STORY WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID. IMAGES ARE NOT OWEND BY CREATOR.
There’s a reason they call it the portal of the mine. It’s like a one-way trip into another plane of existence that is not for the faint of heart nor for men wishing to remain on the side of the living. Down there, in the unforgiving depths of darkness, a man teeters on both sides with one foot hanging over the edge of life while the Devil tries to greedily grasp it with boney claws. It’s an occupational hazard—a formality of daily drawls in this day and age for a bit of bread on the table.
Babcock’s sole purpose of existence in West Virginia at the time was as an unimportant, slapdash mining town that held the prize jewel of Red Hollow No. 2 Mine within its mountainside. It was like a dark monster of fire raging in the midst of civilization waiting to be fed its next batch of flesh when the dawn called for men to ride the tracks deep inside its jaws while sweethearts, wives, and children prayed to it for mercy that they might once again see the faces of the ones they held dear. After months of continual labor with the ever-present loss of men to black lungs or equipment mishaps, the lasting crew members of Red Hollow No. 2 had delved into the mountainside deeper than expected as coal seams became more and more abundant. Each passing day revealed new, uncharted territory underground, thus making the mine a large cavity of numerous tunnels that felt long and copious as if a small village existed under the earth just for the tonnage men to live in. Their 10-hour days felt like continuous night as they rose for the workday in the creeping hours of early morning when the sun had not yet accepted the coming of day. At nightfall, the miners would return home—the sun having long ago departed the sky. The men never knew the sun as a familiar occurrence but more so as an unseen specter that disappeared as soon as their dust-covered faces emerged from the mine to blend amongst the blackening night as equals.
It was late November of 1906 when the crew had struck something more than coal seams and new passageways leading to the hopeless promise of much-needed earnings and higher wages. What they had cracked open was unwanted and of something that had wished to remain hidden within the walls of Red Hollow No. 2.
While working the mine, the large tonnage crew usually broke off into factions of a sort—factions where men had found kinship with one another and formed alliances underground—so, every shift began with each of them migrating to work alongside a preferred member in the tight rooms. One of these merged groups consisted of Hiram Wickes, Jeremiah “Lizard” Rowe, Elam Barlow, Abner Johnson, and a young boy of fourteen named Benjamin Ladd. The odd family of miners always detached from the main group as a derelict, makeshift clan varying in size, age, and colorful personalities.
“Ol’ Lizard’s got the run of it like always. Look at him,” Hiram grumbled to Benjamin as the stoic man in front of them picked away at a seam with great precision and agility. He always pulled in more tons than the others, dishing out the brass tags with his number plastered onto it to attach to the carts, symbolizing to the pit bosses of his success and reminding them of the competitive pay. “I swear, he’s a workin’ fool like no other. A timeworn man like me don't much have that kind of fire anymore. Oy, Lizard!” The diligent man turned to regard them both with a straight, flat face without emotion. “You save some for us.” Lizard just turned back around and resumed his efforts.
Lizard was mute, or at least he hadn't spoken a word to any soul since he had joined the crew months ago. He had adopted the nickname after only a few days down in the mine once the men had all watched in astonishment at the way that the muscled bloke was able to slink his way between the roof and floor with ease like he was made of rubber instead of bones. Benjamin didn’t care for him. He found the peculiar man’s reticence unnerving. He wasn’t even quite sure which of the group had adopted him as one of their own. He just assumed Lizard had forced his way in with his usual daunting glare being too much to argue with.
Hiram, he liked, though the man was more so a bottle of whiskey or hooch than an actual person. He could drink everyone under the table, and Benjamin would watch him during his benders in unadorned confusion, unable to grasp how such a foul drink—the kind that the men had forced onto himself too many times than he liked to remember—could take over a man’s senses and desires to the point that he would continuously clamor for such vile, bottled-up poison. It was Hiram’s sleepy stupor and placid eyes that made Benjamin feel calm while he was blanketed in the thick, black grime he slogged during the day.
