What the Depths Demanded

No one was meant to see the operator come or go. But that evening, well after the whistle had blown, I had to drop out of the long line of soot-faced miners trudging back to town, to return to the gatehouse for my lunch pail. Then I saw him, wheeling his cart toward the mine’s entrance. It creaked under the strain of a large steamer trunk, the same one Mr. Percival had presented as containing his “invention” those three months past. The new owner’s ingenuity was guaranteed to make the mine prosperous once more and safer than ever—or so we had been told. “Lord Percival” some folk had taken to calling him—even “Lord Geoffrey” to others—though whether he ever had any right to the title I neither know nor care. He managed to get the mine running again; that was all that concerned me.

The operator was just how I had remembered him when Mr. Percival had first introduced himself and his associate at the mining company, insisting on a mass meeting where all the miners would be present. The operator was a queer little man; if you had told me he was no more than four feet tall I would have believed you. Yet though he was no taller than a child, his face was dark and weather-beaten. His suit of clothes was ill-fitting—too long in the sleeves of his dusty jacket and too short in the hem of his wrinkled pants—as if they’d been tailored for someone else entirely. It had been a striking contrast to Mr. Percival’s immaculate wardrobe and finely-trimmed whiskers.

“He’s a bad ‘un, that Lord Percival,” Mam-gu Alys had said some weeks ago. Confined to bed more or less continuously for the last year, I knew that the aged woman could have learned almost nothing of the man. But how could I not indulge her? It was she who had so recently lost a son and two grandsons when the Number Four shaft had collapsed.

“The mine keeps food on our table, Mam,” my father replied. “The Devil himself’d have to take over the mine to stop me going back.”

Mam-gu frowned and made a spitting motion over her right shoulder. “I raised you better than to say such things, Dylan Rowlands!”

“Tis no easier for me and Ian than for anyone,” he continued. “Mr. Percival has his own motives, I have no doubt, but as long as he keeps the Bala Gwynedd Mine running I’ll not much concern myself with what they might be.”

“He’s a bad man, I tell you,” Mam-gu went on. The family always seemed to let her have the last word. “Things were not right at the mine before the disaster. No one would come all the way from London for such a slim promise of profit. I don’t trust him.”

I chuckled at the notion of what Mam-gu Alys would have thought if she had seen the operator. Curiosity got the better of me and I paused in the gatehouse doorway, lunch pail in hand, not quite knowing what I expected to see. The little man yanked on the steamer trunk, eventually jerking it onto the ground just outside the mine’s main entrance. There it must stay, I thought, for the burden was surely too much for the operator to bear alone. Just for a moment he looked up from his task. Our eyes met. The dozen yards or so between us seemed to shrink to nothing, as if we stood under the same dim lamp, face to face. A swollen hand began to rise from his side, drawing my gaze to his untrimmed fingernails, grown almost long enough to be mistaken for claws. He smiled at me, but only out of the corner of his mouth, exposing a gummy palate and a single, crooked tooth. I turned to leave, spinning hard on my heel, not caring that the gatehouse door slammed hard behind me.

Hoping to catch up with the lads, I quickened my pace, but already the line seemed to have dispersed down the various side streets and alleys. Up on the hill the church bells chimed the hour. But that could not be right, I thought. The whistle sounds on the half hour and I could have spent no more than a few minutes returning to the gatehouse. Whatever timepiece the Reverend Jenkins kept up there, it couldn’t have strayed that far from the time kept at the mine’s offices. I jogged past the pub, resisting the urge to pop my head in for a minute or two, and headed for home.

“What kept you, Ian?” my father asked as I walked in.

“Had to go back for this,” I replied, holding the lunch pail up where he could see.

“Took you long enough. Help me lift Mam so we can turn the mattress.”

We performed the routine manoeuvre in silence. The operator’s impish grin and the strange passage of time kept me uneasy, but I said nothing. My father would think me a fool and Mam-gu’s irrational distrust of the mine’s management would only grow deeper still.

