THE MINE IS A WORK of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

2016 Antimatter Books ebook

Copyright © 2016 T.M. Catron

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Print ISBN: 1537456431

ISBN-13: 978-1537456430

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Prologue

THE DANG CANTEEN WAS EMPTY. Joe Peters re-attached it to his belt and wiped the sweat trickling down his forehead and into his eyes. How long had he been stuck in this tunnel, anyway? Seemed like hours. He slid between pillars into another empty section of the coal mine, the glow of his headlamp shifting to the left as he banged his hard hat on the wall. The room ahead turned dark. More sweat poured off him, mixing with the coal dust on his body to create black slime. It soaked his work clothes and pooled in his boots.

So thirsty. He adjusted his lamp. Twenty years in the mine. Twenty hard-ticking years. And he knew better than to get lost in the old tunnels. But here he was.

Cool air came up the tunnel from behind, chilling the sweat on his neck. He shivered. Odd—the old parts of the mine didn’t have good ventilation. Those old shafts had been sealed at the top long ago.

He glanced behind even though he knew nothing was back there. Nothing at all, Joe. Gettin’ jumpy in your old age.

The top of his hat scraped the roof, bringing down a dusting of coal onto his shoulders. Based on the size of the room he’d just left, he’d gotten lost in one of the oldest parts of the mine, somewhere behind their current operation.

And he didn’t know how to get back. Unless . . .

The mine groaned around him. Normal, of course, but Joe’s gut tightened into a knot. He tried to catch the idea working its way to the front of his mind. Think. He looked at the floor, where a boot tread was stamped into the dirt.

His own footprint.

With a sigh of relief and a flash of annoyance, Joe wondered why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before. He turned to go back.

He kept his lamp pointed at the floor, following the footprints back into the tiny room. He crossed it and walked through to the next one, passing through thick pillars of coal into a narrow tunnel. Back in the early days, this room would have only fit a man and a hand-drawn cart.

The tracks disappeared over smooth stone. He swept the light forward a few feet. There—ten feet ahead they converged with another set of prints. Joe’s heart knocked against his chest at the prospect of someone else being lost down here, too. Then he laughed at himself. It was his own print—he must’ve circled back at some point.

He turned left and retraced them down another tunnel, passing between more dark pillars. The more he walked, the easier he breathed. Maybe he’d get out of here without anyone noticing he’d been lost. In his improved state of mind, Joe now felt at ease to study the rooms as he walked. Some day they would open up these sections again and come after this remaining coal. Especially with the new machines the company was sending them. Coal-mining wasn’t what it had been in his papa’s day.

A clattering sound from behind caused him to spin around. Joe looked up at the ceiling, checking for a roof fall. It looked solid. But looks were nothing; it could cave at any moment. And here he was breathing and disturbing the air and the dust. At this thought, a tickle rose in his throat. He tried not to cough, settling for clearing the crud with a low growl.

Time to move on. He turned back toward the tunnel ahead, ready to get back out to his crew. Something caught his eye. A shift, perhaps. A falling rock. He stared ahead a moment. If the room was about to go . . .

But Joe didn’t have time to stand there waiting for something to happen. If his way out got blocked, he’d be in a heap more trouble than he was now.

The air shimmered in the light. He blinked, hard, trying to clear his eyes. When he opened them, his headlamp turned off. The room went dark, a pitch blackness so deep only the pits of hell could have been darker. But Joe knew the darkness. Knew the effect it had on the brain and the feeling of disembodiment that came with it. All miners did. He reached up to jiggle his light.

Nothing happened.

He pulled off his hat and turned the lamp toward him.

But it wasn’t off—it was still shining. A lone star against a black sea, it twinkled at him without casting any noticeable light. He held his hand in front of it. But he still couldn’t see his fingers.

Joe rubbed his eyes. Must be something wrong—they weren’t focusing right. He breathed deeply, but it didn’t make him feel better. If anything, his ribs were being squeezed together like they were caught in a vice. Inhaling only made the pressure worse.

Gas—the only explanation. He’d walked into a pocket of methane or carbon dioxide.

And he was already too far gone to get out of it.

Another soft crash. This time Joe recognized the sound of coal falling from the roof, even if he couldn’t see it. He turned, dropping his hat and putting his hand on the wall.

The hat clattered down, landing with the lamp pointing up. It shone up at him like an eyeball peering at him from the darkness. Then the roof cracked, sending a shivering wave through the room.

The Earth was splitting open.

Joe forgot he couldn’t breathe and yelled out. What he said didn’t matter. Just that he said it.

He always knew the mine would get him someday.

Chapter 1

ALICE PETERS MADE HISTORY WHEN she walked into the Springwater Mine on Thursday, June 14, 1956. She was the first female miner in Springwater, West Virginia, and one of the first female miners in the country. But no one knew it. The foreman, her Uncle Ray, had put her down as “Al” on her employment form so he could keep his job.

“You’re not really the first,” he’d said. “Girls have been sneakin’ into the mines to work for long as anyone can remember. Most of ’em dressed like men to do it.”

But Alice was the first woman to walk into the Springwater Mine with the approval of the section foreman. That first day, Billy Loggins spat at her when Ray wasn’t looking. Loggins was built like a barrel—narrow shoulders and skinny legs, wide around the middle. Afraid of causing trouble on her first day, Alice had kept her head down and followed Ray to the conveyor. Never mind them, she told herself.

Never mind that she’d grown up around the mine, and that her daddy, Joe Peters, had been Loggins’ foreman for ten years. Never mind that male or female, black or white, once a person entered the mine, they looked like everyone else. The coal dust made sure of that.

Never mind that Alice didn’t have any other options. That the only family she had was Daddy’s brother, Ray, and that his wife Nancy had kicked her out eighteen months after Daddy died. Nancy had said she wasn’t going to hand out charity to a grown woman who should be working instead of sitting in a school desk all day reading.

Nancy had dropped out of school at fourteen to marry Ray. As far as she was concerned, Alice should already be married with five kids hanging off each arm.

Ten weeks after her first day, on August 23, Alice switched on her headlamp and entered the drift mouth, walking close behind Ray. Ten men followed. None of them spoke to her.

It was the crew’s daily routine: Ignore Alice on the twenty-minute walk to the coal face, give her a hard time whenever Ray wasn’t looking. Today wouldn’t be any different, even though it was her birthday. If they knew, they’d only make it worse for her.

Ray had forgotten, and Alice wasn’t going to remind him. What were birthdays for, anyway?

The belt conveyor lay to the right of the manway. It had just finished running third shift’s load. Soon it would be humming again, and Alice would be walking beside it, shoveling the loose coal that had fallen off.

They passed great pillars of coal, supported in part by old timber. New timber had been added here and there for safety. Springwater was an old room-and-pillar mine, with winding tunnels and random rooms. Thirty years ago, crews hadn’t even bothered to close off sections once they were done. The resulting labyrinth made Alice feel as if something was behind her, stalking her from the black spaces.

Dark, narrow tunnels branched off to the left and right, all the way to the new advance. Alice always refused to look into the passages. She’d keep her eyes straight ahead, thank you. It didn’t do to be dwelling on anything other than the job.

Like most miners, she tried not to think too hard about the dangers of working underground. Roof falls, explosions, and pockets of deadly gas were only some of the accidents waiting to happen. If she thought about it, she remembered how her daddy had died. They’d found him after three days of searching, not far from the advance and half-buried under two tons of coal. If she thought about it, she might not ever go back in.

And she had to go back in.

The mountain groaned under its own weight, a reminder that millions of tons of rock sat above their heads. Rumor was they would be getting a roof bolter soon to support the roof without timbers, just like they used at the bigger mining operations to the south. Then the mine would be safer. But for now, the grind was the same for Alice: go in, keep her head low, do what they told her.

If she didn’t draw too much attention to herself, the days were bearable. Alice made sure she did as much work as any man. She was useful, even if the crew didn’t admit it.

As soon as the crew reached their section, everyone went to work. Billy  Loggins operated the miner. He did his checks and then started it up. The machine whined, then started spinning toward the coal face. When the grinding began, it drowned out the sound of the rock creaking above.

“You’re workin’ the belt today,” Ray told Alice.

“I work it every day.”

Ray nodded. He still felt responsible for her. Wanted her to know the ropes. Wanted her to stick with it. Mainly because he’d put his backside on the line for her to get this job.

That and he was ashamed Joe had been lost. Ray took responsibility for that, too. Even though everybody knew and Alice knew that Joe had died in an accident, and no one could have prevented it.

“I just wonder what he was doing, is all,” said Ray, as if they’d been having a conversation about her daddy. He brought it up sometimes, an attempt to get rid of his guilt. Or to punish himself, maybe.

“I know, Ray.” Alice’s standard response.

Four hours later, Alice was sweating from shoveling coal onto the belt. Sharp pains shot up her back, her arms, her legs, like they were caught in giant pincers. She gritted her teeth and kept going, slinging the coal onto the conveyor so hard that some of it fell off the other side of the belt.

Jimmy Mans, a lanky twenty-year-old who liked to be around when Alice messed up, doubled over laughing. “Guess it’s too much to ask for a girl to know that she’s s’posed to get the coal on the belt.”

“Shut up, Jimmy.” Alice ducked down and scraped her shovel underneath the belt.

“Don’t tell me to shut up. I been here longer than you—two whole years. And I’m a man. So it doesn’t matter how long I been here,” he said with sudden revelation, “because I’ll always be better at man’s work than you.”

“Some man,” Alice mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“You got a lotta nerve, Jimmy, messin’ with me. You better get outta here before Ray hears you.”

Jimmy snorted. “One day Ray won’t be here.”

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“You know what it means, or are you really that dumb? He’s gonna get fired. Or die like Joe. And then you’ll have to leave, too.”

“You take that back!” Alice straightened, bringing her shovel off the ground and pointing it at Jimmy.

Jimmy sneered. “Or what?”

Alice breathed hard, anger rising up from somewhere deep. He’d gone too far. He could make fun of her. Make fun of her too-big overalls with the cuffs rolled up, her tangled hair, her womanliness (or the lack of it), but not her Daddy. She wanted to wipe that dumb smirk off Jimmy’s face. She pulled back, ready to strike.

Jimmy grabbed a chain from a hook on the wall, one they used to hoist coal if the belt malfunctioned. He twirled it once, making sure it came close to hitting her.

“You ain’t got the rocks to fight me,” he said.

Alice swung, the flat of her shovel landing squarely over his groin. Jimmy dropped the chain and hunched over, squealing, forehead almost touching the ground.

“Don’t need to have rocks to protect myself,” she said. “Joe figured I’d meet someone like you someday. Guess he was smarter than you ever could be, Jimmy.”

Jimmy wheezed and stood. His cheeks were wet. And shiny black now, like the coal.

Alice wanted to taunt him for crying. But she didn’t want to push her luck. Instead she backed away from Jimmy, her shovel still raised in warning.

Jimmy didn’t speak to her again all day. He didn’t speak to anybody. Alice wished some of the other men had been there to witness. Maybe then they’d ease up on her. But they hadn’t, so they wouldn’t.

“Want to come up to the house for some supper?” Ray asked when they left the mine that evening. The crew was climbing aboard the bus to take them back to Springwater. Alice sat across from her uncle.

“Thanks, but I got things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Things.”

Since Nancy had kicked her out, Alice had been living in the house at the edge of the Peters’ property. It wasn’t much, a one-room shack left over from the town’s old coal-camp. But it was hers as long as she paid rent. Ray didn’t argue about dinner. He’d only offered to be polite, anyway. Nancy wouldn’t have wanted Alice there.

