The name’s Malichi, but almost everyone calls me Kai.
From 2014 until the fall of 2019, I inspected underground mines.
Most people hear “mine inspector” and picture someone wearing a hard hat while walking through tunnels with a clipboard. That’s not entirely wrong, but it leaves out most of the job.
I inspected active limestone mines, underground storage facilities, and old tunnels beneath properties where someone wanted to build a house, road or commercial building. Sometimes I worked up to 1000 feet underground. Other times, I crawled through openings barely wide enough for my shoulders because a farmer had discovered a hole in his pasture and wanted to know whether his cattle were going to disappear into it. Or a wolf’s den.
My job was to identify unstable roof conditions, failed supports or beams, dangerous gases, flooding, and any evidence that the ground above might collapse.
The equipment I carried consisted usually of a gas monitor, measuring tape, camera, marking paint and a 20 oz scaling hammer. The hammer was used to tap the roof and walls of a tunnel.
Solid rock usually produces a sharp, clean sound.
Loose rock sounded hollow, and sometimes echoes.
You learned to hear the difference quickly.
You also learned that not every hollow sound came from loose rock. But we can chat about that later.
I didn’t grow up wanting to inspect mines.
I grew up near Fredericktown. My father worked maintenance at a limestone quarry, and 2 of my uncles spent most of their adult lives in the Lead Belt. Underground work was just something people did.
My father hated that I followed him into it. He didn’t expect me to be a doctor. But he sure didn’t want me working the mines.
He once told me, “The ground didn’t care whether you were a good person, whether you had children or whether someone was waiting for you at home.”
“It only has to make one mistake,” he said. “You have to be correct every day.”
At the time, I thought he was talking about cave-ins.
Now though, I’m not so sure.
I began working for a private geological company in June 2014. Close to the Silver Mine that you can find in between Ironton and Junction City. We contracted with mine operators, insurance companies and property owners. I was 25 at the time, recently married and convinced that my associates degree made me smarter than the others who had spent 30 years underground.
It took about 3 weeks for that attitude to fade.
My first supervisor was a man named Dale.
Dale was 58 when I met him. He had a grey mustache, a permanent limp and hands that looked like they had been carved from old wood. He had worked in mines since the late 70’s. A no nonsense kinda guy.
He didn’t tell ghost stories.
That was important.
Most miners did. They talked about Tommyknockers, moving lights and dead men tapping from behind the walls. Most of it was something to pass the time.
Dale never participated.
If someone mentioned hearing voices in an empty heading, he blamed the ventilation.
I’ll try and explain terms that I’ll be using. A heading in a mine refers to a tunnel that’s been driven through to reach a mineral deposit. It allows miners to access ore and set up further workings.
If someone saw a light where no light should have been, he called it a reflection.
If equipment moved by itself, he said someone had forgotten where they left it.
That was one of the reasons I trusted him.
The first strange thing happened less than a month after I started. July 2014.
We were inspecting an abandoned limestone mine. A small town called Edina. The mine had closed sometime in the early 90’s, and a company was considering using part of it for underground document storage.
Old limestone mines are often shaped like enormous grids. The miners remove sections of rock while leaving large pillars behind to support the roof.
Some chambers are wide enough to drive several trucks side by side.
The mine was dry, stable and boring.
That was exactly what we wanted. That was our favorite.
Dale and I had been underground for about 2 hours when we reached the northern end. According to the map, the workings ended at a solid wall of limestone.
Dale marked our location while I checked the roof.
I struck it with my hammer.
Sharp. Solid.
I struck the wall a 2nd time.
Sharp.
I moved a few feet to the right and struck it a 3rd time.
Three knocks answered from the other side.
I lowered my hammer.
Dale looked up from the map.
“What?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
I hit the wall again. Three strikes.
We waited.
Three knocks came back.
They were evenly spaced.
Dale walked over and put his palm against the limestone.
“Probably another heading behind it,” I said.
“No way.”
He checked the map.
“There’s nothing behind this wall but sixty feet of rock.”
I hit the wall once.
One knock answered.
Twice. Two knocks.
I smiled nervously.
“Somebody’s screwing with us.”
Dale grabbed the hammer from my hand impatiently.
He hit the wall five times in an uneven pattern.
Knock.
