Part 2: Curse of the Silver Head Mine Part 2 : nosleep (reddit.com)
I awoke covered in sweat ,breathing heavily, and hands shaking. The bottle of rum was on the ground. I picked it up and tossed back the last two gulps, which helped the shaking slow to a stop. The sun was now peeking above the trees in the east. I could hear the sound of music growing louder as a jeep with the group of kids came bounding down the winding road.
“Hey you made it. Welcome to the Silver Head Mine,” I said. The group of kids got out of the jeep. The excitement in the air was palpable. They started to unload their gear while chatting with each other. I went into my trailer to brush my teeth, gather my gear, and get a pot of coffee brewing. When I came back I shook all their hands and said, “Hey weren’t there five of you guys?”
Samantha replied, “Yeah, Dakota had other plans but we are all ready to go.” They handed me the rest of the payment. We made our way to the mineshaft and I turned on the generator. I grabbed a very big set of bolt cutters from inside the generator room and walked over to the two iron doors. I put the head of the cutters on the lock, took a deep breath and with a little hesitation, cut the old rusty lock. I pulled the chain through the door handles with a loud clang. Burns grabbed one door while Josh and I grabbed the other and then we all pulled. Thanks to my excessive amount of WD-40, the doors slid open with ease. A rush of damp air assaulted our nostrils causing Burns, Josh, and myself to take a step back.
Samantha hopped into the elevator and said, “Let’s go people! Adventure awaits!” I explained how I’d like to send the elevator down first to make sure the shaft is not flooded.There was no point in going down there if we all drowned in an elevator. Samantha was disappointed but Jessica and Burns nodded their heads in approval. We all went into the elevator control room and I made a note to get hearing protection for this area. I used the controls to override and lower the elevator into the shaft. The guide wheel on the side of the elevator glided down the shaft effortlessly. The elevator tech really did a good job on everything, I thought. On the small digital display we could watch a green digital square go down a red rectangle, indicating where the elevator was in relation to the shaft. When the elevator reached the bottom, the red rectangle turned green. I brought the elevator back to the surface. Other than it being cold, it was perfectly dry. “Ok now we can go,” I said. We all got inside the elevator and I pressed the down button. The doors closed with a soft chime. The elevator itself was spacious. We only had five people and it could hold thirty. The elevator started picking up speed as it rocketed down the shaft. It was louder than I expected it to be.
I turned to the group and asked loudly, “So why did Dakota not come along today?” Josh had just opened his mouth to speak, but Samantha cut him off.
“Her dad is really sick,” Samantha explained. “She entered some game show to win money for him. What was it called again?” She started snapping her fingers, the sound lost in the elevator. “It was called, ummmm, Fear Itself. Yeah, Fear Itself. She can win $50,000.” Jessica spoke up.
“Dumb if you ask me, but you know Dakota, she’s dumb and likes to take risks. Stuff like that will get her killed.” I looked over at Josh, Dakota’s boyfriend, who looked uneasy. The rest of the ride down no one talked. The elevator slowed down then came to an abrupt stop, and a soft chime dinged out.
I said, “Ground floor: paints and bathroom windows,” which got a light chuckle from the group. I opened the elevator door and we all looked on in excitement. The lights were on in the mine. Jessica spun on me and pushed her finger into my chest.
“Hey I thought you said you were never down here. How come we have lights and electricity?” I put my hands up in a placating gesture.
“They did some modernization in the 70s before it shut down again. They probably put electricity and lights up then,” I said. The room we stood in had to be 1500 square feet and the ceiling was at least ten feet. Large wooden posts stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Small walls separated office spaces on one side of the room. The other side looked like a break room for the miners. A tunnel directly across from the elevator led deeper into the mine. Though the room and tunnel had lights, one in every three bulbs were burnt out or broken. There was just enough light to see but not enough to stop everyone from being thrown in a creepy shadow. The air in the mine was damp and smelled of mildew. The walls were not wet, but instead cold and clammy.
I went over to the elevator, turned on my head lamp and looked under it. What I didn’t see freaked me out. When I got back onto my feet Jessica looked at me with some confusion. “The elevator tech wanted me to see how much clearance we had between where the elevator stopped and the floor itself.” I lied. What had me spooked was I could not locate the kettlebell or the 2,000 yards of rope that somehow got pulled into the mine shaft itself.
