A/N: Sorry for the lack of updates last week, and the late update today! In my defense, I was getting married. Enjoy the rest of Chapter 4!
The inside of the mine shaft is more or less as Austin expected it to be - dark, quiet, with the lingering smell of rotting wood. It isn’t quite claustrophobic. The ceilings arch a good couple of feet over his head, high enough that even Otter doesn’t have to stoop, and the light makes it easy to see anything they’re going to run into before they hit it. The ground slants at a slight incline, like they’re going deeper underground the farther they walk, and Austin wonders just how far down the shaft went before it caved in. As reluctant as he is to admit it, it’s actually a pretty cool place. He can see why teenagers would want to come here to drink and make out, even if it is a little morbid to do all of that in a place where so many people died.
“How far in does this go?” he asks, and cringes a little as the echo of his own voice bounces around the tunnel.
“It should end a little ways up there,” Otter says, gesturing farther ahead of them. “I don’t really remember how long we have to go before we hit a dead end, but it’s not too far in, I don’t think. Not enough for us to get lost or anything.”
“Are there bats in here?” Rabbit asks. He shines his flashlight at the ceiling of the tunnel, inspecting it.
Otter laughs. “Yeah, probably. I bet there’s all kinds of animals that live in here.”
Wonder if there’s any ghosts who live here, too, Austin thinks. It feels too quiet for a place where so many people died all at once. Sure, the cave-in was probably a freak accident, but the fact that everyone caught in it just bit the dust peacefully…I don’t buy it.
He chews the inside of his cheek. The mine shaft definitely gave off a bad vibe when he was standing outside of it, like something deep within the place didn’t want to be disturbed. And now that they’re actually in the tunnels, traveling along like blood cells in the arteries of a sleeping giant, nothing feels as profoundly wrong as it did a few minutes ago. If he hadn’t known the history of the mine before setting foot in it, Austin might have been tempted to dismiss the bad vibe he’d gotten as jumping to conclusions about a spooky old place. He’s done it before. But for a place that’s seen so many deaths to have no paranormal activity at all seems fishy at best.
It’s chilly in the mine - but a chill that seems natural, not one from any otherworldly source. Austin hugs himself as Otter leads the group down a branching pathway off the main tunnel. Maybe he should have brought that jacket after all. He looks back the way they came, hoping to remember what it looks like in case they do get lost - though he has faith in Otter, of course - and has to swallow a yelp. Behind the group, too far back for Austin to make out any proper details, is a shimmering, spectral something, drifting towards them at a relatively steady pace.
Has it been following us this whole time? I really have to start looking over my fucking shoulder every once in a while. Austin turns his head to look at Rabbit and Otter, who don’t seem to have noticed that something is wrong. Should I tell them? Rabbit probably doesn’t know anything about ghosts being real, or that Otter and I are psychic, and maybe Otter doesn’t want him to know. Maybe I can take care of this without them noticing.
“Hey,” he says abruptly, and sees Rabbit startle a little at the sudden sound. “I gotta piss. I’ll catch up to you, okay?”
“Are you sure?” Otter asks. “We can wait for you.”
Austin nods, forcing a smile. “I’ll just be a minute. I don’t think I’ll lose you in here.”
He’s not being particularly facetious, given that the tunnel Otter turned the group down is slightly more narrow than the main mine shaft, and doesn’t appear to have any other branching tunnels. It would be pretty impressive if Otter and Rabbit happened to vanish in the (hopefully) short time it should take to sort out the business of their ghostly stalker.
“Okay,” Otter concedes, and keeps moving.
Austin watches the Redfords’ flashlights move farther and farther away for a moment, before turning his back on them and shining his own light in the direction of the spectral form behind him. It’s gotten even closer since he last looked, and is still gaining fast. It’s hard to make out exactly what it is while he’s filling the tunnel around it with light, so once the flickering, ghostly image is a few feet away, Austin switches his flashlight off and lets everything plunge into darkness. It only takes a second or two after that for him to realize what he’s looking at, and Austin lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in the first place.
“Christ, Richard, I thought I told you not to scare me like that!”
