The Regulators - Stephen King [121]
'Seth!' she yelled. 'You come back now!' She yelled it two or three times, then dropped her camera on the ground and just ran. That was all I needed to see, her dropping her expensive Nikon like a used cigarette pack. I was back down the ladder in about three jumps. Wonder I didn't fall off and break my neck. Even more of a wonder Garin or his older boy didn't, I suppose, but I never even thought about that at the time. Never thought about them at all, tell the truth.
The little boy was already climbing the slope to the opening of the old mine, which was only about twenty feet up from the pit-floor. I saw that and knew his mother wasn't ever going to catch him before he got inside. Wasn't anyone going to catch him before he got inside, if that was what he meant to do. My heart wanted to sink into my boots, but I didn't let it. I got running as fast as I could, instead.
I overtook Mrs Garin just as Seth reached the mine entrance. He stopped there for a second, and I hoped maybe he wasn't going to go in. I thought there was a chance that if the dark didn't put him off, the smell of the place would — kind of an old campflre smell, like ashes and burned coffee and scraps of old meat all mixed together. Then he did go in, and without so much as a look back at me yelling for him to quit it.
I told his Mom to stay clear, for God's sake, that I'd go in and bring him out. I told her to tell her son and husband the same thing, but of course Garin didn't listen. I don't think I would have, in his situation, either.
I climbed the slope and broke through the yellow tapes. The tyke was short enough so he'd been able to go right underneath. I could hear the faint roaring you almost always hear coming out of old mine-shafts. It sounds like the wind, or a far-off waterfall. I don't know what it really is, but I don't like it, never have. I don't know anyone who does. It's a ghostly sound.
That day, though, I heard another one I liked even less — a low, whispery squealing. I hadn't heard it any of the other times I'd been up to look into the shaft since it was uncovered, but I knew what it was right away — hornfels and rhyolite rubbing together. It's like the ground is talking. That sound always made the miners clear out in the olden days, because it meant the works could come down at any time. I guess the Chinamen who worked the Rattlesnake back in 1858 either didn't know what that sound meant or weren't allowed to heed it.
The footing slipped on me just after I broke through the tapes, and I went down on one knee. I saw something lying there on the ground when I did. It was his little plastic action figure, the red-head with the blaster. It must have fallen out of the boy's pocket just before he went into the shaft, and seeing it there laying in that broken-up rock — waste stuff we call gangue — seemed like the worst kind of sign, and gave me the creeps something fierce. I picked it up, stuck it in my pocket, and forgot all about it until later, when the excitement was over and I returned it to its proper owner. I described it to my young nephew and he said it's a Cassie Stiles (sp.?) figure, from the Motor Cops show the little tyke kept talking about.
I heard sliding rock and panting behind me; looked back and saw Garin coming up the slope. The other three were standing down below, huddled together. The little girl was crying.
'You go on back, now!' I said. 'This shaft could come down any time! It's a hundred and thirty damn years old! More!'
'I don't care if it's a thousand years old,' he said back, still coming. 'That's my boy and I'm going in after him.'
I wasn't about to stand there and argue with him; sometimes all you can do is get moving, keep moving, and hope that God will hold up the roof. And that's what we did.
I've been in some scary places during my years as a mining engineer, but the ten minutes or so (it actually could have been more or less; I lost all sense of time) that we