He cupped the top of his flannelette shirt over his mouth to filter some of the microscopic flakes of glass and quartz that still sparkled in the air. He got to his feet and began crossing the tunnel floor. It was intact, which was good news. The explosive had directed itself properly. He peered toward the end of the tunnel. He should have seen a face of gray quartz among the glittering black glass.
He didn’t.
How deep did that vein run? Maybe he should have just switched to another mine tunnel. Well, as long as he was here, he might as well see what the fates had brought him.
The fractured obsidian glittered back at him.
Suddenly he stopped. Something was wrong about the tunnel.
He could hear himself breathing. In the confined space, every sound echoed back to him.
And yet…
He aimed the flashlight downward. The rubble at the bottom of the tunnel seemed to disappear for a few steps, then reappear again. He shuffled forward slowly, keeping a steady eye on the gap in the floor.
When he was standing next to it, he aimed his flashlight downward.
The unexciting, dull gray of gold ore lay just underfoot. Inconvenient, but it still put a grin on his face. Even through his goggles he could pick out a yellowish shimmer. There was gold down there in that rock, a fair amount of it, too, if he could see it from all the way up there — nearly twenty feet above. He must have blasted into a volcanic cavern that had formed millions of years ago.
It was too deep for him to climb down unassisted.
He gritted his teeth, and returned to the surface to collect a thick rope. It took him nearly an hour to get there and back, but it needed to be done. One false step and he would disappear down the crevasse, and, unable to climb out, he would never be seen again, his death remaining a mystery for years to come.
Jesse tied the thick fibrous rope off to a disused ore cart. The thing was made of iron, weighed more than a ton, and was permanently stopped at the end of the narrow-gauged line. He unfurled the rope, dragging it through the narrow opening of the new area the blast had revealed.
He threw the tail end into the narrow opening and carefully tested the rope, taking the slack out by tensioning it with his hands. It was nearly three inches thick, making it possible for him to climb it vertically if he had to.
Jesse fixed the beam of his helmet light into the opening and climbed down — real Indiana Jones style.
His heavy boots crunched the glassy rubble underfoot. He ran his eyes across the new obsidian vault. Holy hell. He’d dug all the way through the Queen Maggie Mine and now was encroaching on someone else’s property.
And that couldn’t be a good thing.
The beam of his flashlight struck the new opening, reflecting hundreds of small flakes, grains and nuggets of gold, which stood out on the black canvas of obsidian, like glittering stars in the night’s sky.
He started to laugh.
It was big and boisterous.
There was enough gold there to make him rich. His life was about to be changed forever. Luck, like everything in life, turned on a dime. He was ready to kill himself, and now he was going to be rich beyond his dreams.
Jesse quickly started to grab the bigger of the nuggets, furtively securing them into his sampling bag, like a thief in the night. His heart pounded in his throat. He felt delirious with glee as he removed the piles of gold from the dragon’s lair.
A moment later he turned the beam of his flashlight to the right and stopped laughing — because, there, embedded in the glassy obsidian wall stood a mask of what appeared to be an ancient caveman, with its hollowed out jade eyes glaring at him and its teeth grinning at him like some sort of heinous creature of the dead.
The stone eyes fixed on him like an ancient guard of some unimaginable cache of wealth, penetrating his soul, accusing him and cursing him for being a thief.
Chapter Five
Jesse swallowed down the fear that rose from his gut like bile.
With the sound of his heart pounding in his own ears, his breathing heavy, he wanted nothing more than to climb up the rope and run for his life. But what would that achieve? He would simply be throwing away all his riches. Despite the disturbing image of the mask, it was nothing more than that — an ancient relic of a superstitious people, most likely long extinct.
He forced himself to slow his breathing as he swept the rest of the obsidian vault with the beam of his powerful helmet light. The room was roughly ten feet long by fifteen wide and about thirty deep. It was secure. There was no other way in except for the opening in the ceiling through which he’d climbed down with the rope.
And no other way out…
Jesse tried to shut the thought out of his mind, fixing his mind on the immediate priorities. He could run away and return with… what? Some friends? He didn’t have many and none whom he could trust with such a secret. Even those who would initially mean to be trusted would inevitably start spending their gold, throwing it around the town like they were rich… they would get drunk and then inevitably reveal that they had found a motherlode down the old Queen Maggie Mine.
Then what?
At best they would be forced to repay every ounce of it back to the rightful owners, Smith and Rochford.
If they pressed charges, they could end up doing serious prison time for stealing.
His wife, Betty might be a better choice. She at least knew how to be tightlipped. Still, if he were to sell his gold on the pretense that he’d made a secret discovery on a riverbed — somewhere he was going to refuse to give away in case other treasure hunters returned — it would be all the more believable if she didn’t know the truth. If two people know a secret that meant double the chance of being found out.
No. So then what? Do I run scared, like a child afraid of the monsters hiding in the dark — or in this case, stuck within a wall of clear obsidian — or do I man up, retrieve the larger pieces of gold, and keep to the original plan?
Jesse swallowed and started to quickly fill his backpack.
It didn’t take long. No more than ten minutes. He didn’t bother with the small flakes. Just stuck to the gold nuggets, of which there were plenty. In a matter of minutes, he’d picked up more gold than he’d found in forty years of mining.
He strapped the bag onto his back. It was so heavy he had to lean forward to stop it from pulling him over.
Jesse took one more glance around the pile of fractured obsidian, quartz, and gold, shook his head in disbelief and started to climb the rope, hand over hand. He made it just four feet off the ground and stopped.
The strange mask was now at his eyelevel.
There was something accusing about the evil creature’s sinister glare. Yet something pleading too. Had it changed? No, that’s impossible. The damned thing was frozen in obsidian for God’s sake! Yet, where it had looked hideous and powerful before, like an unearthly guard over the riches of past kings, it now looked sullen and pitiful.
Jesse met its eye directly. “What?”
He half expected the creature to answer him.
When it didn’t, he started to climb again.
At the top of the rope he climbed through the opening and dropped his backpack on the floor to catch his breath. The weight of the backpack made it harder than he expected. He was about to stand up and go, but something stopped him.
The mask was still down there.
Who made it? How old was it? Where had it come from? How the hell did it end up trapped inside a wall made of solid obsidian?
He gritted his teeth and, despite his fear, he climbed back down the rope to take a photo of the strange mask.
Jesse had no idea what it all meant, but was certain that one picture of it in the right places on the internet, would capture the interest of someone who might know.