by T. M. Catron
“Ready?” she asked.
Charlie nodded. He walked beside her as they stepped off the manway into the tunnel. The area was dark except for Alice’s flashlight. A few times they heard men talking and shouting Ray’s name. But the voices were only echoing back to them from other parts.
Finally, they reached the hole. It looked more sinister now without lights around it—more like a sideways mouth than just another tunnel entrance.
“You think he went in there?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know. But he was pretty upset about it all day. Kept going in with the engineers.”
“And you don’t think they checked it already?”
“I don’t know. No one will tell me anything.”
Charlie sighed deeply.
“You okay?” Alice asked, remembering he’d never been in the mine very much.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
They stepped down into the tunnel. Immediately, a cold blast of air hit their faces. Alice shivered. The lights the engineers had used the day before were still there.
“Could we turn those on?” Charlie asked.
“Stay put.” Alice turned and went back out of the hole. She found the switch for the lights and pulled it down. Nothing happened. They’d cut off power to them.
She hurried back to Charlie. New sweat was dripping down his face despite the chill in the air. “I don’t like the dark, I don’t think,” he said, smiling. “Which way?”
Alice turned left for the tunnel. “We have to check down here.”
Its slope was too steep for walking. She lifted the rope off her shoulder.
“No way am I going to lower you down there by yourself!”
“Well I can’t lower you down there. You’re too big.”
“No, Alice, there has to be a better way.”
“What if he’s down there, Charlie? What if he’s hurt?” She pointed down the tunnel with her light.
“I didn’t realize . . .” He licked his lips.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll climb down.” She turned to put her feet in backward, looking for footholds.
“Wait,” Charlie said. He grabbed the rope and tied it around her waist. “One tug to stop. Two quick tugs if you need me to pull you up for any reason, okay?”
Alice nodded and checked the knot. Then she lowered herself backward into the hole. Charlie kept the rope taut while she used her feet to steady herself against the wall. Then he began letting it slowly out. She pointed the beam of light downward, leaving him the dark. She wished they’d planned this better and brought more lights.
She descended for several minutes, seeing only the rough rock beneath her feet, hearing only the scrape of her boots on the Earth and her own breathing.
After what felt like hours, Alice saw a stone bottom. She tugged once on the rope and it stopped. She maneuvered the light around a bit, but still couldn’t tell if it was really the bottom or just a shelf. So she gave the rope another tug.
Nothing happened. Alice hit the rope with her fist, sending a vibration along it to the top. Finally, Charlie started lowering her once again, faster this time.
Too fast—she couldn’t keep her feet planted on the wall. Then the rope loosened altogether, letting Alice fall backward. She let out a startled cry as she anticipated the rock below rising up to meet her.
The landing forced the air out of Alice’s lungs. For a moment, she lay on her back, trying to find her breath. Something heavy was slapping her repeatedly on the chest. She groped for it and realized it was the coils of rope falling down the tunnel.
Charlie had let go.
***
Something had seized Charlie around the chest. His ribs hurt, and he couldn’t suck in any oxygen. He remembered the darkness, the spot of light below that was Alice’s flashlight, a disturbance of the air, like something was behind him, and then . . .
Alice!
As he lay suffocating on the stone floor, Charlie thought that this wasn’t how this day was supposed to go. He had been going to help Alice find Ray, then propose to her. He’d loved her ever since they were kids. He just didn’t know how to say it. He needed to say it.
But he’d let her go. Why had he let her go down there at all? Why had he let go of the rope?
Charlie’s ears rang. His body contorted in an effort to gasp the air. He didn’t know what was happening. Why had he let go of the rope? Tears of pain and guilt spilled out of his eyes. Stars hovered in front of him. He was going to die like this. And Alice was going to die lost down below. Maybe she was already dead from the fall.
Suddenly, the pressure on Charlie’s chest lifted. Oxygen returned and his lungs expanded to let in the air. He gasped and choked, then cried fresh tears of relief. He wasn’t going to die after all.
Alice.
He crawled over to the tunnel and peered down. His heart beat wildly in panic. What if he couldn’t see her?
No, there—a light. It had moved.
She was alive. Charlie wanted to laugh, to holler, to celebrate. But his voice wasn’t working correctly just yet. “Alice,” he managed after a minute. He watched the light sweep around—a tiny pinprick, really, nothing more. Then it disappeared.
“Alice!”
***
Alice turned. Had she heard Charlie? She walked back to peer up the tunnel she’d just come down. “Charlie? What happened?”
She heard shouting on his end, traveling back down to her, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was up there in the dark, unable to move without getting lost. Alice had the light, but also the rope. They were both stuck. “Just stay there and yell for somebody!” she shouted.
More shouting. Alice refused to think about how she was going to get back up there, not yet. But she was encouraged that Ray’s body was not lying at the bottom. Did that mean he’d come down here, then moved on? Or did it mean he’d never come down here at all?
A chill passed over Alice’s body—the result of cold air on sweaty skin. She shivered and shone the light around again, thankful she’d had the good sense to keep a grip on it as she fell.