Abner was his second favored of the men—a moral compass and bright light that shined more radiant than any lamp knitted into their caps. He kept them all sane, singing songs and whistling sprightly tunes to carry them through the disheartening hours. Benjamin hadn’t a father for as long as he could remember, and sometimes he wondered if it was because he had been born straight from the coal beds since it was all his mind held onto for memories. He had always placed Abner in that paternal position, and he felt that Abner had assumed the role happily as the caring man always kept the fears bubbling inside Benjamin at a manageable level whenever the boy flew out of his mind. Elam, on the other hand—
“I heard it coming down this way from the others. All them mules up front... they’re dead!” Elam exclaimed, hunched over as the roof met the floor too closely for any of the men to stand upright. He raised his coal-dusted arms in exasperation as he continued his fevered statements. “Deader’n doornails, but here’s the curious bit... they ain’t got blood in ‘em. How’s that to yas? No cuts or sickness held them animals. They was strong. Now they up there laying out on the floor sucked dry, just limp flesh stretched over bone. Don’t figure we’ll have an easy time pullin’ the carts ‘til they get new ones in here.” Elam awkwardly sauntered over in the tight tunnel with his pick slung heavily over his shoulder as he studied Benjamin who averted his eyes and focused on meddling with a lantern. The rest of the men ignored Elam’s reports, keeping their hands busy with work. “What you think, little feller? Think there’s monsters in these here mountains? You a brave enough man to go trottin’ down those tunnels in the dark and take a look? Huh?” Elam chuckled deeply before lunging at Benjamin. Benjamin swung his fists at Elam, but the older man locked him in a tight hold while Benjamin kept his feet kicking away in hopes of freeing himself.
“Piss off, Elam, eh?” Abner shouted from the room he was working in. “Get on with you, you fool.”
Elam let Benjamin go with a sigh and then a smack on the shoulder. “Best be keepin’ your eyes out, boy.” He left and descended into the room with Abner, and Benjamin could hear the two men pick up in conversation that reverberated out into the tunnel as muffled chatter. Just as he was getting ready to join Hiram in his labor, an odd flash of something caught his eye down in the pit of the tunnel.
Benjamin walked past the rooms alone, picking up the lantern in his hands and coughing forcefully as his lungs filled with the essence of mine dust and poisoned air. As he walked, he held out a hand in front of himself against the pitch black of the tunnel that stretched on. He could hardly see his hand as the soot that covered it masked his skin and blended it into the walls of the mine. He only walked enough into the carved depths until it got too tight for him to do so happily and Abner’s whistles became not as clear as he would like. As he returned to the men and went into Hiram’s room, he caught sight of the same strange apparition he had seen, but this time it ran quickly past the rooms in the direction of the portal.
"Hiram, did you see that?" Benjamin asked, lifting the lantern in an attempt to light the tunnel and view it better. Hiram huffed quizzically, eyes drooping. Benjamin shook his head and started aiding the man by carrying the coal deposits back to the cart. Benjamin looked around for Lizard, wondering if he had been the bizarre sight rushing by, but the man was still on his knees chipping away at his area unbothered.
“Get out! Get out!” a man’s voice came calling from the portal so far from their area that the shouts almost sounded like faint whispers. “Hurry!”
Benjamin dropped the coal from his arms and raced back to Hiram, poking his head into the room and relaying the information. He did the same to Abner, Elam, and Lizard before grabbing up the lantern to light their way. All the men came bustling out together not knowing fully what the shouts of warning had been in reference too, but they hardly questioned it after hearing all the horrors of nearby mine disasters that were surely not too far ahead of Red Hollow No. 2. As all of the men started to run towards the exit, fear played over Elam’s features as Hiram remained his indolent self. Abner held his countenance strongly, and Lizard moved around on his feet quickly like a ghost flying past them all.
