By the Light of a Gibbous Moon Page 6

  Two hours later, my hands and face broke out in a red rash from whatever poison lay in that pool and I felt wicked ill, as if a week-long drinking binge had come down on my head all at once. From someplace the notion come to me– It sounds like foolishness now, but I thought that if I went back to the pool again I’d feel better.

  30 June

  Trouble at last. It’s never far off in a mine, and I figured we were about due. Paczini has been ducking out in the middle of his shift, for longer and longer times. Jessup thought he might had the runs or something. Turns out Paczini had wandered past that stone door and had to go poking his beak in to see what was behind it. I guess he liked what he saw cause now he won’t leave it alone. Says he don’t want to work in the mine anymore. Nothing easier to fix than that. I paid him out and sent him on his way. From now on, I’ll be taking his salary for my own. Lord knows I earned it.

  3 July

  Paczini again. I had to get two men to drive him out, and the only way they could do it was at the end of a musket. I don’t have people to spare for this nonsense. I told them he comes back, put him to sleep.

  When I heard about Paczini’s madness to see the pool again I considered taking another peek myself, while the boys were all out for Independence Day. It’s the trip down the shaft that stopped me. The truth is I get a touch of the shakes in the dark, especially down below the first level. The Head Foreman afraid of tight spaces, haha.

  6 July

  Men are back from celebrating. I gave them a small bonus to get bent up in the settlement, told them there’d be more if they got back to work on time. That was a lie. I borrowed the money from their next packet. They don’t break something good soon, all the money’s going to stop, and never mind bonuses.

  14 July

  Jacobs told me today that not a lick of work has been done in a week. He didn’t want to turn on the boys, but he figured if they didn’t get back to work soon the mine’d shut down. He’s right, too. And what were they doing, at the bottom of the shaft, instead of work? Gambling, drinking, whoring for chrissake? No, they’ve been sitting around that God-damned pool of muck!

  Jacobs spelled it out for me: it was Thompson, that worm, what first revealed the pool to Paczini. Rigged up a chain to lock off that stone door, then charged him a nickel to look inside when he was off shift. Soon enough the whole work gang is filling his pockets with nickels. Paczini was a halfwit all along. I can understand him paying money to look at the pretty puddle of light, but what about the others?

  I’m starting to fear there may be some new kind of gas down this hole we don’t know about. Whatever is down there puts unnatural notions in a man’s head. I know it from some of the crazy thoughts I had after seeing it that once.

  I asked Jacobs to give that room a shake, just a small charge to bring the roof down and block the door for good, but he says it ain’t safe because of the slipshod shoring in the corridor. So I waited on the men to come topside and told them straight: anyone else buggering around by that pool was going to get kicked off the site, and I don’t care if the whole thing shuts down. I was going to tell Thompson off right then in front of the others, but he didn’t come up. He’ll have to sooner or later though.

  I’ve got a man on gas watch all shift now, just in case. We can’t spare the man-power, but I figure it’s essential.

  I need a drink.

  16 July

  Jacobs just come to tell me the chamber is open again and every man-jack in the mine is down there. How I hate going down that shaft! If tight spaces didn’t give me the willies I could have stopped this nonsense long back. I’m bringing the musket this time and settle it for good.

  ****

  I put the log book aside and poured myself some more awful camp coffee.

  “Listen Wilson, you have to agree that something fishy preceded the disaster.” Pardee thumped on that ragged log book like an old-time preacher ranting about brimstone and fire. “The foreman spells it out right here.”

  I scratched where my beard was growing in a little too thick for comfort.

  “What’s mostly spelt out is he didn’t have a clue what was going on in his own mine.”

  “Look.” He hesitated. The struggle creasing his face added ten years. “There’s more that I didn’t tell you before. I knew you would be skeptical of the St. Mary’s account, and I didn’t want to add more details, which on their own would sound absurd, but now–”

  “Whatever you’re chewing on, spit it out.”

