The Thing In The Mine

by J. R. Ayers

  Chapter Two

  Buddy Sawyers opened the entry gate with a remote and drove onto the Logan number 12 coal mine property at approximately half past eight Saturday morning. Beside him on the passenger seat of his Jeep Cherokee was a Coleman cooler full of roast beef sandwiches, three lunch size bags of Frito corn chips, several Little Debbie snack cakes, three cans of diet Sprite, a thermos full of black coffee, and a dozen chocolate doughnuts still so fresh from the Wal-Mart Deli in Beckley that Buddy wondered if he should share any of them with Charlie Waddell, or just lie and say he didn’t have time to stop that morning.

  “Aw, hell, I guess I’ll give the ole’ coot one or two,” he muttered as he parked his Jeep next to Charlie’s Ford Ranger.

  Making his way to the Straw Boss’s office with the doughnuts and thermos of coffee, Buddy didn’t notice the door to the equipment room standing ajar until he was within ten feet of the office building. Puzzled, he glanced down at his watch. “What the hell’s he doin’ pullin’ a check now for?” he asked himself.

  Buddy usually made his first rounds of the property at precisely nine a.m. Charlie always made his last check of the equipment room at six and then did a final walk around the yard at eight, before retiring to the office to fill out his shift report. For him to be in the equipment room at eight-thirty was highly unusual in Buddy’s way of thinking. One thing Buddy had always insisted on was order and consistency. Possessing those attributes had helped him survive twenty-five years of hauling and delivering mail to half of Raleigh County. Being persistent, as well as consistent, was how he had, against some people’s better judgment, managed to convince the mine Superintendent, Jess Hobbs, to hire him on as the day watchman at the mine. “I got a long record of bein’ on time and never failin’ to deliver,” he’d told Hobbs when practically begging him for the job. “It’s just that I can’t walk all them miles anymore. I had to quit the Postal Service to save my knees so I could do other things, like keep your mine safe and in good working order when you ain’t diggin’ coal.” In the end, Hobbs had relented, and Buddy joined Charlie Waddell as the only two individuals responsible for Logan number 12’s well-being when the mine was idle.

  Balancing the doughnuts in the palm of his left hand, Buddy headed over to the equipment room to express his displeasure at the deviation from protocol. He had just called Charlie’s name when he heard a commotion over by the new mine shaft. It seemed the elevator was on the move. Buddy watched the elevator car descend past the containment cage and disappear from sight into the shaft. “What the hell,” Buddy said, frowning. “They ain’t supposed to be anybody workin’ today.”

  He ambled over to the elevator cage and looked down at the wire mesh top of the car. It took a moment to realize that the car was empty, and when it finally dawned on him, he jerked back from the containment cage so quickly that he lost his balance and dropped the doughnuts, lid side down, on the gravel below his feet. “Shit!” And then, “Who’s down there!” Charlie, is that you?” It’s me Buddy. What the hell you doin’ down there anyway?”

  The elevator car disappeared into the darkness, and then stopped abruptly. It rocked back and forth for a few seconds and then began ascending up the shaft toward the containment cage. Buddy took an involuntary step backwards and one of his size twelve steel-toed boots landed on the box of doughnuts flattening the contents inside.

  As the top of the elevator came into view, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Charlie Waddell sitting in the bottom of the car. “Damn, Charlie, you’re gonna give me a heart attack,” Buddy snapped. “What the hell you doin’ down there anyway?”

  The elevator car reached the top of the containment cage and the entry door slid open with a metallic bang. Charlie Waddell rolled out of the car and stood shakily to his feet. Not liking the look on Charlie’s face, Buddy shifted the thermos to his right hand, his strong hand, and regarded Charlie with suspicion. “What the hell’s goin’ on here, Charlie?”

  For a moment, Charlie stood perfectly still under the crescent of silvery light projected from the fixture above the cage. He looked at Buddy with little recognition and let go a shrill, throaty giggle. “Not enough time,” he said slowly. He spoke in monotone, his voice thick and watery, as if he had a mouthful of peanut butter. Suddenly, he burst into tears and coughed up a wad of phlegm stained ebony by specks of coal dust.

