Speaker 1: I've been contracted by the Bureau a dozen times in
the last four years, mostly sinkhole reports or rural spill assessments,
the kind of work no one notices until it costs
someone money. This one came through late in the season,
an old mine outside a place called Evercreek, tucked in
a valley that didn't show up on GPS until we
were nearly there. The brief was minimal, a collapse shaft
from the nineteen thirties reportedly sealed after seventeen fatalities. The
town's records were inconsistent, and what little had been digitized
didn't match the states. Our job was to assess any
remaining liability, test for subsistence, and determine if the land
could be safely reclassified for timberalese in and out. No
contact needed with the townsfolk beyond a courtesy heads up.
We hit the edge of town around noon. October had
already stripped most of the trees, and the wind blew
low through the bare branches in irregular pulses, the way
wind does when the landscape feels hollow. Fog clung to
the roots of the hills, moving only when we did.
Evercreek was smaller than I expected. A gas station, a diner,
a short main road that curved lazily around the church
and disappeared back into the trees. Maybe three hundred people
if that. Some looked up when we passed, but no
one waved. No one asked what brought us. They just watched, silent,
still returning to their tasks. Only when our car moved on.
We checked into the motel, four rooms flat. Gravel lot
rushed around the fixtures. The woman at the front desk
handed me the key without asking my name. There was
a small guest book by the window, but the last
signature was dated two weeks ago. My prentice Seth took
the room next to mine. After dropping our bags, we
drove the half mile to the mine site. The axis
road had been overgrown with vines and thistle, but the
path was still clear enough to follow on foot. Old
warning signs hung loose from metal rods, faded to near illegibility.
A half ratted vent surrounded the mouth of the mine,
with caution tape haphazardly fluttering from rusted stakes. We walked
to the perimeter, marking our potential weak points in the
soil and flagging erosion spots. The ground was mostly stable,
though I noted a shallow depression near the north side
that looked fresh. I was jotting notes when Seth called
me over. Just outside the broken section of the fence
was a bundle he looked deliberately placed, not dropped or
blown in, a small scuffed baby shoe, a hand mirror
with a crack, spider webbing out from one corner, and
a velvet pouch, its straw string rotted. Seth opened it.
Inside was a single child's tooth, browned with age. He
turned to me with a half smile. Guess Halloween start
early out here. I shrugged, reached for a nitrial glove
for my kit, and bagged the items, probably old memorials.
I figured maybe a local tradition or just some grief
left a wither out in the open. Either way, when
he couldn't leave it there, wild life might get to it,
and there was no reason to let someone find it
and think it meant anything now. Seth made a face
as he watched me seal the bag, but didn't say anything.
I made a note to include it under potential public
safety debris. I'd seen weirder things back in the car.
We loaded the first round of soil data, and logged
the day's findings. The mine wasn't visibly unstable, but the
fence needed replacing, and we'd have to get a look
at the shaft itself if we wanted to close the
file properly. I figured we'd head in tomorrow and get
the rest of it done in daylight. Two more days
of work at most, then we'd be gone and the
town would have their forest back. The next morning, we
decided to split the day between paperwork and local logistics.
Seth wanted to get breakfast and see what the town
was actually like in the daylight. I agreed, mostly because
the state records on the mine were such a mess
that it made to check the town's clerk office while
we were here. I figured we might find original filings
or released some version of the truth closer to the source.
The diner was the first stop. It was the same
one from the previous night, though it looked warmer in
the morning light, wood paneled walls, a faded jukebox, and
a specials board written in hard to recursive. There were
only two other customers, both elderly, both watching us over
their mugs without speaking A waitress greeted us with a
smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. She handed us menus,
asked where we were from, and then made no further comment.
When I said, we were working on a state assignment
near the mine. We're just cleaning up some liability stuff,
I added, trying to keep the tone casual, she nodded slowly.
Best not to linger past sundown. Then Seth gave me
a quick glance but didn't say anything. Breakfast arrived quickly.
Everything was hot, and everything tasted fine. The silence around
us remained fixed in place. When Seth asked the waitress
what she meant earlier, she wiped her hand on her
apron and said, ain't much up there worth surveying anymore,
then walked away. He looked over at me, eyebrows raised.
