Ghost Mine

by Hunter Shea

  “Taking the little ones is easy, almost too easy. They’re so simple to shatter. But their souls! That’s another matter. Soft on the outside, the children are harder than steel on the inside. It doesn’t stop me from trying. And, of course, there’s the added pleasure of ruining the adults they leave behind. First the children, then the poor weeping mommies, then the vengeful daddies who no longer believe in a just God. Suffering is a sweet delight.”

  “You’re one twisted bastard,” I snarled.

  “I invented twisted bastards,” he replied. His eyes flashed red and my heart paused, wondering if he was going to morph into the vision of the devil I’d grown up seeing in my mother’s Bible.

  I took a step forward, but Matthias touched my arm. “Not that way.” He opened his Bible and started chanting the same verse, over and over in a low and steady rhythm.

  “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!”

  The devil’s upper lip curled and he went stiff. “Shut up,” he said.

  Matthias spoke louder, faster, the words running into one another.

  “I said shut up!”

  Matthias was lifted into the air. The Bible fell to the ground. His body was thrown into the wall. He cried out and tumbled to his knees.

  “Do you believe who I am now?”

  I sensed we all did. A dark power radiated from him. I felt sick being near him, tainted, like I’d been thrown into a deep pool of shit and rotting carcasses.

  No one spoke. Being the devil, I was sure he could see right through us. “What do you want with us?” I said.

  “What have I ever wanted?”

  “And if we say no?”

  Again he laughed, a terrifying rumble that filled the tunnel. “You have no choice. When you come to the doorway to hell, you don’t get to run back home. Consider this your home. Or at least it will be, once we take care of one last formality.”

  The devil directed his gaze at Hank, breaking him from his stupor. He and his brothers bowed their heads as one.

  “Selma, your husband will make sure we see each other very soon.” At the mention of her name, Selma gave a muffled start.

  The devil smiled, then blinked out of existence. The mad howling began.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Hank and his brothers leapt into action, picking up right where they’d left off. They swarmed over Teta and me. There was no stopping them. They were a pack of mad dogs answering the dinner bell. I saw one of them grab Matthias by the throat and drive a knee into his chest. He was pinned, helpless.

  Only Franklin stayed out of the fray – again. I caught a glimpse of his face and I could tell it was a real struggle for him not to join in. I didn’t know whether it was out of fear of disappointing his master, or if he simply didn’t have it in him, no matter how damned his soul. All that mattered was that he was one less indestructible brother we had to deal with. Angus swung his oak-tree arms from side to side, sweeping two of the brothers clear of Selma and the spirit chest. He was too massive, even for them, but he was human, and he couldn’t keep the pace up forever.

  I struggled with two brothers, one wrapped around my legs and the other landing glancing blows on my face. I threw a punch into one of their chests that would have stopped another man’s heart. It only slowed him for a moment. He retaliated, launching a haymaker at the side of my head that I blocked with my forearm.

  I had to get my legs free. No matter how hard I kicked, the wild-haired brother wouldn’t let go.

  And then they were both lifted from me. I watched their bodies sail to the other side of the tunnel, landing on top of four others. Angus did the same with the brothers pummeling Teta. For a moment, we were all free.

  Something thumped against the chest.

  Whump! Whump!

  “Great,” I said, taking hungry gulps of air. “Now your spirits want to join the party.” Angus leaned over the box, chattering in his creepy deadspeak.

  “Matthias, you got anything in that Bible that will throw the boys off-kilter like it did to the devil?”

  Every part of that sentence sounded wrong – strange, alien. A great part of my mind was still miles behind what we were facing, back where the devil was a story to scare people into following the rules and abandoned mines were just that, empty and abandoned holes in the ground.

  He looked at me with haunted eyes. “What’s the use? We’d only delay the inevitable.” I slapped him across the face. “Because we’re still alive for a reason.”

  Hank was the first one to his feet. He wiped his jaw with the back of his hand, growling like a madman. He ran for Selma. He was too fast. I had no way of getting between them. She brought her hands up and clapped her fists over his ears. Hank barreled into her midsection, driving them both to the ground. I ran to pull him off her, shouting incoherently.

  With a quick swipe, he knocked me off my feet.

  “No!” Selma shouted as he dragged her by her hair. With his other hand, he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her to her feet. She threw an elbow into his stomach but it was useless. You couldn’t harm a man whose body was worm food, probably rotting in one of the tunnels under the Deep Rock Hills.

  Hank scampered backwards with Selma positioned in front of him like a shield.

  “You don’t mind if I have a little reunion with my wife, do you?” he said. His face shined with sickening glee.

  “I might,” I said.

  Teta picked up the cavalry sword and sliced it through the air. I reached over so he knew to drop it. There were no weapons made by man that could stop them. Selma, on the other hand, could get hurt if he started swinging it around.

  “So it would bother you if I wanted to have conjugal relations with my woman?” Hank sneered. “It has been awhile.”

  “I believe you’d need a real, working cock in order to do that.”

  I watched his hand tense as he applied more pressure to Selma’s throat. “Hank, if you ever loved me, let me go,” she croaked. “You don’t want to do this. I know you.”

