The Darkness Within

Chapter 2 - The Old Mine Shaft

Derrick's party is where we got together. I swear it was like that breakfast club movie my mom once made me watch — there was a brain, a jock, a rich kid, and two outcasts.

Jackson was the rich kid. The newcomer to town. The real outsider.

You know how it is, the rest of us all knew each other, we grew up together, but we weren't really friends. We had all gone to the same school and got invited to the same birthday parties. All that clichéd small town living shit. But none of us were friends. Not until that night. Jackson is the one who brought us together.

Jackson moved to Hicksville from a big city. His father is the one who bought the old high school. He started to gut the place, to turn it into some kind of artist colony. Jackson's old man has a lot of money. He was a big shot on Wall Street until his heart attack. I guess his dad's dream as a kid was to go live out in the desert, an old mining town.  The dude dreamed his whole life about being artistic, about painting.  And now that dream was coming true--The old high school was going to be their home, but also a place for other artists to live, and work, and sell their stuff.

Jackson's family has money. I mean uber-rich. The boy comes to school wearing two-hundred-dollar basketball shoes rich. When Jackson first showed up at school, he didn't fit in, and we didn't bother trying to get to know him. But Derrick's party changed all that.

The party was out of control. Derrick's parents were out of town. I'm surprised the cops didn't shut it down. Eventually, the beer ran out, and it got late, and everyone decided it was time to go home. But a few of us stuck around. There were five of us — Derrick, Adam, Chantel, Jackson and me. We stayed and smoked some pot and just, I don't know, hung out and talked. I don't think I ever said more than a dozen words to any of those guys until that night.

It was Chantel's idea to hike up to the tunnel, the one up on the old hiking trail. The tunnel is all the way to the top of the trail, past the railroad tracks, past the water tower. I'd only been up there once before.

We were drunk and still high when we piled into the back of Derrick's truck. At that moment Jackson didn't seem that different from the rest of us. I'm not sure what the plan was, or if we had one. Sit up by the tunnel drinking more beer. Check out the Town lights. Show the new boy the spooky mine shaft next to the tunnel. Up the road we drove, to the old fire station. We piled out of the truck and hiked up the narrow dirt trail. It was dark, but we had the light from our cell phones and Adam had a flashlight.

By the time we got to the tunnel, it was 2 am. It was one of those nights where the wind starts to blow like crazy through that V in the mountains. Okay, maybe it was the weed, but the wind felt angry, felt hostile. I'm not the type to get spooked, but that wind made my skin crawl.

We made it to the ledge next to the tunnel, the one over by the mine shaft. Here's what's weird — bars have covered that mine shaft for as long as I can remember. But that night the bars were bent. It looked like someone had taken a crowbar to them. As soon as the guys realized the mine shaft was open, they had to go in. But Chantel and I stayed back. I'm not crazy about going into small, dark places.

We waited for them at the entrance for what seemed forever and when they finally came out, they looked spooked. Their faces were pale, and they talked too fast. I just thought maybe their buzz had worn off.

Jackson seemed the most disturbed. I remember he stopped just outside the entrance, and he gave this odd yelp. Then he raised his shirt and, I know this is going to sound crazy, but honest to God it looked like someone had scratched him. Four long, wicked red scratch marks marred the lower part of his back. There were branches at the entrance of the opening; I just thought he must have brushed against them. He was really wigged out by those marks. I can still see the expression he had on his face, his eyes all wide, his mouth open as though he wanted to saw something, but he wasn't sure what.

The walk back down to the truck was awkward. The guys were quiet, and each time we asked them what they saw in the mine shaft, they got pissed and refused to tell us. And then finally Adam caved. He told us how when they were ten feet in, they heard growling and saw a pair of yellow eyes glowing off in the darkness. The animal was too far out of the lights range to see what kind it was. Adam figured it might be a bobcat. So, they all hustled out, and that made sense since it would be crazy to stay trapped inside the tunnel with a wild animal that might feel threatened and attack.  But if that was the story, why didn't they just tell it the first time we asked? And why did the other's look so uncomfortable when Adam was telling us about the wild animal?

We piled back into the truck and headed home, and I didn't give it another thought.

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