She was standing in another tunnel, bigger than the one she’d come down, smaller than the one above. Unlike the tunnel above, this one didn’t have arching, smooth walls. In fact, this one looked most like a cave, with jagged walls and sharp rocks.
And it stretched on ahead of her. Alice knew she’d follow this tunnel. She told herself it was because Ray could have stumbled through here in the dark, become disoriented, couldn’t find his way back. But it was more than that. She had a deep-rooted desire to find out where the tunnel led. And she couldn’t explain it. She didn’t want to.
Charlie shouted something else from up top. He sounded panicked. But Alice couldn’t do anything about him right now. So she moved forward, one foot in front of the other, checking for adjoining passages to the left or right. But there were none. After a while, the tunnel sloped downward. Charlie had stopped shouting. Either that, or she had moved out of ear-shot.
A twinge of guilt ran through her. Charlie wasn’t a miner. He wouldn’t know what to do in the complete darkness. What if he tried to get out without a light? He’d be lost like Ray.
The thought brought Alice to her senses. Would she risk losing Charlie while she looked for Ray? And if Charlie wandered off and got lost, no one would know she was down here. She halted, her desire for knowledge battling with her instinct for survival.
Just a few more minutes; Ray could be close.
“Ray?” she called. She moved forward again. Her light caught something in the ceiling and she turned it upward to look. A mark of some kind. Had Ray found a way to write on the ceiling, to let people know where he was? She hurried forward to look closer.
But it was like no mark Alice had ever seen. It was a circle, carved deep into the rock. Inside the circle were more circles and swirls. It was beautiful, but nothing like Ray had ever drawn or written. And how would he have carved it? Were these cave drawings like she had
read about in school? Had this been an Indian hiding place?
Alice swept her light along the ceiling, searching for more. She wasn’t disappointed. A little further down, more circles joined with others, flowing together on the ceiling, and soon the walls and the floor. Alice stopped to gaze at them in awe. She was surrounded. She couldn’t explain it, but for the first time since falling, she was warm. And . . . safe.
The searchers and engineers couldn’t have been down here already. They would have reported finding these markings. Which meant Ray could be down here. She didn’t know how he would have fallen, though, without sustaining massive injuries. Which meant if he was down here, he was hurt. He could have wandered anywhere.
What if he’d climbed down like she had? Alice shook her head at the thought—he was smarter than that.
A scraping sound echoed along the corridor, startling Alice out of her musing. “Ray?” she called, hope blossoming in her chest. She stopped shining her light on the walls and swept it down the tunnel ahead. The scraping sound grew closer, but she didn’t see anybody.
“Ray? You there?” She walked down the tunnel, over the markings covering the floor, wanting to run but afraid of falling down into some unseen chasm. The scraping noise grew louder. It sounded like stone on stone.
The tunnel curved to the left, and Alice swept right around with it, thinking only of finding Ray at last.
“Ray!”
She rounded the corner and drew up short. Golden stone glittered in the beam of her flashlight, blocking the tunnel. There’s gold down here, she thought with a thrill. Alice moved forward, her hand outstretched.
The stone moved. When it did, it scraped along the stone of the tunnel. Alice startled and stepped back. But the stone kept moving—toward her, through the passage.
It was unfolding.
Despite the panic that filled Alice’s brain, she managed to register two things: the golden stone had things that looked like legs and arms, and it had two enormous eyes. When she flashed her light into them, they flashed, too. Like fire, she thought. Then, without waiting to see any more, Alice turned and ran.
The scraping moved with her. That thing was chasing her. She had the idea that it somehow didn’t quite fit in the tunnel, that it was struggling to get through.
Which meant the tunnel going up would be safe.
She ran faster. The scraping noise followed as if it were some huge beast from the pits of hell. Maybe that’s what it was.
Demon—Jimmy’s accusation from the night before. He hadn’t been talking about her, then. Alice ran as hard as she could, expecting any moment to be grabbed and dragged backward. The monster was still behind her—she could hear it scrabbling against the walls, louder maybe than it was before. She didn’t dare look back. Her flashlight beam wobbled on the tunnel in front of her, but she was sure of her footing now.
Up ahead, she saw the tunnel going up to Charlie. Would the demon catch her before she climbed up high enough? The thought spurred Alice on, giving her another boost of energy.
Just a few more steps.
The scraping came faster now. It sensed she was going to get away. Alice attached her flashlight to her belt as she ran. Now the light swung crazily around her, bouncing off the walls, making her dizzy. She jumped over the rope on the ground and launched herself onto the rock.
She somehow found a handhold and began to climb. Her heart pounded so violently she thought it would stop; her breath came in ragged gasps.
“Charlie!” she managed. “Charlie!”
She heard him shout out an answer. The sound encouraged her. He was still okay. And this creature couldn’t get up the tunnel, she was sure. She groped for handholds, knowing that she was taking too long, that her legs were still exposed to the creature at her back. Her skin prickled, but she dared not turn around.
Just keep moving. Charlie’s at the top. He’s waiting on you.
