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Now, watching the sheriff photograph the cross, the man felt a familiar stirring. The urge to share his gift again. To help another entitled soul understand the truth about darkness and faith.
He shifted his weight, sensing movement in his peripheral vision. A deer, probably. The animals were used to his presence up here. His cabin sat less than a mile away, hidden in a stand of pines. The basement held his workshop, his supplies, and most importantly, his own private entrance to the mine system.
His father had built that entrance years ago, before the drinking got bad, before the punishments started. "Every miner needs his own way in," Frank had said. "In case of cave-ins." He'd died in those same tunnels years later, though not from any cave-in. His death had been more… dramatic. More fitting.
The sheriff was speaking to her father now, their voices carrying faintly on the wind. Something about the mine historian, about mapping the tunnels. The man smiled. Let them try. He'd spent decades learning these passages, memorizing every twist and turn until he could navigate them blindfolded. They were his domain now, his church where lost souls could find redemption through suffering.
He thought of Marcus Reed, the urban explorer whose videos he'd been studying. Such arrogance, treating these sacred spaces like tourist attractions. Filming them for likes and subscribers, making light of their dark power. Yes, Marcus would be next. He had already begun preparing, studying Marcus's patterns, learning his weaknesses.
The wind shifted, carrying voices more clearly.
"...serial killer profile..." the sheriff was saying.
"Too early to assume that," her father responded.
But the man knew they were right to worry. Tyler Matthews had only been the beginning. There were so many others who needed to learn to understand the gifts that darkness could bring. The peace that came with accepting your fears, embracing them until they became strength.
He touched the cross hanging from his neck—his father's cross, taken from his cooling body all those years ago. A reminder that salvation came through suffering, just as his father had taught him.
Deciding he'd seen all he cared to see here, the man turned away and moved silently through the trees. He had preparations to make. Marcus Reed's latest video showed him planning to explore an abandoned mine near Coldwater later today. No time to waste.
Walking home through the deepening snow, he smiled. Some would call him a monster. But monsters lived in darkness. He had become something else entirely—a teacher, showing others the path to enlightenment through the same dark tunnels that had shaped him.
His father would be proud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sheila was still thinking about the cross Tyler had drawn in the dirt, unwillingly or otherwise, as she and her father watched Doc Sullivan pour coffee from an ancient percolator that looked like it might have been here since the mines first opened.
Doc Sullivan's office was a converted storage room in the Miners' Museum, though 'office' might have been too generous a term. Every surface was covered with maps, geological surveys, and old photographs of men in hardhats standing proudly before mine entrances. Mining equipment from different eras filled the corners—pickaxes, shovels, helmets with carbide lamps. The room smelled of old paper and leather bindings.
"thirsty?" Sullivan asked, offering a mug of coffee. "It's not good, but it's hot."
Sheila accepted the chipped mug, noting how her father declined with a slight shake of his head. Gabriel was examining a topographical map that covered most of one wall, his eyes tracing the elevation lines that marked where the mountains had been riddled with mining tunnels.
"So," Sullivan asked, "what's the latest on Tyler Matthews' death? I didn't see his body myself—that's… not really my thing, if you understand. But I heard there were signs of foul play."
"He was bludgeoned to death near a mine entrance," Sheila said, watching Sullivan settle into his creaking desk chair. "But before that, it appears he spent two nights in the mines."
Sullivan's weathered face grew grave. He was older than her father, with deep lines carved by years of outdoor work, but his eyes were sharp and alert. A former miner himself, he'd dedicated his retirement to preserving the area's mining history. Now that history had turned deadly.
"And you think there will be others," he said. It wasn't a question.
"The way it was done—the planning, the execution—this wasn't the killer's first time using these tunnels." Sheila took a sip of coffee. It was exactly as bad as promised. "Either he was waiting for Tyler outside that entrance, which seems unlikely given how many entrances there are, or he followed Tyler through the mines. My money is on the latter."
"Followed him?" Sullivan squinted, puzzled. "Why would anyone do that?"
Sheila shook her head. "I don't know. Part of some sick game, maybe."
Her father turned from the wall map. "In any case, we need to know every possible entrance to these mines. Every way in or out. He may very well strike again, and we need to know where that might be."
Sullivan barked a harsh laugh. "That's not as simple as it sounds." He stood, joints popping, and moved to a filing cabinet. "The mining companies kept detailed maps, sure. But locals? They found their own ways in. Prospectors, teenagers looking for trouble, homeless folks seeking shelter." He pulled out a drawer, rifling through files. "Some entrances were intentionally hidden to prevent claim-jumping."
"How many are we talking about?" Sheila asked.
"Official entrances? Maybe thirty, spread across three mountains." He found what he was looking for—a thick folder stuffed with loose papers. "Unofficial? Could be hundreds. Some are just gaps in the rock face, barely big enough to squeeze through. Others..." He spread several papers across his desk, revealing hand-drawn maps covered in annotations. "These were made by old-timers, marking entrances they remembered. But half of them are probably collapsed by now, and the other half..." He shrugged. "Memory gets fuzzy after fifty years."
Sheila studied the nearest map, trying to get a sense of the extent of the mines. From what she could tell, half of the notes on here were conjecture. While there were some well-known entrances, many smaller entrances were more rumor than fact.