My uncle is Arthur Trevelion, you may have heard of him if you’re into art. He is… or was… an artist known worldwide for his exquisite neoclassical sculptures. He seems to have taken a strange turn in the past year of his life. He had always been quite reclusive. Despite being vastly wealthy he lived modestly. His only big spend was when he bought a disused coal mine in south Wales which he had been obsessed with since childhood. He lived in a caravan on site and seemed happy despite only having basic amenities. We only became concerned when he hadn’t been heard from for two weeks.
I was the only member of the family regularly in touch with him. Not that he ever fell out with anyone, he was just quiet. Arthur was profoundly deaf, and even more profoundly shy, so he struggled to communicate at the best of times. When I was young I learned to sign so we always had a bit more of a bond than the rest of the family. I visited him every week or two, even after he moved to Wales. We would stay in touch by email, we would talk about books and art. Recently he told me he had been working on new sculptures down in the mine, he was excited, calling it his ‘best work yet’.
He hadn’t been responding to emails as often as he normally would. I visited last week and got no response from the caravan. I left a note asking him to send me an email, but after a week he still hadn’t. Upon returning this morning I saw the note I had left was missing. His caravan was left unlocked and I found his laptop open with an email in progress, yet unsent, addressed to me. It was as if he was interrupted or distracted before being able to send the message.
It read, “James, thank you for checking on me. I am sorry for causing any concern, I have been very busy with my new work. The pit has rejuvenated me. The song drives me to new creations. It is my best work yet but I have more work to do.” I was initially relieved, but I wasn’t sure when it was written. I still needed to find him.
Ever since I was just a boy, uncle Arthur had told me about this old coal mine. ‘The pit’, as the miners called it. He visited on a school trip when it was kept as a museum. While on a guided tour deep in the mine the old miners who acted as guides would turn off all the lights so visitors could experience true darkness. During that darkness Arthur insisted that, despite being deaf, he heard for the first time. He could hear a song being sung in a beautiful soaring melody and a sweeping rhythm. But when he left the mine the music stopped. It was so beautiful he became obsessed with going back.
He pestered his parents to return. They weren’t rich, so could only afford to visit twice more throughout his childhood. He heard the song again whenever he went down into the mine. Then the museum eventually closed and the site was abandoned. He visited other mines and caves to try and repeat the experience, but never heard the song anywhere else. My uncle’s success as an artist made him vastly rich, and I now wonder if his motivation to work so prolifically was, at least in part, to earn enough money to buy the pit for himself and relieve that experience. Because that is what he eventually did.
Since living at the mine his art changed. He stopped taking commissions, instead focusing on his own work. His sculptures were still masterpieces of technical skill, but were a vast departure from his previous neoclassical depictions of historical figures and scenes from mythology. Arthur described the new work as the song from the deep petrified in stone. They were abstract, incredibly complex swirls and twists of rock. A maze of intricate patterns and textures in three dimensions. A song frozen in time. The new works sold for vast amounts, usually to art speculators who hoarded these investments and probably never even took them out of the crate. An incredible waste which Arthur resented.
My uncle had shown me down the pit before, so I knew how to get the lift activated and make my way down to search for him. While descending I saw all the lights were off so I took out my small keyring torch. As soon as the metal cage clattered to a halt at the foot of the shaft I could see strange figures ahead of me. The figures danced with light as I moved my torch, as if recoiling from the light. I tried to activate the main lighting system that was installed when it was still a museum, but it wouldn’t work. I focused my torchlight down the tunnel and noticed the figures I saw were each unique sculptures. I could see dozens of them. He must have been working prolifically but I neither saw nor heard any sign of my uncle.
When Uncle Arthur first showed me down the pit he was clearly disappointed I couldn’t hear the song like he could. He was enamoured with it. I am not sure if the song itself was that beautiful, or if it was purely a deaf man’s joy at hearing something. It certainly touched him in a way no music I had ever heard had touched me. I always doubted whether he really heard anything at all, but it seemed to make him happy so none of us ever pressed him on it.
