James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

‘That’s what you said last time, at the other mine,’ Stelică said in a whisper, then louder: ‘At least leave me some cigarettes.’

‘Wait until the others come back, I don’t have any more,’ said Nicu, getting down once more from the cart, after which he performed a short inspection of the mine’s entrance.

The horse, still snorting thick steam, turned its glance towards the village. The men returned from the bushes. Vasile raised his arms towards the others and said:

‘Come on, over here.’

They knew what was coming. Vasile was the oldest, Auntie Valeria’s husband, as wizened as he was intelligent and God-­fearing, imbued with the mists of the place as a cellar is imbued with mold. He whispered a prayer for those who dig in the earth’s core. Vasile had gone down into many mines and since he had lost his brother in one of them, many, many years ago, he had never gone down to dig without whispering a prayer first. ‘God defends you from the pixies, but you have to want it. You have to tell him, since otherwise how is God going to know, if you don’t say it to him? Do you think he has nothing better to do than take care of you?’ That’s what he always said and then he would stammer a prayer that nobody understood. Stelică made a ‘tsk’ sound and gestured to them to give him a cigarette. He didn’t believe in God. Nor in pixies, nor in good places and bad places. He had to steal the iron in order to get money. If he could find work, he would work, no question, but there was nothing to be found in the whole region, so all that was left for him to do was get his hands on some ‘business’, as he called it when he talked with the guys at the dance club every Friday. So now he took the cigarette between his teeth, made a sign that they should give him some more – how was he supposed to stand outside in the cold with only one cigarette? – and walked to the cart.

‘Stelică, come here!’ yelled Vasile, calling him to prayer.

‘Leave me alone,’ Stelică responded with irritation.

‘When the whirlwind comes and chases you around here, you’ll be sorry you didn’t listen to me.’

‘All right,’ said Stelică with his back to them. ‘Come on, faster, the sun’s coming up.’

Vasile finished whispering the prayer and the men took their tools and climbed up the hill towards the decommissioned mine, a black cave in the snow, with rusted signs indicating the danger of death awaiting whoever dared to go down into it. Signs, that’s all. The town hall hadn’t set up fences, hadn’t installed locks, and guards were out of the question. A sign. But the stomach is more powerful than the brain and hunger is stronger than a good guard, so the men climbed toward the mine, went up in order to go down.

It was said that there was still old iron to be removed from the Turk’s Mouth mine. It was not a large mine, it did not belong to a complex, it had perhaps been an unsuccessful exploitation attempt, or, rather, nobody really knew what had been wrong with it or why it had fallen into disrepair. And yet, despite the riches it was suspected to contain, there were not many who penetrated into its depths. The reason was one that made Stelică laugh. He too had heard the story: that the fairies of the earth roamed in those parts, and when it was decided to construct a mine, many people died before it was even opened. And then many more met their end after the exploitation began, until it was decided to call an end to the activities on the grounds of ‘high risk of accidents’. And then there was the other story, the one about Piele, who led seven children from the community into the mine and undressed them and laid down beside them. Stelică had been told when he was a child: ‘Don’t play with old Piele, he comes from a wicked family!’ He had a wife and two children, but his mind was shot from drinking, and he led youths and girls from the neighboring villages into the mine and kept them there. It went on more than a year until they found them, but they were all dead, only Piele was living, he slept covered in rags, with a hand on one of the unfortunate children. The first ones taken were already decomposed, but Piele paid no heed, he slept and ate with them there, then went down from time to time to the village to his family. He told no one where he spent his days and nights. Stelică shook off a shiver when he remembered the words of his brother, now a professor in the city, how he told him when they were younger: ‘There was this guy Piele – well, you don’t know him, ’cos they’ve taken him away now – and this Piele stunk of death like one of the undead.’

Stelică lit a cigarette and looked around: the white of the snow was streaked with the gray of the trees. Then he looked at the mine’s entrance and imagined Piele sleeping alongside the children’s corpses, Piele who escaped the people’s fury only to be killed in Jilava prison by his cellmate. Apparently even in prison there’s justice for child rapists.

He spat in the snow and took a drag from the cigarette.

The three men lit the lanterns and went into the mine. The snow had remained behind them, it was warmer in the narrow tunnel. They walked on the rails, their steps slid on the stones. The smell was no longer at all like that of fresh snow, of sleeping forest. Other things had slept an eternal sleep in the mine. The men knew what carcasses smelled like and here, at the entrance to the mine, somewhere in the darkness, there were surely some rotting cadavers of small animals.

‘This way,’ Nicu’s voice was heard.

They followed him to where the rails turned to the right, and they entered a room dug in the walls of the tunnel. A table, two chairs. Nothing else. Something moved in a corner and the men directed their lanterns that way. Nothing.

‘Rats?’ asked Stere, but no one responded.

‘Follow the rails, they’ll lead us to a gallery,’ said Nicu and the men started off.

There was still plenty of oxygen around, so they didn’t have to worry, and they breathed easily when they reached the main gallery and saw the metallic structures.

‘All right, we stop here,’ said Vasile. ‘Let’s take as much as we can and leave. Further on there’s no air, we’re not going there.’

The men did not respond and were reconciled to what Vasile had said. Vasile was a wise man. Everyone knew that. They wedged their pliers and crowbars in hinges, cut through pipes, lifted iron bars, put them in the wheel­barrow. Then once more: bend over, stand up, sit down. And so on.

Stere suddenly felt a warm breeze at the nape of his neck. He turned around and pointed his lantern toward the darkness opposite him, but he didn’t find anything there. He had just turned back once more to his work when he again felt something – this time like a soft touch on his elbow.

‘Hey!’ he said.

His heart was pounding. Even there, where it was possible to breathe, he had to catch his breath every few minutes and wipe away the sweat that was dripping in his eyes.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nicu.

‘Nothing,’ said Stere and illuminated the walls alongside him from one end to the other. He saw an entrance into a side gallery and headed towards it. In the darkness within he thought he saw a movement – short, like a thought (or a blink). He stopped, turned towards the men, but they hadn’t noticed anything, neither the movement nor that Stere had gone off away from them. They were lifting up chunks of rail and putting them in the three wheelbarrows they had brought with them.

Stere went in through the entrance and lit up the darkness of the gallery. It was a room similar to the others they had been in, only perhaps with a lower ceiling, in which there were stacks of beams and several very large metallic containers. Stere was going to see what was in them when he heard movement to his left, and, when he directed his lantern that way, he could have sworn he saw a leg disappearing around a corner – perhaps another gallery, perhaps a tunnel. Stere hurried towards that spot, but made it only three steps before he felt as if he were submerged in darkness – not the darkness in front of him, but rather that behind him, beneath him. His feet had pierced the rotted wood covering a well, and Stere plunged several meters into the darkness. His lantern struck against the walls of the well and went out.