The town of Kiruna is special. Superficially, it is a humble mining community located between the mountains Luossavaara and Kiirunavaara. Extensively, it harbors many a nightmare deep underground. But we don’t talk about that, usually.
Giron, as it is called in the native tongue, was founded in the year 1900. The history stretches back further, however. As early as the 15th century brave explorers trekked through the treacherous terrain and found evidence of iron deposits in the ground. I think about them a lot. I wonder if they knew what their discovery would bring. Did they see what we have seen?
You see, as the mine started developing, so did the town. The town soon became a small city and at its peak it supplied ⅔ of the world’s iron. But open-pit mining soon became dangerous. The edges of the pit started collapsing and the decision was made to continue underground. With time the ground became porous. Miles and miles of tunnels snaking through granite, threatening the stability of the very foundation the city stood upon. Rationally you may think this was a good time to stop, but greed knows no bounds. Instead the city was to be moved. Thousands of lives uprooted, including mine.
The local government has time and time again blamed this on the threat of collapse. However, townsfolk whisper in the night. Rumors of something inexplicable, something terrible, residing in the mines of Kiruna. A furious, ancient presence. As a worker for the company your natural instinct is to protect your livelihood, but I must now face facts. We disturbed the order. We dug too deep.
I am here to tell you what I have seen.
I started my current job decades ago. I was born here, raised here. It was only natural for me to work here as well. I took pride in the storied tradition of my home. Nationally the miner is regarded with subtle contempt, but we are treated like heroes here. They call us Men of Iron.
The first story I want to share with you took place during my first week, all those years ago. It wasn’t particularly scary back then, but I was young and naive. During the first couple of days I didn’t do much in the way of work because they had a whole introduction planned for the new hires. They’d take us down for visits in the old pit, tell us about the history of the company. Stuff like that. But soon the information we received turned… weird.
They spoon-fed us the weirdness. Never too much at once, sprinkled throughout boring presentations on quotas and the like. I remember vividly that our handler showed us a graph of some sort. Profits I’d wager. There were dips and one of my colleagues remarked on the fact that they seemed to occur periodically, almost to the exact date. 4 months and change in between each decrease. Our handler told us that they shut the mine down during a week each time. When I asked why I expected some kind of logical explanation, but alas.
Apparently those dips in profits coincided with the increased frequency of sightings of something she called ‘Jägarögon’. Eyes of the Hunter. I recognized fear in her face when she told us this, but chalked it up to superstition. I wouldn’t get an explanation for what they were until much later. The miners do not like to talk about the strange things going on down there, especially not this. But, we will get to that.
First I’ll tell you about the time I realized that the mines were alive.
A year into my employment, nothing had gone wrong yet. There were a couple of workers going missing in the deep dark, but this was not out of the ordinary. We mourned them, not much else to do. The interesting part was that we never found their bodies. Not one. I had this in mind as I walked the tunnels with a small exploratory group. Sure, iron is the main interest of the company, but that doesn’t mean they want to hedge their bets to one product. Me and four others were conducting tests to find traces of valuables in a lesser known part of the system.
I crouched on the slope of the wall and gathered my equipment from my bag. A small bore, a strip of pH-indicator and a glass container for the samples. I won’t bore you (pun intended) with the minutiae of gathering samples, so let’s just say that I did my thing. I always liked being close to rock. In front of me were the bones of Earth itself, silently bearing the weight of all known life. It’s hard not to feel insignificant at that prospect (again, pun intended). But I enjoyed that feeling, it made me forget about the struggles above ground for just a moment.
I spaced out and didn’t snap out of it until I heard something. It was like the behemoth in front of me whispered something. The rock begged me to get closer, to look at it. I did so.
Suddenly, I was alone. When I turned around I couldn’t see any of the others. I called out for them. No answer. And when I thought about it for a bit, did the tunnel really look the same as before?
I did what we were told not to do when lost, walk around. After all, this was not the same place I ‘got lost’. I must’ve been alone for hours, aimlessly searching for the rest of the group. I’ll tell you something, I’m a typically masculine man, but when you’re alone down there real fear sets in. You scan your surroundings with your torch, and every shadow is a threat. And I could hear the walls breathe. And I could see the walls shift, ever so slightly. Sometimes it even looked biological.