  “Take it easy there, guy,” Buddy said, looking at Charlie as if he was someone to be feared. “What’s the matter, you hurt or somethin’?”

  “We. . .we just needed more time,” Charlie stammered. “Just a little longer, that’s all. Just a little more. . . time.”

  “What do you mean? Who’s we?”

  Charlie laughed in response to the question, a harsh, gritty sound that made the hairs on the back of Buddy’s neck stand on end. Powdered coal dust curled from Charlie’s grinning mouth staining his ashen face with shimmering soot. He pointed to the elevator shaft and said,

  “Down there. We were talkin’. I was learning. But, but we need more time. Now you’ve ruined it.”

  Buddy eased backwards a couple more steps and glanced nervously toward the fence where he had parked his Jeep. He didn’t know what was going on with Charlie, but he did know that the man was acting very strangely. He’d known Charlie Waddell for almost three years, and never had he seen him acting as he was that morning. “You ain’t drunk, are you Charlie?” he blurted. He’d never known Charlie to be a big drinker, but, hey, nothing people did these days surprised him much.

  He was about to voice his displeasure with Charlie’s strange behavior when Charlie turned toward the elevator and dropped to his knees beside the containment cage. He began violently nodding his head, and for a second, Buddy thought he might break his neck if he didn’t soon stop.

  He did stop a moment later and opened his mouth. Silvery, sparkling specks of luminous powder wafted from his nose and mouth and spread out like a halo above his head. “I will, I will, I will,” he chanted. “Oh, I promise, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll doooooo it!”

  Buddy was at a loss as to what to do or say. Charlie’s behavior was beginning to spook him, and he didn’t like being spooked, especially since the doctor had told him to eliminate as much stress as possible in his life if he wanted to prevent his recently diagnosed angina from getting any worse. The sight of Charlie Waddell acting like a raving lunatic certainly didn’t qualify as any type of stress reliever as far as Buddy was concerned.

  He worked up a degree of courage and approached Charlie as cautiously and silently as the gravel lot underfoot would allow. Just as he got close enough to touch his shoulder, Charlie leapt to his feet and rushed past Buddy, nearly knocking the big man to the ground. Buddy watched in amazement as Charlie sprinted across the gravel lot toward the entry gate.

  “Hey, where you goin’ Charlie!”

  Charlie bounded over the ground like a sprinter heading for the finish line. There was no hesitation in his gait, no favoring of his damaged leg, not even a hitch as he sailed over the uneven gravel with no more effort than a skater on ice.

  When he was a few feet from the ten foot high entry gate, Charlie leapt from the ground and grabbed hold of the chain-link backing of the gate. For a few moments, he hung suspended four feet off the ground, his shoulders heaving as he sucked in huge gulps of air. Then, mewling incoherently, he began a slow, steady crab walk up the length of the gate. From his position near the elevator, Buddy watched dumbfounded as Charlie climbed to the top of the gate and reached out for the triple-strand of razor wire affixed to the last rail of the gate. “Oh no he ain’t,” Buddy said, wincing at the thought of Charlie slicing his hand open on the sharp razor wire.

  No one in their right mind would even think about doing something that stupid.

  Apparently, at least at that moment, Charlie Waddell wasn’t in his right mind He gripped the razor wire with his right hand and swung his legs up and over the top strand of the wire. His overalls pant leg caught momentarily,
and he kicked his leg until the material ripped free. Grunting and cursing, he wormed his legs and body over the razor wire and began climbing down the other side of the gate. Even at a distance, Buddy could see blood streaming from multiple cuts on Charlie’s arms and hands. His face too was injured, as well as the right side of his neck and the lobe of his left ear.

  That’s just plain insane.

  Beginning to doubt his own sanity, Buddy sagged against the side of the containment cage and willed himself to watch Charlie climb down the other side of the entry gate. He was moving quickly, apparently oblivious to the blood streaming down his arms and face. Suddenly, he stopped about half way down the gate and jumped backwards, landing on his feet in the middle of the access road.

