Coal
My second attempt for genrechallenge – this one was my horror effort. Be warned, this has some creepy bits (only a few, and rather mild) and some gory bits (quite a few and really gory).
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You turn to look back at your friends, almost glowing in the dappled light slanting through the deep green canopy of leaves. The two boys wrestle each other, mock war cries and laughter mingling together, interspersed with the warbling shriek of birds and the soft babble of the stream that winds around the entrance to the old coalmine; the entrance in which you stand looking back at your friends.
“I dare you to eat my snots,” Jeff says to Bill, sitting atop him, the victor calling the spoils of battle.
“Double dare you.”
“Fine. Let’s both do it.”
You turn into the darkness of the mine, not wanting to watch fingers go to noses, then to the other’s mouth. Their dare for you was innocent compared to some of the ideas the boys come up with. All you have to do is walk into the abandoned coalmine and sit in the dark for the night. In their mercy, the boys had even let you bring a light. Simple.
You press the switch on the torch and the orange tungsten light vanishes into the matte black coating of soot that covers the walls and support beams. Webs flutter in the draft, the same draft you feel against the backs of your shorts. The breeze carries the scents of outside, of warm grass, damp soil, growth and summer. Your friends’ voices carry into you on the breeze.
“We’re going back to the tent. Have fun, boogerbrains,” says Jeff.
“Boogerbrains? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Where do you get these words?” says Bill.
Their voices trail off as they move away from the mine, leaving you with the crazy chirping of the birds, reminding you of anarchy and brutality-rules. You imagine them swooping down to attack each other, feathers ripped out in the fray as the birds fall together in a tangle of beaks and claws. This is a strange thought for you; you’ve never really paid that much attention to the birds before. Must be the way the noise carries so well in the silence of the mine. You can’t help but focus on the vivid sensory impulse.
You consider stopping the on the brink of darkness, still within sight of the entrance. You glance back, blinded by the light streaming in; it amazes you how fast your eyes adjust to the dark. You turn back into the dark and shrug. You’re in here now, you might as well explore. Who knows what you might find. And while the pitch-black coal-darkness holds a chill of unknown fear, it doesn’t affect you, held back by the steady light of your torch.
The mine curves to your left and descends steeply. You pause at the brink and shine the light down the shaft. It reflects off jagged rock and worn, rotting wood. Flat, round mushrooms, mottled white and pale brown, cling to the wood. Your gaze hangs on the beams, surveying them with an inexperienced eye, hoping they’ll hold for another day. They’ve held this long, no reason for them to collapse now. But still, you watch them warily as you trudge past them.
Your careless steps dislodge a cloud of dust and small stones which rattle down the shaft ahead of you. The dust tickles your face, curling up your nose and finding its way into your mouth. You shut your eyes, waiting for it to settle. The darkness behind your eyes is total, giving your imagination free reign to envision miners trapped down here, day after day, living with this soot all over their bodies, in their hair, in their eyes, in their lungs hacked up as black, phlegmy goo, and in their blood strangling their hearts to an agonizingly slow death. Goosebumps ripple up your skin from foot to head and back down again. Your eyes whip open. You take comfort from the physical reality that surrounds you.
Just as you berate yourself for an over-active imagination, you feel a soft, warm breeze tickle your neck, like a sigh, more intimate than a lover’s kiss, a lingering breath. You spin around, your heart suddenly pounding. Nothing there. Of course there’s nothing there. This is an abandoned coalmine.
You continue forwards and downwards, picking your way carefully this time, trying not to dislodge so much dirt. The passage becomes damp and spots of slimy mould and fungus appear. You wrinkle your nose at the stinking miasma surrounding them. It reminds you of death, of bodies prepared for a funeral. The smell, concentrated by the tunnel, engulfs you, catching in your nose and throat, making you gag. You decide to turn back and head for the fresher air up the passage.
As you turn, the scree slides from under you and you lose your footing on the unstable ground. You pitch forwards and slide with the scree downwards into the darkness. You splay your arms, trying to slow yourself, but it doesn’t help. You grab at the wooden beams but can’t hold on. Pain shoots through your bones as your arm whacks into one, sending lightening bolts of agony up into your shoulder. You wrap your arms into your chest and pray the shaft levels out soon. Your eyes are shut tight. You don’t try to open them.
