The December Special Guest Writer is Simon Clark
You can visit Simon at:
http://www.bbr-online.co.uk/nailed/
GHOST PIT
by Simon Clark
The man spoke in a whisper. “Listen… I mean really listen. Can you hear it? That hiss…shush. It sounds like lungs, doesn’t it? We’re down here at the bottom of the pit. A thousand feet below ground, and there it goes: hiss…shush. It sounds like someone breathing…some thing breathing. Something huge…”
Her guide in the coal mine was a hard, muscular man. Tufts of black hair stuck out from beneath his bright yellow helmet. Up there on the surface John Stryker had been cocky. He strode round the mine like he owned the place. John Stryker loved the sound of his own voice. Yet down here, at the bottom of the shaft, it was a different story. The man was scared.
In the light of the helmet lamp she saw the sweat on his face. Yes, absolutely, the place terrified him. It fascinated him, too.
Jenny Brown suspected he dared himself to come down here into the coal mine. A test of his manhood. Fear was his fix of choice. Then there was something uncanny about these miles of tunnels. The abandoned machinery. The inky blackness. The solitude.
His voice was gruff. “Come on, then. You’ll want to get your filming done, so you can get out of here.” He tried to smile. It looked like a desperate snarl. Fear was eating into him. “You won’t be used to pits like this—no doubt you’re scared. That’s only natural.”
“I’m not scared, Mr. Stryker.”
“Uh. Trying to put on a brave face, are we?”
“You promised to show me an unusual feature of the coal mine, Mr. Stryker. It’s my job to film it for the Industrial Heritage Archive.”
“That’s a flipping mouthful, isn’t it?” He tried to cover his fright with contempt. “Industrial Heritage Archive. Waste of money, if you ask me.”
“If you’d rather not come, I can go by myself.”
“Go by yourself? Ha. You wouldn’t last two minutes down here, Miss Brown. Not two minutes.”
“Then show me what I’ve come to see.”
“Follow me, then. Don’t bang your head on the pit props. All right?”
“I’ll take care of my head, Mr. Stryker. You look after yours.”
As her guide turned away, he grunted something she didn’t quite catch. A something that was clearly insulting about the young woman with the video camera.
“What was that you said, Mr. Stryker?”
He bluffed his way out with a lecture about the pit, like Jenny was some dim-witted school girl. “There used to be hundreds of coal mines in Britain. This is one of the last. It was mothballed ten years ago, because it’s cheaper to import coal than dig it from under our feet. Mind you don’t trip over the cables. I don’t want to have to carry you out with a broken leg. Now where was I? Ah. The name of this pit is Capstone Luck. Despite the name it was never a lucky pit. In 1896 two hundred men were killed in a methane blast. And two hundred coffins were paraded through the village to the graveyard. There wasn’t a single body in the coffins. No. They’re all still down here, lass.”
Clearly, he wanted Jenny to feel the fear he felt, so he continued, “They’re all lying in the muck and the dark two levels below this one.” He decided two hundred deaths weren’t enough. “Lots more died, since. Explosions, rock falls, machinery accidents. When the pit was being mothballed, six engineers fell a thousand feet when the lift cable snapped. They hit the bottom of the shaft pretty much where you’re standing. Now then…hurry up. Otherwise you’ll miss filming Capstone Luck’s big mystery.”
Then his voice acquired a dark sarcasm. “We don’t want the Industrial Heritage Archive wasting their pennies, do we now?”
They walked along the tunnel. Its walls had been cut from living coal. Beneath the harsh light those seams of coal shone a glossy, lustrous black. Like black gemstones.
Then Jenny heard the sound again. Hiss…shush…
“You don’t want to be late lass,” he told her. “It’s coming!”
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s making that noise?”
“You’re just about to find out, Miss. Stand at the edge of that shaft and look down.”
She peered into the shaft. The light revealed smooth flanks of rock that plunged downward. A rusty iron ladder was bolted to one side of the shaft. The phrase ‘bottomless pit’ came to mind.
John Stryker took a deep breath. “Every twenty-eight days the lower mine workings flood. Water rises up the shaft as far as that steel beam there. Do you see it? About thirty feet down. The L-shaped one next to the ladder?”
Hiss…shush…that sound again.
Jenny switched on the camera. “Why does it flood on such a regular basis?”
“Nobody knows. We’re miles from the sea. But every twenty-eight days the water comes back. It’s like a tide. It rises three hundred feet up the shaft, then stops. Just stops right there at the beam.”
Hiss…shush. The sound grew louder. HISS. SHUSH. Like a huge animal breathing.
“You know something, Miss?” The man’s voice was like the echo ghosting from the shaft. “The truth is, I can’t get Capstone Luck out of my mind. It’s all I ever think about. Locals call it ‘the ghost pit.’ And now I know why. I can see all those men that died here. Burnt, suffocated, blown apart…cremated alive. And I know it’s those dead men. They make this happen. They do it…the ghosts…they bring the water. They want to drown the fires…they need to stop the pain. The ghosts pull the water into the mine to quench that awful, searing heat. Even though the fires went out a long time ago, there are still fires burning inside their souls.”
She stared at him in shock. “You can’t really believe that!”
“Oh, but I do, Miss. I see them. All the miners that died… their ghosts are down there.”
“I’m going back, Mr. Stryker. You’re not well.”
