“I’m not going.”
“Come on, don’t say that.” Mari takes Cora’s hand. She tries not to laugh at the pout her best friend is making. “I promise you, this is gonna be fun.”
“It better not be like last time.” Kevin’s party… Well, he's Kevin. Nice, quiet. She thought he’d be a completely changed person outside of his button-up shirt and slacks.
But no. The only people from the school who showed up were her and Mari. That would’ve been fine on its own, but Kevin had a few of his friends over. They looked interesting until he and them talked about Dungeons and Dragons for hours. Completely ignoring the two girls who bothered appearing.
Lame. As. Hell.
Mari frowns. “Okay, fine, last time was pretty lame. But this will be cool. I swear.”
“Uh huh.” Cora glares at her. “You’re so dead if it’s just as bad.”
“Have I ever been wrong before?” Mari claps a hand over Cora’s mouth before she can answer. “Don’t answer that. The point is that this one’s different. They’ll actually have a real party.”
Mari’s face twists into a grimace and she pulls her hand away. “Ew, did you just lick my hand?”
“Like I said.” Cora narrows her eyes. “If it’s lame, you’re dead.”
Mari grins. It’s the same devilish look whenever she’s about to do something… well, devilish. “You’re going to so pay for that.” She lunges and wipes her hand off on Cora’s sleeve. She makes a face and tries to push Mari away, but that encourages her to wrestle Cora to the ground.
“Hey! That’s not fair!” she whines, pawing at Mari’s hands.
She sticks her tongue out. “You should’ve expected that.”
Cora gains the upper hand. She pins Mari down, much to her disbelief as she struggles to get up from under Cora’s weight. “What do you want to watch tonight?”
“Ugh. You’re the worst.” Cora lets Mari go. She stands and crosses her arms, huffing. “That new Netflix show looks good.”
“Okay, let’s watch it.”
***
Turns out the party isn’t so bad after all. After Cora finishes taking a million selfies with Mari, they roast marshmallows over a bonfire and chat up several red-faced guys who clearly drank a little too much.
Not that it doesn’t matter. Their jokes make her and Mari laugh so hard Cora’s struggling to catch her breath minutes later.
“Alternative milk,” Mari wheezes. Her eyes are brimming with tears. “Like what–” She howls with laughter, doubling over, slamming her fist into the dirt.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Cora wipes the tears from her eyes and brushes her bangs back. “Does he still buy off that guy?”
Jose–whom, Cora notes, Mari wraps a loose arm around–flashes a pearlescent grin. “Joe told him about a year after.”
Joe takes a sip out of his flask. “I felt bad. Dude was paying double for glorified almond milk. What can I say?”
“Have you heard about alternate water? It gives you extra hydration,” Cora says, dropping her voice low.
The whole group cracks up.
“Want some?” Joe says, offering his flask to her. She shakes her head, and he shrugs, taking another sip. “Suit yourself.”
“Our parents would kill us,” Mari says.
“Try it. You only live once.” Jose smiles devilishly. Mari giggles, snaking her arm around his waist. “Drinking is fun. Watch.” He cracks open a new can of beer and chugs it in one gulp. He must be a seasoned veteran, because when he sets the can down, it sounds hollow.
“Don’t listen to him. Don’t live for that cheap shit. It doesn’t count for nothing,” Joe says. Liquid sloshes inside his flask as he waves it around. “This, though? It’s Merlot. It’s a lot better.”
“Liar, liar.” Jose taps his finger on the can, clucking his tongue. “You can’t go wrong with beer.”
“You mean alternate wine?”
Cora chokes on her grape soda. Bubbles fizz into her nose, and she half-chokes, half-gasps with laughter, all while soda dribbles down her lip. Despite this, Joe passes a napkin to her. She wipes the soda off, flashing him a smile.
Suddenly a garbled version of MONTERO belts out, coming beneath Jose’s crumpled jacket tossed on the table. “Time to go,” he mutters, snatching his jacket and shrugging into it. He stops his beaten phone’s alarm and offers a hand to Mari. “Shall we?”
“Please, you’re too kind,” she says, taking it.
“You’re leaving without me?” Cora says, her smile dropping. “Where?”
Mari bites her bottom lip, glancing away. “I didn’t want you to come because we’re all going to be stupid. And I know you’re not into… risks.”
Stupid. Code word for going off to explore buildings older than their parents, or doing some dangerous challenge, or skirting with police.
Cora gets it. But the fact she wasn’t warned still stings. And what is she supposed to do if the three of them–the only people she’s talked to the whole party–are gone?
“You can take my car,” Mari blurts out, then shrinks away from Cora’s withering glare.
“We’re headed to the old mine. The one out by that haunted field or whatever,” Joe says. He shoves himself to his feet, grunting. “Hey, you wanna come along? We have room for one more.”
Cora hides the stab of betrayal behind a determined nod. “Sure. How long will it take?”
“Most of the night, if you’re cool with that.”
“Yeah, I’m down.” She glares at Mari again, who does her best to pretend that Cora doesn’t exist. Whatever. Not like it’s the first time she goes off on her own and leaves Cora to herself. “Let’s go.”
***
Cora’s seen her fair share of messiness. Her mom sometimes brought her along to housekeeping in houses with shredded cushions, dried juice stains, mold-spotted peeling walls, and other wilder horrors, but Jose’s van?
It’s scary.
Even he makes a face as he shoves hamburger wrappers and dented beer cans off the back seat. They join the crumbs, crumpled papers, and a pizza box squished on the carpet floor.
“Thank you,” Cora says when Jose wipes his hands on his jeans and points a thumbs-up. She has to squeeze next to Mari to avoid the wet stain on the cushion.
Not to mention how the smell of beer itself is a pungent reminder of who is driving. With a great lurch, Jose heaves himself onto the driver’s seat. White-knuckled, he clings to the steering wheel for support to adjust his weight.
He can’t drive. But Cora keeps her lips sealed. He scoots over to the middle. Joe joins him on the passenger side, riding shotgun. Then who’s driving?
The driver’s door slams open. A tall, muscular blond girl climbs onto the driver’s seat. Built like a volleyball player, hair tied back into a ponytail, she oozes confidence, quick and sharp in her movements. “The keys,” she says, a frown etched on her forehead.
“Holy shit, Sally. Jeez. You got no chill,” Jose says. He fishes in his pocket and tosses a set of keys to the girl. Moments later, the engine rumbles to life. The van vibrates under Cora’s seat.
Sally smirks. “Somebody has to be the adult around here.”
“I’m older than you.”
“Then you should know that DUIs are very, very bad.”
Jose smiles a wide grin, leaning back into the middle seat, crossing his arms behind his head. “True that.”
The van’s headlights wash across the grassy field. Grills, coolers, and beer cans glint like miniature stars. Several people look up from a poker game and wave, only to knock the flimsy table aside and spill chips and cards onto the grass.
Sally rolls down the windows and leans out. “Are those pocket aces pre-flop? What a hero fold!” Several middle fingers flick out, but she returns to the wheel and rolls down the window.
“You’re evil,” Mari says, the first words she’s spoken since her betrayal.
“Thanks!”
Gravel crunches under the tires as they move onto the road. Beyond the endless fields of sweet corn, the city’s skyscrapers blaze like rectangular diamonds. Being so far out from the city and suburbs, though, darkness cloaks the roads and masks the many potholes that jostle them from side to side.
“My baby is dying,” Jose moans, arms spread over the dashboard.
“It’s fine,” Sally says, just as the van hits another pothole and it briefly lurches aside. Cora holds back a yelp of surprise when her thigh presses into the wet spot.
“Drive more slowly, you lunatic,” Joe says. He wipes a dark liquid off his chin.
“The gas station closes at twelve, you stupid fuck,” Sally fires back.