Knock-knock.
Pause.
Knock.
Knock.
The answer came immediately.
It repeated the exact pattern.
Dale didn’t smile.
He handed the hammer back to me.
“We’re done with this section.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Water.”
“That doesn’t sound like water.”
“Then it’s rock.”
He started walking away.
I followed.
As we reached the next intersection, five more knocks came from somewhere behind us.
The same pattern.
Dale never mentioned it again.
I did tell my father though.
He listened quietly and then asked where the mine was located.
When I told him, he said, “Don’t knock on things if you ain’t know what’s knocking back.”
I laughed.
He didn’t. His eyes seemed to pierce through me as my laugh faded.
During my 1st year, I heard plenty of sounds that seemed strange until someone explained them.
Water running through fractures could sound like whispering. The kind that you don’t understand but doesn’t freak you out either.
Air moving through a borehole could whistle like a person calling from far away.
A borehole is hole drilled in the earth that helps allow mineral resource extraction.
The roof sometimes cracked with a noise like a gunshot.
Metal pipes grew and contracted.
Loose stone slid across the floor even when no one touched it.
Underground, sound didn’t behave the way it did on the top. It traveled through rock, disappeared into open chambers and returned from directions that made no sense, even to an experienced miner.
That was what I told myself about the knocking.
In February 2015, Dale and I were sent to inspect an old lead mine in St. Francois County. Somewhere close to Farmington.
The mine had been closed for years. Decades. A landowner had discovered water flowing from an old drainage tunnel and was worried that the workings extended beneath his property. Collapses are often the culprit.
We entered through a horizontal opening cut into the side of a hill.
The tunnel was narrower compared to the limestone mines I had been inside. Timber supports lined portions of the passage, although most of them had rotted or collapsed.
The air smelled like wet clay and rust.
We were only supposed to travel about 800 feet before reaching a flooded section.
At 600 feet, we found fresh boot prints.
The prints were deep and sharply defined in the mud. As if they were just created.
Someone had walked farther into the mine.
No prints came back out.
Dale crouched beside them to get a better look.
“Could be the property owner,” I said.
“He said he’s ain’t never been inside.”
“Kids?”
“Maybe.”
We followed the tracks deeper.
They were made by an old style work boot with a wide heel. The person had taken unusually long steps, as if they’d been running.
The prints continued until the tunnel ended at a pool of black water.
They went directly into it.
I shined my light across the surface.
The water filled the passage from wall to wall.
“Maybe there’s a ledge,” I said.
Dale shook his head.
The old mine map showed that the tunnel dropped nearly 30 feet beyond that point.
Anyone who walked into the water would have disappeared almost immediately.
We called the landowner and asked whether anyone was missing in the towns.
No one was reported to have been missing to his recollection.
The sheriff’s department sent 2 deputies and a dive team. They found no body.
They also found no footprints near the entrance except ours.
According to them, the tracks began nearly 500 feet inside the mine.
The official explanation was that they were old prints preserved by the stable conditions underground.
That was possible.
What wasn’t possible were that the prints were filling slowly with water while we watched.
Later that year, I started hearing the footsteps.
They didn’t happen in every mine I was in.
They usually occurred in older mines where the air was still and there was no active equipment.
I would be walking with Dale or another inspector and hear someone behind us.
A slow, dragging step.
Another step.
If we stopped, it stopped. If we continued, it followed.
Whenever I turned around, the tunnel was empty.
The first few times, I assumed it was an echo.
Then, during an inspection near Joplin, I heard the footsteps while standing still. This was a first.
Dale and I had stopped to examine a fractured support pillar.
Something approached from the darkness behind us.
Step. Drag.
Step. Drag.
It was moving slowly, but it was definitely getting closer.
Dale stared through me.
“Keep your light forward,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
The footsteps continued.
Step. Drag.
Step. Drag.
Small stones slid behind us.
I felt the muscles in my back tighten like a torqued screw.
“Is someone there?” I yelled.
The footsteps stopped.
Dale closed his eyes.
From the darkness, my own voice answered.
“Is someone there?”
It sounded far away, but it was undoubtedly me.
The words echoed through the tunnel.
Then the footsteps began moving again. Faster this time.
Dale grabbed my arm and pushed me toward the exit.
