Inhabited Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One - Preface

  Chapter Two - Basement

  Chapter Three - Class

  Chapter Four - Mission

  Chapter Five - Excursion

  Chapter Six - Entrance

  Chapter Seven - Procedure

  Chapter Eight - Cave

  Chapter Nine - Lost

  Chapter Ten - Gold

  Chapter Eleven - Clarity

  Chapter Twelve - Control

  Chapter Thirteen - Split

  Chapter Fourteen - Mining

  Chapter Fifteen - Puzzle

  Chapter Sixteen - Rescue

  Chapter Seventeen - Ledge

  Chapter Eighteen - Grounded

  Chapter Nineteen - Darkness

  Chapter Twenty - Together

  Chapter Twenty-One - Alone

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Glow

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Evidence

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Voices

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Doubt

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Hike

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Deduction

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Choices

  Chapter Thirty - Entrance

  Chapter Thirty-One - Exit

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Reunion

  Chapter Thirty-Three - Tracking

  Chapter Thirty-Four - Hope

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Night

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Darkness

  Chapter Thirty-Seven - Survival

  Chapter Thirty-Eight - Stuck

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - Trap

  Chapter Forty - Road

  Chapter Forty-One - Observation

  Chapter Forty-Two - Searching

  Chapter Forty-Three - Passage

  Chapter Forty-Four - Rolling

  Chapter Forty-Five - Reality

  Chapter Forty-Six - Gone

  Chapter Forty-Seven - Abandoned

  Chapter Forty-Eight - Under

  Chapter Forty-Nine - Battlefield

  Chapter Fifty - Escape

  Chapter Fifty-One - Confrontation

  Chapter Fifty-Two - Bomb

  Chapter Fifty-Three - Quake

  Chapter Fifty-Four - Lesson

  Chapter Fifty-Five - Free

  Chapter Fifty-Six - Fight

  Chapter Fifty-Seven - Shadow

  Chapter Fifty-Eight - Choice

  Chapter Fifty-Nine - Duty

  About

  More by Ike - The Claiming

  More by Ike - Extinct

  More by Ike - The Hunting Tree

  More by Ike - Migrators

  More by Ike - Transcription

  More by Ike - The Vivisectionist

  More by Ike - Lies of the Prophet

  More by Ike - Skillful Death

  More by Ike - Camp Sacrifice

  INHABITED

  BY

  IKE HAMILL

  WWW.IKEHAMILL.COM

  Dedication:

  For my mother, whose help was invaluable.

  My deepest gratitude to Karen Atkinson, Lisa Harper, and Jayn Olinick who provided wonderful assistance editing this book.

  Special Thanks:

  Cover design by BelleDesign [BelleDesign.org]

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events have been fabricated only to entertain. If they resemble any facts in any way, I’d be completely shocked. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of Ike Hamill. Unless, of course, you intend to quote a section of the book in order to illustrate how awesome it is. In that case, go ahead. Copyright © 2015 by Ike Hamill. All rights reserved. (3)

  Chapter One — Preface

  1978

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  “Don’t move,” Clarence whispered. He blinked his eyes and then returned them to wide open. It didn’t help. He had never experienced a black so profound. There was nothing to see.

  “I can get us out,” Joan said. She sounded perfectly calm and rational. “If we follow the right wall until we get to the big gap, all we have to do is…”

  “Shh!” Clarence said. He reached out to touch her, but his hand found nothing but emptiness.

  “Is this some ruse to frighten me?” she asked. Her voice sounded like it was only inches from his face. Something about the carved rock around them reflected the sound and played tricks on his ears. “I have three older brothers. When I was little, they used to lock me in the cellar with the lights off to try to frighten me. It never worked.”

  “Listen,” Clarence said. He returned his voice to a whisper. “Something shut off our lights. Something. It wasn’t me, and I’m assuming it wasn’t you. I brought a lighter, matches, a flashlight, and a damn candle, but those are all gone. Unless you have the bag, then maybe that same something took our backup lights as well.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she said. For the first time, she sounded uncertain. The confidence returned to her voice quickly. “Regardless, sight is only one sense. I can still hear, and I can still feel. This isn’t a cave, where we have to be concerned about slipping down into some endless chasm. All we have to do is follow the walls until we get out. You said it yourself—this mine isn’t even very deep.”

  “No,” Clarence said. “What I said was that this is a shallow ore chute. Ore was dropped in from above and carted out through here. As chutes go, it’s not very deep but it does connect to the rest of the mine.”

  “Connects how?”

  “Up through a vertical shaft.”

  “Oh!” Joan said, giving a little laugh. “So as long as we don’t stumble up a vertical shaft, I think we’re okay.”

  Clarence heard the slide of her shirtsleeve just before her hand grabbed his. He managed to not scream or jerk away. He yielded to the tug of her warm hand.

