The air grew colder and the light — filtered by the racing clouds — shimmered and shifted. It was like being underwater. Coral looked from the mineshaft to the steep cliffs above it and picked out spiralling dust devils being whipped up by the wind.
‘Three minute.’ Ludokrus was studying his watch.
‘I think we might need to find some shelter,’ she began, but her words were drowned by a crash of thunder like the boom of heavy guns.
A searing flash of lightning danced along the cliff top to their right, almost as if it had been aimed directly at them. Norman didn’t even have time to start counting. A second gun-like roar hit them, making the earth tremble and bringing with it waves of stinging rain.
‘Back to hut!’ Ludokrus shouted. He turned his bike and raced off at full speed. The others followed.
Coral cried out as the first fat drops struck her back, but no one could hear her above the angry downpour that engulfed them. They hunkered down over their handlebars, focussed on the hut that seemed to grow more distant in the dimming light.
The dusty track was suddenly slick. Puddles appeared out of nowhere, and the dry creek bed that ran along one side boiled into life. Ludokrus, leading, brought his bike to a skidding halt at the back of the hut and leapt off to help the others. Coral simply abandoned hers, stepping off it before it had completely stopped, using its momentum to propel her into the shelter. Ludokrus caught it and switched it off.
They left the bikes beside the fuel drums where the overhanging roof gave them some protection. Round the front, they huddled in the doorway, staring out like three drowned rats, barely able to think above the pounding on the iron roof.
* * *
Tim adjusted the slider on the barrel of his torch, narrowing the angle of its beam until it became a spotlight stabbing into the inky blackness ahead.
‘Off one moment please,’ Alkemy said.
He clicked the switch and they stood in darkness, peering ahead. Waiting. One full minute this time. But there were no more flashes. Not so much as the flicker of a glowworm.
A roar behind them made them start. A deep bass rumble followed immediately by pounding rain. They edged deeper into the mineshaft and Tim turned his torch back on, widening the beam to illuminate rough-hewn walls and sturdy pit props while Alkemy kept hers on narrow beam and directed it ahead.
They moved in silence, shapes and shadows dancing in the torchlight. The sound of the pounding rain faded to a murmur.
‘Albert?’ Alkemy called.
A muffled echo was the only reply.
There were no footprints on the rock floor. It was hard and smooth, marked by parallel streaks of rust from the long-vanished tracks. Trickles of water caught them up, overspilling the furrows and racing ahead into the eerie gloom.
‘Some storm,’ Tim said, thinking of the others.
They moved slowly and carefully, examining the pit props on each section of the ancient mine before continuing. Everything seemed stable and solid. It was odd to think it must have been this way for a hundred years or more.
Alkemy stopped, steadying her beam. Tim narrowed his own. Five metres ahead, the shaft ended in a broad T-shape where the miners had hacked about, searching for the dying remnants of the gold seam before finally giving up.
They glanced at each other in the pale backwash of light. That was it. Nothing else. A few scattered rocks, but no sign of Albert.
* * *
‘They ran away!’
‘Cowards.’
‘Option two then. Open the hatch and switch on the recording equipment.’
‘Recording now ...’
* * *
‘What was that?’ Tim heard a faint whisper of sound. He turned and played his torch beam over the walls of the dead-end.
‘Like something move,’ Alkemy said, doing the same. ‘There! What is that? I do not see before.’
Her torch lit up the left branch of the T, playing over a dent in the wall partly masked by a rocky outcrop. Behind it was a circular shadow, dark and silent. They approached and saw what looked like a small side passage angling up and away from the main shaft.
‘Albert?’ Alkemy called again, louder this time, her words flattened by the dead-end.
‘Looks like a ventilation shaft,’ Tim said.
It began partway up the wall, a hole a metre in diameter. Perfectly circular, its sides glassy smooth. ‘Looks like has been melted.’ Alkemy touched the surface and pointed to the puddle of congealed rock they were standing on. ‘Is still warm. Feel.’
‘Melted? How?’
She shrugged and peered in.
He played his torch around the smooth walls. The light reflected back and forth a thousand times, playing off the glassy sides.
‘Looks fresh all right. Could Albert have done this?’
‘I do not know.’
She called again.
No reply.
‘Only one way to find where it goes.’ She eased herself inside.
Tim followed, clambering in after her, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the surface of the melted rock. It was like climbing up inside a water slide.
The passage curved right, growing steeper, then angled sharply left. Alkemy’s voice came back to him. ‘Can see the end. Looks like it come out in other mine.’
There was a faint scuffling sound as she exited, a moment of silence, then a cry. ‘Oh ... oh ... Oh no!’