On seeing the Knockers, my mind flew back to that dreary Cornish summer when Mum and Dad dragged us to visit a mine.
It had been a shocker of a holiday. The weather was vile - plus ca change. And the plus did never change - and I was hating everything about the enforced closeness of the family experience. To be fair, looking back, I recognised I was having equally as dreadful a time as my parents. But show me a teenager with empathy for others, and I’ll call you a liar.
Nevertheless, there was something about exploring a hole in the ground that did precious little for any of us. And I could only think it was the inevitability of literal hand-to-hand combat between me and my sister that incentivised them to drag us out of the tent and into the rain.
When we’d pulled up to the entrance, the sight of rusted machinery and towering rock walls emerging from the drizzle did very little to lift my spirits as to the fun and japery that was about to commence.
“This is going to fucking suck.”
My Mum managed that impressive parental feat of reaching back and slapping my legs from the car’s front seat. “Don’t swear in front of your sister. And it’s not fucking going to suck.”
We stepped out of the car, and I was immediately struck by the smell of earth and minerals that hung in the air, a caustic mix of dampness and something metallic. It was the kind of smell that absolutely inspired a teenage girl that this would be her kind of place.
With much sighing and eye-rolling, I’d been coaxed to join a small group of foreign tourists, and our guide, an older man with a greying beard and a voice that oozed, ‘I hate each and every one of you with a passion and would gladly skin your still screaming body if I thought I’d get away with it’, began his spiel.
He rattled off a host of historical facts and figures about the mine, its role in Cornwall’s industrial past, and the sheer scale of the tunnels beneath our feet. My eyes glazed over as I did my best to tune him out and focused on the many ways I would make Mum and Dad suffer for this, wishing I were anywhere else.
After all the warnings about wandering off, floods and the unseen perils present in big holes in the ground, the group descended, following the guide’s flashlight beam. Old Man Mine’s patter was giving off big ‘step out of line once, and I will leave you down here’ energy. To be honest, I remember being borderline as to whether, in my current mood, this was a dealbreaker.
But as we continued our descent, the temperature dropped noticeably. My t-shirt-clad arms prickled with goosebumps, and I wrapped them around myself, suddenly wishing I’d worn something warmer. The only light source was the guide’s flashlight, which cast eerie shadows on the rocky walls.
I remember being genuinely unnerved by the experience.
Every step I took felt heavy, like I was trudging through solid air that resisted my intrusion. I couldn’t even check the time on my watch to see how long we’d been down there, as it had long since given up on life in this lightless place.
Eventually, the walking downwards ended, and we reached a cavernous chamber where the guide explained the mining process in painstaking, somewhat punishing, detail.
Then, just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, he began recounting a local legend that took my mind off the darkness. As he spoke, his voice finally lost its bitter edge and took on an enthusiastic yet somewhat hushed tone.
“Now, we come to everyone’s favourite bit of the tour. All you fine folks with a hankerin’ for a tale of misery and toil, this is what you have been waiting for.” Honestly, this was how he sounded: I imagined he practised at home. “I will tell you now of the heartless Knockers, and, should one of them take offence and pull me into the walls, you take this torch and run straight back the way we came, you hear me?”
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He paused as we tried to take in what he’d just said. Then, he took a half-eaten Cornish pasty out of his pocket and brushed the lint off it. “But I always come prepared and hope my offering will be enough to keep them sweet on me. I’ve been doing this tour for thirty years, and I ain’t never angered them yet. But there’s always a first - and a last - time.”
With great ceremony, he laid the pasty on a rock, adding a little thimble next to it into which he poured something from his hip flash. Satisfied that the creepiest little picnic in the world was now appropriately prepared, he turned to look back at us.
“Close your eyes, ladies and gentlemen, and listen to the echo of the distant moans of the earth. Hear the sounds she makes and the secrets she holds. Now, picture miners, gaunt and grim, walking by your side, with pickaxes in hand, trudging along these cursed passages, chasing after a mere glimmer of tin. It’s a hard life—an unforgiving one. One mistake and the earth could fall on you. One wrong turn, and you would be lost forever. And just when you thought their luck couldn’t get any worse, enter the Knockers!”
On that word, the volume of his voice raised and boomed around the chamber.
“These mischievous creatures, oh, they have a particular fondness for driving miners to the brink of madness. They’d scuttle about, their eerie laughter echoing through the tunnels, causing noises that would make a man question his own sanity. They’d imitate the sound of hammers striking metal, making the miners believe they were close to striking it rich. But alas, ’twas nothing but their wicked games!”
Here, he flicked off his torch, causing more than a few of us to scream in the blackness. Say what you like for crazy tour guides; they certainly have a sense of theatre.
“Knockers have a knack for extinguishing lantern flames and causing mine carts to derail. Can you imagine? A miner, his eyes heavy from exhaustion, his hands blackened from the toil, pushing a cart full of tin, only to have it careen off course thanks to these malevolent imps.”
I knew, intellectually, that the guide hadn’t moved, but it was as if his breath was on the back of my neck.
“Hear my words, and hear them well. Beware the fae, ladies and gentlemen. For they wish you harm.”
He went quiet for just long enough, then, for us to fear we were being left down there. I felt the sort of panic I’d never experienced before rise in my chest, and I’d grasped at my sister’s hand, squeezing it tight. But then the torch switched back on, and his tone had shifted.
“But the Knockers aren’t all devilry and doom. Sometimes, if a miner was kind enough to leave out a little treat – a corner of pasty or a sip of ale – they might earn the favour of these tricksters. Some say the Knockers guided miners to hidden veins of precious metals, though more often than not, it was just another cruel joke. Ah, my offering had been accepted. We’ll make it back to the surface this day, ladies and gentlemen.”
Our eyes turned to the rock, and it was true: the pasty was gone, and the thimble was empty.
“So there you have it: the Knockers, pint-sized tormentors of the Cornish mines. If you’ve got an itch to experience the thrill of being driven to the edge of your wits while chasing after meagre riches in the earth’s bowels, well, you’ve missed your chance by a century or so. But fear not, for the echoes of their laughter still linger in these haunted tunnels.
As the guide spoke, I caught snippets of conversations among the other tourists. Some seemed genuinely intrigued by the legend, while others scoffed and dismissed it as mere folklore. I, on the other hand, was watching, right at the corner of the light, a small green and brown figure munching on a Cornish pasty.
It saw me looking and saluted back. I mean, I think now it was giving me the finger, but at the time, it felt like a moment of kinship entirely removed from my typical experience.
We’d exited shortly after, without me even nagging to go to the gift shop. I think Mum and Dad were quietly triumphant about the excursion’s effect. I never told them about what I saw.
And I hadn’t thought about it since.
*
Fucking Knockers. You need to get me out of here.
Due to his uncharacteristic silence during the journey underground, I’d almost forgotten Drynwyn was on my back. “What’s the matter?”
Knockers can put out fire. I’m a flaming sword. Do your fucking sums and, whilst you’re doing so, get me the fuck out of here.
“Calm down. They haven’t even noticed we’re here. Anyway, they’re basically subterranean Smurfs. I’m fairly sure you could take them.”
What’s that? The sound of someone tempting fate in a faintly reckless fashion? Yep, you’d think I would have learned from a lifetime of my words coming back to smack me in the face. But, no. There I am, my mouth writing cheques my body is going to have to cash.
From my side, I heard Sǣþrȳð’ take a sharp intake of breath, and I noticed that all the sounds of mining had stopped.
With a sense of crushing inevitability, I realised that thousands of pairs of luminous eyes were now staring my way.