"Don't be a coward. It's three days, and we stand to make more money than you'll likely see in your whole career. I just need you to run a camera."
Wayne was quiet for a few minutes, and Terry could tell he was going to waffle.
That's when he decided to sweeten the pot.
"If we actually see the thing, I'll give you an extra three grand."
That was all Wayne needed to hear.
"OK, but this better not be a waste of my time. The boss is already gonna kill me for taking off on such short notice."
Terry grinned, "Trust me, Wayne, by Monday morning, we'll all have more cash than we know what to do with."
He hung up, Wayne's farewell cut off as he set about calling Scully.
Sandra Louis, Scully to her friends, was probably one of the better techs Terry had ever met. She had been a skinny little redhead with thick glasses and a love of gadgets, and Terry had seen more than just a quick sexual conquest with some pretty clear daddy issues. She and Wayne had been his friends since Freshman year of college, and twenty years later, they were as much a part of his team as he was.
If he was going to go to Jeremiah, he wanted both of them.
Scully picked up on the third ring, and Terry could almost hear the Marbro she was eating for dinner in a series of long pulls.
"This better be good, Terry. I'm working on some footage for a client, and, let's just say, it's not the kind of shit I want to get sloppy with."
Terry squashed the urge to ask and plowed ahead, "Clear your calendar this weekend. We’re going to Jeremiah."
He was answered by the long, crispy sound of her pulling the tar into her lungs before she answered him, "And what in God's name makes you think I would ever set foot in that place again?"
"Come on, Scully. No other news outlet has managed to get past the police barricades, and my producer says that if I can get footage from inside the town, he'll lay down some hard cash for the recordings. Not to mention, I can sell them to other outlets once we're done, too. There's a lot of edits to be made here, Scull, and I know you got bills to pay, same as me."
"You stop to ask yourself why the cops won't let anyone into that town?"
"Who knows? I assume they just want to cover up for their incompetence. They haven't managed to find anything, and they're afraid of being embarrassed.
"If the police for three counties and the state boys can't find six missing kids, what makes you think we can?"
"Three missing teens, from what I heard." Terry said, swallowing hard as he thought about the reports his editor handed him, "The boys were…well, let's just say they aren't missing anymore. The morgue has a pretty good idea where they're at."
"Jesus, Terry, and you wanna walk into that? What the hell makes you think I would go in there with you?"
"I'm hoping the same deal that got Wayne to go in there. Three grand for the weekend, and three grand if we get footage of something that helps them figure out what happened to those girls."
There was a pause, and a small curse as Scully hastily put out her cigarette, "Six grand? I'm guessing you're gonna need my equipment too, so you better go ahead and make it eight."
"Eight grand?" Terry balked, seeing his overhead dwindling. The station had promised to compensate him, compensate him big big, but six to Wayne and eight to Scully was pretty big big on its own. Terry would be left with bone and gristle at this rate, but some of those bones might have marrow.
Marrow that Terry could turn into something for his joke of a career.
"Consider the other two a rental fee, and God help you if any of my shit gets broken. Some of this equipment ain't cheap, and it sounds like we're going to be hauling it through the woods to get there."
"Fine, fine." Terry said, "You can have eight, but three of that hinges on our ability to get some solid evidence of what's taken these kids."
"Our luck, it's a pissed-off bear down in one of those mine shafts just trying to mind its own business."
"Let's hope so," Terry said, sighing out the answer, "I don't recall us getting chased out of that mine twenty years ago by a bear."
There was a pregnant silence, broken only by the snick snick of the lighter as Scully tried to light another cigarette.
"I'll see you Friday, Terry. I assume we're meeting at Dolly's beforehand to discuss logistics?"
Terry grinned, "Of course. All bad decisions start with a slice of pie from Dollys and end with a cup of coffee after we get bailed out of jail."
They talked a little more about meet times and what Terry would need from her, and when he hung up a few minutes later, he pumped his arm like a kid who just found a sure thing.
Terry turned to the wall of his office, little more than a mop closet with a desk shoved into it, and glowered at the map of Jeremiah he had tacked up there. The map was really little more than an aerial photo Terry had scribbled landmarks onto. No recent maps of Jeremiah existed. The town had been abandoned in eighty-five under very mysterious circumstances, and maps were usually only for places where people lived. Anyone not living in town had simply pulled up stakes and moved away from Jeremiah. Terry had taken more than a dozen statements from the people who remembered the place, and while most were from ladies and gents old enough to remember a time before sliced bread, they all agreed on one thing.
They had left after the residence disappeared because they just didn't feel safe anymore.