They're all weirdly cagey about this. He noticed that I
had noticed, But I also knew that rural towns protected
their dead fiercely. Tragedy becomes folklore, and folklore turns into boundaries.
People stop questioning. I figured it was better not to bush.
When we stopped at the general store afterward to buy
some bottled water and replacement gloves, Seth mentioned the baby shoe,
just a passing comment to the woman at the register,
asked if they did any sort of local memorials up
by the mine. She froze mid scan. Her hand rested
on top of the register for a full second before
she looked up. That's not for you to handle, she said.
Seth blinked, I mean we already bagged it part of
cycleing up. Her expression shifted, but only slightly. Then she
handed him the receipt without saying another word. We left
in silence. Seth kept shaking his head the whole way
back to the car. They're acting like we dug up
a grave. Maybe we did, and I said, not literally,
but to them could be. At the clerk's office, I
asked for record from the mine's operational period. The woman
behind the desk handed me a heavy binder without asking
any questions. Her nameplate was chipped and the corners of
the folder were stained from time and handling. It had
clearly been opened more than once, but not recently. I
brought it to one of the black tables and started
scanning through it while Seth looked over some land plaits.
About half way through the binder, I found two sheets
clipped together, both labeled Casualty Summary Ever Greek Collapse March
nineteen thirty seven. The first listed seventeen names, each followed
by a cross symbol and a four digit miners ID.
The second listed only eleven. The others were marked simply
as unrecovered. There was no explanation, no read ink or
notes in the margin, just two nearly identical documents that
contradicted each other completely. That alone would have been worth noting.
But deeper in the binder, tucked into a folder labeled
post collapse Correspondence, I found something stranger. Photocopies of town
death certificates, bundled by decade. Some were handwritten, others typed
in fading carbon. Most were a routine old age farm accident,
the kind of mortality you expect in rural places. But
until recently, every two decades, always in late autumn, a
name would appear with no cause of death listed, just missing.
The latest entry was twenty years old October two thousand
and five. Written by hand, was a note saying as
solution was found. No other details were given. Seth came
over and asked if I found anything interesting. I showed
him the list. He whistled low through his teeth. Could
be coincidence, he said, but his voice didn't sound convinced
it could. I agreed, But someone had grouped them all
together across nearly a century of town records. That wasn't
standard viling. That was curation. When I asked the clerk
if anyone was expecting us at the side tomorrow, she
shook her head. We don't go up there, she said,
not any more. She didn't elaborate. I didn't ask her to. Outside,
the wind had picked up. It came down from the
ridge in slow, cold currents, the kind that settles into
your clothes when you stay there. We drove back to
the motel without speaking. The next day, Seth stayed behind
the catalog's soil data while I returned to the mine
sight alone. The air was colder than it had been
the day before. The sky was gray but dry, and
the woods held a heavy stillness that felt deeper than weather.
I paced the perimeter again, noting where the ridge sloped
toward a cluster of collapsed timbers that had probably once
supported the original access trail. From there, the forest pushed
right up against the edge of the old fence, its
roots lifting the earth and stone in uneven patterns. It
was a dramatic subsistence, but it suggested slow movement beneath
the surface, the kinder thing that wouldn't appear on modern
records unless some one went locking. That was when I
heard it, A faint, metallic sound, sharp rhythmic. It came
from somewhere beneath the ground, distant but consistent, the kind
of sound that might have been dismissed as wind dragging
through old ventilation shafts or water dripping from rusted struts
onto a hollow steel plate. But the intervals were too clean, steady.
It struck stone and rang out in short echoes, as
if whatever was causing it was focused on something specific.
I stopped walking, crouched and pressed my palm to the earth.
Felt nothing. The vibrations, if they existed, were too faint. Still,
the sound continued for another ten seconds, then it stopped
all at once. I stood slowly and scanned the surrounding slope,
Just past the trail collapse. Behind a clump of bugs thorn,
I saw something that didn't belong. A small clearing, half
swallowed by moss and leaf litter, A shallow pile of
items sat at its center, arranged with deliberate spacing, not
trash and not abandoned. A silver ring tarnished and bented
the edge. A folded photograph warped from moisture, but still
showing the face of a man standing beside a truck.
A pale braid of hair tied at both ends with twine.