We spent some time looking around the area discovering nothing much, and then started down the tunnel. The tunnel itself was big enough to stand three people abreast and had high ceilings. No one had any problems walking except Burns who had to tilt his head sideways to avoid scraping it on the ceiling. We walked for some time and came across a split in the tunnel. One went left and the other went right. Both tunnels had almost a perfect forty-five degree angle to the main shaft. We decided to make a left. After a while, the tunnel gradually turned back in on itself. Every hundred yards or so there were smaller tunnels that branched off from the tunnel we originally chose.
Samantha chose one at random and said, “Let’s explore this one.” None of the side tunnels had lights and were barely big enough to fit one person at a time. Burns and I chose to stay back. The sound of the group slowly dissipated into nothingness and the main tunnel filled with awkward silence.
I commented, “Man, when I think of mines, I think of wooden support beams every ten feet or so.”
Burns looked at me, slapped the side of the wall and said, “This baby here is Taconite”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What Taconite? It’s a rock with about fifteen percent or more of iron with quartz and carbonate interlayered. It is very strong and tough. It was considered a waste until the iron refining process got better in the late fifties. You said they tried to reopen in the seventies. That’s probably why there is a lot of Taconite down here. Although some people take it for granite,” he said with a grin.
“Ha ha, rock humor,” I said with a dry laugh. “How do you know so much about rocks and digging?”
“I was in the army for eight years as a 89 Delta,” Burns said. I brushed my hand over my head while making an airplane nose indicating it was over my head. “EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. I did that for eight years. I did some training with civilian miners before deploying to Afghanistan and learned about how explosives act differently in enclosed spaces like caves and how different rocks can be effective. We wanted to disable IED so it wouldn’t cause a cave-in. Yep, eight years, 725th EOD Company, 63rd Battalion, 52nd Group, 20th CBRNE Command.” Burns said the last part while subconsciously standing straight up and with a lot of pride. We started hearing voices and footsteps growing louder as the rest of the group squeezed out of the side passage.
“Well that was a bust. The side tunnel ends about 400 to 500 yards. There’s a hole that goes straight up but that’s it,” Jessica said.
“Well let’s keep going and see how far down the main tunnel goes. Worst comes to worst we backtrack to where the tunnel splits and we go right instead of left. Now onward!” Samantha proclaimed.
We walked for a long time. The main tunnel slowly turned to the right and the smaller tunnels to our left. We all agreed they must have been exploratory tunnels looking for silver deposits. Every now and then we would come across an old pickaxe head or a broken shovel. “Hey what’s that?” Burns asked. On our right we found a tunnel just a little smaller than the main shaft with a wooden frame around it. What looked to be a old wooden door made out of railroad ties was smashed outward and laying in the middle of the main tunnel. On top of the door frame was the word ‘Bathhouse’ carved into the wood. There were no lights inside this tunnel. The group turned on their LED headlamps and flashlights.
“Let’s go everyone,” Samantha said. We entered the tunnel.
“Go on ahead!” I shouted. “I want to look at this quickly.” I looked down at the door and I could see claw marks from the side that would have been facing inside the tunnel. It was as if something was trying to break out and was successful in doing so. There was a lock attached to the door frame which was ripped away from the door itself. With more questions than answers I started walking into the bathhouse tunnel. After a little ways inside, I could make out a faint hissing sound bouncing off the walls of the tunnel. It was like a rattlesnake warning me to stay away. I froze in place and my hands began to shake. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out a stainless steel flask. The long pull almost instantly stopped my hands from shaking. However, the liquid that was warming my insides did nothing to stop the rising level of anxiety I had.
Just then something behind me grabbed my shoulder. I spun around and saw bright green eyes. My flight or fight response kicked in. I was about to run when I tripped over my own feet and fell to the ground. In horror I put my hands up to defend myself when a voice said, “What are you doing?” I looked and it was Jessica behind me.
I put my right elbow on the ground and used my hand to prop my head up and put my left hand on my hip in a half ass sexy pose and said, “Nothing, just chilling, laying around. What are you doing?”
