Hey look a short chapter, I'll update soon maybe
EDIT; yeah I've been doing nothing productive but i am posting a better version of these chapters so that's a plus.
The flames were still lapping at anything to satiate its hunger when the groups finally arrived.
The search lasted more than a week, with no humans found except for one another. People had volunteered to help but most left when the unfortunate and sickening remains of six were discovered.
On the first anticipation filled day, the shrivelled and burnt remains of two corpses were found in the embers and ashes of the cabin. Curled in on themselves like the remains of the citizens of Pompeii. A blood trail had been found among the ashes, meters from the smouldering pile of wood and corpses.
They are people.
Not anymore. Not anymore.
After eight hours of sore footed treading though rugged mountaintop, two group shifts after a fight broke out between Loa and a volunteer about something involving glasses and seven calls for more assistance, no one was found that day.
On the second and cynical day, a young and possibly beautiful teenage girl was found in a t-shirt and jeans. Her jaw was brutally ripped off and still not found. Blood seeped from the enlarged orifice and stained her shirt pink and red. The girl's body crumpled in an undignified heap on an elevator platform suspended above the mines. Saraj stayed with the helicopters and pilots during the discovery. Forensics were going crazy; scattering around like cockroaches of death and recovery. Luca worked with them from time to time and now they were kneeling by the retrieved body of a boy impaled onto a meat hook through the jaw. The overpowering combined stench of the rotting flesh and the sight of his blood pooling in his mouth and lungs made Luca gag. Loa threw up at the sight of his body.
He was just hung there, like a slab of pig meat ready to be gutted.
How did his body get up there? I couldn't find any pulley systems and that hook was a good fifteen feet in the air. Could you get a cherry picker in there?
I don't think we should talk about the hanging corpse right now. Please.
That was only day three.
The fourth was spent gathering resources and receiving the calls of worried parents. There were eight missing people. Adding to Beth and Hannah Washington was Emily Benett, (Wesson and Amrike remembered her from the radio transmission) Matthew Sanders, Michael Monroe, Jessica Davis, Samantha Jones, Christopher Torres, Ashley Martin and Joshua Washington.
All three Washington children are missing.
How could any parent react to all of this?
All to the same mountain as well...
No wonder people think it's cursed.
The family is cursed. They should have never have set foot on this land.
Day five was when enough equipment was received to further explore the caverns. No one knew if the build up in their stomachs was anticipation, or the feeling something was watching their every twitch. Sometimes a large rat would rush behind people not paying attention. Very, very large rats. Wesson was sure something snuffed behind them when they were reading over a map. But not even the large rats were there when they turned around, flashlight the only sword against this tar coloured shroud. Wesson would wait, the light going a meter or so into the dark.
And then nothing.
Nothing but the scurrying of very large rats behind them.
And then nothing.
Searching lower and deeper into the extensive mines only yielded chest crushing anxiety and sleepless nights. Amrike would be awoken by a rat brushing over his hand or the feeling of someone breathing on him. As would others. But they all stayed still, be it instinct or not. Sometimes Russell wanted to scream into the mines, but it would never happen. Kendelson had stumbled upon the head of a stranger by a shed hidden under debris when questions were finally asked.
Who did all this?
Who is this?
What happened?
How big are the rats?
When do the mines end?
Why did this happen?
The frantic footprints and scattered blood led to the body by the path. There was a fight from the shed to the cabin and no one survived.
Inside the shed there was more slights of insight as to what may have happened.
A stool was overturned, one of three legs broken off and surrounded by rope and patches of blue fabric. Someone was kept hostage here and had escaped.
The cabin's basement stayed intact, Fisbach and Amrike found cameras in hidden areas along with pop up ghosts and timed batteries, costumes from Mr. Washington's movies and a realistic dummy wearing a girl's clothing. The theories people came up with were laughable, some saying it was a prank of all things, others a movie set or a rite of passage frat boys enjoy partaking in. Wesson doubted any of that happened; this couldn't be the work of a few asshole teens. When Amrike found the old Blackwood Pines Hotel with an entire security monitor setup with majority of the screens fizzed static, or cracked to hell, rumours spread. Whispering it was a third party, a companion of the victims had gone crazy and cut up everyone in sight, including any bystanders. It was shot down without any backing of evidence.
Upritchard was a part of the search party through the radio tower's mine entry when they came upon another section of the mines. Along with an eyeless corpse suspended on a meat hook beside a headless body, her face distorted in pain and fear and jaw slack with flies buzzing and out of her mouth. Two volunteers had either thrown up or gone home.
Those maggots, they're just, just crawling in her eyes and her tongue's half eaten.
That body beside hers is missing a leg. Stump seeped for a bit and that possibly prevented livor mortis.
A room with a swivel chair surrounded by rope wasn't ignored.
In the mines a girl's head was found with a trail of blood leading down a hatch. Her face looked so young and terrified. A cockroach crawled from underneath her knitted beanie. Fisbach tried not to cradle it and seal shut those frantic doe eyes. It wouldn't work; eyes are meant to say open and staring. The hatch led to an underground lake closed off from the upside and not yet fully explored. Stalagmites and stalactites were a hassle, Amrike hitting his head more than once on a protruding rock formation followed by chuckles or hisses to be more careful.
God her face. Her face...
It had been seven days and six hours since the helicopters landed.
Russell and another ranger were tasked with sweeping the intricate network making up Blackwood Mines in the south-east area when John felt the need to banish the silence in this dreadful place.
"Do you like ABBA?" The ranger shook her head. Okay then Russell shrugged. "This place is pretty dark and I mean dark, like, Lemony Snickett double page description dark." Here we go. Russell was rambling again, he hated doing it, never helped in the socialising department. "One time when I was eleven I was playing hide and seek with my next door neighbour, who was a little shit but we had to play with her because she was the only kid our age, and my cousin from the town over joined in. I got my toe tapped in eeny-meeny-meiny-moe so I wasn't it but my neighbour didn't like that because she was it instead of me so she didn't fully cover her eyes and skipped numbers when she counted down, I'd caught up on that and went in the house, which we weren't allowed to." What am I doing? Russell's mouth kept moving even after his head said stop. "So I go into my closet and hid there for like three hours until the neighbour breaks down crying, crying!" he spread his arms to the side. "Can you believe that? It got me in trouble even though she was breaking the rules first. I've honestly never seen it as fair at all but hey, it taught me about people and stuff I guess." The ranger, Jayden maybe, sighed and flicked her light to and fro. She doesn't want to hear it Russell shut up. "Do you like Queen?" She shook her head again. "What? You don't like Quee-" his companion held up a hand, and stopped, looking down the corridor.
"Do you hear that?" The stillness was painful. A rat crawled past the rotting support beam above them ti tti tip tipt tii. Russell looked at her and slowly shook his head. Maybe it was like a special Indian tracking technique, like the Sacajawea lady from Night at the Museum and those other movies. Jayden inched toward Russell's ear.
"It's the sound of you shutting up." She said, barely above a whisper. Russell made an 'O' shape with his mouth and decided they'd become friends when this was over.
And then the floor boards fell out from under him.
Josh'll appear in the next chapter shhhhh.
