The Tales of Gehiwian Circle

The Trapper

24th October 1994

Fallen autumn leaves crackled, as sharp as splitting bone, until Tim Block's feet came to a stop. Before him loomed the gothic Skull Stock, through which the Gehiwian Mining Company opened their operations over one hundred and fifty years ago.

Sucking in a deep breath, Tim distracted his hands by checking the straps of his backpack. Part of him wanted to be here, to see the history of his home town up close. But the taunting of the school's bullies swirled inside his head, that he was too chicken to see the history he obsessed over in the local library.

His foot hesitated as he stepped towards the looming rock. The site had been snatched back by nature. Juvenile silver birch hunched together in the new Gehiwian forest, but stopped several metres clear of the stock. There had been no new growth where humanity had bored deep into the veins of the earth. Rubble and debris littered the bare soil, untouched since the Company abandoned the site decades earlier.

Tim stopped by the first pieces of loose coal, unnaturally exposed on the surface of the soil. He mused over how long it had seen daylight. Was it mined during the original horse-drawn workings, or the steam-hauled, narrow gauge trains that came later, carting coal off to the standard gauge goods yard and station?

Birdsong, trills interspersed in a familiar melody, stole his focus. It sounded like the canary he often saw in the local pet shop.

He walked towards the mines, eyes drawn up to the skull carvings in the stone. Dark, empty eye sockets and yawning mouths oozed an infective sense of foreboding. The artists behind the carvings remained a mystery, one the Mining Company never got to the bottom of. 

Something hard stubbed Tim's foot. He winced at the wooden railway sleeper at the end of a section of narrow gauge track. Rusty rails snaked away into the dark of the mine's interior.

Kneeling down, Tim extracted a torch from his backpack. With a gulp, he got up and walked towards the dark entrance, a small niggle growing in his mind. It was illegal to enter the mines. Even if he did it, he couldn't tell anyone.

Why am I here trying to prove something then?

Something shot past his face, too fast to see. Ducking to the side, Tim swatted it as a line of warmth spread across his cheek. Dabbing it, droplets of blood stuck to his finger tips.

A high-pitched voice echoed down Tim's ear.

"The tub's too full sir."

Tim spun round. Standing at the end of the forgotten track outside the mine was a small boy, maybe eight or nine years old. Coal dust coated his pale skin. Two twinkling eyes were ringed by black circles, while black, baggy clothes hung over his small form. His hands were black, but wrinkles and cracked skin adorned his small, tubby fingers, betraying a lifetime's worth of work. Basic hide shoes, riddled with holes, covered most of the child's feet. Exposed skin was as black as the coal itself.

The miner child's empty, soulless stare sent a venom of unease through Tim. It was neither malicious nor calming, but they could see each other.

"Hi," Tim forced a smile, waving his hand with bloodied fingertips, "Did you throw something at me?" 

No, he thought afterwards, whatever was thrown came from inside the mine.

"I said the tub's too full sir," the child replied, voice cold and tinny with reverb.

"Tub?" Tim looked around, "What tub?"

"It's not going to fit through the door." 

The more the child spoke, the more unnatural they seemed. "What door?" Tim frowned, "The mine entrance?"