All of it was placed with care, though the elements
had done their best to erase the intent. I stood
there for a long time, trying to piece together whether
this was grief, folklore, or something else. Entirely, it was
too far from any graveyard to be a memorial, and
the items were too personal to have been discarded by chance.
Photograph the scene from a distance, then log the GPS coordinates,
and returned to the motel. Seth was in the lobby
working through the geology report over a coffee that had
long since gone cold. I dropped into the armchair across
from him and relayed what I'd found. Second one, huh,
he said, you think it's part of the same tradition,
like another offering site. It has that feel to it,
I said, But nothing official, no plaques, no town maintenance.
All of it looks like it's meant to be forgotten.
He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair.
I tried asking that waitress again, just normal questions. You'd
think i'd asked about somebody's funeral. She said, they don't
go near the fence line. Told me to mind the
season and let it rest. Whatever that means, same tone
I got at the clerk's office. Everyone's polite, but they're
not confused. They know something. Seth looked out the front window.
The sky was starting to dim. The clouds had thickened
since I got back. Do we tell them we're opening
the shafts soon, No point, I said, It's not a
conversation they're interested in having. It was just afternoon when
I decided to stretch my legs and walk the edge
of town. Seth had returned to the motel to sort data,
but I needed to escape the screen for a while.
The air was still pressed down under low cloud cover.
Nothing moved in the trees, even the birds had gone quiet.
The streets were empty. In that in between way rural
towns offten are shops open but unattended. Wind chime's moving
without sound. I passed the church, a one room schoolhouse,
and a shuttered gas station that still sold cold sodas
through an ancient vending machine. Near the edge of the church,
I spotted a boy crouched beside a dry colvert. He
was fiddling with something in the dark, maybe a stick
or a bit of wire, the way kids do when
they have more day than structure. No older than seven.
He didn't notice me at first. I slowed as I
passed and gave him a quick nod. Hey there, I said,
keeping the tone casual. You know any scary stories about
the mines? He rose. The object in his hands slipped
from his grip, but he didn't move to pick it up.
I just sat there, my shoulders stiff and my head.
I waited for a moment, then smiled. I was thinking
of going to play up there, I added, keeping it friendly,
I thought I should ask if there are any monsters
to watch out for. That got him to look up,
but not with amusement. His eyes were wide, in the
way kids get when they've been told a rule that
feels larger than them, something that feels older than their parents.
He looked around, then leaned in slightly. I'm not supposed
to talk about it, he said. I crouched a little,
hands on my knees, staying a few steps back. Fair enough,
But I won't tell if you don't. The boy hesitated, Then,
in a near whisper, he said, the facelesswans are there.
They only come out if someone opens it every twenty
years or so. That's why we leave stuff. It stops
them from coming. He stood up and dusted off his pants.
Then he turned and walked away without another word, not running,
but quick head down. He never looked back. I stood
there for a few moments after he disappeared around the corner,
letting his words settle faceless ones. The phrasing was strange.
Not monsters, not ghosts, not even miners, faceless. It was
the kind of story a child might inherit without understanding,
something passed down through repetition, never fully explained, just accepted
to me. It was a bit of folklore, probably rooted
in grief. Away for the town, I ritualized the collapse,
a quiet warning wrapped in superstition. It was an uncommon
I'd heard dozens of versions in other towns across the state. Still,
as I made my way back to the motel, I
found myself repeating the phrase under my breath, the faceless ones.
We started early the next morning, just after the sun
cleared the ridge. The sky was flat and pale, The
clouds stretched thin across the horizon. Seth looked half awake
when he met me by the car, but his boots
were laced and he was already double checking the survey gear.
The drive to the site was short, trees pressed in
from both sides of the access road, brittle with a
change in season. By the time we reached the mine entrance,
the frost and the undergrowth had already started to melt.
The boards covering the main shaft entrance were old and brittle.
They cracked easily under pressure and pried them loose while
Seth cleared the debris beneath the outer layer. The frame
had been reinforced with thick nails and rusted chains. Someone
had sealed it thoroughly once that effort hadn't held. Behind
the final boards, darkness pressed forward in a way that
felt tangible. The shaft yawned open, lined with rotting timber.
