Scare E. Winner!

I am proud to announce that the winner of “Scare E. – A Contest of Horrors” is none other than Dead Robots’ Society co-host, Justin R. Macumber. Going into this contest, I knew the winner’s piece would have to stay with me –  that it would have to haunt my nightmares. That is the reason I decided to wait until 15 days after closing the event to announce the winner. Justin’s piece terrified me to no end, both while reading, and long after the final page turned. This is what scares E. Blood and guts and acts of violence during intimate moments, are all well and good, and I enjoy them on a regular basis, but when you can create atmosphere, then you have a winner.

Enough reading my nonsense, I’m sure you want to read the title that bested the rest of you. Without further ado…

In The Deep Dark

By Justin R Macumber

The mine was cursed. Burly hated thinking that way — he wasn’t usually a superstitious kind of person — but there seemed no other explanation for it. Every ounce of coal they managed to dig out brought everyone involved that much closer to ruin. The night shifts were getting harder and harder for him to supervise, but as his eyes drifted up to the picture of his wife and daughters he’d taped to the sunvisor of his old Ford pickup, he remembered why he did it. Curse or no, coal meant money, and he had a family to feed.

The sun was nearly down by the time Burly turned off Sewell Road and drove up the rocky path leading to the mine’s office and parking lot. As he crested the final rise that led down to the gravel covered parking area, the sight of a dozen men crowded together in a rowdy mod said his workday was starting off worse than usual. He quickly steered for the nearest open slot, slammed the transmission into PARK, and climbed out of the cab.

Angry voices and fists filled the air as Burly stomped across gravel. No one looked his way as he approached, but they knew he was there when he parted them with a broad shouldered shove he’d learned during his varsity football days. “What the hell is going on here?” he yelled once he was on the other side of the furious throng.

To his surprise he found his boss, Badger Coal CEO Ted Newman, cowering against the mine’s low-slung electric cart with his arms held up in front of him. Normally the corporate officer was a man defined by his calm demeanor and tidy appearance, yet today he was anything but. His light grey shirt was covered in coal dust and ragged black handprints, as was the blue paisley tie that hung half-torn from his neck. Bright red spots bloomed like carnations on his left cheek and jaw, the beginnings of ugly bruises. The final touch on the surreal scene was the blood that dripped from his split lower lip. If Burly hadn’t seen it for himself, he wasn’t sure he’d have believed such a sight was possible.

Standing in front of the CEO like a mother bear defending one of her cubs was Ray Dennings, the mining company’s President and temporary Day Shift Supervisor. Unlike Mr. Newman, Ray was perpetually covered in coal dust, so nothing was unusual there, but the jagged wound over his right eye was new, as was the look of desperation in his eyes, which stood out like twin moons in a twilight sky. Ray’s hands were curled into fists, and despite his fear he looked ready to go another round if that’s what he had to do. When Burly appeared, he heaved a massive sigh of relief.

“Ah, thank Christ,” Ray said, huffing air. “I never thought I’d be so glad to see your ugly face.”

“Don’t defend him, Burly!” a voice shouted from the back of the crowd. More shouts went up behind him, their angry words overlapping each other like storm clouds, and hands pushed and pulled at his back.

“Yeah! Don’t get in the way!”

“Goddam suit’s stealin’ from us!”

“I won’t stand for it!”

Sick of the noise and jostling, Burly whipped around and said, “Shut the fuck up!” The command rolled over the angry crowd like a blast of thunder, bringing everything to a standstill. Taking advantage of the brief moment of quiet, Burly turned back to Ray and Mr. Newman. “What’s going on?”

“They’ve gone insane!” Mr. Newman said, his arms still held up in front of him.

Ray lowered his fists, but his stern gaze settled on every man before him. “Y’all better be glad I don’t have the police here arresting the whole lot of ya!”

“We ain’t the criminals here!” someone said.

Ray cast around for the man who’d spoken out, but after a moment he shook his head and said, “Yeah, well I’ve got a cut here that says otherwise. I know you’re all angry! I’m angry too, but Mr. Newman can’t grow money on trees, dammit, and he can’t make coal throw itself out the mine just by wishing it. You wanna be mad? Then get mad at your co-workers who haven’t been showing up, who’ve called in sick day after day! Every man we’re down means that much less coal gets cut. Less coal means less money, simple as that.”

