Allison Brennan - If I Should Die

But the silence continued to claw at her, more terrifying than the dark. A complete void of sound. No water, no creaking, not even the sound of scurrying rodents. Shouldn’t there be mice or something here? She didn’t know, but it was logical-not that she wanted to encounter a diseased, flea-ridden rat. Only her movement made noise.

The smell of the decaying body grew stronger.

Each footfall carefully placed, Lucy continued. One. Two. Five more feet. The light behind her disappeared. The roof brushed the top of her head, and she hunched over. A small rise of panic grabbed her spine, slithering up to her brain, paranoid warning signals silently shouting

run run run

but no one was here. She had nothing to be afraid of but her own fear. She would not let it win. She counted her steps to focus on something tangible in her battle against her nerves.

Suddenly, she stepped into a wide area that seemed even colder than the pit Sean had fallen into. She stopped to get her bearings, pulling her down jacket closer around her, though that did little to warm her. Shivering, she shined the light on the far walls and estimated that the long, narrow space was about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. Four-by-four wooden support beams were placed in the center, but they didn’t look strong enough to hold up anything.

Here, the miners had kept tools and other supplies. A makeshift stone table had lost one leg and leaned awkwardly in one corner. A metal chair, old and rusted, rested on its side against a wood-reinforced dirt and rock wall. Two tunnels branched off the room-one narrow like the tunnel she’d come from; the other a bit wider with a metal track laid on the ground, disappearing into the dark beyond the scope of her light. An old mining cart with metal wheels sat at the end of the line.

She couldn’t go farther into the mine without putting herself at great risk, as well as worry Sean while he was injured topside. She’d inspect the room, and that was all. Besides, it was below freezing down here-in the eerie light, her breath looked like smoke.

She skirted the wall and shined her flashlight all around, turning in a slow circle.

Lucy bit her cheek to keep from screaming.

Next to the tunnel from which she’d emerged was a horizontal cutout in the wall-about six feet wide and four feet high and lined with wood planks-possibly used for storage, possibly as a makeshift bed for a miner.

It was a stone coffin now.

The corpse’s long blond hair fanned around her, dull and limp from dirt and damp. Her hands were crossed at the wrists over her chest. Her legs were straight. She was dressed in dark slacks and a once-white blouse that was streaked with dirt and grime. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack, and her skin had a blue, waxy, molted appearance.

Swallowing uneasily, Lucy approached the body. She looked down, not knowing what she expected to see-maybe physical signs of violence, or something else that might indicate whether this was an accident or murder.

The body didn’t look as though it had been dead for more than a few days, but the skin didn’t look quite right, either. It was hard to tell with the long-sleeved blouse and pants. The odor of decomposition was most definitely stronger here, telling Lucy that under the material there were bacteria at work.

On the surface the woman appeared to be dead three or four days, but this chamber felt like the cold storage room at the morgue. Cold enough to freeze a body and slow the rate of decay. The woman could have been dead for a few days, or months. Without an autopsy, there was no way of knowing.

Lucy’s eyes were drawn back to the victim’s hands, as they were positioned oddly on her body, cupped over her breasts.

Lucy’s peripheral vision caught movement and she jumped.

The victim’s mouth moved and Lucy stifled a scream, certain she was seeing something that wasn’t there. Lucy shined the light fully on the woman’s face. The cheeks were moving. Her mouth was partly open. The glare of the flashlight revealed thousands of tiny maggots filling the orifice.

Lucy blinked, frozen for a moment, and involuntarily pictured Sean. Insects and rodents devouring his body until it was a skeleton. If they hadn’t found him, he would have died here, too.

Lucy ran back the way she came, wishing she had never seen the body.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Lucy told the semiretired doctor who’d agreed to make a house call when Sean refused to go to the closest hospital in Potsdam.

“No trouble, no trouble,” Dr. Sherwood Griffin answered, looking across the room at the patient in bed. “Just wake him every couple of hours, check his eyes and reflexes, give him the pain meds every six hours. He’ll be sore but I’ve seen far worse.”

“I’m not taking any pills,” a pale and exhausted Sean mumbled from the bed.

Lucy sat down next to him. “Can I convince you to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“By morning, I guarantee you’ll be wanting something to knock out the pain.” Griffin grinned, revealing crooked white teeth.

Sean didn’t return the physician’s smile. He took Lucy’s hand and pulled it to his chest, forcing her to lean over him. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Get him out of here.”

She kissed him lightly. She had an impulse to lie down next to Sean and make sure he was really okay, even though she knew he was going to be fine. She’d been periodically shaking since returning from the mine shaft. She didn’t understand her unusual reaction, considering she’d been around plenty of dead bodies at the morgue and none of them had affected her the way the dead blonde had.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she told Sean.

He nodded, still glaring at the doctor. When Sean had found out that Sherwood Griffin doubled as a veterinarian, he’d almost agreed to go to the hospital.

Lucy walked Dr. Griffin down the path toward the main lodge. The sun had just set, the sky glowing orange, pink, and purple. She wanted a moment of peace and silence to absorb the stunning beauty of the scene, thankful that Sean was alive.

But the doctor had something else in mind besides quiet contemplation. “I heard Tim say you found a body in the mine.”

“Yes.”

“Probably a hiker. We’ve lost more than a few in my sixty-nine years. Think because we have rolling hills and some good trails they can just do what they like, but there’s plenty of danger if you don’t know what you’re doing.” He looked her over, top to bottom. “You’re a city girl. What were you doing near the mine?”

Tim hadn’t told the doctor about the vandalism, and Lucy wasn’t going to. “I’ve done my fair share of camping.”

He laughed. “Your hands are too pretty to spend much time outside.”

Though his comment could be a compliment, his tone was one of derision. She’d already considered the lost hiker theory, but the positioning of the body didn’t suggest accident. Possibly natural, but more likely not. Someone had specifically arranged the body.

However, she asked, “Have you heard of any hikers gone missing recently?”

“Nope, but that don’t mean much. If anyone’s missing, they’ll be posted at the Fire and Rescue.”

“Where’s the station?”

“We’re too small for our own substation, but about twenty minutes southeast, up the mountain near Indian Hills, there’s a good-sized station. Handles a much larger area than just our little dot on the map. When I was little, we had over four thousand people in Spruce Lake and our own pump engine. Now, less than four hundred.” He shook his head.

Tim emerged from his house. He extended his hand to the doctor. “Thanks for coming out, Doctor. Please send me the bill.”