You hit bottom in a fog of disturbed dirt. It tickles your skin and makes you itch in an irritating way that, no matter how much you scratch, remains aggravated. A layer of dust stings your eyes. Trying to ignore the feeling you bring your hands up and rub them, blinking ferociously to clean them. You see no difference between eyes open and closed. You can’t see a thing. With a rapidly pounding heart you feel around for the torch. Your fingers clutch at the ground, finding nothing but rocks, dirt and wooden splinters that jab under your nails. You draw them out again, wincing at the sharp pain. But you do not find your torch. You gaze around, your eyes open as wide as possible, but the darkness is absolute.
You hunch up and feel tears gather in your eyes. You quash them, shove yourself to your feet and throw yourself against the shaft, struggling to climb it. The loose scree and dust defeat your efforts. With a curse you cease and slither to the ground. You slump there and give in to your failure. Your shouts of frustration echo along the shaft, twisting and distorting and coming back to you like a gruesome reflection in a warped mirror.
You listen to the reflected sound, almost able to glean some meaning from it. It sounds like faded whispers. You raise your head, titling your ear a little to the side. You can almost make out another voice, distinct from yours in tone and pitch. Then, clear as someone sitting beside you, a voice calls your name. You jump in fright.
“Who’s there?” you call out, but your voice doesn’t rise above a whisper. Your words carry down the passage, fading quickly. Just before they sink beneath hearing you think you catch faint laughter. Shoving fear aside, you stand up. Perhaps Jeff and Bill found another entrance and are messing with you. You hope so.
You proceed forward hesitantly in the dark, feeling your way along the walls. Your fingers probe against damp stone, slimy with mould. Something soft bursts as your fingers come down on it. You wince and flinch away, rubbing your hand vigorously on your tee-shirt. You continue for a few minutes. The time drags out in the darkness; you feel like you’ve walked for miles.
Off in the distance you see a speck of light. You rush forwards. Suddenly everything is alright. You are safe. You’ll have lost the dare, but that doesn’t bother you. You reach the source of the light, and are met by disappointment. Glowing fungus lines the passage, tracing out the shape of the tunnel. Your hope crumbles to ash.
A movement ahead of you catches your sight. A girl stands in the tunnel, her back to you. She wears a full-length nightie made of white cotton with little frills of lace around the hem. Dirt covers it, thickest around the end. It looks like she’s been wandering around in here for a long time. You step up to her, your hand outstretched to tap her shoulder. Just before you touch her she turns.
You stumble back, strangled by a scream, but you are too stunned to let it out. You stare at her, your mouth agape, your whole body shaking. She stares back at you, unblinking. Thick red blood seeps from her eyes, staining her cheeks and drying into her eye-lashes. She mouths a word, “please,” and points father down the shaft.
You can’t stop staring at her, at the bright blood leaking across her eyelids and down her pale, pale face. It drips from her chin and soaks into her nightie. Your lips curl back in disgust; you feel sick. You rush past her, not considering that you’re heading deeper into the mine. You just want to get away.
Your foot catches against something and you sprawl onto hands and knees. You come down next to a person. She lies face-up on the ground, unmoving but for her eyes. Caught by the movement, your vision goes to her face. You reel back, falling onto your backside, but too late. The sight of pale, white maggots squirming in black, empty eye-sockets burns into your brain. You shut your eyes and cast around in your mind for some other image to replace it, but all you can see is black flies swarming over rotten meat. You get to your feet, shuddering violently, and stumble away from the body. Your stomach rolls and heaves. Swallowing copiously, you remind yourself to breathe.
You regain control of your stomach but you can’t stop shaking. You pick your way forwards into the darkness, away from the glowing fungus, carefully placing each trembling step. Images of that girl’s body haunt you down the tunnel. You try to block them out, but they continue round and round your head. You try to convince yourself that you fell and it was all a fainting dream.
