I agreed. "Yeah, I kind of want to get this over with."
We turned and took the only tunnel that branched out away from the way station. As we walked, we tipped our masks up and drank a bit from our canteens. Ginger offered me a cracker from her pack, but I declined it with a wave.
I tried to act calm and confident, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t pulling it off very well. I suddenly and fervently wished Thorn were there. I felt silly for that, but there it was all the same.
The tunnel widened a bit, and then there was the branch we’d been expecting. This tunnel intersected another that led to our left and to our right. We looked at the map and decided that we would again take the left tunnel first.
As we walked along, we were hesitant to speak. In the back of my mind was the idea that someone in the darkness could be listening. Maybe Ginger felt the same way. She seemed calm enough, but she did walk closer to me than she had before. We were now side by side instead of single file. The tunnel was wide enough to afford us this luxury, thankfully.
I heard that dripping sound again. "Drip, drip, little water drop," I sang softly.
"What are you talking about?" Ginger asked, her voice barely a whisper.
I forgot about trying to be quiet and shrugged. "Don't you hear that water sound?"
She stopped, listening. "I don't hear anything."
I stopped as well, but I could still hear the sound of water dripping into a puddle. "It sounds just like it did earlier."
"Vic, I don't hear anything!" Ginger said seriously. "Are you feeling okay?"
I sighed in irritation. "I'm fine. Are you truly telling me that you can't hear that?"
"I really don't hear anything that sounds like water," she said as she faced me. She’s serious. I can tell she means it.
I decided to just let it go. "Maybe it's my mind playing tricks on me. Wouldn't be the first time I've heard something down here that others didn't!"
Ginger watched me with concern, but she remained silent as we started moving again. We walked for a few more feet, and then a tunnel appeared to my right. I shined the flashlight down into it and startled, which startled Ginger, and we both screamed.
"It's just a cart," I said and took a deep breath, placing my hand over my heart. Ginger looked at me and then at the mining cart, and we both started laughing. It was such a relief from the silent stress we’d been under.
The next instant, everything went black—and it wasn’t because I fainted. Our flashlights cut out simultaneously. It was suddenly pitch-black as we were plunged into darkness. Ginger grabbed me, and I wrapped an arm around her while I shook my flashlight.
"Fuck," I mumbled.
"Did the batteries die?" Ginger whispered breathlessly.
"I don't think so. Don't they usually dim before they go out?"
It was true that our flashlights had been shining as brightly as ever. There had been no dimming or flickering. There simply was suddenly no light. "We should call the others," Ginger suggested.
"I don't have the radio," I said simply.
Ginger moved against me as she searched her pack. "I've got it," she said with certainty. I relaxed a bit, then tensed as she continued to fight with her pack.
"Are you sure you've got it?" I asked her.
Ginger's voice sounded flustered. "I had it, Victor. I know I did! Here; break this open."
I felt her push a smooth cylinder into my hand. I realized it must be a glow stick, and I fought with it for a moment before I heard the crack and the light glowed out of it. I shook it and held it over the pack, where she was still trying to find the radio.
"See it?" I asked as I tried not to sound anxious. I’d never been overly fond of dark places, and my nightmares about the mines and creatures did not help.
"Uh…" Ginger looked up at me in the dim yellow light of the glow stick. "It's not in here. Check your pack."
I knelt down beside her, and she held the glow stick over my pack as I sorted out the things that were in it. When I had reached the bottom, I saw my feelings of panic echoing on her face.
"Maybe we dropped it!" I said breathlessly.
"How?" Ginger inquired incredulously. "I put it in my pack and zipped it up. I haven't opened it since we went back to check on the others."
I put the items back in my pack quickly, throwing it over my shoulder. "I don't care. We have to backtrack. Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound…well, mean."
Ginger shook her head as she put her pack back on as well. I broke open another glow stick, and then we began trekking toward the closest way station. We walked an impossibly long time before Ginger finally pulled out the map.
