Suddenly the darkness grew robust, and it grew and grew around them until the entire tunnel was engulfed in black. Nina yelped, grabbing for Sam.
“Whoa,” Sam uttered in the darkness.
“Not to worry,” Purdue consoled, “my flare just burned out. Hang on…”
Another crack and hiss brought orange light to Nina’s relief. She let go of Sam’s arm as she noticed something glimmering in a side tunnel filled with rubble and sand.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “There is something in there.”
“I hope so, because there is just nothing ahead of us but endless cavern and darkness,” Purdue sighed.
Sam took one of Purdue’s flashlights from his belt and walked toward the smaller tunnel to the left. It was obscured by debris and abandoned building implements stacked to the side of the wall face. Had Nina not seen it at first light from the shadows it would have been invisible to their line of sight. Sam skipped over the dangerous steel protrusions, sheets, and wire of copper and tools. Under it all a mound of sandstone blasted out was heaped and Sam arduously climbed to the top that was just lower than the roof of the smaller tunnel, enabling him to peek inside.
“I swear, if a rat jumps out at me now…” he muttered as he pointed the flashlight beam into the pitch-dark channel.
“What do you see?” Purdue asked, joining Nina at a safe distance.
Hidden under soot, coal, and sand of seventy years, Sam could discern something solid. It was big, almost filling the entire height of the tunnel. As he moved the flashlight something shiny gleamed on the far side of the blocked-off entrance.
Sam slowly turned to face his comrades, reveling in their curiosity. Then he started to smile.
Chapter 28
From the entry pool something emerged. The water splashed wildly, brimming over the edges of the rock pool as something massive crawled from it. Seeing in the dark was not a problem for the creature. In fact, low light was the best light for eyes so sensitive to light that shades or goggles were usually the order of the day. This far back, the noise of the surfacing made very little difference, since the quarry he stalked was too far down the tunnel to note anything amiss.
Sam and Purdue made quick work of pulling away the debris to make the chasm accessible for them to investigate. Nina stood nearby with another green flare, lighting their way for them.
“Guys, we are down to six flares. Just saying,” she reminded them.
“Don’t fret, dearest, we will not be long. We know basically what we are looking for,” Purdue called back to her. Save for Sam and Purdue’s panting and groaning from their labor, Nina pitched her ears. There was another sound that was previously absent, but she could not quite separate it from the other noise. Since they were pressed for time she did not merit it important enough to halt the progress of her companions to excavate whatever was hidden there.
“Now, Purdue,” Sam started in his loathsome mocking tone, “tell me, if we should happen upon the rest of that leviathan chain—”
“Yes? Sam?” Purdue said through his gritted teeth, catching his breath.
“Tell me how you propose to carry that out of here, my very industrious friend,” Sam completed his taunting.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll find a wheelbarrow or something and wheel it out, hoist it through the water… whatever. We have ample implements down here to rig something up to get it done, don’t you think?” Purdue puffed, a few words at a time.
“Whatever you do, just make it quick. I have a feeling we are not alone,” Nina warned, looking around with the flare in her hand pointing where she was looking.
“Hey!” the men shouted. “You’re taking the light away!”
“Sorry,” she winced. Her eyes studied the dark track from which they had come, but she saw nothing to prove that she really heard something.
Finally, they had cleared enough away for her to join them.
“Look here, the tiny side tunnel actually has tracks, unlike the mainline,” Sam remarked, walking among the steel rails.
“Not only a track, my friend,” Purdue said as he took the flare from Nina and walked deeper into the tunnel, “but that track also actually carries… a train!”
Sam and Nina gasped in awe. Although the steam locomotive and its three cars were covered in dirt, making it hard to tell it apart from the wall of the cavern, its shape and weight were unmistakable. In the darkness, with only the slight illumination of Purdue’s flare and a flashlight that Nina held, the static iron horse seemed quite ominous. A huge, black piece of machinery it was, like a giant, coal stove that had not cooked a meal in centuries — rather creepy.
What made the train look even more odd and surreal was the fact that it had no wheels. Either they had constructed the thing in full, bar the wheels, or the entire wheel base had sunk into the ground it stood on. Giving it the appearance of a boat made it look quite disturbing and out of place.
Purdue, Sam, and Nina planned to silently pillage the undiscovered treasure trove, if the legends were accurate and Josef Palevski did not have a sick sense of humor. Each in their own train car, they inspected every corner and cupboard, under every bunk, and even inside the floor, using the tools they picked out of the debris in the tunnel.
“Anything?” Purdue asked.
“No.”
“Nope, nothing,” Nina could be heard inside the last car.
“Shit,” Sam said. “He was fucking playing us, man.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Sam. I certainly don’t want to go back to Finland to find Jari’s hidden house again,” Purdue exhaled hopelessly.
Nina walked past Sam and Purdue’s cars. Hers was stripped bare, with nothing to show for it, so she thought she would at least make good of taking pictures, since the site was a rare find she wished to take credit for with Sam and Purdue. Her phone battery was almost dead, so she set it rapidly so that she could prove she was here. Angle by angle, she shot the dead, black machine for her records, making for a collection of very macabre-looking photos. At least she would have something to show for all her trouble.
In the cab of the black engine, Nina placed her flashlight pointing upward against the cab roof, so that it would light up the whole compartment. Around the firebox there was what would strike a layperson, such as herself, as a mess of wires, copper and black. Between those she scrutinized the intricate workings of the bolts, meters, and what looked to her like steering wheels or valves near the top of the cowl unit.
As in the lighthouse, a careless etching stood out to her.
“What the hell is this?” she said softly to herself, wiping the face of what she reckoned was a pressure gauge. Nina gasped. In the transparent mock glass, several names were etched, forming two vertical columns. She took her pocket knife and worked away at the edge of the plastic until she could carefully wedge it loose. With a gentle grasp she pulled it free and held it on her palm to read it against the blinding white light.
A sudden break in her flashlight beam startled Nina so that she called out, “Hey! Sam, stop stalking me and come look here!” It had been a moving shadow of something solid that passed in front of the light for a second, but it was not Sam.
“What?” Sam asked, hanging by one arm from the door of his chosen train car.
Nina’s blood froze. “Where’s Purdue?”
“Still slowly being disappointed,” Purdue cried from the other car’s window, holding up some papers and files. “This is all I’m getting. Any luck there with you?”
Making a distinct decision that the tunnel was merely haunted by both her unsound mind as well as proper spectral apparitions, Nina dismissed the notion that there really was someone in there with them. If only to spare her nerves, she summoned the men to come and see the etching on the plastic cover of the gauge.