No air movement, just stillness. I stepped forward first and
checked the air with a handheld reader. Oxygen low but breathable,
no methane, no signs of recent activity. Just stale air
and the dry rot of long abandoned spaces. Inside the
beam of my headlamp cut through thick layers of dust
and old cobwebs. The walls narrowed quickly, then opened into
the first main corridor, calvestone, reinforced with wood beams, most
of them splintered and leaning under their own weight. We
moved slowly, pausing often to photograph structural damage and cross
checking support spaces. Seth handled the laser mapping, marking depth
and slow gradients as we went. The process was tedious,
but necessary, no shortcuts with work like this. About an
hour in we both paused at the same time. A
sound had drifted up from the tunnel ahead, faint, sharp,
a metallic tick, followed by a pause, then another, regular
intervals clean repetition. Seth raised an eyebrow, you hear that.
I nodded, already listening harder. The sound came again, distant.
It echoed faintly along the stone, but not enough to
locate a source. Could be water dripping. I said, if
this metal piping still embedded in the rock, the echo
can carry. Seth didn't respond, but I could tell he
didn't buy it. I wasn't sure I did either, but
I wasn't going to say what it really sounded like.
Not yet. We kept working. There was still a lot
to do. The map had to be completed before we
could even submit the preliminary risk report. Neither of us
mentioned the sound again, though it returned occasionally, always at
the edge of hearing. By mid afternoon, we were both
covered in dust, our knees saw from crouching, our wrists
aching from constant notation. The work was good, methodical, but
it drained you. Old tunnels had a way of taking
more energy than they gave back. We reached the midpoint
of the shaft and decided to stop for the day.
There was too much to cover in a single pass,
and we hadn't brought enough gear for an overnight trip.
Before we left, we stacked our packs near the entrance.
It felt safe enough. No one in town would likely
come near the mine, not with how they spoke about it,
and the equipment wasn't useful to anyone who didn't know
how to use it. Specialized tools had a way of
protecting themselves. We hiked back to the car without speaking much.
The quiet between us wasn't tension. It was exhaustion, the
kind that settled into your shoulders and made you feel
older than you were. By the time we rolled back
into ever Creek, the sky had already started to dim.
We didn't talk about the sound in the mine. We
just drove to the diner and ordered whatever was still
on the grill. We were dirty, tired, and hungry enough
to forget everything else for a little while. The diner
felt warmer than usual when we stepped in. The windows
were fogged at the corners from the kitchen heat, and
the overhead lights hummed softly above our booth. We sat
near the back, away from the regulars who always clustered
close to the counter. Seth looked worn out. He rubbed
his eyes with a heel of his hand while flipped
through my note book, cross checking some of the beam
measurements from earlier. Our boots left the trail of dry
mud across the floor, and the waitress didn't ask us
to wipe it up. She just dropped off two waters
and walked away. We ate slowly, tired from the work.
Neither of us had much to say at first. Eventually
Seth broke the silence. The place was empty, he said,
not even a raccoon down there. I don't get what
they're so scared of. He said it too loudly, not shouting,
just casual, the kind of volume people use when they
assume no one is listening. Some one was a man
in a booth two tables over. Turned in his seat.
He stood up slowly, eyes locked on us. His voice
was sharp enough to cut through the entire room. You
opened it, Seth rose mid bite. I set my fork down.
The diner went still, Conversations died, the clink of silverware stopped.
Chairs scraped lightly as people began to stand. Some avoided
looking at us, Others stared too directly. The man didn't
say anything else. He just stood there a moment longer,
then walked out. A few others followed him. A woman
near the counter leaned in our direction. Go back to
your motel. She said, lock your doors tonight. Seth looked
at me, his brows furrowed. I didn't know what to say.
The waitress came by with a check. She didn't meet
her eyes, then she walked away. The rest of the meal,
sat and touched, repaid, and left without another word. Outside
the street, Ada, no one was on the sidewalks. No
cars passing. The sun had finally dipped behind the ridge,
leaving the town in that in between collar that doesn't
belong to day or night. Windows were shuttered, porch lights
were off. The walk to the motel wasn't far, but
it felt longer than it should have. The silence pressed
in from both sides, even the wind had dropped away.
When we reached our room, we didn't discuss it. We
said good night at our doors and locked them behind us.
Seth double checked the dead bolt, then said through the wall,
see you in the morning. I didn't answer right away.
