Harlan County Horrors (25 page)

“
This doesn’t look right,” he said.

“
Dog was hunting,” Joe said.

Feral shook his head.

“
Why would a dog dig into a grave?” Charlene asked.

“
Damned strange,” Feral said. He stepped up to the grave and
squatted down to look more closely at it. He motioned with his
hands as he spoke. “Look at the dirt around this hole. It’s all
over the place. When a dog digs, he uses his front paws to push
dirt behind him. Most of it ends up as a single pile on one end of
the hole.”

Charlene’s eyes widened. “You’re right,” she said. “What does
that mean?”

“Looks like,” Joe answered for Feral, “something broke its
way
out
.”

“
Except,” Feral jumped in, with a warning glance at Joe, “this
hole doesn’t go all the way down into the grave. Unless of course
the zombie reburied it, tried to cover his tracks.”

Joe
nodded. “That’s possible.”

“
I
was joking, Joe.”

“
I
know. So was I. Thing is, we don’t really know how one of these
creatures is going to behave. They might do anything.”

“Which is just another way of saying they might do
nothing
. Of saying they
don’t exist.” Feral stood up. “I say we consider this whole thing
to be the work of a wild animal of some sort. Coyote, cat or
something. That’s the only logical explanation, the only one that
fits the facts.”

The
others assented, relieved to have such a normal
explanation.

Except, of course, for Joe. He glanced repeatedly over his
shoulder as the group moved off toward the gate, staring at the
hole as if he fully expected a demon to rip its way out of the
remaining ground and come charging after him.

Feral rode with Joe back to his place. About halfway there, he
felt a sudden kind of snap in his mind. He looked out of the car
window, watching the passing landscape as though he had never
really seen it before. Joe gave him a sidelong look, relief washing
over his face. But that relief was immediately replaced by his
earlier look of grim anxiety.

Arriving at Joe’s house, they stood on the driveway for a few
minutes, discussing the morning’s events. As they talked, Feral
gazed at the street. The gutter, he noticed, was empty. The dog was
gone.

“
Animal control must’ve come by,” Feral said.

“
How’s that?”

Feral didn’t answer. He stood staring at the gutter, a
coldness rising in his chest. Something didn’t seem right. Finally,
it dawned on him.

“
There’s no bloodstain,” he said.

“
Bloodstain?” Joe said. “What the hell are you talking
about?”

“
Maybe animal control cleaned it up.”

Joe
studied his friend, a mixture of fear, sadness and sympathy on his
face. At last, he said gently, “Prob’ly.”

Feral nodded, deep in thought.

Feral tossed and turned that night for several hours. The
day’s venture had been a fizzle, of course, just as he had expected
it to be. Expectations had a way of sneaking up on a man, revealing
themselves at times when he wasn’t looking for them. That was why
he wasn’t sleeping. Because he expected to have nightmares. Because
what didn’t show up in a man’s life always showed up in his
dreams.

In
his dreams, he hung suspended over a deep mine shaft that dropped
beneath him into the unimaginable depths of Earth. Gravity tugged
at his body, pulling him on every side, so that he had no sense of
up-and-down, left-and-right; there was only
down
, down in every direction. An
infinite plunge opened before him, a horror-filled maw. And it was
waiting for him.

That horror had driven him to the cemetery. A connection lay
between them, the shaft and the grave, a connection of death he
knew was bleeding him dry. No, it wasn’t the dark he was afraid of.
It was the night itself, the night that lay within him like a well
in his soul, waiting to engulf him in its murky, watery depths,
pressing the black air out of his lungs until he awoke screaming
into the cold-soaked sheets, night after night after
night.

Tonight he would not sleep. Tonight he would not scream.
Tonight, he decided, it would all end.

The mine shaft gaped before him, a hole in the earth, a
hole
right through
the earth, never ending, its emptiness textured, gritty with
coal dust and dried blood and the cobwebs of terrified men’s
screams. Those screams echoed in his head, where they mingled
internally with his own to stand as a warning, to keep him from
entering. Yet somehow, though it took all of his courage to do so,
enter he would. He had no choice.

This mine had not been worked for decades. It had been shut
down shortly after Feral’s injury. For some reason, though, it had
never been shut up; its entrance lay open like a wounded mouth, at
once repulsive and fascinating. Perhaps the company had been afraid
to board it up, afraid to block it off. Afraid of angering whatever
had scared them out of it.

The
coal seam had run deep, so this shaft dropped into the earth at a
steep angle, diving directly for the root of the ridge running off
of Grays Knob. They’d dug only a quarter mile when they’d run into
an obstacle, something they couldn’t get through. The rock was no
problem for the machines; the problem was no one wanted to operate
them.

The
men abandoned the borers and abandoned the shaft. Then the company
abandoned the men.

Those men had poured forth from the maw of the shaft like
living dead. Trembling with shock, gibbering and screaming, their
faces chalk white under the black coal dust; they were taken for
medical treatment to the nearby Appalachian Regional Hospital. All
were admitted for psychiatric evaluation. Some never were released.
Several of them died within a few years. Most of the released never
worked a mine again. The company quietly issued them their pensions
under the condition that they never speak of the incident to
anyone. The men were only too happy to oblige, as none of them even
wanted to think about it. Their names were taken off the rolls; the
company denied to the outside public that they had ever even worked
there. The names of those who died did not appear on the miners’
memorial outside the courthouse.

Another mining company bought the operation shortly
thereafter, and the shaft running under Grays Knob was closed,
never to be mentioned again by anyone.

Feral stood at the entrance, staring into the abyss. The
opening seemed to waver in the moonlight, a black ripple in the
black night, a portal into another dimension. He checked the
equipment he had brought with him: his lamped hardhat, a
flashlight, a pickaxe. He had also brought along a small toolkit.
Holding his breath, he took his first step into the source of his
madness.

