’Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves
Synopsis: When a mine collapses, an experienced miner risks everything to save the life of a younger colleague. But before they reach safety, they soon discover something more sinister than the typical dangers of a disintegrating mine.
Sean Westbrook was a fourth-generation coal miner. It was in his blood. He loved and hated it. But today he felt peculiarly uneasy and hated it more than he should. He couldn’t wait to leave that dark tunnel. Just one more load, he thought, and then he’d leave for the day.
He backed his scoop into a heap of coal and then headed up the road to dump it onto the conveyer belt, sending it thousands of feet to the surface. It’s the way it should’ve worked, the way it had worked day in and day out for twenty years now, but he hadn’t driven more than five feet when the bowels of the Earth groaned. Dirt rained down and bounced off his hard hat and onto the floor. He hit the brakes and rolled to an easy stop.
He looked up. The dark surface of the ceiling was marked with roofbolts and ridges cut from longwall machines. Sean breathed out slowly. His brows inched closer together. The underground was no stranger to enigmatic and sometimes frightening sounds. But this seemed different. It was different. He sat there a minute longer looking back and forth along the ceiling. His headlamp made broad strokes of light across the surface. He looked for something that would tell him the mine was weakened. With a whole mountain on top of you, you could never be too careful.
White reflector stripes floated along the right wall, and a familiar voice echoed through the cavern in the darkness ahead. “Hey, what’s taking so long?” said Mick, an 18-year-old who grabbed this job right out of high school. It’s what happens when you need to pay for a baby girl and a teenage bride.
Sean turned his head and squinted toward the voice. The rest of Mick’s body filled in the gaps between the reflective strips on his clothes and the young man momentarily turned off his headlamp so Sean could see him. Sean liked him. Mick was a good kid with a passion for life. But Sean had seen the mine strip that zeal out of a hundred young men.
“What you waiting for?” Mick said. “Let’s get this load on top so we can go home.”
The Earth growled again, shaking the ground. Plastic tubes that held electrical wires bounced along the ceiling. The trembling fluorescent lights flickered, casting demonic shadows that danced along the walls. Except for the hum of the scoop’s engine, it was completely silent.
“Mick, you alright?” Sean said.
Mick’s light turned on in response. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
“Well, get up here on the scoop. We’re getting out now.”
The scoop wasn’t built for speed, but it was quicker than they could make it out on foot. It was a long way out. Sean stepped on the gas, the engine rumbled, the scoop bounced along up the path.
The lights highlighted a damaged mine where wires hug dangerously low from the ceiling. Pillars had collapsed. The scoop scraped along the walls in a few places that were caved in. The tracked wheels squeaked as they turned.
Mick broke the silence. “What was that?”
“Not sure.”
“Earthquake?”
“Maybe.”
“Explosion?”
“Could be.”
Sean chewed his lip as they continued to climb up the road. The headlights formed eerie shadows along the dirt walls. He opened and closed his mouth. His nostrils and lungs felt dry and dirty. The pathway was filled with dust. “Keep monitoring the air. You never know what gasses can escape when these walls crack.”
Sean shifted in his seat and slowed the scoop.
“What is it?” Mick asked.
“Thought I saw something over there,” Sean said, pointing to the left.
Something flesh colored scurried behind the posts and disappeared in the dark.
“There! Did you see that?” Sean pointed.
Mick peered into the darkness. “See what?”
Sean shook his head and hit the gas again. As they turned the next corner, something roared from a tunnel that branched out to the left. They both realized what was barreling toward them.
“Get out!” Sean yelled.
They jumped and sprinted uphill as a wall of water smashed into the scoop, tumbling it over, pinning it against the opposite wall. The men stared as they watched the water tear the machine apart.
“Let’s get high before this fills the entire mine,” Sean said. “Glen and his boys shouldn’t be too far away.”
****
It seemed to take hours to reach the others. A group of about eight men sat around in a circle.
“Sean, Mick,” Glen greeted them. He stood about 6-foot-4, coal dust blanketed his face. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow in comparison to the surrounding blackness. He moved his head to the side and looked beyond them down the mine. “Where’s the scoop?”
Sean told him about the water. “We’ve got to get high before that water reaches us.”
