Chapter Nine: Old Books and Ancient Caverns

Daytime visits with deadpan nurses.

Rotting casseroles left on counters.

Sunken eyes stare into empty mirrors.

Bilbo stares unseeing into the shadow beneath his dresser- from where he sits on the side of his bed it's the closest thing his eyes fall upon. The stretch of muscles from shoulder to shoulder aches uncomfortably from his slouched position, but he can't find it in himself to move.

His eyes burn and water, but he can't bring himself to blink. When he blinks, the image that sits unpleasantly in the back of his mind comes to the forefront, as if it were burnt into the insides of his eyelids. Wraith comes to sit beside him at some point- his weight is a comforting warmth but little else.

He can't really get his head around what he's seen… if he'd seen anything at all really. It was shocking; beyond unnerving. But he couldn't even be sure if what he'd seen had been a projection of his subconscious thanks to his nervousness or a deluded imagining of the imprint of the light on his eyes between changes. He refused to even contemplate the possibility that what he'd seen had been somehow real.

Because… well… surely not.

It was a ludicrous concept to even think about. This was the twenty-first century. Notions of the supernatural had long since been driven out by the stolid, ever encroaching and all-consuming walls of reason.

Even so…

It had felt real. The wild and painful thrumming in his chest had calmed down by now, but that heart-stopping, gut-wrenching fright upon seeing the visage superimposed over his cat- and the subsequent, futile fumbling on the ground for his blasted light had been real enough. And sure, he'd always been one to scare easily (he'd had to walk out of that Doctor Who episode with those damn angels) but he liked to think that he was a rational man. He did not believe in the fantastic; had long ago discounted theories of fey and ghosts and the afterlife as the mad ramblings of the desperate. There was life in all its logical (yet simultaneously mind-blowing) wonders of the here and now. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not that such reassurances were going to stop him from avoiding that cellar like the plague from now on. In the dark, on his own, the atmosphere of the little room completely changed. It had felt eerie, almost hostile. Not an experience he'd like to repeat.

Huffing out a frustrated sigh he flops backwards on his bed. The sudden, solid weight on his chest reminds him that he's still clutching at the book he'd specifically gone to retrieve. With another sigh he pushes himself up again, groaning as his aching muscles from his days of work protest. Resolutely- with only the briefest of caresses to the worn green leather- he opens the book, unsure as to what he'll find inside.

It's almost disappointingly ordinary.

The first page is almost blank, but for a pair of scrawled words at the bottom of the page. Regrettably, the ink had gotten wet at some stage and try as he might, he can't manage to read the smudged script. Disheartened slightly, he turns the page. The paper is of the rich and luxuriantly smooth kind that feels like heaven to his fingers and he can tell why the tome weighed a ton now. Its corners are dog-eared and ragged. These pages bear more of a yield than the previous and he reads the careful, loopy handwriting greedily.

An Account of the Flora of Erebor and their Various Uses says the top of the page. The title has been underlined with ink that Bilbo guesses was once red but has now faded to a sickly brown colour that reminds him uncomfortably of blood. Underneath is their author's attempt at a table of contents, written as carefully as the book's title but it appears (from the size of the book) that after about the thirtieth entry they clearly gave up. The first few headings are all quite standard; lavender, camomile, mint and sage being amongst the most common. As the list goes on however he begins to see some more… interesting plants making an appearance- including mugwort, hemlock and nightshade.

Intrigued, he flips over to the next page. An intricate, beautifully detailed diagram of the common aromatic lavender almost seems to burst from the paper. The author- clearly the beneficiary of some serious artistic talent- had lightly coloured the drawing in with watercolours and the soft purple hues had barely faded. Surrounding the diagram are a multitude of writings; descriptions of where it is to be found, seasonality, variances of appearance and a detailed directory of its uses.

Slightly awed, Bilbo traces a finger over the curly writing. It's an incredible find. The next page (camomile) is as intricately illustrated as the last, and the information around it even more so. Its presence in a museum or library would be a priceless addition, he thinks, and it had been hiding in some forgotten corner of his creepy old cellar for Aule knows how long.

Fascinated, he reads on.

The day was uncharacteristically hot. It bore down with fierce intensity, stinging in eyes and burning through skin.

In contrast to the almost unbearable heat, the axe is cool and smooth in his hands. It slides through his top hand pleasingly and shudders with a satisfying thunk into the wood. It splits cleanly in two, each half falling neatly on either side of the chopping block.

