Nanowrimo Day 1
If anyone is interested at all, this was my first day's writing:
The bottom of a coal mine was so dark that a human mind got sick of nothingness and started inventing things to see in the blackness. There was probably a more scientific explanation for it than that, but it made sense enough for Benjamin Kahl. More sense than the giant chain unwinding next to him made, definitely.
His own human brain knew that it was the noise from the machine around the bend that sounded like giant metal links being dragged away. It was also that brain that was making the shape of them for him to look at since there was nothing else at all to see. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
Even so, things were getting brighter. Something white-gold was flaring from the dark in tiny coronas. He knew it wasn’t really there. His brain and his eyes were playing tricks in the endless dark underneath. It had happened before. He didn’t panic.
It wouldn’t do any good to close his eyes. It wasn’t any darker in there than it was outside. One of the men with him coughed, somewhere to his left. Probably Grady. They were as deep as they could go, the bottom of the shaft, with the whole weight of the world between them and daylight. They had been sent down to set up braces and supports for the machine. The plan was to dig even deeper.
That was insane. It was a sign of how tired they all were that no one was arguing. With all the earth to dig through, why in God’s name were they digging deeper? The company owned miles of land, acres upon acres. Turns out, they only intended to use the one and just go straight down.
Kahl and his team had done as they were told. The supports were in place. The braces were sturdy. They had turned off their lamps to save the oil until the machine made its way down. Then, they could head back up and be away from this until tomorrow. Then it would be Sunday and he could go to church and pray for a better boss and to be kept safe a little while longer. Just long enough to save up to get him and Maggie up north.
She had family there. They worked on the railroad. Hard work, she said, but above ground. You could die from anything anywhere, but at least there you would never run out of air. Or disappear under miles of dirt and rock. Steel instead of coal. Hammer instead of pick. Sunburn instead of black lung. It sounded pretty good seven and a half hours into an eight hour shift.
There was real light now. The machine was finally close enough. Now he could close his eyes and let them adjust. The light soaked through his eyelids. It felt like it was seeping through his skin, into his marrow. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. He might have a fever.
“Kahl…” one of his men said, too softly to be a question. Two more sputtered out his name. Like blackbirds, he thought with a smile. Partly because of the black dust they were covered with and partly because of how they would croak out his name all too often. He opened his eyes and blinked into the white light and saw what they were looking at.
There was a chain, links as big as his body, embedded deep in the wall. The exhaustion in his bones melted into terror. He felt faint, which he had never felt before in his life. It felt like he was dying. He had seen every piece of material and machinery that had ever been used in a coal mine, and knew that there was no possible use for a chain that size. There was no way it could be here, as deep as they were. He couldn’t even imagine how it was humanly possible to make such a thing.
He felt a hand clutch at his sleeve. That had to be Isiah. As big as he was, he was careful never to lay a hand on anyone, only touching their clothes if he wanted something. The touch grounded something in Kahl and cleared his head.
“S’all right, big man,” Kahl heard himself say. The weird weakness was turning into something else. It wasn’t quite anger but it had something betrayed in the mix. “We knew this was stupid. We’re not dying for this thing. Whatever it is. They’re not going to kill us to get it. Everybody, back to the lift. Go. Go!”
His blackbirds obeyed. They hurried past the machine. The workers bringing it down weren’t stupid enough to hang around when the support team was evacuating. They left the machine and followed. Eventually, the lamps burned out and the shaft was left in darkness again. By the time all the arguments and threats and union meetings were over, Kahl and his men refused outright to go back down that particular shaft again.
Most people didn’t know what was so scary about a big chain, but when the team to a man admitted to being terrified of it, respected that much. Maggie got used to having all of them squeezed into her little house. They couldn’t sleep away from each other and were worried if one of their number had to go somewhere alone for awhile. The missing one was just as relieved to get back to them.
She put them up in the loft and on pallets around the floors. Three of them had wives of their own who came too. They had all been put off by whatever this was in the first days, but the longer they were in proximity to the men, the more natural it seemed. There wasn’t any talk of anyone leaving, just of building on so there would be room.
“What’s wrong with us?” Isiah’s wife asked one night after dinner. The seven men all looked up in unison, and then to Kahl.