Thirty minutes later, after winding up a narrow gravel road, around the ridgeline, then back down the mountain, the bus stopped in Springwater. The only industry here was coal. Everybody either worked for the coal company or sold goods to the miners and their families. So in a way, everybody worked for the company.

Springwater’s central feature was Main Street, with its obligatory stores lined up on the left and right. The rest of the town was just houses nestled into the winding arm of the valley. A few farms surrounded, flanking Springwater like buffers against the wildness of Appalachia. Proof that the area could be civilized—that’s what Joe used to say.

Loggins parked the bus in the lot next to company headquarters, and the crew filed out. Jimmy glanced sideways at Alice, but otherwise ignored her with the rest. He would never tell them that a girl, least of all Alice, had caused him to squeal like a banshee.

Most of them, still covered in coal filth and sweat, headed to Springwater’s only bar for a drink before going home. Alice passed it on her way down the street. Music drifted out from the open door—a Johnny Cash song about Folsom Prison. She liked it. The station played it on the radio at least once a night. Maybe they’d play it again when she got home, and she could listen while she was eating. If they played Elvis, she would dance.

The setting sun bathed the sky in yellow gold. Dark, green mountains towered over them, a constant reminder of the town’s separation from the rest of the world. But Alice was more concerned about her growling stomach than the view. She stopped at the corner grocery and bought a can of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread. Mr. Mercer, the grocer, peered at her over his spectacles as he rang her up.

She smiled and picked up a chocolate Hershey bar, adding it to her purchases. Mercer grimaced. Alice imagined her mouth looked disgusting with her dust-coated teeth.

“Special occasion?” Mercer asked, nodding to the chocolate.

Alice shrugged. It was a birthday treat to herself. But Mercer didn’t need to know.

“I woulda hired ya, Alice, you know that? You clean up good. Just quit that mine. You make the boys uncomfortable.”

“If I come to work for you, Mr. Mercer, I ’spect I’ll never get outta Springwater.”

“You should be thinking about marrying. Then you won’t have to be thinking about getting out of Springwater. The doc’s kid—Charlie Satchel—he’s a nice boy.”

“Nah.” Alice wiped her dirty face with her dirty sleeve. “Ain’t nobody ever going to marry me.”

“Not dressed like that, they won’t.”

For the last ten weeks, town folk had been taking it upon themselves to lecture Alice on her appearance, her job, her uncle, her daddy, her marriage status, and a whole bunch of other things that had nothing to do with them. Maybe they were just trying to help. Maybe they were just busybodies.

But she couldn’t deny that ever since she began working in the mine, everybody treated her differently than they used to. After Daddy died, people treated Alice as if she would break. Now they treated her as if she were made of steel, unbending and hard and without feelings. In some ways, their attitudes were an improvement. But Alice couldn’t help but feel a little resentful at the sudden shift in her treatment.

Alice left the store, her feet taking her out onto the sidewalk but her mind taking her down a darker road. She ran smack into Charlie Satchel on the sidewalk.

“Sorry! Oh, hey Alice,” he said. His blue eyes took in her appearance. “Didn’t recognize you.”

Alice glanced around, looking for an excuse to get away. She didn’t want Charlie to see her covered in coal. “Hey,” she finally said.

Charlie and Alice had been friends since birth, almost. His father was the town doctor. And since the town only had one school for all the grades, she had seen him almost every day of her life. During summers, they used to play hide-and-seek in the cornfield on the Peters’ property.

“Got my letter,” said Charlie, standing up straighter. Charlie had been a year ahead of her in school. He’d just graduated and was off to join the Army.

He was taller than Alice, with long legs and long arms. Brown hair he had combed back with pomade. Alice thought he looked nice.

“Going to Basic in three weeks.”

“That’s great, Charlie.” Alice’s gut twisted. He really was leaving. She didn’t know how she could stand Charlie getting out of Springwater when she wasn’t. And then he’d travel the world, just like they’d talked about when they were kids, and she wouldn’t.

But they weren’t kids anymore.

“Hey, listen,” he began, shifting on his feet like he had something else to say.

“I got to go, Charlie.” Alice didn’t know what he was going to say, and she didn’t think she could stand knowing. “Been a long day.”

“Oh, ummm, yeah.”

She turned to walk down Main Street with her paper sack of food. Charlie stared after her a minute.

He hadn’t said anything about her birthday. Maybe he didn’t remember, either.

Maybe if she’d given him half a chance . . .

Chapter 2

FOUR STREETS DOWN, A RIGHT turn, five streets more, a left, then a mile out of town, following the line of the valley to the south.

Alice’s little shack sat in the back of her uncle’s property, down a tree-lined lane, next to a cornfield. She opened the door and locked it behind her. The place had electricity, and an indoor bathroom, tacked onto the side ten years ago for renters. Granted, the only light in the house came from a single bulb hanging over the stove. But it worked.

After showering and scrubbing off every last bit of coal, Alice heated up her soup on the stove and turned on the radio, hoping for Elvis or Johnny. Patsy Cline was singing instead. Alice hummed the tune as she lifted her soup and sat on the edge of the twin bed that was pushed up against the back wall. Metal springs creaked under her.

Three years.

Three years, and she’d have enough money saved to get out. Maybe go to Charleston, or further north. She’d always wanted to see New York City. She glanced at a faded postcard picture that was pinned above her headboard. She thought the city looked beautiful with its tall, gleaming buildings and streets teeming with people. Maybe they liked to hire women there. Give them a decent wage without giving them a hard time about it.

Or maybe she’d die before that happened, in the coal, like Daddy.

The radio crackled and hissed. Alice reached over to the tuner to adjust it. When she touched the knob, the static got louder. She moved her hand away, fascinated by the way her presence affected the dial. A teacher had once told her it was because she had her own electricity flowing through her body. She wondered if that was true.

The light over the stove flickered. Alice glanced at it, but it returned to normal. She’d just finished scooping out the last pea from her bowl when the bulb went out with a pop. A last spot of light lingered on the filament before fading out and leaving Alice in darkness. The radio went silent, too—dead. She moved to the window opposite the stove to peek out the lace curtain.

The moon had risen above the mountains, half-full and half-covered by wispy clouds. The cornfield looked disturbed, like a storm was brewing and blowing the stocks. Maybe a lightning strike had taken out the power line leading to her shack. But Alice hadn’t heard any thunder. So maybe it was the wind.

She opened the window, expecting the cool air that always came before a storm. Instead, the lingering, moist heat of the day entered the room and clung to her skin. She leaned on the sill and stuck her head out. No wind. But the crops still waved around in all different directions, like something was zig-zagging through the field.

Whatever it was, it was big.

Alice groped her way to the kitchen sink and dug around beneath it for a flashlight. She flipped the switch. Nothing happened. She tapped it twice with her hand, and it flashed on.

She went out on the front step to shine her light on the field, into the tall corn. The thrashing had to be coyotes chasing a deer. Funny, she hadn’t heard their yipping cries. For that matter, she hadn’t heard anything all night. She swept the light over the field and up toward the main house, looking for the familiar glow of the kitchen light. Nancy would be sweeping and scolding Ray for stopping off at the honky tonk before coming home.

But the lights were out at the house, too. And it was quiet.

Alice turned off the flashlight to let her eyes adjust to the night. The corn kept swaying, swishing, rustling, back and forth, back and forth. A dense cloud passed over the moon, blocking out the remaining light. Alice turned to the left, toward town. Usually the streetlights along Main cast a yellow glow on cloudy skies. Tonight, though, the darkness to the north was complete.

The power was out everywhere—no sense in walking back into town to buy another bulb. Alice switched on the flashlight and turned to walk into the house, pausing for one last look at the cornfield.

A cloud of smoke hovered over it now, blowing toward the trees behind the mountain. When the light touched it, it stopped moving.

And turned.

Don’t be dumb, Alice told herself.

But she couldn’t deny the smoke had changed direction. She followed its movement with her narrow beam of light. Now that she looked at it properly, it didn’t really look like smoke. More like a great black snake winding and turning above the corn. Or a fluttering black blanket, rolled up in its middle.

Heading right for the shack.

Alice dropped the light.

The beam fell with it, crawling down the corn stalks of the outside row, lighting up the individual dirt paths between. The flashlight bounced off the step, landed in the dirt with a clink, and turned off.

Alice jumped down to retrieve it, her hands fumbling for the switch. But the darn thing had come to pieces when it landed. She reached into the tall grass under the step to get them, hoping a copperhead wasn’t using the cover for a bed.

The corn began swishing again. Louder now. Closer.

Alice grappled around in the dark, looking for the battery.

That thing was leaving the cornfield. Get inside.

Alice gave up trying to find the pieces and jumped back onto the step. Without looking back, she hurled herself into the shack and locked the door behind her.

Her heart pounded in her throat. What was out there?

Outside, the clouds broke up around the moon, and the area surrounding the house grew a little lighter. Her back against the door, Alice cast her eyes around the room, working to catch her breath, ashamed for being scared.

Then a lone coyote called out over the valley, sounding like the wail of a crying child. Alice jumped, her heart jumping too. But everything else stayed quiet. After another minute, she gathered the courage to go to the window.

The field was darker than before. But then, the field was always dark at night. What was different? The coyote had hushed. So had the field. Alice couldn’t help but think that the smoke was still blowing toward the house.

But she didn’t smell it. If the field had been burning, she would have seen something. So maybe it wasn’t smoke. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or a stray mountain mist. Alice tugged the window down, anyway, and locked it for good measure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to get in the house.

She sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall, facing the room. Her body was weary from her day’s labor, but she couldn’t shake the image of that shadow moving toward the flashlight beam. She sat there for a long while, pinching herself to stay awake, picking at the frayed edge of the quilt.

An hour passed without a change. Eventually, Alice allowed her eyes to close, her head to rest against the wall. In a few hours, she’d meet Ray out on the lane, to walk into town with him for work.

The shadow had probably been mist from the mountain, playing a trick with her eyes. Nothing to be scared of. She lay her head on her pillow, her body sinking into the thin mattress.

Then, from far away, a man screamed.

Chapter 3

ALICE BOLTED OUT THE DOOR, her bare feet scattering the gravel of the lane. If something was in the cornfield, she was going to find Uncle Ray. But the sounds of a scuffle ahead brought her up short. One flashlight lay in the road. Another was swinging around, like someone was trying to get a hold of it. A man screamed again. This time she recognized it—half-squeal, half-squeak—Jimmy.

“I was just going home! Promise, Boss!”

“Your house ain’t down this way, Jimmy,” Ray said. “This wouldn’t have nothing to do with that thrashin’ you got from Alice today, would it?”

Alice hurried toward them. On the road, Uncle Ray stood holding Jimmy by the hair, pressing a flashlight directly into his eye.

“Alice,” Ray said. “Glad you’re here. Jimmy’s got something to say to you.” He jerked Jimmy around. Jimmy whimpered and tried to grab Ray’s wrist. “Are you gonna say it, son, or you gonna make me throw you in the Pit for a couple of days?”

The Pit was an abandoned section of the coal mine, the site of the first collapse after the mine had opened. Three men had died. The Springwater miners believed ghosts of those dead men haunted that room.

“NO,” Jimmy said.

“Then say it.”

“I . . . I’m sorry, Alice, for givin’ you a hard time.”

“And?”

“It won’t happen again.”