He wipes the stinging sweat from his eyes. The heat makes it uncomfortable to work in; it feels like a sauna- sluggish and humid and hot. He has to push away the unrealistic sense of claustrophobia as the warmth presses in on all sides, squeezing the breath from him like the death grip of a python.

The work is unpleasant, but necessary. It will be a miserable winter this year- his mother can tell. She can always tell- feels it in her bones she says, and after year after year of accurate predictions there is no disbelief now. And his brother is no use; head in the clouds that boy. Thin as a rake and the muscles to match. Took too much after their mother, bless her soul.

He chops for what seems like hours; after a time the mindless action of bringing the heavy axe down on wood becomes cathartic. All he thinks of is the laboured push and pull of his breathing, the slide of polished wood through hands and the smooth shtunk as it slams through wood into the block below. Physical meditation his brother calls it. Work he calls it.

The sound of crunching feet on gravel interrupts his steady work and he sets the axe down carefully- its rippled surface glints and almost blinds him before he looks up and smiles.

His mother carries two glasses of tea, icy and sweet. The condensation drips through her fingers and down her wrists. How she managed to get them so cool is beyond him but he gratefully accepts the drink anyway. She places the glass into his outstretched hand and carelessly brushes chips and splinters of wood from the block to perch gracefully in their place.

She doesn't smile back.

"Your brother is missing." Her voice is uncharacteristically serious.

He sips appreciatively at the drink- it's already warming up in the horrendous heat- and nods back at her sagely. His brother is always missing; gallivanting about in the forest doing Mahal knows what.

"You won't think it so until tonight, but I thought I should let you know." She continues calmly, staring off at the mountain that their town sits beneath. She's right of course- he's not taking the news seriously. His younger sibling is as otherworldly as their mother- interested in higher things than a good beer and a better fuck like the rest of the men in town. Forever wandering off into the forest or climbing the Lonely Mountain. Skipping meals and coming home covered in scratches, clutching at his precious book- his compendium.

His mother stands suddenly as their contemplative silence stretches on. He watches her walk back to the house, sipping occasionally at his drink.

When he turns back around, he finds that she's left her own glass of tea on the chopping block.

The day passes much the same- cutting wood, weeding the garden and clearing the paths in the aggressive heat. Every hour she walks out, glass in hand or holding a tray of food for him and tells him that his brother is still missing. He nods and thanks her for the food or tea, she stares off at the mountain and then wanders back inside.

Come dinner time, his useless brother sure enough fails to return home.

His mother doesn't put out a plate for him at supper.

At this he frowns. She always leaves a plate of food out for him, no matter how late he arrives home, blonde hair full of leaves and twigs. Always; no matter what.

"When did you first say he was missing?" he asks her as she calmly eats her meal, not bothering to wait for himself.

"This morning."

"Right…" he frowns harder at his plate, "And what kind of missing was he exactly?"

"The permanent kind."

The blood begins to cool in his veins. He sets his cutlery down with a soft clink.

"Mother, are you saying he's gone? Actually missing? As in, the he's not-coming-back-he's-disappeared-under-mysterious- and-sinister-circumstances kind of missing?"

She bites her lip, starting to look upset at his tone of voice.

"I tried to tell you. I knew you wouldn't listen!"

"Only 'cause you were so nonchalant about the whole thing! By Mahal mother! You could at least act a bit more concerned about this! If you knew he was missing, actually missing you could have tried to treat it more seriously!" he's pacing the kitchen now in frustration.

She looks up at him, eyes flashing. It was the most lucid he's seen her be in what feels like forever.

" I knew you would go and find him!" she snarls, he's momentarily taken aback at the venom in her voice, before he resumes his pacing, " You'll find him and bring him back and everything will be alright."

He shakes his head in disgust and storms off into his brother's room. It's as cluttered as always, newspaper clippings pinned to the walls and dried flowers and leaves hanging from the window. His desk is strewn with paper and books, covered in rough scribblings and notes. A well-used paint pot sits in a corner. A small travel palette of watercolours lies next to it.

He sighs in frustration, sitting down on the bed; the frame squeaks softly in retaliation. When he looks up, his mother is standing at the door.

She's grasping his brother's book.

He swallows back the urge to scream. There is something seriously, blood-chillingly wrong with this scene, "He left his book here?" he murmurs.

"Yes."

Just as his mother always left food on the table for him, no matter the time he came home, never would his brother leave home without that book. Never. Silently, he stretches out his arm to take it- she complies with the unsaid request. Its heavy- he briefly wonders how his brother managed to stay so weak when he was carrying this thing around with him all the time. The thought is tossed away quickly and replaced with more pressing matters.