  “Listen, Wilson, you’ve heard of the witch scares in Massachusetts, back in the 17th century?” After starting out with a line like this, I can understand why he hurried the rest. “The Church was uncovering witchcraft and devil worship every week, and people were being burned and hanged anyplace big enough to ginny up a mob. I figure those they put on trial were probably guilty of nothing more sinister than boredom. But there was one bunch of cultists which had arrived in Dunwich from Scandinavia. Knowing as foreigners they’d be closely watched, they hid their beliefs in the building of a Lutheran church. They made a point of excluding outsiders, and since Lutheranism is a Christian faith they were more or less tolerated.”

  I nodded along with his monologue, trying to ignore the ache walking up my neck to my scalp. And us with no liquor.

  “The real reason they settled in these parts was their discovery, through various black arts and the research of certain ancient documents, of what they called the Fontis Vitae, a spring the water of which granted eternal youth. They believed it to be hidden in a cave near Dunwich.

  “An 18th century pastor of the Congregational Church left a pile of documents, proving that several wealthy families in the area enjoyed an unnatural –unholy, he called it– longevity, and that they were in communication with certain outside entities. He believed that these people never died but concealed their long life by staying secluded from the community and making years-long trips abroad.”

  “And that’s it? He proved this bunch of wizards were immortal and they weren’t burned or tortured or whatever?”

  “The pastor’s account concludes with the cultists leaving the area.”

  Although I hold no truck with outside entities, I am able to raise my eyebrows to what some call unnatural heights. I did so.

  “What had been a very straightforward story tapers off into nonsense at the end. There’s some some mumbo-jumbo about the fake Lutherans ascending moonbeams to the heavens. It all sounds like bollocks of course, doesn't it? Unless you have the other facts like Doctor Temple’s testimony, and now this log book.”

  Something had been troubling me about that book and now it came to mind.

  “Don’t you think it right convenient,” I said, “how that book was sitting just inside the mine, like someone was waiting for us to come along and find it?”

  “I agree it is convenient, and welcome too. I know I don’t give the impression of being a man who harbours doubts, Mr. Wilson, but my confidence has taken a bashing these last few weeks. Sometimes a person must get a break. It’s the law of averages, my good man.”

  I said nothing, but to my mind came the picture of a mastiff-sized spider, perched in the unending darkness of the main shaft. A leather book waited at the extremity of his web. I gave my head a shake and climbed into my bedroll.

  Shortly after dawn, the cool darkness settled on my shoulders like a familiar cloak as I entered my element. We hauled our gear to the shaft head.

  I told the boss to save our rope as I rigged up a length of loose chain over the emergency shaft. I wasn’t worried about a bit of surface corrosion, and it would be easier to climb on the way back up. We left our main kit there on the top level and brought only our lights, water, two coils of rope, and a few tools.

  At the bottom, I studied the damage done by the earthquake. The shoring was buckled in several places near the shaft, but there wasn’t much rot. As long as we didn’t light any firecrackers I thought we would be okay.

  A lot of men get the
cold sweats the first time they go down, but Pardee was steady, until a few minutes later when a harsh metal crescendo splintered the silence around us. It was the heavy gauge chain clattering down into a dusty heap. An echoing quiet prevailed for about ten seconds before Pardee let out the curse that been building in his chest and cried, “You and your rusty bloody chains! Now we’re trapped–”

  I grabbed his arm in my fist and squeezed. “Quiet, you idiot! That chain didn’t come loose on its own, it was let down.”

  Pardee hushed. There was nothing after the noise of the chain falling, no taunts or threats or other human sounds. Then he crept over to the shaft. He tried to train his lantern up into the channel, but it was forty feet high if it was an inch. I casually mentioned that if any stones were to follow that chain, they’d put a big dent in whoever was standing below. Pardee pulled his head back.

  “There must be another route out of here,” he gasped, eyes rolling like a pair of loose marbles, “there simply must!” I didn’t see any benefit in contradicting him.

