Monstrous Affections (17 page)

“Well, we can’t let Graham here soak up all the juice,” said Harry.
He stepped inside and peered up into the dark, nose wrinkling.

“Smells in here,” he said finally. Jim stepped inside, sniffing.

Behind me, the ladder shifted again, and more dirt fell into
the mine. The wind shifted up a half-tone in pitch and with it, the
timbers high in the tower creaked. I let go of the ladder and inched
further along the wall. I felt like a reluctant suicide on a high-rise
window ledge.

“Paul, be a good man and swing that flashlight up there,” said
Harry, pointing to the top of the ladder. His voice was quiet, almost
a monotone. Paul obeyed, and slashed the beam up through the
cascade of sand, to the place where Harry pointed.

“Jesus H. Christ!”

I don’t know which one of us yelled it; it might have been me, for
all the attention I was paying. The only thing I know for sure is that
it didn’t come from the narrow platform at the top of the ladder,
where the light-circle finally came to rest.

There was a man at the top of the ladder.

The light reflected back at us three times: dimly in each lens of
the round safety goggles that he wore underneath his helmet, much
brighter from the Cyclops-lens of his own helmet-mounted light. He
wore a snowsuit, bright yellow underneath, but obscured by thick,
hardening smears of mud. A shadow from a cross-beam fell on his
chest and chin, enshrouding his features utterly. His arms dangled at
his side, and in the mitten of his left hand, he clutched a crowbar.

Harry lifted his hands — as though the crowbar were a rifle, and
the miner were a policeman placing the four of us under arrest.

“Hey, fellow,” he said. “Just thought we’d take a look around
before it got too dark up here. Hope we’re not trespassing.”

The stranger stood stock still, and didn’t answer immediately.
He was about fifteen feet above us, on a narrow platform that
seemed to extend around the entire second storey of the minehead.
The ends of the narrow-gauge tracks that the mine carts rode on
extended out into space from the platform near his feet.

“
Bonjour, Monsieur Peletier.
” The voice was deep and gravelly, and
the man up top didn’t move as he spoke. It was almost as though
the voice had come from somewhere else — the top of the pit-tower,
maybe the depths of the mine itself. But Paul answered readily
enough, and with an easy familiarity that sent a premonitory chill
through me.

“
Bonjour, Monsieur Tevalier. Ils sont ici — oui, mon père, ils sont tous
ici.
”

Paul’s Northern Quebec French has always been a challenge
for me, but even without the benefit of my Grade 10 French, the
meaning of that simple sentence would have been unmistakable:

They are here — yes, my father, all of them.

No sooner had Paul spoken than the miner’s left hand opened and
the crowbar clattered to the floorboards over our heads. He stepped
back, and for the briefest instant as the shadows passed from his
face, we could see him — an absurdly weak chin framed by mutton-chop sideburns the colour of dirty snow; hard yellow flesh, drawn
tight as a drum skin across high cheekbones; and of course, we could
see his teeth. They were like nails, hammered down through the
gums so far that they extended a full inch over the lips.

Paul turned the light away as the creature leaned forward. As
it raised its arms to fall, I heard the flick of a flashlight switch and
that light disappeared. Something moved in front of the door, and
the darkness of the pit-head became absolute.

The creature took Harry first. He was the oldest among us,
he’d been slowing down for years, and from that sheerly practical
standpoint, I guess he made the easiest target. There were no
screams; just a high whimper. The sound a beaten dog would make,
if that dog were Harry Fairbanks.

“The rest of you, stand where you are,” said Paul, his voice
preposterously calm. “One wrong move, and you could find yourself
dead at the bottom of the shaft.”

“Oh, you bastard,” said Jim, the words coming out in sobbing
breaths. “Oh, you think you got us trapped in here, oh you
Goddamned
bastard
.”

“Only for a moment,” said Paul. “Only a moment. Stand still, and
we’ll all walk out of here together.”

The whimper had devolved into a low moan, and it was quickly
joined by another sound: dry clicks, the sound old men sometimes
make with their throats, as they swallow their soup.