"Where was he this morning?"

"He's in the mountain." She doesn't even bother answering his questions. Her eyes look oddly cloudy in the dim light of dusk.

"How? Why? And why didn't he go there with his book?"

She shrugs, "He's in the mountain. That's all I know." He swallows back the urge to scream and shout and throw something at her.

"How do you even know that?"

She just stares at him. He gets the point; it's one of those things. Her little sparks of insight. Some things, things no one was supposed to know about, she just knew. Like they came to her from nowhere.

"Right." He stands up, squeezing past her to grab his coat from his own room. It smells of coal and wood-smoke from his last camping trip. He slips on his heavy steel-capped boots at the back of the house (to walk through the house with them is akin to sacrilege) and takes the lantern off its hook, pocketing the matches.

"The old mine." She says from the bedroom door. He closes his eyes, hand clenching at the back door frame to compose himself. The old mine was abandoned almost a century ago after they'd become too unstable. The miners of Erebor had persisted at the ancient shafts long after they'd given up their profit; mostly thanks to its parting gift- the Arkenstone, pride of Erebor.

They were empty now; empty and dangerous. Abandoned for newer sites and forgotten by most, they were left to fall into disrepair. Collapses were apparently common, according to the occasional teen who dared to venture into its dark recesses, and the wooden support structures- those that remained- were mostly splintered and rotten wrecks.

And of course his brother was missing in the old mine. It was one of the few places in Erebor that he was not familiar with and by far the most dangerous. Knowing his brother, he'd gone and gotten himself trapped in some old cavern.

If he was lucky.

He prays fervently, as he walks down the garden path to the small gate in their fence, that the boy wasn't entombed in some fall of ancient rock.

It's only when he reaches the gate that he remembers the talks and rumours of people going missing from Ered Mithrin. Dark whispers had reached the town months ago that men, women and children- even entire families- had vanished from the string of mining settlements spread throughout the mountains. There had been no clues, no explanations; no signs of a desire to leave. Only crumpled sheets and jobs left unfinished.

Grimly he walks back to the house to fetch his gun. It's a long shot, and he doubts such sinister happenings could reach so far, but he'd rather be safe than sorry. On impulse, he grabs the axe from the garden shed too and tucks it through his belt.

His mother is holding out their bicycle to him when he returns. Her doe eyes are solemn, pink lips downturned.

"Follow the cat." She whispers to him, and a shiver of movement makes him look down. Cinder brushes up against the woman's soft skirts and softly butts at his own legs.

He gives his mother his most unimpressed look. She seems unfazed.

"What am I supposed to do with the cat?" he asks when no answer to his unspoken query is provided. Cinder looks up at him reproachfully with eyes like the forest in spring.

"He knows the way better than you do." Is all the guidance she offers before swirling around, fabric rustling softly and walking back into the house. "Find my boy." She calls behind her to him, barely sparing him a second glance.

He stares at the back of her head balefully, and then back down to the cat. Cinder looks about as unimpressed as he feels. With a disdainful twitch of his whiskers- he'd never much seemed to like him- the feline takes off through the back gate, white-tipped tail swaying in an almost jaunty manner. Heaving a sigh; pushing down the steadily growing feelings of apprehension and fear, he grips tighter at the lantern and follows.

His mother was right; the cat did know the way to the old mines better than he. He's not sure if he should feel insulted or unnerved by that fact. In the end he settles for both.

The entrance to the mines is a remarkably non-descript hole in the side of the mountain. Over the years, its not-so-well-used path had been overgrown or eroded away, making the trip noticeably harder than he imagines it would have originally been. When finally they do reach the entrance- partly covered with brambles and a sickly-looking yew tree- the dusky throes of sunset are only a faint line of vermillion on the horizon (or what he can see of the horizon at least). The darkness is peaceful- the forest eerily silent.

Cinder sits patiently waiting for him atop a boulder, not far from the entrance. His tail curls around feet, the twitching white tip of his tail the only evidence of his agitation. When he reaches the rock himself, the cat jumps down, brushing up against his leg and walks into the gloom of the mine. He moves to follow, then stops. Green eyes reflect the light of the lantern back at him, two pools of iridescence.

Hurry Up, he seems to say, unimpressed by his hesitation, I have better things to do with my time.

