Down in the Holler: The Shaft

Episode XI

This is Down in the Holler, a serial speculative mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective.

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← In Episode X: The Forest, against her better judgment, Melissa Sloan went into the mountains with Granger.

Judith woke with a scream clawing her throat. She bolted upright, thrashing her legs free of her tangled, sweat-soaked sheets.

Grabbing at her bedside lamp, she missed and knocked it over with a dull thump. She snatched her phone instead, yanked it free of its charger, turned on the flashlight, and shone it around her still, quiet room.

Her breaths coming in ragged gasps, she checked the time.

10:03pm.

She hadn’t been asleep for long, hardly more than thirty minutes.

It was as though Autumn had been lying in wait, ready to pounce into her dreams.

With shaking hands, Judith dialed.

Tim answered on the second ring. “Well, hello.” His voice was relaxed, untired, as though he was still going about the normal course of his evening, sleep still a distant reality. “I didn’t expect to hear from you this time of night.”

“Granger’s going to kill Melissa. You need to go to his house. They might still be there, but he’s taking her up in the mountains –”

“Hang on.” The smile was gone from his voice, but still he spoke slowly. “Take a breath, slow down, and tell me what happened.”

“I saw it, in a vision. I saw him take Melissa up into the mountains, by an old mine –” Squeezing her hand into a fist, Judith stabbed her palm with her fingernails and forced a breath into her lungs. “I don’t know if it’s happening now, or if it’s going to happen or if she’s already –” She swallowed the words, her throat suddenly tight.

“I’ll do a drive-by.” Like an inverse function undoing the jagged shrillness of her voice, Tim’s tone went down, smoother and lower and calmer. “I’ll go by their house and see if they’re there, if anything’s suspicious.”

“I’m coming.” Judith scrambled out of bed, righted her bedside lamp, and snatched mismatched clothing from her closet.

“You’re two hours away. Just try to go to sleep and get some rest. Or, if you can’t sleep, watch some TV or something. I’ll call you and let you know what I see when I get there.”

“I’m coming.” Judith yanked her legs through her jeans and pulled a sweatshirt over her pajama shirt.

“Judith –”

“He took her up in the mountains, where there are no houses and no roads. He parked his car in the woods and started walking. There is no way you’ll be able to find them without me.”

“You don’t sound like you’re in any state to drive for two hours in the dark.”

“I’m coming.” Judith hung up the phone. Running out of her bedroom and through her darkened house, she snatched her keys and purse from their respective hooks, threw open the front door, and darted out into the night.

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The clustered lights of downtown Lexington had given way to the duller glow of nighttime suburbia by the time Judith’s phone rang.

“They’re at the house,” Tim said. “I can see their silhouettes through the window.”

“Then it hasn’t happened yet.” The knot in Judith’s chest released, just slightly. She sped down the quiet highway, southeast toward Salt Fork. “But he’s planning it.”

“I’ll stay and keep an eye on the house for a while.”

Judith clutched the steering wheel tighter. “I’m not making this up.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Not skeptical of you,” Tim said, and in the crackle of his phone’s spotty reception, Judith thought she detected a stifled sigh. “You said your visions aren’t always completely accurate. You were very upfront about your margin of error.”

“I saw it. If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s going to. It was –” Judith faltered at the heat in her voice. Where was her notebook? Had she left it lying on her bedside table? Had she written down the vision or anything about it? Had she really let her objectivity evaporate at the first sign of danger? “It felt urgent. Imminent.”

“Look, I’ll stay as long as I can. But if I get called out for an emergency, I’m going to have to leave.”

“Don’t you have a deputy or someone who can stay and keep watch?”

Tim chuckled with an unconcealed sigh. “I’m supposed to. His wife had twins a while ago, then he hurt his back and has been out on short-term disability for a bit without a replacement. Small county problems. I can call him in an emergency, but –”

“He won’t be very helpful if anything happens with Granger.”

“Exactly. And, unless I know for sure that there’s an emergency, I don’t want to wake him up in the middle of the night if I don’t have to.”

“What about sheriffs in neighboring counties?”

“If this escalates to an emergency, then, sure, I can call them. But if I called them now and asked them to stake out a house in the middle of the night because my favorite psychic told me a crime was going to be committed, they’d chew my ear off.”

“You can tell them my accuracy rate. And I’ll email you my spreadsheets. There are several pages of graphs, and some of them are slightly on the complex side. But there’s a very clear, color-coded key –”

“Judith, even with all the spreadsheets in the world, if I mention the word psychic to Sheriff Quinn in Bayton County, there’s no way he’s going to leave his house to drive all the way out here.”