Only a few feet inside he encountered the rail tug once used
to haul men and equipment up and down the shaft. The company had
left everything behind, choosing to write off the cost of the lost
equipment rather than attempt to salvage it. Maneuvering around the
loose rocks to the front of the tug, he was pleased to confirm that
what he had hoped to find was actually there: the flux
magnetometer. The instrument was used to determine direction and
depth in the complex set of shafts that made up most mines. He
flipped the power switch and the small box—about the size of a
large candy bar—lit up. He smiled through the grimness of his fear.
He shut the machine off again and used the tools from the kit to
disconnect it, along with its attached voltmeter, from the tug. He
wouldn’t need the gyroscope, so he left that. He carefully hung the
devices on the utility belt at his waist and turned them on once
again. The voltmeter immediately registered a nominal reading. He
nodded to himself. He was ready.

As
ready as he was going to get.

He
entered the mine, the light from his hat bouncing in front of him,
its movement pronounced by his limp. The darkness closed in around
him, but his determination kept it at bay. He walked as steadfastly
as he could, trying not to go weak in the knees, glancing
occasionally at the magnetometer to judge his progress. It was
impossible to tell how far he had walked otherwise; it seemed as
though he had been on this journey his entire life. The world
quickly collapsed in his consciousness to the black shaft, the
light piercing its depths in a tight beam, and the wooden posts
along the walls holding it all together.

Holding the shadows close to him.

Those shadows held demons. Feral swore he could see red eyes
glaring at him out of the niches in the rock, bared fangs glowing
in the reflected light. He tried not to think of them, tried to
will them out of his mind, out of existence. But they accosted him
at every step, making him flinch and sometimes cry out. Still, they
made no real move to stop him, so he made his way in, deeper and
deeper, lower and lower.

The
first wrenching of his gut corresponded with the first spike of the
voltmeter. A wave of nausea washed over him, a gentle lapping that
was more portent than malady. He pushed through it. But almost
immediately another wave pushed up from the depths, from the belly
of the Knob, to twist his own belly and constrict his throat. He
wanted to turn and run, but he refused the urge, refused the demand
of his mind that he escape while he could. He had to continue
downward, and so he did. Another wave rushed over him, doubling him
over and forcing his breath into tight gasps, his stomach cramping.
The fear rose up within him with every such wave, but still he
pushed onward. Reaching the end of the tunnel was the whole point
of his being there.

The
whole point, he now suspected, of his being at all.

The
voltmeter spiked erratically. With every spike, the demons howled
louder.

The
fear and the nausea and the burden, the whole weight of the
mountain pressing on his back, caused him to stoop; it was, he
supposed, too much to ask that he might approach his end standing
upright like a man. By the time he reached blank rock, he was
virtually crawling.

The
magnetometer needle was pegged.

He
stood for a few minutes, leaning against the wall, struggling to
calm himself. Moving quickly, before he lost his will altogether,
he switched on the flashlight and wedged it into the rocks so it
shined on the end of the tunnel. The pickaxe was a dead weight in
his trembling hands, but he managed to swing it, nonetheless. Its
arc over his head was his flight to freedom. He was surprised at
how easily it crumbled the rock, surprised at how much strength he
still had. He swung with the determination of a desperate man,
again and again and again. With each swing, the demons behind him
yelled and mocked and laughed. And with each swing, the dull grey
spike a blur in the focused light, the rock of the shaft gave way,
until at last he broke through.

The
sudden hole in the wall, with its gentle blast of cold air in his
face, so astounded him that he stood for a moment, staring at it,
unable to believe in its reality.

A
soft bluish light emanated from it.

The
demons fell silent.

He
dropped the pick and stepped up to the hole. Drawing a deep breath,
he put his face to the portal and looked through it.

The
saucer filled most of the interior cavern. Dull grey-black, with no
markings on it at all, it hummed with energy at a frequency just
below audible range. A thin electric blue light danced along its
perfectly smooth surface, oscillating with the beat of the hum. The
craft glowed like the moon. Feral felt the bottom drop out of his
stomach, and the dread dropped with it. A great laughter,
hysterical and uncontrollable, engulfed him as his memories came
flooding back. His memories of what had happened here, in this
mineshaft, to those lost miners. To what had happened to him. He
had always known he was not crazy, had always known this ship
existed. Since that day, so many years ago, the day of his injury,
the day the vampires had arrived in Harlan.

A
movement caught his eye, a swift darkness against the grey of the
ship. It moved about and around the craft, quickly scurrying up to
the hole where Feral stood watching. He couldn’t make out its shape
or features in the backlit dark. It stepped up to the wall and
pressed its face to the hole.

And
Feral felt his mind melt.

“
So how did you know where to find him, anyway?” Dr. Peterson
asked.

“
He said something about going back to the shaft,” Joe said.
“The shaft where he was injured.”

Peterson looked up from the notebook where he had been
writing. “He wasn’t injured in the mine,” he said. “He was
evaluated here with the others and kept over for a few weeks. But
he was eventually released pretty much with a clean bill of
health.”

“
Yeah, I know. It’s weird. He seemed pretty convinced he had
hurt his knee somehow. Was even walking with a limp.”

“
Oh? How long had he been doing that?”

“
Last couple of months, I guess. I once caught him limping on
the other one.” Joe paused, wondering how much he should say. But
his friend was in trouble, and he was determined to help him if he
could. “That’s not the damnedest part, though,” he said at last.
“Around the same time, he started talking about weird stuff.
Vampires, and grave robbing, and mutilated animals. He even took
some of us out to Resthaven one day, to show us.”