I didn’t think. I rolled off the box seat. Silas did the same, snatching up his axle. The Charmers wrapped the rearing mules before they had the chance to set their front hooves back to dirt.

  I’ll remember their screams until the day I die.

  The cart rose with them, straining the tongue and harness. The fissures widened. Cracks spiderwebbed, sending loose stone tumbling. The cracks met. Two fissures became a gaping wound in the slide.

  The mules and cart vanished inside. There was a man lying senseless in the back. One too injured for Pastor Ruth to heal all at once. He was a miner like me. His face was the last thing I saw before it all disappeared into the blackness. I’d never even learned his name.

  I turned back and grabbed the bridle of the mule behind me. Silas grabbed the other. There was no room here to turn a cart. The animals’ eyes rolled, but eventually we shouldered the beasts into backing down the tunnel.

  Before we had gone several cart lengths back I saw them. Lights. Dozens of them moved rapidly in our direction. From the passage back to the stable. My arms went weak. I paused. Others looked back and noticed the pale lights. Panic threatened.

  I pulled my Colt. I checked the chambers, though I already knew I’d reloaded it before leaving the stable.

  I felt my hair flick across my face. My pulse quickened. Air movement meant there was a passage leading out nearby. All was blackness beyond the meager cast of the lanterns hung on the cart posts.

  I hissed out a whisper. “There’s a passage. I felt an air current.”

  That seemed to ground the other survivors. Those still left.

  Everyone but those on the remaining cart scrambled to the walls to search with hands on stone.

  “Here!” Mato called out from my left.

  I unhooked the left lantern and walked toward the sound. He was standing against the rib. There next to him was a passage just wide enough for the cart.

  I left the lantern with Mato to hold up as a guide. I ran back to the cart. Silas was already pulling at the mules by the bridle. John and another man were pushing the cart from behind, back and forth, to force the wheels to hump over the rail. It finally derailed with a thump just as I approached.

  “Make for that lantern. Mato has it right in the mouth of that side passage.” The woman at the reins nodded to me.

  I chanced a look down the rail passage in both directions. Further into the mine the lights had grown alarmingly larger. Ahead, I saw only the pale light flickering out of the fissure in the slide.

  We sent those on foot ahead. Silas led them. I remained back with John to make sure the rear chain of mules went into the tunnel.

  We achieved all of this rapidly, yet it felt agonizingly slow.

  This new passage was just large enough for the cart, with the occasional scrape of wood on stone. Halfway through I smelled it. Strong, as if it came from everywhere. Sulfur and fish rot. Whether it came from before or behind, or my sense of smell was only now coming to the fore, I didn’t know.

  After we had traveled through this passage for what felt like hours, though I guessed were minutes, the cart ground to a stop. John and I looked at each other. I heard the susurrus of whispered discussion ahead. I looked back and the pale glow was in the passage behind. My throat clenched. I couldn’t see the wisp-like forms yet, but no doubt I would.

  “Keep moving!” I risked raising my voice. It reflected shrilly back to me off the passage.

  The whispers ahead ceased and the cart moved forward for several moments before I saw the end of the passage looming ahead.

  Then I saw what had halted Silas and the others in front. As we left the cramped passage behind, I recognized the space before us. We were back in the primary chamber. We came in from the far right, roughly opposite where we found Ike pinned. Light pierced the space from the breach atop the slide in the main mouth of the mine.

  My brows knitted and I rubbed my forearm across my eyes as if to clear them. The slide remained exactly as it had been when we first entered. Nothing more had been accomplished. I was stunned. Nothing I knew of could have kept Arno from clearing it and saving its trapped miners.

  Rustling in the passage behind galvanized me. I ran around to the front of the cart.

  Ike and Silas were already herding the other folk along.

  “Let’s get the cart as close to the slide as we can. We’ll just have to try to carry the wounded out,” Silas boomed.

  This chamber was different now than when we had entered. It took a moment before I could pinpoint it. The light. When we had first entered, there had been a glow coming from the rock, or maybe spilling out between the gaps from behind it. I realized now that glow had been completely absent ever since our first encounter with the Charmers. Not just here, everywhere in the mine. Like all the light was just a trick. Another thing, there had been a steady thrum which rose and fell in intensity almost as breath. Now silence hung heavy.