Steeling himself, he steps gingerly through the threshold. The ground is littered with rocks and leaves and the remnants of overambitious brambles. Cinder huffs approvingly and turns around, prowling onwards without bothering to check to see if he was following.

Inside, the sight almost takes his breath away. This is nothing, nothing like the old stories his father told him.

He stands on a wide, rocky ledge that feels slanted, following along on either side of the portal. Beyond that is darkness- absolute and heart-stopping in its purity. He stands at the precipice of a massive chasm that spreads so far that his lantern has no hope of ever reaching the other side. Once, he thinks to himself, this must have been solid rock, mined away through the centuries.

There are stumps of wood connected by ancient chains that fence off the chasm- the dry, aged wood the only defence between him and that terrifying darkness. The ledge slants down to his right, the left is at a slight incline, like a giant inverted thread on a screw.

He can tell without being dumb enough to move any further forwards that the shaft must extend hundreds of meters vertically in both directions. He wonders- more than awestruck at the sheet magnitude- how any of this could ever be structurally sound. Surely the side of the mountain should have caved in years ago.

And how did more people not know about this? From all the stories he'd heard, the mine was less a great abscess within the mountain and more a maze of narrow, interconnected tunnels. But this… this was beyond belief. Beyond words. Such a thing just was; it should have lent itself a certain amount of infamy within the town. It shouldn't have been a landmark to be forgotten so easily; reduced to the rumourings of a place for degenerate teens to meet and get drunk.

"Mrrow!" he jumps at the noise; shockingly loud in the darkness. It feels almost sacrilegious to make noise in the face of such feats of engineering and history- like between the towering shelves of the library. Cinder gives him a pointed look at turns around to the right. Going down.

He follows the cat, apprehension in every footstep. He tries to avoid the ledge with its ancient posts and blackened chains as much as is possible, but in places the ground has eroded and the guard has fallen away. The path becomes narrower here and he has to steel himself a number of times in the face of that great nothingness that no light seems to penetrate.

This is horror, pure and simple, and he can't help but curse his brother for being down here. What could have possibly tempted him to regularly trek this ancient monument? There is malice in this mine. He can feel it as surely as his mother feels the seasons in her bones.

And yet, through all his inner turmoils, Cinder carries on unaffected, so perhaps it is just him, just his mind that observes some unimaginable evil; testing, lying in wait for his arrival. A number of times the cat has to wait for him to gather himself up, clutching at the pieces that threaten to fall away, for the impending screams to be quelled. He regains his composure time and time again, with each attempt seeming to be harder than the last.

Deeper they go, deeper into the great cyst in their mountain. In here the silence is pure. His footsteps seem louder; they eat away at his sanity, as sure and as sharp as any mining pick. The way is littered with rocks and shafts that seep with cold. Sometime he comes across old carts still filled with rubble and ore. Lifts and pulley systems are spread along at intermitted spaces that rise above him like great metal vines.

As they delve onwards, the temperature drops rapidly; if the air wasn't so dry his breath would turn to fog he'd imagine. But the air is earthy and dry and burns his sinuses every time he breaths in too deeply. The slight warmth of the lantern is his only comfort, and his is infinitely grateful that he'd thought to bring his coat.

Suddenly Cinder stops, tail twitching angrily. He looks back at him, the hair slowly rising on the animal's back and tail.

Then he hears it.

Faintly, softly, there comes to him he sound of scraping and shuffling. Of stones pushed away as something moves low to the ground.

He stands stock still, unable or unwilling to move. All of his senses feel hyper-aware; his eyes pick out nonsensical shapes in the darkness, his breathing sounds as loud as a landslide and his icy fingers tingle painfully. He manages to summon the courage to call out.

"Brother?" his voice seems agonizingly soft in the black.

The shuffling stops. He starts to hear a wheezing, as though something were breathing through liquid.

"Brother?" he calls out again, feeling concerned now. What if he'd hurt himself? Was wounded, crawling blind through this damned darkness, the blood slowly filling his lungs? He forces himself to take a step forward.

Cinder hisses and flees.

He curses and moves to follo-

"What is it, Preciouss?" the voice hisses, soft and sibilant and he freezes. His blood cools. Ice forms on his skin.

The voice snarls, "What is it? What does it want Precious?"

The shuffling comes closer and he can hear the scrape of nails on rock.

He takes a step backwards in terror, a hand going to the axe hanging from his belt. The snarling gets closer and he can see a shadow lumbering forwards.

He trips.

Stumbles.

The lantern falls from his hands.

And all goes black.

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