“I’m not so heavy you won’t be able to get me up to the church tomorrow night, am I Ian?” she asked as I laid her back on the bed and adjusted the pillows.

“I’ll get you there, Mam-gu. Don’t worry.”

Three nights of revival services was what the Reverend Jenkins had announced and she was determined to be there for all of them. She never seemed to tire of recounting the “the winter of fifty-nine when Humphrey Jones himself preached a revival in our town.” True religion was everywhere then, to hear her tell it, but it had all but faded away. Though old enough to remember, my father never talked about the famous revival; and since the tragedy at the mine, I was sure I heard him sigh or groan whenever the church was mentioned in his presence.

“Will you go with us, then, Dylan?” Mam-gu asked.

“No, Mam,” he replied, taking in and releasing a deep breath. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

I could see that my Mam-gu’s eyes were welling up with tears yet she said nothing further. As much as changing the bed, this was one of our family’s routine manoeuvres now. She would gently ask and he would decline.

So it was the next night that I trudged up the hill with Mam-gu, pushing the old, wheeled chair the doctor lent us for the purpose. I steered her up to the spot in front that had been reserved for her and then found a place near the back for myself. Reverend Jenkins could preach for an hour or more and if I should nod off for a moment or two there were fewer judging eyes toward the rear of the building.

Just after the singing was done, Owen Griffiths came in and slid into a place at the other end of my row. The gruff, old foreman from the mine was just about the last person I had expected to see there. He took off his hat, revealing the permanent sooty line that marked where his miner’s helmet sat, and gazed up at the preacher with wide eyes. The expression he wore stood in stark contrast to the rest of the congregation; it was one I had never seen him wear: fear. His hands wrung at his hat, like as if he would tear it in two at any moment; his knees bounced up and down and his feet shuffled from side to side.

Reverend Jenkins seemed to notice the man, slowing the cadence of his words noticeably, and directing his gaze toward the back of the room. Raising the volume of his voice a bit, he continued with his sermon.

Not more than a minute later, however, Griffiths shot up from his seat, standing as straight and rigid as one of the beams that held up the roof of the mine. His jaw was clenched so tight I imagined he must surely be crushing his own teeth. He stamped up and down with his left foot, first lightly and then so hard that heads began to turn. Reverend Jenkins could no longer ignore the disturbance.

“Is something wrong, friend?” he called out from the pulpit.

“Jesus, what do we have to do with thee?!” Griffiths exclaimed, running the syllables together as if all a single word. It was the man’s own voice, but the sound had to force its way past his lips, like he was being strangled. An instant later he jerked forward sharply at the waist then fell over to his left, sprawling into the aisle. Foamy spittle began to collect at the corners of his mouth and a wave of convulsions washed over his body from head to foot.

Three men emerged from the congregation—Mam-gu would later tell me they were the deacons—and hauled Griffiths out the back door of the sanctuary and into the vestibule. From there I could hear them struggling to take the man down the stairs to the church’s basement. In the meantime, people had started to stand up, shrinking back from the site of the incident.

“Brothers and sisters,” Reverend Jenkins said, “please stay here while I attend to … this matter.”

The preacher descended from the pulpit and followed the men out the back door. I walked to the front, rather than remain in place as instructed.

“I’m taking you home,” I told Mam-gu.

She protested that she was sure Reverend Jenkins had everything under control.

“I won’t let you test that notion,” I replied. “If there should be a rush for the doors I won’t risk your being trampled. We’ll go now.”

It was clear she wanted to argue, but she put up no further protest after that. As we exited into the cool, night air I heard someone come out behind us. It was Reverend Jenkins.

“Mr. Rowlands, I hope you’ll come back in. I’m sure your nain wants to hear the rest of the sermon.”

I paused for a moment before answering. “Can you tell me what just happened in there, Reverend Jenkins? And can you assure me it won’t happen again?”

