Tales of Tom Feller: Below Deep

Tom Feller’s entrance to Deep was a strange one indeed. He could have sworn he had seen chimney smoke when he was on the approach, but as he broached the city limits, the main street looked some curious kind of dead — shutters battened tight, windows shielded against the outer world even at high noon — all while a struggling, stuttering breeze gasped, feebly dragging wild mustard tumbling end over end toward the city’s heart. Peering about and thumbing his brim skyward, Tom looked about for signs of life. Shifting his pack uneasily, he fretted, deep down, that he had struck pyrite yet again. He breathed in, raising his cupped hands to his mouth, and let out a holler what could wake the territory.

As his halloo shuddered down the three feeble streets that made up the clumsy, snaking spokes of Deep. Tom fingered the silver chain around his wrist and mumbled a hushed prayer. In response to his call came the tentative creaking of a saloon door, and Tom put on his trademark greeting smile that endeared him to all but the most stiff sorts of people. To his surprise, the towhead of a young boy peeked out slantwise and met his gaze. At that instant the town came alive, portals of all sorts winking open to see who came a-calling.

As Tom shouldered his burden and strode confidently forward, the rest of the lad in the doorway slid out onto the short boardwalk and answered Tom’s raised open palm of good day with the same, however less confident it may have been in comparison. Behind him came what must have been the innkeep and cook, both similarly blonded and grey of eye as the lad that stood in front of them. Tom quietly noted the seeking, almost spectral faces from behind dusted glass or greased paper that watched him move down the way. 

As Tom approached the saloon, the purveyors placed their hands on their boy’s shoulders and supplied Tom with the cautiously welcoming expression endemic to saloon owners in small towns greeting wandering strangers.

“Howdy yourself, sir. Welcome to Deep,” the innkeeper offered in a hollowed tone.

Tom tipped up his brim, the muggy midday of the Dakota sun squinting his eyes. “Good afternoon to you all,” smiled Tom broadly, meeting the questing eyes of the trio.

“Passing through?” queried the heavy-eyed chef, her matronly hands holding tight to the boy’s shoulders, palmsides stained with cast iron and soot, contrasting against the faded, overwashed greying white of the youngling’s shirt.

“I certainly hope not, ma’am. Seems I’ve done not but passing for long as I care to remember. Heard there’s work to be done here.” Tom endeared the best he could, sensing the terse affect of the no doubt traveler-weary mother.

The purveyor’s countenance softened slightly, perhaps at the prospect of a new regular customer rather than a potentially mendicant drifter. Tom liked to think his winning personality played a part as well. At all the places he had been over his many years of traveling, he had always been well liked at the least, despite his failings.

“You are right at that, sir. Mr. Pismire has had one hell of a time keeping men around here. Deserters left, right, and center it seems.”

At this, Tom furrowed internally. “Is he a fair man?” he inquired.

“Why, oh yes, yes of course. Nothing like that. They just leave,” the Keep allayed.

“Disappear,” the boy piped in.

His mother lightly smacked his cheek. “None of that hooey,” she reprimanded. The boy cast his eyes downward and shut his mouth tight.

“Have you had lunch yet?” the proprietor redirected.

“I might could eat a bit,” Tom replied, following the trio inside.

As the doors swung in, a swarm of flies poured out of them and a stench of rot assaulted Tom’s nostrils. Through the murky dusk of the interior he began to make out upturned chairs, tables, and more in disarray, as well as the half-eaten remains of a long since abandoned lunch, moldering on tabletops and cloaked in dust and soot.

The matron looked upon the scene with bewilderment, as if seeing it for the first time.

“Those apes… I swear, Martin; if they expect me to keep cleaning up after them like this, I swear…” at which point she then set scurrying about the room.

“Sheila, they’re our only paying customers…” the keep supplicated as he set out after her.

Tom turned and met eyes with the young lad, whose wordless expression held secret depths that he felt unsure about plumbing quite yet. Tom tipped his hat slightly to the boy and quietly made his way outside, stomach grumbling yet turning in revulsion at the same time.

Back upon the boardwalk, he saw others had ventured out into the midday bake. In particular, Tom noticed a small group of grime smothered men ambling their way towards the opposite edge of town. Tom drew one of his last chunks of honey leather from his pack and stuck a bit in his cheek before picking up after them.

Once alongside the men, Tom motioned in greeting, although not sure he caught their eyes, faces downturned and brims brought low as they were, casting their visages as harsh angles in the hooded shade. As the gaze of each man was locked on the two feet ahead of them, whether or not they noticed him, Tom couldn’t tell.