She laughed at this and said, “What a dork,” and helped me up. She looked at me and with all the playfulness gone from her voice she said, “You know about the curse don’t you?“
“Ummm curse? Ummm nope. What curse?” I stumbled like a middle school boy about to ask his crush to the dance.
“Don’t BS with me. I looked up the Silver Head Mine when I got home and could not find a thing about it. I talked to my uncle who is a miner and he told me all about the curse of the Wiowalks and the hissing sound they make,” Jessica said with a stern tone.
“Well umm, I mean yeah but I don’t believe in that stuff,” I said, fumbling along. Jessica looked at me with skeptical eyes, took the flask for my hand and took a pull herself. She motioned for me to come on.
“We better go before Samantha gets herself killed.” As we walked, our headlamps went back and forth cautiously looking for anything out of the ordinary. The ground was smooth and the air was getting humid as we walked, causing water to drip from the ceiling of the tunnel. With every step we took through the weaving tunnel, the sound of hissing grew louder like someone kept turning up the tv in the other room. We took turns taking pulls from the flask.
“So what’s your story?” I asked as my hands shook from a forgotten memory.
“What, like my history? Ha ha, we don’t have time to open that can of worms, but there isn’t much to talk about. My dad is best friends with Samantha’s dad. We did everything together- family trips, school events, cookouts, vacations, you get the idea. We’ve been best friends forever. Burns is Samantha’s next door neighbor. They even have the same birthday and were born in the same hospital, but I’m the one to keep her out of trouble. You would not believe how many times I had to stop her from going home with some guy at a bar. One of the bars in our hometown has nicknamed me ‘The Blocker” for obvious reasons. They even have a running tally on how many times I’ve blocked a dude. It’s thirty-six if you’re wondering,” she said this with a giggle in her voice. I did not know if she was just warming up to me or if it was the half flask of high grade island rum she drank, but her hard edges began to soften. They immediately went back to being hard as we heard someone shout,
“Oh My God!” which was immediately followed by a scream coming from up in the darkness of the cave. Jessica took off at a sprint down the dark cave. I downed the rest of my flask for liquid courage then took one step and fell flat on my face. That’s when I noticed the broken lightbulbs on the ground. I thought the bathhouse tunnel did not have lights, but it did. They were just all broken. A quick glance at the wall, though rough and uneven, I could just see what appeared to be claw marks. The sound of running feet grew more distant. I forced myself up and ran after Jessica.
I saw light coming from the end of the bathhouse tunnel. I saw the group standing around. Burns turned and put his hands up in a, ‘It’s ok, everything’s cool’ gesture. I slowed to a walk and saw a big open cave. Josh had gotten two portable spotlights out of his bag. Along the walls of the cave, I saw steps leading down about six feet long by four feet across. There was a lake in the cave. The water was about forty feet down. The cave itself was cylindrical; the stars spiraled down and looked hypnotic. Samantha was at the bottom. The hissing sound was now at the volume of a full roar or was that just the water falling from the ceiling of the cave?
“It’s so warm,” Samantha shouted. Then she unzipped her backpack and pulled out what looked to be a black pipe. With a few clicks and clacks she had a tripod with large circular lights around it. She hooked her phone up to it. Samantha took off her hoodie revealing a low cut tank top underneath. She pulled out a bag of dirt. I stared on in confusion with just a little buzz. Her friends stood around talking like this was a normal thing. She took some water from the lake and mixed it with the dirt to make mud. Samantha started smearing the mixture on her arms, face, and shirt. She turned on the circle light and shouted, “How do I look?”
Jessica, who I’m assuming was just a little buzzed, shouted back, “Like a whore covered in dirt.”
Samantha smiled and yelled, “Perfect! Thanks! Love you girl!” Samantha tapped the phone and started to speak, “Hey sandwich nation! It’s your girl Samantha. I’m here….”
I said this part a little too loudly, “What is she doing?” The group including Samantha way down below let out a collective groan as if I interrupted some big speech. Burns pressed his fingers to his lips in a hush motion. I looked back down and Samantha was giving me the bird. Josh was shaking his head and Jessica was trying not to giggle.