“It’s that chain,” he said. “That special team that the boss hired to retrieve their machine didn’t come back. I don’t know what happened to them and I don’t want to know. It did something to us, but it let us go because we left it alone.”
“You think they touched it?” asked Rabbit Kennex. His big nervous eyes had gotten him that nickname but he was calmer in their parlor floor than he had ever been in his own house. “We didn’t.”
“We stood next to it,” grumbled Meyer. His old accent flared up when he was upset. “Soaked it up, breathed it in.”
“It’ll be all right,” Maggie said before Kahl could. She looked over her shoulder at him and they shared a thin smile. They were in this together as always. Together was just including a few more people this time. “We’ll work together. The whole town knows that something is up and nobody is blaming us. Nobody wants their men and boys not coming back out of that hole either. They’re glad you warned them.”
“I think,” said Little Al. His English wasn’t the best so he usually kept quiet. They all hushed to hear him when he did speak. “It’s big?” He gestured at the ground all around them. “Under all? Been breathing in all this time? Always.”
They all thought about that for a little while. It was Meyer’s wife who broke the silence with a quiet, but heartfelt “Well, fuck.”
Kahl had no way of knowing that he wasn’t the first. Long before there had been anything else, there had been something chained beneath the mountain. The most ancient of people had wandered deep to hide from the killing winter. A cave that even predators avoided had seemed a blessing until they realized that weren’t alone under the ground.
Their wise people had bled from their eyes and ears and fled screaming into the snow, never to return. They rest hadn’t needed to understand more than that. They left offerings of blood and honey and painted images to honor it. They called it the Great Sleeper and prayed to every other god or spirit they knew that it would never awaken.
Generations upon generations later, other peoples found the remains of the shrines. They had understood as well, and gone no farther. Until one did.
She made it as far as the Sleeper’s hand before her torch went out and her mouth filled with blood. She made her way out in a frenzied madness of terror. The husband she had feared enough to brave the passage underground grabbed her, intending to shake or strike her as he often had. As soon as he touched her skin, the madness jumped to him. He howled with it and his gibbering wife tore him to pieces while the rest of their tribe could only watch.
She ran away, still shrieking. Only when she was well away, did the others dare to speak. She was cursed, clearly, but by what? Was there more coming? A pair of their bravest back tracked her footsteps to the old caves and the old shrines and they saw her bloody handprints on the walls even farther down. They hurried home to tell this and the shamans all nodded as if they understood.
Their gentle tribemate was no longer. She did the will of the Great Sleeper now. They did a ritual to change her name from the woman they had known to whatever she was now. The tribe obediently grieved her loss and acknowledged her new name and her new purpose. They built high fires and sang songs of protection. Warriors were painted with symbols to protect them from madness and evil and sent to follow her at a distance.
She was easy to track. She tore at trees and rocks, the ground and her own body along the way, leaving more red handprints. Animals weren’t afraid of her, the trackers saw. Deer raised their heads as she went by, but didn’t run. Rabbits and squirrels got out of her way, but went about their business. She didn’t seem aware of them either.
More proof, the warriors agreed, that she was no longer walking in this world. She belonged to gods and spirits now. That was why her husband had been killed, that he would have no claim on her.
Days, they tracked her. They were careful to stay far enough back that she wouldn’t be able to reach them without them having time to get away. She lead them over hill and river until they found her in a sunken hollow, digging furiously with what was left of her hands. They were just stumps now, and she was weeping in obvious pain as she dug.
The youngest of the warriors was moved to pity and crept closer. He reached for her and was yanked back by his elders. Did he not remember the fate of her husband? There was too much madness for one body to hold. One touch and it would be him screaming and digging with her. That was why she tried to tear more room into her own flesh, one reasoned. She couldn’t contain it all.
Her digging was slowing. It was less of a frenzy and more of a desperation now. She hadn’t eaten or slept in all the time they had been following her. What would happen if she collapsed? Would the spirit inside her let her die? They knew better to intervene in the will of any god. They had no intention of touching her. If she did die, they reasoned, they could cover her with stones and white shells from the river to keep her in her grave.