  The two of us hunkered around our light and worked out in whispers how we should proceed. I shoved aside any speculation as to who might have followed us and cut off our retreat, and Pardee thankfully forgot about his magic pool for the time being.

  We began a careful job of pacing out the tunnels, clearing any clutter away from the intersections, and marking them with little stone cairns. I didn’t own a watch, and I didn’t ask the boss if he had one –can’t see how it would have helped– but I figured it was about two hours later when I stopped to take a careful sip from my canteen. I was fending off the thought of what it might be like to take the last sip and still be here underground, when I saw a faint glow bobbing like a bit of flotsam on the unrelieved blackness.

  Soon it no longer vanished when I didn’t look at it straight on, and as it came closer it separated into three separate lights, one at about head height, and two smaller ones which flanked it lower down and swung slightly.

  I grabbed Pardee with one hand and held my breath as the beam of his bulls-eye came around.

  In my mind’s eye, the approaching spectre turned into a ragged veteran of hard-rock mining, dressed in century old rags and sporting a beard down to his ankles. What the light actually revealed was a slim and smooth-faced youth of about twenty, wearing threadbare coveralls and rubber-soled boots.

  Pardee’s lantern trembled slightly, but he held his ground until the figure was as close as a grocer on the far side of a counter. The miner glowed. Even in the full light of our lamp, he undoubtedly glowed. His smile was open and friendly, and despite the fantastic circumstances of our meeting I was not afraid.

  “A-are you John Jukes?” It was a minute’s work for Pardee to get the question out.

  “Cain’t say that I am, sir. Name is Edward Mulligan. Pleased to meetcha’” He thrust out his phosphorescent meat hook and Pardee hesitantly clasped his hand.

  “Mulligan, my name’s Lionel Pardee.” There was a slight pause between his first and last names, but he stuck with the one he had given me. “And this is my partner, Ben Wilson.”

  “You folks are with the rescue, yeah?”

  “Rescue?” Pardee cut his eyes my way, but I had nothing to contribute.

  “You’re standing here so I reckon you know the main shaft collapsed. There’s a whole bunch of us down here. You know how long I been waitin’ on a cold glass of beer?”

  “No.” Pardee’s ears must’ve hiked up two whole inches for the answer to his next question: “How long have you been waiting?”

  “Well now, I don’t rightly know, but I tell you it’s a damned sight too long.” There was no anger in the man, just good natured frustration at what he felt was shabby treatment by the bosses. “I’ll be writing a letter to the Mining Commission, don’t think I won’t. I’ll get my back pay too. Must be weeks by now, maybe months...” He trailed off here and was lost in his own inscrutable thoughts until Pardee interrupted.

  “Listen, Mr. Mulligan, we had to jury-rig our descent down the emergency shaft, and it looks like someone sabotaged our line. Maybe one of your friends did it… as a joke, eh? What do you think?”

  “Oh sure,” Mulligan chortled, “that would be Thompson.” Pardee gave me a significant look at the mention of that name. “He was a joker all right, before the disaster. Off his nut now, though, mad as a March hare. Seeing as you don’t know him, I wouldn’t go up to shake his hand if’n you see him. And call me Eddie, if we’re going to friends and all.”

  “Right. I’m sorry to say we didn’t come to rescue you, Eddie, and without any way up back up the shaft we’re all trapped.”

  The miner waved this detail away as if it were of no more significance than a mayfly. “We ain’t stuck here, don’t worry. I can get us out.”

  “If you know of a way,” I said, finding my voice at last, “lead on.”

  “Hold on, Mister. I can’t just up and leave my friends behind. See, everyone was in this old ruined chamber what Thompson discovered, and when the cave-in happened, the door got wedged in place. I think the three of us could dislodge it now, seeing as you brought some proper tools.”

  “Yes, let’s help your friends, by all means.” Pardee’s eyes lit up at the prospect of finding a dozen more Rip Van Winkles. The lump I swallowed felt about the size of a baseball, but I had to go along with their madman’s errand. I didn’t know exactly what Mulligan was, but I figured him for our best chance of escaping that wreck of a mine.