  “You knew me,” he said. Hank looked at his brothers, motioning with his head in our direction. “Keep them busy. I want to break my little Selma in.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Angus reaching down to grab the chest’s lid. “Angus, don’t!” I shouted.

  It was too late. The spirits were loose and filling the tunnel.

  * * *

  Hundreds of wispy, alabaster shapes swarmed on top of Hank, his brothers and Selma.

  She screamed so loud I thought her lungs would burst. “What the hell did you do?” I screamed at Angus.

  He stared back with wet eyes. He was crying. “They chose this. I can’t put them back.”

  Franklin materialized between us. “He did what he had to do. Come on, let’s make sure this wasn’t for nothing.”

  The echoing cries and hungry keening made it almost impossible to hear. Hank and his kin were being tossed about the tunnel as a whirlwind of white tore at them, taking small pieces with every turn. Teta ran into the tempest, hooking an arm around Selma’s waist. Even though she’d been in the center of the storm, she hadn’t been touched by the spirits Angus had unleashed.

  Franklin ran ahead of us, his old legs rejuvenated. “Follow me.”

  He headed down the long tunnel. Back where the devil had come from.

  There had to be another way. If we backtracked, there might be a passage we hadn’t seen before.

  “There isn’t,” Franklin said. Now even my thoughts weren’t my own.

  We had to act fast. There was no telling how long those spirits could keep Hank and his brothers occupied, though it looked like they were doing a thorough job of obliterating them.

  “Nat, we should go with him,” Selma said.

  “And do
what, shake hands with the devil?”

  “Better,” Franklin said. “You’re going to close the gates of hell.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  We skirted around the melee of spirits. I thought I heard Hank shout my name and hoped one of the spirits used that as an opportunity to tear out his tongue. Teta pushed Angus and Matthias ahead of him so he could guard our rear. Matthias had regained some of his color, though Angus didn’t look so good.

  And then it hit me.

  How could I see them so clearly when our torches were back where the fighting was taking place?

  I turned and saw it was Franklin. A soft but bright white light poured out of him. He moved fast, and I had to remind myself that even though he looked like an old man, his ghost, or whatever he was, wasn’t bound by the frailties of age. I went to grab his shoulder but my hand passed right through him. He spun around to face me, so he must have been able to feel my attempt.

  “Franklin, I don’t know if we can even trust you. You’re going to have to explain some things before we take another step closer to the gates of hell,” I said, wincing at the words that kept tumbling out of my mouth.

  “I will, but first we have to put some distance between us and my brothers.”

  We trailed after him, our only beacon in the dank shaft that got hotter with each step. This tunnel had a lot of twists and turns, but it stayed level. Had we already gone down so far we were flush with hell itself? The thought made me queasy. Everything made me queasy at this juncture.

  I thought of Teddy and that book of his and how Teta said Hecla was similar to Hekla, the volcanic gate of hell. There were no coincidences. Did Teddy know he was sending us on a one-way trip, or did the early settlers know exactly what they were standing on? I would have given anything to be in Teddy’s cozy study right about now, asking him just that.

  After jogging for what I felt must have been a quarter of a mile, Franklin stopped. We were out of breath. He had no breath.

  “Can we talk now?” I asked. Sweat danced down my spine and stung my eyes. Selma’s hair was matted to her scalp.

  “Yes.” He looked at Angus. “Don’t be upset. You did the only thing you could. You can still free them all. If you close the gates, you can free every enslaved spirit, Djinn and human alike.”

  The big man closed his eyes and nodded, but he looked doubtful.

  Matthias said, “You spoke about closing the gates of hell. I’m just a reverend without a flock, but I’m almost positive that there’s nothing a handful of mortals can do against the ultimate evil. Only the archangels or God himself have the power to seal Satan within his den of iniquity.”

  “It’s true, you will need help,” Franklin said.

  “From you?” I asked.

  “No, not me. There’s not much else I can do beyond getting you to the gates. My soul is trapped, damned. I can’t raise my hands against my master. Even now, I wonder why he’s let me go against him without consequences.”

  “You’re the carrot, the devil’s the stick,” I said.

  Teta stepped up to Franklin, drenched, tired, bruised and bloodied. I suspected I looked the same. “You seem to be doing pretty well for someone, or something, that was a babbling old bastard when we first brought you to town.”

  “It’s because I’m not supposed to leave here. When I do, my strength is sapped away. The hound was sent to stop me by scrambling my thoughts, weakening my will. It was a parasitic demon. Satan uses them as spies and siphons, absorbing energy and information like sponges. You’ve heard of vampires?”

  We nodded.

  “Parasitic demons are the inspiration for the myth. That particular one made it too difficult for me to maintain any semblance of coherence. I’m glad you put an end to it.”

  I could see the jagged wall through his face. It was unsettling.

  I said, “This gateway to hell, how long has it been open? And what can we do to close it?”