“Sorry,” Richard says, though his face contorts in a way that means he’s trying not to laugh. “In all fairness, I kind of thought you would catch on by now. Or watch your back a little more often. I think you’re starting to forget your training, Aust.”
“So,” Austin says, “did you come here for a real reason, or to lecture me on how I’m not prepared enough for assassins that might come after me in an abandoned mine tunnel?”
“A little of both,” Richard says breezily. He finally allows himself the laugh that he’s obviously been holding back. “No, actually, I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you left town. I’m surprised you didn’t notice earlier, but I guess you’ve been distracted. I didn’t want to leave you without a way of contacting anyone back in town in case things went sideways out here.”
Austin opens his mouth to retort, but closes it again just as quickly. That’s not actually a bad idea.
“Thanks,” he says out loud. He can hear Rabbit and Otter’s voices coming from farther down the mine shaft, but he can’t even see their flashlights anymore.
Richard grins wide enough to show off the gap between his two front teeth. “Don’t mention it. Nothing interesting’s going on back in town, but I’ve got the other ghosts keeping tabs on things just in case.”
Austin frowns. He hadn’t considered the possibility that while he was outside of Antlers, running around in the desert, the entity might seize the opportunity to reveal itself in town. But apparently it seemed likely enough so that Richard planned for it. Then again, Richard has a lot more training in how to plan for and deal with these types of things. As irritating as it sometimes was at first, Austin’s glad that Richard has been pretty persistent about sticking around.
“What’s Landis up to?” he asks. If the lake really is passively possessing Landis, there’s a chance it might have started taking more control of him once Austin and Otter left.
Richard shrugs. “Working, I think. Wes and Danton said they would keep an eye on hi-”
A high-pitched scream comes from deep in the mine shaft, from the direction Otter and Rabbit walked off in. For a brief second, before he can even turn around to look, Austin feels his heart stop. Goosebumps spring to life on his arms. His feet feel nailed down to the mine car tracks under them.
“I have to go help,” he says. He unsticks his feet from the ground and sets off at a fast walking pace, unwilling to run in case whatever got Otter and Rabbit hears him coming. The slower it realizes there’s another person in the tunnel, the better.
“Aust, wait,” Richard calls after him, zipping forwards to float next to Austin while he walks. “This could be a trap.”
“I don’t care,” Austin growls.
“Think about this before you rush in, is all I’m saying. Something could be trying to get at you through -”
“They’re in trouble,” Austin hisses. “Rabbit’s just a kid, okay? I have to go help.”
Richard shuts up after that, but Austin can feel the disapproving gaze on him. Instead of dignifying it with a response, he points his flashlight in front of him and turns it on, sweeping the beam along the floor in search of anything Rabbit or Otter could have dropped, maybe a patch of unstable earth they fell into. But the two Redfords seem to have vanished entirely from the tunnel, swallowed up by the darkness. Austin swears under his breath. He swings the flashlight beam a little more erratically the farther he walks, until finally it bounces off of something that looks suspect.
There’s an entryway set into the wall of the mine shaft, just between two support beams. It looks like it was closed off, once, but the wood planks barring anyone from coming in (or out, Austin thinks grimly) have since decayed and fallen away. Austin steps over their remains gingerly, shining his flashlight down into the smaller passageway.
“Otter? Rabbit?”
He can hear someone whimpering, up ahead. He makes his way carefully down the shaft, which feels steeper than the ones before it, angling downwards with an unexpected sharpness. The whimpering gets louder the farther downhill Austin walks, until his flashlight beam illuminates something that makes his breath catch in his throat.
The closed-off shaft ends abruptly at a sloping pile of rock and soil that fills it from top to bottom, blocking any passage. This must have been where the cave-in happened. Dozens of people, dead, under that pile. Austin barely has time to consider it. Otter is standing in front of the dead end, holding Rabbit in front of him with a long, sleek hunting knife pressed to Rabbit’s throat. Rabbit’s eyes are swimming with tears, and Austin can see the kid’s throat and jaw working as he tries to swallow back sobs.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Otter says. His mouth stretches into a manic grin that shows off too many teeth, and one of his eyes starts to jitter and roll back in its socket. Austin’s stomach lurches. “Now we can finally get to the fun part.”
OH HEY. IT’S THIS ONE.