“Take two,” Samantha yelled out, but I felt that was more directed towards me. “Hey sandwich nation! It’s your girl Samantha. I’m here in the Silver Head Mine going cave exploring with the group.” As she was saying all this into the camera I noticed a shadow rise up from the water. The two spotlights Josh brought created enough light to illuminate the room but not bright enough to penetrate more than a foot or two into the inky black water below. The shadow looked like the front half of a person with very skinny long arms and huge hands. The back half had four legs, two on each side around a bulbous body that ended in a point with some sort of tail that trailed behind it. There was a ball shape on the end of its tail. This creature, whatever it was, was gliding under the water as silently and as stealthy as it could towards Samantha. I could not be sure if it was just a trick of the light combined with my slowly rising blood alcohol content or if what I was seeing was real.
I turned to ask anyone if they saw what I witnessed, when Samantha suddenly splashed the water and said, “OMG the water is so warm I’m thinking of a cave beach party. Maybe I’ll wear that new bikini I bought. Anyways,hit that follow button for more content.” Then she blew a kiss to the camera. When she slapped the water, the dark shadow quickly turned away and swam fast like a fish that got spooked by a predator. It dove down under the blackness of the water and disappeared.
Shortly after, we broke for lunch. We decided to eat inside of the bathhouse cave, on the overlook in the cave. The group packed sandwiches and handed one to me. I took a bite and nearly moaned in pleasure. Through a mouth full of sandwich I said, “Holy crap this is a good sandwich! Who made this?”
Jessica responded with, “Josh did. He’s going for his master’s degree in
Culinary Arts. He smokes, seasons, cuts his own meat.”
“Well this sandwich didn’t just exceed my expectations. It took my expectations out on a fancy dinner date and then screwed my expectations brains out,” I said. The group broke out in laughter.
“One day Josh and Dakota want to open a wedding catering and DJ service called DJ-Subs, kinda like a one stop shop for wedding cake, food, and music,” Jessica said. I looked over at Josh and he was beaming with pride.
I asked, “So Samantha, what’s your story then?” Samantha looked at me with a dumbfounded expression on her face like I should already know and that it’s an insult to ask.
“You really don’t know who I am,” Samantha said, pausing her bite into an apple.
“No I honestly don’t,” I replied.
Jessica let out a snort and said, “Well that’s a first for her.”
Samantha started talking, “Well I’m a social media influencer. I have over a million combined followers and I’m on all the major social media apps except OnlyFans.” Jessica and Burnes chuckled at this last part.
Jessica playfully quipped. “Although, people would pay you a lot more if you were on OnlyFans.”
Samantha looked at me and said, “So you really don’t know me?” I shook my head no as I crammed another sandwich into my mouth. “Honestly I thought you recognized me in the bar and wanted a free promotion or something for this. I’m used to people just asking me to review their product or help them promote their business. To be honest, I’m only in it for the money to pay for college. The whole stupid, dumb blond thing is just a front. I’m going to school to get my doctorate in oceanography.”
“Wow, have you ever thought to talk about that instead of playing an idiot on your videos?” I asked.
“Yeah but no one cares about the whales,” Samantha laughed. “I can talk about them and maybe a few would listen but,” Samantha changed her voice to that of a valley girl “Hey guys like to look at my breasts, like what do you think? Buy this product and if I can get one million likes I’ll wear a bikini.” She switched back to her normal voice and said, “That’s how you make the money.” The group including myself laughed at this. This clearly wasn’t the first time this conversation has been brought up. “Speaking of product placement, I need to shoot and promote. Burns I’ll need you to come with me. I need a cameraman.” Samantha and Burnes stood up and began walking out of the bathhouse cave.
“You two behave now, no going past second base,” Jessica said as Josh burst out laughing. The last thing we saw before they walked into the dark tunnel was them giving us the bird.
“So are those two like an item or something?” I asked
“No, like I said they’ve been next door neighbors since birth and it’s been a platonic relationship,” Jessica replied. A sly smirk started to form on Josh’s face. “Ok, ok, fine I guess a few years back before Burns left on his first deployment he and Samantha got a little tipsy and according to his army friends they walked in on them. Samantha was tickling his tonsils if you know what I mean, but I think it’s just a lie.”
The three of us finished our lunch and walked out of the bathhouse and back to the main tunnel. The three of us were just chatting and having a casual conversation when we heard a faint cry, “Help! I’m stuck,” the voice called out. We looked at each other.