Eventually I said yeah, morning, but it was hard to
believe that tomorrow would feel the same Today. We woke early,
though neither of us had slept well. I kept waking
to small noises that never repeated, moments that might have
been dreams, but left a hair on my arms standing straight.
When we stepped outside, the air had turned colder, a
fine mist clung to the gravel lot, and the sky
had the flat, heavy color that usually meant snow. By nightfall,
the town was still not just slow, not quiet in
the way small places often are. It was still in
the way of shut doors and drawn curtains. The kind
of stillness that implies watching. The diner was closed, no
chairs on the porch, no light inside. The gas station
had its metal shutters down. The General's door was locked,
its windows dark. We knocked on a few doors, more
out of instinct than hope. We could hear the shovel
of feet inside. Once there was the distinct sound of
some one inhaling sharply when we knocked, but no one
opened up. Seth looked around and rubbed his neck. They're hiding,
they're waiting, I said, for what. I didn't answer. We
made our way back to the mine. The path had
the same emptiness as the town did. At the mine entrance,
everything was untouched. The boards we had pried loose still
lay in a neat stack by the opening. Our gear
sat just where we left it, the dust undisturbed. It
felt wrong to step into the shaft again, but we did.
The job wasn't finished inside. The air had grown heavier,
not from weather or lack of oxygen. There was simply
a pressure to it now, the kind that settles behind
your eyes and makes your jaw clench. Without knowing why,
we worked in silence, mapping, photographing, and logging. I tried
to focus, but every few minutes the sound returned. Tick,
metal on stone, pause, tick. It echoed from deeper in
the tunnel, always past the last point we'd explored, never
louder than a soft chime, but enough to hear, enough
to feel in the joints of your teeth. Seth stopped
once to ask what I thought it was. I gave
the same MANSI I had before, groundwater pressure shifts old machinery,
but I knew he didn't believe me. We left earlier
than we had the day before. Neither of us wanted
to be in the shaft when the light failed. Back
at the motel, the hallway smelled faintly of cedar and dust.
Our doors were closed, but something had changed. Inside my
room and the table beside the window sat a basket,
wicker lined with cloth, no tag, no note. Inside was
cheese wrapped in wax paper, jerky salted in dense bottled water.
Six tall containers, labels peeled off. Seth called from his room.
He had one too. We stood in the hallway a moment,
baskets in hand. This isn't hospitality, I said, no, he said,
it's rations. We didn't talk about what that meant, but
I left the basket sealed. When I went to bed,
I woke to the sound of something slamming against the door.
Not knocking, not a fist. It was heavier than that, blunt,
deliberate pace, with the kind of weight that didn't need
to rush. The first strike rattled the frame, the second
made the bedside lamp flicker. I sat up too fast
and nearly fell out of bed. My mouth was dry.
I hadn't heard any footsteps or voices leading up to it,
just the bang, then another, then the silence in between.
I thought at first that the townspeople had decided to
force us out, that the warnings had turned into action.
I imagined a group outside with flashlights and tools, fed
up with our presence of whatever they thought we had stirred.
But I didn't hear voices, no muttering or yelling. Just
one more slow, heavy impact against the door. The hallway
light under the door flickered once, then dimmed. I backed
into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it. It
was a flimsy bolt, the kind meant for privacy, not protection.
I sat down in the corner beside the toilet and
tried to slow my breathing another blow shook the walls.
Then came the sound of wood splintering, long drawn out cracking,
the groan of material giving way under pressure. Whatever was
out there had started breaking, something apart, but it wasn't
my door. The sound shifted. I heard a scream, Seth.
It came from the room next door. Not just one shout.
It stretched out, ragged, panicked. I heard furniture scrape, then crash.
Something was being dragged, not fast, a slow pull across
the carpet. Seth screamed again. Then it cut off, sudden
and sharp. I pressed my hand over my mouth and
stayed completely still. My own breathing felt too loud. Then
came the creaking, not footsteps, just the sound of something
shifting weight, a slow movement, wood bending under uneven pressure.
The hallway groaned. Minutes passed, then more, No more sounds,
no more movement. I didn't open the door. I didn't speak.