“I don’t blame ‘em,” an older man said as he stepped forward. From the corner of his eye Burly saw it was Hank Stafford, one of the day shifters responsible for bolting the cave ceiling after a section of coal was cut into the mountain. “This place ain’t right, Ray. You’ve been down there. You’ve felt it. This whole mountain is… it just ain’t right.”

Encouraged by his words, the intensity of the crowd picked up again. It crackled against Burly’s skin like static electricity. Hank wasn’t the first person to talk about the Bluestone Mine like it was haunted. Almost from the beginning there’d been whispers among the men, talk of strange sounds and shadows that didn’t move right. Burly hadn’t ever seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, so he’d blown it off as idle chatter from grown men who ought to know better, but idle or not he wasn’t about to let the day shift crew use it as an excuse to riot.

“Come on now, Hank,” he said, forcing his tone to be steady and neutral. “We’re all reasonable men here, so let’s be reasonable.”

Hank turned to look at him, and a shadow passed over the old miner’s eyes that sent a shiver down Burly’s spine. It only lasted a second, but the sense of… of otherness… lingered. “Don’t talk down to me, Burl,” Hank replied. “You’ve been in that darkness. Tell me you ain’t felt it down there, in the places we don’t –”

“Enough!” Ray yelled, his voice like a grenade exploding in their midst.

Burly was thankful for the distraction. He didn’t want to hear the bolter say another word, didn’t want to look at him or see the mountain’s shadow in his eyes.

“Yes, that’s quite enough,” Mr. Newman said as he pushed away from the mine cart and stood up. He straightened his tie as best he could and smoothed the rumpled material of his shirt. “Though I doubt you want to hear the ‘suit’ complain about how much money he’s lost in this place, we are all hurting, and it won’t get better until we get coal production up. If you want to quit because some animal wandered into the mine and hissed at you from the dark, fine. Come back tomorrow and I’ll cut your final check. Understand, though, that as soon as you’re out the door I’ll be hiring your brother and your best friend, and they’ll be the one with a job while you’re looking for your last penny at the bottom of a beer bottle.”

Without waiting to see how the men would react, Mr. Newman pushed his shoulders back and walked toward the office trailer. The mob parted like the Red Sea, some still angry, but most casting their gaze around like they weren’t sure where they were or what was going on.

After the CEO was out of sight, a few chuckles dropped from the day crew, but most of them grumbled and walked to their waiting vehicles. Hank, though, remained where he was, alone as he stared at the mine entrance. Burly couldn’t tell from the older man’s expression if he was glad to be out of it, or if he wanted to go back in, but after a moment Hank shifted his gaze to him, and again a darkness flittered across his eyes like a crow flying past the sun. The two men stared at one another for several eternal seconds before Hank sighed and ambled away toward his dirty brown pickup. As the parking lot emptied, Burly felt like he should be relieved, but he wasn’t.

“Well that was a clusterfuck,” Ray said. Gravel crunched like broken glass under his boots as he walked over.

“I’ve never seen the men act like that,” Burly said as he watched Hank’s taillights disappear over He nHe

the rise he’d driven over just minutes before. “I know money’s tight and we’re all worried about our jobs, but to have them start throwing punches? That mine must really be getting to them. Makes you wonder if…” Burly didn’t finish the sentence, a small part of him fearful that giving voice to the unnatural thoughts creeping through his mind would give them life.

“Wonder if what?” Ray asked, tilting his head and staring deep into Burly’s eyes. “If the mine’s haunted? Don’t give me that shit. I’ll admit, this operation’s seen more than its fair share of problems, but I am not about to go call in some damn psychic or… or priest. Bad luck is bad luck, plain and simple. The sooner we start dealing with it instead of looking for bogeymen to blame it on, the better off we’ll be. So please, for the love of God Almighty, keep that kind of talk to yourself. The men don’t need to hear their supervisor talking that shit.”

Ray was the rational angel sitting on one of Burly’s shoulders, while the devil of his Sunday School youth sat on the other, and between them he didn’t know which way was up anymore. “You’ve never… you know, seen anything? Or heard something? I haven’t, but –”

“The only thing I see and hear is a bunch of pissing and moaning from grown ass men,” Ray replied. His words were shot out of his mouth like buckshot meant to kill any and all superstitious notions, but for a brief moment Burly saw a strain in the company president’s eyes. It was a fleeting thing, barely there, but Burly still saw it. After a moment Ray shook his head and pointed over Burly’s shoulder. “Now, I suggest you drop this crap and get ready to deal with your own world of hurt that’s coming.”