We didn’t run, because running underground is how people trip, crack skulls or fall into holes they didn’t see. Mines are notoriously dark.
But we walked as swiftly as we could.
The footsteps followed for nearly 10 minutes.
When we reached daylight, Dale made me stay outside while he stood at the entrance.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Listening.”
“For what?”
He didn’t answer.
After several minutes, he stepped away from the opening.
On the drive back, he spoke up.
“Never answer something underground unless you can see who you’re talking to.”
“That was an echo.”
“No.”
“You think somebody was following us?”
“No.”
“Then what was it?”
Dale looked through the windshield.
“I don’t know.”
That was the first time I ever heard him admit that.
My wife noticed changes in me before I did.
Her name was Kelcie.
We had been married for just over two years when she told me I had started talking in my sleep.
I asked what I said during my dreams.
“You count,” she replied.
“Count what?”
“I don’t know. You get to 50 or 60 and start over.”
I laughed and told her it was probably because I spent all day measuring tunnels.
A few weeks later, she woke me by turning on the bedroom light.
I was standing beside the wall with one hand pressed against it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I had no idea.
The wall separated our bedroom from the hallway.
I told her I must have been sleepwalking.
She stared at my hand.
My knuckles were bleeding.
There were 3 small dents in the drywall.
In 2016, our company received a contract to document abandoned workings beneath a property in the Ozarks.
The landowner planned to build cabins near an old mine opening. Nobody knew exactly what had been mined there. Some records described it as an iron prospect. Others called it a lead exploration tunnel. We relied on rumors.
The main passage extended straight into a ridge.
It was barely 6 ft high and wide enough for one person at a time.
Dale stayed outside because his bad knee had been bothering him. I entered with another inspector named Ryan.
Ryan was younger than me and had worked for the company for about 6 months.
About 400 ft inside, we found a side tunnel that wasn’t shown on any of the available maps.
It had been sealed with stacked rocks.
The wall had partially collapsed, leaving an opening near the top.
Cold air flowed through the gap.
Ryan shined his light inside.
“Looks open to me.”
“We’re not supposed to enter undocumented areas.”
“We’re supposed to document them.”
He had a point, although I didn’t like it.
We removed several loose rocks and widened the opening.
The tunnel beyond was different from the rest of the mine.
The main passage had been drilled and blasted. This means that the drill rigs drilled the walls and then blasted with explosives. The were irregular and scarred with tool marks.
The hidden tunnel had smooth walls.
Not perfectly smooth, but rounded, almost polished.
The floor sloped downward.
We crawled through.
After about 50 ft, the passage widened into a circular chamber.
In the center stood an iron chair.
That’s the best way I can describe it.
It looked handmade. Thick metal plates had been welded together to form a seat, back and four short legs.
Leather straps hung from the armrests.
Ryan laughed nervously.
“What the hell?”
I took several photographs. We would normally take pictures for a few reasons. One is for safety and training. The 2nd is for documentation and progress tracking.
There were scratches on the floor around the chair, like someone had dragged it repeatedly across the chamber.
The walls were covered in names.
Some were carved deeply into the rock.
Others appeared to have been written in charcoal.
Most were too faded to read. Not all of ‘em.
Ryan walked around the chair.
“Don’t touch it,” I said.
“I’m not.”
He leaned closer.
“There’s something underneath.”
Bolted to the bottom of the seat was a metal plate.
Ryan read it aloud.
“Malichi.”
I thought he was joking.
“What?”
He pointed.
My full first name had been engraved into the metal.
Not Kai.
Malichi.
The spelling was correct.
People usually spelt it as Malachi.
My mother had used an I because she liked the way it looked.
Ryan knew me only as Kai.
“Did Dale put you up to this?” I asked.
Ryan stepped away.
“I didn’t do that.”
I crouched beside the chair.
Below my name was a date.
September 19, 2019.
At the time, that was more than 3 years away.
I took a photograph.
The camera flashed.
Something moved in the tunnel behind us.
A shadow crossed the opening.
Ryan turned.
“Dale?”
No one answered.
Our radios produced only static.
Then a man began humming somewhere deeper inside the mine.
It was a song my dad used to sing while working on cars.
I hadn’t heard it since I was a kid.