I sat curled on the tile floor, knees pulled to
my chest, staring at the space beneath the bathroom door,
and waiting for the sky to turn gray again. It
was a long time before dawn came. When morning finally came,
I stepped out into the hallway, expecting to see the
remnants of a break in, maybe even the police. But
the corridor was clean, the carpet undisturbed. My door stood intact, latched, untouched.
I crossed a few feet to Seth's room and felt
the shift as soon as I reached it. His door
was split down the center. The frame had been torn
at the corners where the bolts used to be. The
handle hung loose on one screw, and the paint around
the lock had buckled outward. Four clean holes had been
punched straight through on the bottom half of the door.
They weren't ragged. They were narrow and round, drilled deep
and deliberate, about the width of a pickaxe tip. Inside
the room, the sheet had been stripped half way down
the bed. The nightstand lay on its side. The floor
was scuffed in a wide arc. The carpet torn where
something had been dragged. A dark red smear trailed from
the bed to the door, then turned toward the parking lot. Outside,
a woman in a plain gray sweater was mopping the
pavement with slow, practiced strokes. She worked in silence, pushing
the soaked fibers across the concrete. The red line faded
behind her with each pass. She never looked up. I
stood there for a long time, waiting for someone else
to appear, for a police cruiser, a medic, a crowd,
but no one came. Eventually I left the motel and
walked into town. The streets were no longer empty. The
diner had its chairs back out. The gas station pumps
were humming again. A man was putting out a sandwich
board for the Lunt Special. People passed me on the
sidewalk without stopping. Near the post office, I found a
small group gathered in the street, half a dozen men
and women, all standing in a loose formation. They weren't
holding anything, they weren't armed, just waiting. One of them,
a man in a tan coat with sleeves too short
for his arms, stepped forward. He was maybe fifty. His
expression was neither kind nor angry. It's time for you
to go now, he said. I stared at him. What
happened to my partner? No one answered. I tried again,
what happened last night? Where did you all go the
day before? Why are you acting like this is normal?
The man's mouth twitched once at the corner, not quite
a smile, more of a signal, a recognition that my
questions didn't need answers. An offering has been made, he said.
I looked past him to the others. None of them
met my eyes. They stared just over my shoulder, waiting.
I turned and walked away. No one followed. The sky
was dull gray when I returned to the mine. The
streets along the road were still, the leaves half dropped
and wet from a slow morning tree. The tires cracked
over gravel, but the rest of the world held its breath.
No one followed me. No one had asked where I
was going. The entrance had been sealed again. Fresh boards
crossed the mouth of the shaft, cleaner than the old ones.
We had pulled away. New bolts reinforced the frame. Someone
had worked quickly and quietly, and they had done it
before sunrise. I walked to the fence. The grass around
the path was damp, but a few red droplets stood
out on the pale soil leading toward the base of
the entrance. The color was too bright to be old.
Then I saw a bundle. It had been placed carefully,
resting against the lower beam of the gate. A handkerchief
knotted into a loose satchel bulging at the center. I
crouched and opened it inside with the same kinds of
items we had found before, a ring dulled by age,
a lock of hair braided and yellowed at the tip,
two small teeth that looked far too human, and nestled
among them in the pile of offerings. The plastic corner
of a clipped work badge seths his name, his face,
still clean, still laminated. It must have been taken from
the pack we had left behind. I stood slowly, holding
the bundle against my chest, then lowered it again and
left it there. I pieced it altogether. Something in the mines,
the faceless ones that I heard about, were in there,
Whether their lost souls from the collapse or something far older,
I did not know. But what I did know was
how they kept them back, memorabilia, memories from when they
were alive, left on their doorstep, maybe a reminder of
their humanity to stop claiming more souls. They had solved this,
worked this out over decades, and we came in and
messed things up. And how could this have gone any different?
If some here came up raving about monsters and rituals,
we'd have pushed them aside to do our work. No
one had told me what to do next. There was
no official protocol for this, no field manual entry labeled folklore,
no check box for an offering made in some one
else's name. I sat in the driver's seat of the
truck with the engine off, and opened my field log
mind structure remains unstable conditions hazardous collapse risk high. I
paused secondary fatality during inspection. Body unrecoverable. Recommend indefinite closure.
I didn't sign it right away, just closed the book
and rested it on my lap. Then I looked back
at the mouth of mine. I never heard the ticking
sound again, but I also never went back