  We were nearing the slide. The broken top of a passage was outlined near the base of the slide. I caught a gleam. Lantern light spilling back as a rainbow. Ike’s pillar was there extending some thirty feet into the air to where the rough dome shape of the chamber ceiling spilled down sharply toward the floor.

  I saw another glint.

  Near the pillar, but elevated, and slightly in front and to the left of it. Something reflective was there. It hung high up with a slide of debris below. The lantern light seemed to glance across it as if it moved beneath the light. This smaller slide gave way to a narrow valley where we stood. At our backs rose the slide blocking the mouth of the mine and the sunlit world. That smell of fish rot and sulfur now hung cloying in this room, thick and rank.

  At that moment several things happened at once.

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  The passage we had entered from grew bright with pale light.

  Silas glowed red and hefted his axle.

  Lights emerged from the opposite end of the chamber.

  Mother Deborah stood in the wagon.

  All of the mules snorted and reared.

  That second reflection stilled. I felt the sense of scrutiny bearing down on us as a weight.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  Mother Deborah stumbled back. John rushed forward. He produced a knife from some unseen sheath and cut the harness. William did the same at the back of the cart. The mules lit out in a gallop. This was too much for them. The sound of their hoofbeats lingered long after they passed out of our sight. I heard one scream just as those taken by the Charmers had.

  Charmers burst forth from all around us. Pale flesh threw a mix of their light and our lanterns back at us. They came out of the rubble in front of us. From our right and left. The only clear path was the slide leading back to Arno.

  “CLIMB!” Silas roared. His voice had taken on a distinctly bestial depth.

  Ignoring his own advice, he took a wide stance and awaited the onrushing Charmers.

  William lifted his wife, Edna, from the cart and labored slowly up the slide toward the light of the sun above.

  John helped Mother Deborah down from the cart. He tried to lead her to the main slide but she planted her feet. Immovable. He looked stricken, but nodded and pushed Martha and Mato along before returning to her side and drawing out his knife.

  I drew and waited. Ice and flood swirled in me. Waiting.

  Ike and Ruth took a position next to Esther and Seamus halfway up the slide. Seamus began to play. I felt a buzzing form in my ears. A thrill went through me.

  He sang softly at first as if only to himself, but the words had their own mind in this echoing chamber. The song passed through me like a strong wind. His voice mingled with Esther’s.

  “...The pikes must be together by the rising of the moon.”

  When the music passed through me it bore away the daunting pressure of the Charmers bearing down upon me. I hadn’t realized they’d been in my mind until they were pushed away. I shivered.

  When I turned and looked up I felt a sharp twist in my gut. We were moments from collision with the Charmers. Now, with the light concentrating on us, I could plainly see what glinted atop the slide before us.

  It was a disc of immense size. As big as a waterwheel. It was dark black, but suffused with a cloudiness like a splash of cream in coffee. The disc was set in a pale white socket like bone, but rock had breached it in many places. Along that socket strips of something gleamed wetly. Strewn about the rise were miners’ boots, ripped clothing, and a large patch of shaggy fur still attached to bloody skin.

  Then the disc moved. It scanned across us. It paused on Mother Deborah and intensified.

  I wretched. An eye. It was a great eye.

  The first of the survivors were passing into the breach now. The people had bottlenecked, having to go through on hands and knees. Good. At least some could tell the tale.

  The flood rose in me. I told it to be ready.

  Mother Deborah stamped her foot down and rock fell among the Charmers with a mighty crash. They slowed and some were pinned. I saw her skin go coal dark and stay that way, drinking in the Charmer light.

  Silas embedded the wheelboss end of the axle deep into a Charmer. I shot the globe out of another rushing in behind him. I kept firing.

  Seamus played on.

  I saw a chunk of rock fly at a Charmer from behind me. Just before it struck it went white-hot as the coal had when Ike transformed it into the pillar. The rock blew apart on impact with the Charmer like a cannonball, sending shards through the Charmers on either side.

