Courtney Summers - Defy the Dark

Cali opened her eyes. The spider was gone, the remnants of her web drifting lazily and unfinished in the window.

Cali’s phone blinked off, finally spent. She’d have to get the charger from her mother later. Cali slipped it into her desk drawer on top of the magazine and pushed the drawer closed. She left the window open, though; closed her eyes again and inhaled the dawn breeze.

She hoped the spider would be okay.

Underground, it is cold.

The deeper you go, the colder it gets. In elementary school, I learned that if you go far enough, there’s a layer of magma underneath the dirt, and beneath that the earth’s core. It’s hot—billions upon billions of degrees—and solid. Most people think it’s made of iron. My teacher said some people think it’s made of gold.

When I told my father that, he said it wasn’t true—that it’s the core of the miners that’s gold. That they are brothers underground, protecting one another, using drills and shovels like wands and athames to uncover power for the world. A league of magicians working in the depths, in the secret places of the world where no one else has ever been.

I am in the league, but I am not like the other miners, who slap each other on the back and tell dirty jokes gleefully. When we go into the mine, all I can think is this—billions of degrees at the earth’s core, yet it’s cold. I think it’s a sign, like the way people get a chill when they go into a haunted house. The earth is telling us we’re not welcome.

But underground is where the money is, in the fat seams of coal, tall as me and ten times more valuable. We rumble into the mine on the cart, Roth’s salt-and-pepper hair whipping back as he presses harder on the accelerator—he knows the track well enough to speed along with total confidence through the labyrinth. The headlights beam through the coal dust like we’re driving through black snow; we turn our helmet lamps on as the sun vanishes behind us. I’m afraid of the dark in the mines. Afraid to be so, so far away from the world above.

I nod to a group of miners as we pass—most of them went to Middleview High with me. Just four months ago, we sat at graduation together. As the principal talked about bright futures, I entertained the idea that I would go on to something else—anything else. It was a silly fantasy, of course. The only Middleview boys who escape a life in the mines are the Runners, who slink away to colleges or the army, never to be seen till they return for their parents’ funerals. The town doesn’t welcome them back. They’re deserters, traitors.

My father was a foreman, last out in an accident fifteen years ago. The Middleview Mine Catastrophe , the monument calls it. Four died; Dad kept a group of seven others alive, including Roth. My father gave them his lunch. He went hungry as three, four, five days passed until rescuers reached them. He is a local hero; he was a great miner. If I were a Runner, it would destroy my mother. It would destroy my father’s memory.

I could never come back.

Roth drops me off, pats me on the shoulder as I walk away from the cart. Because I’m new, I get the boring jobs; because I don’t talk, I get the solitary ones. Just like yesterday, I’m plastering an airflow wall, scooping white goo out of a bucket with my hand and rubbing it into the cracks of cinder blocks.

I pretend I’m a painter, drawing stick figures in the plaster. I pretend I’m a doctor and getting the plaster into all the cracks saves someone’s life. I pretend that I’ll keep my promise to myself this time around, that once this mine is dead, I’ll consider leaving this town even if it means never returning. I’ll escape, I’ll be free, I’ll be happy. I don’t know how much time passes—it’s hard to tell without the sun. If I check my watch I obsess over each second, so I just try not to look. I’m halfway into pretending I’m an archaeologist, making casts of something ancient, when I hear a sound.

A single knock.

No, not a single—there’s another. And another. Knocks with just enough pattern to be intentional, louder than the grind of machines farther down the path. I lift my head, wipe my forearm across my mouth. Knock, knock, knock ; before I know it I’m walking toward the noise. I pass a group of miners who look up at me, eyes of all ages lined with coal that’s thick like a girl’s eyeliner. Don’t they hear it? We stare awkwardly at one another for a moment; I think of saying something—

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

Pause. The others stare blankly.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

I hurry on—they don’t hear it, and I don’t want them to think I’ve lost it by saying something. Down another pathway, through an empty room . . . This is an old, old mine. The company reopened when they discovered the men from the 1800s hadn’t entirely cleared out the coal. It’s full of caverns, corners, tunnels that are easy to get lost in, dug with hand tools. Did someone get turned around, get sealed into an now-unused tunnel? I arrive at the retreat miners’ area—a far corner of the mine, where they use mechanical drills to plant explosives. They’ll take all the coal until the ceiling of earth above us is held up by a few precious pillars. Then they’ll take the pillars and their coal, too, and the room will collapse. They’re preoccupied with the machinery and don’t notice me passing.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

“Hello?” I call. The knocks answer. I run toward them, around the pillars—the retreaters’ area looks like a big, empty ballroom. I reach the wall—is the knocking getting more desperate, or am I imagining things? I put my hands against the wall. I feel the knocking on the other side, the slight tremble that vibrates into my fingertips.

“Hello? Are you there?” I ask.

The knocking stops.

Silence. Long-drawn-out silence that makes me lean forward, wait for it, wait for it—

The knocking moves.

Along the wall, knock, knock, knock . I follow. The knocker and I move along the wall together to the corner of the ballroom, where he begins to knock swiftly, like he’s keeping time with a song. It moves lower, to the bottom of the wall, to a crevice in the stone.

Voids in the earth aren’t unheard of, but we usually don’t drill this close to them. They’re unpredictable, dangerous. The wall between the ballroom and the void could collapse, start a chain reaction that covers us all up. I glance back. The retreaters aren’t in shouting distance—

A hand shoots out of the crevice, covered in coal dust. I leap back and scream like a girl—a girl . The hand grasps the edge of the crevice with white knuckles. It is not the grizzled, beaten hand of a miner. It’s slender, a tiny wrist, white white white skin dusted with coal that looks like powdered makeup instead of soot.

There is a girl trapped down here.

My eyes widen and I yell for help. I duck down, shine my helmet light into the crevice. “Hang on!”

How did she get down here? I’ve heard about druggies wandering into mines, homeless people hoping for a place to stay, but these mines are so well guarded that I didn’t know it was possible. I reach into the crevice, wait for her to take my hand, Please, grab it, I’ll help you . Is she too strung out to know I’m here, to understand I want to help her? I wonder what she’s on, I wonder how old she is, who she is, how long she’s been here. Take my hand, please.

I hear her breathing; I pull myself farther through the crevice, and my body pitches forward on an incline. I start to slide away from the ballroom and into the void. It’s only a short drop, the length of a child’s slide, but my helmet falls away; the lamp flickers off. My stomach twists.