It was the youngest one who stepped in again. He called her by name, her old name, which got hisses of disapproval from the others, but he ignored them. He called to her that they had been children together, that she had been friends with his sister. They had watched over him when he played. Did she remember going with them to the creek to hunt crayfish? Did she remember the necklace she left with his sister’s grave when she died in childbirth?
He had heard her whisper, the young warrior said, that she would’ve traded places with his sister gladly. That he had known she was unhappy, but hadn’t know what to do. Her husband hadn’t let him talk to her then. The husband was dead now though. She was free of him. Would she speak to him now?
She stopped digging while he spoke and the others murmured again. If she sprang at them like a wild cat, they would need their spears to keep her back. She couldn’t be allowed to touch them, not even the poor fool who believed he could speak calmly to a driven god.
“You can’t have her,” one of them said. “She belongs to the Sleeper now.”
“I don’t need a wife,” the young one said. “I just want to know.”
“You don’t get to ask for that either,” another spoke up. “With gods and spirits, we don’t dare ask.”
“I do,” the young one said. If he had been any younger, they would’ve swatted him for such insolence. He had passed his warrior’s initiation though, and was as much a man as any of them. They couldn’t punish him without challenge and this was no time for that.
The woman they no longer knew was still crying, moaning softly. She held the remains of her hands to her face and swayed in the hole she had dug. The young man tried again, asking her what she needed. Without answering, she curled up in the hole like a child in a womb. Her sobs sniffled out and all was quiet after awhile.
If anything, it was even worse. Birds still sang. Insects hummed in the tall grass. The handful of warriors waited for anything to happen and nothing did. Eventually, they ventured close enough to look into the whole to see if she was still alive.
She was still breathing, so they pulled back again to decide what to do. They could just leave her. The Sleeper had brought her here for whatever reason. If it was done with her, she could remain. They could find stones to cover her up with now, but that idea didn’t sit well with them.
She would die on her own without the Sleeper, they said. The smell of blood might not attract a predator the way it would with a natural woman. Infection might not set in. She might not starve to death. She might be beyond all that now. They pulled back to a safer distance, set up watch, and set up camp.
The bottom of a coal mine was so dark that a human mind got sick of nothingness and started inventing things to see in the blackness. There was probably a more scientific explanation for it than that, but it made sense enough for Benjamin Kahl. More sense than the giant chain unwinding next to him made, definitely.
His own human brain knew that it was the noise from the machine around the bend that sounded like giant metal links being dragged away. It was also that brain that was making the shape of them for him to look at since there was nothing else at all to see. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
Even so, things were getting brighter. Something white-gold was flaring from the dark in tiny coronas. He knew it wasn’t really there. His brain and his eyes were playing tricks in the endless dark underneath. It had happened before. He didn’t panic.
It wouldn’t do any good to close his eyes. It wasn’t any darker in there than it was outside. One of the men with him coughed, somewhere to his left. Probably Grady. They were as deep as they could go, the bottom of the shaft, with the whole weight of the world between them and daylight. They had been sent down to set up braces and supports for the machine. The plan was to dig even deeper.
That was insane. It was a sign of how tired they all were that no one was arguing. With all the earth to dig through, why in God’s name were they digging deeper? The company owned miles of land, acres upon acres. Turns out, they only intended to use the one and just go straight down.
Kahl and his team had done as they were told. The supports were in place. The braces were sturdy. They had turned off their lamps to save the oil until the machine made its way down. Then, they could head back up and be away from this until tomorrow. Then it would be Sunday and he could go to church and pray for a better boss and to be kept safe a little while longer. Just long enough to save up to get him and Maggie up north.
She had family there. They worked on the railroad. Hard work, she said, but above ground. You could die from anything anywhere, but at least there you would never run out of air. Or disappear under miles of dirt and rock. Steel instead of coal. Hammer instead of pick. Sunburn instead of black lung. It sounded pretty good seven and a half hours into an eight hour shift.
There was real light now. The machine was finally close enough. Now he could close his eyes and let them adjust. The light soaked through his eyelids. It felt like it was seeping through his skin, into his marrow. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. He might have a fever.