They exchange barbs back and forth while Cora stews in her disgust that her thigh is firmly over the wet spot and Mari is glued to her, so scooting over isn’t an option.
If only she’d said that she was going to leave. Well, now they’re stuck together. From the corner of her eye, Cora catches Mari gazing out the window, chin on her palm.
There’s nothing to see but the faint silhouettes of trees and the occasional house or barn. She doubts Mari is enjoying what little scenery presents itself. Or maybe she sat on a wet spot and she’s trying her best to focus on anything but the discomfort.
Maybe.
Several potholes later, Cora spots the pinnacle of civilization: a gas station. She heaves a sigh of relief when they pull up next to the single working pump. The lights are on inside the store, but already the place is barren, the cashier packing away stray items on the counter. Cora checks her phone. Fifteen minutes until midnight.
“Gas duty,” Sally says. She turns off the ignition and hops out of the van. Joe opens the door and tries to hop out, but he must’ve drank too much because he misses his landing completely, falling sideways into a bush, flailing.
Cora laughs, clapping a hand over her mouth. Jose chuckles, then explodes into a roar of laughter, stepping out of the van and offering a hand to Joe.
She raises her eyebrows at him, and he avoids her imploring smirk, choosing to walk toward the front doors. “You didn’t see that!” he calls over his shoulder.
Jose peeks inside the van. “You guys don’t want anything? Snacks? Drinks? They have a restroom here.”
“I’m good, thanks.” All around them are fields of sweet corn, miles of country road, and the single gas station rising like a ghost from the mid-20th century. “Is this really the last gas station before we get there?”
“Yup. Hey, not sure if you need to pee? Trust me, it's better to have no regrets.”
Maybe that’s why there’s a wet spot. Cora scrunches up her nose, shuddering. “No, it’s just we’re so far out from you know. Civilization. But it’s fine.”
“No problem. You, Mari?”
“I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
Jose shrugs and lumbers after Joe, who sways and bumps into shelves, snatching bags of Cheetos and Doritos, while the middle-aged cashier stands rigidly behind the counter, eyeing him. Sally is pumping gas, leaving Cora and Mari.
It shouldn’t have to be awkward. They’ve been there for each other since fourth grade. But Cora can’t get over the fact Mari didn’t even consider if she wanted to tag along. People change. Cora looks at her best friend, only to find her looking back.
“Awkward…” they say simultaneously.
Mari is the first to break. She huffs and moves a lock of hair behind Cora’s ear. “You should totally cut that.”
“It’s part of my look,” Cora defends. “Without it, I’d look like you.” She scrunches up her face, only to receive a smack to the shoulder.
“Gorgeous, you mean. Here, I’ll do it for you.” Mari takes the lock of hair between two fingers and pretends to cut it. She purses her lips and sighs, letting the lock of hair drop. Her shoulders droop. “I’m a jerk.”
Cora glares at her. “Yeah, you are. You were gonna leave me.”
“I know.” Before Cora butts in, Mari raises her hands and hangs her head. “And I know I’ve done it before, and just because you’ve told me before you didn’t want to come doesn’t mean I should’ve ignored you this time.” Mari drops her head on Cora’s shoulder. In a quieter voice, she adds, “I promise I won’t do it again.”
“Thank you.”
Mari squeezes her hand. “Also, I might’ve drank my first beer.”
Cora pulls away, putting on her worst grimace, holding Mari by the shoulders while she stares back impassively. “Ugh. You’re so–” Annoying. Loyal. Questionable. Trustworthy. Sneaky. Lovable. She grins and snatches an unopened can of beer, shaking it. “You gotta tell me how it was.”
***
Gravel spits out under the van’s tires as Sally finally pulls up to a decrepit, crumbling guard post. Beyond the twin streaks of light blazing out the headlights, the mine entrance is barely visible, built out of splintered wood and soot-streaked bricks. Around it, tire marks betray the parking spots of past visitors, though nobody is here.
Heaped against the entrance are every kind of bottle brand imaginable. There’s even a name called Duckhorn, with a cursive Merlot scrawled beneath it, though the bottle is worn by time, the letters almost gone save for the barest imprints on the yellowed labeling.
“Wicked,” Joe says, half-stumbling out of the van. Jose follows, not doing too much better himself, having to hold on to the door to stabilize his footing.
“You two are idiots,” Sally says, shaking her head.
Jose blows a kiss. “I love you.”
“Yeah, whatever. You love everybody.”
When Cora clambers out of the van, her eyes water. Instead of beer and mold, it smells like crap and piss, worse than those public portables at the fair.
Sally sucks in a deep breath, then laughs, planting her hands on her hips. “You’ll get used to it,” she says. “Nothing like some fresh air after driving in that van’s stink. Isn’t that right, Jose?”
“I didn’t forget. Fuck you,” Joe says. He kicks the faded bottle of Merlot. It clinks against other bottles, shoved deeper into the gaping maw that is the mine entrance.
Sally scoffs. “You were almost blackout drunk. I saved you.”
“You still haven’t paid me.”
“And I won’t, because after all the favors I’ve pulled for you, this is the least you can do. Let it go.”
“Fine.” He skulks down to the entrance, kicking bottles aside. “Do you have that cheap shit, at least?”
Mumbling, Sally says, “You goddamn alcoholic.”
“What?”
“Nothing!”
Jose goes to the back of the van and opens both doors. Glass shards glint in the grass as the cabin light spills out the back. Groaning, he hugs the cooler and sets it down. The lid jostles, exposing silver cans of some off-brand beer and a few bottles of water.
“I thought you forgot,” Sally says, snatching a bottle out of the cooler. Ice water dribbles down her hand as she unscrews the cap and drains half the water. “Mmm. Water. Very healthy.”
Cora squints. Near Joe, at the periphery of the rear van lights, something rectangular fades into the darkness. He must think she’s looking at the entrance, because he stops and raps his knuckles on the beat-up entrance, then jerks his thumb toward the entrance.
“Trust me, you’ll have a blast. We’re chill. No deadbeats or anything.”
Cora furrows her brow. “Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“Why is there a bed there?”
Then he spots it. The others do, too. They spot a stained, beat-up mattress that has seen better days, draped with tattered blankets and a pillow whose stuffings partially spill out. Beside it, a propane burner leans to one side, missing the propane tank itself. A wooden box is propped up on a pile of mangy clothes on the mattress, lid cracked the slightest bit. Light flickers within it, little more than the flash of static electricity. Cora blinks, and the image is gone, nothing more than an afterimage.
Maybe she shouldn’t be staying up so late.
“A hobo?” Mari says.
Sally frowns. “Looks like it. Weird, though. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve never seen one.”
“It’s risky as fuck,” Joe says.
“Let’s do it.” Everybody stares at Jose. He shrugs, palms turned upward. “What? We already drove here.”
“You mean I drove us here.” Sally paces toward the mattress, then stops, inspecting the few items they left behind. “The hobo’s probably exploring inside. Or they went to the Spritz.”
“What’s that?” Cora asks.
“Before you ask, no, Joe named it, not me.” Cora has no idea what she’s talking about, but Sally continues. “It’s a chamber inside the mine, at the right. It connects to the outside, so if the worst happens we won’t get trapped or anything, but that area is a pain in the ass to go through.” She points at a tangle of torn fencing and dense vegetation past it. “I don’t think we should be here, though.”
“I agree. For once.” Joe kicks bottles out of his way. He stares into the darkness, but there’s no sign that the hobo is there. “Most homeless people are chill. One guy tried to stab Jose, and our friend Marty tripped him.”
“That was funny as fuck,” Jose giggles, cracking open a new can of beer. He tosses his head back, can to his lips.
“Point is, some of them are crazy. I wouldn’t risk it.”
Cora doesn’t have the level of excitement Mari has whenever they do something new. It’s always been that way–she chooses where to go, and Cora follows. This time, she cradles her curiosity and lets it soar.
