The Becoming - a novella (3 page)

If he survived
this disaster, Karl made a promise to himself he would walk up to mine owner Jedediah
Norton and punch the cheap bastard right in the nose as his way of giving
notice before quitting outright. Sure, jobs were hard to come by, but risking
life and limb for a few measly dollars worth of scrip a day, money that was
useless anywhere except company-owned stores where prices were jacked up so the
owner could recoup most of the wages he paid out? On a job that was dangerous
enough even without taking into consideration Tonopah’s shoddy safety measures?
It just wasn’t worth it. Not any more.

Karl began to
wheeze. He sounded exactly like his little brother Harold had just before he
died from asthma when they were kids. His eyes were watering and he rubbed his
sleeve across his face, accomplishing nothing but smearing dirt and coal dust
into them. Now they watered
and
stung.

He wasn’t going to
make it. It had been less than an hour since the explosion and the air was
already barely breathable. Karl doubted he would be able to survive another
couple of hours, never mind days.

But if he wanted
to live there was still one possibility. He hacked out a glob of dark black
phlegm and began to walk toward the source of the smoke.

***

Karl paused at his mining cart,
still positioned exactly where he had left it just before the explosion. He had
fashioned a makeshift mask out of a dirty handkerchief, tying it around the
back of his head and breathing through the cloth in an attempt to filter out
the worst of the toxic gas. He wondered whether it was actually accomplishing
anything of value. He doubted it.

He dropped to his
knees and took a few deep breaths. The air quality seemed marginally better here,
close to the ground, than it had up near the ceiling. He thought about all the whispered
rumors he had heard regarding Alpha Seven. That shaft was ancient, one of the
mine’s original tunnels, dug into the earth more than seventy years ago and abandoned
well over sixty years ago. It was long; nobody still alive knew exactly how
long, because nobody still alive had ever been all the way to the end of it.

In fact, Karl
couldn’t think of anyone who had ever traveled
any
significant distance
into Alpha Seven. Everybody laughed about the legend of Alpha Seven being
haunted—by the ghosts of long-dead miners, or worse, by something inhuman and
bloodthirsty—but everybody stayed out of the damned thing, too.

But if the shaft
really was as long as the old-timers claimed, if it went as deep into the earth
as rumored, then it stood to reason that at some point along the length of
Alpha Seven the air would clear, at least enough to remain breathable. It’s not
like he really had a choice, anyway. The oxygen in this section of the main
tunnel was corrupted; that much was obvious. Staying here was not an option,
and neither was returning to the far end of the main shaft.

Karl rose unsteadily,
arm throbbing, and approached the entrance to Alpha Seven. He glanced back at
the rock which had nearly hit him an hour or so ago. It was nestled harmlessly in
the dirt where it had fallen after clanging off his cart. He knew the second
rock would still be sitting at the base of the tunnel wall, too, if he decided
to look for it.

He didn’t. He took
a deep breath, coughing and hacking, and squeezed between the ancient rotting
two-by-fours nailed in an X pattern across the entrance and into the darkness.
His miner’s lamp seemed to be dimming, the light changing from bright yellow to
dirty brown, and Karl knew it was only a matter of time before the damned thing
burned out, leaving him trapped in the inky blackness of a haunted—
rumored
to be haunted, he reminded himself; it was only a rumor—mining shaft with . . .
what, exactly?

***

For a long time, Karl walked in
what felt like basically a straight line, although he could feel the shaft
floor sloping steadily downward. He scanned left and right as he moved, the
weakening beam of light moving back and forth, back and forth. There was no
indication anyone (any
thing
) had been here recently; no clue to indicate
where the flying rocks may have come from.

But Karl felt
uneasy, like he was being watched. That was absurd, of course; the ancient mine
shaft was only four to six feet wide, a rounded, hollowed-out tube burrowed
into the ground. There was no place for anyone to hide and no reason for them
to do so.

