Chapter XIV

The tunnel never got any lighter as Alex crept farther down, and the beam from his tiny flashlight hardly did him any justice. The air around him was cold and moist. He could feel it coming through his thin hoodie. Worst of all were the thoughts that kept gnawing at his mind; would he be able to find a way out of here at all?

No, that was morbid thinking, he told himself. The tunnels could not possibly go on forever, and even if they did, he knew where the entrance was, or what was left of it. Help would come as soon as possible.

However, the thought of being buried alive had a mind-bending power over Alex, and he was simply not willing to wait for help to arrive. If this was a mine, then surely there was another access point to the surface of the mountain, whether it was an air duct, an auxiliary entrance, or the main entrance itself.

Alex was trying to keep the heart in his chest from exploding. He had to keep his cool, that was more important now than anything. He waved his light all around the tunnel for any signs that might lead him to an escape route, but no other options revealed themselves except forward. Alex felt as though he had been walking through the dark tunnel forever, constantly stepping over and bending under disfigured, broken segments of the mine’s structure. Panic was welling up inside him again as he cursed the seemingly endless tunnel. Thoughts were racing through his head and he could feel it getting tougher to breath. Was it because he was starting to lose his mind, or was he only traveling deeper and deeper under the mountain?

“JESUS!” Alex cursed out loud, his voice reverberating throughout the dark, crumbling corridor. Nearly falling forward, he managed to snatch hold of the small end of a tree root sticking out of the wall as he was almost taken over the edge of a massive hole in front of him. In the sudden jump scare, Alex accidently dropped his flashlight into the chasm. As he regained his footing, he watched the faint beam of light spin as it continued to fall. Alex held his breath, waiting for the flashlight to stop falling. After several seconds, he heard the light hit the ground, but the beam itself was hardly visible at all. Alex’s jaw dropped and he tightened his grip on the root. That was perhaps the luckiest thing to happen to him all day. If the fall itself had not killed him, surely bashing his head off of the walls of the hole several times would have done the job.

His brief thoughts of relief faded when he realized that he was now without a source of light and trapped underground in a highly unstable mine. Yet as he stared blankly down at the flashlight, he was still able to faintly make out his surroundings, as if the light was somehow illuminating the tunnel.

Without thinking, Alex glanced up. To his surprise, he was looking up into a vertical tunnel, similar to the hole he had just dropped his flashlight into, and saw the dim outline of what looked like a shaft leading above ground. A smile instantly expanded across his face, only to be wiped away by one curious fact: the faint light that shone through the shaft was the light of the moon.

Alex’s eyes widened and he felt an intense wave of goosebumps travel along his arms. There was no way he could have been trapped in the mine long enough for night to fall. He could see the dark of night through the vent above him, which would have meant that he had been wandering this tunnel for hours. It didn’t make any sense.

To make matters worse, his state of panic was preventing him from calling up through the mine shaft in the hope that somebody might hear him.

He bit his lip as he reached out and felt along the mouth of the hole above him for something to grab onto. The walls of the tunnel were completely ragged with chunks of dirt, roots, and other forms of debris sticking out of them. So why should this one be any different, he wondered. He thought about Nickole, and how she had to be absolutely frantic right now, knowing that her older brother was trapped in this life or death situation.

Alex shook his head to regain his senses. At this point, he realized he had managed to climb about halfway up the vertical tunnel. One of his hands was grasping another tree root in the wall. The other had hold of a rock that barely jutted far enough for him to grip properly, and he had his feet dug into the dirt for as much support as he could muster.

Alex gasped as his foot slipped out of its hold and he nearly lost all of his grip. He held his breath and tried desperately to regain his footing.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Alex breathed through clenched teeth. One more slip and it was over, he just knew it. How did a simple afternoon out with friends suddenly turn into a sick game of survival? Alex took a deep breath and slowly heaved himself up, scrambling about for more points to grab.

As stressful as the effort was, Alex finally pulled himself high enough to reach the shaft vent. He carefully reached up and put hand against the vent, applying pressure and hoping that, like the rest of the mine, it was weak enough to push it off without issue. The vent cover, however, would not budge, and Alex was beginning to feel it digging into his hand as he struggled with it.

Finally giving up, Alex gasped and brought his hand back down to help support his precarious position. Now he just stared up at the sky through the mine shaft’s vent. He could feel the warm, outside air against his face. The thought of a single, metal obstacle standing between him and escaping this nightmare only made him angry; so angry that it was beginning to heat him up inside. He was not thinking straight anymore. His teeth were tightly clenched and he was breathing heavily. The anger forced his eyes shut and he was starting to feel a sharp pain around his forehead. Whatever was happening to him at this moment, Alex felt a sudden, powerful urge that made him cry out and throw his fist into the air.

The vent covering the mine shaft broke off as Alex’s fist hit it with incredible force. Yet it was not pain in his knuckles that hit him, rather he felt a strange wave of dizziness and shock emanating from his forehead. Hardly thinking at all, Alex forced himself up and climbed out of the shaft in the ground. Once he was clear of the dark chasm he rolled over and lied on his back for a moment to clear his head.

The dizziness and the weird pulsing sensation in his head took a while to wear off. When he came to his senses, Alex found himself staring blankly up at the nighttime sky. The light of the stars struggled to push through the clouds. The muffled sound of thunder in the distance caught Alex’s attention. It seemed the storm they had been expecting to pass over tonight had already occurred and long since passed. With that in mind, Alex realized how damp the ground was. He groaned in frustration as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling his wet clothes rub against his skin.

‘Calm down, Alex.’ He said to himself. He managed to get out of the crumbling deathtrap of a mine, now he just had to make his way back – but where was back exactly?

It was nighttime already. That had to mean he had been wandering for at least several hours, and he had serious doubts that his friends would still be on the other side of the tunnels waiting for him. In fact, by now they would have already sought out help and made an effort to clear the debris from the tunnel’s entrance.

Still, if Alex had really been underground for so long, then he must have wandered a whole lot farther than it seemed. By the time he had stumbled upon the gaping hole in the tunnel, he could have sworn he had been walking for no more than ten minutes at most. If it really had been hours, then he would have to be a couple of miles into the mountains. None of what just happened to him made any sense. However, if Alex just turned and hiked back in the direction he had come, then he should eventually arrive back at the dirt path and the ruined mine entrance. That would at least be a start. So he took a deep breath and turned around to head back, but before he could take a step, he froze in place at the new obstacle in his way.

Alex’s jaw dropped again as he gazed upon another cliff-like obstruction in his path, similar to the one they came to when they discovered the mine, but this one was different; It was much larger and far rockier. It towered over Alex and extended outward at the top, making it appear like a menacing, unscalable barrier. He looked to both sides and saw that this cliff also stretched out as far as he could see, as if it were meant to be a wall separating the mountains from their base, which meant that Alex was still cut off from his quickest route out of these dark hills.

Alex had to force himself to relax. What else could he do? If he hiked off into the hills or along the cliffside then he would surely encounter civilization at some point. Throughout this entire experience, he could feel his sanity slipping away. He was only fourteen, he should not have to be going through this, he told himself. Still, he had to get out of this situation somehow, even if it meant spending the rest of the night hiking and wandering the dark and eerie atmosphere of the Appalachian Mountains. So taking a few deep breaths and giving a slight nod that said ‘Screw it,’ Alex walked cautiously into the woods.