So even though he didn’t care much about school, most of the time Tim followed the path of least resistance. He attended regularly, paid attention in class — more or less — and generally did at least enough work to keep his mom happy. They had always been close, but when his dad abandoned them, going out for a drink and never returning — a scenario straight out of some depressing country song — their bond had deepened, moving from a typical mother and child to a pair united against whatever the future might bring.
Until his mom had found Matt, of course, but that was another story. Matt was okay, Tim knew Matt cared about his mom and was happy she had found someone to make her stop crying every night after she thought he was asleep, but Tim wasn’t in the market for another dad and mostly just tried to stay out of his way.
Despite the fact Tim wasn’t exactly a pro at skipping school with a fake illness, he had known the minute his teacher covered the infamous Tonopah mining tragedy in history class last week that he was going to take a little field trip out to the site of the disaster the moment he could work out the details.
He had to check it out for himself. The disaster involving the Tonopah Mining Company had everything a kid could want: explosions, fire, crooked business owners sacrificing the safety of their workers for the savings of a few dollars, death, destruction. Heck, there were even legends of murderous ghosts! The whole thing had happened almost a hundred years ago, but it was still a darned good story, even if it was ancient history.
He learned in history class that the mine had had a notoriously poor safety record for decades, and then in 1925 a worker simply disappeared, vanishing without a trace after a suspicious underground fire. Government authorities had come in and abruptly shut down the entire operation, sealing up the entrance to the main shaft and throwing the mine’s owner in jail for negligence to boot.
But the best part of the whole story was that the mining camp was located only a couple of miles away and had never been destroyed. After they finished sealing the thing off, everyone had simply walked away. What had once been a busy, heavily-traveled road between the center of Tonopah Township and the Tonopah Mine had fallen into disrepair and was now nothing more than an overgrown path through the woods, with the Pennsylvania forest mostly reclaiming the land for itself. Tim assumed the mine was also heavily overgrown — no one he knew had ever been there, so he could only guess — but he figured if he looked hard enough it would be pretty easy to find.
Tim had listened, spellbound, over the three days Miss Henderson recounted the tale, amazed that an event which had made headlines all over the country — heck, all over the world—had taken place right here in little Tonopah, Pennsylvania, the town where nothing exciting ever happened. Tim was immediately filled with enthusiasm about the prospect of exploring the old mine and just knew his small circle of friends would be as well.
But he had been disappointed. No one would agree to skip school to trek out to the mine for a little field trip. As the newcomer in town, and a smallish, shy kid as well, Tim had struggled to make friends in the year since he and his mom moved here from Harrisburg to be with Matt. He had a grand total of just three friends, and all three had flat-out refused to consider it. They hadn’t even bothered to discuss the matter. It was as if they had been brainwashed by their parents or something.
Tim couldn’t understand it. Everybody knew there was no such thing as ghosts or monsters. Sure, they made cool subjects for books and movies, and especially for video games, where zombies routinely attacked and twelve years old were routinely called upon to save the world. But that was fantasy, not reality. It seemed obvious to Tim that there was an important distinction there.
His friends, however, failed to recognize that distinction. Jake Mallory, not exactly a tough guy but the acknowledged leader of the small group, not only refused to hike out to the mine but told Tim if he was going to be so fucking stupid he could just find himself a new bunch of kids to hang out with. That was how he said it, too: “so fucking stupid.”
Well, Tim didn’t think it was stupid, he thought it sounded like one heck of a lot of fun, certainly better than sitting around in Jake’s basement watching reruns of Two and a Half men. That was fucking stupid, as far as he was concerned. Tim had shut his mouth and pretended to let the issue drop, all the while figuring out a way to get some time to himself.
He heard his mom clomping down the hallway — thank God for the high-heeled shoes she liked to wear to work — and burst out from the blankets, worrying he had once again stayed under too long. He was so busy brooding about Jake Mallory and his other two friends, wondering where their sense of adventure had gone, that he may have blown everything.
“I don’t know, honey,” his mom said, opening the door and poking her head in to smile at Tim. “I can’t find that darned thermometer anywhere, and I thought I knew exactly where I had put it. I guess I’ll have to buy a new one.” She looked him over critically. “You seem even more flushed than before. Are you sure…”
“Yeah, Mom, I’ll be okay.” Tim remembered to put a little weakness into his voice. “I’ll call you if I start feeling really bad, I promise.”
She paused for what felt like forever, staring at him through narrowed eyes, but Tim knew he had her. At twelve, he didn’t know — or care — much about finances, but he had overheard enough conversations between Matt and his mom to know they needed money, and while he felt guilty as heck about deceiving her, he knew she wouldn’t stay home just because he was running a little fever.
“All right,” she finally said. “But not too much TV, okay? Try to get some sleep. And drink plenty of fluids.” She walked over to his bed and bent down to give him a quick kiss on the forehead, furrowing her eyebrows in concern when she felt the warmth of his skin. Tim felt another, more powerful surge of guilt and almost confessed the whole thing — pretending to be sick, planning the hike out to the old abandoned mine, everything — but somehow kept his mouth shut and then the feeling passed.
His mom smiled down at him and ruffled his hair again. Then she turned and walked out the door with a wave. Tim listened do the click-click-click of her high heels on the hallway floor as she headed toward the front door. He stayed under the blankets pretending to be sick until he heard her car start up and back down the driveway. He pushed the covers back and sat on the edge of his bed, listening to sound of her Honda’s rough-running engine fading and then disappearing entirely.
Then he got to work.
Sweat poured down Tim’s face as he struggled through the underbrush. He had filled a backpack with supplies — three water bottles and a few snacks, as well as some tools he thought he might need — before leaving the house and his pack seemed to have grown steadily heavier as he hiked. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head and he swatted and cursed.
He had been walking for over two hours and it seemed as though he should have run across the old mine by now. The long-abandoned road had been mostly retaken by the forest over the last eighty years, but it was still easy enough to follow. Eighty year old fir trees and oaks were hard to miss when they were surrounded on all sides by trees easily three or four times that.
Tim paused for a moment, taking a seat on a boulder and unzipping his pack. He took a long drink of water — it was no longer cold but still tasted sweet and refreshing — and then checked his map. Miss Henderson had let him borrow the authentic 1920’s era road map she had shown the class as part of her presentation on the Tonopah Mining disaster, pleased that one of her students was showing an interest in the tragedy that had played such an influential part in local history.