"This isn't right," she kept mumbling. "Look." She pointed to the tunnel we’d been in when the lights went out. "Here's where we were, right?" I nodded. "Well, how far do you think we've walked? We should only have gotten about 200 feet before we came to our turn. I know we've gone farther than that."
"That can't be right." I took the map and tried to find some mistake, some rational explanation. "Let's just go a bit farther."
"Okay," she conceded softly.
We walked for another 100 feet before we stopped, looking back and all around. There was no sign of any other tunnel. We walked on for a bit, then we stopped. "What if we’re going the wrong way?" Ginger asked. "We could’ve gotten turned around while the lights were out."
We pulled the map out, but the tunnel we had been in came to a junction just a bit past where we’d stopped. "Okay, so where the HELL are we?" She sounded frustrated, scared. I could relate on both counts.
The tunnel looked old. "We've gotta keep moving," I said. "We'll reach the end of the tunnel or an exit eventually!"
"Okay," Ginger replied while we continued walking but at a brisker pace. Here and there were little bits of graffiti, and we stopped occasionally to look at them. Most of them looked as old as the tunnel. As Ginger stopped to look at some particular marks on the wall, I walked past her a bit and peered farther down the hallway.
"Hey..." she began, "do you know this symbol?"
I walked back over to where she was and eyed the strange figure scribbled on the wall. It looked like a vertical line with two diagonal lines pointing upward on the right-hand side.
I nodded. "Yeah. It's an elder rune. Um...I think it's Fe, if I remember correctly. I ran into them a good deal doing research over the years."
"What's it for?" Ginger asked, spooked.
"Uh, I don't recall, exactly. I think it has to do with wealth and fertility."
"Weird place for it," Ginger said softly.
"Not really. People have used runes as graffiti for centuries. I imagine these miners spent long hours down here, plus all the thrill seekers that have come down since the mines closed. This area was settled by Anglo-Saxons and their kin during the gold rush. So, the likelihood that runes were in the collective culture of the area is pretty normal."
"Maybe."
We might have talked more, but there was a clank from behind us. We both spun around but saw nothing. We glanced at each other and then quickly continued down the tunnel, away from the direction of the noise.
I cursed and pulled Ginger to a stop. "We came down here to investigate!" I said. "Shouldn't we check the noise out?"
"Are you serious?"
"It could be Donna," I replied as we eyed the tunnel behind us.
She sighed. "We just came from down there! There was no one there. Vic, if that were someone needing help, they would be calling out."
I nodded. "You’re right. Let’s go, then."
The noise came again from behind us, and we quickened our pace. It was sort of a scraping sound, almost like metal scraping against the dirt. I panted, "Maybe it's some kind of machinery?"
"That we missed in the empty tunnel?" Ginger asked me as we hurried through the dim light.
I shook my head, and we just kept going. Every few feet, we sped up until we were almost running. The tunnel seemed like it went on forever. My breath puffed
out and fogged up my mask, and that fine mist swirled along the ground again.
Finally, Ginger slowed to a stop, and I slowed with her. She quickly got another glow stick out of her pack. Tossing her old, dimming one on the ground, she cracked the new one against her knee to spur it to life. I followed her example, dropping my old glow stick to get a new one.
Soon enough, we were jogging back down the tunnel as Ginger took a swig from her canteen. The glow sticks behind us marked how fast we were moving away, and I peeked over my shoulder at them. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I watched them get farther and farther away. Turning around, I almost hit the wall in front of me but managed to stop in time. We suddenly realized that we’d run not to a dead end, but a 90-degree bend in the tunnel.
Ginger asked, "Hey, where'd my glow stick go?" I followed her gaze.
Behind us, only my glow stick was visible. As we watched, mine suddenly winked out as well. "We should go now," I said, heading away from whatever had caused the glow sticks to go out or be blocked.
