Selena clenched his hand. In the black silence he heard sounds. Too many sounds. Water dripped somewhere. There was a soft, constant noise of dribbles of earth falling from the roof. The tunnels creaked and he heard wood groaning. Something scuttled close by.
Talking was strange. The relentless dark sucked words away like velvet as soon as they were spoken.
"I don't think we should go further in. Those tunnels go deeper, and they're lower. We'd have to crawl. The tracks end here and that's not good. If these passages went through, the miners would have run the tracks all the way to get the ore."
"Nick, I'm scared. What if we can't get out?"
"We can't think like that."
"Yes, but what if we can't?"
"We'll get out."
"Maybe one of the side entrances we passed back there can take us out."
"Yeah, but which one?"
"If we open them up, something could give us a clue. Those boards they used, they don't look strong. We can break them down to get in."
"That's good thinking." He smelled her fear, a faint, sour, coppery smell. Or maybe it was him.
He turned on the light. It was weaker.
Back up the tunnel they came to a side shaft and Selena held the light while Nick pulled boards away. He tossed a rock through the opening waiting for the sound. There was a pause, then a splash, a long way below.
"You heard that?"
"Yes."
"I'm not up for a swim. Let's keep going."
The next two were the same, vertical death traps dropping hundreds of feet into the flooded lower levels of the mine. They came to the next entrance. Carter played the light around it.
"There's something written there," Selena said.
Chinese characters were scribed into the rock over the entrance.
"Can you read it?"
"Yes. It says, 'Dreams'."
"Dreams?"
"That's what it says."
"Why would someone write 'dreams' on a mine shaft wall?"
"How would I know?"
He kicked in the boards. They stepped through into a low tunnel and followed it bent over. The light dimmed. After what seemed a long time the passage opened into a large chamber. The air was better, the ceiling high enough to stand upright.
The room was about twenty feet square. Against one wall, three low rectangles of wood bore old mattresses, straw spilling out where the rats had gnawed on the rotted fabric. Across the room a broken stool lay on its side by a rough wooden table. On the table was the stub of a candle in a holder. Selena walked over and picked it up, just as the light died.
Nick felt the old fear, the childhood demons of nameless, hideous monsters lurking in places without light. He took a deep breath, calmed himself. They weren't dead yet.
"Now all we need is a light," said Selena.
"You have a match?"
"I don't smoke."
"Neither do I."
"Smoking can kill you."
They started laughing hysterically.
When they had calmed down he said, "Stay where you are."
He crossed the room with hands stretched out until he banged up against one of the beds. From the tattered mattress he gathered straw and fabric and fumbled his way back to Selena. On the floor he felt around until he found a rock
He made a little pile of bedding, took his knife and struck it against the rock. After a few tries he got a spark. He chipped at the rock, showering sparks down on the straw. It caught into bright flame.
She handed him the candle and he lit it. The room came back into view, the smoke from the fire rising upward.
"Look." Selena pointed upward.
The smoke disappeared into a hole in the ceiling.
"That's where the air is coming from."
"At least we won't suffocate. Be nice if it were bigger."
Carter looked around. "What is this place?"
"I think it was an opium den. No one except Chinese would have come in here. The miners couldn't have read the sign over the entrance and wouldn't have cared anyway."
"That makes sense. That's why the beds. And the sign makes sense, too. There might be a way out. I don't think there'd only be one exit to a place like this."
He walked slowly around the room. On the back wall was the outline of another entrance, walled up with stone, the mortar crumbling and old. Nick took the pick head he'd found and began chipping away. Soon there was a pile of dust on the floor. A rock came free, then another. He stuck his hand through the opening and touched empty space.
He kept chipping and pulling out rocks until the entrance was big enough to climb through. They looked at each other.
"It's another tunnel," he said.
"What if it's a dead end?"
"We don't have a choice. Only one way to find out."
This tunnel was narrow but it was in good shape. At one point it dipped through water that came to their knees. Nick wondered if he was about to step into a deep, deep hole, but the floor rose again and they were back on dry ground. The candle was almost gone when they came to another blocked entrance, this one walled up with brick.
"That's a change."
"The mortar looks old. Maybe I can kick it down." He handed her the candle.
He gave it a good kick. Another.
"Now I know how Bruce Lee must have felt," he said.
"Let me try," Selena said. "Better get out of the way."
Nick stood to the side. Selena closed her eyes, took a deep breath and became very still. She opened her eyes and backed away, then let out a wild yell and launched herself flying, feet first. The whole wall blew out into the room on the other side.
Squinting against light, he stepped through into someone's basement. Selena was getting to her feet. He reached down to help her up.
"How the hell did you do that?"
"Nick." She gestured with her head.
A burly man with a gray beard stood openmouthed across the room in pajamas, eyes wide, pointing a twelve gauge shotgun at them.
Carter raised his hands. "How's it going?" he said.
Chapter Seventeen
"What are you doing here?" Shotgun Man was around sixty. He looked scared. The twelve gauge shook in his hands. A large dog of indeterminate breed stood next to him, bristling and growling.
"Take it easy. I'll pay for the damage to your wall."
"You mind telling me where the hell you came from?"
"You mind putting that down, sir? I can explain. It's a long story. My name's Nick, this is Selena."
"You look like something my dog rolled in. You say you'll pay?"
"Absolutely. We'll make it new. Where are we, anyway?"
Suspicious, but he lowered the gun a few inches. Nick breathed easier.
"You're in Smartsville, California. How did you get here?"
The truth wouldn't be a good idea, considering the events of the day. He began improvising.
"Selena here owns the old Connor mine up the road. You know the place?"
"Connorsville? The Number One Mine? Sure, everyone knows about it. That's your place?"
Carter was about to say something, but she beat him to it.
"Yes." She smiled at him. "I'm really sorry we made so much trouble for you. I was showing Nick around and we went inside the mine. I tripped and grabbed a post holding up the roof. The whole thing came down and the roof collapsed. We were almost buried alive."
Carter picked up the story. "So we couldn't get out the way we got in. We wandered around in there for hours until we found the tunnel that brought us here. We broke down your wall because there wasn't anything else to do. Like I said, I'll pay for the damage."
"Well, I'll be damned." The gun dropped another few inches. "I always heard the Chinese dug secret tunnels during the gold rush."
"Why would they dig one here?"
"This was a whorehouse in the old days. It's good a reason as any, I guess. You two were damn lucky to find it, after being dumb enough to go into that old mine."