“Nothing hotter than Dakota summer noontide,” Tom offered up.

The nearest of the men crooked his neck up slightly. “Well, we’re cold as hell, Chipper,” he returned, then spat.

Tom narrowly avoided tripping over a spool of rope, then turned his eyes to the road in order to keep up with the cadre as they continued their metered plod. He warded his eyes with his palm against the harsh blank ahead, where in a blinding lack of definition, the bleached earth met sunsoaked firmament. The group continued the rest of their journey in a mutual quiet.

As they crossed the tracks and passed the outskirts of town, Tom saw a great plume of sand come up from the ground, with no source in sight. The earth was as smooth as it was in antiquity ‘round these parts, so flat you could see the trains a day before they got here. It wasn’t until they reached the edge of the pit — when the footing beneath him began to slowly sink, Tartarus bound — that he saw the shape of it.

The depression was made up of a slow, gradual gyre spiraling down into the earth like the inverse ziggurat of some antediluvian chthonic empire. A spidery armature crouched over the conical hollow, arcane tendrils of block and tackle stretched this way and that, reaching into a hole in the center. The mechanism stood derelict, wooden troughs hanging in midair filled with dull, hazel-colored oblong stones caked in earthen muck.

Tom watched the group move slowly down the winding path, feet dragging methodically in a fashion he had seen many a time in those who were not in any particular hurry to be punctual, to a trade they found no redemption in. However, as a coin-hungry and belly-poor traveler eager to make his day’s wage, Tom set down directly, stepping across the broad yet shallow steps toward the core, the tin sheet shack he saw dangling nearby.

Seeing no outward sign of life within, he picked his way carefully up the set of crumbling stairs, a few chunks falling out below him as he passed. After rapping his sterling beringed knuckles against the paper thin door of the shack, seemingly shaking the whole structure, a whine emitted from within the workings within. Springing awkwardly to life, buckets swung to and fro as they made their way in and out of the shaft below. A deep, hacking cough answered him and the door swung wide, revealing a man clothed in dust and grease regarding him wordlessly from behind dark goggles. They both stood in silence for a moment until Tom extended his hand to break the still. 

“Mr. Pismire, I presume?” 

The man cocked his head slightly, then gripped Tom’s hand in his, the chill of the man’s pale fingers biting into Tom’s warm palm. “Looks like we’ve got a live one here,” the man chuckled behind a spotted neckerchief, as Tom broke the icy handshake. “Emmet Pismire, that’s me.”

“Tom Feller. I see you could use some warm bodies,” Tom offered.

“You’re right there, son. That’s about all I can get at the moment,” he stated flatly, hooking his thumb towards the meandering laborers as they made their way stiffly about their duties. “Y’ever mined before?” Pismire asked brusquely. 

While he was most comfortable with a saw or an axe, Tom was not entirely unfamiliar with a pick and shovel. Though working in the earth was near the top of his most unfavorable enterprises, hungry and weary as he was, he was more than willing to sally forth into the darkness again if it could fill his belly and his purse. 

“Reckon I have, sir. Worked the Nonpareil mine out in the Oregon territory some.”

“Oregon? Strange, don’t see too many folks heading East nowadays.” 

“Ran afoul of some… people out there. Bad people. Saw some things, did some things. Figured I’d cool my heels back off the trail a bit.” Tom supplied.

“No need to tell me, boy. If it didn’t happen in Dakota, it don’t concern me none.” Emmet returned, closing the discussion and leading Tom down and out to the shaft’s edge.

Still speaking from behind his bandana, Emmet gestured at the buckets moving in and out of the earth’s maw. “Simple. Go down in the bucket, send geodes back up. Come on out when you hear the horn.”

Trying to hide his reluctance, Tom stepped into a bucket as Pismire stopped the line, holding fast to the ropes as it jerkily resumed its course. As Tom was lowered into the shaft, he carefully noted the sides of the perfectly vertical tunnel; they were polished smooth and featureless, almost like concrete. Rocks were sheared off where they sat and something like a lacquer covered them over in a fine layer. Tom reached out to touch it and his hand recoiled at the cold, damp surface. The stench on his fingertips was like vomit and kerosene, and it would not easily wipe off onto his pant leg. 

“I hate mining,” he murmured to himself, struggling not to envision that which defies definition. 