With what felt like an eternity of running through the tunnel with their bodies bent in on themselves in the close confines, it appeared that the mine kept stretching on and on longer than it should have. No light pierced the distance to bring them relief in seeing the portal. No sounds of the other men working filled the depths. The silence of the mine was deafening alongside the heavy breathing of the gang and the scraping of their boots clamoring for an exit from unknown demise.
The mine never opened up further past the continual cramped space. Abner stopped running and examined the walls in confusion. The others left him behind and kept running, but Benjamin fell back with Abner who was now bouncing his eyes back and forth between the direction of the exit and the direction of which they had all come from.
“We should’ve been out of here already. Where’s the rest of the crew? Where are the other rooms? The tracks?” he asked with his lungs heaving and a wheeze punctuating each question. Benjamin could hear the huffs of struggling lungs petering out into numbing silence as Elam, Lizard, and Hiram became distant, darkened images in the black mine. “Somethin’ ain’t right.”
There were no rooms attached to the tunnel now. The two of them were solely surrounded by endless coal walls on either side. After a few minutes of inquiries between each other, Abner and Benjamin turned their heads back towards the direction where they had all been working. They could hear boots meeting the rocky floor and shouts of fear coming upon them quickly that way, and Benjamin reckoned it was more of the tonnage company following behind. As the sounds became loud and within a few feet of them, Abner and Benjamin again met the sharp eyes of Elam, Hiram, and Lizard poking out of their black grime masks. All the men looked at each other in confusion with their eyes wide.
“How did yous two get in front of us?” Hiram asked with congested lungs.
“In front of you? We’ve been standing here the whole time! How’d y’all come back from that way? It’s a straight shot to the opening! Ain’t no circles in here.”
“We been runnin’ straight! Where are all the rest of them fellers?” Elam threw his hands around in a fury gesturing at the intact walls. As they stood in the quiet mine, asking each other questions in fearful glances instead of words, the distant sound of whistling echoed in the pits. Two more voices joined in on the haunting, disembodied whistles from afar, and the men all turned to regard the noises coming from the direction of which their rooms were.
“Why’d someone shout to leave if they’s all back in their still workin’?” Elam asked before turning to Benjamin in a rage. “You’re the one says they told us to retreat. You playin’ a game with us, boy? I’ll cut your ears off, you little pig,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Someone shouted to retreat! I heard it!” Benjamin held up his hands and shook his head, coughing violently and hunching over from the force of it. He hacked up whatever was in his lungs and spit out an odd substance from his mouth.
“Looks like you’s got black lungs, boy.”
“Shut up, Elam,” Abner warned as he listened to the growing volume of the whistles. “I’d like to not be down here if it’s firedamp, boys. Burning alive just ain’t the way I wanna go. Go on, Hiram, and head down that way to see what the rest of them are still doing down there and if all’s clear. Elam, you go with him.”
“I’d much rather take Lizard. At least I won’t die from his bluster,” Hiram joshed as he met Elam’s narrowed eyes. Lizard stepped forward, unable to argue against being chosen for the task being thrust upon him, and he and Hiram descended the mine with Hiram’s cap lighting up the way in front of them. Soon, their bodies were hidden by the darkness again while Elam, Abner, and Benjamin stood against the body-hugging walls awaiting an answer and praying that ruin did not lie in wait for them.
The whistles all joined into a song then instead of haphazard bits of noise, and they grew louder and louder. A bird chirp reverberated then throughout the tunnel and merged with the whistles as an equal in a verse of whatever melody they were all partaking in.
“Hear that? That’s the canary,” Elam whispered, pointing a finger up at the roof, “It ain’t firedamp or the air, then, if he’s a’warblin’.”
“It’s gotta be some of the crew. I’m gonna go look,” Abner said.
Benjamin shot his eyes to Elam who grumbled, “Oh, so now I guess I’m the babysittin’ dolt!”
“Stay here and wait to see if Hiram and Lizard come back.”