It’s almost too easy.
“I want to see the Spritz,” Cora says.
Mari scratches her head. “Uh, you sure?”
“Like Jose said. We didn’t come here for nothing.”
Mari can probably pry apart Cora’s lies as easily breathing or blinking. Expose her to the group, call out her false confidence, and Cora would cave. But she nods, glancing at the yawning, pitch-black entrance.
Thank you, Cora voices silently.
“Three to two,” Cora says. “Unless both of you want to stay here?”
Sally narrows her eyes. In the dim lighting, they look like a submerged snake’s, ready to lunge. “Ugh, democracy is a joke.” But she turns toward the entrance and gestures over her shoulder. “Let’s go, then.”
“I knew you’d listen,” Jose says, clapping a hand on her shoulder. Instead of lashing out, she punches his shoulder and takes up the front end of the cooler.
“If you weren’t so nice all the damn time, I’d strangle you.” She flicks her middle finger out at Joe. “And you… I can’t believe we’re agreeing on something for once. Ha! What a joke.” She faces Cora and Mari. “You two, you’re chill. Thanks for not being like Joe.”
“Hey!”
“Thanks,” Mari says, while Cora flashes a thumbs-up.
Joe’s flashlight cuts swathes of darkness into ribbons. The torrent of light punches through cobwebs and dangling plant roots alike, ending at a bend where corroded rail tracks descend off to the left.
No hobo. Then again, the mine is huge, or so Jose said during the last leg of their drive.
Joe goes in first, stumbling down the tracks, with Sally and Jose in tow, and Cora and Mari at the back. Inside the tunnel, the air is pungent and musty, worse than a barn, making her gag. To their right, just like Sally said, a cut in the rock opens up to a pit.
The Spritz is built of bands of gray and white stone encircling the pit. At the top, grass blades peek out, haloed by the moon higher still. Off to the side, a valley cut into the stone wall leads to a tangle of shrub land and overgrown trees, amassed into a living wall of green tied together with what suspiciously looks like poison ivy.
No hobo here either. Cora frowns. More bottles litter the ground, along with burnt scraps of paper, cigarette butts, empty bags of chips, even what looks like a used condom–she jumps when a loud crinkle echoes out.
Mari raises her foot, dripping with beer, while a crushed can bleeds out from its opening. “What the fuck!” she exclaims, undoing her laces, probing over her wet shoe.
“Damn,” Joe comments. Cora thinks he’s responding to Mari, but he plucks something dark off the jumble of bottles. “Somebody left their wallet here.”
He trains his flashlight on it. Expertly, he opens the wallet one-handed and flips a flap up. A blue card glitters inside a clear pouch. Framed off to the side is the image of an old man with a knotted beard, gray and faded, cheeks drooping, wrinkles etched into his forehead and corners of his pale lips.
Joe inspects it for a few more seconds. “Huh.”
“Is it the hobo?” Cora says.
“Could be. I don’t know. This guy was born in… 1961. Old as fuck.”
“That’s probably the hobo.” She wrings her hands, biting her bottom lip, glancing back at the mineshaft entrance. “But where is he?”
Jose turns on his phone’s flashlight and trains it under his chin, so his face stands out in exaggerated shadows. “He might’ve… disappeared. Legends say that old Billy’s ghost will fuck you up if you show disrespect.”
Sally glares at him, but Cora puts on her most serious face, crossing her arms. “Not me.”
“You dare disrespect old Billy?”
“Yeah, because I can beat a ghost any day.” She flips her hair over her shoulder. She giggles, shaking her head. “Ghosts aren’t real, anyway.”
Joe is quiet, flipping the wallet open and closed while he drums his fingers on his flask, fingertips dancing over the cap. “No, it’s true. This place is haunted. Some guy called Billy died deep in the mines like ten years ago. Then some other guy died out in the fields two or three years ago for no reason. He just dropped dead. Both made it on the local news and everything.”
Sally pinches the bridge of her nose, grimacing. “You remember Jessie?”
Joe makes a face. “You mean that girl who ate all the chips?”
“Yeah, my friend. Last year she went down there with some people. She swears that there was something there. 'Sally, there was a shadow chasing us, it was the scariest thing I've ever seen.'” Sally gestures at the mineshaft. “It’s stupid. Ignore them. There’s a lot of old, dangerous shit in there. Some leftover chemicals got into their heads.”
A scream, high and shrill, tears through the silence. A little girl’s scream. It sounds distant but clear, raw and in agony. Cora squeaks out in surprise. Mari recoils. Joe drops the wallet. Jose’s eyes widen. Sally is the only one who appears unfazed, statuesque, lips pressed tight. Another scream follows, long and drawn out.
Quieter, as if the source went further away. Or is dying.
By the time the last scream trails off, Cora’s pulse is roaring in her ears. She doesn’t realize she’s holding onto Mari’s shoulders until she gently pries Cora’s fingers off.
She twitches, nursing her hands to her chest. Cora does the same, struggling to keep her breathing steady, to stop herself from rushing into the mineshaft and help that girl.
“What the fuck,” Jose mutters. “The hobo. Do you think–”
“Don’t even mention it,” Sally says, gritting her teeth. She brims with violence, shifting her weight from foot to foot, assuming a boxer’s stance.
But Joe’s face is pale. He pockets his flask and the wallet, takes a few steps back from the opening, and shudders. Whatever drunk happiness fueled him has vanished, leaving a trembling wreck in his place.
“Oh hell no,” he says, drilling his eyes into the mineshaft.
“It’s a fucking little girl in there!” Sally explodes, turning her fury on him. He shrinks beneath her looming glare. “God fucking damnit! Ghosts aren’t real! Get your shit together!”
“Seriously, Joe, I thought you were better than that.” Jose hitches his shorts up. He takes a deep breath, then exhales, combing his fingers through his hair. “Fuck. That’s seriously fucked up.”
Joe, despite being leveled to a crisp, manages to gather enough of his dignity to nod and step beside Sally. “Shit. I’m sorry. That hobo’s going to get hell.”
Sally turns back to Cora and Mari. “You two can wait by the van. We’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.” Then, in a quieter voice, she adds, “Call 911 as well.”
“I’m coming with you,” Cora says.
“Same,” Mari adds. They share a nod of approval.
Joe drags his palms down his jeans and takes a swig out of his flask. Cora wishes she could sip out of it, if only to quell her nausea and spine-tingling dread. “Just a warning, it’s filthy in there. There’s lots of spiders and rats and other shit. Seriously, just stay in the van. We’re the ones who brought you guys here.”
“We chose to come here. We can help. I want to help.”
All partial truths, because really Cora is terrified out of her mind. She doesn’t even want to imagine what’s happening to the little girl. The scream replays over and over in her head, looping to images she can’t help but imagine.
The hobo has to be there.
And the poor little girl…
“Fine. Call 911,” Sally says. Mari beats Cora to the call, raising her phone to her ear, gnawing on her cuticles as the line connects and a man starts the call.
Thirty minutes. That’s all they get until the police and first responders arrive.
***
Sally falls in step beside Joe. “Follow the flashlight, don’t go off the tracks. These parts get dangerous.”
Cora is no stranger to danger. Mari’s antics have dragged her from the slimy pits of a questionable museum attraction out in Nowheresville, USA, to hiking deep in the woods while sunset hid paths they had to double back and find.
But this is different. The little girl’s screams still cling to her like the cobwebs stretching from floor to ceiling. Cora takes in the curved walls, crevices, pits, and torn tracks, wondering how much more they have to endure until they stumble upon the grisly scene.
Joe trains his flashlight ahead. Sally brought her own from the van, and she sweeps it across the mineshaft at maximum brightness. Spiders skitter back into the dark. Beetles and roaches scurry beneath twisted rail tracks or into cracks in the walls. Several worms slink back into the disturbed ground.