The tunnel around us looked smooth, much like the one where we’d found the water, but the walls weren’t wet. They appeared to have been worn smooth. I couldn’t take the time to think about it too much, as we were busy trying not to lose our footing while we ran along the narrow tunnel. We didn’t even spare time to look back.
SIX
I could describe the worst hours of my life as dark and wet. Ginger and I had doggedly kept going despite that the tunnel narrowed to where we could hardly fit. We edged through, taking our packs off and turning sideways.
We had abandoned our second set of glow sticks and watched from a safe distance to see if they, too, would disappear. Ginger began to cry as the first one winked out. I was dragging her up and pulling her away, and we never saw the second one go. I tried with all my might to will Thorn and Oliver to come find us, but it was just futile.
The tunnel turned gradually from a man-made tunnel into a natural cave. We ended up in a cavern that was, at least, bigger than the narrow tunnels before it. We could see precious little with our glow sticks, but we made our way as best we could. I tried to feel air flow, but we could feel nothing. Ginger sat down and cried.
"We have to find a way out," I said as I turned around, trying to think of what to do.
Ginger shook her head. "I just had to come down here. My mom made me promise not to, and here I am. I was so damn intrigued by the idea of some doppelganger twin down here that I... Why did I come down here?" She was practically sobbing.
I had to stop and come sit next to her. "It's going to be okay."
"No. It won't, Vic," Ginger said solemnly. "My mother said that they closed the mine not because of economics, but because the mountain got too hungry."
I startled. "What did she mean?"
"Well…" Ginger pushed some sweaty hair out of her face. "People around here say that the mountain was greedy with its treasures. You had to give the mountain something in return. You know, like gifts."
I nodded. "Gifts of..?"
"Mom's from here, you understand, but my dad wasn't. He never believed in all of it," Ginger said, ignoring me.
I touched her shoulder. "Gifts of what, Ginger?"
She looked at me, her eyes shining with tears in the dim light. "Trinkets. In the old days, Mom said that people used to leave food or sometimes money."
That sounded like a lot of cultures I had heard of, so I nodded. "What did she mean by the mountain getting too greedy?"
Ginger took a shaky breath. "People used to never go in these mountains. Not inside of them because of the Native American legends that said the mountain would steal your soul." She paused. "The mine didn't close down until long after Caroline disappeared...although most people think it closed down earlier because the operation was so small. Truth is, they couldn't keep miners."
"Why didn't you tell me any of this before?" I asked.
"I was afraid it would spook you and you wouldn't come down even after all that dream talk. Mom said that Miss Durant, Oliver and Thorn's granny, told her that the mountain swallowed Caroline up, and when it did, it got hungry. It tasted life, and it wanted more. Miners kept leaving, claiming they heard voices and saw people in the mines—people who couldn't be there. They were spooked. Eventually, the mines had to be closed due to safety concerns. Tell the truth, there's plenty of gold still left in this mountain. No one wants to come down here to get it, though."
I rubbed my face and stood up. "We have to get to Thorn and Oliver."
Ginger got up, too. "You’re not thinking about going back down that tunnel?"
"I don't know what to do," I said quietly. "Where's the map?"
We pulled the map out and looked it over; Ginger’s finger hovered over a tunnel. "This kind of resembles the tunnel we came down. It looks like it just dead ends, but it could actually go back in these caves. It would appear the same on the map."
She was studying the map intently; I tried to not interrupt her. "Okay," Ginger said like she’d come to some sort of agreement with herself. "This tunnel here." She pointed to another tunnel that dead-ended near us. "It probably comes out in these caves, too. Happens sometimes. It should be, um…over here." She pointed to the left of us, and we stood up.
It took us a bit of fumbling, but eventually, we found a small opening. We could barely scramble through, and we were in another tunnel but definitely not the one we'd entered into the cavern from.
"So where do we go from here? We’ve gotta find either a radio or the others," I urged as Ginger pulled the map back out.