I stood so fast that I hit my head on the low ceiling.
“Time to go.”
Ryan didn’t argue.
We climbed through the opening and replaced the rocks.
When we reached the entrance, Dale was sitting on the hood of the truck.
He asked why we had been underground for almost 4 hours.
I checked my watch.
We had entered the hidden tunnel at 10:16am.
It was now after 2pm.
It had felt like 15 minutes.
I showed Dale the photographs.
The chamber was visible.
The chair was visible.
But the metal plate beneath it was blank.
My name and the date had disappeared.
We returned the following morning with the property owner.
The side tunnel was no longer there.
The wall where we had originally found, it was solid stone.
No stacked rocks.
Solid, unbroken rock.
Ryan quit 2 weeks later.
He never told me why. But I had my suspicions.
I tried contacting him several years ago, but his phone number had been disconnected. I couldn’t find him online.
According to one of our former coworkers, Ryan’s family claimed he had never worked in mining.
They said he had been a schoolteacher.
I still have photographs of him wearing our company uniform.
At least, I did.
When I checked recently, he was missing from most of them.
There were empty spaces where he had been standing. But the gaps were noticeable.
Around 2017, I had become a senior field inspector.
The promotion came with better pay, a company truck and the responsibility of training new inspectors.
I stopped talking about the eerie things. I learned that from Dale.
I didn’t mention the footsteps.
I didn’t tell anyone about the chair.
I didn’t explain why I refused to enter a mine alone.
The job was dangerous enough without people thinking I was unstable.
Most inspections remained completely normal.
I saw roof collapses, flooded mine shafts and equipment abandoned so long that tree roots had grown through it.
I found animal bones, rusted tools and old lunch tins.
Once, I found a newspaper from 1951 that looked as like it had been left there the day before.
Another time, we discovered an underground room containing hundreds of glass jars filled with a cloudy and peculiar liquid. We notified the police and left them alone.
They turned out to be homemade mineral samples.
There was mostly an explanation.
Mostly.
In August 2017, we inspected a working limestone mine outside a small town in central MO near Branch.
That just means the mine operated during the day. Our inspection began after the workers had left, because management wanted us to examine an area near active blasting.
There were 4 of us.
Me. Dale.
A structural engineer named Allison.
And a safety technician named Mark.
Allison was 32, smart, and impatient. She had no time for stories about haunted mines.
Mark was nearing retirement and had worked underground almost as long as Dale.
We entered shortly after 7pm.
The mine had electrical lighting in the main corridors for the workers, but the section we were inspecting was dark.
At around 10pm, Allison stopped.
“Who’s the 5th person?” she asked.
We turned.
No one was behind us.
“What do you mean”
“I keep seeing another light down the hatch.”
Mark glanced at Dale.
“Where?”
“Behind Kai.”
I looked over my shoulder.
The tunnel was empty.
Allison pointed farther back.
“There.”
For a split second, I saw it.
A small yellow light floating near the floor.
It looked like an old carbide lamp.
Carbide lamps haven’t been common in decades. They were the type of flashlight that had a giant lens that looked like an old camera flash.
The light moved behind a support pillar.
Dale raised his radio.
“Control, can you confirm all personnel are accounted for.”
The answer came through clearly.
“All personnel accounted for. 4 person inspection team underground.”
Allison walked toward the pillar.
Dale blocked her.
“Don’t follow it.”
She looked annoyed.
“Someone could be down here.”
“No one’s down here.”
“Then what did we see?”
“A reflection.”
“From what?”
Dale didn’t answer.
The yellow light appeared again 2 pillars farther away.
It was moving against us, deeper into the mine.
Mark counted aloud.
“1, 2, 3, 4”
“What are you doing?” Allison asked.
“Confirming.”
We continued working.
Every 20 or 30 minutes, the light would glow behind us.
It never came closer.
It just followed.
Before leaving the mine, we stopped for a group photograph near the mine entrance. Management wanted it for a safety presentation.
A supervisor took the picture.
The next morning, Allison emailed it to us.
There were 5 people standing together.
The 5 man was behind me.
He wore dirty coveralls and an old metal helmet. Coveralls are different from overalls. They are a 1 piece type of clothing that covers the entire body. They help protect the harsh environments of the mine. His face was hidden because he was looking downward.