  “Come on,” she said. I can get us out of here.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  Clarence let his feet slip forward over the rocky floor. There were puddles in places, but he had given up on dry feet some time ago. Besides, he had fresh shoes and socks out in the car. He stumbled on a rock and had to lean on her grip to stay upright. At the moment, nothing was more important than the feel of his hand in hers. If he had only known that utter darkness was what it would take to feel her touch, he would have dashed his light against a rock twenty minutes ago.

  Clarence ran into her back.

  “Shhh!” she said, stealing his line. He heard her hair swoosh as she turned her head from side to side.

  “What?” he whispered. He honestly didn’t care. For the first time in a long time he thought he had a shot at something more than friendship with Joan, and that was way more important than being a hundred yards down an ore chute. After all, it wasn’t even a very deep chute. Holding hands in the dark wasn’t much, but it was more than he had expected.

  “I guess it’s nothing,” she said. She shuffled forward a few more feet and then stopped again. This time, she squeezed his hand to alert him to stop, instead of letting him run into her. “Here’s the gap.”

  “What?”

  “The gap in the wall. When we came in, there was that room on our left. If we just follow straight across this gap, we should pick up the other wall, right? I mean, correct?” She laughed at her own confusing statement.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said. But was she sure? It was way too soon to find that gap. If they were passing the room, then they were close to the entrance. This close to the entrance and they should be able to see moonlight. His eyes were still registering exactly nothing.

  He started forward again when she tugged on his hand.

  “Oh!” Joan said. She stopped once more. “I think I found the bag.” Her hand descended as she knelt down. He heard her fumbling with so
mething for several seconds. “No. It’s not the bag. It feels like a shirt or something? Do you remember passing a shirt?”

  “No,” Clarence said.

  “Gross,” she said. She pulled on his hand more as she lowered down. Clarence heard water flowing and wondered what she was up to. Her grip tightened and then slacked. She did it again and then her hand went completely limp.

  In the dark, Clarence tilted his head and smiled as he wondered what she was up to.

  “Joan?” he whispered. “Joan!”

  He tugged at her arm. She offered no resistance.

  Clarence knelt and took her hand in both of his. The fingers didn’t grip back. He worked his other hand over to her shoulder and shook. From what he could tell, she was basically laying on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. His smile became expectant. He moved his hand up her shoulder and towards her face. She didn’t stop him. He pictured her in the dark, laying down, and waiting for his touch.

  He reached his shaking hand out towards her chest. Even if she objected and pulled away, he would still get the thrill of one fleeting touch. It was worth the risk. When his hand landed on her soft bosom, she didn’t react at all.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  “Joan?” he asked. The corners of his mouth began to turn down. He felt on her wrist for a pulse—it was weak. He moved his hand up to her neck to check her pulse there. Perhaps she was having an episode and needed resuscitation.

  When his hand touched her neck, Clarence froze. Her skin had been parted. So had the muscle and sinew underneath. His hand touched an artery that was pumping out the last of her blood. Clarence pressed his head down to her chest and heard the final beat of her heart.

  He popped his head back up and spun it around rapidly, desperate for any light or sound. He heard nothing but his own breathing and his own hammering heart. Clarence let go of her hand and rose silently to his feet. His knee clicked and inside his head he cursed the noise. He didn’t have time to worry about her body, and he certainly didn’t have time to panic. Something was loose in the mine and he would be its next victim if he didn’t act decisively.

  First things first—he had lost his sense of direction and no longer had any idea which way was out.

  Clarence patted his pockets. He had his keys, a knife, and some change. Everything else was back in the car. He opened the pocketknife and held it out against the dark. With his other hand, the hand sticky with blood, he used two fingers to pull a single coin from his pocket. He tossed it towards where he thought the wall might be. The coin sailed through the air and reported back with a little clang. Clarence tried to get a sense of the place based on the reverberation of the noise. He also hoped that the sound might draw away whatever had… He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Joan.

  He slid a foot to his left. There was a wall over there somewhere. Clarence shifted his weight and moved his right foot to join the first. He repeated the process several times. Each time, he expected the wall. He remained disappointed for a while.

  The toe of Clarence’s sneaker finally scraped on the rock wall.

  He heard another sound immediately after. From off to his right, he heard something that sounded liked a breathy sigh. Clarence froze. He closed his eyes to the darkness.

  With calm, even breaths, he set his mind to the problem. He remembered the details of their entry. They had walked in casually, pointing their headlights at chains hanging from the supports, looking at the graffiti from a thousand trespassing vandals. She had never been in a mine before, and she was thrilled by every detail. Clarence had played the magnanimous guide. He had explored many abandoned mines. Back East, he had been a caver. Mines were off-limits in the Smokey Mountains because they would fill up with poisonous gasses. Out here, they were fair game.

  They had made two turns. The shaft turned left and then right. There was one big room to the side. Clarence pictured it from the top down, like a map. He imagined the two of them going deeper and deeper, around the two turns, until both of their lights had gone out for no reason. At first, only Joan’s light had gone dark. Clarence moved to help her. A second later, his had gone out too.