Two sets of headlights appeared over the driveway as Burly turned his head. A third followed soon after. The night shift was on its way, crawling across shadows that grew longer by the moment.

“Tyler and Wilbur called in sick, so you’re running light tonight,” Ray said, disgust thick in his voice. “Push the guys you’ve got as hard as you can. Dig, dig, dig. Get that coal out, and tomorrow we should have some new guys here to help. They’re from Kentucky, but we won’t hold that against them.”

“Not much anyway,” Burly said, glad to have something to smile at. Taking a deep breath, he hitched up his pants and went over to the sign-in board to await his crew. He didn’t wait long.

“Okay, guys, listen up,” he said. “Wil and Tyler called in sick. I need all y’all working hard and working smart, all right? The more cuts we make, the more money we make. If you need anything, let me know. Otherwise, get moving.”

The gathering drifted apart like bits of wreckage floating on the ocean, but they all moved in the same general direction toward the sign-in board. As soon as enough were signed in, the electric cart was turned on and one of the men got behind the wheel while others took a seat and leaned back. The cart sat only a few inches off the ground, so it was a pain to get in and out of if you had bad knees or a sore back, but if it was any higher you’d lose your head as it drove into the four foot high mine entrance.

As Burly walked over to double check the sign-in board, a young man wearing a red hardhat approached. Even from the corner of his eye Burly could tell he was nervous. Red hardhats were only worn by apprentice miners, and the boy beneath it looked like he wished he was anywhere other than where he was right then.

“Evenin’, Boss,” the young man said. A piece of tape was stretched across the front of his hardhat, and BUD was written on it in fat Magic Marker strokes. “Can I have a word with you?”

“Only if those words are ‘I can’t wait to get to work, Boss’,” Burly replied, turning only slightly to give the new man on the shift a glare.

“Not exactly. I… uh… I hate to do this, but… I’m quitting.”

The urge to choke the young man filled Burly like a fire, but he clinched his jaw and held himself in check. “I’m really disappointed to hear you say that, Bud. You’ve got good instincts, and I think you’d make a hell of a miner. Can I ask why?”

“I guess so,” Bud replied. He kicked at the gravel at his feet and looked everywhere but at Burly’s face. “I thought diggin’ through mountains and workin’ with a bunch of guys would be fun and all, but… it ain’t fun. Not one bit. I…”

Bud’s hesitations and dour tone said more than his mouth did to Burly. “Don’t feed me a bunch of shit and tell me it’s a ham sandwich, son. Be a man and say it.”

The skin on Bud’s youthful face went tight and pale, and his hands dove into his pockets so deep he could have tied his shoes. “Dammit, boss, I feel like a right idjit, but… that mine scares me. It’s the dark. It ain’t normal. It… moves. I’ve seen it, out of the corner of my eyes. The other guys, they play it off, make excuses, but they seen the shadows too. People don’t go into that darkness alone if they can help it, and those that do… they don’t come back right.” The skin around Bud’s eyes was red, and a faint shimmer of tears sat on his lower eyelids.

“That’s just nonse –” Burly started to say before Bud pulled his hands from his pockets and pointed a finger at Burly’s chest.

“It’s true! Last night Wilber went off on his own to check a ceiling bolt, and later on when we took lunch Tyler left early to get an extra smoke in. When we signed out this morning, neither of ‘em said a word to us. Not one. They both had this… this glassy stare to ‘em. I knew when I pulled up tonight they wouldn’t be here. There’s something down in that mountain, boss. These guys need the paycheck, got families to support, but I don’t. If you’re smart, you’ll leave this place too. It’s goddam cursed.”

Hearing the word said aloud that he’d been thinking about just minutes before jolted Burly to his core, but when Bud lowed his head and walked away, all Burly saw was one less body to do a job that was already too hard. As Bud passed the sign-in board he took his red hardhat and hung it from the top right corner, then waved over his shoulder and went to his motorcycle. He gunned the engine and left as quickly as he could without sending gravel flying into the air like a rooster tail. For that small mercy, Burly was grateful.