Ray let Jimmy go, throwing him away as if he were a possum that’d been eating his garbage. Jimmy scrambled to his feet and looked at both of them. Spittle ran down his chin. He wiped it on his sleeve.

Alice almost felt sorry for him—almost.

“Well, go on,” Ray said. “Git.”

Jimmy turned and jogged off down the dark road.

Ray shined his light toward Alice, studying her. “You alright today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t yes, sir me. You’re not alright. Come on up to the house.”

He lit the way back to his and Nancy’s place, a white-washed two-story close to the road. The power was still out. Ray chuckled to himself as they stepped up onto the dark porch. “Jimmy never was good at much but makin’ trouble.”

“How’d you know about the shovel?”

Ray grunted. “Saw the whole thing.” He looked at her again. “You did good, kid. Real good.”

Alice smiled, the first one all day.

“Why’d you run up the lane, anyway?”

“Heard someone yell.” She didn’t want to tell him she’d been spooked well before that. “Hey . . . Ray.”

“Yeah?”

“You notice anything weird tonight, in the corn? Right after the lights went out.”

“No. Why?”

Alice shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it was Jimmy tryin’ to scare me.”

“I ran into Jimmy out here on the road, standing at the top of your lane. Good thing, too. He’s no good. You listen, Alice: anything else happens at all, I want to know.”

“But—”

“Anything. Don’t go trying to settle everything on your own. These boys are hard-headed as mules.” He spat into the dirt off the side of the porch. “But don’t let ’em bully you, neither.”

“You want me to quit?”

“You want to quit?”

Alice squared her shoulders. “No, sir.”

“Good. Then don’t quit.”

With a hum, the lights came on inside the house. Nancy came to the door, watching the pair of them through the screen. “What’s going on out there?” she barked.

“Just givin’ Alice here a word of advice.”

“Well, come on in and get your supper. Kids ate an hour ago and are already in bed. Let Alice go home.”

Ray took a deep breath, ready to argue.

Alice shook her head. “I’m going. Borrow that flashlight?”

Ray handed it to her.

On her way back to the shack, Alice checked the surrounding trees more than once. But Jimmy was gone. The weird shadow was gone. The world was normal.

***

Jimmy Mans walked down the road, rubbing his scalp where Ray had nearly torn out his hair. That stupid Alice. If Ray hadn’t come up when he did, Jimmy would already be at Alice’s door.

What he was going to do when he got there, he didn’t know. Billy Loggins had bought Jimmy a beer and told him Alice needed a good scaring, but he’d been vague about what it would take to do it. Jimmy had thought it was a good idea—up until he’d run straight into Ray on the road. What was the old man doing out there, anyway?

A light blinked on down toward town. The electricity was back on, then. The road where Jimmy was standing was dark though. And he’d left his flashlight back in front of Ray’s house.

He scowled again and kept walking. Ray had no right to give Alice a job. Loggins had reported him to the company. He’d said that a man who let a girl work in the mine couldn’t be trusted to take care of his crew. That he was showing a lack of good judgement.

Jimmy stopped again. He could cut down through the fields and forget about walking on the stupid road. Roads were for sissies. In his bitter mood, he didn’t think about the consequences of taking a shortcut through a field at night. He was used to the darkness, anyway. It didn’t bother him—he was a miner.

He huffed and turned right, off the road and into another cornfield. He and his mama lived in a little one-bedroom place at the edge of town. Jimmy slept on the couch.

He was saving enough money to buy her a real house, right up by Main Street. Just next door to Mercer. The smug grocer was always looking down his nose at Jimmy’s mother because she sometimes paid her grocery bill late. That was partly Jimmy’s fault—he stopped in at the bar too much after work. But no more. Tonight had been the last time. Next week, he’d be able to hand over his entire check to Mama, and then they’d start saving for that house. That the house wasn’t for sale didn’t bother Jimmy. If he had enough money, he could buy whatever he wanted.

His sour mood brightening a bit at this thought, Jimmy pushed his way through the tall corn. It was a shortcut he’d taken plenty of times, though usually with some kind of light. When he was a kid, he used to . . .

Someone was standing in the row ahead of him, a lone, dark figure blocking the path. Jimmy stopped walking. “Who are you?”

“Where’ve you been, Jimmy?” It was Charlie Satchel. Jimmy recognized the voice.

“Out walkin’, not that it’s your business.”

“I followed you.”

“What?”

“I followed you. You went down to Alice’s house.”

Jimmy sniffed. The air smelled of fertilizer. “Maybe I did. She said I could come ’round any time I wanted.”

The whole town knew Charlie had a crush on Alice. Jimmy couldn’t resist trying to make him a little jealous.

“You stay away from her. She’s better’n you.”

Jimmy reddened, although in the dark Charlie wouldn’t be able to see just how close to the mark he’d got. “Alice is the one who better stay away from me. She’s the one taking good jobs away from the men. She ain’t got nothing but trouble coming her way.”

Charlie moved closer. Jimmy took a step back, raising his fists. He could just make out Charlie’s nose in the moonlight. One punch was all he’d need to dirty up those clothes a bit. It was time to see if the doc’s boy bled like common folk.

Charlie chuckled. “You wouldn’t dare. I could have you fired.”

“Not because you’re anybody. Just your daddy. You ain’t nothing without him.”

“Maybe. But you better leave Alice Peters alone all the same. If something happens to her, what are people going to believe when I tell them I saw you at her house?”

“They’re gonna wonder why you were there, too. You ain’t so big, Charlie Satchel, now get outta my way before I break your nose.”

Charlie laughed again, but stepped back. He didn’t move out of the row, though, and Jimmy had to push over to another one to get by. He kept one hand up, expecting Charlie to throw a punch while he wasn’t looking. But when nothing happened, Jimmy left him in the corn and hurried toward home.

Halfway down the row, he heard movement in the stalks behind him. He turned. “Don’t think you’re gonna sneak up on me, Satchel.”

Something big hit him round the head. Jimmy pivoted on his foot, reeled back, and fell down into a corn stalk. It bent under his weight. His hearing went dull, and he struggled to stay upright.

It didn’t do any good.

The last thing Jimmy remembered was golden light, followed by crushing darkness.

Chapter 4

THE NEXT DAY BEGAN JUST as any other day. At 5:00am, first shift filed back onto the bus. Alice yawned and found a seat by herself. Ray checked off everybody as they came in. Loggins crawled into the driver’s seat and started the bus.

“Hold it,” Ray said. “Anybody seen Jimmy?”

Everyone shrugged shoulders, looked around.

“Guess he’ll have to find his own way to the mine, then.”

Alice shot Ray a look. Had Jimmy quit because of what happened last night?

Ray ignored her and motioned for Loggins to go. Everyone was silent for the next thirty minutes. Most of the men smoked and swigged coffee from large metal thermoses. Alice didn’t have a thermos because she didn’t have a way to make coffee at the shack. She always had to wait and get a cup at the work site.

Tobacco smoke fogged up the windows. Alice wanted to put one down for some fresh air, but she knew better; she’d only get teased about it later. Instead, she leaned her head back against the vinyl seat and closed her eyes.

She sat quietly for the rest of the trip, her eyes closed but her mind turning. After thinking about it all night, Alice had decided that Jimmy may have been trying to scare her, running through the field with a sheet or a blanket. Although that explanation didn’t quite fit when she remembered how big the smoke had been—much bigger than a blanket or sheet. And how had Jimmy managed to disturb the corn in so many places at once? Did he have buddies with him?

Maybe he’d wanted to do more than just scare her. Ray seemed to think he did. What did her uncle know that she didn’t? She shivered. Tonight, when she got home, she was going to have a look at that cornfield; Jimmy must have made a mess of it.

Jimmy still hadn’t shown up at noon when they took their break. Ray shook his head and mumbled something about a sorry good-for-nothing.

“You’re with Loggins the rest of the afternoon,” he told Alice. “It’s time you learned how to help the operator, anyway.”

Loggins frowned at the news but didn’t argue with Ray. Unlike Jimmy, he could show some sense when it suited him. Loggins showed Alice which lever controlled what on the continuous miner and instructed her on how to watch it crunch through the coal. If any kind of problem developed, they’d shut it down.

Alice didn’t dare take her eyes off the machine when it started up. If she made a mistake, she’d never hear the end of it. It ground down on the coal in a swirl of dust and water.

They worked for several hours without incident. Then without warning, the sound of the miner changed from grinding to whining. Loggins looked down at his controller, adjusting the knobs. Then a great cracking sound split the air.

“Watch it!” Ray said from somewhere behind.

Something big whizzed by Alice’s ear. She ducked down out of the line of fire.

Loggins shut it down, and the teeth rotated to a stop. Dust slowly settled to the floor.

“What happened?” she asked.

Loggins cursed. “Broke two teeth. What d’ya think of that, Boss?”

Ray walked over to look at the machine. “I think that’s a normal thing to happen on a continuous miner,” he said pointedly. He looked at the wall in front of the machine, then shouted, “Step back!”

It was the kind of command a miner obeyed at once.

Alice and Loggins backed toward the other side of the machine. Ray followed right after them, pulling a sensor off his belt and holding it up to test the air for toxic gas.

Alice held her breath—an automatic response that wouldn’t help if they’d already been exposed. She glanced at Loggins. He seemed to be doing the same thing.

Ray got on his hands and knees with the sensor down around the wall. Then he climbed up again. “All clear,” he announced.

Alice let out her breath. Loggins did, too. They moved forward to the coal face where Ray was fixated on something. When they reached him, they saw what had his attention.

A three-foot-wide hole, tall as a man, had opened up in the earth.

“Is it a chasm?” Alice asked.

“Don’t think so. It widens past the coal.”

“Are we at the end of the seam?”

“Can’t be.”

Ray squeezed between the continuous miner and the wall, putting his head in. “Well, I’ll be,” he said after a minute.

“What?” asked Loggins, who had moved behind Ray.

“Another tunnel.”

“Part of the old mine? I always said those maps weren’t right.”

Ray got out of the way for Loggins to look. “It’s not part of the seam. The tunnel is stone, not coal.”

Loggins took a look then came back around the miner. He reached up and wiggled his hard hat, like he was trying to scratch an itch underneath it. “So . . .”

Ray shrugged.

“What?” Alice asked. “What is it?”

“Can’t say. Could be an underground spring that’s all dried up.”

Alice walked over to the hole. She held onto the wall, peeking her head through. Her light showed dark, smooth stone in every direction. It was just a cave.

And yet it wasn’t. The walls were straight and smooth. They met above, arching into a roof ten feet overhead. The floor dropped off at the edge of the coal, the cave floor a foot below the floor of the mine.

She looked to the left, then to the right. The tunnel was ten feet wide, ten feet tall, and long. She couldn’t see an end in either direction.

“One thing’s for sure,” Ray was saying, “we’re going to have to completely redraw all these dad-blame maps. Maybe have to inspect the entire mine.”

“But where’d it come from, Boss?”

Alice pulled away from the hole. “Isn’t it just a cave?”

“You ever seen a cave that straight,” Loggins said, “with walls like that? A machine dug that out, girl.”

Alice had only ever been to one cave, the Lost World Caverns down in Greenbrier County. Loggins was right: it didn’t look like that cave at all.

“What kind of machine, do you think?” Ray asked.

“The government has all kinds a things for diggin’ tunnels and such.”

“Why?”

“To keep ahead a the Soviets, of course.”

Ray snorted. “But why’s it here?”

Loggins shrugged, as if coming up with a good explanation for his theory was too much work.

“Call the other guys,” Ray said. “Better tell ’em what’s going on.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Alice asked.