  He pictured where they had stood and then tried to guess the direction they had gone after she took his hand.

  Clarence nodded to himself in the dark.

  He figured it out. If they had headed the wrong direction, her right hand would have lost the wall quickly as the tunnel curved away. That’s what happened. She had assumed that they were passing by the big room, when instead they were going deeper into the shaft.

  Clarence reached up and touched the wall. He knew what he had to do.

  He turned around and began a very slow walk away from Joan. He moved like Scooby and Shaggy would when they were trying to tiptoe around a ghost. He reached out, toe first, and set his foot down like he was trying to balance on eggshells without breaking them.

  Clarence was rewarded with silence. Except for his breathing, he was unable to detect the sound of his own movement.

  He heard another sigh behind him and he froze. The sound was from back down the shaft. He decided to sacrifice some of his stealth for speed.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  Clarence gained confidence as he strode into the dark. He trailed his fingers down the rough wall to make sure he kept going in the correct direction. Using his mental map of the mine, Clarence held his other hand out in front. He led with the knife. He expected to run into…

  He found it! Now he was certain that he was on the right trail. His hand found the wall before his face hit it. All he had to do was follow this shaft for a little bit and then he could make his final turn. Clarence held himself to a medium pace. He only slowed down when he scuffed his foot. He still didn’t think he could afford to make that much noise.

  His wall ran out. This was more good news. That meant he just had to make one more turn. Everything was lining up. Clarence wanted to run, but this would be the worst time. It was in this shaft that chains hung down from some of the support beams. If he ran into one of those, it would make a terrible racket. He brushed by one of the posts and could picture how it would look. The ground got softer towards the mouth of the mine and these supporting arches were spaced every ten to fifteen feet.

  Clarence blinked and peered as he walked. He imagined a dark-blue rectangle of night sky in the distance, but it could just be random firings of his optic nerve. The only way to tell would be to keep going.

  After two more support columns, he was sure of it. There was the faint glow of moonlight in the distance. He could see the hanging shapes of a couple of the chains. As long as he kept close to the wall, he might be able to run without hitting them.

  He ran out of wall.

  Clarence stopped. It was the room. There was a gap in the wall where the shaft led to the big room. He’d heard that at one time the room had stored supplies for the civil defense shelter. If that was true, the supplies had been completely cleared out. He had searched every corner of the room and never found anything more substantial than the skeleton of a bat.

  Compared to the glow at the end of the shaft, the room was a return to pure black. He didn’t like standing next to it. It felt as dangerous as the deep darkness behind him. Clarence rushed past the opening to the room and his hand found the wall again on the far side. He rushed to be closer to the moonlight. Soon, he could see the shadow his legs were casting on the mine floor. His heart soared to be so close to freedom.

  His hand rested on the final support post, just below the “No Trespassing” sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. Clarence turned back to look into the darkness. Guilt swept through him. Somewhere back there, Joan was lying on the floor of the mine in the dark.

  She had committed the crime of curiosity. Was he even sure she was dead?

  He shook his head. Of course he was sure. Her heart had stopped and her blood had been everywhere. He had touched it and smelled it.

  Maybe it was a joke.

&
nbsp; If so, it was a very elaborate and mean joke. Hell, if she was going to play a joke like that, she deserved to be left in the mine. His mind was made up—he would drive home as fast as he could and he would wake up his father. His old man worked for the fire department, but he was nearly a doctor. If anyone could help Joan, it was him.

  Clarence folded his knife and tucked it back into his pocket. He reached for his keys. They were gone. A thin film of sweat jumped instantly to his skin and Clarence began to frantically pat his pockets. He looked back into the black hole of the mine and remembered where he’d last had them. He had been standing right next to Joan’s body. There was no way he could go back. Even if there was nothing in there, even if Joan’s death had been a complete accident, he would never find his keys in the dark.

  With desperation taking over, he shoved his sticky hand deep into his front pocket. Hope washed through his veins when his fingers found something hard. Below the change, he found his keys, right where he had left them. Clarence fished them out and squeezed them tight in his fist. He turned towards the trail that led to where he had parked.

  He nearly made it.

  Clarence took one step out into the safety of the night before the thing slinked out of the dark and looped twice around his ankle. It jerked back, sending Clarence towards the ground. He smacked into the hard rock and the keys bounced from his grip. He reached for them as his body was dragged backwards into the darkness of the mine.

  Chapter Two — Basement

  YEARS LATER…

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  “Where else?” Justin asked.

  “I don’t know… Anywhere?” Travis asked.

  Justin shook his head. He pushed open the gate and let the spring pull it back. As he descended the concrete steps, he felt the difference in temperature. It was a stifling night. It almost hurt to breathe the hot air. He knocked twice on the basement door.