Nevertheless, the
farther he walked, the more apprehensive Karl Meyer became. The hair on the
back of his neck stood up, as did the hair on his arms. Although the air
quality seemed to be improving, somehow the
density
of the air seemed to
be thickening. It was as if some invisible entity was massing in front of him, trying
to force him to turn back.

I wish I could,
Karl thought.

At last the shaft
turned, banking gradually to the right. Why the miners seven decades ago had
elected to turn here rather than continuing to dig straight ahead was a
mystery, but Karl had no alternative than to turn as well. He had now been
walking for at least thirty minutes and began debating whether he had gone far
enough. He removed his makeshift mask and breathed deeply. The air wasn’t
exactly sweet and fresh, but that metallic-chemical odor he had been so
concerned about had disappeared.

Karl turned
around, peering back the way he had come. The little miner’s lamp proved
ineffectual at piercing the darkness, which had seemed to grow much thicker and
fuller the farther Karl walked. The beam of light simply disappeared, swallowed
up by the encroaching darkness.

Then the lamp
failed.

The hiss of gas
sputtered and recovered, sputtered again and then stopped entirely, and Karl
was plunged into darkness, only now realizing how much he had come to depend on
the weak yellow glow. He turned, panicked, making a full three hundred sixty
degree revolution as his heart rate skyrocketed.

He felt his way to
the side wall and eased into a sitting position, trying to slow his breathing
and force his racing pulse to ease before his heart simply exploded in his
chest.
There’s nothing here in the dark that isn’t here in the light.
There’s nothing here in the dark that isn’t here in the light.
Besides, he
reasoned, the damned miner’s lamp had barely shone ten feet in front of him,
anyway. When he really thought about it, Karl decided the lamp didn’t make a damn
bit of difference. He would be fine.

Problem was, knowing
he would be fine and convincing his body
to accept that hypothesis
were two entirely separate issues. He was shaking like he had just contracted
yellow fever and staring into the darkness so hard he thought his eyeballs
might just pop out of his head and roll away in the dark.

He leaned against
the dirt wall, feeling the earth’s damp chill leach through his overalls and
into his body. He wondered how long it would be before the rescuers came, and
how he would even know when they did. He guessed he had traveled close to a mile
into the old mine shaft, probably the deepest penetration any human being had
made into Alpha Seven in nearly a lifetime. Hell, the shaft hadn’t been active
in at least sixty years, so when you took the life expectancy of the average
coal miner into consideration, it probably had been
more
than a lifetime
since anyone had trod this dirt floor.

Karl thought about
Susan, and about the children. The prospect of his wife trying to raise their
family as a widow filled Karl with sadness, and he vowed to do whatever
necessary to survive this ordeal, if only to make it home to his wife, because—

—a stealthy
slithering noise from somewhere off to the right made Karl’s breath catch in
his throat. He strained to identify the noise and it stopped.

He listened hard.
Nothing.

He realized he was
holding his breath and tried to chuckle but could not; his throat was dry and
scratchy and he became acutely aware of his lack of food, water or survival
supplies. If the rescue took more than a day, maybe two, Karl knew he was going
to be in big trouble. Food, he could do without for a while, but water—

—there it was
again. The sound was softer this time, somehow even stealthier, as if whatever
was making it knew Karl could hear and was trying to mask its advance.

Could it be rats?

He knew the filthy,
disease-carrying rodents lived in the mines, but had never seen any this far
underground and doubted that was what was making the noise. Rats tended to
scurry, and this slithering, sliding sound struck Karl as the sort of noise a
snake might make. But if it was a snake, it would have to be an unimaginably
large one. The noise, although stealthy, implied a heft to whatever was making
it that most snakes didn’t have, at least no snakes living in North America
that Karl was aware of.

He concentrated
hard and the sound stopped again and his blood chilled when he realized he was
being stalked. By what, and for what purpose, he didn’t know, but there was no
doubt in his mind that something was out there in the dark, watching. And
waiting.