To his relief, the platform shortly appeared and he stepped off into a sidelong avenue that ran off of the main trunk. Tom lit a torch and hesitantly moved inwards, the light revealing the crude, rough dig of this branch of the tunnel, held up by occasional wooden jambs and struts. Relieved to be away from the unsettling uniformity of the main shaft, his eyes caught sight of abandoned tools, haphazardly cast to and fro along the walk. A pickaxe struck straight into the wall was missing its back half, broken off smoothly near the head. Tom picked up a loose pick and began working at his task.

Hours passed of dark iron sparking against stone and great bland geodes breaking loose and tumbling to the dirt. Tom filled up a tub, transferred it to the elevator and repeated. Soon enough, every bucket he saw was nearly full. The others must have hit a rich cache below. Curiosity pricked Tom and he grabbed a medium geode and turned it in his hands. The surface beneath the dirt was pebbled, and smooth. It almost felt warm in his hands as he inspected it and the strange patterns nature had painted in its shell. Setting it on the ground, Tom swung his axe and clove it open with a bang. The green insides spilled, glittering across the dirt, pooling and drawing together like baleful quicksilver. He shook off an arriving memory quickly, not looking to revisit the night in that cursed cavern with its argent river. The misshapen crystals inside pulsed with a terrible brilliance then slowly faded to black, the strange liquid following suit, leaving Tom gobsmacked and wary.

Behind him a ways, a voice suddenly cried out and then silenced. Light flickered and went out around the bend of the hall. A second, maybe three, then he shot off in the direction of both. 

Tom found himself doubled back around, staring at the center axis again. The downward slope had brought him to what must be the lowest spoke, and a great pile of geodes stood scattered around the edge. Bewildered before him stood two men with their backs to Tom, seeming to stare at the center of the hub.

“Told him there weren’t no good to be had going after the big ones.” muttered one.

“Stay on the upper rings, I said,” answered the other.

Tom walked closer to the men, and as he approached, they turned to face him. Tom slid back in horror. Their front sides had been sheared off, broken faces spilling teeth and gristle onto their dangling entrails, blood pooling as they stared lidless at Tom. One of them raised a stump as if to point at him, and as Tom tried to gather his wits to run for help, two great limbs came out of the ground behind the two men. The limbs rose up, wicked points glistening with gore, like the antlers of some unspeakable elk, longer than any man he had ever met on earth, and in an instant, gnashed the two corpses between them and drug the bodies beneath the sand.

Scrambling madly up the slope, Tom found himself standing at the edge of the abyss once more, buckets slowly making their way up and down the shaft. After a moment’s trepidation (and once the awareness had settled over him that there was no other route of escape), Tom threw himself into the next bucket. Below him, great gouts of dust rose up from the pit, the earth rolling and shaking beneath. Gripping tightly to the rope, Tom frantically began to pull himself up, the buckets overhead rattling and dropping flakes of dirt and gravel onto his face. Spitting and squinting, he climbed until he made it to the next cart, taking only a second to glance down at the now still surface of the floor below.

Gracious light shone above as he got nearer to the blessed surface. The sun had made its gradual recline to the west, and the long shadows of the scaffolding above cast a miserable shadowed web across the sloping hollow. On his hands and knees, Tom scrabbled up the side of the pit, fingers struggling to gain purchase in the baking sand, the carefully carved terracing having since collapsed during the grave tremors from below. Closer to the pit’s edge, Tom rolled over, shouting for any who could hear. The mechanisms stood halted, buckets shattered and broken, dangling askance from the frayed and snapped roping. 

No one replied, his futile calls ringing feebly around the hole. Tom turned back to scrabbling up the side of the pit in the unsettling grave silence that surrounded him. He made it to the sloped side of the chasm and flopped down, panting with exertion.

Just then, his eyes caught sight of the golden-haired youth from before, standing on the rim above him. The boy stared dumbly at Tom, as if unsure of what to make of the haggard, haunted man that crouched in the sand below. Slowly, other townsfolk began to gather near the edge, with the same befuddled expression as the boy. Tom waved frantically, trying to shoo them off and to warn them of the terror below. 

A great stone sailed out of the chasm and struck the ground next to Tom, and suddenly the earth began to shake. A hail of rock and grit shot out of the void and peppered Tom and the townspeople above. They began to scream soundlessly in the cacophony as the edge of the slope collapsed beneath their feet and they fell tumbling down. Tom futilely grasped at them as they rolled by, but in a flash, they had disappeared into the abyss. He turned and loped the last several yards up the side of the pit and snatched the awestruck boy up in his arms, running frantically back towards town, the wind biting into his face and tearing his fraying shirt from his forearms. He hazarded a quick glance behind himself as the entire structure of the rig collapsed in on itself and disappeared into the yawning maw of the earth.

