I gazed slack-jawed at the bell. Transfixed. It was not the rapid all-hands cadence from before. It tolled slow and dolorous. The bell mourned for the town.

  The townsfolk were oblivious. They crept toward my position, the pit bell at their backs. Mother Deborah and I still stood halfway up the slide. On the little outcropping where I’d fallen, just below the rescue tunnel. As the huddled mass of people moved into the mine they passed the harsh line of shadow that marked the departure from the sunlit world. Every eye peered upward, searching for signs of a secondary collapse.

  I turned to Mother Deborah. I needed proof I hadn’t gone mad. I received no such thing. She looked at me, then at the bell, then back at me. She raised her hand palm-up in a brief dismissal. I felt my face grow hot. It was as if stopping several tons of falling debris, whatever happened to me afterwards, and now this mysterious phantom-rung bell were perfectly reasonable occurrences for her. I wanted to scream, but my tongue was like a lead weight in my mouth.

  Before I could recover my power of speech, Mother Deborah was already climbing. She navigated the scant footholds of the slide dexterously, one hand hitching up her skirt. As I watched the slight Monacan woman near the top rescue shaft, she looked back and grinned. I noticed her long, too-pointed teeth. My heart turned over in my chest. Had they always been like that? I didn’t think so. I’d said “Good morning, ma’am” to her a time or two at most. Had I ever even seen her smile before now? I couldn’t be sure. Those teeth gave her a predatory cast.

  I thought of what I’d seen in the breach. Had I witnessed deaths in that chaos? My God. Everything was happening so fast. My heart raced and I placed my hand on my chest as if to steady it. I thought of what had changed in me, or attempted to change me. It felt like an offer. One I’d turned down. Maybe that was the wrong choice? I felt the power pressing against its bounds. Rising. What if it spilled over? Or worse, ruptured the ice damming it? Setting aside its implied threat to me, what was that power and where had it come from?

  Even then, I was vaguely aware that strange sounds and the pale light continued to emerge from the rescue tunnel. Sometimes louder, sometimes barely a whisper, though the light remained constant. All of this weighed upon me. That’s why I didn’t notice the crowd forming below me.

  CRACK.

  A deafening shot thundered off the rock walls. I spun. While others’ hands went to their ears, mine reached for that emptiness at my hip. The noise of the world flattened to a single piercing tone. I remembered dunking my head in the creek one afternoon last July, when it was hot as Judgment Day. That deep, swirling sound when I was fully submerged, that was what this felt like now.

  I stared cold fury at Sheriff Marrow. He lowered that 1860 army model he was so proud of. Everyone knew it was a gift from Bartholomew Crowe. The damn fool had fired where the ball could ricochet and the rock was already unstable. I’d seen the Foreman, Caleb, lay a man out for far less recklessness.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I saw Marrow’s mouth form the words, “That’s quite far enough-,” though the rest was swallowed by that walrus mustache of his. The Sheriff made it plain he aimed his order at Mother Deborah by the tilt of his head.

  I turned back, dizzy from the pain in my ears. Where moments before Mother Deborah had been climbing straight for the rescue shaft, she now stood still. Erect. Her face was a blank mask.

  The world seemed to slow as the two locked eyes. I’d seen crowds subdued by a calm, authoritative voice. That’s not what this was. Hard looks and narrow eyes turned on the Sheriff. The tension rose thick in the crowd.

  Marrow holstered, then raised one hand while digging at his ear with the other. No one moved. I tugged at my own ears as feeling crept back in, the ringing still dominating, but words were now perceptible.

  “Now, I’m sure you just want to help, but that little tunnel ain’t no place for a lady, not even an Injun lady. Or any other folk for that matter. Ain’t safe.” He jutted out his chin.

  I looked up at the tunnel. It was where the pile had settled thinnest, so the natural place for the townsfolk to begin the rescue effort. It was a long stretch of unsupported stone. A desperate gamble. Marrow had a point. I’d have trouble squeezing through, broad-shouldered as I am, but Deborah could make it without much trouble. Still, the danger of collapse was real. No miner would enter that save for this life and death matter. Not to mention whatever may wait on the other side.

  My gaze drifted to the edges of the slide. The rock walls had rippled open to accept the loose slide and hold it firm, as if the stone had liquefied to receive the debris. No, had been made to liquefy. I knew Deborah had done it. I gazed at the tunnel, the only real evidence of the long night of labor the town had offered to the earth to save its lost people. It dwarfed the diminutive Monacan woman. Standing there above us, poised at the breach, it suddenly seemed ridiculous. She weighed a buck and a quarter soaking wet.

  But I saw what I saw, that shape in her shadow. Those teeth. I shuddered.

  Folks sometimes ended their shift hollow-eyed. Not just worn out. Emptied.

  Some had to be led home by the shoulders.

  Once it took days for a man to come back to himself.

  I remember Old Jeb rocking on his porch for hours, repeating the same phrase over and over.

  “Don’t tell it my name.”

  Something was wrong in that mine. Now I wondered if that same kind of something was wrong with Mother Deborah.

  I felt a cold certainty that Marrow ought to choose his words more carefully.

  “Now, Tom Hale, you come on back down too.” Sheriff Marrow added.

  “That’s right, boy, listen to the Sheriff!” My father raised his Bible overhead, gripping it with both hands like a lighthouse beam meant to guide me back into harbor beside him. Under sky and safety.

  I stood my ground, though internally I hesitated.

  “No one’s going in. Not yet. Like I said, it ain’t safe,” Marrow paused to survey the crowd, then went on, voice pitched to carry. “We’ve lost enough good people.” He paused, hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, and shrugged. “Crowe’s orders.”

  [... remaining text unchanged until Ike reveal ...]

  Ahead of me Pastor Ruth, Mother Deborah, and the others stood staring down at something their bodies hid from my sight.

  I pushed forward. They parted numbly.

  At first I saw only strange shapes and a wet shine.

  Then I recognized a miner’s boot.

  Small. Perhaps a woman’s or a child’s.

  The foot was still inside.

  Tatters of skin and an impossible amount of blood trailed away into the dark.

  I tasted stomach bile.

  “Ruth…” a voice whispered, though the walls seemed to resonate with it somehow.

  Ike.

  Ruth ran for him, heedless of everything else. We followed.