I started carving crosses on the ground to keep my bearing, but every time I turned back there would be no sign of them.
Then, my flashlight went out. I sat down to accept my fate.
“You fucking idiot,” a voice woke me up.
I was completely out of it, confused.
“You never listen to the mountain.”
I learned that the caves like to play tricks on you. Transport you elsewhere. Try to get you to slip up, lose your cool and wander off into the unknown. I was told that I had some unimaginable luck. The other place I got sent to was just a kilometer to the east, an area also owned by the company. Thank God. I started bringing earmuffs after that incident.
With time I would become more experienced, both in regards to my work and how to stay safe under Kiirunavaara.
One of the most terrifying facts about the mines is that you could never know if your colleague right next to you actually is what he seems. Reports had been filed, telling upper management about the appearance of a long lost miner. Apparently, he had just waltzed right into a group of people at the bottom of the lift, as if nothing was wrong. At first they hadn’t recognized him, but as they shone their lights on him it was unmistakable. That man had been gone for over two years. When they reacted appropriately, he just looked at them with a blank stare. ‘Not quite human’, someone had described his expression.
The company knew more about this than they let on. How do I know this? Well, because they promptly disposed of him. Or it. And soon after, 4 months after the last time, the Eyes started appearing. The mine shut down for a week. During this time the company managed to quell any rumors stemming from the incident. Hush, hush.
Now, with my seniority, I have gotten access to documents that estimate that around 3% of the total force has been replaced by these lookalikes. If the mountain hadn’t slipped up and used the vessel of someone that shouldn’t be there, we may have never known. With this in mind the sporadic, violent outbursts of some workers can be explained. It may not be “cave insanity”, but rather this. I shudder at the thought of having unknowingly walked beside these things. Maybe even shared a cup of coffee with one. Doing something innately human, with something not quite human.
It is all part of the trickery. Those flesh-dolls try to get you to break the rules. And when you don’t, they break character. They’re a catalyst. That’s why we increased the size of groups to a minimum of 7 people. However, there’s always a slim chance that you may be the only real person in it. So if you plan to work here and see someone in the dark, alone, moving strangely, run the other direction. Even if the tunnels change on you, getting lost is a far better fate than whatever happens to the replaced.
I think it’s time I explain what an Eye of the Hunter is. I will tell you about them in exactly the same way I was told.
You’re new here. You’ve heard about some of the strange things going on, but haven’t experienced anything on your own. Work is going fine and you tell your wife about how good of a job you’re doing before bed every day. She is proud.
Weeks pass, the initial excitement dies down and you realize that you do tough, manual labor for a criminally low fee. Your days become monotonous and you stop telling your wife about them, even if she still calls you her Man of Iron. You need money. You need more. You want to buy her everything she wants, she’s too good for you.
One day, you hear whispers in the break room. Something about off-hour gold expeditions. Unsanctioned by the company, of course. They notice you listening and offer a spot on the team in exchange for your silence. You gladly accept. Good for you.
You tell your wife that you had to cover the graveyard shift and drive towards the mine. We don’t work at night. The guys are all there, waiting for you. Some have brought their own equipment. Lights, drills, hammers. All you need is there.
In the dead of night you climb over fences, dodge the vision of the cameras and sneak into the elevator. It starts its descent.
“We have heard about a large vein, mostly left untouched,” they’ll tell you.
“Why?” You’ll ask.
But you do not get an answer. Fine, you’ll still be rich enough for an early pension by tomorrow morning. But until then, a long night’s work awaits the group. You look around. Grizzled faces, slowly worn down by years of hard work. You’re the youngest and it’s an honor to be around these men. But, doesn’t that man look a little… off? The skin under his eyes, too saggy. The faint smile he sends your way, off-putting. Must be the light.
You and your newfound brothers start the journey. Tunnel after tunnel. Darkness only broken up by the criss-crossing beams of your torches. One of the more senior members stops periodically, checks his map, then continues.
They tell stories. Mostly nostalgic, light-hearted ones. Maybe there are mermaids for miners? Wouldn’t that be nice, they’ll say. You start to feel almost comfortable in the presence of these men, despite the fact that you are deeper underground and further away from known territory than you’ve ever been. You start thinking about that necklace you’ll buy for your wife. You wonder if she’s sleeping right now.