They couldn't say why. No one thing stood out, but the feeling of otherworldly dread that slid out of Jeremiah like a fel miasma made them believe they might be better off in Young Harris or Toccoa, or even Cashmere.
Terry had been obsessed with the secrets surrounding Jeremiah since he was a kid, and it seemed like this weekend might be the climax of his life's work.
You would be forgiven for not knowing where Jeremiah Georgia is. Most schoolchildren in the area considered it little more than an urban legend, but it was real. The town was founded in the mid eighteen hundred after Jeremiah's Folly, a large mine that mostly dealt in iron ore, found a large deposit of some odd gems. Terry had seen fragments in the Dahlonega mineral museum, and they were a strange mixture of several different stones. The jewelers loved them because the cuts were unlike anything they had ever seen, and the more popular they became, the deeper they mined looking for them.
The cave-in in nineteen eighteen had been expected but had still devastated the industry in the town.
They had simply dug too deep; everyone said so. The ground was tired of giving and giving and had decided to take a little back. It had started with the C level, three miles down, and just as they were clearing the debris to rescue the miners, the level above and below C had also collapsed, and hundreds had died. By the end of the day, three other levels had collapsed, and more than four hundred miners had been lost. Those trapped in the levels below were lost as well, and after a lengthy rescue, the mines were closed and the project abandoned.
The town had shrunk, becoming more of a ghost town than anything, and the population had shrunk to a few hundred until Morgan Gouled had bought the land in fifty-nine. He wanted the mine more than anything and started reopening the tunnels so they could start mining again. Terry had never spoken to any of the miners from the early days, most of those who'd survived the collapse had been old in nineteen eighteen, but he had spoken to a few of the miners from the fifty-nine project. They talked about cleaning out the tunnels and supporting the tunnels as they unearthed the old levels. They said the whole place was spooky. There were weird noises that never seemed to have a source, strange lights that led off to nowhere, and several counts of missing miners that were never accounted for. The mine bosses always talked about men who disappeared in the middle of the night, but the men he'd spoken with had said that too many of them were men with good work ethics that wouldn't just have gone off.
One of them, Marcus Wedge, had talked about clearing the debris from Level D and hearing something like insects as he dug.
"It was that sound that cicadas make, that high-pitched reeee sound. I looked around, wondering how any bug could make it this deep and saw nothin but the flickerin lights of the electric lamps. This wasn't like modern days, either. Those lights were dodgy, and if they went out, you were in a world of trouble. Gouled had been workin on a lift system, too, doin away with the track system they had in place, and I remember one time that lift went out and had three of us hung up between C and D level. Kyle Jernagin was complainin about quotas, and gettin hollered at, so I got on my belly to see if I could see into D level. We were right around the ceiling, and I could see something in the winking lights. It was moving along the ceiling, its body like tar, and as it rounded the corner, it turned its head to look at me and smiled. It had a mouth full of perfect teeth, and I stood up in a hurry as the car shook and started down again. I worked them mines for another year until I got stuck down there in a blackout and nearly had a nervous breakdown. It was me, Tommy, and Rolf down there, clearin a tunnel to get down to E level. Suddenly, all the light went out, and we were left in total darkness. As I stood there, waitin for them to come back on, I could feel somethin moving around. I remembered that dark thing I thought I'd seen, almost thought I could see that grin in the darkness, and I got down on my knees and started prayin for God to protect me. I don't know if he did or not, but when the lights came back up, Tommy and me were still there, but Rolf was gone. I went to the paymaster that day and told him I was done. He handed me my check and told me he'd see me in a couple weeks. I went to Clayton and got work at the gas station there and never saw the mines again. When I heard about what happened to the town twenty years later, it didn’t really surprise me none."
Terry had heard similar stories but didn't really believe any of them.
Sure, he and his friends had seen something there when they were in college, but he refused to get spooked because of some superstitious miners.
They would go in there and get some footage of something and be paid accordingly.
Terry grabbed his coat and headed for the door. He needed to get his ducks in a row before he met with Wayne and Scully. He needed to gas up the van, get his part of the equipment, charge his portable batteries, he needed to…
He stepped out into the hallway and almost rolled right over the top of Dale, who had been standing by the break room door.
"Where's the fire, Spooky?" he asked, and Terry paused the mumble a quick apology, "you got a little kids' costume contest to cover?"
Terry narrowed his eyes and bit his tongue before he let it get the better of him. He hated Dale, but he was technically higher than him in the station's hierarchy. Dale Corsey was the field reporter for the six to six-night shift, the same shift that Terry reported on, but he was tasked with more pressing stories. They sent Dale and his perfectly coiffed brown hair if there was a forest fire to cover or a standoff at a bank. If there was a reported Bigfoot sighting or a strange plane reported, they sent Terry out because they knew he loved that sort of coverage. This had given Terry a little bit of a reputation for covering oddities, and his coworkers used it as an excuse to hassle him.