  We fought desperately, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  All at once Silas rushed forward. Two Charmers slammed the dirt where he’d been an instant before. They left deep impacts as they rose. Silas rapidly ascended the slide toward the eye, leaping from rock to rock.

  The eye shifted in its socket. Mother Deborah was forgotten as it fixed on Silas.

  Two Charmers shot out of the slide and wrapped Silas. One by the arms and the other by his legs. He had made it within ten feet of the eye. All the other Charmers halted as the two holding Silas extended further and further out from the slide. They stopped when Silas was directly above us, some thirty feet in the air. The mine shook as if in laughter.

  The Charmers pulled in opposite directions.

  Silas strained against them. He let out a roar that rose in pitch to a scream.

  This must not be. I embraced the flood. Time slowed. Spikes of icy pain shot through me. I clenched my jaw. I always counted my shots. I had one ball in the chamber. I’d saved it for the eye. Silas’s face twisted tight in agony.

  The eye looked down on us from its height. Then I understood. Charmer. The things we’d fought were merely its arms. That eye was directing them, some unseen mind behind it. It cast everything anew for me. It had arranged all of this. Herding us along when it failed to pull us out of the stable. Now it was going to rip each of us apart and devour us, starting with Silas. It was making a show of it. I saw the arrogance laid bare before me.

  Pride.

  Ice ran up my arm from my Colt. My lead ball would be the last thing it ever saw. My arm locked in place.

  Then doubt ran up through me to grip my heart. My eyes widened. Would this be enough to end something so vast? Might I put out the eye and still have it rip Silas even in its agony and wrath?

  Then I saw it gleam. Rising just to the right, not far from the eye. The only thing holding up immeasurable tonnage of stone and coal. Ike’s pillar. That falling weight would crush any living thing. I gave it no more thought.

  My arm refused to move. The ice had cast it in place with deadly aim.

  Silas gasped and I heard a sickening pop.

  I must act. I gripped my right arm with my left hand and shoved it in line with the pillar. Pain shot through my right arm and I saw the ice turn red beneath as blood poured from my arm. I screamed and shot.

  CRACK.

  That wave of judgment following the bullet hit the pillar like a thunderbolt. For a moment all was stillness. The eye shot its gaze over to the pillar. A crack ran the length of the diamond. The Charmer dropped Silas and he crashed through the planks of the empty cart.

  The Charmer’s arms rushed toward the eye. More of them sprang from the rock around it, stretching toward the ceiling.

  The pillar gave all at once. The mountain poured out its wrath in a mighty rain of rock and coal. The strength of Charmer arms was not enough to stop it. It was rapidly buried.

  Our danger was also great. My arm hung limp and useless, dripping blood and water. I helped Silas up. He limped with me to the slide leading out. The way home. The others were ahead of us. The chamber was coming down behind us.

  Soon I was pushing Silas through the breach in front of me. We were the last. My heart continued to race as the whole mine still shook under the crashing stone. The breach we were in wasn’t solid. At any moment we too could be crushed.

  Finally we emerged. I was right on Silas’s heels. For a moment I was dazzled blind by white light. I passed my hand across my face.

  I felt a clean tremor run through me. The smell of life re-entered my nose. Cold and fresh. Layers of scent I had forgotten in my long, dark journey. Wood smoke, wet earth, other scents I couldn’t name in my forgetful joy. Then my vision began to clear.

  Those ahead stood stock still, looking down at the mouth of the mine. Heavy snow had fallen earlier than usual. The middle of October. Not unheard of and certainly nothing to cause this solemnity.

  I inched past Silas to see strange mounds dotted here and there just inside the mouth of the mine and beyond. Then I saw her. My stomach turned over and I tasted bile. Pale and blue-lipped, a woman lay in a sprawl at the bottom of the slide. I couldn’t tell who she was. The cold had twisted her face into something I couldn’t recognize. One thing was clear. A perfect dark circle between her eyes.

  Shot dead.

  Between her eyes, a perfect dark circle. Shot dead.

  Arc 1: Iron & Ichor.

  Profit & Loss, will continue weekly on Sundays.