Coal Country

I grew up in a little place in Boone County, West Virginia. Not even a community, really, it was just a loose smattering of houses halfway between the two closest cities. My parents and I lived up one of many small hollows (or "hollers," as we called them), in a house built on a flattened piece of land right smack in front of a mountain. Not some towering monstrosity, like most people picture, but one of the gently rolling giants of the Appalachians. Being in the heart of coal country, this mountain was crisscrossed by various service roads and dotted with abandoned mines.

I was an adventurous kid. That mountain was a mystery to me, always hiding something new and awesome just over the next rock formation. The most mysterious part, though, was sitting right in plain sight, taunting me, begging me to uncover its secrets while also denying me entry. It was a long-abandoned mine right behind our house, just a short walk up a service road my father had modified for his own use.The mine was a yawning mouth in the side of the mountain, separated from a flat area where my father stored old car parts by a large hole of orange-tinted water, mine runoff from the bad old days. The dirt around the mine had mostly fallen away, revealing thick seams of coal, completely untouched. Why, then, had the mine closed?

"I think it fell in," was all I could get out of my father. For a while, that answer satisfied me. Then I turned ten.

My best friend in fifth grade was named Chris, and to say that we were quite the pair is conservative at best. We were into everything, from unorthodox science experiments (no, a mixture of motor oil, glue, and tree bark will not function as a fertilizer) to cryptozoology (which at the time consisted of convincing naive classmates that we had seen a massive reptilian creature emerge from the water in front of the aforementioned mine. We were mostly viewed as two more examples of wasted potential in Boone County, which was a lot less depressing than than it is now.

On a fine Saturday morning during the winter of 1997, Chris and I decided to take a break from the Sega Genesis and walk back on the hill to do some more documentation on our reptile friend. We bundled up (West Virginia winters could be damn cold), grabbed a couple solid sticks to become official badasses, and took off up the service road. When we got back to the mine, something had changed. We couldn't tell what at first, but it soon became obvious.

At some point since our last visit, more of the hillside around the mine had fallen away, exposing a drainage pipe large enough for a fully grown man to traverse if he stayed crouched low to the ground. Chris and I looked at one another, our minds awash with the possibilities of this new discovery. We could use this as further proof that our creature was real; this was obviously the creature's lair! If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten the hell out of there. Unfortunately, childish curiosity outweighs common sense every time.

We crept closer to the mouth of the pipe, chilled to the bone by the winter air as well as the cool air flowing from the mine. Natural human hesitancy clashed with exhilaration as we drew even with the pipe, staring into its depths with wide eyes and hopeful hearts. That was when it started, a deep rumbling from somewhere nearby, maybe even from inside the pipe! Far from deterred, we stuck our heads inside. Somewhere beneath the rumbling was a closer sound. It was a scratching- no, a shuffling sound, like the hesitant steps of an elderly person out of the wheelchair for the first time in weeks.Chris and I both put one foot inside the pipe before we were grabbed from behind and pulled back. Dead certain that the end was nigh, I let out a high-pitched squeal and whirled as best I could to face our assailant.

It was my father.

"What'd I tell you about that mine? You'll suffocate in there, or a rock'll fall on your head. What if a bear lives in there? Stay out of it!"

It was then that I realized what the rumbling was, as I had failed to track its progress upon hearing the shuffling. It was my father's old farm Jeep, not a reptile living deep within the Earth. Never had I been so disappointed. As my father led us back to the Jeep, I glanced back at the pipe one more time.

The light hit just right, and I saw movement, a vaguely defined shape, but definitely humanoid.

The memory of that day haunted me for the next sixteen years. I found myself jolting awake at night, having seen that vague, humanoid shape in my dreams, believing that something in my home was making that shuffling sound as it crept closer and closer to where I slept. I didn't know if I had actually seen something that day, or if I just wanted to see something so badly that my mind filled in the blanks. I couldn't tell anyone, not even my wife, about it lest I be thought insane, and had actually began to resign myself to believing that I would never know the real answer. I phased the shape out of my dreams, heard the awful shuffling less and less, and gradually came to peace with the whole situation.