She bit her lip and said, "Looks like we'll need to take a left at the next tunnel intersection."
We set off. We’d heard no other noises once we entered the caverns, but I hadn’t forgotten how silently the glow sticks disappeared. I did not trust the silence any more than I did the noises. We marched at a fast but steady pace. We were both too worn out to run more unless the situation warranted it.
It took considerably less time to get to our turnoff than I’d thought it would. I was getting a bit uncomfortable. Ginger had been holding my hand for the last few minutes. When she had slipped her hand into mine, I gave her fingers a squeeze. However, she’d been holding on tightly ever since. I tried tactfully to withdraw my hand, but she clung to it.
I busied myself with trying to keep track of where we were going. At the next turn, I finally got my hand back from Ginger under the guise of shifting my pack around for comfort. We moved on more swiftly now that the tunnels were widening. Ginger stopped at the next intersection.
She pulled out the map. "We should probably go this way." She tapped a vague spot on the map.
My brows furrowed together. "Isn't that a dead end?"
She looked again. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry."
We turned toward the tunnel that led toward the center of the web, where we should find a way station and possibly the others—if they’d made it that far. Somehow, we had unwittingly traveled from one side of the mines to the other.
I had no idea how that happened, but all I really wanted was to get back to the others. We trudged on. Ginger had gotten in front of me, and I watched her navigating the tunnels easily. She moved with a swift and sure gait. She was a lot more comfortable down here than I was.
The longer we went without talking about the strange incidents in the tunnels, the more they seemed far away, almost as if they’d never really happened. Ginger came to a stop, and I almost ran into her because I was so lost in thought.
"What is it?" I asked, looking around.
"I thought I saw something," she said softly.
I peered around her, and she pointed toward a bend up ahead. I eased in front of her, and slowly, we then edged toward the bend. I saw a flicker of light, and we stopped. It looked very much like someone with a flashlight was coming down the tunnel.
Ginger and I exchanged a look, and I called out cautiously, "Is someone there?"
The light stopped bobbing, and there was a moment of
deafening silence before a voice called back, "Victor?"
I breathed a sigh of relief as we walked around the bend to see Thorn and Oliver. The brothers looked equally relieved. "I am so glad to see you guys!" I said in earnest.
"Yeah. Splitting up was a bad idea," Ginger admitted without hesitation.
Oliver and Thorn exchanged a look before Thorn wondered, "How the hell did you guys get down that tunnel?"
"It's a really long story..." I replied, and Ginger agreed with a nod.
Ginger and I sat in the way station with Oliver across from us. Thorn stood near the door and watched us as we ate and drank a bit to calm ourselves down.
Finally, I took a breath and said, "We were in a tunnel. Show them on the map, Ginger."
She quickly pulled the map out of her pack and pointed out the tunnel we were investigating right before our lights went out. "We were right here, checking off tunnels, and we’d just started down this one when our lights went out."
Thorn and Oliver nodded, following along. I then said, "We cracked open some glow sticks and tried to find the radio, but we couldn't. We looked everywhere for it. Finally, we decided to try and backtrack, but we noticed the tunnels were different. We couldn't find anything that looked familiar, and it didn't match up with the map." I took a sip of the water I held. "Then we heard a noise. We argued about whether to check it out and opted to move away from it."
Ginger admitted freely, "I opted to move away from it. He wanted to check it out because he thought it might be someone hurt."
I nodded. "Yeah, but I'm glad we didn't. We chucked our glow sticks. We were maybe fifty feet away from them when we noticed the glow sticks blink out like something had moved between them and us. We ran until we finally ended up in a natural cavern. We checked the maps and eventually found a way into the tunnels near where you found us."
Oliver said, "That's an interesting story."
Thorn added, "We tried to call you guys, actually, but we couldn't get through. We figured it was interference."
"Actually, not long after we started, our radio went nuts, and we backtracked to the last way station. But we never saw you guys," Ginger said as she bit into a cracker.
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