I was walking through a tight mine shaft, the rock above me gave me just a handful of inches of space to pass through. I couldn’t yet see an opening ahead of me, but I had yet to hear anyone follow me in. So at least I had that going for me.
What was not going for me was what was printed all over the walls.
I pulled my flashlight away from the terror, put my head down and staggered on until a bitter cold wind swept through the shaft and almost knocked me over. I grabbed hold of a waist-level boulder to my side to keep my balance and catch my breath for a moment.
My lungs huffed and puffed for a few moments until I felt the rock shift from under my weight. I whipped my flashlight down and saw the rock moving away from me in a slow roll, as if it was steadily tumbling down a hill, but we were on flat ground, I jumped away and dropped my flashlight in the process.
In the bouncing light of the flashlight, I caught a hideous look at what I had assumed was the boulder. Instead of a dusty rock, it was a hardened, molded-together, twisted clump of bodies – like a human ball of yarn. I stared at it just long enough for the pale face of a woman to blink at me before I collected my flashlight and sprinted away up the shaft.
I heard the ball let out a hideous gasp as I tore away with my flashlight frantically ripping through the darkness. My meager light seemed to reveal more of the same on the ceiling above me but I could at least see the hint of what may have been an opening dead ahead about 40 yards in front of me.
I ran as fast as I could to the opening until I heard a familiar voice call at me from further back in the shaft.
“Ranch hand.”
I whipped around to see the silhouette of Ezra wobbling about 10 yards behind me. His eyes shimmered in the beam of my flashlight when I ran it up and down his body.
“Where you going ranch hand?”
I squinted at Ezra. Something was off about him. It looked like him at first glance, but he barely seemed to be able to stand and his eyes were too bright, his skin too pale. He was an old man, but looked like a dried out mummy standing in front of me.
I slowly started to back away when I saw Ezra’s skin crawl like it was alive. He burst out into a smile and spit a jag of tobacco at my feet. I looked down at the filthy tobacco for a moment. It slithered in my direction like an eyeless slug.
My eyes snapped back to Ezra. His skin turned from a crawl into a disgusting slither. He appeared to be made up of dozens of flesh-colored snakes.