  Anyway, we followed the glowing miner down a narrow passageway we hadn’t yet tried ourselves. It wasn’t far to the stone door. You could see it was an unusual piece of work right off: seven feet tall, it glittered all over like a giant hunk of black quartz, and was flanked by two tapering pillars worked in a spiral pattern. On the door itself, there was some sort of carving like nothing I’d seen. Whether they were pictures or writing I don’t know, but they seemed to writhe just at the point you looked away. It was either the work of a master mason or just bad light, but to me the message was loud and clear: stay away.

  Pardee and the miner weren’t fazed though. With a pickaxe and the pry bar, they worked the slab mostly clear of the lintel. The fixture looked like a candle made of brass that had melted over on one side. When Pardee grasped it with both hands, the portal swung out so smoothly you’d have thought it had been greased that morning.

  Something like light poured out that doorway, not all at once as natural light does, but in languid waves. It washed over us like some nacreous, all but tangible liquid, flooding the sagging gallery behind us. When I dared to breathe again, I tried to stroke it with my hand, but wherever I gestured the weird luminescence lazily evaded my grasp.

  The phenomenon was dazzling, and left me mesmerized. When I finally gave my head a shake, I saw Pardee and Mulligan were already in the chamber beyond. I followed.

  The hall beyond was broad and perfectly round, as was the radiant pool which lay at its center. Although it didn’t move in the usual sense of the word, you couldn’t call it still, for the dancing light seemed to climb up out of it like smoke, to twine and shift, merge and separate, and eventually return to its origin.

  About the pool’s edge, arranged however they had slumped into death, were two dozen or so glowing white corpses. To a man they yet faced the pool. The bodies were naked and leprous, the clothes, hair, and some flesh as well, eaten away by the radiation, as if a family of rats had made sport of them but not bothered to finish.

  With a jerk I pulled my eyes away from that unearthly scene. Rather I later recalled trying to avert my gaze, but remained idiotically gazing, until I forgot in irresistible fascination any reason not to look. But one thing moved other than that endlessly shifting liquid effulgence: from time to time the eyes of one of the miners gathered around the pool would flick up at me, before turning back to their worship.

  I did not come out of this horrific catatonia until I found myself back in the corridor with Mulligan’s hand on my arm. Pardee
had in a daze preceded me. With a whisper the door closed, hiding that otherworldly radiance.

  “I guess they’re content to wait,” the miner said. If I had obeyed my instinct then to laugh at this calmly stated irony, I think I would yet be laughing today, in a padded room in the sanitarium.

  Instead, we gathered up our gear and follow ed Mulligan.

  What ensued next, an hours long march through a twisting warren of rock, was as unpleasant a trek as any I’ve known. The shadows retreated, bottomless, before our light, into series of corridors, halls and caverns. I can swear before the Lord above that not a one of them was cut by human hands, but I cannot equally swear they were natural.

  What made me shiver like a man confined to the sickbed from which he will never rise wasn’t the strangeness of it all, but the memory of the pool of radiance. Every step away from that chamber of the dead was like adding a brick to my load, a burden which I was free to release, if only I would return to the warm and restful glow of the pool. We let Mulligan guide us past junction and impasse, but however far we journeyed into that trackless subterrene maze, the path back to the round room was as plain in my mind as the path from my front door to town. If it wasn’t for the ancient miner’s calm reassurance, our frayed nerves would have snapped a dozen times over.

  “We’re close now boys, never fear,” he said with a grin. We had arrived at a long open space, punctuated by a rising slope of cluttered rock and schist. “We’d be able to see the exit from here I think, but it must be nighttime.”

  He was right! Catching the whiff of fresh air, I allowed myself a little laugh of relief, right before I saw it. It had been a long hike in almost no light. I blinked hard, but it could not so easily be denied: it was the same wavering glow, the same as had first given Mulligan away. This time it was back behind us, and coming on fast.