“Well, Ian,” he began, adopting the more familiar tone and form of address I’d heard him use with congregants before. “You saw as well as I did the distress Mr. Griffiths was under. The deacons and I were able to calm him down and he is resting peacefully now.”

“In his right mind?”

Then it was the Reverend’s turn to pause before answering. “What would make you ask that?”

“No doubt you know the Good Book far better than I, Reverend, but I can’t be the only one who thought Mr. Griffiths’ words were strikingly similar to the—”

“Yes, I’m sure they were,” he said, cutting me off mid sentence and casting a sideways glance at the wheelchair. “Mr. Griffiths was quite delirious when I saw him downstairs. In his fevered state he might have said anything. We need not make any hasty conclusions.”

“Aye, I suppose so.” My words came out in a bitterer tone than even I expected. “Might scare folks away from your revival services.”

Reverend Jenkins’ expression froze in stoic silence. “Good evening to the two of you. Be careful going back down the hill.”

Though I expected her to protest, it was several minutes later before Mam-gu spoke, breaking up the clacking rhythm of the wheels on the street.

“You needn’t have spoken that way to the Reverend,” she said.

“And he needn’t have cut me off before—”

“No, he shouldn’t have,” she interrupted. “Not on my behalf, certainly. I know the story as well as you and the Reverend knows that I know it. If it weren’t the exact words of Legion when Christ cast them into the swine, it was near enough as makes no difference.”

“Then you see why I wouldn’t go back in there?”

Mam-gu scoffed at my question. “You’re not such a fool to think you’re any safer out here than you would be in there, Ian.”

“It’s not me whose safety I worry over.”

“Bah,” Mam-gu replied, dismissing my words with a flick of her wrist.

By the time of the morning whistle I had put the events of the night before out of my mind. A man hardly needed to know his letters and figures to work in the mine, but, nevertheless, the job required a degree of focus that was altogether foreign to me until the day I joined the other men of my family underground. I arrived at the gatehouse at the usual time, but found that a disorderly queue had formed.

“What’s going on?” I asked when I joined the restless assemblage.

“Operator’s still in there, I heard someone say,” one of the men in front of me said.

“Can’t be,” another replied. “Operator has to be out before we go in.”

“Then why do you think we’re standing out here?” a third man said, joining the fray.

“Ah, sod off, you!” the second man said, though a sheepish grin had crept in at the corners of his mouth.

Ahead, the chief foreman had climbed onto something at the front of the crowd so that his knees stood on a level with our heads.

“Listen up!” he shouted through a large, brass speaking trumpet. “The Number Two shaft is closed this morning. Those crews will work on the Number Four today instead.”

Murmurs swept through the crowd; more than a few could be heard to exclaim, “What?!” or “He can’t mean it!”

The chief foreman began again, louder than before. “Lord Percival assures us that the Number Four is safe once more. Not only that, but the Operator’s been hard at work in there and we can be sure we’ll dig more out of that shaft than we ever did before.”

The muttering and grumbling continued. If anything it seemed to be growing in volume and intensity. I looked around, but held my peace.

“The men going into Number Four will find a bonus in their envelope at the end of the week,” the chief foreman continued, all but shouting by this time. “And any who don’t,” he bellowed, “will find themselves out of a job this morning.”

The din faded away quickly after that. The men destined for the Number Four shuffled to the front of the line; each of them seemed to have a curse to whisper under his breath as they passed my way. A couple minutes after they had gone down, it was my turn and I proceeded as usual with my foreman, Mr. Huws, to the Number Three shaft.

The morning shift passed uneventfully. But as I sat down to eat my simple lunch of bread and cheese, it was announced that Mr. Percival had increased our lunchtime break by a quarter of an hour—with pay! The work that the Operator had done in the Number Four shaft—or so the rumour went as it passed down the line—had so vastly increased output that our benevolent owner had chosen to reward all the workers. Given the chance, I would have spent that extra time merely to shut my eyes for a few minutes, propped against a wall somewhere. Yet I had no such chance.