I progressed through the tunnel, black sculptures littered the route. It was like his modern work but increasingly vulgar and disturbing as I made my way further in. The sculptures took twisted forms, not man or creature that I could recognise, but some hideous beings wrestling with each other. An incomprehensible mass of twisted limbs, scales, teeth, and claw. The detail was so incredible they looked alive.
There were a few tunnels that branched out, but I just followed the statues. Further down the route there were fewer statues standing in the way, but instead the mine walls themselves had been carved. One wall looked like a tangled mass of tentacles. Another wall was carved like a great smooth bowl with a single glittering demonic eye in the centre.
I walked further, past so many disturbing sculptures I can barely remember what they all looked like. I don’t think I could bear to look for too long. I continued through the mine to a part of the tunnel which became round and sloped downwards, as if newly dug by a boring machine. The statues decreased in frequency as if my uncle had then become obsessed with delving instead of carving. He had always said the song he heard came from the deep, was he now trying to find the source?
I came across a small camp bed where Arthur must have stopped to rest at some point. A notepad was left on the bed. It had been written on extensively but it was barely legible. I suppose partly because it was written in the dark, but also because the handwriting was uncharacteristically frantic. It was possible to read some of the sentences as they were scrawled across the page, but only just. Each line overlapped with other lines of text making them even harder to read. I focused my torch on the pages to try and read what he had written.
“I HEAR THE VOICE GETTING NEARER. I AM SO CLOSE. [ILLEGIBLE] MY BODY ACHES AND MY HANDS BLEED. I HAVE NOT EATEN [ILLEGIBLE] I AM NOURISHED AND DRIVEN ON BY THE SONG IN THE PIT. IT GUIDES MY HAND IN THE DARKNESS.”
Behind me I felt an unnerving sense of movement. I turned to look but saw nothing beyond torchlight slithering across the smooth carved beings around me. I noticed a carving overhead of leathery wings, poised like an eagle swooping in on its prey. I moved away from beneath it, unnerved. Despite my uncle’s deafness I felt the need to call out to him in a pathetic attempt to scare off whatever may be lurking in the darkness. “Uncle Arthur?” I shouted. “Are you down here?”
Ahead I could see the boring machine parked up and the rounded tunnel ahead tapered to a squared end. Some sculptures would still catch a glimmer of torchlight in the corner of my eye and make me recoil as if they were jumping out at me. They had now become demonic figures. Horrific monstrosities waiting to prey on whatever luckless fool would pass. A putrid smell filled the air.
At the very end of the round tunnel was the square opening. As I drew closer the smell grew like an open sewer. In the torchlight I could see the opening had debris resting at its base like a large slab had been smashed through, beyond it there appeared to be a chamber. I climbed into the chamber and immediately tripped over. I scrambled in a panic to pick up my torch and noticed the bitter stench stirring around me. I checked where I had fallen and found Uncle Arthur. He lay amongst the debris by the doorway, a black hole in his abdomen. His body didn’t look like it had been there long from what I could tell, but from the smell I believe his bowels had been ripped open. His belly was sunken, hollowed out as if he had been fed on by scavengers. But there was no wildlife down this mine.
My first thought was that whatever could have done this may still be somewhere in the pit. I instantly scanned around the chamber only to be distracted by hundreds of deep gouges that had been scratched into the walls. The chamber was not carved, but built from huge smooth black stone blocks far larger than anything my uncle could have feasibly assembled. It must have been something he had discovered. The blocks had shallow carvings with figures and writings in a language I didn’t recognise, but most of these had been defaced by the gouges in the walls. They depicted people with swords and spears, one image showed a tunnel to this chamber being deliberately caved in with someone shut inside. Was this my uncle’s work? It seemed crude for a man of his skill, but he may have been under duress, or in poor health. If it was his work why was so much of it then defaced?