Elam slumped against the wall and Benjamin followed suit. They sat without speaking as the whistles soon dissolved into silence again—the only sound around them being the creaking of the roof.
Quick footsteps came running up to them from the direction of where the mine portal should have been. Benjamin and Elam jumped up in their spot as much as they could under the low roof as Lizard came into view under Elam’s cap lantern. His eyes were huge, and his mouth hung open as his arms flailed about wildly and his knees shook.
“What is it?” Elam asked, his face contorted with uneasiness. Lizard tried to answer with overstressed movements in his lips and teeth, but Elam and Benjamin hardly understood anything that he did. Lizard mimed actions then, grabbing his own throat and making slicing motions around his head before delving into reenactments of what could only be deciphered as a wild man eating. Finally, in the last effort of conveying his message, Lizard tried whistling the tune that they had all heard in the tunnels. A disjointed sound came from his mouth as he continued making vicious carving motions around his head and neck. “Damn loony. I knew you was always a creepy little feller, Lizard.”
Benjamin brushed Elam out of the way and moved closer to Lizard. The man continued his performance, pleading with his eyes.
“Has someone been killed?” Lizard nodded and motioned between the three of them. “Where’s Hiram? Oh, it isn’t Hiram, now, is it?” Lizard lowered his head and raked a hand through his messy hair and nodded. Benjamin shook his head in disbelief, thoroughly muddled over the idea, and wishing that Lizard could speak. His watered eyes caught sight of something watching them from afar behind a heap of slag in the distance. He turned his lantern in the direction of the thing, and in just the right angle, two sets of white, beady eyes glowed as soon as the light was cast on them. He saw matted hair and two pairs of long arms bent around the slag mound, and as Benjamin shouted over to the figures, wondering if they were perhaps stray tonnage men, he watched as both bodies cracked their bones in skewed positions before quickly whistling and descending into the pit further while the sound of clacking hooves marked their retreat. Benjamin howled in horror and dropped the lantern, shattering it to bits and encasing them all in complete darkness save Elam’s cap lamp.
“The hell did you do, huh? What is it?” Elam shouted, rage filling his voice as he turned to Benjamin.
“There are things down here with us, and they ain’t men.”
“You scared now, that it? The dark getting to ya? Maybe it’s them things ate those mules up,” Elam snickered as he licked his lips and made slurping noises for added effect. Lizard motioned down the tunnel where the things had been behind the slag and made muffled, cautionary noises as he backed up into a wall and slumped down with his knees pulled to his chest.
Benjamin stewed on Elam’s comment and then looked back at Lizard. “Just might be.”
“Where’s Abner? Hiram?” Elam shouted with frustration.
“Lizard said Hiram—”
“Yeah, yeah, I ain’t believin’ a nutty outburst from someone can’t even say the name ‘Hiram’ with his own tongue. Let’s all go back down together’n look. Maybe they went back to the rooms and are workin’.”
“Then where’s the rest of the men? The opening?” Benjamin asked frantically as he scanned the area in search of what he had seen, praying that it had all been a trick of the light or a hallucination brought on from being emerged in poison air for too long.
“Why don’t you shut that hole in your face and come on, then?” Elam pushed Benjamin forward to lead them as he and Lizard fell in behind. They walked slowly back down into the depths of the mine, past the slag heap that had shielded their bizarre stalkers from full sight. It was an endless hall of rock with the promise of pitch-black void awaiting them.
“Makes not a lick’a sense. Feels like it just keeps damn well repeating over ‘n over again. Any of this look familiar to ya? It’s like the mine keeps shiftin’ on us like a maze!" Elam shook his head as he dragged his fingers against the ever-presently close roof. Benjamin’s knees ached from being bent for so long and his neck burned with nerve pain with its constant folded position to keep his head from raking against the rock surface above.
“Hey, what’s that there?” Elam asked with a hushed voice. He moved his head so that his cap lantern shown onto the foreign object laying on the floor that they had just come upon. “Holy Mother Mary!”