Ray straightened his lamp as Loggins got on the radio. “See how far that tunnel goes. Need to know so we can maneuver around it.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Ray waved her away. “Nah. Loggins and I won’t be long. You wait here in case we need you.”

Alice thought about arguing with him. But she didn’t. She was thinking of Daddy though. How he’d never come back.

Maybe Ray was, too. He nodded to her, then he and Loggins grabbed flashlights and entered the tunnel. Their voices bounced off the walls at first, then gradually faded.

Alice grabbed her canteen off her belt and took a swig. Then she looked at all the coal slung around the miner. Every pound of coal helped them reach their quota, especially on a day filled with delays. She picked up a shovel and began scooping up the mess and putting it in the coal car, a low, wide vehicle for taking the coal to the conveyor. The coal wasn’t going to shovel itself. And she needed something to do.

The cleanup took her twenty minutes. It would have taken her ten if she hadn’t kept checking the hole for Ray and Loggins. She paced around the miner, looking for any pieces she may have missed. When she didn’t find any, she settled for sitting in the car’s small driver’s seat, facing the hole.

Except for normal creaking and groaning, the mine was quiet. Alice fidgeted, cracking her knuckles and tapping her foot against the metal floor of the car. But when the sound pinged off the surrounding walls, she stopped.

They’d been gone too long. Something wasn’t right. She got up to peek inside again. The tunnel looked the same as before. Smooth walls, perfectly shaped. It couldn’t be a cave; she saw that now. Alice swooped her light up the walls, over the ceiling, then back down to the floor. It was smooth, too, and dry. No dirt except where the miner had slung coal dust inside when it had broken through.

Alice stepped down into the tunnel. Ray and Loggins had gone to the right. She turned left. A quick look, then she’d jump back into the mine. Ray would never know.

One step, then another. Alice kept her light on the floor, afraid of tumbling off into a dark chasm. But the floor remained smooth until twenty paces in where the tunnel narrowed into a hole going down. She held onto the wall, shining her light down into the tunnel.

Smooth floor changed to rough stone. The steep tunnel would fit a grown man, but walking down it was unthinkable. Climbing would be more appropriate. And one slip would cause the climber to fall into who-knows-what. Alice shivered in the cool air coming up from the bottom. If there was a bottom.

Voices. Four beams of light bounced off the walls at the other end of the tunnel. Ray and Loggins were returning. Alice switched off her headlamp and allowed the lights shining from the mine to guide her back to the entrance. She slipped up into the mine just as she heard Ray say:

“Can’t believe it. Biggest dang cave I’ve ever seen.”

“You think it’s a cave, then?”

“What else would it be?”

They climbed back into the mine.

“What’d you find?” Alice asked.

Ray took a swig of water from his canteen, then another, which he spat out onto the floor. “Huge cave down the tunnel a ways. We’re gonna have to remap the whole mine.”

He stalked off toward the mine entrance.

Loggins regarded Alice with undisguised contempt. “Like I always said, nothing good ever come from having a woman in the mine,” he said quietly. Then he followed after Ray.

Alice turned to look one more time at the gaping hole in the coal, then hurried after them.

***

As soon as she got home that evening, Alice rushed out into the field to look at the damage Jimmy must have done. Up and down the field, stalks were broken and bent, like a giant had stomped them on his way down from the mountain. But the soil looked untouched, with no footprints scattered about. Jimmy had been wearing shoes the night before, she was pretty sure.

So maybe he hadn’t been in the cornfield, then.

What had?

Alice shivered despite the warmth of the evening. She showered and changed, but the thought of sitting alone and listening for the corn stalks to rustle again made her stomach do funny flips. So she put on her dress and walked down the lane in the twilight, taking her flashlight in case she was out longer than she meant to be.

Halfway to town, she saw Charlie walking her direction.

“Hey,” he called.

They met in the middle of the road. A barbed-wire fence lined one side where an old black cow grazed the weeds that grew around the posts. It raised its head to look at them, chewing the grass that hung out the corners of its mouth.

“I was coming to see if you wanted to go for a walk,” Charlie said, smiling. “Guess you did.”

His smile reached all the way to his eyes. Alice had always liked Charlie’s eyes—eyes that were blue as the summer sky. And with his easy smile and good manners, he looked so charming she almost forgot he’d spoken.

“You were?” she asked when she found her voice.

He put his hands in his pockets and shuffled a foot around on the asphalt, kicking a pebble into a pothole five feet away. “Yeah. You’ve been kind of scarce lately.”

“Oh.”

“That all you’re going to say? Aren’t we friends, Alice?”

“Yes, we’re friends.” Alice watched the cow instead of Charlie. It finished its mouthful, swallowed, then looked away to resume its dinner. Alice looked back at him.

“So are we gonna walk?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and offered her his arm.

Alice hesitated. He’d never done that before, even though they’d been on loads of walks together. Charlie sensed her indecision and his shoulders sagged, but he continued to hold his elbow out. He looked so sweet and courageous and handsome that Alice almost turned and ran back home. He was leaving, and he’d probably never come back. She wouldn’t if she was him.

But the last thing Alice wanted to do was disappoint Charlie, or ruin his last days in Springwater. So with warm cheeks, she took his arm, and they walked down the road toward town.

“Where are you going for Basic?” she asked.

“Fort Lee.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near Richmond. Close enough I can come home when I’m on leave.”

“Oh!”

“What?”

Maybe Alice would see him again after all. Then she stamped out the thought. He wouldn’t be back, no matter what he said. He’d find another life, one that didn’t include her. “Ummm . . . Nothing.”

Charlie shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. Then he stopped walking and turned to face her. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”

She shrugged and gave him a half-smile.

“I’m coming back,” he said with conviction. “How could I not come back?”

Alice wanted to believe him. Really she did. But she couldn’t see the point in pretending. “You ain’t comin’ back, Charlie. No one who leaves Springwater ever does. It’s not the kind of place you come back to.”

“I wouldn’t be coming back for Springwater,” he said, staring at her.

The words hung in the air between them. Alice’s stomach did a funny flip again, not unlike it did earlier when she was afraid of being alone. But she wasn’t afraid of Charlie; she was afraid of his leaving, no matter what he said.

“I better get home,” she said, smiling to hide her thoughts.

“Okay.”

He offered his arm again, and this time Alice took it without thinking. They walked back in silence. Charlie’s arm was comforting. Alice leaned into it, as if by keeping him close she’d always remember this quiet moment before he went away.

The road was dark by the time they returned to the top of her lane.

“You okay from here?” Charlie asked.

“I’m okay from anywhere.”

“What does that mean?”

She laughed. “Don’t know. Just popped into my mind, I guess.”

He laughed with her, then said, “I love that about you.”

Alice was glad for the darkness because she didn’t want him to see her blush this time. “Well, ’night,” she said.

She switched on her flashlight, turning to go down the lane.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yeah?”

Charlie took a deep breath.

Then let it out.

“Goodnight, Alice.”

Chapter 5

THE NEXT DAY, AFRAID OF losing any more time, the crew moved the miner to another section away from the hole. Company engineers came in to look at the new cave. Alice watched them walk in and out all day while she shoveled coal onto the conveyor.

She was working a little slower today, mainly because she kept replaying her conversation with Charlie in her head. He wants to come back. Whether he did or not, knowing Charlie planned on it was enough to make her stomach flip-flop again. With a grin, she decided it wasn’t a bad feeling.

Mid-morning, Alice propped her shovel against a wall and stretched, twisting in place to relieve her aching back. After two months of working in the mine, she’d hoped she’d feel less pain as she got stronger. But ten weeks later, the backaches and sore muscles started about nine in the morning and usually continued until well into the night. Alice would go to sleep sore and wake up stiff. Moving around in the mornings helped, but the relief was always temporary, the pain returning after a few hours’ work.

“Havin’ a tough time, Alice?”

The man’s voice made Alice jump for her shovel. Expecting a tongue-lashing for taking a break, she cringed and looked around. A sheriff’s deputy, Marvin Coolidge, stood next to the pillar behind her. She hadn’t heard his approach over the sound of the conveyor.

Alice swallowed hard. Had he come to take her out of the mine? Had someone finally complained to the sheriff? Working here wasn’t illegal. Lying on her work forms was. Had the company finally caught on that her name wasn’t “Al?”

“I’m doin’ alright, Mr. Coolidge.” Alice squirmed under his gaze. She shouldn’t be worried. The deputy had known her father after all. But then, her father had known everybody in Springwater. “Can . . . can I help you, deputy?”

Coolidge pushed his broad-brimmed hat back from his face. His graying hair peeked out beneath it. “Was hoping you could help me. Jimmy’s missing.”

“I know. Hasn’t shown up for work in two days.”

“Know anything about that?”

“No, sir. Why would I?”

Coolidge ignored her question and looked down at her shovel. “This is man’s work, Alice. Your father’d die all over again if he saw his baby girl working down here, covered in coal dust and looking like one of the boys.”

Alice took a deep breath. Coolidge had no idea what her Daddy would’ve thought. She thought about hitting him with her shovel, too. But he wasn’t Jimmy. Instead, she looked at her feet so he wouldn’t see the anger in her eyes.

Coolidge took the gesture as a sign of agreement. “Get out of here, get you a woman’s job.”

And he stalked off.

Throughout the day, the deputy questioned the entire crew about Jimmy. No one had seen him after he’d been drinking with all of them at the bar two nights ago. Jimmy’s mother had fixed him dinner, then he went for a walk and hadn’t come back.

Far as Alice knew, she and Ray were the last people to see Jimmy that night. Had Ray told that to the deputy? She wanted to ask Ray about it, but he was busy all day, more so than usual. His eyebrows stayed knitted together in a permanent frown. Still, she watched him, waiting for the right moment.

At quitting time, she found her chance.

“Mr. Loggins, you seen Ray?” she asked as he passed her.

Loggins jerked his head back down the mine, in the direction of the new hole. The engineers had been there all day, with nothing to report. They’d left a few minutes earlier, saying they had some calls to make to Charleston.

Alice passed one of the men on her way to the hole. He scowled at her, so she didn’t ask him about Ray. It didn’t matter anyway, she knew where he’d be.

Without the continuous miner in front of it to dwarf it, the hole looked much bigger than it had the day before. She searched the rooms to the side, walking between a few pillars, keeping the bigger room within sight.

“Ray?”

The question bounced off the walls. In the distance, she heard the sound of the conveyor being stopped, then started again as the next shift started.

“Ray!”

***

Through a haze of pain, Ray heard someone calling his name. He struggled to open his eyes. His head hurt, and he was lying on cold stone. Where though? The complete darkness around him gave him no sense of place. He tried to think, to remember.

“Ray?”

Alice. Why was she down here? Why was he down here?

He’d come back to the hole to do something. Was it important? Ray couldn’t remember. He put his hand to his head. It came away wet; he was bleeding. All he remembered was stepping down into the new tunnel. Then . . .

Pain. Something had hit him across the head.

***

Alice peeked into the hole, shining her light toward both ends of the tunnel. Nothing. The engineers had left some tall electric lights on the floor, but they were already turned off for the evening.

The room felt empty, lonely, even, without the mining machine. Alice turned to leave, but her light caught the reflection of something just inside the tunnel, near a wall. She jumped down to investigate.

It was a hardhat. The top was cracked, the lamp smashed. Had there been an accident she hadn’t heard about? She turned it around in her own light, trying to determine who it belonged to. But it could be anybody’s hat—they were all the same.