It was at that point, I think, that it occurred to me that Paul’s
warning to Jim didn’t really apply to me: my back was still against
the wall, and so long as I kept in contact with that wall, I’d be safe
from making a wrong step into the pit. And the ladder to the second
floor was only a step away.

Harry let loose a horrible, blood-wet cough, and with it, my
decision was made: left hand still pressed against the rough tarpaper
wall, I reached out and grabbed a rung of the ladder with my right.
It was just as soft as I remembered it, but I didn’t take the time to
worry whether or not it would hold and in a single motion, swung
myself around and started to climb.

The bottom rung snapped under my foot, but I was working on
momentum at that point and managed to pull myself past it. The
climb couldn’t have taken more than a second or two, but it seemed
like hours. I was torn between two dreads: of the moment the rungs
snapped — beneath my feet, or my hands, or both — and I fell back
into the mine; and of the instant that the creature below stopped
swallowing, and reached up with whatever kind of claws it had
hiding under those big miner’s mitts, to grab my ankle and pull me
back towards the pit.

But the clicking continued, and the ladder held, one rung and the
next rung and the next, and finally when I reached for another rung,
my hand fell instead on the rim of the second floor. As I scrambled
to get up, my hand closed around the cold metal of the crowbar the
creature had dropped, and when I got to my feet, I hefted it in front
of me like a club. There was marginally more light up here, and I took
a moment to get my bearings. What remained of the day filtered in
through cracks in the far wall, and reflected dull steel gleam off the
mine-cart tracks even as they converged toward that wall. I couldn’t
see clearly, but I knew there would have to be a door there — those
tracks would lead out to the trestle, and the jagged heap of rocks
that it traversed.

“Graham! For Christ’s sake!” It was Paul, but I didn’t take time
to answer him. Something more important had suddenly occupied
my attention:

The clicking had finally stopped.

And the ladder creaked under new weight.

I turned and ran towards the light. The floor was clear, but the
boards had heaved over the years and I almost tripped twice before
I finally fell against the huge door at the end of the tracks. It rattled
on its runners as I righted myself. Behind me, I heard the sound
of wood snapping, and something grunted — a sound a pig would
make.

I found a metal handle about half-way up and lifted, but the
door wouldn’t budge. So I wedged the tip of the crowbar between
the floor and the bottom of the door, and stepped on it. There were
more splintering sounds; this time coming both from the door in
front of me and the ladder behind me.

“Graham! Get back here!”

“Forget it, Paul!” I was surprised at how giddy my voice sounded,
echoing back at me through the darkness.

“I’m doing you a Goddamned favour!”

Whatever was holding the door shut gave way then, and I nearly
lost the crowbar as it shot up with the force of the released tension.
In a fast motion, I scooped up the crowbar under one arm, and lifted
the door up with the other. The pit-head was briefly filled with grey
November daylight and I let the door rest on my shoulder.

The creature was at the top of the ladder. It had cast off its helmet
and goggles, revealing patchy whips of hair on a mottled yellow scalp,
eyes that seemed all pupil — they glittered blankly in the new light.
Its chin and beard were slick with Harry’s blood and its hands
were
claws. The gloves had been discarded on the way up, and they poked
out of the snowsuit’s sleeves, dead branches blackened by flame.

The thing held its arm up against the light for only an instant
before it launched itself at me.

I swung my head under the door and, checking my footing on
the trestle outside first, let go. The door clattered down, even as the
creature fell against it.

I backed up a few steps and raised the crowbar again, this time
holding it over my shoulder, like a baseball bat.

I don’t know how long I stood there before it dawned on me that I
could climb down any time I wanted; that it wasn’t coming out.

Before it dawned on me just what kind of creature the thing
inside the pit-head was.

I threw the crowbar ahead of me, and in careful fits and starts,
made it to the ground.

Paul raised his hands and stepped away from the van. I held
his 12-gauge cocked and ready at my shoulder, an open box of
ammunition on the floor of the van beside the chemical toilet, which
I was using as a stool. If the gun were to go off, it would do so with
both barrels, and take Paul’s head away in the process.