“Well shit,” he said to himself. Knowing he had to do it, he went to the office trailer to let his employers know the good news. Mr. Newman was in his back office with the door locked, but Ray was at his desk, and as Burly relayed what had just happened, the President’s already drooping eyes went a notch lower. When Burly left the trailer a minute later, he felt like he was leaving the hospital room of a patient who’d been told they only had hours left to live.

“Yo, boss!” a voice shouted. “You ready to get dirty?”

Burly turned and saw Sam Wellers sitting down in one of the passenger seats of the mine cart. All the other seats were empty, which meant everyone else was in the mine and this was the cart’s last run. He waved and dashed over to his truck to get his lunch pail and bright white hardhat. After scooping it up and jogging to the cart he tested the hardhat’s forward-facing light to make sure it worked. He’d put fresh batteries in it the day before, but you couldn’t be too sure of those sorts of things when hundreds of tons of mountain were waiting to crush you amidst miles of tunnel as dark as deepest space. The headlamp shone bright and steady.

“Thanks for waiting,” he said as he took the seat opposite Sam. In the driver’s seat, Dean Cotton nodded and pressed the acceleration pedal. Overhead, the dark clouds began to break open, and heavy raindrops splattered to the ground. The men in the cart barely had a chance to get wet as they slipped into the mountain seconds later.

Inches above Burly’s head was rough-hewn cave ceiling. The way ahead was lit by the cart’s headlights, with more light thrown by the hardhats each man wore. It made for a fairly bright scene, but Burly wasn’t fooled. The dark was ravenous, capable of consuming all the light you wanted to give it, and when you didn’t have any more it would reach out and swallow you in one lunging bite.

After a few minutes of rolling over broken earth and bits of rock, Dean turned the cart to the right, kept things steady for a moment, and then made a left. A rumbling sound began vibrating the air, and soon it was joined by a tumbling wave of dust and coal soot. When the cart’s headlight turned right a second time, it lit up the hard working night shift crew of miners.

“Digger’s really givin’ her hell!” Sam yelled once the cart was stopped next to the roofbolting rig. His partner, Billy Simms, was already prepping the machine and locking yard long drill bits into place. “We’re gonna be racing to keep up!”

Dean nodded at him, his face as humorless as usual. “You and me both.” He then backed the cart up, turned left, and pulled forward until he and Burly were stopped next to the scooper, which was Dean’s duty to operate.

After getting out of the cart, Burly headed toward a group of men kneeling together talking while Doug “Digger” Renfro sat with his control panel and operated the continuous miner from a safe distance. The mechanical beast chugged along, scrapping out coal with its rolling drum of tungsten carbide teeth. Despite Bud’s hasty departure and Tyler and Wil calling in sick, work was off to a good start.

An hour into the shift coal rolled its way out the mine, and Digger was into his second cut. Ready to do his job and make the way forward safe for everyone, Sam drove the roofbolter from controls at the back while Billy guided from the front. Two young guys, their former red hardhats so recently off their heads it made their new white ones look pink, lugged the continuous miner’s electrical cable by hand, making sure it didn’t get crimped against a wall or drug under the machine’s treads. They looked to be doing a good job, but suddenly the miner’s lights went dark and it ground to a stop. As Burly looked around to see what had gone wrong, he noted that the conveyer belt wasn’t rolling and the distant hum of ventilator fans was gone.

Something had cut their power.

From his belt Burly grabbed his walkie-talkie, and his grimy thumb depressed the TALK button. “Chester? We’ve lost power! What’s going on out there?”

The walkie-talkie’s speaker spat out a blast of noise that made Burly’s teeth ache. Through the squealing static he though he heard the outside man say, “This rain… crazy! Like… -nd times! … check- … right back!” Mercifully the noise cut out as Chester closed his end of the radio channel, but Burly was aggravated at how spotty the communication had been.

“Dean,” he said to the scoop operator sitting idle a few yards down the mine. “Head out there and see what’s going on.”

Turning the scoop on, Dean nodded and backed down the tunnel, his headlights chasing after him. Once he was turned, the darkness of the mine seemed to creep in a bit.

As the men stood around waiting to hear news, Burly glanced over at his lunch pail and wondered if it wasn’t too early for a bite. He wasn’t all that hungry, but if the generator was having a problem, then their schedule was about to get screwed, and who knew when they’d be able to stop and eat. He told them to start their lunch break early, and low cheers tumbled weakly through the mine.

Several minutes later words blasted from Burly’s walkie-talkie like cannon fire “Boss? You there?”