Worse than the bugs, though, is the chill that runs over her skin. Long gone is the warmth of the night that enveloped her like a blanket. Sally runs her flashlight over the walls, ceiling, and floor, eyes narrowed, muscles tensed.
She doesn’t seem to care about how compact the mineshaft becomes. The cobwebs are little more than nuisances to her. One sweep of her arm clears them away. She pushes everybody onward, deeper into the mine, though careful to avoid the sharp rails and few spiders that defy the light’s assault.
Joe sweeps his flashlight, too, covering areas that Sally’s doesn't. Something glints inside a crack up ahead. They’re numerous, byproducts of the mine’s age. But in the time it takes for the flashlight to move on to the next interesting thing, Cora steps toward the crack.
“Hey, wait.”
Sally turns around, pointing her flashlight down. “What?”
It gives just enough light to make out the source of the glint. A ring, she thinks, but there’s something attached to it. She gestures at it. “What’s that?”
Joe lights up the crack.
Mari screams first.
The ragged remains of a finger is jammed into the crack. Blood dribbles from the stump onto the terracotta-colored walls, still glistening red. Another finger, a thick thumb worn with age, is jammed into a neighboring crack, snapped backwards, bone peeking through bloodied tissues.
Cora screams next. Jose turns around and empties his stomach, while Joe stares at it, mouth gaping open, and Sally… she’s pointing her flashlight elsewhere. Back in the direction they came from.
The air is all wrong. The floor is the ceiling and the ceiling is the floor. Cora’s eyes water from a searing haze seeping from the walls. Silhouetted within the haze, suspended by its limbs like a crude marionette, the bloody, broken, bitten corpse of the hobo leers at them. Both of his eyes were ripped out of their sockets. One of them is an empty cavity, but the other eyeball dangles by glistening strands on his split cheekbone.
“Holy shit!”
Cora doesn’t know who said it. It doesn’t matter. Both flashlights flicker, their lights dimming.
The haze cleaves apart. The corpse shudders and spits out a glob of black matter that sucks in the light, dimming the flashlights further. Ethereal haze and black matter funnel upward into a spindly, many-legged, impossibly thin composite of outlined shadow. It scuttles forward. In the absence of any face, white teeth shine.
The flashlights die. A little girl’s screams echo off the walls, deafening Cora, squealing and desperate, loudest behind them, while too many legs patter on the ground.
Cora’s sprinting before her mind catches up.
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Somebody’s elbow hits Cora’s ribs. Her elbow hits another person’s ribs, but the pain and guilt cower in the monster's presence, chasing after them. Screeches echo off the tunnel walls and deafen her.
Her heart pounds madly. She struggles to fill her lungs with precious air. Somebody locks their arm around her elbow and drags her aside. She screams, slamming the heel of her hand into whatever body part she can hit.
“Come on!” Sally hisses.
They stumble over rails. Metal cuts Cora’s ankles and snatches on her jeans, raking her shins. More than once, cobwebs stick to Cora’s head and shoulders. Something crawls on her neck. Sally’s tight grip keeps her going.
It isn’t until she suddenly stops that Cora can breathe again.
She sobs, clapping a hand over her mouth when another screech reaches them. She huddles against Sally, whose hands dig into her shoulders as they hug each other, silent save for their heavy panting.
The screeches grow louder, almost like a steam train barrelling right past them. Crackling static accompanies it, and a dull roar that makes the ground and walls shake.
Bits of rock chip off and hit her cheek. Cora bites down on her lip and curls into Sally, powerless to stop the supernatural force descending upon them.
I’m going to die and end up like that old man.
She silently screams, wails, begs for forgiveness for whatever she’s being punished for. Nobody hears her outside her own head, of course. Not even Sally, whose chin presses on top of her head, locks of hair tickling the back of Cora’s neck.
Gradually, the rumbling quiets. The crackling static fades to a hiss, and then a high-pitched squeal, then nothing. Their ears pop. Neither of them move until the sounds are long gone.
“We made it,” Cora whispers, struggling to keep her sobs at bay. “That thing’s gone.”
Sally stays quiet. Her labored breathing is the single response that comes out of her. “Sally?”
Cora wrestles her way out from under Sally, arms straining to keep her weight aloft. She deposits her into a sitting position against the wall. Cora feels around her body until she touches cool metal.
A click later, the flashlight blazes to life, highlighting the worst of Cora’s fears.
Sally is limp and bloody, eyes closed and cheeks flushed purple with bruises. There’s a gash bleeding near her ear, and several cuts by her chin. Parts of her hair are matted with blood to her scalp. Her ponytail came undone during the stomach-churning escape, and the rest of it hangs like a dirty curtain.
A gust of wind blows Cora’s hair aside. She hears the footsteps too late. She shrieks and dives over Sally, baring the flashlight on the incoming threat, gasping when she realizes it’s just Joe, wide-eyed and caked in dirt.
“What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck out of here!”
Cora’s eyes sting. She takes Sally’s hands in her own, refusing to wrench her attention away. “It’s Sally. She–she’s not moving.”
“Did that thing get her? Is she okay?” Joe drops to one knee next to her. He presses two fingers to her neck.
“I-I don’t know.” Cora squeezes Sally’s hand, hoping with every fiber in her being that she’ll be okay. “Shit, oh my God. Sally, please, wake up! Sally!”
Finally, one eyelid peels open. “Wh’f h’pnd.” Her lips change shape, but what comes out sounds more like an infant blowing raspberries. She blinks out of sync. One of her eyes is bloodshot, the other hidden behind bruises swelling her facial tissue. “Mmph!”
Joe touches the back of Sally’s head. He frowns, then freezes, his arm shaking. “Shit, she’s injured. The back of her head’s bleeding. Shit.”
Cora shrugs off her jacket and hands it to him. “Use my jacket. Put pressure on it.”
A deep rumble reaches them. The ground vibrates under her feet, jarring her bones, awakening injuries Cora wasn’t aware she had. “Hey, do you hear that?” She rubs her forearms. The chill is coming back, and the heavy pressure in the air that followed whatever flew past her and Sally. “Oh my God. It’s coming back.”
“Go get the others. Get them out of here.” Joe cradles Sally’s head and grits his teeth. “I gave them my flashlight and told them to run. They probably ran for the exit. But if they didn’t, get them out of here.”
“No. We’re gonna come back and help both of you.” Cora can’t stop her voice from wavering. Can’t stop her body from betraying the nauseous mix of terror and grief. “I promise. I swear.”
Joe pats her shoulder. “Stay safe.”
“You too.”
In moments, she’s soaring down the tunnel. Her feet ache, and pulse, and throb, but they carry her at a heavy sprint. She coughs as dust fills her lungs. Swats away cobwebs that snare in her face and hair.
Somewhere behind her, terrible screeches seem to chase her as she flees toward the outside world, free of monsters, a place where the group was supposed to relax, crack some jokes.
Before she knows it, the faint glow of the exit appears. She heaves and clears the barrier into the world. Never has she been glad to see the night sky and stars, the garbage and broken bottles that glint in the moonlight.
Jose is curled into a ball, retching. Beyond his shuddering bulk, leaning against the van, Mari is gnawing on her cuticles. She raises her head and gasps.
Cora’s enveloped by two strong arms that squeeze what little oxygen Cora has left out of her. She doesn’t care–she finally cries and collapses into Mari, clutching her. Cora drinks in the scent of perfume that she’d spritzed on Mari’s shirt, her comforting warmth, the promise of safety and friendship.
Mari is her remaining anchor of sanity. Her beacon of hope that everything will be okay.
“Call 911 again,” Cora whimpers, pulling away from her. “Tell them to hurry up.”
Mari chokes back a sob. “Fifteen minutes. I already tried. What a fucking mess. I can’t believe… it’s so… I don’t know! Shit.” She rubs her eyes and glances at the mine entrance. “Where’s Joe? And Sally?”
