In olden times, people might have thought demons lived in the stony white caves. There was a faint feeling of water, as if to drill much deeper would lead to an underground river far under the earth.
The smell of burning rubber was stronger, and this time the elevator door actually got stuck. The officer had to jerk the lever a few times to make the doors open all the way.
“Elevator’s been breaking down,” he said.
“What happens if you get stuck down here?” she asked.
He gave her a wide-eyed look. “I get stuck.”
She checked her phone. No service. Of course.
“Is there an emergency procedure?” she asked.
“The next guy on shift calls the elevator guy. That’s what they tell me.” He shrugged, but she could see he worried about it.
“How did they get the limestone up, back when this was a mine?” she asked, curious, as they entered the vaults.
“There were shafts between the floors.” He pointed way off, into the dark. “You don’t want to see them now.”
“How come?”
“They fell in years ago. They’re rubble.”
He pulled out his penlight. This floor was for paper records, and the dry air was pungent with the smell of mildew. He shined the light on row after row of file boxes, some of them bulging with time. Coils of old faxed papers, unreadable now, spilled down the shelves, and the ground was littered with fallen papers. They formed dirty snowdrifts over the white stone. She looked down to see an old receipt that saidchains.
“This mine was first dug back in 1809,” he said, looking over at her to see if she was as interested as he was in the history of his own private prison. “They used what is called room and pillar mining—it’s most often used for coal, but it works for limestone, too, if you want what’s underground and not just up at the quarry surface. You cut in vertically at each floor, creating rooms. To hold each room up, you leave pillars.” He stroked one of these massive white supports as they passed. “The pillars are carefully calculated to hold up the floors above us. You got to know exactly how big they need to be. One inch too narrow and the whole thing might come down.” He shined the light on the limestone ceilings above them as if to confirm the truth.
“It sounds like you know a lot about this place.”
“I got nothing better to do, sitting up in the cage all day.”
“Why did you get sent here?” she asked. It was very cold down here.
He didn’t answer that question, looking at his black rubber shoes.
“There’s been five collapses of limestone mines in recent years,” he replied instead. “That’s a lot, when you consider that there are less thana hundred mines like this left in the United States. But the bosses tell me,Don’t worry, Jacob.” She could see the concern in his young face, the shadow of faint acne on his cheeks. “There was one collapse in Tennessee that killed seven people. It registered 3.2 on the Richter scale. If the pillars go—even one—it can cause a domino effect and the whole mine falls in on itself. It can make a sinkhole a mile wide. That’s what you see, sometimes, when you look at what looks like a man-made lake. It’s a collapsed mine. They fill them with water. Or the groundwater comes up. That can be like an explosion, too.”
She gazed at him, wondering if he was trying to scare her. No, she thought. He was processing his own fear. He had sensed her compassion, and she sent it out to him now, surrounded him with tendrils of warmth.
“It must be scary, sitting in the cage above all this,” she said.
“Yeah. It’s like the Misty Mountains inThe Hobbit,” he said, blushing. “That’s what I tell myself. I’m sitting above a treasure.”
“You are. Many treasures. And secrets.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You could have information down here that changes the world—above.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
He glanced deep into her eyes. He was mesmerized by how intent her gaze was, by the peaceful, warm way she made him feel. It was like the corridors vanished, and even the white stone held warmth.
“What police force were you on, before being sent here?”
“Tiny town by the name of Birch. They were nice there.”
“You let anyone know I’ve been visiting?”