You almost begin to believe yourself when a disturbing laugh breaks out behind you. It sounds like no noise a human could make. A man’s deep chuckle, but derisive, slow and measured, holding not a hint of mirth. The sound chills you to the bone, makes you stop and cower with your arms raised protectively. You back up against the wall, curling up as small as you can. Your heart pounds and your whole body trembles. You want the laughter to stop; its deathly cold could drive you insane.
You sense someone next to you, but can’t make anything out in the darkness. You feel warm breath on your neck, along your cheek, your lips. You scuttle away, but a strong hand grabs your shoulder. Something cold and hard presses painfully against your throat. You wrench away and sharp pain burns across your neck. You scream in pain and fright. Your hand goes to your neck and comes away wet. You panic, flailing arms and legs, desperate to get away from your attacker. Your lashing limbs connect with air. No one stands near you. Your fingers go to your throat, but the flow of blood has already slowed. Just a nick.
You slump to the ground, sobbing and screaming, utterly frightened and just wanting out of this.
* * *
How long has passed? Hours? Days? You have no idea. You haven’t moved since your encounter with the laughter. Just you and the darkness, which plays with your eyes, making coloured shapes and whirling sparkles dance across your vision. Hunger gnaws at your stomach, and your mouth feels sticky with lack of water. You realize that staying here will kill you; you don’t want to die. Standing, you reluctantly carry on down the tunnel. Maybe it will open out soon.
Your footsteps sound loud on the grit and scree of the mine floor. Reverberations bounce around the walls, coming back hollow and broken. You walk for a while, mentally distanced from all around, blotting out the dark and the noises that inhabit it: that chilling laughter, the garbled voices that speak of desire, death and poisoned dreams. Under it all a deep whisper utters your name over and over unit it has lost its meaning and gained a new one.
You stumble at your next step as the passage veers sharply down and to the right. A few steps later it turns left and opens out into a huge cavern, brown walls glittering in the light of hundreds of candles, flaming torches and pit fires. The light pierces your eyes, momentarily blinding you. It fills the room with a deep orange glow, reflecting off the ferruginous rock and coming back bloodied. Dark murals cover the walls, scrawled across huge spans of bare rock. Basic drawings depicting violent acts of torture and killing. The shock of this room awakens your senses and you take in everything.
Dark tables, little more than planks of wood, cover the room, laid out in perfect rows with a few feet between each. They remind you of slabs in a mortuary, all ready to receive a corpse. Various items litter the tables: jars filled with liquid, lengths of metal, various hand-held instruments used to take measurements but you have no idea what sort. Large men, wearing stained leather aprons, prowl the cavern going from table to table doing something with the items on them. You stare down into the cavern watching the activity with a fascinated dread.
A hand grabs yours shoulder, gripping hard enough that you yelp in pain. All faces turn at the sound, staring at you with hard, angry faces. You tense and try to pull away but the stranger’s hold is too strong. You turn to face him and look up into a wide face, eyes and nose covered by a leather mask. Smears of soot and splatters of something dark sully the leather, giving it the look of rotten, diseased, blackened skin. Coarse stubble covers the lower portion of his face, a frame for his sneering lips. His only other garment is a leather apron covering waist to thighs. His bulk easily triples yours. Your involuntary gasp draws a laugh from this gothic executioner.
His other hand comes down and wraps around your middle. He hoists you off the ground as easily as you’d pick up a small animal. Held securely under his arm, he carries you down into the deathly chamber. Too sacred even to struggle, you look down with horrified eyes at everything in the room. Old blood stains the tables giving them their dark surface, like long dried scabs, mottled brown and a ghastly yellow in places – like puss lanced from a boil. The red light permeating the chamber casts everything in a sheen of bloody overtones.
You reach the centre of the room and your executioner stops before a table. He places you gently on the ground, locking your feet in place with two heavy manacles. The cold stings your legs and the weight presses against your ankles. You try to shift your footing but you can only wriggle your toes. You lose your balance and grab the edge of the table to stabilize yourself. You touch something cold, wet and slimy. You whip your hand away. Red liquid outlines the ridges and hollows on your palms. You rub your hand on your shorts, feeling sick.