“You can’t go yet.”
“Why not?”
“It’s starting. Look.” He pointed downwards. His finger trembled and his eyes bulged. “Here it comes. The flood!”
Despite her alarm at his talk of ghosts, she pressed the camera’s record button. In the light of the helmet lamps, she saw a pool of silver appear at the bottom of the shaft. A long way down. A very long way down. Strangely, it resembled the glint of an eye. Silvery. Wet.
And then it came. The water rose up the shaft.
Hiss…shush. It flowed upwards. Swirling, turbulent. Hiss…shush…
The water stops at the L-shaped beam, she told herself. It always stops there. The flood never rises higher. That’s what Stryker said. The water will stop.
She watched the rising levels. The flood touched the steel beam. Then the water swirled past it. The liquid surged higher and higher. She saw it racing toward them. A fluid piston remorselessly surging up from the black depths.
She cried out, “You said it would never rise higher than the beam!”
A strange smile appeared on Stryker’s face. “The mine needs more ghosts. The faces told me. We will stay here forever and ever.”
With that, the man stepped over the edge. When he struck the water it swallowed him without a splash.
Jenny turned and ran.
That was the moment the electricity failed. The sudden death of the lights startled her so much she stumbled. The safety helmet flew from her head. When it struck the floor the lamp went out.
Darkness. Absolute darkness. Jenny held her breath. She could see nothing. There was nothing but black.
She heard, though. Hiss…shush…the sound grew louder. Hiss…shush…then the sound of pouring.
I know what that is, she thought in horror. That’s the sound of water rising out of the shaft. A cold wind blew along the tunnel. The air being displaced by the flood. Soon the water would reach her.
Her heart pounded, her chest grew tight; so tight she could hardly breathe.
Move, she told herself. Get out of here! But which way? She couldn’t see. Yet she knew that the water gushed into the tunnel.
To drown in the dark? Here, deep underground; to die alone. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Arctic shivers ran down her spine. Already she imagined the water’s cold touch.
She scrambled to her feet, then reached out for the tunnel wall. As soon as her fingers met the rock she began to walk, using the wall to guide her.
Then she ran, because something was happening. Something worse than the flood. Worse than darkness.
The water behind her began to glow with a faint silver light…a glow like moonlight. Eerie…haunting…a cold, cold glow that was not natural, nor even earthly.
She glanced back. The water pursued her…it wanted her…then she knew why.
Faces… the water consisted of liquid faces. Dozens…hundreds of them…faces with wide, staring eyes. Eyes of men that had been dead for decades…but something in the mine wouldn’t let them be properly dead…not dead and gone…these were the spirits of the dead miners, She glimpsed the face of John Stryker in the water.
His lips moved. Jenny... Jenny, stay…The liquid souls wanted her. They had to possess her.
The glowing water gave her enough light to see by, so she ran faster. Just then her toe caught a cable. She went sprawling to the floor. The water rushed toward her.
Then she was on her feet again. Running hard. Running faster than she’d ever done before.
At last she reached the lift cage, jumped in and slammed the grill shut. Punched the red button. And kept punching that big red button: the emergency call. The one that told them on the surface to haul up the lift.
Where are they? Why don’t they pull me up? Oh, no…oh my God…here it comes!
Hiss…shush. The flood swept toward her.
*****
Jenny must have blacked out. She didn’t remember the return journey to the surface. All she knew was that hands carried her out of the lift. Where’s Stryker, they asked. What happened to Stryker?
*****
Jenny Reed was much better now. The nightmares had stopped. No more hallucinations, touch wood. Whatever happened in the coal mine was a terrible accident. Or so they told her. A freak flood, that’s all.
Even so, she changed her life entirely. Now she worked for a TV station in Saudi. The sun shone. In the desert, there wasn’t so much as a drop of water. She liked it that way. This arid land made her feel safe.
Because these days even a jug of water at the dinner table made her shudder. And as for taking a bath…
And then a year later, on the anniversary of her escape, Jenny woke all of a sudden. She was alone in her Saudi apartment. A warm breeze blew through the open window. At first she thought it was the breeze making the sound.
Then she heard it properly. And her blood turned cold.
Hiss… shush…
Jenny turned on the light. A shadow crept under the apartment door. No, not a shadow...this is water. A large pool of water, spreading out across the floor toward her bed.
And that sound again…the one from the Ghost Pit.
Hiss shush…Yes. That sound. Hiss…shush.
The last sound she would ever hear.
See a film clip of Simon HERE
Simon Clark lives in Doncaster, England with his family. When his first novel, Nailed by the Heart, made it through the slush pile in 1994, he banked the advance and embarked upon his dream of becoming a full-time writer. Many dreams and nightmares later he wrote the cult zombie classics Blood Crazy, Darkness Demands, This Rage of Echoes and The Night of the Triffids, which continues the story of Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids. His revival of the wickedly ambulatory plants won the British Fantasy Society’s award for best novel. More recently he has won that award for Humpty’s Bones.
Simon also experiments in short film, one of which, Dear Simon, Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? has been featured in the UK’s Channel 4 ShortDoc series, and earned the accolade ‘the ultimate in TV documentary.’ He also created Winter Chills for BBC TV. More films, with tips on writing horror fiction, plus articles, stories, and news can be accessed at his website HERE.
Photo of Simon Clark courtesy of Peter Coleborn