  Some part of Buddy’s mind told him that he should do something to stop Charlie from further hurting himself, but he could do nothing except cower by the elevator cage and listen to the obviously crazed man shout unintelligible words at the sky. Charlie was bleeding profusely, and, judging by the way his left leg sagged under his weight, it was obvious to Buddy that he had re-injured the bone when he jumped from the gate. Charlie seemed oblivious to his condition, however. In fact, he showed no ill affects at all as he spun on his heel and took off running down the access road away from the mine at top speed.

  Buddy watched him disappear around a bend in the road and wondered if he was locked in some type of realistic, unending nightmare. He had never been this frightened, or confused, at any time in his life. His fear and confusion only intensified when the elevator motor suddenly revved to life. Buddy stared open-mouthed as the car descended into the darkness, stopped, and then proceeded to rise back up the shaft. He was still staring when the elevator reached the top of the containment cage. Something like a mass of writhing worms roiled and twisted inside the cage. Lights danced within its transparent mass, shapes, like molten shadows appeared and just as quickly disappeared, and somewhere toward the rear of the car, hundreds of tendrils, resembling gnarled, cancerous fingers, probed the edges of the containment cage as if testing the integrity of the metal.

  And then, as fast as a thought, they were probing Buddy. He felt the thing enter him, first his head, and then the rest of his body as the cold, electric-shock like fingers slithered down his spine and wormed their way into his legs and feet. And then, quite against his will, he began to move. The thought that he should resist briefly crossed his mind, but the notion was instantly swallowed up by a rhythmic chanting gliding through the folds of his brain matter.

  By the time he was riding the elevator to the bottom of the shaft, the only thing left of the old Buddy Sayers was three bloody fingernails stuck in the wire mesh of the elevator car where he had made once last attempt to save himself from the thing in the mine.

  Chapter Three

  It was nearly noon when Charlie Waddell arrived at the place where the mine access road joined up with West Virginia State Route 16. It had taken him the better part of three hours to walk the five miles of gravel road leading from the mine, mainly because he had fallen on numerous occasions and lay on his back for several minutes, staring at the sun, too weak from blood loss and shock to continue. The last time he fell, he had willed himself to fade away into sweet, painless unconsciousness, but the thing inside his head wouldn’t allow it. It probed him and prompted him and eventually, it commanded him to get to his feet and continue walking down the road toward the highway.

  He resisted at first, but as his body weakened, so did his resolve. The thing was powerful, and compelling; it would not tolerate resistance, no matter how hard Charlie attempted to will its influence out of his brain.

  So he walked in a body he had no control over. His mind was changing as well. Once, when he stumbled over an out-cropping of sandstone rock and fell on his face, he realized that he couldn’t even remember his own name. That realization frightened him and he began to panic, but just as he was about to cry out in desperation, the Thing seized him and shook his mind into submission. Walk, it said. Walk and think of nothing.

  No longer able to control his body, Charlie began shambling along the center of the roadway. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes, mingling with blood oozing from several razor wire cuts on his nose and forehead. The noon day sun beat down on his bare head baking the blood and sweat on his body like a kiln. Under any other circumstance, the intensity of the sun would be blinding, but it wasn’t Charlie’s eyes that were staring directly into the sun. The force, the Thing, had him dominated and there was nothing he could do to change his situation no matter how hard he tried. By the time he had covered another stumbling, excruciating mile, he’d stopped trying all together.

  When he arrived at the Route 16 junction, he stopped in the middle of the road, his feet straddling the double yellow lane markers. The old two-lane blacktop was still damp with dew in spots where the sun couldn’t penetrate the canopy of the giant Walnut trees lining both sides of the highway. Condensation fumes radiating from oil slicks on the blacktop danced like a shimmering mirage atop the lanes in both directions. The roiling, clamor of the rushing river rose up from the forest bed below the highway. Birds sang in the myriad of trees populating the foothills below the mountain range, small animals rustled in the underbrush, insects did whatever insects do, and the Thing inside Charlie’s head contemplated and savored it all with rapt wonder. Sensual moments like these had been a long time in coming.

