger is in Canada. I called their corporate office, but was never able to make it past their public relations office who simply said, and I quote, 'Stillwater, West Virginia, is still a viable coal producing area. We at Badger are working hard to keep that coal flowing, and the people of Stillwater working.' End quote.”
Kyle snorted again. “They might as well have just told you to fuck off.”
“I've been brushed off worse. When you ask the kind of questions I ask, most people just look at you like you're crazy. The rest get openly hostile. It's the rare few that actually want to help, and usually they're the ones contacting me.”
As they rounded a wide curve, the Stillwater Dam came into view. A hundred feet high and three hundred feet across, the dam sat in a small valley between two mountains, its vertical surface broken by half a dozen sluice gates that maintained water levels for both the river and the reservoir. During the spring and summer months, the reservoir covered an area just over three square miles, and the surrounding forest made the place a genuinely pretty site from a distance, but for the life of him Kyle couldn't remember a single family outing to the lake during his youth, or one weekend spent fishing or swimming or camping by the water. Nor could he remember any of his friends doing it either. If it hadn't been for the occasional high school party thrown on one of the beaches around the reservoir, and therefore far from the eyes of lame parents and authorities, he doubted he would ever have gone out there at all. It only now struck him how odd that was.
“Wow, it's so beautiful.” Maya sat up straight in her seat and gazed out the rain-splattered windshield.
Kyle glanced at her for a moment, wondering if she was staring at the trees, or the shadows. “And I bet you're about to tell me hundreds of people died out there.” The look she gave him made him wish he hadn’t said anything.
“Don’t joke. You're not far off the mark.”
His hands grew cold as they held the steering wheel and turned them onto the road that led across the top of the dam. Maya didn’t say anything else, but shook her head and settled back into her seat. When they reached the middle of the dam, he parked on the right shoulder. “It's raining out, but I think the view's worth it.”
It was. After a few moments they were standing side by side in the drizzle and looking out over the reservoir that stretched like a vast piece of smooth, wet shale from one mountain to another. The water was far too dark to see through despite how still the surface was, with the few ripples caused by raindrops. As Kyle stared down at it, he wondered how far it went, how far he would fall before light became a forgotten memory, and what would greet him when he hit the bottom. In his mind, none of it was good.
“There are a lot of deep dark places here.” Maya echoed his thoughts as she stared down at the same stretch of placid water.
Kyle shifted his eyes back to the trees that ringed the reservoir like a giant verdant collar. “And apparently a lot of dead bodies.”
“That too,” Maya replied, leaning on the railing and taking the scenery in.
“Speaking of dark places.” Kyle pulled out a sheet of paper with his one research note. “According to that book I found, over the centuries a lot of tribes came through this area, and the name Stillwater was originally used by the Seneca for the river behind us. There was also a reference to these mountains in an old Cherokee story. It seems they avoided this place like the plague. They called it gv-ni-ge-a-da-nv-do.” He contorted his mouth and tongue to get the pronunciation out properly. “That's as close as I can get it anyway.”
“And what does it mean?” Maya asked.
“Black heart. Comforting, huh?”
“Not really.”
As though on cue, a bolt of lightning cracked down over a mountain to their right, a wall of thunder swept past them. The patter of rain increased with it, fat drops hitting the them like tiny, wet hammers.
“Something is definitely going on here in Stillwater,” Maya said, “but we’re not going to get any closer to it standing here getting wet.” She stepped back and pulled him toward the Jeep.
Kyle let himself be pulled, and he opened her door. “You don't want to take any pictures with that fancy camera of yours?”
“Not in this weather,” she replied as she got in the vehicle. “Besides, this stuff is for catching ghosts, not Instagram.”
He closed her door and hustled around to the driver's side. Once seated he said, “Taylor should be getting close to the lunch bell, so let's head back. After we're done I'll take you wherever else you want to go.”
“Are you sure you want me coming along and meeting your sister?”
He looked at her and screwed up his lips in a scowl. “Why? Because you're black, or because we just met?”
Maya mirrored his face back at him, adding her own bit of 'tude to go with it. “Either. Both. Take your pick.”
“Trust me, Taylor is the last person who would ever judge anybody.”
“I've heard that before.” Maya settled back in her seat and winked as she pulled out her phone. “And by the way, my dad was white, so watch how you label people, cracker.”