“Ian,” Mr. Huws called out in his unmistakable baritone. “I was over in Number Two t’other day and left my spare headlamp. I need you to go get it for me.”

I hesitated getting to my feet. Not only was the shaft supposed to be closed, but the lunch break would be ending soon.

“Mr. Huws,” I started to say as I slowly pushed myself to my feet.

“No worries, lad. If anyone asks, you can tell them I sent you on the errand. And I’ll be sure you get all your time back.”

He then proceeded to describe to me exactly where I would find his spare lamp. I nodded, secured my cap and headlamp, and shuffled off on my way.

Completing my transit required mumbling On an errand for Mr. Huws only once or twice. By the time I arrived at the mouth of Number Two the sounds of the other work crews had all but died away, persisting only as faint, distant echoes. As I ventured farther into the shaft, the noise evaporated altogether and the thought intruded upon me of how isolated I was, deep within the earth, no other living thing anywhere near. Not since my first time in the mine, years ago, was the crushing weight of the soil above me and the unsettling mystery of what lay beneath my feet so palpable.

My contemplation lasted no more than a moment, however. As my eyes refocused on my surroundings, I spied Mr. Huws’ spare headlamp, just where he had said it would be. I covered those few paces and reached down for the lamp and stuffed it in my pocket.

No sooner had I done so than a peculiar sound reverberated from somewhere ahead, deeper into the shaft. I halted, but the muscles across my shoulders and back spasmed, bone and sinew revolting against the will of their master. For the eldritch vibrations were like none I had ever heard in the mines: they were too organic to be made by any machinery, but neither could they have been made by any man.

I shuffled forward slowly. The faintest light seemed to issue from a newly-carved side shaft. The urge to turn and run away was strong, but a greater urge—one that came from somewhere so deep in my mind it hardly seemed my own—impelled me onward. A lifetime passed from one step to the next; my heart pistoned so hard and so fast I thought it would shoot through my ribs at any moment. Yet still I crept forward, closer and closer toward the mouth of the side shaft. The sounds grew more distinct, even if they did not grow much louder—they reminded me of nothing so much as the rats that used to scutter through the walls of the decrepit slum house my family had been forced to call a home when I was a young lad.

As I turned the corner to enter the side shaft there could be no mistaking that something down that way was the source of the noise. My eyes adjusted to the light after a moment. I strained and squinted to see, but instantly regretted the effort. It was the operator. He lay prostrate on the floor of the shaft; he faced me, but his eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth twisted into a frightening amalgamation of pain and glee. He was barefoot and then the source of the scuttering noise became clear: with his fingers and toes the operator was scratching furiously against the rugged surface beneath him.

An unexpected blast of frigid air struck me in the face and at the same time the operator’s convulsive movements ceased. I inched forward, hardly daring to breathe, straining to make out the operator’s shallow breaths. He was alive, it seemed, but only just. The feeble groan that escaped his lips froze me in place. A second icy gust assaulted my right side. Reflexively I began to turn my head in search of the source, but before I could do so the operator turned over—not like a man rolling over in his bed, but rather flipped from one side to the other like Mam-gu tossing crempogau in her favourite pan.

He expelled a guttural sigh as his back slapped the floor of the shaft. For a moment or two he was very still once more, but then began to stir, stretching his limbs in a way that reminded me of a cat rousing itself from a nap in the sun. Suddenly he shot up to a seated position, throwing his hands over his ears; his knuckles, I could see, were a purplish, coagulated hideosity, no doubt scraped to the bone. The tips of his fingers, too, were a terrible sight, the claw-like nails ground down or peeled back. Though his mouth gaped open and the rest of his face contorted, no sound emerged.

Then I heard the voice.