“Stay where I can see you,” I told him, and he made no move to
disobey. He was framed perfectly in the open panel. “But don’t come
any closer. No more tricks, all right?”

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” he said, and at that I swear I almost
did shoot him.

“No thanks to you.”

“No, Graham,” said Paul, his voice very cool and reasonable
considering his circumstances, “if you’d done what I told you to,
stood still and waited for it, believe me — you’d thank me.”

“Yeah, Paul. Just like Jim and Harry are thanking you now. I
want you to hand over the keys to the van.”

“So you can just drive away? Leave all this, leave your work
behind?” Paul stood still, kept his eyes on mine as he spoke. “I’m
disappointed.”

I’d been in the back of Paul’s van for about an hour before he’d
shown up, and once I’d pried open his gun case and found where
he’d kept the ammunition, I’d had little to do but think. Paul had set
us up — set us up for something awful — that much was clear. Other
things were clear too, but it was the wrong kind of clarity; I needed
confirmation.

“That miner — that thing in the mine — it drinks blood, doesn’t
it?” I demanded. “We’re talking about a vampire, aren’t we?”

“It’s not the only one,” replied Paul. “There are maybe twenty or
thirty of them, living down in the tunnels. When the mine’s active,
they feed on the miners.”

“And when it’s not active, they kill the tourists.”

Paul actually smiled at that. “Don’t be stupid. They don’t kill
anyone; how long do you think they’d be able to survive here in these
mines if they did? They just — ” he searched for the word “ — just
feed, they milk us if you like. And they always give something back.
It’s a transaction.”

“So that thing in the pit-head — the vampire — didn’t kill
Harry?”

“He’s sleeping in his car.”

“Or Jim?”

“They’re both fine.”

I sat back and let that sink in for a moment. If Paul were telling
the truth, my original plans — stealing Paul’s van at gunpoint,
hightailing it to the OPP station in Hailiebury and reporting a brutal
triple-killing-by-exsanguination at the Royal minehead north of
Cobalt — would all bear some serious rethinking.

“What’s the deal, Paul?” I finally asked. “Why’d you do this to
us?”

“I didn’t do it
to
you,” he said, sounding a little exasperated. “I did
it
for
you — particularly for
you
, Graham.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Look: When you joined our little group three years ago, you
were just out of art college. And even though you’re pointing my own
shotgun at my head and it’s probably not the wisest thing for me to
do, I’ll tell you: your work wasn’t much to look at then, and three
years later, it’s still not much to look at. You might as well be doing
paint-by-numbers. You’ve got technical skills that Jim and Harry
would both probably kill for — hell, you went to art school for two
years, you’d better have learned something — but artistically? You’re
all cast from the same mould.”

When Paul was done, I lowered the shotgun. If I’d left it trained
on his forehead, the temptation to pull the trigger would have been
too great to resist.

“It may hurt to hear that,” continued Paul, “but I think it’s the
case. It’s the case for all of you, and more days than not, it’s the case
for me too. Which is why when this opportunity arose, I couldn’t
pass it up. And I couldn’t have let any of you pass it up either.”

“What opportunity?” My voice sounded like metal in my head.

Paul shook his head. “How do you think,” he said slowly, “the
Women’s Art League of Hailiebury managed to produce such
consistently good work here? You think they were born with talent?
Or maybe that it was God-given? They made an arrangement,
Graham — just like I did.”

There was a rustling in the darkness behind Paul, and I raised
the shotgun again. I could barely see Paul in the vanishing light; the
shadows that emerged from the stand of spruce behind him seemed
insubstantial.

“Let them inside,” said Paul. “They’ll change the way you see.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

The cold was fierce through the night, but I was glad for it; I managed
to stay awake for all but a brief hour before dawn. Paul came by every
so often, to check on me — he was waiting, I guess, for me to slip, for
the miners to take me the way they’d taken the rest of them, so he
could get inside and use his cot for the night. He would pound on the
side of the van, shout — “Still corporeal, Graham?” — and tromp off
laughing every time I told him to go screw himself.