Then my wife suggested that we go back to West Virginia this past December to visit our families.

We left home early on a Friday and arrived in West Virginia around noon that same day. It was the usual trip; we made the rounds, saw our families, had dinner with some friends, the normal stuff. It was on the last full day of our vacation that I got the urge. I suddenly, without any kind of warning, needed to go back to that mine, if only to lay my own questions about that day to rest.

My wife was having lunch with one of her friends from school, so I drove to my father's house and stopped in to visit again before leaving the state. He wasn't home, which was unfortunate but made the true objective of my visit easier to reach. I left my car in his driveway and started up the hill, a grim determination setting into my heart.

It was a trick of the light, and the sound was a squirrel or something.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">Yeah, a big, evil squirrel from the depths of Hell.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">The mine didn't look nearly as big or as ominous as it did sixteen years beforehand, but the same cool air flowed from its depths, and the drainage pipe was still right there, beckoning. There was little hesitation this time, no more wide-eyes wonder. I was there to prove a point, and damnit, that's what I was going to do. I crouched and stepped into the pipe.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">It was silent inside with the exception of my own footfalls, amplified and distorted by the shape of the pipe. Every few steps I stopped and listened, hoping that I'd hear something but silently praying that I wouldn't. I wasn't deep enough inside to worry about asphyxiation, though the air inside was stale and freezing. After about thirty yards, not as far as I envisioned in my countless nightmares about the place, I emerged from the far end of the pipe.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">I moved my flashlight around, finally allowing myself a brief moment of wide-eyed excitement. The biggest mystery of my childhood, finally solved! I must have been in a chamber off the main shaft, judging by the distance I had traveled. It was dry, and as I expected, the walls were solid sheets of coal. It was strange, though; this wasn't the typical deep black of coal, but instead had a greenish tint unlike anything I had ever seen. What the hell.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">The chamber wasn't very big, and so the exit was easy to find. The thin layers of coal shavings and dust on the ground offered a little resistance, but could barely even slow me down. I moved quickly into the next, larger chamber, aware that a misstep could bring the whole damn mountain down on my head. Also, any deeper and the lack of good oxygen would start to take its toll on my body, so I couldn't go much further.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">I didn't need to.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">As I stood and contemplated my next move, I felt something brush very lightly against the leg of my pants. I pointed my flashlight at the ground and let out a scream that should have caused a cave in. Lying at my feet was a human- or, it had been human once- that was completely covered in the greenish coal dust. The strangest thing, though, wasn't that I had found a person. It wasn't even that there were dozens of these people in the chamber, crawling, moving at less than a snail's pace, all wearing forties-style mining helmets. It was where I was standing.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">My right foot had passed through the man's torso just below his heart. I was standing in a man's chest.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">But there was no blood, just more of the greenish coal dust, which for a split second almost seemed to writhe before settling to the ground. The air was thick with the stuff, disturbed by my own feet as well as the slow movements of the people in the chamber. I moved my flashlight back the way I had come. The coal shavings and dust that had slowed me down were more bodies, all still moving, all with holes or missing pieces where I had moved through them. Their flesh must have literally become coal, their insides the green dust.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">I looked back down at my latest victim, shining my light on his face. His eyes were gone, or maybe just completely covered by the dust. I couldn't tell. Didn't want to.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">No wonder this mine caved in, I thought. What would happen if these things got out?

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">I ran for the pipe, toward the sliver of daylight. Somehow in my heart I knew they wouldn't follow.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">I pass this tale on to you now, in the hope that it will help in the days to come. I'm still not any closer to finding out what happened to those miners, and I can't turn to anyone I know for help. All I know right now is that the world needs to know about this, and they need to know now.

<p style="margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">Because the dark spot on my back is growing.