Page 36 of This Stays Between Us
For the first time I think of how dangerous this is. If whoever killed Phoebe really did murder Hari to keep her silent about what she knows, then what’s to stop them from doing the same to me? To stop me from sniffing around?
I consider turning back, but I stop myself. I don’t know when elseI’ll get this opportunity. And I need to see the mine for myself, to confront what I did head-on.
Finally, after several more minutes of walking, I look up and see it.
Memories rush back. The “field trip” Nick Gould took us on one of our first afternoons in Jagged Rock, leading us through the unbearable heat, every one of us growing sulkier as we longed for the cool tropical breeze of the Whitsunday Islands we’d left days before, grief already clinging to us over what happened to Tomas. Until we reached it: the bushland stopped abruptly, giving way to bare ground strewn with discarded rusted metal beams. The only structure aboveground was a tall copper-colored tower that stretched up to the sun.
But as we got closer, I saw something else. A small door, hardly noticeable astride the tower and tall enough for a person to get through only if they hunched over.
Nick explained it as the entrance to the mine, the heart of Jagged Rock, a city that had forged a living in silver, until even that dried up. Nick stood in front of the small door that looked like something out ofAlice in Wonderlandand recounted the city’s history. The hope that had surrounded the mine, the locals putting everything they had into building a city that never had a future.
“This here door leads to nearly three kilometers of winding underground mine shafts, none of which are safe to go into. Not that they were back in the late 1800s either. Nearly a hundred miners died down there, from suffocation or collapsed shafts. Some got lost, and no one found ’em til too late. After they died from lack of water.”
I don’t know if it was the dark history or the blasé way Nick recounted it, but I wasn’t able to pull my eyes from that mine door. Glancing over at Phoebe, I saw her doing the same. Her eyes wide, her face a mural of pain. As if she could somehow foresee what was coming.
Today, the mine is different. The tower still sits next to the warped metal door, which sticks up out of the ground like the head of a snake. But it’s all wrong. Rather than the flat land from ten years ago, unassuming aside from the entrance, the entire area is cratered, like the remnants of a bomb site. The once hidden mine shafts—at least the shallowest of them—have been dug up, exposed to the world like metallic entrails. A lethal-looking maze.
I suck in a breath at the sight of it, heavy and ominous, and pause until my eyes take in the signs of human life. The piles of dirt stacked in random locations among the shafts, as though whatever construction company was working here abandoned their project as soon as they unearthed Phoebe’s remains; a string of discarded caution tape tied around a branch of the singular tree that seems to have escaped construction.
Seeing everything already torn up, for as far as the eye can see, I know any chance is gone of finding the knife around this area. The realization carves a hollow feeling in my gut.
But I don’t leave. Instead, I inch closer towards the mine as though I’m drawn to it. Ignoring the sign at the lip of the crater declaring the land a construction site and unsafe for entry, I scoot down until I’m seated, legs hanging, and drop the few feet, landing hard.
I wipe the dirt off on my jeans and head towards the tower, keeping the entrance to the mine in my sight. It’s deathly quiet here, no sound other than the occasional caw of a raven from somewhere nearby. Despite the earlier chill, the sun is rising steadily, and I feel a drop of sweat sneak down my spine as I walk.
And suddenly, I’m in front of it. The metal door rests on its hinges, until all at once it slams shut, a gust of wind sending it crashing against its frame. That must have been the noise I heard earlier, not a gunshot after all. I take a deep breath and yank the door open. I’m instantly hit with the darkness of it, and the subterranean scent invades my nostrils.
My feet instinctively move backwards, but I force myself to walk. One step in, two.
I look around as I go, the metal walls caked in red dirt, the stairs hard and unyielding. The last sights Phoebe ever saw.
I picture her here, injured, screaming for someone to help her. While I was outside, free. The guilt returns then, eradicating everything else in my body like lava.
Until I feel something else. A presence a few feet in front of me.
I blink hard and squint my eyes, but the sunlight doesn’t reach this far into the mine. Everything is cloaked in darkness, so all I can make out is a form. Someone or something bigger, taller than me. And then I hear it. The soft short breaths of someone trying to be silent.
In the time it takes me to realize I’m in danger, a force slams into my abdomen, knocking me down. The air shoots from my lungs as my spine connects with the stairs. The pain is blinding.
Still, I feel the figure step over me, squeezing by in the narrow stairway.
I force my eyes open, but it’s futile. All I see is a blur. I reach my hand out to make contact, but they’re already gone.
I try to force myself up, but before I can, I hear awhoosh.
My body recognizes it before my mind does, blood pulsing in my ears.
The door to the mine shaft.
Instantly, what little light the outside world afforded is snuffed out. The darkness is smothering.
I throw myself up the few steps, but as I do, I hear a sound that stops me cold.
The door latching.
I’m trapped in here.
16