He reviewed his
options. It didn’t take long, because he didn’t have any. He knew the main
mining tunnel was far off his left, but the thought of returning all the way
down Alpha Seven in the dark, exposing his back to whatever was lurking in the
darkness, filled Karl with dread. It was completely illogical, he was already
at the mercy of whatever was out there, but he simply could not bring himself
to contemplate turning his back on the potential danger.

Plus, the
situation back inside the main tunnel undoubtedly had not changed. Even if he
were successful at finding his way out of Alpha Seven with no light and some
strange creature stalking him, his reward would be a painful and probably
protracted death. The air was certainly even more poisoned now than it had been
when he made the decision to walk away.

He had no choice
but to stick it out here. He wished he had thought to bring something to use as
a weapon; even the two jagged rocks which had nearly beaned him would have been
better than nothing. But the prospect of having to defend himself against . . .
some kind of attacker . . . had never even occurred to him. He was alone
between two closed bulkheads, with no possibility of anyone coming or going, so
self-defense had not been a top priority when compared with trying to survive
poisonous gases.

Karl closed his
eyes and concentrated on Susan.
She
would be his rock;
she
would
help him survive. It made him feel somehow even more vulnerable to be sitting
in this supposedly haunted mine shaft with his eyes closed, but what difference
did it really make? He couldn’t see a damned thing anyway. This was a darkness
thicker than any he had ever known.

Karl slowed his
breathing and concentrated hard, listening closely for the slithering noise.
Nothing. Maybe the whole thing had been the product of his fevered imagination
working overtime. It would make sense. Stuck in the dark in an abandoned—and
some would say haunted—mine shaft with no company, facing an uncertain future
and possible death, it would be strange if a person’s mind
didn’t
play
tricks on him.

Before he knew it,
Karl Meyer fell into a fitful sleep.

***

In his dream, Karl was lying on a
beach, stretched out in a lounge chair with a drink in his hand and the sun
beating down on his tanned body. A few feet away, the waves pounded onto the
sand, the ocean’s hypnotic efficiency lulling him to sleep. He was warm and
comfortable and happy, and Susan lay next to him on a lounge chair of her own.

Karl had never
been to the beach, had never seen the ocean. He had grown up an immigrant in
central Pennsylvania, raised by a drunken father and a disinterested mother.
The family had never taken a vacation, to the ocean or anywhere else.

Karl knew he was
dreaming but didn’t care. He was warm and comfortable and happy.

***

Something was on his arm.

Karl gasped and
his eyes flew open. Something was on his arm and it was thick and cold, ropy
but hard, like a flexible tree branch or a wire cable or something similar. He
jerked his arm, pulling reflexively to get it away from the awful cold thing
but could not move.

The ropy cable-like
thing wrapped itself around his injured right wrist tightly and pulled with a
steady pressure and Karl screamed in terror and pain and the sound fought its
way through the unnaturally thick air in Alpha Seven and disappeared. Karl felt
his body sliding sideways, moving deeper into the pitch-black mining shaft. His
injured wrist pounded and throbbed, sending white-hot bolts of pain shooting
through his arm like someone had inserted TNT into his wrist and chosen this
moment to detonate it.

He kicked and
scrabbled in a desperate attempt to halt his attacker’s progress and succeeded
only in losing a boot. He was stretched out on the tunnel floor, sliding
through the dirt in the endless black hole that was Alpha Seven. He knew the
thing had begun pulling him deeper into the abandoned mine shaft, but in his
panicked attempt to free himself, Karl had lost all sense of direction. It was
possible the thing had turned around while he struggled against it, but somehow
Karl knew that was not the case.

His attacker dragged
him along steadily. He gasped and moaned and was rewarded with absolutely no response
whatsoever. The monster either had nothing to say or no way to say it. In the
midst of his mindless panic, Karl Meyer now realized all the stories he had
ever heard about the Tonopah Mine were true. The whispered rumors of some
horrible entity lurking in the long-forgotten depths of Alpha Seven, eternal
and vicious and deadly, were not just stories but fact.