“Sally’s hurt. We have to back and help them–”
There’s a loud crash, and another rumble that shakes the ground. The van breaks out into a wail, rising in pitch before suddenly dropping and starting again.
“The keys. Jose, the keys!” Mari shouts. He manages to slide his spare set from his pocket and toss them at her before retching again. She snatches them mid-air and silences the alarm. The ground shudders. This time, it pitches forward, a rolling wave of kinetic madness. Cora stumbles and crashes into the side of the van.
Mari grits her teeth, draping an arm over Cora. Jose retches once more, doubled over. The air hangs heavy. A distant roar grows in intensity, the crashing of an ocean straining against the shoreline, or monstrous energy swelling out of the cracks of the mineshaft, straining to be unleashed upon the world. Rocks tumble down the hill. The entrance cracks. The wooden beams splinter.
Moments later, the ceiling collapses.
It’s over in seconds. The structure snaps. Just like that, the hill collapses into the mineshaft. Plants, dirt, and rocks stuff the entrance. Off to the side, other sections of the hills collapse, including the area where the Spritz had been.
“No…” Mari claps her hands over her mouth. She stares at the ruins of the mine.
“No!” Cora peels away from the van and lurches forward. She scoops handfuls of dirt and throws them aside. “They’re still in there!”
She doesn’t know how long she spends there, breaking her fingernails, clawing toward the two people she promised to help. She keeps going until the haunting wail of police sirens and an ambulance echoes across the hills and fields. Into the clearing, into their ears, short two people who might as well be a universe away for how useless Cora is.
She heaves, slamming her fists into the wall of dirt.
They were there, until they weren’t.
Gone, in the blink of an eye.
***
She had hoped that the rescue effort succeeded. That she wasn’t called to the police HQ to listen, but to see Joe and Sally walk into the waiting room, alive and untouched.
Hours later, she stuffs her cold, bandaged hands between her legs, staring down at the piece of paper that is a declaration of truth. An admission, irrefutable, that Cora’s hopes hadn’t panned out.
Of course they didn’t. She can’t cry. Not here, not now, not when she has to find out what happened. What was found, if anything was found at all.
The woman in the gray suit taps her pen on the mahogany desk. Her coils of hair are glossy, untouched, and they frame a heart-shaped face worn with creases.
At odds with Cora’s bruised, scabbed face, hair shorn in one place where a rock clipped it, and her hands. Skin torn away where the rock had cut into her palms. Several fingernails broken, and a gash on the back of her hand where yet another rock had clipped her.
And Sally had protected her. Thrown herself over her, knowing that the monster–whatever that thing is–was bearing down on them. Cora gulps, but the tight knot remains.
“We need you to tell us everything that happened.”
“You’re not gonna believe anything I tell you. I told them, they didn’t believe me.” A monster? A murderous monster? Seeping out of the walls with the body of an old man? Symptoms of shock. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Potential drug-induced hallucinations.
They refused to believe. They said she was grieving, or processing things the way somebody gone mad would, remembering things that didn’t really happen.
Sally was dying because of that monster. Still, they didn’t listen. That monster tricked a homeless man and devoured him. They didn’t listen, either. They didn’t say what they discovered after hauling rubble out of the mine for days.
Only, “Tell us what happened.”
“Take your time. This is a judgment-free zone. We understand if you can’t.”
Cora scowls. She wipes her sleeve over her eyes, dries up the corners and musters a glare that devolves into casting her eyes down, shoulders hunched. “No, not that. It’s just… I learned half an hour ago that they never made it out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know what?” Cora rises to her full height, which isn’t much compared to the taller woman. Still, Cora draws back her shoulders and scowls. “I’m done here. If you don’t want to believe me, fine. But I know what I saw. These cuts–” She gestures wildly at her face. “I got them because of that thing. I’m tired. I’m going home.”
At least the woman has the empathy to leave her alone. Cora wants to go home and scream into her pillow until she physically can’t.
Everybody stares at her as she exits the building. Nobody dares stop her. She steps into a world cast in monochrome. Raindrops splatter on the sidewalk. Thunder breaks out in the distance. Wind whips her hair around and leaves her cuts stinging in the cold’s wake.
The world is exactly the way she remembers it. The roads are immaculate. She passes the pothole her dad curses about every time they have to take that one road out of their neighborhood.
Then, there’s the side street looping into itself in a cul-de-sac. The cookie-cutter houses pushing into each other’s spaces. Her house, two stories tall, centered behind the loop.
And of course, another staple in her house: Mari. She’s rocking back and forth on the hammock swinging chair, knees hugged to her chest. Only when Cora enters the driveway does she lift her head and give a timid wave.
“Cora…”
She huffs and storms up the stairs. “Go away.”
“Cora, I just wanted to talk to you about–”
She slams her bandaged fist down on the railing. What comes out is more of a muffled thunk than the bang she expected, but Mari cringes. “Fuck that. It’s too late.” Cora stares at the gap between the porch and the house. In between that dark gap must exist a whole ecosystem. She imagines that’s how the mine was.
Isolated, at least in the deeper parts, with its very own apex predator at the top of the food chain. If that predator was a nightmarish force matching nothing she ever learned about.
Sally and Joe… she winces. She has to rub her eyes to stop them from tearing up again.
“You weren’t there. I saw them. They’re never coming back!”
Mari stops rocking. She stands up and moves toward the mesh door. “If you need me, just tell me.” She squeezes Cora’s shoulder as she descends the steps out into the street.
“Wait, Mari,” Cora calls out. She whips around, hand fixing her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. You can come inside. We can work things out. Maybe help each other?”
Mari offers a hint of a smile, shadowed by the frown lines etched into her forehead. “Okay.”
***
Cora’s fingers shake as they waltz across the keyboard. Page after page of the mine incident pop up. Local news channels, mostly. A few bigger outlets, too, though the story there is verbatim what other major outlets reported on.
But that’s not what caught her attention. On some derelict internet forum, somebody made a post about what happened that night. Like usual, the information was sourced from one of the stupid news articles, and like usual, missing some pieces of information.
Instead of Jose’s van, they arrived in Sally’s pickup truck. Instead of reporting a murdered man and a real monster lurking inside the mineshafts, the story was five drunk teens dared each other to enter the mine.
What surprises her is the anonymous user who bothered commenting at all. The comment sends chills into Cora’s core.
Re: What REALLY happened in the recent mine collapse incident?
Anonymous user, February 9, 20##, 03:32:09 a.m.
Don’t believe anything the media is saying. I was part of the investigative task force assembled to search for the missing teenagers. They assigned me to mark anything that could corroborate the official story as evidence. There was a presumably homeless person’s belongings by the collapsed entrance. It was there where I had my first, and only, paranormal encounter. There was a bed, propane tank, clothes, and a box. Upon tagging the box, I saw a land wreathed in flames, and a dark shadow jumping from horizon to horizon.
After letting go, I quickly finished tagging the rest and discovered I had burn wounds on my fingertips, the same hand that I tagged the box with. I explained the situation to my supervisor, but he blamed my wounds on propane igniting. To this day, I’m certain that a supernatural force was there that night, and may have had something to do with why the missing teenagers were never recovered.
Re: What REALLY happened in the recent mine collapse incident?
arcing_thunder, February 10, 20##, 09:31:01 p.m.
@anon no offense but you should read nosleep stories and creepypasta and learn how to structure a story
Re: What REALLY happened in the recent mine collapse incident?
Anonymous user, February 11, 01:58:31 a.m.
@arcing_thunder It’s true.
Cora stares at the screen until the text blurs into indecipherable gibberish. Those details are too specific. She remembers the homeless man’s belongings. There had been a box next to the propane tank.