Wind shrieks through the chamber, coming from a cave at the back. Everyone stops and turns to look at the cave. You can’t help but look too. Another huge leather-masked man appears out of the darkness, bearing two small figures, one under each arm. You recognise their hair and clothes immediately even though the streaks of dirt covering them. How did Jeff and Bill get caught? You have no idea, but you suddenly fear for them.
The huge man comes over to you and places Jeff on the table before you. He lays the boy out gently, reverently almost. You feel a thrill of something, anticipation maybe. Jeff lies still, his eyes closed, his breathing deep and regular. The brute lifts a long, needle-like spike of metal from his apron. Red light glints along its length as he brings it down to Jeff’s temple. He presses against the end of the needle, sliding it easily through the skin, deep into the brain. Jeff’s eyes snap open. Flecks of blood float across their surface, like blood-flies in milk. His eyes meet yours and you know he has seen far worse than you.
The huge man flicks the rest of the needle into Jeff’s head. Your friend screams; a sound like you’ve never heard before, ringing with pain and fear. You hope this is a nightmare. You don’t want that sound to have been real.
Your guard steps closer to you and brings his chunky arms around you. He holds a huge hammer, long-handled, capped by a heavy block of rusted metal. Shuddering in revulsion, you realize the hammer isn’t rusting; it’s covered in old, dried blood. He grips your hands within his own. You feel the rough wood pressing into your palms. Your hands are squashed between wood and heavy flesh, and though your try, you can’t budge them. He raises the hammer up, stretching you out to your full height, then lets it crash down with all the force of an avalanche onto Jeff’s knees.
Blood sprays everywhere, shards of bone and skin dripping off the hammer. Jeff’s scream lingers, rattling in your ears like the devil’s call for apocalypse. You barely register your own screams before your arms rise again and come plummeting down, this time onto Jeff’s pelvis. Over and over the hammer strikes: left arm, right arm, ribs, neck and finally skull. It bursts open like a rotten watermelon, grey mush splattering in all directions.
A string of clotted blood dribbles down your cheek. You don’t mind it so much. It’s like Jeff’s last soft caress, his final farewell. You rub his blood into your cheek and around your chin, licking your fingers. Metallic saltiness lingers in your mouth even after you swallow.
The men around you remove the remains of the body with an efficiency that tells of long experience. Another burly man carries Bill onto the table and shoves a spike into his brain. The man behind you presses the hammer into your hands, then steps back. You can barely lift it, but you know what you must do. You struggle against its weight, finally raising it above your head. You let it crash down and feel it smash against Bill’s shins. The bone smashes but the skin does not break.
Ignoring Bill’s wails of anguish, you look back to the man behind you. He nods; you carry on. It takes longer this time. You don’t have the precision required to do an efficient job. But the hammer is heavy and needs little help to do its murderous work. As Bill’s skull splinters, you turn again to the man behind you, seeking his approval. He bends down and unlatches your legs, patting you once on the shoulder.
You walk away from the table, not thinking about your destination. After a moment you find yourself in the corner of the vast chamber. You sink to the ground, your knees pulled up to your chest with your arms wrapped around them. Water leaks from your eyes; you have no idea why. You drift off, losing all sense of time and space.
* * *
You come around.
The narrow walls of a stone cell surround you. A heavy door, firmly shut takes up one wall; a small window, another. You wonder how long you’ve been here. Cries and screams filter in under the door and the stink of waste and infection stings your nose. Heavy footsteps pass your door with routine regularity, back, forth, back, forth. You don’t know how long you’ve been here, but those footsteps sound as familiar as the greeting of an old friend.
You stand and stretch out muscles stiff and cramped from too long huddled against the wall. A flash of memory rips across your vision: your hands covered in the blood of your friends, dripping off you like water, so much of it, all over you. And your laughter – chilling, with a slow cadence, like someone who has triumphed over those lesser than them and relishes the easy kill.
The memory leaves you shaking. In an effort to forget it you turn to look out the little window. A red sky rises above black buildings, all squashed together with tiny points of light glinting from the windows like evil eyes. You shiver as a chilly breeze comes through the uncovered window. You settle in to your cell, just another captive in this prison of brutes and lost souls.
The dim sun rises above the skeletal buildings. It casts no warmth over this city. Its light struggles to banish the shadows. Another cold morning dawns in Hell.