West Yellow Dog had been dynamited. All that remained of its entrance was twisted ore cart track. Ron searched the cliff base to both sides. A niche three hundred yards to the right might have been where they stored powder, but it was only ten feet deep and didn’t have a door. Below the mine, partially hidden behind scrubby pine growing between the rocks, he found a small tunnel barely tall enough for him to enter on his hands and knees, but twigs and dirt blocked the way a few feet in and it smelled of marmot. Ron sat on his haunches outside the hole and closed his eyes against the sun.
He’d know if Levi had died, wouldn’t he? A father and son had a bond, he’d told the detective.
Within his view, visible only because the sun cast long shadows, several foundations rose from the grass in the clearing below the slope. There must have been a small community here, or they might have been part of the mining operation. At the Gilpin County Courthouse, Ron had looked at pictures of the town from the 1880s, and beside them were modern shots taken from the same spot. The buildings changed. Trees changed. But the rocks and mountains stayed the same. He trembled. To the mountain, time didn’t exist; all times were interchangable. He glanced at his watch. To a little boy dying in a mine, every second stretched like skin on fire.
He pushed himself upright.
The New Baltimore had a park service gate on it. Ron slowed as he approached. Covered in dust, the remains of a broken lock lay on the ground. He rubbed the scratches in the metal. No rust. Someone had been here this summer.
“Levi!” His voice sounded hollow and out of place.
The gate gave reluctantly, its base dragging over the rock as he pulled it open. Moisture seeped from the walls a few feet in. Resting one hand on the black-slime ceiling just above his head, he shone his flashlight on indistinct footprints on the muddy floor. Back in the depths, a watery plink-plink-plink broke the silence. The tunnel split. To the right, a pile of rock and broken timbers blocked the way. To the left, the passage sloped downward for another twenty feet before ending at a pool of water. The footprints led here. Ron played the quivering light across the surface, penetrating to the bottom. Rocks. More timber. Metal so heavily rusted he couldn’t tell what its original shape had been. No wrapped bundle. No horror-story patch of white that resolved itself into a face.
He released a pent-up breath. Why had someone broken into the mine? Turning, he studied the walls and ceiling. A slippery, unhealthy looking fungus covered the surfaces, and the stagnant air smelled rotted and mildewed. Near the ceiling to the left of the pool, a patch of rock peered through the growth, as if it had been brushed clean, and above it, a crack wider than his fist swallowed the light. Ron reached in, touched plastic. He found four bags in the crack, about a pound each. A whiff of the first one showed he’d uncovered someone’s stash.
Ron left the bags on the floor. Ten minutes wasted.
According to his map, all that remained was the Crossroad. It took a half hour of backtracking across the gulch’s east side before he found a faint trail that led to a gap around a rock wall.
He spotted the lock on the door on the other side of the stone arena as soon as he rounded the corner, a brand new, brass padlock, like the row of them on top of Sims’ dresser. He ran without thinking about it. Old metal door, not park service. Ron ripped off his backpack, fumbled for the bolt cutter, gripped the handles and squeezed. The lock snapped.
Was now the moment when he would know? Ron had dreamed of finding Levi in a thousand ways. Bad dreams, in some, where Levi was dead. Either dead over a month, or even worse, dead a few days. He’d be starved or dead from thirst or exposure. In some dreams he was alive but sick, damaged from exposure or the time alone. In one dream Levi didn’t know him, his mind gone. What could be worse than an eight-year-old driven insane by abuse and fear? In that dream, Ron loved his son back to sanity. No evil could be so bad that love could not change it to something good.
Ron tore the lock from the hasp, jammed his fingertips into the gap between the door and the frame. Pulled.
In the good dreams, Levi waited. “Daddy!” he would cry. He always called Ron “Daddy,” like it was a blessing.
The door swung open.
Charles didn’t even try to get to sleep. Sitting at the table in his cabin, the tiny slice of moon providing the only light again, he thought about the locked gate and the boy behind it. His intention was to never return.
He thought, what’s the greater evil? Every time he closed his eyes, he saw dead children, a fingerprint on their foreheads; he also saw the boy at the Crossroad, staring at a candle, maybe, or sleeping. What kind of dreams would a bringer of death like him have? But Charles was evil too. The boy, no matter what else he was, was his son. A father should take care of his own. One time when Charles was young he locked a storage shed on his father’s farm. A week later his father sent him to fetch some tools. The storage shed stank, a solid wall of putridness rolling out when Charles opened the door. A cat had been locked in, its mouth gaping open, dry as dust, the stomach burst. If he had known, wouldn’t it have been merciful to have killed the cat a week earlier?
Charles looked through the darkness to his own bed. He couldn’t imagine sleeping again. The boy behind the gate moved in his mind. The room was so black, Charles could almost see the boy without closing his eyes. Like the cat, the boy was locked in. But the cat wasn’t the devil. No, not by a long shot. Maybe a creature like the boy thrived on the black air behind the gate. Could such a thing be killed by an act as simple as being shut into a mine? What if it could do some magic to save itself?
In a sudden vision, Charles saw himself as an older man walking down a street. A beautiful carriage clattered by, the horses’ hooves loud on the bricks. In the vision, Charles glanced up. Sitting in the carriage was his son, grown now, and the look he gave from the carriage was full of hate.
Charles made a fist on the table, alone in his cabin in the midst of the night and moaned. The boy was behind the gate. “I’m cursed,” Charles said to the four walls. Already he felt the guilt like a blood-soaked blanket settling over his head, suffocating him.
He’s a boy dying slowly, my son, Charles thought. He’s a monster who can save himself in some evil way.
Like the New Baltimore, the Crossroad was wet. Footprints showed clearly in the mud. Little prints. A child’s shoes.
“Levi!” Ron’s eyes strained to see into the mine, pulse throbbing huge in his chest. “Are you there, son?”
He took a few steps down the tunnel. Where was Levi? Ron turned on his flashlight. The powerful beam cut into the air showing the path curving away before him. His feet slipped on the muddy floor as slick as polished marble, and suddenly he felt scared, as scared as he’d ever been in his life. His breath puffed out in a plume before him. Every instinct told him to run. The mine didn’t feel right. The air clung to his arms like icy cockleburs, and he had to brace himself with a hand against the wall. Then the floor shook, but it wasn’t just the floor; everything jolted or quivered. Every cell in his body flinched. He wasn’t sure if he had turned around and was heading out. He thought, the world has shifted.
He stepped forward again. Where am I? Where am I going?
A voice came from the tunnel before him, a little boy’s voice.
“Papa?” it called.
Ron rushed forward, his fear forgotten. He would greet him with love like he’d never known.
“Papa?”
His son was coming home.
Charles stood at the Crossroad gate. He’d pulled it open, but he wouldn’t step inside. No, he was too frightened for that. He couldn’t see the boy, or all would be lost. He had one chance to make it right, and only one.