“Of course I’m here, Chester. What’s going on?”

Rain and wind hit the microphone like a hurricane. “Hell if I know! The genny looks fin, so I’m gonna need to open her up and take a deeper look! Can you send somebody to help?”

Burly looked at his handheld like it was an alien artifact dug out of the ground at his feet. “What? I already sent Dean up there. Ain’t he with you?”

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Dean. He ain’t there yet?”

“No.”

“He should be. Go check the entrance. We’re getting some water down here, so maybe the scooper’s wheels got stuck in some wet grit.”

“Okay, boss. Be right back.”

Standing around waiting was not one of Burly’s strong suits, but at that moment it was for the best. The men sat together, eating and chatting in low voices. Some made jokes, but the laughter that followed was forced. Burly opened his mouth to offer a few reassuring words for his crew, but his walkie-talkie squawked, interrupting him.

“Boss!” Chester said. “There ain’t no sign of Dean! I looked as far into the mine as I could from the outside, but I don’t see him or the scooper! He must’ve got turned around somewhere!”

Burly didn’t believe that for a second. Between the scooper and the mine cart, Dean knew his way through the mountain like a mole knew its own den. But, if he wasn’t lost, then where was he?

“All right,” Burly said. “Get back to the genny. I’ll send a couple more guys out to help. Hopefully they’ll find Dean along the way, and then y’all can get this problem sorted out.”

A squall of noise blasted from the handset, but then Chester said, “Sounds like a plan, boss!”

Burly clipped the walkie-talkie back on his belt and turned to the two young cable carriers. “Either of you know how to operate a mine cart?” he asked.

Both boyish faces nodded.

“Like drivin’ a go-cart, sir,” one of them said, a blonde with a too-easy smile. His name was Dale. The lanky brunette next to him was Ricky. They’d been hired as a pair right out of high school.

Wishing his confidence level was higher, Burly said, “Well, head on out then to help Chester. When you see Dean, pick him up too. Think you two can manage that?”

Dale and Ricky nodded their heads like frogs bobbing on a pond.

“Then get going. You help Chester get that genny running in the next thirty minutes, and I’ll buy you both a pizza when we get out of here.”

Needing no more encouragement than that, the two kids bumped fists and walked to the mine cart. The electric engine sounded like a cat getting kicked off the back porch as they spun the wheels and took off.

“Okay, y’all,” Burly said to the rest of his men. “Hopefully we’ll get this fixed up shortly.”

The night shift crew nodded over their meals. Out of habit, Burly did a quick head count. When he came up one short, he blinked. Scanning through the gritty faces wasn’t easy, so it took a moment to see who wasn’t there.

“Billy, where’s Sam?” he asked the second bolter who was chomping into a strikingly white sandwich. His fingers were covered by a plastic bag to keep the coal dust off the bread.

After gulping down a big swallow of sliced ham, Billy said, “I think he went to go take a piss.”

There wasn’t anything unusual about that, but a small chip of ice dropped into Burly’s stomach.

“Wasn’t that like six minutes ago?” Digger asked over the lip of his thermos.

Billy looked at the miner operator, and then at Burly, his eyes round. “I guess. I didn’t think about it. Sorry, boss.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Burly replied, his voice hard. “Be fucking smart.” He then tilted his head up and shouted, “Sam? Where you at? You better not be taking a shit!” His words echoed through the lengthy system of coal cuts, the sound reflecting at odd times and strange pitches. No other noise came back but the dwindling whine of the mine cart. When several seconds went by without an answer, Burly pointed a thick finger at Billy and said, “All right, numbnuts, he’s your buddy, so you better go find him.”

“What?” Billy asked, his eyes going wide and round. “But… I…” Words tumbled over themselves in the back of Billy’s mouth, all of them afraid to get too close and accidentally come out. “You can’t –”

“I sure as shit can.” The chill in Burly’s stomach was all but gone in the heat of his building anger.

“I’ll be alone though,” Billy said.

Getting more irate by the second, Burly’s nostrils flared. “Yeah, and right now so is Sam. Now get off your lazy ass and –”

The earth suddenly rumbled beneath Burly’s feet, and a roar filled the mine with horrendous noise. Rocks ground together, metal squealed, and beneath that was the faint high-pitched warble of human voices screaming in agony. Coal dust billowed toward the miners like a hellish fog from the direction the cart had gone.