As he reached the edge of town, he came upon the proprietress and her husband looking beyond and through him, and as he set their progeny between the two, he turned to follow their gaze. The parched ground shook beneath his feet, setting his bones to jangling in their sockets. Then, with an awesome crack, the horizon opened up and a nightmare stuck its dewy new paw out into the night air. Following behind the massive pad came an arm the length and width of a centuries-young sequoia, bristling with flexing spines that breathed and twisted like a gown of spears. Soon after, a second followed, and a third, and a sixth, and the people stood frozen in place while this cyclopean bugbear drew itself up out of the earth and flexed its shining pupation in the humid eve.

Its carapace was studded with scattered gems, all burning with a putrid luminescence that breathed sickeningly as the creature stretched. With a snap, tetrad translucent wings arrayed from its back and shook off the ooze of larvality. Slowly, the titanic monstrosity turned to regard Tom and the townsfolk, crystalline organs sparkling in the emerging moonlight and catching the failing glow of the setting sun. In an instant, it cast its arms wide and its featureless face split lengthwise and emitted an appalling screech that left Tom’s ears ringing and sent him running for shelter. He reached out to grab the others but they had vanished, and he was left alone to scramble wildly towards the town square.

No train was to be found, and the streets were deserted. Doors hung wide open or lay broken on the boardwalk. Shattered windows lay in shards everywhere, glass twinkling like fallen stars all around him. Not a soul was to be seen as Tom frantically looked down every street. With a crash, the beast landed in the middle of Deep and let out another wail. The slavering sludge dripped from its indescribable mandibles as it stalked Tom like a cat would a moth. Where the slime fell, flames bursted up in an instant. The sheer scale of the thing made escape impossible, so Tom opted to set his feet in a wide stance. The well lay in shambles before him, so Tom resolutely plucked a round stone from the wreckage. After weighing the melon sized rock in his hand, he threw it as hard as he could muster, with a yell of desperate determination. 

The stone sailed through the distance between Tom and the beast, and cleaved a mighty hole in the side of the abomination, causing its broken shell to dangle around the breach like panes of glass before falling to the ground and sticking fast. The animal roared in defiance and swiped a trunklike limb at Tom, sending three roofs flying into the air in a calamity of shake and rafter. Tom dove to the side and ducked against a building. He spotted a truss laying broken beside him in the dim twilight, and he set his rough hands upon it. Testing the heft of the thing in his hands once again, Tom took in a deep breath and gathered any hidden strength he had left. Out from behind the monster he came loping with a mighty timber, cocked back like a giant’s cudgel. Tom swung with all his might at the ankle of the behemoth.

The edge of the truss cut right into its delicate carapace and sent a web of cracks climbing up the leg of the titan. In bewilderment and rage, it turned quickly upon Tom — and sealed its fate in that same second. Its quick twist toward Tom caused its shin to twist sickly, and the husk of the thing exploded in a soggy snap. The cape of armature it had dragged out from its nest swung like a skeletal cloak as it collapsed towards the ground.

Flames flickered to life in the dusty timbres of the broken buildings as the monstrosity struggled and thrashed about, stoking the fires while turning the city to kindling. The church alone stood unharmed like a bone white crown above its head, the sunset casting it in blazing glory as the horror released an enraged death rattle in defeat. 

As Tom stood dumbfounded and exhausted at the foot of the terrible pyre, he looked down and somehow found his satchel beside him in the dirt. He picked it up and found it curiously heavy in contrast to how he’d left it. Inside were bundles of hardtack, dried fruits, and meat, as well as a fistful of old coin. 

He looked around at the wreckage and inferno that surrounded him. Shrugging and shouldering his pack, Tom raised his hand in a wave at the burning, writhing horror and turned to put it at his back. Biting into a hank of jerky, he set one foot in front of the other and walked into the night, while behind him, the ashen remains of Deep were already beginning to blow away into the morning.

Unseen by Tom, the boy stood in the flames and waved in response as he slowly faded into the dark. 

Sylvan Lingo hails from the insubstantial township of Quishnam, and has a deep, abiding regard for the unique weirdness of Eastern Washington.