At first I did not recognize it as a voice; it sounded, rather, like the whole mine was collapsing on top of me. Reflexively I fell to the ground and covered my head and neck, awaiting the impact. Though I quickly realised that I was not then to be crushed, the sound only intensified. I moved my hands to my ears and sat up to see the operator frozen in the same position as before. My jaw clenched so hard I was sure I would crack a tooth, but after what seemed a lifetime of agony the sound resolved itself into the voice. The voice filled my head and was no less terrifying than the sound I had assumed it to be at first.

The language, I thought, was none I had ever heard before. I cast a glance at the operator and the words in my head transformed to my native tongue.

This one has been reckless. His chastisement has merely begun.

Whether the voice was in my head or whether it filled the side shaft I could not tell. Despite the torment I could not help but marvel in terror.

Another burst of cold air seemed to assault me from all sides. The operator was swept up in the gale; he sailed across the chamber, crashing against the wall, and fell to the ground in a motionless heap.

You too must suffer, human. But we may not torment you before the time.

The voice released its grip on my mind and I toppled forward, extending my hands just in time to save my face from a collision with the rough ground. All was silent. As soon as I understood that the voice—the sound, whatever it was—had left me, I scrambled to my feet and ran. Past the entrance to the Number Two shaft my feet carried me with speed from some reserve I had not known that I possessed. The urge to get out of the mine altogether was so overpowering that my journey to the surface was nothing but a blur. I had forgotten all about Mr. Huws’ headlamp until I was about to emerge from the mine’s entrance and my mind was consumed with something else altogether.

I had expected to step out into the sun of mid-afternoon, but instead was greeted by an inky sky, dusted with the light of pinprick stars. It was impossible, yet it was true. I knew I had started out on my errand not more than a quarter of an hour before. Yet there was no mistaking that it was nighttime. The mine’s yard was empty; only the gas lamps at the end of the street gave me any illumination. A wave of horror washed over me and I started running again. I ran all the way home, past shuttered shops and empty pubs.

All was dark and quiet—save in my own head. There the words of the voice echoed in my mind. Louder and louder they grew as my feet pounded the familiar pavement of the town’s streets. I rounded the last corner before the house and a searing pain shot across my shins, radiating up toward my knees. Almost before I had time to think about the injury I found myself tumbling head over heels; whatever had struck my legs had also been sturdy enough to arrest my forward momentum. In the moonlight I caught a glimpse of my own front door before my head struck something hard and I blacked out.

I woke to find myself propped up on the little sofa in our house’s modest front room. Mam-gu Alys was standing next to me.

“Mam-gu, why are you out of bed?” I exclaimed, shocking myself at the raspy weakness of my own voice.

“Lay yourself back down, Ian. I can stand long enough to come pat your hand for a moment or two.”

“How did I—”

“Quite the fall it must have been and you’ll have a nasty lump to show for it. What you were doin’ out so late, I’d like to know, but not now. Just rest.”

Mam-gu shuffled slowly across the room to her own bed which was just in view from where I reclined.

“But the mine …”

“Your tad is already there. Who knows how long they’ll be digging this one out.”

“What?”

Before responding Mam-gu climbed carefully into her own bed, resting her cane against the wall after she was safely ensconced.

“ʼTwas a big collapse, I hear. Maybe the end of the mine for good this time. But I shouldn’t gossip.”

“But how—”

“Rest, Ian. I said too much and upset you. Forgive an old woman one loose-tongued moment. Rest. I’m going to do the same.”

Sleep seemed like an utter impossibility. Nevertheless, I sunk back into the cushions of the sofa as much as I could and pulled the quilt down from under my chin where someone—Mam-gu Alys I did not doubt—had placed it. Before long my eyes grew heavy and I slept again.

Judging by how the shadows clung to the back wall, I must have slept most of the rest of the day. Light snoring signalled that Mam-gu Alys had been doing the same. The front door opened and I shifted onto my side, expecting to see my father. Instead the Reverend Jenkins passed through and my father followed.

“Hello, Ian,” the preacher greeted me. “I hear you’ve had quite the night.”

Mam-gu stirred in the next room. She slept lightly during the day and the Reverend’s voice had a piercing quality to it.