Hiram’s body laid there like an empty hull—a husk of flesh without blood running in the veins. He looked more a skeleton with skin stretched across his bones than a human as his eye sockets were now hollow recesses, and his mouth remained opened from his attempt at screaming.
“He looks like them mules!” Elam whined with panic as he grasped his mouth closed with a shaky hand. All three of them studied the body without speaking. Lizard slinked away from them and resumed his position with his knees to his chest on the floor whistling the haunting melody of the mine. Elam started screaming with hopeless pleas, calling for their rescue, for someone to hear of their plight, to be saved, but Benjamin knew all too well that miners couldn’t expect salvation. The bosses would just find new saps to fill their boots tomorrow when they would all be found dead. To them, there wasn’t such a thing as paying for the safety of men when they were as expendable as leaves falling from the trees in autumn.
Hell seemed close to them, and Benjamin lifted his prayers to God, but he knew that God would never turn His ears towards Babcock to listen. It seemed He hardly even remembered creating the bit of land with His powers, abandoning it for demons to run free in its stead. When the Lord called for there to be light in the world, He surely ignored that mining town when He spoke, for light was something to be had for those that were still living with souls rather than haggard bodies that more or less resembled corpses instead of miners.
“We thought we been digging for coal, but it’s our own graves we been digging,” Elam whispered to himself. “Where the hell is Abner?!” he screamed then as he pounded a fist against the side of the mine. “Abner?!”
Abner’s voice came calling then from deep in the pits ahead of them all. It was frantic and full of something demanding and unfamiliar each time his cries echoed in the tunnel. The men fell into line together, running as best as they could towards the voice with their knees nearly rubbing against their chests. Elam and Benjamin both yelled the man’s name multiple times, trying to gauge where he was, but the closer they felt that they had come to running into Abner, the farther his voice became.
“Wait. Where’s Lizard? He was right with us. He—” Benjamin’s voice cracked as he turned his eyes back onto the empty path behind him and Elam. “Stop!” he shouted as he grabbed Elam’s arm forcefully to halt the lanky man in his tracks, “Lizard is gone!”
“Not like he could’ve told any of us anyhow he was leavin’.” Elam tried to brandish his snide remarks like usual as if to keep himself sane in the midst of chaos, but as he studied the empty tunnel and looked at Benjamin’s gaunt face that held an unspoken burden, he shook his head. “You don’t think–”
The ideas of what had earlier become of Hiram stabbed Benjamin and Elam’s heart when their thoughts turned to Lizard. Surely it was only their heavily poisoned minds now strung up by the strings of paranoia and hallucinations down in the mine making them all feel like they had lost their minds. Surely there was nothing to run from other than firedamp down there. Surely what Benjamin had seen had not pulled Lizard from their side without a single bit of a cry for help allowed to escape the vulnerable man. Elam and Benjamin stared at each other in horror at the thought of Lizard’s soundless begging deaf on their ears. Whatever dwelled amongst them all had enacted unknown sins while the two of them had run away into the tunnel from Lizard without any knowledge as to what was happening mere feet from them.
“I ain’t lookin’ back, boy,” Elam whispered with his eyes unblinking.
“Elam?” Abner’s voice called from the pits again, and Elam took off frantically towards it. Benjamin scrambled behind the man to stay in the range of his lantern cap. “Elam!”
“I’m comin’, friend!”
“You’re running too fast, Elam! Wait! Wait! Please! I can’t see! Please! PLEASE! I don’t want to lose my eyes!" Benjamin's scream was so guttural and feral that he hardly recognized his voice in its utterance, and it shook his being to the core. Elam’s figure became scarcely recognizable in the dark. It seemed that the very winds of hell carried his feet further and further away from Benjamin without a second thought. As Benjamin clawed his fingers into the near walls to help propel himself further towards Elam, Benjamin’s foot slid on an incline in the floor, and his body crashed onto the rigid, cold ground, smashing his head for good measure.