The scraping stopped right behind her. The thing was at her back—she could feel it even though it wasn’t touching her.
Don’t look don’t look don’t look.
Alice’s stomach filled with lead. She struggled to pull herself up. Her foot slipped, then her hand. Her feet hit the floor. Unable to stand the suspense anymore, she turned, backing herself into the wall at her left.
It wasn’t a wall.
The creature filled the tunnel. As a giant arm reached for Alice, she thought at least if it killed her, she’d get to see her Daddy again.
With her last conscious breath, Alice hoped the beast didn’t decide to drag her down to hell instead.
Epilogue
HARVEY O’BRIEN STUBBED OUT HIS cigarette on a shovel someone had left at the entrance to the mine. He sat on an overturned bucket, waiting on them to bring out the kid. The entire place stank of coal, and dirt, and metal. The dense, suffocating trees didn’t help his mood, either. The sooner he was back in DC and civilization, the better.
When the powers that be had transferred him to this job, Harvey had laughed and laughed. He had a reputation for being able to cover things up—a particular skill set that made him very popular with a great number of people.
Those same people also feared him. He knew secrets—too many. He’d hidden the government’s most unsavory mistakes from a populace that would rather be kept in the dark, despite what it claimed.
And now O’Brien was paying for it. He’d been transferred to ARCHIE a year ago. At first he’d thought it was a joke—the Alien Research Center for Hostile Invasion of Earth. Formed, no doubt, in response to recent public interest in extra-terrestrials. As if they needed proof monsters existed in the universe. O’Brien knew a few of them right here in the United States.
But it wasn’t a joke. He was stuck here. And somehow he’d landed in Springwater, West Virginia, investigating a string of disappearances at a mine. Didn’t mining accidents happen all the time? Didn’t miners die all the time?
But his superiors had wanted him here, so here he was.
Deputy Coolidge was capable enough, but not so much he hadn’t been able to prevent a kid from sneaking up on him and stealing his gun. Typical backwoods sort, O’Brien thought with disdain. The hillbilly was walking toward O’Brien now.
“Here they come,” Coolidge said.
O’Brien stood and looked to where Coolidge was nodding. A rescue crew was bringing a young man out of the mine on a stretcher.
He was barely of age. Tall, gangly, disheveled, dirty clothes. He was sobbing, talking softly. “Alice . . . Can’t leave her. She’s down there. She was screaming.”
“Boy’s been saying that over and over,” said one of the men holding the stretcher, a miner named Billy Loggins.
“Is he injured?” O’Brien asked, looking for wounds on the young man’s body. But he was uninjured as far as O’Brien could tell.
“No, the dark does that to people, though. He’s been in there two days without light.”
“What’s his name again?”
“Charlie Satchel.”
“Mr. Satchel,” O’Brien said.
The young man didn’t respond.
“Charlie,” he tried.
Charlie looked over at O’Brien, his eyes puffy, his face pale.
“My name’s O’Brien. Can you tell me what happened to you down there?”
“Alice,” he said with a moan.
“Who’s Alice?” O’Brien looked up to the men around him.
“She’s that girl I told you about,” Coolidge said. “The one that was with Charlie when he got the jump on me.”
“What happened to Alice, Charlie?”
“Monster.”
“Monster?” Great, the guy was delirious. So much for going back to DC tonight.
“It got her,” Charlie whispered. “She was screaming. I couldn’t get to her.”
Then he dissolved into more tears, and no one could get any more out of him.
Charlie Satchel was checked into a hospital and treated for shock. They never did get a strai
ght story out of him; he only mumbled about monsters and Alice and darkness. Apparently he’d heard her get into some kind of trouble, but couldn’t go help her. He was discharged from the Army without ever reporting for a day of Basic Training.
O’Brien questioned everybody who’d ever set foot in the mine. And he became intrigued with the tunnels the miners had found. (Despite what Billy Loggins said, the government had not dug them. O’Brien had had a good laugh over that one.) One day he had someone escort him down there to look for himself.
The hole was strange. And creepy, even though O’Brien wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself. He invited a few scientists—geologists, mostly—to have a look. They only deepened the mystery by saying they didn’t know what had created the perfect arching tunnels and circular room. He ordered a team down into the tunnel where Alice Peters was last seen.
The team disappeared. O’Brien hadn’t seen that coming.
After consulting with his department, he shut down the mining operation. Then he had to bring in a National Guard unit to maintain the peace—the townsfolk didn’t take too kindly to having their jobs disappear. O’Brien couldn’t blame them.
The markings inside the smaller tunnel became the center of their investigation. Then more were found in a large room at the bottom of another tunnel, one that ran from the top of the mountain all the way down. O’Brien had metal stairs installed in both tunnels for convenience.
More scientists came, scratched their heads, and left. Then the disappearances began again, always when someone was left alone in the lower tunnel. O’Brien finally had it closed off for safety. No one else vanished after that.
After a year of research, O’Brien was convinced that something unearthly had created the tunnels, and not the Soviets, as a few had suggested. They determined the circular etchings in the stone were writings of some kind.