The whole situation filled me with confusion and terror. My heart was pounding as I looked out of the chamber. Uncertain horrors danced in the darkness, my eyes unable to distinguish between the sculptures and whatever else may be hidden in the void amongst them. My small torch started to flicker as the battery began to fail. I clambered out of the chamber and sprinted back to the lift.
As I ran back through the area with the most sculptures I collided with unseen statue which caught me in the belly. I lost balance and must have hit my head on the way down because I lost consciousness. After an uncertain amount of time I awoke and the fog slowly cleared from my mind to be replaced with a ringing in my ears. I stumbled to the lift, my stomach pulsating with pain, fumbled with the controls and after an agonising wait, the lift eventually clattered into motion and rose from the pit.
Rising into the light my eyes watered, burned by the relative brightness of the afternoon. I stumbled over to my uncle’s caravan for some shelter from the light and to regain my senses. I rested for a moment but the veil of adrenaline slowly pulled away to reveal a stabbing, swelling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I noticed a bloom of blood no bigger than a fist marked the front of my shirt. I lifted my shirt and saw my belly button was gaping open, as if it had been bored into. It was red raw and blood crusted around it. I didn’t think I had been hit that hard. I then saw something in my stomach writhe beneath the skin and I vomited. The image of my uncle’s hollowed out abdomen flashed into my mind. It had got me too.
I checked my phone and had just enough signal to call the police. I advised them I had found my uncle dead, and that I was injured. I told them about what I had found, the tomb, or prison, my uncle had discovered. I explained my belief that some malevolent being had been released, killed my uncle and may now be inside me. The call-taker didn’t sound convinced. I didn’t attempt to persuade her any further. They could come and see for themselves.
I lay slumped on the caravan bed waiting to die. Then the ringing in my ears gave way to calming waves of silence, the pain from my belly gently subsided with a song.
The song was as beautiful as my uncle had tried to describe it. But no words, not even his incredible sculptures could do it justice. It was intoxicating and euphoric. Like a universal language soothing my mind with whispers.
While my uncle only heard the song through the stone and earth, singing deep from the pit and drawing him to it. I could feel the song directly within me, uninhibited by rock and coal, unrestricted. It encouraged me to leave this place, but I did not have the energy. The song slowly nourished me with all the strength I needed. I felt rejuvenated. Elated. Like I was capable of anything, it was now no wonder my uncle had found the boundless energy and the inspiration to create so many sculptures.
The song compelled me to get in my car and leave. To drive for a city, Cardiff is the nearest. It needs me to be around people. It is a compulsion like thirst or hunger. I try to defy it but the song intensifies. The more I resist the more the need to leave grows. No longer like mere hunger, but the need for a drowning man to pull above water and draw breath.
I was overwhelmed and I admit I was afraid. I considered going back to the pit and throwing myself down the shaft. Leaving a note warning people not to follow. Fill the pit with concrete as far as I care, bury me with uncle Arthur and his numerous works. Something powerful, unknown and incomprehensible was once imprisoned here. Maybe it should remain.
But that would be futile. If those ancient people chose to imprison it, maybe it couldn’t be killed. And who would ever believe me? Nothing would stop the police from recovering the bodies from the pit. Nothing would stop the relentless greed of art collectors when they hear how many of his works are down there. The pit would be plundered one way or another and now it was released from its cell, the singer’s escape was inevitable.
Better it was in me. I can try to control it. I may be able to withstand it. Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it doesn’t mean any harm. It’s just trying to exist like the rest of us. I have already had a taste of what the song can provide, fear of the unknown shouldn’t inhibit exploring that further. My uncle was probably too weak to carry it, but I am stronger. The singer and I could help each other. It obviously needs me. I think I need it too.
I left the mine before the police arrived. My car is electric, so I am currently stopped at the services to recharge before I can reach Cardiff. The singer is content, its song is soothing. I am writing this while my car charges in an attempt to explain what has happened before the police come looking for me. I grieve for my uncle, but the singer sings a song of sympathy and mourning to ease that pain but turns my focus to the future. In this short time I have already experienced a small part of the singer’s wonderful gift. Soon we will share the song with the world.