Judith pressed harder on the gas, her stomach growing hot with anxious rage.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Tim said, his voice, taking back the hint of a smile. “Just don’t drive like a maniac, please. If you’re going to insist on coming, then stay safe and get here in one piece. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Again, Judith hung up the phone.

The city lights grew sparser, the cloudy night swallowing the moon and stars, shrouding the sky in blackness.

It hadn’t been just a dream. It hadn’t. The darkness had been too intense, the evil too visceral. There had been intent – an old mine, its shaft dropping deep into the mountainside – and there had been fear too – a panicked, twisted fear, writhing through the vision like a sickness.

But what if it wasn’t tonight?

What if she drove two hours, forced Tim to stake out Granger’s house all night – all for nothing? And then, on another dark night, Granger killed Melissa in silence, in secret, and she disappeared without a trace, just like Autumn.

What if, yet again, Judith knew what had happened, but couldn’t prove it?

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Gas station coffee burned Judith’s tongue but kept her eyes propped open through miles and miles of treacherous, winding roads.

Almost there, she was almost there.

Her phone rang again, lighting up the dashboard of her car and startling her from her thoughts.

“Hello?”

“Tell me everything you saw in your vision.” Tim’s voice was still low, still slow, but there was a tightness now, a coiled intensity that sent a hot jolt of fear crackling down Judith’s spine.

“What happened?”

“I got a call. A scuffle in a bar. Everyone had cooled off by the time I got there, everything’s fine, but I was gone for about thirty minutes.”

Her fear turned cold, chilling Judith’s skin. “Where’s Granger?”

“The house is dark, and the truck is gone.”

“No.”

“I knocked on the door, and no one answered.”

Judith drove faster. She whirled back through what she could remember of the vision, the nightmare. Mountain road, thick forest, pressing darkness, the warped boards blocking an old mine shaft. Murder, pulsing in a feverish heartbeat.

“He’s going to dump her body in an abandoned mine shaft,” she said.

“Did you see any identifying markers? Anything that could tell where it is?”

“How many abandoned mines are there near Salt Fork?”

“This is coal country, has been for two hundred years. There are abandoned mines all over these mountains. Some of them are so old we don’t even have records for them.”

“I’m almost there.” Judith sped up, flying around bends in the road. “I can help once I’m there. Just wait for me.”

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Tim was pacing beside his sheriff’s car when Judith pulled up outside Granger and Melissa’s run-down house, with its overgrown lawn and white vinyl siding.

Judith sprang out of her car and locked the door with a beep. “I need you to drive where I tell you to.”

“Drive where?”

“And I need you to be quiet for a minute. Please.”

Closing her eyes, Judith pressed her palms together and held them out in front of her. Granger – where did you go?

Calming her anxious breaths, Judith turned in a slow circle, tuning her thoughts and sensations on Granger, on whatever trail he left behind.

Judith’s pounding heartbeat thudded, but as her breathing quieted, her other senses came to life.

Her fingertips dipped suddenly with a strange gravity, and Judith opened her eyes. “That way.” She pointed toward the distance, where the black mountains were indistinguishable from the starless sky.

Judith pulled on the passenger’s side handle of the sheriff’s car, but it didn’t budge. Yanking his keys from his pocket, Tim unlocked the doors and slid into the driver’s seat.

“Do you know a road that gets up to the mountains that way?” Judith said, climbing into the car.

“Don’t know that I’d call it a road.” Tim swung the car around and sped out of the small neighborhood toward the looming dark of the hills. “What was that you did just now, back there?”

“Dowsing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dowsing.”

“Dousing? Like dumping water on somebody?”

“No,” Judith said. “The s is voiced, like a z. Dowsing. It’s used to find things.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Only when I’m looking for misplaced keys or my phone.”

Tim was silent for a moment. “This is a little different.”

“I know.” Sharpness stabbed into Judith’s voice, and she rubbed her hands on her knees.

The mountains and the darkness and Melissa and the baby and Granger – she had seen the bloodstained thoughts, felt the strangled, distorted rage and fear, the savage, discordant violence.

Judith pressed her hands together again, holding them out in front of her. “This way. Keep going this way.”

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The road turned to dirt, then to the bone-shaking jostle of land not meant for vehicles. Tim’s car struggled and groaned its way up the claustrophobic hillside, the trees hemming them in, nearly blocking their path.

Judith bit her lip and glanced again at the clock.

12:59am.

“We won’t be able to drive much further,” Tim said, the car’s dashboard lighting up his grim face.

“They’re close,” Judith whispered. “I think.”

A shiver rolled through her. What if she was wrong? What if they were on another mountainside, beside a different mine –

Another body they’d never find –

“Wait.” Tim slowed the car and pointed straight ahead. “Look at that.”

Judith squinted through the darkness and the glare of the car’s headlights, and gasped.

