The Old Mine.

The screech of the brakes jerks me awake. I sit straight, looking around me until I notice that the cart is empty. I feel the train leaning to the right so we are at the beginning of the curve. I am the only one left in the cart which isn’t uncommon for a Friday night. Everyone tries to leave as early as they can to enjoy the rest of the day before curfew.

As usual, my boss wouldn’t let us leave until the insane amount of work finished. Work that wasn’t ours to do, but that is irrelevant to my boss. The pressure of finishing everything made me more tired than I thought I would be as I stretch my body to relieve my sore back.

When the train finishes the curve, dread floods my body. There isn’t a curve before my station. I look outside the windows but there is only darkness as far as I can see. I missed my stop. My body trembles as I look around, searching for something that can get me out of this. 

There is nothing near me. There is nothing that can save me now. I missed my stop. The more that I think about it, the more I shake. Tears spring into my eyes and a sob bubbles in my throat. I stop it in time before I count to ten in my head to get control of my emotions. 

They won’t help me now. I need to do something. I need to concentrate and remember what my dad taught me. Always look for a solution. If your emotions aren’t helping you find one, then lock them down until you have one. You can always cry later. The internal pep talk steels my spirit and I dash my tears away. Looking at the forest moving past the window, I run through my options. 

There will be police patrolling the residential areas to enforce the curfew. So I won’t be able to go home. The train will go back to the first station to wait until morning. Which is near to my house but not a distance that I can cover on foot before curfew. I can’t go to a hotel because they won’t take anyone past eight p.m.. 

I could hide out in the forest and wait for the next day. But wild animals fill the forest and I don’t know how to defend myself from them. Or how to survive in a forest. I can take one night close to civilization, but no more. Maybe I could find an abandoned warehouse or building and can squat as my ancestors did.

But that won’t work because there are no abandoned constructions in my town. Space is too scarce for the town council to tolerate anything being deserted. Thinking about abandoned things, I remember an old story my father used to tell me at bedtime. 

There is an old mine in the middle of the forest that used to supply the town. A long time ago there was a cave-in that trapped the thirty-two workers inside for three days before they could rescue them. Luckily none of them suffered a major injury. Only surface cuts and one broken bone. 

The spooky part that always brings chills down my spine, even when I’m just remembering the story, is that when the medical workers were transporting everyone to the hospital, they counted thirty-three people rescued. 

Everybody was so preoccupied with their loved ones, and in taking care of them. That nobody stopped to think there were only thirty-two people inside the mine that day. 

When the police came to interview the miners so they could determine the cause of the cave-in; they realized that there one more person who no one could account for. The medical staff didn’t know where the person was and the miners swore that there wasn’t anyone else with them. 

They never found this person.

After the town council cleared the collapse and reinforced the mine, they rehired the miners to get back to work. But when they got back, they saw that minerals overfilled the mine. The worker had been hacking at the cave for years, so they knew that there was almost nothing left.

But in the space of two weeks, it seemed like everything was back to what it was the first time that they dug the mine. They didn’t understand what was happening, but they knew that this meant job security for as long as the mine had minerals to be dug. 

The only problem was the moment that they stepped inside their entire body froze. It paralyzed them on the spot. An ominous feeling took over the workers. And suddenly they knew that if they had the audacity of taking any more from the mountain, they would die. 

It wasn’t a conscious thought. It wasn’t something that they stopped to think about. They felt as clear as they feel the air come inside their lungs that they would die if they took anything. 

After this episode, it didn’t matter what the town council offered the miners refused to come back. So the council resorted to hiring teams from outside the town. But the moment the team would arrive, the old miners would tell them everything and they would leave.

Miners are superstitious workers. At least at the optics of everyone else. Everyone who never worked hours on end inside of a mountain. They don’t understand what is like to be buried under tons of dirt and rock with only a flimsy wood reinforcement to keep you alive.

They don’t understand that the mountain speaks to them.

The council brought even more teams, but they would all leave after the miners told them the story. Until one team decided that it didn’t care about the story. 

One leader, three men and two women came in. None came out. The town council found the leader’s body speared by the same minerals they were trying to take. But they never found the bodies of the rest of the team. But the most disturbing aspect of that day wasn’t the leader’s body. It was his blood.

It was smeared all over the walls of the cave. As if someone had deliberately used the blood as paint. But his body had no other marks besides where he was speared. And yet the coroner confirmed that it was his blood. 