Feeling properly rebuked, Kyle let his muscles steer them toward Stillwater High School, home of the fighting Honey Badgers.
Chapter 11
Getting all of Maya’s equipment loaded in the back of Kyle’s Jeep didn’t take much time, but it would have taken even less if he hadn’t had to be extra careful with some of it. Night vision goggles and infrared camera lenses were fragile things, not to mention expensive. But soon enough they were on the road. While he drove, Maya checked her phone to see if Darius had called or sent a text. He hadn’t. She then tried calling him but only got his voice mail. Anger poured through her body as she envisioned him looking at his phone and ignoring her out of spite, but along with it came a thin trickle of worry. As childish as Darius could be, the silent treatment wasn’t his usual shtick. Unsure of what she could do about it, however, she closed her phone down and jammed it back into her pocket.
“Your phone piss you off?” Kyle asked.
“It's not my phone. It's Darius. He's the person I'm supposed to be out driving around with today. He's...like my mule. This stuff can get heavy.”
Kyle sniffed and leaned his head over toward her. “It's none of my business, but you seem a bit more upset than an AWOL grunt should warrant.”
Swirls of awkwardness tumbled around Maya, twisting her emotions up and causing her to blush. She had nothing to hide, but that didn't mean she felt comfortable airing her laundry either. And really, how appropriate was it to talk about an ex-boyfriend – one she still worked with, no less – with the guy she'd just slept with the night before? She felt like a character in a stupid romantic comedy, so she shook her head and pushed the awkwardness to the side.
You're a big girl. It is what it is. Fuck it.
“He's my ex.” She hoped her eye-roll illustrated her feelings about the relationship. “We broke up a couple of weeks ago. My friend Alan was supposed to be out here helping me, but he got caught up with work, so he asked Darius to help instead. I wish he hadn’t.”
“And are you sure Darius knows you broke up?” It was a fair question, and he didn't ask it with any hint of jealousy.
Maya twisted her lips and gave him a deep nod. “Trust me, we are way over, and we're all more than fine with it. Helping me with Stillwater is the last interaction we'll ever have, and if I have my way it'll be over and done with A.S.A.P.”
“Huh.” Kyle increased the Jeep's windshield wiper speed to keep pace with the rain. “I didn't know you were in such a rush to leave town.”
A new set of awkward waves rolled over her, but these had a different flavor. She hadn't meant to imply she wanted to flee or that the investigation was the only thing that interested her in town. Kyle sounded just the tiniest bit hurt, and she regretting her words. He was a really cool guy, insanely attractive, and scored nearly 100% on her che
cklist of things she liked in men, so of course she had a reason to linger. But Darius... Even when he wasn't around he somehow managed to screw with her life. Her frustration toward him, and her attraction to Kyle, made her head spin. Before she could say anything, Kyle turned left onto a small road and pointed with his right hand at a sinister looking building.
“There's the high school.” Years of teenage angst weighed his words down.
Made of red brick that long turned black from dirt and coal dust, the squat building looked more like a prison than a school. The tall cyclone fence that surrounded it was missing only a roll of razor wire to complete the effect. An all-weather flag fluttered limply in the rainy breeze over a parking lot that had more potholes than cars. All the windows were fogged over and covered in what looked like chicken wire. It wasn't exactly heavy on the curb appeal.
As they pulled in, she saw kids milling about in the courtyard between the school and parking lot. Some were clustered in small groups, their eyes down and their heads hung low, like they were trying to stay off everyone's radar as they talked, while others just stood and stared at nothing, or sat in small, silent circles. It wasn't the loud and energized sort of scene she experienced when she'd been in school, that was for sure, and the rain couldn't be the only thing keeping them all down.
“So when did fun get outlawed?” she asked, her eyes roaming from one dour face to the next.
“No kidding. School wasn't exactly a party when I was here, but this is ridiculous.”
He stopped the Jeep next to a blue STUDENT DROP OFF sign and craned his neck to look around. After a few seconds he dug in his pocket and brought out his cell phone. “Taylor's not out yet.” He dialed her number, held the phone to his ear for a moment, and then pulled it away. “Voice mail.” He then typed in a text message, his big man-thumbs working overtime on the small keypad.