The lid had been cracked open. She’d glanced over it back then, but that detail sticks out to her. Upon tagging the box, I saw a land wreathed in flames, and a dark shadow jumping from horizon to horizon. Coincidence, maybe.
Or not. She types into the search box “mine collapse” and “box.” The same thread appears first on the list, and after that more repetitive news articles.
That's the single place that mentioned anything beyond the “official narrative.” Her pulse quickens. She takes a picture of the comment and bookmarks the site.
A box?
That can’t be it. But the commentator wrote about details that nobody else should know. She clicks on the name. Nothing registers.
Her disappointment is short-lived. She needs an account. If she can’t contact whoever was there during the rescue operation, then maybe they can contact her.
Cracking her fingers, she starts sifting through webpages to reach the new user page.
***
Mari’s voice crackles through the phone speaker. Cora adjusts the volume and presses it to her ear. “You want to go back to the mine? But I thought it was behind us.”
“It’s… it’s important.” With her free hand, she twists a lock of hair around her finger. “I need this. Please. For my sake.”
“Okay. Do you wanna hang out at the mall after? I saw a cute shirt at Hollister.”
Two months. Sixty-three days since they narrowly escaped a monster and a collapse. Mari’s bouncing back quicker than Cora expects, gradually gluing together the pieces that fell apart that day.
Cora, though, sees images flash in the corners of her eyes whenever she’s alone. Monsters with peeling skin and serrated claws. Gusts of chilly wind and vibrations that crawl over her skin. Shadows that dart whenever she lifts her head from the computer and squints at the analog timer she sets for herself whenever she’s diving deeper into paranormal topics.
Hollister is so normal. She needs it. She wants it. But research awaits.
“No, I’ll pass. We can go out tomorrow, though.”
Through the phone, Cora can practically sense the disappointment radiating off Mari. She’s probably scrunching up her nose, the way she does whenever she’s frustrated. “Okay, fine. What time do you want to go to the mine?”
“Whenever you’re free. But we should hurry before it’s night.”
“Got it.”
“I can’t thank you enough. Thank–”
Cora stares at the call ended screen. Mari’s trying her best, she knows. She was the one who thought of new things to do, new places to visit, and Cora always tagged along.
It was just the two of them. Still are the two of them. But she’s aware of the rift forming between them. Is it her fault for shooting down practically every attempt Mari makes to get her to come out of the house? Mari’s fault for leaving her to drown in her thoughts instead of listening?
Together. We’re not doing it alone, we’re doing it together.
They did. It worked out for a month, maybe a week on top of that, where they stuck to each other and took staggering steps toward the finish line of not being depressed as fuck and living like normal people.
Mari cleared the finish line weeks ago. Cora’s still floundering behind, dragged down by the visions and nightmares and seeing Joe and Sally in their final moments.
I was there!
And now she’s not.
Easy as that.
The question of the box remains. Its whereabouts, and what horrors remain trapped inside.
What she’ll do with it once she finds it, she doesn’t know. That’s why she has so much time to find it. Test it. Trace its origins, mark down details, photograph and take video of it.
She allows herself a rare smile. It’s like Pandora’s box. She doesn’t expect to find anything at the mine, but it doesn’t have to be the box or any item. What she wants to see are the environmental changes. The anonymous user said he’d awoken with abnormally low body temperatures for weeks after the simple act of tagging the box.
What other marks on the environment did the box leave? Ghostly imprints? Weird shapes? Mutated animals? Whatever.
Then she can focus on finding out what happened to the box. But first, baby steps.
***
Out of all the places in the world, they locked away the incomprehensible power of a universe inside a thrift shop.
Not even a luxurious one. Its roof shingles look like a hurricane away from taking flight. Mold creeps along the stucco wall. A chipped bell hangs behind the smudged glass door. Graffiti marks are spread over the adjacent wall. A dumpster sits flush with the building, and it reeks.
Mari plugs her nose and glares at Cora. “You made me come all the way here for this?”
She fans the air and takes a few steps back from the front door. “Yeah.”
“A thrift shop? You wanted to go here?”
“It’s an antiques store…” Cora squints at the golden lettering under the store name. Closed Sunday. That wasn’t what the Google search told her. She presses her fingers to the glass. “No! It’s closed.”
Mari types for a few seconds. She grins and shows her phone to Cora. “On the bright side, the theater’s open.”
Frowning, she pores over the list of movies available. Garbage, average, maybe that one’s interesting. The last movie on the list catches her attention.
“Let me guess, you don’t want to go,” Mari says, pocketing her phone.
“I bet twenty dollars that you won’t watch that new horror movie with me.”
She stares at her, suspicious. “Since when–”
“Since today.” Cora takes Mari’s hands and drags her toward her car. “Movie. Now.”
***
Against the backdrop of the waning sun, Cora stumbles out of the theater, head spinning, palms clammy. It’s too bright out. She keeps her head ducked low and follows the sidewalk winding around the entire mall.
No matter how much she begs, she knows Mari will refuse to drive tomorrow back to this place. It’s over ten miles away, and even if they’re trying to bond, she’ll suggest somewhere else.
Cora feels guilty. She left the movie halfway through. Mari hadn’t questioned her, instead obsessing over the vampire that admittedly was pretty hot.
One look back at the theater tells her everything.
This will be worth it.
Trees provide snatches of relief from the sun’s searing might. Even as it sinks lower and lower into its cradle, the rays sting, and the baked paths radiate heat slithering over Cora’s ankles.
She’s a sweaty mess by the time she passes the strip mall they drove past first. Several storefronts ahead, to the right–there. A Chick-Fil-A, also closed. There’s a skip via the drive-thru, then the smelly dumpster.
The thrift shop is so unremarkable. Bordering on decrepit, really, but who would guess that inside it is the strangest, most powerful object in the world.
She only knew the scope of its power after she’d returned to the mine. Mari had fussed over getting her shoes dirty and blabbered about how Cora needed to move on. She had focused on the imprint.
A snake with legs that darted into the thick vegetation when Mari parked. Glass creeping up an old tree, although she accidentally discovered it when she threw a pinecone to test if anything felt off.
A patch of purple soil. A bug that looked like a cross between a butterfly and some spiny shelled creature, dead in a bush. Mismatched rocks close to the mine entrance. Cora had lingered there, allowing herself to cry, just a little, before Mari hugged her and they trudged beyond it.
At the site where the mattress had been, a weed sprouted that had silvery pink leaves and a golden trunk. That, even Mari noticed. She chalked it up to some rare species of plant that blew into the area, but Cora knew better.
It all tied back to the box.
Cora’s no exception. She fingers the bobby pins in her pocket, then glances at the front door, padlocked. Google told her this type of lock should be easy to pick.
She glances around. The parking lots are bare stretches of asphalt, littered with leaves, closed in by trees whose leafy tops hide her from the ascending hill where the mall is.
“Okay, you got this,” she murmurs, drying her fingers on her jeans. “Easy.”
Minutes later, Cora gasps as she pushes the final pin up. Her fingers burn. Her back hurts. Sweat trickles down her forehead, stinging her eyes, but the padlock falls away, and the door’s open.
She slips inside. The interior is surprisingly comfortable, sporting a wood finish and ceiling lights behind frosted glass. Racks of clothes are bunched up to one side of the store. To the right, paintings and old electronics sit on shelves or lie against them. At the very back, bookshelves take up nearly the whole wall.
She goes from wall to wall, checking every space. There’s more than enough garbage that makes her nose crinkle up. A few boxes sit among them, but they’re metallic.
Her hopes deflate. She checks the bookshelves, the clothing aisles, the furniture section, getting closer to the corner opposite of the entrance, where the bookshelves and furniture section clash.
There’s a glass table and a rocking chair beside it. Shelves hang in the corner, littered with picture frames and paperback books and vases.
She checked everything.
The box isn’t here.