“Ray? Hello?”

A stirring of the air. Alice listened, her ears straining. She turned to look behind her. The air could have come from anywhere, she told herself. The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. Like she was being watched.

***

Ray’s right leg felt like it was caught in a huge pair of pliers. And the pliers were pulling him, dragging him. To where, he didn’t know.

“Ray!”

“I’m here!” His voice sounded muffled, strange. He kicked at the pliers with his free leg. But this only caused his left leg to be pinned to his right. He was being dragged faster now, across a smooth stone floor. He flattened his palms on the floor, trying to stop himself from being pulled farther into the darkness. But he couldn’t get a grip on anything. He clawed the stone, pawing at it, gritting his teeth as a nail gave way.

“Ray?” Alice’s voice was farther away now, almost gone.

“No!” he said. His cry was soundless, useless. “Let go of me!” He struggled some more, twisting his body off the ground in desperation.

In answer, the pliers picked him up and slammed him back to the ground. His leg snapped.

Ray hollered. Pinpricks of light ran through his vision. But they must have been in his mind because the blackness around him was complete.

With his last conscious breath, he prayed to God that Alice didn’t come down the tunnel.

***

“Hey!” Alice called. “You don’t scare me, whoever you are!”

That’s silly, she thought. No one’s here. The wind could have come from anywhere.

If she hadn’t needed to talk to Ray, she might have taken the opportunity to go see the cave everybody was talking about. Instead, she climbed back into the mine, taking the hat with her. Ray must have already walked out, or he would have answered her. She just missed him somewhere, is all.

With the hat in her hand, she walked toward the entrance herself, turning to look one last time at the hole. Why she was drawn to it, she didn’t know. It reminded her of Daddy, maybe. After he’d died, the hole he’d left behind had been meaningless and empty and endless. Alice shook off her thoughts and kept walking.

At the entrance, she blinked in the fading sun and went to gather with the other crew members at the trailer that served as a mine office. She unhooked her tag from her work shirt and turned it in, her eyes automatically sweeping over the tag board. All of them were accounted for, except Ray’s.

“Hey,” she called to Loggins. “Ray didn’t turn in his tag.”

“That’s because he ain’t back yet.” Loggins muttered something else under his breath that Alice didn’t quite catch.

“No, I was just at the hole. He’s not there.”

He sighed with a huge shrug of his shoulders. “Well then, he’s checking the ventilation shafts or somethin’. If you were a real miner, you’d have thought of that.”

Refusing to be cowed, Alice held out the hat she’d found. “This was at the hole. Know who it belongs to?”

Loggins took it from her, turning it over. He frowned. “Must’ve been one of the engineers—threw it against the wall or something. They were pretty upset today.”

He tossed it on the ground and walked away.

Alice went into the office and poured herself a cup of sludgy coffee from the bottom of the carafe. She should go ahead and make more. That was the rule: you drink the last cup, you make more. But she was unwilling for the crew to see her doing something as feminine as making or serving anybody coffee. She didn’t need to remind them she was a woman, that she didn’t belong.

When she walked out, Loggins was on his way in. He glared at Alice, like her standing there offended him. So she left the trailer for the bus.

No one was on it yet. The boys were still milling around. A few followed Loggins into the trailer. He wasn’t being too quiet about the “bad luck” they’d had this week and who he thought was responsible. The other boys openly stared at Alice sitting on the bus. Like Loggins, they probably thought everything was her fault.

Alice chugged down her coffee and climbed off the bus. Loggins came out of the office and spotted her. He moved over to stand between her and the trailer.

“You stay in there,” he said. “Ray’ll be out any second and then we’re gettin’ gone. I’m not waitin’ on you, too.”

“Are you gonna go check on him, then?”

“I already told ya—he’s just doing some last minute checks.” Loggins turned and walked away.

Ignoring his command to get on the bus, Alice went over to sit on a tree stump away from the trailer where the air was cooler. Five minutes later, she saw Loggins grab his tag, put his hat back on, and stroll back into the mine.

An hour later he hadn’t returned. Some of the boys were fidgeting. A few had got on the bus, waited a while, and then got back off. Two more went in to get Ray and Loggins.

“Who didn’t make more coffee?” someone yelled from inside the trailer.

The sun set behind the mountains; the air cooled. Dirt and sweat caked together on Alice’s body so that when she moved, she felt it cracking along her cheeks.

After another thirty minutes, concern grew to alarm—no one could find Ray or Loggins. Alice stood, her stomach trying to escape her body through her throat. Just like Daddy. No, she wouldn’t think like that. It wouldn’t do any good. She paced a while, wearing a path between the trailer and her stump. Everyone ignored her.

Just as second shift was getting involved in the search, Loggins stalked out of the mine. A group gathered around him. Alice walked over to listen, stopping behind the others so no one would notice her.

“Not yet,” Loggins was saying. “We need to organize into teams.” He began barking out orders. The men scattered, hurrying to find their hats and tags.

Alice joined them at the tag board.

Loggins spotted her. He grabbed her wrist when she reached for her tag, his hand covering half her forearm. “Stay out of it,” he said.

Alice blinked. “My uncle’s in there.”

Loggins tightened his grip.

Alice gasped at the sudden pain. “You’re hurtin’ me.”

“You’ve already caused enough trouble. Those boys don’t need you in there, jinxing them, too. You go in there, and I’ll make sure you don’t come back out.”

Loggins let go, pushing her against the trailer.

“Now get on that bus, an’ don’t get off until I tell you, ya hear?”

She nodded, hatred burning through her for the second time that day. But she was no match for Loggins. And he’d probably meant what he said.

Chapter 6

JIMMY GROPED HIS WAY THROUGH the dark trees, too blind to run, too scared to walk. Branches and vines grabbed at his flesh, tearing his skin so that little beads of blood ran down his body. He stumbled and fell face first into the undergrowth.

He had to get up. To warn them. The monster—no, the demon—was after him. All of them. When he pushed off the ground, wet soil and leaves clung to him.

His belly burned, like he’d swallowed a pint of acid. It bubbled up through his throat and he vomited all over himself. It mixed with the dirt on the front of his chest, creating a kind of black ooze. Jimmy ignored it and stood. No rest for the weary. That’s what his mama always said. She was looking for him—she’d called Jimmy’s name, woken him from his dream. And when he’d opened his eyes . . .

Flashes of gold burned across his mind, and he shouted in fear. Keep going, don’t look back. For it would be there, that thing he’d left behind. He’d always been told that demons were red. But maybe that wasn’t right. He hadn’t gone to church much. He wished now he had.

He saw the lights of the mine. The cars. Many cars, more than usual. They had to get out. Get out, get out, get out.

“Get away from me!” he shouted over his shoulder.

Jimmy stumbled for the bus, his muddled mind thinking to blow the horn. That would get their attention. And then they would all get on the bus and Jimmy would drive them away.

They couldn’t go to Springwater. No, had to be farther away than that. His belly burned now like it was on fire. Maybe he’d let somebody else drive.

The bus was close. They had to all get out of here, away from the mine. Away from the demon.

***

Overnight, more people had arrived to help search for Ray. Their headlights bounced along the gravel road leading to the mine. Most of them were from Springwater, but a few had come from neighboring towns and farms. Men went in with flashlights. Women stood outside, fetching water and coffee for the rescue parties.

Alice watched them all from the bus. Most of all, she watched Loggins. He had become the unofficial search director, yelling at people who were coming in and out, consulting the maps, and generally keeping people in line. He hated Alice, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from finding Ray.

Finally, Loggins left the trailer to supervise a search party of his own. Alice stood to watch him grab a hat and march into the mine. The bus was parked at the edge of the gravel, its door facing the trees. She’d just put her foot on the first step when a tall, skinny shadow ran past the bus.

The presence there startled her, and she jumped down the last two steps to see who it was. But this side of the bus was too dark to see anything clearly. She groped her way around the front until the lights from the camp lit her way.

Alice avoided the crowded office. No point in trying to get a hard hat, anyway—the pegs were empty. She skirted the crowd, keeping herself out of the light as much as possible. She’d just decided to dash for the mine when a loud shrieking caused her to turn back toward the office. The crowd muttered. A few people gasped. The shrieking turned into crying. More voices raised in alarm.

“NO! No no no no! Tell them to get out!”

The crowd parted, and a young man ran through to the entrance. The spotty lighting and crush of people prevented Alice from seeing exactly who it was. She caught glimpses of a naked body, covered only by some dirty underwear. Mud and leaves clung to him, like he’d been rolling around in a creek. Something foamy coated his chest.

“Grab him!” someone shouted. A man jumped in front of the stranger, blocking his way into the mine.

The man shrieked again, a long note that ended in a high-pitched squeal.

Alice peered closer. Jimmy?

Yes, she could tell now that people moved out of his path.

Jimmy saw her, his eyes locking onto hers. He ran straight for Alice. But the man blocking the entrance leaped for him, tackling him and holding him to the ground.

Everyone was talking. No one was being heard. Jimmy burst into sobs. “No, they can’t.”

The crowd stopped talking, pressing closer to hear.

“Get away from me, demon!” Jimmy screamed and struggled against the man holding him down. “Tell them they CAN’T!”

“What can’t, son?” asked the man pinning him down.

Jimmy spotted Alice again. His eyes grew wide with fear. “Demon!” he screamed.

Several people stole glances at Alice. Then Jimmy began writhing, his body convulsing so violently he threw off his warden. Alice watched in horror as he began foaming at the mouth.

“He’s possessed,” someone said.

The man pinning Jimmy down recoiled and let go. “Get the reverend,” he said.

With no one holding him, Jimmy flopped around even more. His screams had stopped, but his body looked like it was trying to fight itself. After a moment where everyone stood looking stunned, Deputy Coolidge hurried forward to hold Jimmy down again.

“He’s not possessed!” he said. “He’s having a seizure—a fit. Help me turn him over.”

After they got him on his back, Jimmy’s seizing changed. The difference was hard to tell at first, then he noticeably calmed. He panted, his eyes closed. Finally, his limbs stopped twitching. Then he sobbed again.

With the show over, the crowd relaxed. More talking, muttering.

“Never seen anything like it.”

“I still say we need the reverend.”

“Doc’ll know what to do.”

“Where is Dr. Satchel, anyway? Thought he’d be here.”

“He went home for a while,” Coolidge said. “I’ll take him over.”

Alice lost track of everyone who was speaking. She couldn’t see Jimmy anymore because of the people. No one was looking—now was her chance to get into the mine. But she was riveted to the scene before her.

Some searchers came out of the mine, drawn by the noise outside. Jimmy saw them exit. “You’ve gotta get out of there!” he yelled.

Then he shrieked like before.

“It’s starting again!” Coolidge shouted. “Get back.”

This time the shaking was worse. His entire body flopped around in the dirt, even with Coolidge using all of his weight to hold him down. Alice was reminded of a large trout she’d once caught that had tried to escape back into Springwater Creek. But it hadn’t foamed at the mouth, like Jimmy was doing.

The young man choked, air whistling out of his mouth. Afraid of doing more harm than good, Coolidge let go of Jimmy. Once Jimmy was free, his body went still.

No one moved.

The crowd held its breath while Deputy Coolidge checked for a pulse. After a minute of terrible silence, he shook his head.

Jimmy Mans was dead.

Chapter 7

A WOMAN GASPED. SOMEONE STARTED crying. Alice was numb, like she’d stood outside too long in the snow. Jimmy was dead?

Where had he been? Where were his clothes?