When he had finally pulled his head from the floor, he felt the side of it sodden with something wet. As he reached a quivering hand to his temple to determine if it was mine drippings or something more sinister, his fingers stuck to it more so than they would with water, and his stomach turned. He couldn’t tell how badly he had been cut, as his hand, when held out in front of himself, was hidden by the darkness of the mine. As he stood, he felt dizzy with pain as his eyes tried to focus on his surroundings. There was not a thing for them to adjust on. There was only a vacuum of black surrounding Benjamin.
There was only void.
Benjamin reached his hands out on either side of himself to touch the mine walls and to get a grasp on which way to proceed in the tunnel. He could scarcely make a noise as even the thought of crying, or being able to have any emotion at all at that point of terror, seemed an impossible act. He tottered through the tunnel, unable to rationalize which way to go, but the act of continuing was more so a means to have a purpose than anything else.
The whistling started to echo ahead, this time like a choir of violins that scraped together, untuned in a fit of fury. Benjamin’s mind ran freely, reflecting on images of the creatures he had seen. With every unsteady step he took, he nearly screamed with the horror of what might be existing mere inches away from his face, unseen without a light. In an attempt to appease these fears, Benjamin reached out a hand from the wall to feel out in front of himself so that it would alert him to whatever was lurking there, giving him enough time to pray for his soul. Benjamin’s stumbling boots met a barricade in the path that had just enough give to it to let him know that it wasn’t anything made of rock or slag.
It was a body.
The boy wailed as he gingerly stepped over whoever was beneath him. He could only guess it was Abner or Elam without a lantern to reveal their familiar appearances nestled alongside sunken skin and carved-out eye sockets.
The whistles grew in their ferocity, and the voice called to him from what seemed every direction at that point. Benjamin swiveled in place, reaching out his hands to feel around himself, asking God or whoever would listen to direct his feet towards salvation.
“Benjamin!” The voice screamed through the tunnels like a solo performance amidst the deafening whistle song. “Benjamin!”
His head struck something as he walked blindly, and after contemplating what it had been, Benjamin reached his trembling hands up above himself towards the roof. His fingers met a cage swinging above. He didn’t hear the chirping of the canary. He didn’t hear any life inside its confines. As he reached inside the opening of it, wishing for a warm, feathered body to touch his fingers, for another life to give him comfort in that mine abyss that robbed him of sight, his fingers clutched instead around a cold, little bird.
Benjamin held the dead canary to his chest as he continued walking in the tunnel—the whistles and clacking of hooves both following behind him and awaiting his presence ahead. The boy fell to the floor then and crawled his way in the mine—the roof having closed in tighter and the thought of walking or merely having the energy to stand on his feet being too much for him. He started singing a song to the little bird, one Abner had once chanted during a shift, as he reached his empty hand out in front to pull himself forward against the uneven floor. A fit of hacking and coughs tore his lungs to ribbons, and he spit to the side, wishing that his afflictions could take him asunder faster than what he ran from.
“Benjamin! Elam! GET OUT!” the distant voice screeched, but this time it was Abner’s. This time it was drowning in pain and torment. Benjamin kept singing. At every angle, the poor boy felt the presence of unseen spirits dancing around his ransacked body, be that the creatures of Red Hollow Mine No. 2 or the ghosts of the tonnage men, he knew not. With an outstretched hand grasping the floor of the mine, praying for an escape from the numbing, black existence he was forever caged in, his coal dust fingers felt a hard object of what he could only imagine was an animal’s hoof and the spindly hair that fell beside it. But Benjamin dared not look up, for he feared that he would see white eyes in the unforgiving, black mine.
He would no longer sing, having been robbed of his lungs like the cold canary in his grip, but, like his fellow crew members of Red Hollow No. 2, the boy would linger without his eyes.
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