“Yeah, well, that’ll be a problem,” Glen said, pointing up the road where dirt and rocks blocked the passageway. “We’re stuck here.”
“I’m telling you, whatever’s out there took him!” someone yelled.
Sean turned quickly, and thought he saw something run from the light of his headlamp.
“I’m telling you,” said Drew Hatch, another young miner. “Something came out of nowhere and took off with Casey. Something’s out there. That quake, it woke something up. Something that lives down here.”
“Drew,” Glen said, “he’s probably just out there taking a piss.” Glen turned to Mick. “He’s been saying he’s been seeing something ever since the tremors hit.” Then he walked toward Drew.
Drew’s words, however, struck something in Sean. Sean looked out into the void of the mine. Then he turned to Mick as the men tried to calm Drew and look for Casey. “How’s the gas in here?”
“Both carbon monoxide and the carbon dioxide is getting a little higher, but it’s still safe,” Mick said. “There is a little methane, however.”
“Keep checking,” Sean said. He reached down and felt his pick hammer in its holster. “You have your steel hammer?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep a hand on it.”
Sean wandered out further into the mine and exposing the walls with his headlight. Something moved just a few feet in front of him. He looked down; nothing was there. His heartbeat pounded in his chest, rattling the buckles on his suspenders. He thought about Casey. Something was much stranger than the typical dangers of a crippled mine.
Sean looked back down the road. His lamplight glistened off the tracks that lined each side, leading into a ghastly abyss. He could hear water getting closer.
Something dragged across the dirt floor. He spun around; his lights highlighted someone’s legs being pulled into a small crevice in the wall.
“Holy crap!” Mick yelled from right behind Sean. “Did you see that?”
Before Sean could respond, Big Drew bellowed from behind. Multiple men cried out in pain. Sean and Mick ran back and saw four men in a tight circle, shining lights back and forth. Their numbers were dwindling.
“What are they?” one of them yelled.
“It’s not a myth, it’s not a myth,” Drew repeated.
Sean got a good look at what he had only previously caught glimpses of. It clung to the ceiling above the four men. Its four appendages gripped to the ridges. It looked at the light with small, cloudy eyes.
“Holy crap.” Mark whispered.
The animal’s mouth opened with a crack, its jaws seemed to unhinge. Saliva dripped from two large canines as it hissed violently. The thing released its grip on the ceiling and fell in the middle of the four men.
Drew had no time to react. In one swift motion, the creature landed, pounced onto his chest, bit at his throat and leaped into the darkness, disappearing. Drew bent over and fell face first into the dirt.
Two more of Glen’s men were yanked into the shadows.
Something cut deep into Sean’s right thigh. He grunted as he hit the ground. His pick hammer was already in hand, and he swung it wildly at whatever grabbed and tore at his body. The pointed end of the hammer stuck in something, which thrashed on contact.
Mick aimed his light at Sean. The creature thrashed more when the light touched its skin. It released Sean then silently escaped into the cover of shadows, with a hammer bouncing along its back.
“Whatever they are, they sure don’t like the light,” Mick said, scanning everywhere with his flashlight.
“You alright?” It was Glen standing above, panting. Beads of sweat fell off his nose.
The ground shook again. Glen and Mick were knocked to the ground; Sean rolled to the side as boulders rolled past them in the dark. It was silent again except for the rush of water. The coming torrent cooled the air.
Sean looked back toward the collapsed wall that had blocked the path. His headlamp highlighted floating dust and a section of empty air.
“Hey,” Sean’s voice was only a gasp. He coughed up dust, cleared his throat and gutturally spoke again. “Hey, fellas, look! The way is clear.” Sean knew that the elevator, if it was still working, was not too far away.
Glen suddenly sprang up and sprinted uphill past Sean. Sean looked down. A herd of those things were scrambling up towards them; behind the creatures was a wall of water. Mick lay unconscious below Sean’s feet.
“Get up, Mick! We gotta go, now!”
Sean gasped as he tried to stand up, his leg didn’t support him and he collapsed. He put his hand down on his thigh. It was warm, wet. He crawled over to Mick and shook him by the shoulders.