More men came out of the mine, including Loggins. They stopped when they sensed the stillness among the camp. A few quick questions, a glance at the body, and they understood.

Loggins spotted Alice near the mine, and his face contorted with rage. “YOU!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he advanced on Alice, who was still standing to the side of the mine.

She shrank back until her body touched rock. “I didn’t do nothing!” She yelled, looking around for someone to help her. For someone with some sense. No one moved. Maybe they were shocked, or afraid, or believed she deserved it. “I don’t know what happened to Jimmy!”

Loggins grabbed her arm and swung her around. He smelled of coal dust and sweat.

“Now just a minute, Loggins,” said Coolidge. “You can’t go grabbing the girl. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“She’s jinxed the entire place! First Joe, then Ray, now Jimmy!”

Alice’s heart pounded. “You—you found Ray?”

“No,” he spat. “And we won’t find him as long as you’re here.”

“Well, if you haven’t found him, keep searching, man!” Coolidge stalked over to Loggins, his hand stretched out toward Alice. “I’ll take the girl.”

“NO! I want to stay!”

“I can arrange that!” Loggins sneered. He twisted Alice’s arm. She glared at him, refusing to let him see he was hurting her.

“Take your hand off that girl, Loggins.” Despite the ring of authority in his voice, Coolidge was no match for the bigger man. Perhaps that’s why his hand went to his gun and rested there.

Loggins turned and spit in Alice’s face. Then he let go. A few bystanders muttered their disapproval, but no one moved to help Alice. She wiped off the spittle with her sleeve and scooted over to stand beside Coolidge.

“Go get in my car,” he told her.

Alice didn’t want to go.

“You hear me?” Coolidge asked, although he didn’t take his eyes off Loggins.

Alice turned and trudged over to the deputy’s car, parked just behind the bus. She climbed in the back seat and slammed the door.

***

Alice sat for hours. The windows were rolled down, so she heard most of what was happening. The mood in the camp shifted from panic to hopelessness. Jimmy was dead, and they still hadn’t found Ray. Loggins had glared at Coolidge a while longer then stomped off again into the mine.

Now and then, someone would walk by the car and peer at Alice through the back window like she was an animal in a zoo. An ambulance came and took Jimmy’s body away. Somebody mentioned an autopsy.

Alice’s gut flipped over and over inside her. One minute she wanted someone friendly like Charlie to wait with her. The next, she wanted to get out and run away, to  be anywhere but here.

What if Ray wasn’t in the mine? What if he had fallen down that new tunnel? Of course they would look for him there, wouldn’t they? Loggins knew about it; the engineers had been in there all day. How many others had gone in there today just to get a look? The search parties would have checked that first.

She wanted to ask them. No, she didn’t want to ask, but she thought she should ask, just to make sure they weren’t missing anything.

The driver’s door opened, and Coolidge slid into the front seat. He fiddled around with the keys a minute, avoiding looking back at her. Finally, he settled for catching her eye in the rearview mirror. All she could see were his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

“You understand why you’re sitting here, don’t you, Alice?”

“Yes, Mr. Coolidge.”

“You were the last person Jimmy called by name,” he said, as if she hadn’t just agreed. “People were scared and worried and then he just popped out of the trees screaming . . . Well, everyone’s pretty upset.”

Alice was pretty upset. Somehow no one had thought to ask her how she was feeling through all this. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to take you home, and you’re going to stay there.”

“I don’t want to see Nancy.”

“She’s not there. Took the kids to wait at the Satchel’s place.”

“Mr. Coolidge . . . has anyone looked inside the new hole? That’s where I found that broken hard hat.”

“I’m sure they’re looking everywhere, Alice. Don’t worry, they’ll find him.” He spoke like he knew it was something he should say, not because he believed it. “What do you think happened to Jimmy?”

Alice shrugged.

“Anything I need to know?” He turned now, finally looking her in the eye without the help of the mirror.

She considered telling him about her trouble with Jimmy and the other men, about her scare outside her house two nights ago, about Ray’s scuffle with Jimmy the night before the younger man went missing. But if—when—they found Ray, she didn’t want him to get in trouble. They might somehow try to blame him for Jimmy’s death.

“No, Mr. Coolidge, there’s nothing.”

The deputy stared at Alice as if trying to catch her in her lie. But after a minute, he grunted before turning in his seat and starting the car. The Ford rumbled to life. He put it in gear and eased out away from camp.

To Alice, the ride around the mountain was familiar. Yet nothing looked right. The trees were darker, the road more narrow. The deputy’s car bounced along the gravel, skidding here and there. Each time Alice grabbed the door handle and held on so she wouldn’t slide across the shiny seat.

“Why was Loggins so mad at me?” she asked once they hit the main road into town.

“I told you before—men don’t like to see a woman do their job.”

“Even if that woman needs to feed herself and keep a roof over her head?”

“It’s not that simple, Alice. You could do something else. Get married, work for Mr. Mercer. I know he said he’d hire you.”

“But he won’t pay me nothing.”

“He’ll pay you enough.”

“I don’t want to work for Mr. Mercer. I want to be a coal miner like my daddy.”

“No, you don’t, Alice, that’s just your grief talking. You miss him, so you think you’ll bring back some part of him by continuing his work. But it ain’t right nor proper to take jobs away from men who have families to support. And it’s just plain bad luck to have a woman in the mine. Everybody knows that.”

Alice didn’t know that. She hadn’t caused any accidents or failed to do her work in any way. In fact, Ray had once told her she caused him less trouble than all the other men put together. Maybe he was just being kind.

But she didn’t see how wanting to work in the mine was part of her grief. If anything, common sense said she’d stay away from the place that had killed her daddy.

When they pulled up to the Peters’ property, Coolidge ignored the main house and drove down Alice’s lane. He parked out front with the headlights shining on the door.

“You ain’t to leave, hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does your door have a lock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, make sure it’s bolted. Me or the Sheriff or Mrs. Satchel will come check on you in the morning.”

“What about Uncle Ray?”

“They’re doing all they can. You just worry about Alice.”

“I mean, will someone come tell me . . . if . . .?”

“Oh.” For the first time, Coolidge looked sorry for Alice. “We’ll keep you updated.”

Alice got out of the car and closed the door. She didn’t look at the deputy again before going in the house. After she locked her door, she heard the Ford rumble back up the gravel lane and onto the road.

Whatever he said, Alice wasn’t going to stop worrying about Ray. Her stomach rumbled. She’d last eaten at lunch. A glance at her tiny alarm clock told her that meal was yesterday. The sun would be up in an hour.

She pulled a slice of stale bread from its bag and ate it dry. It stuck to her throat and scraped the inside of her chest after she swallowed. After two more awkward bites, she gave up and went to shower.

Unable to rest after, she began working on her house. Picking up and organizing her tiny space took five minutes. Then she filled a bucket with cold water, soaped it up, and threw in an old towel. Her wet hair dripped water onto the floor as she scrubbed on her hands and knees. She put all her energy into the floor, working until her rag wore a hole in it, until the smell of soap stung her eyes and nose.

Pink light diffused through the window. Still Alice scrubbed. If she’d got lost, Ray would be down in the mine looking for her, not washing the kitchen floor. She cried, despising herself for not being able to do more, for obeying Mr. Coolidge and staying put, for Jimmy, for Daddy, for herself. When she was done, she sank down on the spotless floor, leaving her rag to puddle near her feet.

The light outside grew until a square of sunlight lit up the papered wall opposite the window. Alice watched it move slowly downward on the wall and over the stove. It angered her, somehow, that the sun could still shine when a man was stuck down in the mine where he couldn’t see it.

She had just decided to move, to do something about it, when someone rapped on the door. Alice started, then felt foolish. The deputy had said someone would check on her today. But she hadn’t heard a car.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“It’s me, Charlie. You okay, Alice?”

Chapter 8

“JUST HEARD,” CHARLIE SAID WHEN she opened the door. He was out of breath. “I went down . . . to Charleston yesterday . . . for my mother. Came back this morning.” Charlie took a big gulp of air. “I didn’t know about Ray or Jimmy until I saw Nancy sitting in our living room . . .” His voice trailed off when he finally took in her appearance.

Alice probably looked a mess with a tattered robe thrown over her nightgown, her uncombed hair falling down around her shoulders, her eyes puffy from crying. She shook her head at Charlie. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

“Oh.” Charlie half-reached his arm out to her, stopped, then dropped it back. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”

Alice nodded.

“I’m surprised you’re here, actually. Thought maybe you’d be up at the mine.”

“They kicked me out.”

“What?”

Alice filled Charlie in on everything from the night before. When she finished, he stood with his mouth open.

His face reddened in indignation. “They can’t do that to you! He’s your uncle!”

Alice’s heart swelled at Charlie’s show of feeling, the warmth spreading from her chest to her cheeks.

Charlie didn’t seem to notice. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t think there’s nothin’ to do. You didn’t hear anything new this morning? About Ray?”

“No. No one’s been to the house since the deputy left.”

“There’s a new cave in the mountain,” Alice said. She’d been thinking about it without realizing why. But she’d been upset by Ray’s disappearance, then Jimmy’s death, too distracted to think it through. Suddenly, the pieces fit. “They found it two days ago. And ever since then everything’s been going wrong. Jimmy, the field, Ray.”

“What happened in the field?”

“Nothing. Something. I don’t know.”

“What does it have to do with Ray?”

“Loggins said it’s because I’ve jinxed the mine.” Alice mumbled to her feet, waiting for Charlie’s reaction. Would he believe them?

Charlie swore. “I’ll smash his nose,” he sputtered out.

“Don’t you go pickin’ a fight with him, Charlie Satchel! It’ll just get you hurt.”

“I’m not afraid of getting hurt.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I’ll go with you, then.”

“Go with me—to the mine? They won’t let me in it.”

“They will if they don’t know you’re there. Get dressed.” He took a step back, clearly waiting for Alice to go inside and put her work clothes on.

He was crazy. They couldn’t sneak inside the mine in broad daylight. She could barely get to the entrance last night in the dark. Then she again wondered if the rescuers had tried to go down into the tunnel. Maybe just a peek to see. They might be going down there now. She could check and then leave again.

If not, Alice could go down there. She would need rope . . .

Charlie was looking down at his precisely ironed button-down shirt and black pants. “Do you have an extra set of work clothes?”

Alice laughed. He was at least a foot taller than she. “You couldn’t fit in them!”

A car on the road stopped them mid-conversation. Down the lane, the deputy’s car crunched onto the gravel as it made for Alice’s house.

“What’s he doing here?” Charlie asked.

Alice gasped. “I forgot! He was going to check on me. He can’t see you here or he’ll wonder what we’re doing.”

Charlie hopped up onto the top step and went inside. Alice’s stomach did another little flip-flop as she closed the door—she’d never been alone in her own place with a boy. She turned the lock and looked over at him standing near the wall next to the door. With dark stubble on his chin and his broad shoulders, Charlie no longer looked like the boy she’d grown up with.

But Alice already knew this. She waited at the door, listening to the car come down the lane. The deputy left it running as he got out and walked up the steps. He knocked.

“Alice? You awake?”

She stepped back from the door, then called back, “Just a minute.”

Charlie pressed himself to the wall. Alice made sure he was settled then opened the door and stood in it. “Any news, Mr. Coolidge?”

Coolidge looked grim. His face was white, the bags under his eyes more pronounced than ever. “Get dressed, Alice, I need you to come with me.”

Alice frowned. “Why? What happened? Did you find Ray?”