“Come on!” Cora paces back to the entrance where the cashier is at. Glass displays create a rhombus where the cashiers would be, leaving a gap in the corner where they can come and enter.
She hadn’t taken more than a cursory glance at each section, because the only things worth protecting are precious china, jewelry, and video games.
But buried beneath heaps of jewelry, the box practically glitters in the shadows.
Cora presses her hands to the cool glass. It’s there, she can practically feel its power thrumming through the glass, promises of something incredible that can’t be matched anywhere else in the world.
So close, and yet so far. A blinking red light in the corner of her eye catches her attention. Several security cameras are mounted at the entrance, and several more in the back.
Shit.
They captured her face, her actions, her height, her clothes–everything. Probably backed up some place on the Internet where people like her can’t destroy the evidence.
“Not like I’m gonna be here forever, right?” she murmurs, rapping her fingers on the glass. “Oh, well.” Her fingers close around an umbrella handle. The bottom is steel-capped, and it’s folded, so she jabs the metal end into the glass.
It shatters far more easily than she expected. Shards bounce off her jeans and shoes. Cora tenses, braced for the squeal of the alarm, preparing to snatch the box and run, but it never comes.
She hesitates, hovering her hands over the box. “Moment of truth,” she whispers, then picks it up.
It is humming. Warm like a living thing, humming in her hands, the swirls on the wooden exterior brighten by several degrees. She rotates it, checking the bottom and back side. The same pattern is spread out, swirls and ribbons of gentle, pulsating light.
The lid should be easy to crack open. Yet her fingers freeze when she touches it. Her racing thoughts slow to a creeping chill, starting at the base of her skull and traveling down to her feet.
What is she doing here?
The box–
As suddenly as the wave of vertigo hits her, she leaves the box on top of the glass case and grabs onto the corner. Pain cuts through the vertigo and nausea, and she yanks her hand back. Blood wells from her palm, dripping on the ground.
The box lights up the glass shards like a chandelier, tainted red with Cora’s blood oozing freely.
She has to get it out.
Her body is not her own. She rips a blouse out of a clothes hanger and wraps it around her hand. It hurts, and her hand feels too wet, too warm, but the blouse stops the bleeding somewhat, a fashionable bandage.
The box dims. Cora picks up the box and steps over the shards. The front security camera watches her with a cold, unblinking stare. It blinks red, and back to a glassy black, where it doesn’t change color.
Outside, a wave of humidity engulfs her. She struggles to suck in a breath, receiving air thick enough to choke her and the damp, earthy smell of wet earth.
Thunder booms in the distance. Lightning crackles across clouds, menacingly gray. Gone is the sun that bathed the world in stifling heat. Gone is the mall, hidden behind a curtain of rain that pours in droves.
Some distant instinct drives her forward. Beyond the edge of the shop’s protruding ceiling, the world is drowning. Water streams down the parking lot, parting around trees, flooding a canal that rapidly approaches a river.
Cora checks her phone. Two hours have passed. Half an hour ago, Mari sent six messages. The movie is three hours long, and Cora left somewhere what she thinks is the middle.
It might be finished, it might be close to finishing. “How?” Cora says in disbelief. She must’ve spent fifteen minutes at most searching. Two hours borders on impossible.
Then she remembers. She holds unimaginable power in her hands, and she’s bleeding, wet, and trembling. One fuck-up and she might end up like the old man from the mine, or worse.
What is she thinking? The box belongs elsewhere, to scientists or the government. Part of her still can’t believe that the box exists at all.
But it’s in her hands. There’s no denying the feeling of smooth wood, the faint strobes of light within the grains, the constant humming of power under her fingertips.
Mari’s car is somewhere out there, beyond the hazy curtain of rain. She parked near the entrance to the food court. Cora hesitates, looking back at the front door, chain and padlock dangling.
Nobody will catch her when she’s gone.
***
One might expect the testing of a real, magical object, to happen in a magical setting. Bookshelves stuffed with ancient books, grimoires heaped on vast wooden desks, plush carpet to cushion the feet, creepy paintings of old people hung on old walls, a statue or two, a foreign skull, a fountain pen, a candle mounted on a silver plate, cats, heavy incense, and arcane writing written on parchment and yellowed papers to complete the set-up.
Cora has none of those luxuries. She couldn’t care less, though.
Revolutionary. Scientist. Pioneer. Maybe a witch, if the Puritans found out. She grins from ear to ear, scribbling down the latest experimental results, hand aching, fingertips numb.
Loops of messy script sprawl across the journal page. One page, two, three–she flips and writes, erases and annotates, punches numbers into her calculator and invokes half-remembered mathematical and scientific principles, combined with some quick Googling, to work out her theories.
She teaches herself Faraday’s law. Lenz’s law. The basics of electromagnetism, just enough to realize that the box emits a constantly changing magnetic field of its own, inducing electricity in stationary loops of wire.
Forever. And ever. And ever. A miniature version of Earth’s magnetic field, but forever. She measures it using an ammeter. The readings change second by second, hour past hour. Several weeks into her set-up, Cora still can’t figure out any patterns in the data.
Her eyes burn. Her hand cramps. Her legs are jittery from gulping a large cup of coffee. This is real magic, and she reserved a spot for it on her bedstand, with a sticky note plastered at the top that reads, DO NOT TOUCH!
Her security could be tighter, sure. She could get out more, too, hang out with Mari or eat dinner with her parents.
But it’s all so mundane. None of it is real magic.
Real magic that she intends to study, and maybe even use.
Cora plugs her headphones into her laptop and loses herself in the punchy beats, quick vocals, and bass of rock and metal throbbing through the speakers. Her hand dances across the page, circling numbers and underlining annotations, drawing lines from one side of a page to another.
Clocks age slower within a two-foot bubble radius around the box. Objects she weighs on her precision balance weigh less, sometimes by as much as 50%. Last week, she’d tested her weight beside the box, and within seconds she felt lighter, somehow, like her bones became hollow and she shed a good thirty pounds.
Iron fillings slither like snakes, never content with following a static magnetic field. Ink smears over paper. Flames combust green, yet are cool to the touch. Plants lose their green, then wither and die, unless she takes them outside, where they regain their color and liven up.
Something to do with chlorophyll and absorption of green light, Cora notes.
She’s too busy jamming to the music blasting through her headphones to notice the door creaking open. Not until somebody taps her shoulder.
“What!” She whirls around, ready to yell at her parents to please knock, when she realizes who entered. She purses her lips and pauses her playlist, takes off her headphones, and slings them around her neck.
“Ben?” Cora splutters, face reddening. She flips her notebook closed and sets her pencil down. “Why are you here?” She pushes past him and steps into the hallway, scanning down its length. “Mari?”
Mousy-haired, spectacle-rimmed, pallid Ben shakes his head. “She, uh, left. I don’t know why.”
Cora sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay, that’s fine, whatever. But why are you here?”
Something akin to defiance sparks in his icy blue eyes. Weird, to see his eyebrows furrow like that, weirder still for his pale lips to twist into irritation. “Because of this?” He waves his arms around. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but we’re worried about you.”
“Worried?”
“Cora, Mari told me you’ve been acting weird. I want to know why.”
She stares at him. “Everything’s fine.” She follows Ben’s gaze to her copper loops, her precision balance, and her loose leaf notes she forgot to stuff into her journal. Beyond a pile of candy wrappers and energy drink cans, a heap of clothes rises like a mountain over her bed. She bristles, putting herself between her mess and his judging sight. “I promise, this is just how I like to keep my room, okay?”
His eyes shift a fraction of a degree. “Hey, what’s that?” He points at the box. Cora bites on her tongue the moment she realizes it’s going through one of its relapses. The moment it throbs a golden wave, iridescent and slow to encapsulate its wooden grains. A whorl of light diffuses from the top and seeps into wooden grains, an action potential unlocking channels of magic and coloring each grain a blazing gold. The effect lasts a few seconds, briefly outshining her desk lamp, before fading.