“Come on!” Burly said as he took off at a stooped run.

The men ran, their heavy breathing loud in the tunnel. Half a dozen beams of light bounced crazily off the tunnel walls, jittering so much they were nearly useless. A minute later red and white reflective tape flashed ahead of them.

“Hurry!” Burly urged, pumping his arms and legs. He barely had enough breath in him to shout. By the time he made it to the cart he was ready to pass out. Considering what he saw, that might have been preferable.

Buried beneath a massive slab of shale was the crumpled remains of the mine cart, its orange paint and metal frame barely recognizable under the dust and loose bits of rock. It had fared much better than the two men in it, however. One body was lying half out like he’d tried throwing himself out of the way, his face beaten to an unrecognizable bloody pulp, while all that could be seen of the other was a purple-shaded hand peeking out from the left side of the cart. Burly rushed to the rock and started lifting.

I think that’s Dale, he said to himself as his helmet light swept across exposed dirty blonde hair. He couldn’t remember which kid had sat on which side of the cart, but Dale’s hardhat — while doing nothing to save his face from being mangled — had protected his skull enough to make identifying him possible.

“Hurry!” Digger shouted as he leapt in next to Burly. “I think this un’s still alive!”

Burly’s arms and legs strained to move the block of shale mashed into the cart, but his eyes never left Dale’s ruined face. Deep cuts ran down his forehead and cheeks, and blood dribbled off his chin in thick drops. His left eye was destroyed, leaving the socket behind it a vacant dark red hole, but his other eye seemed okay as it moved in small, jittery motions. A deep gouge tore through the soft tissue of his nose, flaying open his left nostril like a butterfly shrimp. Below it, his lips were battered strips of flesh that couldn’t hide his shattered teeth and bloody gums. A sound bubbled up from his throat.

Every available fiber of muscle was put against the shale slab, every hand and shoulder, and the mine was filled with grunts. But, try as the men did, there was nothing they could do to shift the stone off the cart. It weighed an easy thousand pounds, and it was so broad and flat it was impossible for the men to get leverage and lift it or shift it off the cart’s frame. They were going to need help to save Dale’s life.

Stepping away from the devastation, Burly unclipped his walkie-talkie and hammered the transmit button down. “Chester? You still out there?”

Static boiled the air for a moment, but then was replaced with the sound of rain and wind. “Yeah, boss! What’s going on in there?”

Burly hardly knew where to being. “There’s been an accident! The ceiling… some shale came loose! It looks like Ricky’s dead, and Dale’s in bad shape. Real bad. I need you to call emergency services. Tell them to bring some lifting and cutting equipment. Then I need you to call Ray and Mr. Newman and tell ‘em to get their asses out here. Got that?”

“I… I got it,” Chester replied. The outside man sounded shell-shocked. “I’ll be down there with you as soon as I’m done.”

Burly shook his head at the walkie-talkie. “No, don’t. We need someone out there in case something else happens. Besides, one more person ain’t gonna make a difference lifting this thing.”

“But –”

“No buts,” Burly said quickly, adding a harsh edge to his voice. “Just make the calls and stay put. You hear me, Chester?”

The walkie-talkie was silent for several long heartbeats, but eventually the outside storm broke through the tiny speaker again. “Yeah, I hear you. I’m making the calls right now. I’ll be back with you as quick as I can.”

Burly nodded to himself and returned the walkie-talkie to his belt. In front of him, the miners strained against the rock. They knew it could have easily been them under that shale, dead or dying, and if it had they’d want their friends and coworkers to do all they could to save them. So they did, grunting and crying and cursing all the while.

A sound in the darkness behind Burly made him turn. Afraid he was about to see more cave ceiling fall, his hardhat light swept the black like a hand feeling around in midnight waters for something to hold onto. All he saw down either direction was endless stretches of black. As he took one final look behind him, his light hit on a pair of brown work boots. The uneven wall hid who wore them, and panicked that someone else was hurt he scrambled to turn and run toward the boots. When he rounded the stony obstruction he saw Sam standing in the dark. His face was calm, his eyes still and unblinking.

“Sam!” Burly said, a wave of relief washing over him so powerfully he nearly fell over. “Oh, thank God! Come on, we need your help!”

Sam didn’t move, didn’t say a word. All he did was stare.

“Did you hear me?” Burley asked. “We’ve got people hurt over here, so snap out of it and let’s go.”