The deputy shook his head. “They’re still looking. The sheriff wants to see you in town.”

“Why?” she insisted.

“Loggins dropped by this morning. We have some questions for you about Jimmy.”

Alice’s face paled. “And what did he say?”

“Afraid I can’t tell you that. All we want to do is talk to you. Mrs. Satchel said she’d come down and be there with you, if you want. We just have to ring her.”

If they were calling someone else to be with her, it must be bad. What had Loggins said?

“Haven’t got all day, Alice, get dressed quick, and come on out.”

She nodded, her mind racing. After she closed the door, Charlie hissed. “They’re up to something.”

“Like what?” she whispered. Alice still hadn’t told him about Jimmy turning up at her house, and she wasn’t going to. Jimmy was dead. Making Charlie mad at a dead man wasn’t right. And it didn’t matter anyway, did it?

“Hurry up, girl!” Coolidge called from outside.

Alice jumped. She’d forgotten she was supposed to be getting dressed. She looked at Charlie, but he was already moving to the window. He eased it open, then stuck a foot through and slid out onto the ground.

Alice grabbed her one dress from its hook and went into the bathroom. She’d just removed her clothes when Coolidge knocked on the door again.

“I’m almost ready, Mr. Coolidge!” she called.

“Alice!” Charlie’s voice said. He sounded panicked. What was he doing at the door with Coolidge?

Alice pulled her dress over her head and walked out of the bathroom with a growing sense of foreboding. When she cracked open the door, she saw Coolidge splayed out on the ground, his eyes closed. Charlie was standing over him with a piece of firewood in his hand.

Chapter 9

ALICE PUT A HAND TO her mouth to hide her gasp.

“What have you done?” she whispered. “Is he—?”

“He’s knocked out. Put on your work clothes. We have to get out of here.”

“Charlie—”

“It’s done. Now hurry!”

Alice closed the door and changed into a clean set of mining overalls. They still smelled of coal dust, but she was so used to it she never noticed anymore. She pulled on her boots without lacing them, then walked out.

“Psst! Alice! Over here.”

Charlie had dragged Coolidge over to the side of the house and propped him into a sitting position. When he was satisfied no one would see the deputy from the road, he took Coolidge’s gun and hat.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he said when he came back to the front of the house. “You couldn’t have gone into town with him.”

All of Alice’s emotions bubbled to the surface. Charlie was supposed to be on her side, but he was just another person trying to order her around. “And who are you to tell me what to do?”

Charlie leaned in close. “Look, I saw Jimmy, alright? The night he disappeared. I think I was the last one to see him.”

“What time?”

“After he showed up at your place. I saw what happened with Ray and Jimmy. Saw the whole thing.”

“Why were you here?”

“Because, I . . . I followed Jimmy down here. I saw him walking out of town and wondered what he was doing. Before you came outside, Jimmy said something to Ray. It’s what made him grab Jimmy’s hair.”

“What’d he say?”

“I couldn’t hear all of it, but he said something about Loggins was going to put people in their place. Make sure they learned a lesson while he was at it. And now he’s down at the station saying stuff about you? After what happened last night, don’t you think that’s odd?”

Ray hadn’t told Alice anything about a conversation with Jimmy that night. That’s why he told me to be careful.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“I didn’t know Jimmy was missing. And I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

Alice held her breath. “What?”

“Now’s not really the time.” Charlie grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

He pulled her to the Ford and opened the passenger side door for her. Feeling she was in too deep to protest, Alice got in. Charlie slid in the driver’s seat and backed out down the lane.

Once they were on the road, he said, “I’ve heard some things about Loggins, from my father. Dad’s treated Mrs. Loggins multiple times for injuries she always claimed were accidents. But they obviously weren’t, not unless she’s the clumsiest woman this side of Appalachia.”

Alice was lacing her boots, glad to have a distraction from what he’d just said.  She finished her laces then moved on to rolling up her pant cuffs. When she finished, she sat up and watched the trees roll by.

“We’re going to be in trouble about the deputy,” she said after a bit.

“Not we. Me.” He put on the deputy’s hat.

“But what are we going to do?”

Charlie’s mouth set into a thin line. After a minute, he said, “Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

They drove through the valley and to the mining road. Charlie had never worked in the mine, but he knew the way. Everyone in town did. When they passed another car, he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Alice ducked down out of sight, her head resting on the gun in the seat between them.

Once they crossed the train tracks, Charlie pulled the car off to the side of the road. They got out and cut through the trees on foot. The elevation didn’t change much from there to the mine, but the vegetation slowed them down. Soon they were sweating in the hot, sticky air. Charlie’s shirt was soaked.

Once there, they hid behind the empty bus, watching the crowd. “There’s not as many people this morning,” Alice said. “Are they giving up?”

“Nah. Not this soon.”

They walked around the outside of the camp, following the path Alice had used the night before. At the last big tree, they paused. The space directly in front of the mine was clear. They’d have to make a run for it as soon as no one was looking.

They waited several minutes. Alice recognized a few people milling around the trailer, but they were all preoccupied with maps or food or coffee. Finally, she gave Charlie a thumbs up. They walked quickly toward the mine, attempting to be quiet. When they entered the mine and scooted up against the wall, Alice turned to look. No one had seen them. She couldn’t believe their luck.

A long length of rope was coiled on a hook beside them. She took it and slung it around her body.

“This way,” she whispered.

The electric lights led them along the conveyor. They paused every few minutes to listen for the rescue parties. But the chambers close to the entrance must have been cleared first because they didn’t hear anything. At the end of the lights, Alice grabbed her flashlight from her belt and switched it on.

“Ready?” she asked.

Charlie nodded. He walked beside her as they stepped off the manway into the tunnel. The area was dark except for Alice’s flashlight. A few times they heard men talking and shouting Ray’s name. But the voices were only echoing back to them from other parts.

Finally, they reached the hole. It looked more sinister now without lights around it—more like a sideways mouth than just another tunnel entrance.

“You think he went in there?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know. But he was pretty upset about it all day. Kept going in with the engineers.”

“And you don’t think they checked it already?”

“I don’t know. No one will tell me anything.”

Charlie sighed deeply.

“You okay?” Alice asked, remembering he’d never been in the mine very much.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

They stepped down into the tunnel. Immediately, a cold blast of air hit their faces. Alice shivered. The lights the engineers had used the day before were still there.

“Could we turn those on?” Charlie asked.

“Stay put.” Alice turned and went back out of the hole. She found the switch for the lights and pulled it down. Nothing happened. They’d cut off power to them.

She hurried back to Charlie. New sweat was dripping down his face despite the chill in the air. “I don’t like the dark, I don’t think,” he said, smiling. “Which way?”

Alice turned left for the tunnel. “We have to check down here.”

Its slope was too steep for walking. She lifted the rope off her shoulder.

“No way am I going to lower you down there by yourself!”

“Well I can’t lower you down there. You’re too big.”

“No, Alice, there has to be a better way.”

“What if he’s down there, Charlie? What if he’s hurt?” She pointed down the tunnel with her light.

“I didn’t realize . . .” He licked his lips.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll climb down.” She turned to put her feet in backward, looking for footholds.

“Wait,” Charlie said. He grabbed the rope and tied it around her waist. “One tug to stop. Two quick tugs if you need me to pull you up for any reason, okay?”

Alice nodded and checked the knot. Then she lowered herself backward into the hole. Charlie kept the rope taut while she used her feet to steady herself against the wall. Then he began letting it slowly out. She pointed the beam of light downward, leaving him the dark. She wished they’d planned this better and brought more lights.

She descended for several minutes, seeing only the rough rock beneath her feet, hearing only the scrape of her boots on the Earth and her own breathing.

After what felt like hours, Alice saw a stone bottom. She tugged once on the rope and it stopped. She maneuvered the light around a bit, but still couldn’t tell if it was really the bottom or just a shelf. So she gave the rope another tug.

Nothing happened. Alice hit the rope with her fist, sending a vibration along it to the top. Finally, Charlie started lowering her once again, faster this time.

Too fast—she couldn’t keep her feet planted on the wall. Then the rope loosened altogether, letting Alice fall backward. She let out a startled cry as she anticipated the rock below rising up to meet her.

The landing forced the air out of Alice’s lungs. For a moment, she lay on her back, trying to find her breath. Something heavy was slapping her repeatedly on the chest. She groped for it and realized it was the coils of rope falling down the tunnel.

Charlie had let go.

***

Something had seized Charlie around the chest. His ribs hurt, and he couldn’t suck in any oxygen. He remembered the darkness, the spot of light below that was Alice’s flashlight, a disturbance of the air, like something was behind him, and then . . .

Alice!

As he lay suffocating on the stone floor, Charlie thought that this wasn’t how this day was supposed to go. He had been going to help Alice find Ray, then propose to her. He’d loved her ever since they were kids. He just didn’t know how to say it. He needed to say it.

But he’d let her go. Why had he let her go down there at all? Why had he let go of the rope?

Charlie’s ears rang. His body contorted in an effort to gasp the air. He didn’t know what was happening. Why had he let go of the rope? Tears of pain and guilt spilled out of his eyes. Stars hovered in front of him. He was going to die like this. And Alice was going to die lost down below. Maybe she was already dead from the fall.

Suddenly, the pressure on Charlie’s chest lifted. Oxygen returned and his lungs expanded to let in the air. He gasped and choked, then cried fresh tears of relief. He wasn’t going to die after all.

Alice.

He crawled over to the tunnel and peered down. His heart beat wildly in panic. What if he couldn’t see her?

No, there—a light. It had moved.

She was alive. Charlie wanted to laugh, to holler, to celebrate. But his voice wasn’t working correctly just yet. “Alice,” he managed after a minute. He watched the light sweep around—a tiny pinprick, really, nothing more. Then it disappeared.

“Alice!”

***

Alice turned. Had she heard Charlie? She walked back to peer up the tunnel she’d just come down. “Charlie? What happened?”

She heard shouting on his end, traveling back down to her, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was up there in the dark, unable to move without getting lost. Alice had the light, but also the rope. They were both stuck. “Just stay there and yell for somebody!” she shouted.

More shouting. Alice refused to think about how she was going to get back up there, not yet. But she was encouraged that Ray’s body was not lying at the bottom. Did that mean he’d come down here, then moved on? Or did it mean he’d never come down here at all?

A chill passed over Alice’s body—the result of cold air on sweaty skin. She shivered and shone the light around again, thankful she’d had the good sense to keep a grip on it as she fell.

She was standing in another tunnel, bigger than the one she’d come down, smaller than the one above. Unlike the tunnel above, this one didn’t have arching, smooth walls. In fact, this one looked most like a cave, with jagged walls and sharp rocks.

And it stretched on ahead of her. Alice knew she’d follow this tunnel. She told herself it was because Ray could have stumbled through here in the dark, become disoriented, couldn’t find his way back. But it was more than that. She had a deep-rooted desire to find out where the tunnel led. And she couldn’t explain it. She didn’t want to.

Charlie shouted something else from up top. He sounded panicked. But Alice couldn’t do anything about him right now. So she moved forward, one foot in front of the other, checking for adjoining passages to the left or right. But there were none. After a while, the tunnel sloped downward. Charlie had stopped shouting. Either that, or she had moved out of ear-shot.

A twinge of guilt ran through her. Charlie wasn’t a miner. He wouldn’t know what to do in the complete darkness. What if he tried to get out without a light? He’d be lost like Ray.

The thought brought Alice to her senses. Would she risk losing Charlie while she looked for Ray? And if Charlie wandered off and got lost, no one would know she was down here. She halted, her desire for knowledge battling with her instinct for survival.