The man in front stops.
“This area shifts a lot.”
You can’t help but feel a bit proud. You know what this means. You suggest that some of you will stay behind, keep in line of sight with the others. The mines can’t shift then. Only if you listen to the mountain, but you all know better than to do that.
Three of the men start walking towards the deposit of gold, leaving you and the strange man from the elevator to stand back. You talk about sports; he seems to not care. You tell him to stop looking at you, you need two pairs of eyes to watch the others, in case one of you needs to blink. But somehow, he doesn’t seem to blink. You see the other men hard at work, their beams moving across the roof of the cavern.
The man standing next to you brings something to your attention. It’s a hole in the rocky wall. It is very smooth, concave in shape. It doesn’t really look like any kind of formation you’ve learned about. Almost like it was made by something other than the gentle scrubbing of water for eons. The man asks you to look into the hole while he keeps watch over the others.
Mistake. The last one you’ll ever make.
The hole is completely straight and goes on for what seems like infinity. It gradually becomes thinner and thinner. Your light can’t reach the end of it, but you can still see that the thinnest part is no thicker than the head of a needle. What you do not know yet, is that something is crawling in there, in the long dark. Coming towards you.
Strange, you think, and go back to watching the men at work.
Some time later, two thin hands will grab the edges of the hole from within. They’re black as black can be. Or rather, devoid of any color. Thin, awfully long fingers feel around the edges for something to grip on to, and when they finally do, it’s over for you.
It happens too fast to register, something lunges at you from the depths of the hole. One of the men hears the commotion and turns around. He screams. But they all know the ending. Now, they can just pray that you hit your head during the struggle so hard that you die immediately. But you didn’t.
The thing drags you into the hole with desperate vigor. Disjointed pulling. It has you by the arm, so you’re facing away from the exit. You stare into the face of that thing. Despite the darkness, a white smile greets you. A perfectly white smile and two large, perfectly white eyes with a small, black dot in each. The last thing you will see.
It drags you onwards. Deeper into the mountain. The hole is getting smaller and you feel your ribs tightening. You can’t breathe. Bones in your body shatter, you start turning to pulp. It goes on, and on for what feels like an impossible amount of time, unt-
At this point in the story, the drunken miner who told me it stopped. He just looked out towards the horizon. Terrified. I didn’t poke around further, I had heard enough.
That hole was an Eye, and you NEVER look into it. That’s how they hunt. When they (or it, we do not know if it’s a single entity or many) spot a pair of human eyes, they start their crawl. Then, when it knows the victim is facing away, they stretch out their arms as far as they can. Sometimes several tens of meters as to not be seen. At this stage, many have reported the sound of cracking bones. So at least those things suffer a little in the process, hopefully.
They then use the force stored in their stretched arms to slingshot themselves out of the hole, grabbing their victim and then disappearing back into the void. A horrible way to go.
I have never seen one of the creatures, only their holes. Their Eyes.
But I have been there once when it happened. A coworker had gazed into one of them, thinking it was another kind of hole, one that indicated the presence of iron-rich granite. The Eyes weren’t ‘in-season’ at that time, only two months since the last appearance. I guess he thought it was safe to take a peek.
By the time I realized he had already been grabbed. I managed to get a hold of his leg but it was futile. I got pulled into the wall and lost my grip. I broke my jaw. Then he was gone. Faint screams emanated from the Eye for three minutes.
After this, I asked to be put on desk duty. I vowed to never step foot underground again. At least not that particular ground. Sometimes I miss the good parts about it though. But when you slip up doing paperwork you’ll get, at most, an earful from a superior. When you slip up down there, you die. Well, you die after an excruciating amount of pain has been inflicted on you.
There are many other stories from the deep. Many other rules that had to be followed. One time we found some sort of inscription on carefully carved blocks of marble. The symbols were ancient, apparently. Unknown language, apparently. But that’s up to the scientists to figure out. I think that, if they do crack it, we will understand the evil there.
For now though, I’ll sign off. I have a long day of paperwork tomorrow. It’s been 4 months since the last cycle ended, so I’ll have to prepare the documents for a week-long shutdown.