“Mam asked me to bring him,” my father managed. “We had a talk on the way here. I think you should talk to him as well.”

By that time, Mam-gu Alys had sat up in bed and called out her greeting to Reverend Jenkins. “He’s a good lad, Reverend.”

Confused, I looked to my father, who easily read the look I must have had on my face. He brushed away my confusion with a wave of the hand as he brought a chair for Jenkins to sit on next to my makeshift bed.

“I came because … your nain was … concerned.”

I admit I had never known the Reverend all that well, but for what I did know, he’d never been a man to hesitate for words.

“Concerned at what?” I asked. A sidewise glance toward the bedroom confirmed that the oldest member of the household was listening carefully.

“You were unconscious at first, but when they settled you on the sofa it seems you started to speak.”

“Speak what? I don’t remember that at all.”

Reverend Jenkins looked over at my father where he leaned against the kitchen door then looked back at me.

“At first you were muttering about running out of the mine into the darkness, but after that … they don’t know what you were speaking. As far as your tad and your nain could tell … it was no language they had ever heard.” Here the Reverend paused and took a deep breath. “They were sure it was nothing human, in fact.”

“What happened last night, Ian?” Mam-gu said with a pitiful wavering in her voice.

I looked at my father again. He was a hard man who came up as a boy in the mines and had stayed there. Until that very moment never before had I seen fear in his eyes. Wringing his hat in his hands, he sank to his knees and whispered the Lord’s Prayer—the first time I’d heard a religious word pass his lips in many a year.

“Reverend,” I said, turning back toward the visitor. “All this fuss? Surely my ramblings, whatever they were, are only because I took a knock on the head.”

“I would have said the same until …”

“Until what?” I asked.

“I can tell him, Reverend Jenkins,” Mam-gu piped up.

“Very well,” he replied.

“I looked at the clock when Dylan brought you in. I made a special note of the time: it was half past two in the morning. When you fell outside it woke us both instantly and it wasn’t more than a minute or two before you were on that sofa.”

“And what has that to do with anything?” I said.

My father had bowed his head all the way to the floor by that time. It was a posture in which I had never seen him. He twisted his hat so roughly it seemed as though he might tear it in half.

“You were asleep when the news from London started going around town. Lord Percival is dead. Threw himself from a window, it seems, and broke his neck. A couple of bobbies happened to be nearby and heard him fall, but they came upon him too late, just as he breathed his last. They marked the time as half past two.”

I scarcely knew what to think of the words. My face surely betrayed my bewilderment and disquiet, for Mam-gu quickly ushered everyone out, insisting that I must have my rest. Sleep—or something like it—came, but genuine rest played the truant. A foggy veil shrouded my eyes and my mind.

Hours passed and darkness came. Though I was only on the cusp of wakefulness, I dimly perceived my lips moving and words quivering over my tongue. I could hear myself only as if the voice were coming from another room, muffled by the intervening walls and doors. Then another sound came in, faint at first but insistent.

“Holl amrantau'r sêr ddywedant,” Mam-gu sang in her breathy voice. “Ar hyd y nos.”

The stream of unintelligible words continued pouring out of my own mouth, but they started to form a kind of counterpoint with Mam-gu’s melodious tones.

“Dyma'r ffordd i fro gogoniant, Ar hyd y nos,” she continued, just as if she had been singing while she toiled at housework when I was a boy and she still had strong legs. As she sang on, the sensation of my own voice faded, the futile attempts to parse the meaning of the unknown words disappeared, transposed with the English words some long-forgotten Sunday school teacher must have taught me:

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

All through the night

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping

Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,

I my loving vigil keeping

All through the night.

I could feel myself beginning to retreat from the borders of waking. Even Mam-gu’s voice started to dwindle, leaving only the familiar tune and the calming sense of its words floating on a gentle breeze that swept through the realm of my consciousness. The breeze carried the faintest trace of something else, something cold, but before that impression could fully form the sleep of peace embraced me.