“Kahl…” one of his men said, too softly to be a question. Two more sputtered out his name. Like blackbirds, he thought with a smile. Partly because of the black dust they were covered with and partly because of how they would croak out his name all too often. He opened his eyes and blinked into the white light and saw what they were looking at.
There was a chain, links as big as his body, embedded deep in the wall. The exhaustion in his bones melted into terror. He felt faint, which he had never felt before in his life. It felt like he was dying. He had seen every piece of material and machinery that had ever been used in a coal mine, and knew that there was no possible use for a chain that size. There was no way it could be here, as deep as they were. He couldn’t even imagine how it was humanly possible to make such a thing.
He felt a hand clutch at his sleeve. That had to be Isiah. As big as he was, he was careful never to lay a hand on anyone, only touching their clothes if he wanted something. The touch grounded something in Kahl and cleared his head.
“S’all right, big man,” Kahl heard himself say. The weird weakness was turning into something else. It wasn’t quite anger but it had something betrayed in the mix. “We knew this was stupid. We’re not dying for this thing. Whatever it is. They’re not going to kill us to get it. Everybody, back to the lift. Go. Go!”
His blackbirds obeyed. They hurried past the machine. The workers bringing it down weren’t stupid enough to hang around when the support team was evacuating. They left the machine and followed. Eventually, the lamps burned out and the shaft was left in darkness again. By the time all the arguments and threats and union meetings were over, Kahl and his men refused outright to go back down that particular shaft again.
Most people didn’t know what was so scary about a big chain, but when the team to a man admitted to being terrified of it, respected that much. Maggie got used to having all of them squeezed into her little house. They couldn’t sleep away from each other and were worried if one of their number had to go somewhere alone for awhile. The missing one was just as relieved to get back to them.
She put them up in the loft and on pallets around the floors. Three of them had wives of their own who came too. They had all been put off by whatever this was in the first days, but the longer they were in proximity to the men, the more natural it seemed. There wasn’t any talk of anyone leaving, just of building on so there would be room.
“What’s wrong with us?” Isiah’s wife asked one night after dinner. The seven men all looked up in unison, and then to Kahl.
“It’s that chain,” he said. “That special team that the boss hired to retrieve their machine didn’t come back. I don’t know what happened to them and I don’t want to know. It did something to us, but it let us go because we left it alone.”
“You think they touched it?” asked Rabbit Kennex. His big nervous eyes had gotten him that nickname but he was calmer in their parlor floor than he had ever been in his own house. “We didn’t.”
“We stood next to it,” grumbled Meyer. His old accent flared up when he was upset. “Soaked it up, breathed it in.”
“It’ll be all right,” Maggie said before Kahl could. She looked over her shoulder at him and they shared a thin smile. They were in this together as always. Together was just including a few more people this time. “We’ll work together. The whole town knows that something is up and nobody is blaming us. Nobody wants their men and boys not coming back out of that hole either. They’re glad you warned them.”
“I think,” said Little Al. His English wasn’t the best so he usually kept quiet. They all hushed to hear him when he did speak. “It’s big?” He gestured at the ground all around them. “Under all? Been breathing in all this time? Always.”
They all thought about that for a little while. It was Meyer’s wife who broke the silence with a quiet, but heartfelt “Well, fuck.”
Kahl had no way of knowing that he wasn’t the first. Long before there had been anything else, there had been something chained beneath the mountain. The most ancient of people had wandered deep to hide from the killing winter. A cave that even predators avoided had seemed a blessing until they realized that weren’t alone under the ground.
Their wise people had bled from their eyes and ears and fled screaming into the snow, never to return. They rest hadn’t needed to understand more than that. They left offerings of blood and honey and painted images to honor it. They called it the Great Sleeper and prayed to every other god or spirit they knew that it would never awaken.
Generations upon generations later, other peoples found the remains of the shrines. They had understood as well, and gone no farther. Until one did.
She made it as far as the Sleeper’s hand before her torch went out and her mouth filled with blood. She made her way out in a frenzied madness of terror. The husband she had feared enough to brave the passage underground grabbed her, intending to shake or strike her as he often had. As soon as he touched her skin, the madness jumped to him. He howled with it and his gibbering wife tore him to pieces while the rest of their tribe could only watch.