“No one else should be down here but us,” I said. We started walking in that direction and found a tunnel that led to a massive open room that looked partially collapsed. There were no lights in this section of the mine. We heard the voice again,
“Help me! I’m stuck!” But this time it sounded like a fake cry for help, like obviously fake. We could just make out the glow of a lantern in the darkness. The three of us saw Samantha wedged between two rocks and Burns standing there with a camera. Then Samantha said, “Help! I’m stuck! I hope no one bangs me……. ``She held up a can to the camera and said “Bang Energy, how hard do you bang?!”
Burns said, “Cut! Perfect.”
Samantha turned and said, “Oh hey guys. What did you think of my performance?” She easily unstuck herself from the rock. I started laughing and Josh left out a snort which caused everyone in the group to almost double over in laughter. While wiping a tear away and trying to hold back giggles, Jessica said,
“If you were going for a porn actress with no relationship with their father then you nailed it.” This caused another round of laughter that was so loud it echoed off the chamber walls.
We returned to the main tunnel after all the laughter and giggles worked its way out of our system and continued heading in the same direction we started at. The main tunnel looped back onto itself and we found ourselves at the forty-five degree split looking at the tunnel that leads back to the elevator. The main tunnel does a full loop in a teardrop shape. After a small discussion and looking at the time, we decided to walk back and call it an early day. Before we started walking back I addressed the group. “Hey, so umm yeah, I don’t know how to ask this but, umm, would you guys like to come work for me over the summer as tour guides? On your days off you can explore the mine and any connecting cave system free of charge, and of course I’ll pay you guys.”
The group talked amongst themself and after a few minutes Samantha said, “Absolutely! But it will be three months before we can start. Some of us are still in school after all and it will only be for the summer.”
“Well this calls for celebration,” I said while removing a bottle of tequila. Before I could open the bottle, Samantha grabbed the bottle and yelled,
“Let’s drink up bitches,” and took a big pull from it and passed it to Jessica who did the same. We passed the bottle around and walked down the tunnel to the elevator. Half way back Burns had a girl over each shoulder. They were trying to play patty cake with each other but Samantha just ended up patting the top of Jessica’s head who was at the time passed out. We stumbled our way to the elevator when I heard the sound of liquid hitting stone and turned to see Josh bent over throwing up.
Jessica and Samantha were in the elevator sitting down when Jessica said in a drunken slur, “Hey, how, I mean where are we going to sleep? I’m not not sleeping with Mark. I mean with more tequila maybe, but like I’m not sharing a trailer or what not.” I became flushed in the face and before I could respond, Samantha, also in an inebriated state said,
“Oh my god Jessica! You slut!” Jessica pushed Samantha over and she fell on her face and made no attempt to break her fall. There was a tense moment of silence then when the two girls started laughing.
“Awwww bitch, I love you,” Jessica said sincerely.
“Awwww bitch, I love you too,” Samantha said. Burns looked over at me. He was slightly swaying or maybe I was because a lot of alcohol had been consumed.
He said to me, “What are the sleeping arrangements?”
“Oh I have a house with six bedrooms. It’s got no power but I will get that figured out, don’t worry.”
“Sure that will work,” Burns said. I looked down to see Josh clawing himself into the elevator before blacking out. Dang kids can’t handle their alcohol. I was just about to close the elevator doors when I saw it standing there. Its head was just about the same height as the tunnel and it was slowly moving towards the elevator. Its pale, white skin was unmistakable. It looked like the body of a praying mantis with the torso and face of a man. It had no hair, no eyes, a big mouth, bat ears and long slinky arms. It pointed at me with one hand and in the other hand was some sort of ball. It wasn’t until this creature dropped it that I realized it was the kettlebell. It raised its tail and shook it making a rattling hissss sound. Behind him another one appeared, then two more, then eight more, and so on until the tunnel was full of them- as far down as I could see. They all pointed at me. I closed the door to the elevator and looked behind me to see Burns helping the girls up and Josh still blacked out. I must be drunk and seeing things, I thought to myself. I hit the up button and the elevator started to move. On our journey to the surface, the fingers of the Wiowalks followed me, accompanied by a chorus of hisses. When we reached the surface the sun was about to set. I closed and locked the mine.
End of Part Three