There, in the bright yellow glow of the car’s light, was Granger’s dark red truck.

“I’m calling Sheriff Quinn.” Tim pulled out his phone.

During his quick, hushed conversation, Judith closed her eyes and reached out for Granger, for Melissa, though she struggled to see or hear anything over her own thudding heartbeat.

“He’s on his way. ” Pulling out a flashlight, Tim turned off the car, plunging them into dark silence. “Stay in the car.”

“They hiked up the mountain. You won’t be able to find them without me.”

With a click, the white beam of a flashlight lit the car. “I won’t take a civilian.”

“You said I’m a volunteer cold case investigator.”

“You’re still a civilian. I won’t take you into a dangerous situation.” Tim reached for the door handle.

“Do you know where the mine shaft is?”

“No, but you can point me in the right direction, can’t you?”

“It could be another mile up the mountain, and you could get turned around. If you don’t have me with you, your chances of finding them are miniscule.”

Tim let out a tight breath. The dead silence of the moonless woods stretched between them, filling the car.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay. Just hang on.” Tim opened the car door and crept to the trunk. He returned and pushed a thick, heavy bundle toward Judith. “But you’re wearing this. And if you hear or see anything, or if I tell you to – and I mean the moment I tell you to – drop to the ground and lie on your stomach. Got it?”

“Is this your only vest?”

“If you’re coming, you’re wearing it.”

Judith slipped the dense vest over her head. She pulled on the straps to tighten them, but still it hung like a box on her torso. She pointed to the gaping armholes, too big for her. “Does this affect the structural function of a Kevlar vest?”

“It’s still better than nothing.”

Behind the stark beam of the flashlight, Tim pushed through the underbrush, following Judith’s directions. She walked behind, trying to place her feet in the same places he did as she stepped into impenetrable darkness amid the squelch of rain-damp leaves.

Her foot caught on something in the blackness, and she pitched forward with a gasp. Tim jerked around and grabbed her arm, then released a breath of relief when the flashlight showed nothing more dangerous than a tangle of roots. “Try to stay close so you can see the light,” he murmured. “We need to stay quiet. We going the right way?”

Judith held her hands out in front of her again, turning until they dipped just slightly toward the ground with a soft, unearthly tug.

“No.” She pointed a different direction into the darkness. “That way.”

The inky night loomed around Judith on every side, closing in everywhere except for the little beam of light that illuminated the trees and the grasping bushes, casting an ambient glow on Tim’s face, his smile vanished and his jaw tight.

Judith was acclimated to the ever-present hum of city traffic and electricity, but the silence of the forest was thick, eerie, foreign to her ears. Their cautious footsteps were the only noise in the unsettling soundlessness, as though even the owls and deer and bats hid from the depths of the starless darkness.

Somewhere in the distance came the whisper of rustling leaves. The black night amplified every sound, warping it to monstrous intensity.

Icy fear prickled over Judith’s skin. What was she doing here? She was a software developer from the city. She had no place here in the haunting stillness, stalking a murderer.

A wailing shriek stabbed through the dark silence. Close, with a strange echo, somewhere just up the hill.

Tim bolted into the forest, his hand moving to his gun.

Her only source of light disappearing into the dense black woods, Judith’s lungs clenched inward, and her throat tightened. Stumbling, she staggered through the trees after Tim.

The wailing cut short, and a new sound grew louder as Judith scrambled up the steep slope.

Whimpering sobs, barely audible.

Tim crouched on the hillside, visible only by the glow of his flashlight, held low to the ground to conceal its beam.

At a sharp gesture from Tim, Judith dropped to her stomach on the damp earth.

Tim crept forward, flashlight in one hand and his gun clutched in the other.

There it was – a cave. The mine entrance, its boards loose and broken and warped with age.

The suffocating, sickly-sweet reek of decaying leaves, so close to Judith’s face, pushed itself ever closer in the utter darkness.

Darting forward into the tunnel, Tim disappeared from sight, but his voice bounded off the stony cavern. “Sheriff! Put your hands in the air!”

Judith heard him now, the soldier. A strange, sharp-edged echo of the man who’d eaten ice cream and laughed while rocking a rope bridge.

Closing her eyes, Judith quieted her breath, trying not to smell the leaf corpses around and beneath her, squirming their scent down her nose and throat.

Granger, Melissa, Tim –

Color and sound burst into Judith’s mind, pulsating with dread.

Tim, gun drawn, flashlight pinned on Granger.

Granger, the barrel of his gun on Melissa’s stomach.

Melissa, body racked with sobs, frozen between fear and frenzy.

Rage lashing out from Granger like tongues of flame, indiscriminate – the poisoned spawn of a hateful man.