“Come on, Mick!” He felt his pulse. It had a consistent beat. He looked down at the gas gauge. Carbon dioxide and methane gases were getting dangerously high. He pulled out his self rescuer and attached it to Mick’s face so he could breathe clean oxygen. Mick’s eyes fluttered slightly. “Come on, buddy.”
Sean aimed his light downhill and the herd of creatures splayed out on both sides of the beam and continued to race uphill. The creatures seemed uninterested in Sean and Mick. They just ran around them and swarmed through the hole towards higher ground.
Large chunks of the mine were loosened by the flow of water and crashed behind them. Sean somehow ignored the pain in his leg, hefted Mick onto his back, hiked a few feet and then dragged Sean through the open hole in the wall. He grimaced and spat sweat as he dropped Mick on the other side.
He reached into his belt and pulled out the materials needed to make a barricade wall. The walls were designed to keep bad air from coming in, but Sean hoped it would also help keep the water out as long as possible.
After attaching the last support for the wall, Sean picked Mick up again. He stumbled, his vision blurred. He wheezed as he gasped for air, but continued on.
The creatures seemed to vanish. He wondered if they ever existed, if it was just his mind. Where was Glen?
The wall behind popped and cracked as the water hit it. It wouldn’t last long. Sean pushed harder up the hill.
He turned the corner and knew the elevator shaft was close. Then he saw it. His lights flickered off the metal braces. The ground surrounding it seemed to swing and move.
He shined the light directly on the ground, revealing about 10 of those sinister beasts rhythmically swaying back and forth. One of them looked back directly at the light. Tissue and blood hung from its mouth.
Sean yelled and charged with his light. The creatures scattered. Sean set Mick down by the elevator shaft and looked at Glen’s body. It wasn’t recognizable anymore.
Mick mumbled.
Sean looked up at the elevator and then back down at Mick. “I gotta get you up there, Micky.” The car rested about seven feet above him. “Can you help?”
Mick nodded.
The animals hissed and scratched the rocks behind him. Sean shined his light and the swarm backed off.
Sean hefted Mick up onto his shoulders, put his arms underneath his rib cage and thighs and pushed straight up. Mick threw out his arms and grabbed a hold of the bottom of the elevator. Sean gave one more push and Mick rolled into the elevator’s floor.
Sean collapsed to the ground. His grimace looked like a painful smile. He grabbed his thigh and rolled onto his face. He wheezed. It felt like he was breathing hot tar.
Above, Mick started to come to. He pulled his mask off his face. “Sean, get up here.”
Sean tried to stand. He fell back down. He couldn’t even extend his leg. Sean looked above him at the lever that would close of the elevator car and send it up.
“Mick. Don’t worry.”
“What are you talking about?” Mick responded, weakly.
“Take care of those two beautiful girls in your family.”
“Sean, don’t,” Mick said as he tried to push himself up.
“It was an honor working with you, Mick,” he said, reaching up to the lever. He paused on it for a second. Then he closed his eyes and pulled.
The elevator door squeaked as it closed. Gears went in motion and the car started to rise.
Sean sat there and looked into the darkness. He checked the gas gauge. Methane was extremely high. He grabbed a rock with a sharp point and pulled out a piece of flint in his pocket. One spark would do it.
He shined his light into the dark. The group of creatures circled around him, stalking. He shined the light at them again to keep them away. He needed to wait a few minutes to make sure Mick would be safe.
The wall below creaked and moaned from the rising water.
He had to do it now.
Sean raised the rock and slammed it into the flint.
Just after a fireball roared through the mine and up the elevator shaft, a wall of water blasted through the barricade, swallowing up the surge of fire and everything else in its path.
****
Fourteen hours after feeling the concussion of the blast from Sean’s flint, and feeling the elevator come to a complete stop in some unknown place underground, something cut into the top of the elevator car.
“Anyone in there?”
Mick tried to yell “I’m here,” but it just came out as babble.
The roof of the elevator folded open revealing a smiling human face. “You okay in there?”
Mick nodded his head.
“Wow, you’re one of the few lucky ones.” He turned his head “Hey we have somebody down here!” He turned his gaze back towards Mick. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get you out of there.”
Beyond the rescuer, Mick saw something flesh colored blur by in the darkness.
Photo courtesy of coaleducation.org
