63.
"When you dig coal for as long as we did you get used to seeing shit down there." Robert Douglas was in his eighties and looked even older than that. He had a long eyed stare that Gilbert had seen before when dealing with forests, but Robert had never been in the woods, said he never hiked or camped or did any of that. What he had done was dug coal.
"Take your time Robert, we don't have to go through this all right now." They had found Robert from talking to a couple people around the town of Beckley, he was all by himself in a small shack outside of a ghost town that Gilbert couldn't make out the name of when they drove past it.
"I've been taking my time this whole time Mr. Dunkley now its time for someone to know, know what we found down there, know what we unleashed." Robert took a drink from his mug, shuddered and went on, "It was back in fifty three, we had opened up a new tunnel deeper than we'd dug in the time I'd been there, a guy I knew was down there talking about hearing things, strange things. I remember back then thinking he was full of shit, just imagining things down there deeps, then I heard it." Robert drank again, shuddered again, and continued though both Gilbert and Clarissa could see from his eyes he wasn't really with them anymore. "Sounded like a young girl, we'd get them every once in a while, they'd wander into a mine when we'd be on lunch or something, get lost and get afraid, usually not an issue just have to find them. But something seemed off about this little girl, the voice was a little too insistent on me finding her. Less asking for help and more drawing me in. The hairs on my neck stood up as I moved further into that mine, when I finally found that little girl I was in full terror mode. She looked fairly normal, a little soot covered, but pretty much like every little girl I'd seen around town but my body was acting like I was looking at the devil himself. She called out to me and I couldn't find it in myself to move. She kept calling to me, each time a little more pleading, each time I felt like nothing more in the world wanting to leave her presence. I could see it you see, I could see as I looked at her she changed, her body became twisted, flesh cracking, the mask falling away revealing what she was to me." Clarissa and Gilbert both knew what Robert was talking about, they'd seen the same thing. "She was moving closer to me asking me to come toward her, I was paralyzed in fear until the explosion went off. Some dumb ass up tunnel had done an unplanned demo, wrecked a whole bunch of tunnel work almost got a couple guys killed, but it shook me out of my issue. I hauled ass out of that tunnel and quit that very fucking day I'll tell you what. Just said 'fuck this job' they thought it was the explosion and understood. I got a job as a prison guard, it was a far trek compared to the mine, but I made it everyday just to stay the fuck away from whatever was down there." Robert finished his drink and then poured himself another.
"So it was just the little girl down there, that's all you saw?"
"That's all I saw down there, but that wasn't it. A few days after I quit first guy went missing. Thomas Gribbs a foreman who worked the late shift. Just there one minute gone the next. Other people went missing over the years too, every time one did I'd think back to that little girl lost down there, and what was she doing. I knew it was her, whatever she was, we unearthed her and now she was taking people to wherever she planned on taking me." Gilbert understood the guilt, he'd felt it himself. "But you really want to know what keeps me up Mr. Dunkley? She's calling for me now. I heard it a couple weeks now, can hear my name on the wind in her voice, that thing I touched is now looking for me, and I got a sense its looking for you, you got the look of it."
"I plan on going down there and killing it Robert."
"Don't think what's down there can be killed Mr. Dunkley." Gilbert stood up and Clarissa followed.
"Everything can be killed Robert, everything."
"Well if you're looking for it, seek out the Davidson mine, its capped now, they lost too many men, blamed it on chemicals but I know what it was, it still gets people from to time, see it in the paper." Robert resumed rocking on his deck like he was when Clarissa and Gilbert had found him. "I hope you can kill it Mr. Dunkley, god knows my time is coming soon as it is, but I don't want whatever that thing wants for me in the Davidson, what it wants for us all."
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