Volume Three - WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here

“What is it?” McAffey directed his helmet light at the spot and gasped.
“Some sorta dead dog looks like, but he’s froze in the rock wall for God knows how long.”
“Look at the size of them fangs, would ya? Thing’s gotta be old as the bible, I warrant.”
They stared at it. The thing was indeed embedded in the cave wall, recently uncovered by the fallen debris all
round it. The snout was huge, the gaping incisors prehistoric in appearance. “May Gawd ’imself blind me,” began
McAffey. “Francis, tell no one about this monster, not a word of it, ya hear?”
“Why? What’re you thinking, Tim? We could put it on display, charge folks to ’ave a look-see! Make ’nough to
keep us in ale and bitters for months.”
“Word gets out ’bout this, Tim, and-and we have two problems, old man!”
“Two problems?”
“Yes—one with the men, the second with the long-hairs over’t the universities.”
Francis shrugged, frowned, and asked, “How’s that, Tim?”
“The men’ll claim tis Satan ’imself at work here! You know that. And the professors—they’ll want to turn this
shaft into a laboratory—an archaeological dig.”
“Aye…I see your meanin’.”
“This stays with us. We pickaxe this…this ancient badger outta here, wrap it up, and toss it into the nearest
river. Let it be somebody else’s bloody discovery. I want nothin’ to do with it. Agreed?”
O’Toole poked at the brittle creature in the wall with his pipe only to knock away an entire tooth the size of
his finger. He lifted the tooth, pocketed it, and said, “Something to tell my grandchildren about!”
“I just said no one’s to know!”
“After I retire one day.” He laughed and turned to McAffey who shoved a pick into his hands.
“So long as you tell ’em that’s all you found—a tooth. Now let’s start diggin’.”
The two veteran miners intended to make short work of the unusual find. In fact, they soon had the creature
extracted from the wall, and were chipping away at the remaining ore attached to the carcass. “I can just see this
flesh-eater tearin’ away at his kill, can’t you, Francis?”
“Aye—he’s dried out like a mummy but from the girth at the shoulders, he’d’ave been a real monster, this
one.”
“We’ll get a tarp, wrap it, take it down to the mill creek,” suggested McAffey, puffing now from the work.
“Either bury it or tie a rock to it and dump it there.”
O’Toole pictured the spot his boss was talking about, a curve in the creek that accumulated debris floating in
the current above the millworks north of the shipyards. His thoughts were interrupted when suddenly McAffey
sucked in a deep breath of the mine dust and stumbled to a rock, squatting there. He tried to shake off a sudden
fatigue, his face turning an odd shade of pale grey and a strange greenish hue in splotches here and there.
“Musta overdone it,” he muttered, out of breath.
“You OK, Tim?”
“Just get the tarp! I’m fine. Catch me breath in a minute. Go!”
O’Toole studied his boss for any additional signs of danger, wondering if the gases down here had turned him
sour, and if so, they might both be dead in minutes.
“Just somethin’ I ate, Francis, so stop lookin’ at me like I’m a dead man.”
“Sorry, Tim. It’s right-cha-are!” After nodding, O’Toole set off for the surface to fetch the tarp; he couldn’t
help grumbling and cursing under his breath that he was ordered about like a dog himself, while McAffey sat on a
rock to wait for his return.
Fifteen minutes elapsed when O’Toole returned with the tarp only to find McAffey bent over in serious pain,
asking the other man for help. “G-Get me to-to the surface; imperative. Need fresh air…now. Help me, pplease.”
He didn’t even sound like McAffey anymore, so distraught was he.
“Sure…sure…I can come back later for the carcass.” But McAffey had forgotten about every other
consideration. He simply kept repeating, “Air…I gotta have air. Get me air!”
O’Toole thought of the amount of dust they’d both swallowed on first entering the shaft. O’Toole, a big man
in his late fifties, held his wobbly boss who seemed about to faint dead away any moment. The man’s knees