Nobody knows how. Nobody ever found the people who walked inside that cave. But the town decided that it couldn’t risk the public relations nightmare and decommissioned the mine for good. 

My father used to tell me this story but he would always finish it by saying that I shouldn’t be afraid of the spirits living in nature. Just be respectful, don’t take more than what you need to survive and you won’t have any problems. They only interfere when people get greedy and start to take more than what they need. 

So that is why I was never afraid of approaching the mine. Because despite what happened to the miners every one who was respectful of the spirit and heeded its warning was fine. 

The problem that I had with this story when I was younger is that my father would never tell me the rest of it. I wanted to know what happened to the town. If they found something else to keep them afloat. If they had to move so they could survive. If the extra person to get out of the cave-in was ever seen again. But my father refused to tell me every time I asked.

It was only when I was old enough to go to the library by myself that I found out why my father never told me the rest. Our city is the capital of the country and the story that he told me was the boiling point to change our society. 

After what happened on the mines the story went viral. All workers started to be careful when they would mine in fear of what the mountain would do. But nothing happened until a town on the other side of the country changed the direction of a river. The day after that happened a massive wave flooded the town and killed everyone in it.

Anywhere that nature was massively changed because of human intervention, the humans suffered. It was decided that nature was fighting back against everything that humans did. And so to stop the death toll the government decided to evacuate any town who had changed their surroundings. The massive exodus forced the states to change and forced the government to be harsher against any kind of crime. Because people were so tightly packed they had to be careful so they wouldn’t cause a revolution. 

Slowly the world changed. Areas, where a thousand people lived, became the home of a hundred thousand people. Crime increased and in response, the government went even harsher with the punishment. It instituted a curfew but the result was people paying the fine but still going out. So they increased the fine until they decide to arrest these people. Now breaking the curfew results in a two-year imprisonment. 

The jails got overcrowded and that meant the construction of new jails. But they didn’t have the money or the time necessary to built a jail. So their solution was to release these people to nature. The worst criminals don’t go to jail. They go directly to the areas where people had evacuated. None of these people ever came back to society.

Slowly the fear started spreading. The jails were packed with misdemeanor criminals so the government started to release people who had only robbed to nature. As the fear grew the crimes diminished but the punishment stayed. Because this was an effective way of controlling the population.

Until the very idea of being out, past curfew was something that no one considered unless they were willing to risk their lives. 

It is ironic that now I am going to the very place that started everything. The place where they would send the worst of criminals hoping that nature would take care of them. But everyone was so afraid of what could happen that they forgot that nature has always been here. And it didn't hurt us until we started hurting her. So I have to believe that the spirits that inhabited the mountain won’t kill me if I just spent the night there. 

There is no reason why they would. There is a good chance that all of those criminals that they released into the wild aren’t dead. They are just living their lives away from the society that incarcerated them. 

When I get to the mouth of the cave I can’t see anything inside. The forest is dark but inside the cave is pitch black. I can’t see anything. Fear starts to creep in but I take a deep breath and force myself to take that first step. I don’t have a choice. I can’t sleep in the forest because there are predators there that I won’t be able to fight. There is a chance that some predator is using the cave as a home but it will be easier for me to fight something inside the cave than in the forest. 

I take the first step inside the cave and darkness surrounds me. I keep walking hoping that my eyes will adjust and I will be able to at least see something. Chills travel down my spine and I have to force myself to keep walking. Fear floods my system as my breathing accelerates. I try to calm myself but no matter how hard I try my body still shakes. I take one more step before I can’t force myself to continue. I tremble so much I am afraid of dropping my bag. If I lose my bag I won’t be able to find it in this darkness. And everything that I need is in this bag. 

I tighten my fist on the strap of my bag and force myself to take one more step. Maybe, maybe this is the step that will bring me to the light. 

I take the step. But there is no more ground in front of me. The air rushing by me freezes my entire body. Until I am so numb I can’t physically do anything. The fall ends as abruptly as it began and crashes hard on to the ground. By some miracle, I don’t break anything but I realize immediately that I lost my bag. I open my eyes to look for it and recognize that there is light in here. When I look around I see everything. And that is when I understand that the story that my father told me was wrong. That everything that the government thought was wrong. That we have been so wrong about everything. 

But most important I understand that I am well and thoroughly screwed.