But Sam didn’t snap out of it, or move, or speak. His eyes were immovable as they bored into Burly. The night shift supervisor had thought the bolter wasn’t hurt, that he looked fine, but the more Burly stared, the more he thought that wasn’t so. Sam wasn’t bleeding or bruised, but his skin — where it could be seen past clothing and coal dust — was porcelain white, while his lips and the skin beneath his eyes was dark, like cave shadows had settled on his face and didn’t want to leave. And his eyes, which Burly could have sworn were blue, seemed as black as the cave around them. He looked sick, cold. Gooseflesh broke out on Burly’s arms and back.

“Sam, talk to me,” he said, taking a small step forward.

Sam moved backward. His feet never left the ground, and his legs stayed stiff, but he somehow still moved. Burly’s eyes watered as they tried to make sense of what they saw. Then Sam’s lips parted, the graying bits of flesh forming words in a pantomime of speaking, yet no words or air left his throat. Burly felt like he was watching a television with the sound turned off. But then words hit his ears with the closeness of someone whispering to him from just behind his neck.

“I’ve seen it,” Sam said, his voice soft, close, and out of time with his face. “I’ve seen the heart of the mountain, Burl, and it’s so beautiful.”

Pain lanced through the center of Burly’s head, making him wince. He suddenly felt loose, untethered. Nothing made sense. He saw movement without motion, heard words that had no voice. Behind him was death, and ahead of him was something other, perhaps worse, or perhaps better. His thoughts became hard to control, keep order of. Desperate to feel something real, he curled up his right hand and punched the stone wall near him. The pain was intense, but clarifying.

“Sam, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, meaning every word, “but we’re getting out of here. When the sun comes up we’ll get this mess sorted.”

Instead of doing as he was told, Sam smiled, his dark lips bowing in a way that made Burly nauseous. “No more,” Sam said, his words and mouth once again out of sync, his distant voice as close as a lover whispering goodbyes over a grave. As the words were said, Sam glided backward into the darkness as smoothly as fog drifting from an October lake to blanket the shore in wet silence. “No more sun for you, Burl. We’re beyond all light now, and we’ll fall into it forever.”

A new jolt of pain hit Burly’s head, striking through his forehead like a spike. He clenched his teeth and howled, but the sound was lost as the mine trembled under the falling of more stone.

The miners screamed, the mountain screamed, and Burly couldn’t tell one from the other as dark rock tumbled from the ceiling and pounded the cave floor. Movement was everywhere, legs and arms and rock, dust washing over everything like nuclear ash. Burly ducked his head and ran without knowing where he was going. His hardhat light swung through the choking air like a fist, lighting up everything yet revealing nothing. He was blind, confused, chasing shadows into insanity.

“Stop running,” Sam’s voice whispered at the nape of his neck.

Burly spun around and swung his hands out to push Sam away, but no one was there, and he tripped over his own stumbling feet. His elbows crashed into the ground.

“Digger!” he yelled. “You out there? Digger! Billy! Anyone!” The only replies were distant screams. He reached for his belt and grabbed the walkie-talkie. His hands were shaking so much he could barely keep it in his hand. “Chester, talk to me!”

Static droned out of the walkie-talkie, but it quickly became an electronic whine that built and built until it was a constant screech. Burly thought his ears would burst from the sound of it, but then the tiny speaker popped. He grunted at the useless object before throwing it against a wall and stumbling as fast as he could from the sound of falling rocks.

As he ran past a cave junction, Burly’s light swung past a pile of loose shale and lit on a face that shone like the moon, a face that shouldn’t have been there.

“Tyler?” he asked. “I thought you –”

“It’s wonderful in the dark,” the ghastly white face said. Arms rose up and hands reached for him.

“Join us,” a voice said behind him.

Burly turned so fast that his neck popped and a jolt of pain raged up his neck like he’d grabbed a live wire. In the opposite cave was Wilber, his face just as white, his eyes just as black.

“Let the shadows have you,” Wilber said.

Hands like ice settled on Burly’s shoulders. He craned his neck and saw Tyler standing behind him, his mouth opening. For a split second Burly expected needle-sharp teeth to glitter in the light, but they didn’t. He didn’t see anything. Tyler’s mouth was blackness, a void, a bottomless emptiness, and it hungered for him. He felt himself falling upward into the black. Using all his strength he twisted his shoulders and threw an elbow into Tyler’s chest. The younger man flew backward, the darkness of the cave swallowing him whole. When he turned back to Wilbur, the miner was nearly on him, his dark mouth open and his bone-white fingers grasping.

