“Fucking place is haunted,” Maki said with absolute conviction.
Boyd did not argue with him: it was surely haunted, just not by ghosts as such. But at the same time, he could feel the atmosphere around him and it was charged with some ethereal energy, an oscillating discharge almost like static electricity.
The thing out there clicked again. Twice.
Maki did not dare answer it.
After a few seconds, it clicked again: click, click, click-click-click.
Maki made a low moaning sound in his throat.
The thing clicked and clicked, repeating the previous exchange perfectly. It wanted to communicate again, but the men were silent and as its repeated attempts went unanswered, it began to click feverishly out of what seemed anger or frustration, not just clicking now but knocking loudly against a petrified bole.
The sounds were very loud, echoing and echoing.
After maybe five minutes in which Boyd and Maki were nearly holding each other out of terror, the sounds ceased. The silence that followed was somehow worse, just pregnant with nameless possibility. And then another sound rose up, like air blown over the mouth of a pop bottle. A steadily rising mournful wailing that was high- pitched and almost hysterical in tone. It got louder and louder like the night-call of some huge insect, then died away.
The very timbre of it made the fine hairs at the back of Boyd’s neck stand up, made the flesh at his groin shrivel. Because although that shrilling was not remotely human, there was something almost despondent and melancholy about it.
“Hell is that?” Maki said.
“I don’t know what she is.”
“She?” Maki whispered. “She?”
It had been a slip of the tongue, but Boyd did not retract it. For the very sound of that crying voice had been very feminine somehow and that was sheer lunacy, yet the certainty of it remained. That thing out there…dear God…it was female.
They sat there quietly for some time and the only sounds now were the distant dripping of water and the noise of Jurgens, Breed, and McNair clearing more rubble from the stope mouth. And Maki breathing with a hoarse, frantic sound.
“What’re we gonna do, Boyd? Fuck are we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna wait for them above to get us out,” he said. “Listen, Maki, I don’t know what’s down here with us, but just leave it be. Don’t fool with it. Don’t try and make sounds for it. Maybe it’ll…I don’t know, maybe it’ll just go away.”
But he didn’t believe that, not for a moment.
Because it was still out there and, God help him, but he could feel its eyes on them.
14
They’d been at it a good six hours that was closer to seven and Russo was feeling the heat. It was coming from every direction-the media, the families, the mine execs. Felt like every damn last one of them was standing on his back. He rubbed his aching neck and swallowed a couple Tylenol. He watched the men widening the drift, the constant sound of jack hammers and rock drills, the hiss of steam and thudding of limestone chunks being shoveled into metal cars. It was all making his head pound.
He rubbed his eyes, then his temples.
Everything down here echoed. Banging and booming, clanging and ringing out. Russo lit a cigarette and motioned Corey, the shift boss, over.
“Well?” he said.
“We’re making progress, but I’m guessing it’ll take us most of the day to widen that drift so we can get the raise borer in here,” Corey told him. “If that shaft is just filled up with loose limestone, we can drill through it like cheese, but…”
Russo glared at him. “But?”
Corey shook his head. “You know same as me. If it’s just loose rubble, we can drill it in three, four hours with a reamer bit. Even cutting four-hundred feet we’ll have her in eight hours…but we don’t know what happened down there. Whole goddamn earth might have moved. Limestone is unstable. If we have to cut through solid rock it’s gonna take days.”
“And more likely weeks,” Russo said, spitting.
Weeks. Weeks down there for chrissake. Russo pulled off his cigarette and watched Corey making his way up to the drift, hollering orders and telling the diggers to keep at it. He stood there, wondering what it was like for them down there. He remembered the time he’d been trapped below. Even now, it made his flesh crawl.
15
Boyd was waiting.
He didn’t know for what or maybe he did and just didn’t want to admit it to himself. He lay there next to the tree that had broken his leg. Maki hadn’t spoken in some time and he figured that was a good thing. The silence was killing him, the desolation and the claustrophobia that clawed at his throat, but he did not want to know what was going on in Maki’s head because he figured it was plenty bad.
Much like what was in his own head.
A sound.
Shit.
“What’s that?” Maki said.
Then a light splashed through the spiderwebbing of trees and they saw Jurgens coming in their direction, moving over mounds of rock and down into little hollows, splashing through puddles. He leapfrogged a cluster of roots and stood before them, panting.
“We’re making some progress, I think,” he told them. “Lot of rock fall over there, but Breed and McNair are doing a good job of it. When they come back, Maki, we’ll take our turn.”
“Maybe she don’t want us getting out,” Maki said.
Jurgens just looked at him, smiling as if he expected a good joke, but seeing that none was coming, he frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The sounds,” Boyd told him. “They came again.”
“Yeah?”
“Worse.”
“Click, click, click,” Maki said.
Boyd told him what had happened, realizing how ridiculous it sounded, but he did not feel ridiculous telling it. Because the fear was still on him. He wore it like a skin.
“Could have been a weird echo,” Jurgens told them. “I’ve heard some pretty strange subterranean echoes in my time.”
Boyd shook his head. “It wasn’t an echo. The same sounds repeated, but of a different caliber. And that other sound…that moaning or whatever in the Christ it was. It wasn’t natural, not at all.”
“Ghost,” Maki said. “It sounded like a ghost going w-o-o-o-o-o-o-o…”
Jurgens didn’t even comment on that. It was absurd. “Do you realize what you two are saying? Ghosts?”
No, no, no, Jurgens wasn’t going to listen to bullshit like that and you could see it on his face. He was a mining engineer. He was the guy who cut shafts and found the raw ore that made others rich and kept industries rolling. Ghosts. Of all things. Maybe there were such things and maybe there weren’t, but not down here. Not in