She ran away, still shrieking. Only when she was well away, did the others dare to speak. She was cursed, clearly, but by what? Was there more coming? A pair of their bravest back tracked her footsteps to the old caves and the old shrines and they saw her bloody handprints on the walls even farther down. They hurried home to tell this and the shamans all nodded as if they understood.
Their gentle tribemate was no longer. She did the will of the Great Sleeper now. They did a ritual to change her name from the woman they had known to whatever she was now. The tribe obediently grieved her loss and acknowledged her new name and her new purpose. They built high fires and sang songs of protection. Warriors were painted with symbols to protect them from madness and evil and sent to follow her at a distance.
She was easy to track. She tore at trees and rocks, the ground and her own body along the way, leaving more red handprints. Animals weren’t afraid of her, the trackers saw. Deer raised their heads as she went by, but didn’t run. Rabbits and squirrels got out of her way, but went about their business. She didn’t seem aware of them either.
More proof, the warriors agreed, that she was no longer walking in this world. She belonged to gods and spirits now. That was why her husband had been killed, that he would have no claim on her.
Days, they tracked her. They were careful to stay far enough back that she wouldn’t be able to reach them without them having time to get away. She lead them over hill and river until they found her in a sunken hollow, digging furiously with what was left of her hands. They were just stumps now, and she was weeping in obvious pain as she dug.
The youngest of the warriors was moved to pity and crept closer. He reached for her and was yanked back by his elders. Did he not remember the fate of her husband? There was too much madness for one body to hold. One touch and it would be him screaming and digging with her. That was why she tried to tear more room into her own flesh, one reasoned. She couldn’t contain it all.
Her digging was slowing. It was less of a frenzy and more of a desperation now. She hadn’t eaten or slept in all the time they had been following her. What would happen if she collapsed? Would the spirit inside her let her die? They knew better to intervene in the will of any god. They had no intention of touching her. If she did die, they reasoned, they could cover her with stones and white shells from the river to keep her in her grave.
It was the youngest one who stepped in again. He called her by name, her old name, which got hisses of disapproval from the others, but he ignored them. He called to her that they had been children together, that she had been friends with his sister. They had watched over him when he played. Did she remember going with them to the creek to hunt crayfish? Did she remember the necklace she left with his sister’s grave when she died in childbirth?
He had heard her whisper, the young warrior said, that she would’ve traded places with his sister gladly. That he had known she was unhappy, but hadn’t know what to do. Her husband hadn’t let him talk to her then. The husband was dead now though. She was free of him. Would she speak to him now?
She stopped digging while he spoke and the others murmured again. If she sprang at them like a wild cat, they would need their spears to keep her back. She couldn’t be allowed to touch them, not even the poor fool who believed he could speak calmly to a driven god.
“You can’t have her,” one of them said. “She belongs to the Sleeper now.”
“I don’t need a wife,” the young one said. “I just want to know.”
“You don’t get to ask for that either,” another spoke up. “With gods and spirits, we don’t dare ask.”
“I do,” the young one said. If he had been any younger, they would’ve swatted him for such insolence. He had passed his warrior’s initiation though, and was as much a man as any of them. They couldn’t punish him without challenge and this was no time for that.
The woman they no longer knew was still crying, moaning softly. She held the remains of her hands to her face and swayed in the hole she had dug. The young man tried again, asking her what she needed. Without answering, she curled up in the hole like a child in a womb. Her sobs sniffled out and all was quiet after awhile.
If anything, it was even worse. Birds still sang. Insects hummed in the tall grass. The handful of warriors waited for anything to happen and nothing did. Eventually, they ventured close enough to look into the whole to see if she was still alive.
She was still breathing, so they pulled back again to decide what to do. They could just leave her. The Sleeper had brought her here for whatever reason. If it was done with her, she could remain. They could find stones to cover her up with now, but that idea didn’t sit well with them.
She would die on her own without the Sleeper, they said. The smell of blood might not attract a predator the way it would with a natural woman. Infection might not set in. She might not starve to death. She might be beyond all that now. They pulled back to a safer distance, set up watch, and set up camp.