  “It’s been here a very long time. There are gateways all over the earth. Most, thankfully, are sealed. This is the second time this particular gate has been opened. There were people that lived here thousands of years ago. They were the ancestors of the different Indian tribes that are all over this part of the country. One day, the earth shook and the opening cracked wide. Satan feasted on them like a hungry wolf in a henhouse. But they fought back using the ways taught to them by their fathers, handed down by their grandfathers and so on.

  “They knew all about Djinn. In fact, they had found a way to live in peace with the Djinn for many generations. Banding together, they battled Satan and his demons, pushing them back, down and down into the lone portal that stretched from hell to the surface. They won, but it came at a price. Everyone who came in contact with the demonic army was infected. Djinn and human went mad, became evil. The men were put down like rabid animals. The Djinn were sealed into the stone of the hills by their elders, what we would call medicine men. And the land was left barren, for a long, long time.

  “When the rush for copper and other minerals swept through Wyoming, the Deep Rock Hills were once again split open. The main copper mine went too far, shattering the ancient seal. The devil used gold as a lure to attract more people, planted ideas in their minds to bore as many holes into the hills as they could. What the miners didn’t know is that they were unleashing the tainted Djinn, as well as Satan’s demons, and, ultimately, our doom.”

  Selma reached out and tried to touch his lined face. “Franklin. You were always so gentle, so sweet. I’m so sorry.”

  “I went with my brothers because I wanted to. What man doesn’t dream of being rich? I’m not as good as you remember me. That’s why I’m here.”

  Matthias paced back and forth while Franklin talked. His hands were wrapped around his Bible so hard his knuckles were white. “You said we needed help to close the gates. What kind of help are you inferring?”

  Franklin stared at Selma. “When I first knew you were here, I left the mine to see you, and to warn you. But Satan robbed me of that, just like he stole my life from me, watching me grow old and suffer and die when we came across him in the mine. I was pulled back here before I could gather enough strength to tell you to leave. But when I sensed their arrival—” he pointed at Angus and Matthias, “—I knew there was hope. You all just needed to live long enough to make it happen.”

  “Make what happen?” Matthias asked.

  “His gift.” He walked until his face was inches from Angus’s chest. “He can talk to the spirits, but he can also talk to the Djinn. They’ll follow him as they did with the Indian elders. He’ll show them there is a way to break from their captivity. He can turn them against Satan. If he can unite the living, the dead and the Djinn, we can close the gates.”

  Matthias’s eyes went wild. “A horrible destiny, for sure, but proof there is always a purpose behind a calling.”

  Franklin had neglected to mention the most important thing, at least to me. I wasn’t sharing Matthias’s enthusiasm. I said, “If we close the gate, how do we get out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” Franklin said.

  Matthias put his hand on my shoulder. “If we’re meant to escape, we will.”

  I bored holes into him until he got the hint that I didn’t want him touching me or telling me I had to have faith.

  “The final tunnel is just down there. It will be protected by a variety of demons,” Franklin said.

  Demons. Of course. The ability to shock me had long worn off. “So what do we do now?” Selma asked.

  “Angus needs to call on the spirits and the Djinn to bring them here. And Matthias should prepare you.”

  Matthias went through the thin pages of his Bible. Franklin began to step away. “Where do you think you’re going?” I said.

  “He’s going to quote God’s words. I can’t be around when he does it. It hurts too much for someone
like me who’s been denied heaven. I won’t go far.”

  By his moving away, we lost a good deal of light, but that didn’t stop Matthias from finding his prayer. He said, “Please, everyone gather in a circle around me. Angus, while I pray, call them.”

  Teta reached into Matthias’s pocket and pulled out the amulet. He tossed it down the tunnel. It clinked off the cave wall. When I looked at him, he said, “If we need the Djinn’s help, we can’t have that around.”

  “Good thinking,” Matthias said, beaming. Guess he thought he had a new convert.

  I pulled Selma close to my side and we huddled around Matthias. Angus bowed his head and started with his incomprehensible deadspeak.

  “Nosfaung entdulas, edmane, thikool.”

  The Bible’s spine lay in Matthias’s hand. “This is from Psalms. I’m going to bless each one of us, as well as our weapons, to assure victory.” He made the sign of the cross over our guns, blades and the few spare bullets we had left. Then he started to read, “‘The Lord hear thee in the time of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend thee’.”

  I watched Franklin standing apart from us and it appeared that the light emanating from him dimmed. His face was twisted in a grimace. Matthias went on, with Angus a steady drone under his prayer. I hoped the prayer would work, even if I hadn’t paid it much mind.

  “‘They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen and stand upright’. Amen.” We all responded with a somber “Amen”.

  “This is how we’re going to do it,” I said. “We’re going to form a cross, keeping Selma in the center. Teta, Angus and I will be the forward facing parts of the cross, with Matthias keeping track of the rear.” I gave Selma the shotgun and the last shells. “When you run out of ammo, swing it like a club at everything you see. Don’t grab it by the barrel or you’ll fry your hands.”

  “Thank you, Nat.”

  “Scared?”

  “Strangely, no. I’m just glad I’m with you.”

  “You just keep thinking about getting back to Laramie and you’ll be fine.” I smiled and rubbed my thumb across her cheek. Talking to her father would be a piece of cake after this.