A familiar icy shiver rolled through Judith, her fingertips going numb. Something – something strong and dark and desperate – pushed into her vision, and the image stuttered, speeding up like a film reel. Then it stopped, the image frozen –

Melissa on the ground, scarlet splattered in the heart of the mountain.

No – it wasn’t real. No one had pulled a trigger yet.

Judith clenched her shaking hands, shoving back against the force hijacking her vision.

In a whirl, the image cleared again.

Tim speaking, his voice muffled as though underwater.

Granger, gun still pushing against Melissa, backing deeper into the tunnel.

Twisted fear, knotted and sharp as barbed wire, winding around Granger, stabbing into him and drawing out ichor, black and thick and guilty – his father’s, and his, and now the same sickened, cursed blood preparing to force itself on the world again.

The poisoned spawn of a hateful man.

Judith’s eyes flew open.

Whatever Tim was saying, it wasn’t working.

The chill came again like a prodding, but Judith pressed herself harder against the damp ground.

She was supposed to stay here. That was the plan. She’d done what she could; anything else would make her a liability, a danger to herself, to Tim, to Melissa.

Cold enveloped her, and Judith reflexively squinted through the inky blackness for Autumn. But there was nothing.

Ahead of her came the muffled rumble of raised voices. They couldn’t be too far inside the cave.

Again an image forced into Judith’s mind – the flash of a gun, lightning in the stony tunnel, a body falling in a spray of blood.

Scrambling to her feet, Judith clawed up the last slope of the hillside, the voices rising as she went.

She crested the hill and crept through the inky blackness toward the hole that stabbed into the bowels of the mountain, lit from inside with the dim, shaking glow of a flashlight bouncing off the stone walls.

“Sheriff, you come any closer, an’ I pull this trigger right now!” Granger’s voice was loud and ragged, panicking and furious, a dangerous combination.

Judith dropped to her stomach again, and a cascade of pebbles shook loose beneath her, rolling and clinking against each other down the slope.

“Who’s out there?” Granger’s voice came again.

Judith’s breath caught, her throat clenching. From the ground, she could see into the cave – the beam of Tim’s flashlight trained on Granger, Melissa’s tear-stained face.

In the quivering light, Granger’s frantic eyes searched outside the mouth of the cave, distracted for a moment from Tim and his gun.

He stared past Tim, past the tunnel, past Judith huddling on the ground, out toward the still, black woods.

An icy gust whooshed past Judith, raising the hairs along her arm.

A hum like the droning of wasps filled Judith’s ears, and suddenly Granger’s face changed.

His eyes widened, his mouth dropping open.

He stumbled back from Melissa in a clawing panic, his mouth rounded in a scream Judith couldn’t hear over the noise that flooded her mind. Granger fled, staggering further into the tunnel, outside the reach of Tim’s flashlight.

Tim rushed forward, pushing Melissa toward the mouth of the tunnel before pursuing Granger deeper into the mine.

The droning suddenly stopped, leaving Judith’s ears ringing.

Tim’s voice burst like gunfire into the night. “Stop! Granger, stop!”

Granger’s feral scream sliced through the forest. Echoing, tumbling, growing distant fast – too fast.

Sudden as a hammer strike, the mountain was silent.

Tim – where was Tim?

Her legs shaking, Judith crawled forward, following the sound of Melissa’s sobs.

The tunnel walls were smooth gray stone interspersed with rotten wooden beams, an old wound in the mountain. There, in the faint light that ricocheted off the walls, Melissa lay curled on the ground, her arms cradling her stomach.

Judith crept closer to Melissa and strained her eyes for a glimpse of Tim in the distance.

Down the tunnel, further into the swallowing darkness, Tim stood at the edge of a black pit, a deep hole bored into the earth, and looked down, his shoulders slumped.

“Melissa?” Crouching beside her, Judith tried to think of what Constance would do but came up blank. Constance had never tracked a murderer and his intended victim into a coal mine. And, as far as Judith knew, Constance had never had to comfort someone moments after they had cheated death –

Melissa threw her arms around Judith’s shoulders, yanking Judith down to the ground with her, and held tight, her sobs shaking them both and soaking into Judith’s sweatshirt.

Judith tensed. Raising one hand, she patted Melissa’s shoulder.

Footsteps, slow and heavy, came toward them, and through the dimness Judith’s eyes caught Tim’s.

He looked back toward the gaping hole of the mine shaft and shook his head.

Cold wind rushed again past Judith, gushing out of the cave toward the forest, and warmth snuck back into the quiet June night.

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this installment of Down in the Holler, please let me know with a like, comment, or restack!

→ Keep reading! Episode XII: The Goodbye (Reprise)

← Read Episode X: The Forest

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