Dipping forward, Burly hit the man with a lowered shoulder, knocking him to the ground, then kept going. Rocks and dust fell all around him, the cave a constant roar of noise. He dodged the rocks that he could, bounced off the ones he couldn’t, and hoped that his feet were leading him somewhere safe. As he crossed a passage he thought his light passed over the shadowy face of Hank, the day shift bolter, but the vision was so fleeting he couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t go back to look again.

As he turned down one cut section of mountain and then another, the sound of roaring changed. It was hard to tell at first, as it seemed like one long grinding noise, but after a few seconds he heard a mechanical sound beneath it. That was when he noticed that the rocks had stopped falling.

The miner, he thought. The continuous miner’s on! We have power!

Latching onto that thought like a man reaching for a branch as he careened down a raging river, Burly stopped to gauge where he was. With practiced ears he turned left and right, noted a slight change in the noise to his right, and ran that direction. He felt shadows pulling at him as he ran, inky fingers grasping for his clothes, his arms, his legs. His light crossed from rocky wall to floor to ceiling, but the center of his vision was dark, a hole that had no end. All he could do was run.

Eventually lights appeared in the far distance. They were dim, like the first stars at dusk, but to Burly they were the most beautiful things in the world. As he got closer he saw they were the safety lights on the back of the continuous miner. At the front of it was the rolling drum of metal teeth as it churned deeper into the mountain. In confusion Burly looked around to see how or why the metal beast was operating, and as his hardhat light swept to the right what he saw hit him like a punch to the gut and dropped him to his knees.

Bodies littered the ground like empty fast food containers. Some were crushed by rocks, their heads reduced to leaking pulp or their chests caved in so hard and fast that internal organs had erupted from their mouths. Others looked normal save for the vacant spaces where their eyes should have been. Nearby was Billy, his body laid out like he was waiting to be put in a coffin, his skin milky white and his eyes burnt pits. The rest where dead by the hands of those around them. Long drill bits poked up from the chests of some, and others had had their brains bashed out with heavy wrenches or hammers.

The worst of it was Digger. The miner operator sat on the floor, his legs crossed and his hands on the continuous miner’s control panel that sat in his lap. The dead were arrayed around him like the spokes of a wheel. He faced away from Burly, and Burly was glad for that. He didn’t want to see the miner, didn’t need to.  The Bluestone Mine was filled with the stench of the dead, and shadows crept over it all, even him.

As cold fingers caressed the back of Burly’s neck, the continuous miner emitted a horrific sound. In it he heard dogs barking, rotted trees crashing in deep woods, glaciers cracking in half, meteors screaming to the ground. It was a noise like the end of the world. The digging drum rolled and rolled until the mountain in front of it gave way, revealing a cavern so black it defied sight. As the stone wall crumbled, the continuous miner shut down. In the sudden silence Burly heard a new sound enter the cave. It was a wet sound, and as his light turned on the cavern opening, tendrils of darkness inched out of it. In a sudden rush of panic he tried to get to his feet and run, but cold hands pressed him down. Above him was Tyler and Hank and Wilbur, their dark eyes and mouths echoes of the cavern beyond. He tried to push them off, but their strength was that of the mountain, and their fingers dug in harder, sending ice into his veins.

One by one the dead rose up around him, their blood and brains and organs clothing them in colors he didn’t want to see. Behind them, the darkness reached out, hunting, so hungry, and his light disappeared into it as though it had never existed. With it he felt his sanity slip away little by little until all he could do was cry and wail into the blackness. When his hardhat light finally went out and the darkness overtook him, he was glad. He didn’t want to see the shadows as they swallowed him up. It was enough to feel their cold, moist tentacles pulse and slide across his body. He was alone, flailing in the deep dark, falling into a midnight that had no end, one shadow amongst thousands buried in the heart of the mountain.

The End

About The Author:

Justin is the author of HAYWIRE and the forthcoming A MINOR MAGIC. When not hard at work on his next story he is one of the co-hosts of the popular Dead Robots’ Society podcast. He and his lovely wife live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex along with a motley pack of dogs and cats. Justin is also a co-host on The Hollywood Outsider, a weekly podcast about movies and television.

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