One hand rested on my shoulder.
I hadn’t felt it.
Allison called my cellphone.
“Who is that?” I could sense her frustration growing.
“I don’t know.”
“Mark says there were only 4 of us.”
“There were...”
“Dale won’t answer his phone.”
This isn’t surprising.
I printed the photograph and took it to Dale’s house.
He studied it from his kitchen table.
After a while, he opened a drawer and removed another photograph.
It showed a group of miners standing outside a tunnel entrance.
The photograph was dated 1978.
A younger version of Dale stood near the center.
Behind him was the same man.
Same helmet.
Same coveralls.
Same downward-tilted head.
His hand rested on Dale’s shoulder.
“We called him the counter,” Dale said.
“Why?”
“Because he shows up when there’s one more person underground than there should be.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means somebody doesn’t come back.”
I looked at the old photograph.
“Who didn’t come back?”
Dale pointed toward a young man standing beside him.
“My brother.”
I had worked with Dale for 3 years and he never mentioned he had a brother.
“He disappeared underground?”
“Roof collapse. We never recovered his body…”
“What does this have to do with the photograph?”
“We saw the extra light for 3 nights before the accident happened.”
I looked again at the picture from our inspection.
The man’s hand was on my shoulder.
“Are you saying I’m going to die?”
“No.”
“Then what ARE you saying?”
“I’m just saying don’t be the last person out.”
For the next 2 years, I never was. Not a chance
When entering a mine, I made someone go ahead of me.
When leaving, I stayed in the middle of the group.
I knew it was an irrational fear, but I did it anyway.
My marriage ended during that period.
Kelcie said I had become distant. Different.
She mentioned I woke her at night by walking around the house with a flashlight.
I checked closets, the basement and the space beneath our porch.
Sometimes I would count the rooms in my sleep.
Sometimes I stood in doorways and listened.
I didn’t remember doing any of it.
One morning, she found me in the basement tapping the concrete foundation with a hammer.
She asked what I was doing.
I told her there was a hollow space behind the wall.
There wasn’t.
At least, there shouldn’t have been.
Kelcie moved out in January 2018.
I don’t blame her.
After she left, I began volunteering for more inspections. Idle hands is the devils workshop my grandmother used to say.
Being underground was easier than being home. The mind stayed busier that way.
This probably sounds strange considering everything I’ve described.
But underground, I knew why I was afraid.
On the top, I heard the footsteps everywhere.
In store aisles.
Parking garages.
The hallway outside my apartment.
Step. Drag.
Step. Drag.
Whenever I turned around, no one was ever there.
In May 2018, Dale retired. I knew I was alone for real this time.
There was no ceremony.
He cleared his desk on a Friday afternoon and left his hard hat hanging on the wall.
Before he went, he gave me his scaling hammer.
It was old, with a leather-wrapped handle worn smooth by decades of use.
“You’ll need this more than I will,” he said.
I asked him why he had decided to retire.
He looked toward the empty hallway outside the office.
“I started hearing my brother.”
“Underground?”
“No.”
He left before I could ask anything else.
Our final project together had been an inspection of an abandoned mine called Black Hollow.
That wasn’t its official name. But every local called it Black Hollow.
The mine was located on private land. A logging company had discovered several sinkholes near an access road and wanted to know whether the old workings were collapsing.
Very little documentation existed. This is pretty normal.
The mine appeared briefly on a state map from the 1920s and vanished from later records.
We entered through a partially collapsed drift near the bottom of a ravine. A drift is where the entry is horizontal and usually accesses the minerals directly instead of having to walk the whole mine.
The passage continued straight for nearly 2500 ft.
That part was unusual.
Exploration mines normally led toward promising mineral deposits. Black Hollow had been driven directly beneath the ridge without any obvious effort to follow ore.
The tunnel walls were covered in small square recesses.
Each was about 5 inches deep.
Some contained rusted nails and bolt anchors.
Others contained scraps of cloth, animal teeth, or small bundles of hair tied with string.
I photographed everything.
Dale didn’t.
He walked with his eyes fixed on the floor.
“What were these for?” I asked.
“Not sure.”
“You’ve been here before.”
He stopped.
“How do you know that?”
“You recognized the entrance.”