  A sound in the distance came to the Charlie/Thing’s ear and he staggered to the center of the highway facing north. A speeding Mack logging truck rounded the bend a hundred yards up the road and sounded its air horn. Charlie stared at the approaching diesel, oblivious to the fact that the big truck was rapidly bearing down on him. When the rig was fifty feet and closing, the driver flashed his lights a few times and applied his air brakes while steering the overloaded truck to the right. The subsequent effect was predictable as the big rig yawed into a precarious skid, leaning dangerously to the right, a fraction of a degree from toppling over into the ditch. Rubber barked and screamed against the oily pavement, swirling plumes of white smoke boiled up from the skidding tires, brake pads groaned against overheated drums and all the while, Charlie watched the calamity with eyes that danced with amazement and utter joy.

  The Thing made Charlie step aside an instant before the out of control truck would have slammed in to him, no doubt bursting him apart like a piñata. The truck’s tandem tires gouged into the pavement in the westbound lane and the cab began fish-tailing down the center lane stripe. A sound like a giant tea kettle venting filled the air as the pneumatic brakes dug into drums scorched red hot by friction and pressure. The driver finally regained control, laid on his horn for a full sixty seconds and then roared off down the highway belching diesel fumes.

  Unimpressed and seemingly unaware of the near miss, Charlie began walking down the center line of the highway heading in the opposite direction of the truck. The sun had finally arced above the tree tops and was busy burning off the last of the ground fog lingering in the ditches alongside the simmering highway.

  It vaguely occurred to Charlie that his senses were heightened to a level that he had never, heretofore, experienced. He could smell the burned rubber from the truck tires and the caustic, kerosene stench of the rig’s exhaust fumes. He could hear the wildlife in the forest beyond the highway—little hearts beating like bongo drums, miniature claws and talons scratching for insects in the dry underbrush beneath the trees, ephemeral gasps of otherwise inaudible breath from the tiny lungs of a ground squirrel fleeing from a red-tailed hawk. He could smell things too; the earthy, rich odor of dried hickory leaves decaying in the luxuriant earth, the cloying overpowering fragrance of honeysuckles in bloom and, less distinctly, yet every bit as profound, the sour, nauseating stench of his own fear.

  Although his eyes were no longer his own, he could see things that only the force in his head appreciated. He could see a fox squirrel romping in the fork of a white oak tree a half a mile up the wes
tern slope of the mountain. A trout leapt over a waterfall in the river five hundred yards below the highway and Charlie saw it with such clarity that he could count the spines on the fish’s dorsal fin. Birds on the wing were visible as far as a mile a way. And even those things he couldn’t see with his eyes frolicked in his head in the form of dreams, convoluted, disturbing dreams dreamed up by the Thing from the mine. It was clear that it was getting stronger with each passing hour, which meant more and more of Charlie was winnowing away into nothingness.

  Not surprisingly, it was the Thing, and not Charlie, who first saw the Dodge Caravan rounding a steep curve up ahead.

  Get your shit together, Charlie, we’ve got company.

  Chapter Four

  The van drew nearer, slowed, then stopped a few feet in front of Charlie. The side window lowered and a man with a hawkish face and a shock of sandy hair that looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb in a week looked out at Charlie with unabashed curiosity. A movement caught the Thing’s attention and it noticed a woman in the passenger seat peering over the man’s shoulder. She was attractive, in a rudimentary sort of way, an observation not lost on the Thing as it ogled her through Charlie’s eyes. A look of concern and empathy in her countenance told the Thing that it could exploit her if it had a mind too. And, to be sure, it had a mind to. The man, on the other hand, wore a smirk on his face that conveyed at best, casual indifference. In the Thing’s distorted way of thinking, he could turn out to be a problem.

  But not much of one.

  “Howdy,” the man said. A strand of hair fell over his face and the Charlie-Thing had a sudden vision of shit colored straw.

  Answer him, Charlie.

  “Howdy.”

  “Damn, bud, what the hell happened to you?”