Just a few more minutes; Ray could be close.

“Ray?” she called. She moved forward again. Her light caught something in the ceiling and she turned it upward to look. A mark of some kind. Had Ray found a way to write on the ceiling, to let people know where he was? She hurried forward to look closer.

But it was like no mark Alice had ever seen. It was a circle, carved deep into the rock. Inside the circle were more circles and swirls. It was beautiful, but nothing like Ray had ever drawn or written. And how would he have carved it? Were these cave drawings like she had read about in school? Had this been an Indian hiding place?

Alice swept her light along the ceiling, searching for more. She wasn’t disappointed. A little further down, more circles joined with others, flowing together on the ceiling, and soon the walls and the floor. Alice stopped to gaze at them in awe. She was surrounded. She couldn’t explain it, but for the first time since falling, she was warm. And . . . safe.

The searchers and engineers couldn’t have been down here already. They would have reported finding these markings. Which meant Ray could be down here. She didn’t know how he would have fallen, though, without sustaining massive injuries. Which meant if he was down here, he was hurt. He could have wandered anywhere.

What if he’d climbed down like she had? Alice shook her head at the thought—he was smarter than that.

A scraping sound echoed along the corridor, startling Alice out of her musing. “Ray?” she called, hope blossoming in her chest. She stopped shining her light on the walls and swept it down the tunnel ahead. The scraping sound grew closer, but she didn’t see anybody.

“Ray? You there?” She walked down the tunnel, over the markings covering the floor, wanting to run but afraid of falling down into some unseen chasm. The scraping noise grew louder. It sounded like stone on stone.

The tunnel curved to the left, and Alice swept right around with it, thinking only of finding Ray at last.

“Ray!”

She rounded the corner and drew up short. Golden stone glittered in the beam of her flashlight, blocking the tunnel. There’s gold down here, she thought with a thrill. Alice moved forward, her hand outstretched.

The stone moved. When it did, it scraped along the stone of the tunnel. Alice startled and stepped back. But the stone kept moving—toward her, through the passage.

It was unfolding.

Despite the panic that filled Alice’s brain, she managed to register two things: the golden stone had things that looked like legs and arms, and it had two enormous eyes. When she flashed her light into them, they flashed, too. Like fire, she thought. Then, without waiting to see any more, Alice turned and ran.

The scraping moved with her. That thing was chasing her. She had the idea that it somehow didn’t quite fit in the tunnel, that it was struggling to get through.

Which meant the tunnel going up would be safe.

She ran faster. The scraping noise followed as if it were some huge beast from the pits of hell. Maybe that’s what it was.

Demon—Jimmy’s accusation from the night before. He hadn’t been talking about her, then. Alice ran as hard as she could, expecting any moment to be grabbed and dragged backward. The monster was still behind her—she could hear it scrabbling against the walls, louder maybe than it was before. She didn’t dare look back. Her flashlight beam wobbled on the tunnel in front of her, but she was sure of her footing now.

Up ahead, she saw the tunnel going up to Charlie. Would the demon catch her before she climbed up high enough? The thought spurred Alice on, giving her another boost of energy.

Just a few more steps.

The scraping came faster now. It sensed she was going to get away. Alice attached her flashlight to her belt as she ran. Now the light swung crazily around her, bouncing off the walls, making her dizzy. She jumped over the rope on the ground and launched herself onto the rock.

She somehow found a handhold and began to climb. Her heart pounded so violently she thought it would stop; her breath came in ragged gasps.

“Charlie!” she managed. “Charlie!”

She heard him shout out an answer. The sound encouraged her. He was still okay. And this creature couldn’t get up the tunnel, she was sure. She groped for handholds, knowing that she was taking too long, that her legs were still exposed to the creature at her back. Her skin prickled, but she dared not turn around.

Just keep moving. Charlie’s at the top. He’s waiting on you.

The scraping stopped right behind her. The thing was at her back—she could feel it even though it wasn’t touching her.

Don’t look don’t look don’t look.

Alice’s stomach filled with lead. She struggled to pull herself up. Her foot slipped, then her hand. Her feet hit the floor. Unable to stand the suspense anymore, she turned, backing herself into the wall at her left.

It wasn’t a wall.

The creature filled the tunnel. As a giant arm reached for Alice, she thought at least if it killed her, she’d get to see her Daddy again.

With her last conscious breath, Alice hoped the beast didn’t decide to drag her down to hell instead.

Epilogue

HARVEY O’BRIEN STUBBED OUT HIS cigarette on a shovel someone had left at the entrance to the mine. He sat on an overturned bucket, waiting on them to bring out the kid. The entire place stank of coal, and dirt, and metal. The dense, suffocating trees didn’t help his mood, either. The sooner he was back in DC and civilization, the better.

When the powers that be had transferred him to this job, Harvey had laughed and laughed. He had a reputation for being able to cover things up—a particular skill set that made him very popular with a great number of people.

Those same people also feared him. He knew secrets—too many. He’d hidden the government’s most unsavory mistakes from a populace that would rather be kept in the dark, despite what it claimed.

And now O’Brien was paying for it. He’d been transferred to ARCHIE a year ago. At first he’d thought it was a joke—the Alien Research Center for Hostile Invasion of Earth. Formed, no doubt, in response to recent public interest in extra-terrestrials. As if they needed proof monsters existed in the universe. O’Brien knew a few of them right here in the United States.

But it wasn’t a joke. He was stuck here. And somehow he’d landed in Springwater, West Virginia, investigating a string of disappearances at a mine. Didn’t mining accidents happen all the time? Didn’t miners die all the time?

But his superiors had wanted him here, so here he was.

Deputy Coolidge was capable enough, but not so much he hadn’t been able to prevent a kid from sneaking up on him and stealing his gun. Typical backwoods sort, O’Brien thought with disdain. The hillbilly was walking toward O’Brien now.

“Here they come,” Coolidge said.

O’Brien stood and looked to where Coolidge was nodding. A rescue crew was bringing a young man out of the mine on a stretcher.

He was barely of age. Tall, gangly, disheveled, dirty clothes. He was sobbing, talking softly. “Alice . . . Can’t leave her. She’s down there. She was screaming.”

“Boy’s been saying that over and over,” said one of the men holding the stretcher, a miner named Billy Loggins.

“Is he injured?” O’Brien asked, looking for wounds on the young man’s body. But he was uninjured as far as O’Brien could tell.

“No, the dark does that to people, though. He’s been in there two days without light.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Charlie Satchel.”

“Mr. Satchel,” O’Brien said.

The young man didn’t respond.

“Charlie,” he tried.

Charlie looked over at O’Brien, his eyes puffy, his face pale.

“My name’s O’Brien. Can you tell me what happened to you down there?”

“Alice,” he said with a moan.

“Who’s Alice?” O’Brien looked up to the men around him.

“She’s that girl I told you about,” Coolidge said. “The one that was with Charlie when he got the jump on me.”

“What happened to Alice, Charlie?”

“Monster.”

“Monster?” Great, the guy was delirious. So much for going back to DC tonight.

“It got her,” Charlie whispered. “She was screaming. I couldn’t get to her.”

Then he dissolved into more tears, and no one could get any more out of him.

Charlie Satchel was checked into a hospital and treated for shock. They never did get a straight story out of him; he only mumbled about monsters and Alice and darkness. Apparently he’d heard her get into some kind of trouble, but couldn’t go help her. He was discharged from the Army without ever reporting for a day of Basic Training.

O’Brien questioned everybody who’d ever set foot in the mine. And he became intrigued with the tunnels the miners had found. (Despite what Billy Loggins said, the government had not dug them. O’Brien had had a good laugh over that one.) One day he had someone escort him down there to look for himself.

The hole was strange. And creepy, even though O’Brien wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself. He invited a few scientists—geologists, mostly—to have a look. They only deepened the mystery by saying they didn’t know what had created the perfect arching tunnels and circular room. He ordered a team down into the tunnel where Alice Peters was last seen.

The team disappeared. O’Brien hadn’t seen that coming.

After consulting with his department, he shut down the mining operation. Then he had to bring in a National Guard unit to maintain the peace—the townsfolk didn’t take too kindly to having their jobs disappear. O’Brien couldn’t blame them.

The markings inside the smaller tunnel became the center of their investigation. Then more were found in a large room at the bottom of another tunnel, one that ran from the top of the mountain all the way down. O’Brien had metal stairs installed in both tunnels for convenience.

More scientists came, scratched their heads, and left. Then the disappearances began again, always when someone was left alone in the lower tunnel. O’Brien finally had it closed off for safety. No one else vanished after that.

After a year of research, O’Brien was convinced that something unearthly had created the tunnels, and not the Soviets, as a few had suggested. They determined the circular etchings in the stone were writings of some kind.

So O’Brien brought in linguists to decipher them. No one did. When he showed photographs of the markings to a secret congressional committee in DC, they ordered research halted.

O’Brien was angry. He fought them, threatened to go public with the information. What good was ARCHIE if they weren’t allowed to investigate the very phenomena they were created to study? He had proof of something, even if he wasn’t sure what. The mine disturbed him, but he couldn’t convey to them the intense, nameless feeling he got whenever he visited the mine.

No one listened.

Then O’Brien realized he was being followed around DC, watched at his house. His career was already in shambles. No need to make things worse, or he’d never get another assignment. And he had a family to think of.

After that, O’Brien made sure everything was packed up, put in storage or just simply burned—photos, reports, maps. He even cleared out the town, relocated the people. He made a lot of enemies, but hey, it was his job. Then ARCHIE ordered the buildings bulldozed and cleaned up. They even removed the rail line to the mine.

A few townspeople tried to create trouble for ARCHIE, spread rumors. One of them was Loggins. O’Brien had him hushed up. No one was difficult after that.

Alice Peters and Ray Peters were never seen again, of course. Years later, O’Brien thought of them sometimes. Thought of what had spurred them into the tunnels on their own. He never found out.

Charlie Satchel was institutionalized for a time and then sent back to his parents’ new home in Richmond, Virginia. He recovered enough to make a life for himself, get married, have his own family. But he always insisted on sleeping with the lights on.

In total, fifteen people had gone missing around the mountain. Each disappearance was kept out of the papers—O’Brien made sure of that. The forest surrounding the town and mine was allowed to take over. For a time, it gained a reputation as being haunted.

O’Brien never spoke again of what he had seen. When he died, the majority of the findings died with him. Except one thing—a map of the mine. His daughter found it tucked away in a nightstand. Since it was stamped as property of the Department of Defense, she unwittingly returned it.

It was placed in an evidence box on a shelf, mislabeled as a historic document, cataloged as a remnant of another government program gone extinct. And it sat there for years until a man named Paul Cummings ordered it retrieved.

It was just a map, smudged and brittle and half-drawn. But it was a seed—the seed for a rebellion that would embroil the entire Earth in war.

Book 1, Shadowmark

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About the Author

T.M. CATRON IS AN AUTHOR who lives in Tennessee with her husband, son, and three spoiled dogs. When she isn’t writing or reading, she’s waging war on the flowers she planted in early spring.

Thankfully, she puts more effort into her writing than she does her gardening. She’s the author of Shadowmark, its soon-to-be-released sequel, Aether, and The Mine, a prequel to the Shadowmark Series. Also in the works is a new series for elementary children, co-authored with another teacher.

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Other Books in the Shadowmark Series

Shadowmark, Book 1

Aether, Book 2 (Fall 2016)

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