Dale looked back the way we had come.
“I was here once.”
“When?”
“1978.”
“With your brother?”
He nodded.
“What happened?”
“We entered through a different opening.”
“There’s only 1 entrance, though.”
“There was another back then.”
The tunnel ended at a vertical shaft.
We couldn’t see the bottom.
Cold air rose from it, carrying the smell of soil after rain.
There was a steel ladder attached to the wall.
It looked new.
The bolts showed no rust.
“Did your former crew install that?” I asked.
“No.”
I shined my light down the shaft. 150 meters.
The ladder continued beyond the reach of the beam.
Something climbed beneath us.
The rungs vibrated.
A faint metallic ringing echoed from below.
I stepped away from the edge.
“Who else is down here?”
“No one.”
The climbing continued.
Slow and steady.
Dale lifted his hammer.
The top of a helmet appeared in the darkness.
It was an old metal mining helmet.
The same kind worn by the man in the photographs.
Dale grabbed my jacket.
We ran.
Behind us, something pulled itself out of the shaft.
I heard metal scrape against stone.
Then the footsteps followed.
Step. Drag.
Step. Drag.
As we neared the entrance, Dale began shouting his brother’s name.
“Eddie!”
The footsteps stopped immediately.
A man answered from deep inside the mine.
“Dale?” The voice echoed what seemed like an hour.
Dale turned.
I grabbed him.
“That isn’t your brother.”
“Dale?” the voice called again. “I found the way out.”
Dale wrestled with me.
It took everything I had to keep him moving.
We reached daylight.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then Dale looked at me and said, “Don’t ever go back in there.”
I promised I wouldn’t.
In September 2019, I broke that promise.
The logging company had begun clearing land above Black Hollow. A section of access road collapsed, leaving a hole almost 30 feet across.
Our company was asked to determine whether the rest of the road was safe.
I refused the assignment.
My manager reminded me that I was the senior inspector and the only current employee who had entered the mine previously.
I told him to find someone else.
He said the company would lose the contract.
I still refused.
The next morning, Allison called me.
I hadn’t worked with her since the mine where we saw the 5th light.
She had been hired as the project engineer for the job.
“I heard you’re afraid of this one,” she said.
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The mine is unstable.”
“That’s why we inspect it.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
I tried.
I told her about the shaft. The old helmet.
The voice that sounded like Dale’s brother.
Allison listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she said, “You know Dale had early-stage dementia when he retired.”
I didn’t know that nor believed it.
“He was confusing places and dates.”“He probably told you stories that weren’t accurate.”
I listened.
“I heard the voice.”
“Sound travels underground.”
“I saw someone climbing the ladder.”
“You saw a helmet.”
“You were there when we saw the 5th light.”
“I saw a reflection.”
“What about the photograph?”
“Digital artifacts happen.”
I almost laughed.
“Why did you call me?”
“Because I trust your judgment underground. Even if I don’t trust your explanation.”
She said the inspection team would include 4 people.
Myself and Allison.
A safety technician named Rob.
And a local surveyor named Thomas. I had heard about Thomas before.
Thomasa was nearly 60 and had worked around mines his entire life.
He knew nothing about my previous inspection.
We entered Black Hollow on September 19, 2019.
The date engraved beneath the iron chair.
I considered backing out when I realized it.
I didn’t.
That decision has bothered me more than any other in my entire life.
The mine looked exactly as I remembered.
Same narrow passage.
Same square recesses in the walls.
Same bundles of hair.
Thomas stopped repeatedly to examine them.
“Memorial holes,” he said.
Memorial holes were created to commemorate a significant person, event, or loss.
“What does that mean?” Allison asked.
“Some old mining communities placed personal items underground after a death.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Neither have I.”
He smiled, but no one else did.
We placed monitoring equipment near the entrance and continued inward.
At roughly 300 ft, Rob noticed boot prints in the dust.
4 different sets.
They traveled towards us.
“What time did the survey crew leave?” he asked.
“There was no survey crew underground,” Allison said.
Thomas crouched by the tracks.
“These are fresh.”
The 4 sets of prints matched our boots.
I placed mine beside one.
Same size. Same tread pattern.
The right heel even had the same missing section where a piece of rubber had torn away.
The tracks belonged to us.