“Woah, what was that?”
Cora shrugs. “I dunno. Probably just you.”
He stares at the box again, but just as she theorized, his eyes glaze over, synapses erasing and reforming beneath a magical influence. “Wait, what?”
“You just stopped talking. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I feel funny.” Ben touches his forehead, as if expecting the skin to peel off and skull to cave under his probing finger. “I think I’m getting a headache. I knew I should’ve eaten breakfast.”
Cora grabs him by the shoulder and gently steers him toward the door. “It’s okay. We can talk later.” Once she passes the door, she shuts it, then leads him to her kitchen. “Want to grab anything before you go?”
“Sure. I’ll take a granola bar.”
She doesn’t relax until he’s out the door. Once she closes the front door and locks it, she slumps against it, hugging her knees to her chest. Her trembles are getting worse. Too many sleepless nights and close brushes to discovering the truth is tanking her health.
Or maybe she’s becoming a monster.
***
“Cora?” Mari’s voice has never sounded so timid. Robbed of its strength, its conviction, reduced to a plea. “Can I come in?”
Cora stifles a groan. She stretches, cracking her spine, before turning the knob and finding Mari with her arms crossed. In the deadly heat of summer, she’s wearing denim shorts, a crop top, and a pair of Converse. In the chilled quarters of her room, Cora wears a set of baggy pajamas, a hair clip to keep her bangs out of her face, and that’s it. Her toes sink into her plush carpet. Not even socks.
Mari scowls. “Okay, Cora, this isn’t funny anymore.”
Cora yawns, then stuffs her fist into her mouth, forcing the rest downward. “What are you talking about?”
“You spend so much time here.” Mari gnaws on her lip. She reaches out, then hesitates, eyes glistening. “I’m worried about you. Your parents, too.”
“This–it’s important, okay?” Cora takes a step back into the cool comfort of her room. “I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood to talk right now.”
“Cora!”
“Maybe later. I don’t feel like talking.”
Mari glares at her, but her eyes are tearing up. She clenches her hands into fists and chokes out a single sob before storming down the hallway toward the front door.
Too far. Cora pinches herself. She’s gone too far. “Mari, wait!”
“You don’t want to talk anymore, fine.” She huffs and yanks the door open. One hand rises to wipe at her eyes. “I’m not in the mood to talk right now.”
“Wait, Mari, I’m sorry–”
But the last image Cora gets to see is her smoldering grief before she slams the door shut behind her.
This time, Cora stays rooted to her spot until she hears Mari’s car rumble to life and pull out of the driveway. She slams the gas and roars into the street, leaving behind the echo of her sob.
For the first time in months, long after the mine collapsed, long after she thought the box healed her wounds, Cora cries.
***
Cora’s burning her bridges left and right with gasoline and a match. One survives. It’s built out of steel and reinforced concrete, only the fire burns so hot and so bright the steel warps, and she’s on fire herself.
Her insides roil with disgust. She stares down at the best friend she once had, this artifact of a bygone era.
“You’re unbearable!” Mari screams into Cora’s face, her words burbling acid.
“This is important! Why do you think I didn’t tell you before? Because you would’ve ruined all of my work!”
“Fuck that! And fuck you! You used me, you sick… ugh. Argh!” Mari’s fist slams into the wall. Cora jumps, her lips drawing back in a snarl, all those months of brewing bitterness surging to the surface.
“It’s important and you just don’t wanna listen!”
“Don’t wanna listen?” Mari flicks her middle finger out. “Fuck you! You used me! You lied to me!” Her voice cracks. She scowls and trembles with barely suppressed rage, eyes burning holes into Cora’s own. “You made me think we had a chance at being normal again!”
Cora blinks away the stinging sensation building on her eyes. Mari really should’ve left her alone. “You’re the one who took me to the fucking mine!”
“You chose to go. I took you to the party! I offered my fucking car to you!” Mari glares at her, and Cora glares back. She juts her chin out, the same way she always does, to let Mari know that no, there is no winning this argument. Mari suddenly goes still. “Know what? I’m tired of your shit.”
Cora growls, “Then leave! Why the fuck are you here?” Mari squares her shoulders. She grits her teeth, hand clenching into a fist. “Hey, back off–”
Mari swings her fist into the wall. Cora puts herself between the box and Mari. The bridge is melting. It eats through her hands and coats her nerves in liquid agony. “You can still help me. It’s not too late.”
“Help?” Mari laughs, the notes shrill. “After everything? You left me!” Her face is red, teeth bared. “All for this stupid thing that’s just a fucking fantasy you’ve deluded yourself into believing!”
“It’s fucking real!” Now Cora looms over Mari. She takes several steps until her back is against the wall, cowering under Cora’s heaving body. “I had to do this. Don’t you get it? It’s real. Fucking. Magic.”
“No shit it’s real!” Mari moves forward, and it’s Cora’s turn to retreat, locking eyes with her. “What do you think it’ll get you? You could’ve told me about it. You could’ve told Ben. You could’ve told your parents. You think it’ll fix what happened that night, right? Well, guess what. They’re never coming back.”
Cora can’t help it. She laughs, dry and bitter, sick of herself, sick of this world, so limited and constricted, obeying rules that only lead to hardships and misery. “I didn’t do this for them.”
Mari stops. She licks her lips and glares at her. “What?”
“I know what it does now. It can take me to different worlds.”
For the briefest of moments, Mari sinks back to her peaceful spirit, renouncing her frown, softening her scowl. Then she moves.
Cora's head snaps back before her reeling mind can comprehend the situation. Her cheek pulses painfully. Mari’s face fills up her vision, glaring and angry.
“You selfish, evil, stupid, cruel piece of shit. You were going to leave and never come back? That’s why you treated me like shit?”
Cora’s head jerks aside. Knuckles slam into her cheek, stunning her. “Fuck you!” Mari is tearing up again. She raises her trembling fist again, fully crying now, cheeks stained wet. “Fuck you!”
Cora doesn't mean it. She swears. Her fingers curl and she swings with her body weight behind it.
Crack.
Mari stumbles backward. Blood dribbles down her lip, gushing from a nose that’s no longer neatly symmetrical, askew and rapidly swelling where Cora’s knuckles struck. Cora stares at her shaking hand, and she opens her mouth, but nothing comes out except a whimper and an apology that doesn't make it past the first syllable before Mari slams her into the wall.
“You monster,” she seethes, before turning away and collapsing over Cora’s bed, touching her face. Her blanket is stained red. Cora’s fingers are red. She unzips her backpack and cleans off her hand on a cloth she carries inside it.
“You made me do this,” she chokes out. She has to breathe out the last syllable, throat tight, flexing her hand and unable to pull her eyes away from Mari, broken and defeated, touching her nose as blood drips, drips, drips past her fingers. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Mari raises her head and lunges.
Cora is too slow. She raises her arms and slides into a defensive stance, but she barely shifts her legs when Mari slams her head into her chest. Cora staggers, breath knocked out of her, flailing for purchase before Mari slams her into the ground.
“Fuck you!” she wails, battering her fists on Cora’s chest. “Fuck you!”
She lurches and shoves Mari backward. Her back connects with the bed stand, knocking the box out of position. “No!” Cora pushes past Mari and races to catch the box, teetering at the edge of the bed stand. Mari wraps her arms around Cora’s waist and tackles her.
“I’m sick of you!”
Cora is too far. She can’t reach. “Mari, the box!”
Too late.
It tilts, brighter than a star, and plummets a short, momentous distance to her carpet.
One thud. A cessation in movement. Momentum sending the box forward. Its lid yawning wide open, pointed straight at them, blazing with light and color, raw potential that doesn’t hesitate to claim them.
The last thing Cora remembers is being squished against Mari before the ocean of light that follows drowns out their screams.