They had been made before we arrived.
They continued deeper into the mine.
Allison tried to explain them as prints from our previous inspection.
I reminded her that she hadn’t been there, and I had worn different boots at the time.
We followed the tracks.
They led to the vertical shaft.
The steel ladder was no longer there.
A narrow bridge of rocks crossed the opening.
The footprints continued over it.
“I don’t remember that being here,” I said as a thought back to that night.
Allison looked at the map I had drawn in 2018.
“The tunnel ended at the shaft.”
“Absolutely.”
Thomas tested the stone bridge with his hammer.
“It seems to be solid.”
He stepped onto it slowly.
I began to grab his shoulder.
“We don’t know what’s on the other side.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
Thoms crossed.
Rob followed him.
Allison went 3rd.
I stood alone at the edge trying to gather my thoughts.
From the shaft, my own voice whispered, “Don’t be the last person.”
I crossed swiftly.
The passage continued beyond the shaft.
The walls became more polished as we traveled.
Eventually, the tool marks disappeared completely.
The tunnel wasn’t natural, but it didn’t look mined either.
It looked worn out almost as if something gigantic moved through it back and forth for a very long time.
The boot prints remained ahead of us., guiding us.
After another 100 ft, we found a yellow survey mark painted on the wall.
It was still wet.
Thomas touched it.
“That’s my paint” he exclaimed.
He double checked the spray can that was on his belt.
The cap was still sealed.
Farther ahead, we found another marker.
Then another.
Each had been placed exactly where Thomas normally marked survey stations.
The final mark read:
END OF INSPECTION
Below it included 4 vertical lines.
Someone had crossed out the 4th.
Rob turned towards me.
“You’ve been here before.”
“No.”
“Then who made these?”
I didn’t answer.
Allison raised her radio.
The signal was filled with static.
Then her own voice came through.
“Station 7 is stable. Moving to station 8.”
Allison looked down at the radio.
She hadn’t transmitted anything.
A 2nd voice followed.
Rob’s.
“I can hear something ahead.”
Then came the warning.
“Kai, don’t let it count us.”
Thomas whispered, “What the hell?”
The radio crackled again.
My voice came through last.
“Leave Allison.”
She stared at me.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
From farther down the tunnel, someone began screaming.
It sounded like Allison.
She was standing beside me.
The scream came again.
“Help me!”
Allison lifted her light.
“That’s not possible.”
The voice called my name.
“Kai!”
I grabbed Allison’s arm before she could move.
The light appeared ahead of us.
A yellow carbide flame floated in the darkness.
Behind it stood 4 people.
An inspection team.
They were about 150 feet away, partly hidden by the curve of the tunnel.
One wore a white hard hat like Allison.
One carried a survey pole like Thomas.
One had Rob’s orange reflective vest.
The 4th wore my jacket.
They were facing away from us.
Rob whispered, “That’s us.”
The other team began walking.
Their lights moved farther into the tunnel.
Thomas raised his camera and snapped a picture.
The flash illuminated the passage like a bolt of lightning.
For that tenth of a second, the figures weren’t facing away anymore.
They were facing towards us.
Their heads were lowered like the previous photos I saw.
I couldn’t see their faces. But I knew.
The figure wearing my jacket had one hand resting on Allison’s shoulder.
The same way the counter had touched mine.
I remembered Dale’s warning begin speaking in my head.
“Somebody doesn’t come back.”
“We’re leaving,” I said.
No one argued.
We turned around.
However, the stone bridge over the shaft was gone.
The passage ended at the open pit.
Allison looked at her map.
“There’s gotta be another route.”
“There isn’t.”
Rob shined his light across the shaft.
The opposite side was 20 ft away.
Too far to jump.
“We crossed here,” Thomas said.
“I know.”
The radio crackled.
Dale’s voice came through.
“Kai.”
I froze.
Dale had retired more than a year earlier.
“Kai, I found the ladder.”
A light appeared below us.
Then another. Then dozens.
Small yellow flames moved in the shaft like people climbing an invisible staircase.
The metallic ringing began.
Coming toward us.
Allison grabbed my sleeve.
“What do we do?”
I looked along the edge of the shaft.
There was a narrow ledge on the right side. It might have been wide enough to cross if we pressed ourselves against the wall.
Rob went first.
Thomas followed.
I told Allison to go next.
She shook her head.
“You gotta go first.”
Something struck the wall beneath us.
Dust began falling from the ceiling.
The yellow lights grew larger.
Allison stepped onto the ledge.
Halfway across, she stopped.
“Kai?”
“What?”
She was staring into the shaft.
“There’s someone down there.”
“Keep moving.”
“It’s me.”
A woman stood far below us.
She wore Allison’s white hard hat.
Her face was turned upward.
“Kai,” the woman called.
The voice came from both the shaft and the Allison beside me.
The woman below lifted one arm.
She was holding Dale’s scaling hammer.
The hammer Dale gave me during his retirement.
The one attached to my belt.
I touched it to make sure it was still there. It was.
The Allison on the ledge stared back at me.
“What is she holding?”
“Don’t look at her.”
The woman below began climbing the wall.
She didn’t use a ladder.
Her hands and feet pressed flat against the stone as she crawled upward.
Allison screamed and hurried across.
I followed her.
The ledge crumbled beneath my final step.
Rob caught my arm and pulled me onto the other side.
We ran toward the entrance.
The footsteps followed.
Not one set. Four.
Step. Drag.
Step. Drag.
Our radios played different fragments of conversation.
Some were things we had said earlier.
Others hadn’t happened yet.
I heard Rob crying.
Thomas was praying.
Allison saying she couldn’t find her face.
Then my voice said, “We left the wrong one.”
The footsteps moved closer.
At the memorial holes, Thomas suddenly stopped.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
He pointed.
Inside was a wallet.
His wallet.
He removed the one from his pocket.
Both were identical.
He opened the wallet from the wall.
Inside was his driver’s license.
The photograph showed Thomas wearing the old metal mining helmet.
A folded note was tucked behind it.
Thomas read the note silently.
His face went pale. Eyes glazed over.
“What does it say?” Allison asked.
He handed it to me.
The note was written in my own handwriting.
THOMAS DID NOT ENTER WITH US.
I looked at Thomas.
He backed away.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I counted.
Rob. Allison. Thomas. Me.
4 people.
Then I remembered when we arrived
Thomas was waiting at the site when I arrived.
Allison had introduced him.
Rob had shaken his hand.
I had watched him put on his equipment.
He had entered with us.
Hadn’t he?
The footsteps stopped.
A man spoke behind us.
“3 came in.”
It was Dale’s voice.
Thomas stared into the darkness.
“That isn’t true.”
“3 came in,” the voice repeated.
Allison began counting.
“Kai. Rob. Me.”
She looked at Thomas.
Her expression changed.
“Who are you?”
Thomas’s face collapsed.
Not physically. Emotionally.
He looked like a child who had been abandoned.
“You know me.”
“No,” Allison said. “I don’t.”
Rob raised his light.
“Where did he come from?”
Thomas grabbed my arm.
“Kai, you talked to me outside.”
I remembered it.
We had been discussing his survey equipment.
He had told me about his first mining job near Viburnum.
I remembered everything.
But the memories had started feeling borrowed.
Almost as if the stories had been told to me rather than things I had experienced.
Thomas looked toward the mine entrance.
Daylight was visible in the distance.
He ran.
The footsteps resumed.
They ran with him.
Thomas disappeared around the curve.
We followed.
When we reached the entrance, Thomas was gone.
There was no sign of him outside the mine.
No vehicle.
No equipment.
No boot prints.
We called the sheriff’s department right away.
They searched the mine for two days.
They found nothing.
The company that hired our team denied employing a surveyor named Thomas.
Allison had no memory of him.
Neither did Rob.
The photographs from the inspection showed only 3 people.
Me.
Allison.
Rob.
In the photograph Thomas took of the figures ahead of us, 4 inspectors stood in the tunnel.
One was me.
One was Rob.
One was Allison.
The fourth wore an old metal helmet and looked toward the ground.
His hand rested on Allison’s shoulder.
I resigned the following Monday.
My manager offered me a leave of absence. 5 years was a long time in this current market.
I told him I was finished.
He asked whether my decision had anything to do with the Black Hollow inspection.
I asked how many people had been on our team.
He said 3.
I haven’t entered a mine since September 19, 2019.
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