Dale was one of the worst offenders, but Terry didn't have time for him today.
"I'm busy, Dale, so if you don't mind,"
"Oh no, an emergency call? What, did someone see the Wendigo at Five Guys? Witches eaten kids in the park again?"
Terry started to bristle but pushed it down.
By the end of the weekend, he would wipe the smile off Dale's face for good.
"Not at liberty to say, Dale, and I'm kinda in a crunch, so I gotta go."
The sound of derisive laughter followed him out as Terry went to the parking lot to get his van.
He had a lot to do before tomorrow.
* * * * *
He could see Wayne and Scully waiting in the back booth of Dollys when he arrived the next day. It was mid-morning, and the place was dead except for a few oldsters in trucker caps drinking coffee. His friends stuck out like sore thumbs in their heavy coats and dark expressions. The waitress kept looking at Scully darkly, and Terry could already see the curl of smoke rising from her cigarette. If Scully was awake, she was smoking, and even Ms. Grace couldn’t dissuade her.
The bell rang as Terry came in, and Ms. Grace smiled as she came around to give him a hug.
"Terry Flowers, as I live and breathe. I had hoped you'd be joining your surly friends. The usual?"
"Yes, ma'am," Terry said, already tasting the hashbrowns as they softened under the blanket of warm gravy. He added coffee and orange juice to his order and went to join the others. Scully looked up as Terry approached, and Wayne lifted his coffee to blow the steam off before sipping. Terry took a seat across from them.
He had them on the line, and it was time to reel them in.
"So, any questions before we get started?"
"Did you bring my money?" Wayne asked as Scully tapped her cigarette into a dish in front of her.
Terry rolled his eyes as he reached in and pulled out two envelopes, tossing them on the table.
"Half now and half Sunday."
They took their envelopes and tucked them away, turning to listen to Terry as he spread out the copy of the map he had made. It was smaller than the one in his office, about the size of a placemat, and Terry had all the appropriate landmarks clearly labeled. Their starting point seemed to be an access road about two miles out, and Terry tapped the X on the map.
"We'll come in here and hike into the town. Once inside," he moved his finger to the outskirts where an X labeled Fill N Go stood, "we'll set up here and start our investigation. It's close to the Gouled Mining Company and will give us a spot to investigate the rest of the town too. We'll, ideally, spend two nights and three days there, leaving Sunday so we can go over the data Monday morning."
"What exactly is the story here, Terry?" Wayne asked.
"Information on the missing teens. The police still haven't found them, and the TikTok Heather Johns was making when she disappeared leads people to think they may be lost in the mines. The police and the park service had searched the mines, but after the third person went missing down there, the police pulled their guys back to the city limits and set up a perimeter to keep others out while they investigated."
"And if the cops come in and drag our asses out?" Wayne asked
Terry shook his head, "It'll never come to that, Wayne. We'll be in and out before anyone is the wiser. We can stay hidden in the old Fill N Go and take little scouting trips into town when it's safe. We can trek in early so we can avoid any patrols. We can get in and get set up before lunch, and our small group will make it easier to hide. We set out tomorrow at dawn. I'd suggest you stay at my place tonight so we can leave before the first light tomorrow. Questions?"
Scully shook her head, but Wayne seemed intent on talking himself out of this.
"Does this have anything to do with what happened when we were in college?"
Terry chewed his lip, "I really hope not. Jeremiah is a place where people go missing sometimes, where a whole town went missing once, and it sounds like the kids that went missing twenty years ago when we first went to investigate. I'm not willing to rule it out, but I really hope not."
Thinking about the things that had stalked them and chased them out of Jeremiah that day, the street lights flickering as they ran for their lives filled him with dread. He understood Wayne's hesitation. Jeremiah was the last place he wanted to find himself, but there was something here, and Terry had to know. At his core, Terry was just a nosy kid looking for a secret to tell his friends.
It was what had brought him into journalism, and it's what kept him in the game.
"I'm leaving in the morning, with or without you guys. If you're coming, I'll gladly take you. If not, then I guess I'll do it on my own. Either way, I'm going back to Jeremiah."
The two of them stared at him for a second before Scully snorted and tossed the crust of her toast at him, "You're so dramatic, Terry. Of course, we'll go with you. You've already paid us, you moron."
"Plus,” Wayne added, “if you head in there and don't come back, we'd never forgive ourselves."
Terry smiled, glad he had brought them in. If there were two people he could believe in, it was these two. They'd follow him to hell and back, were possibly preparing to do just that, and if he had to go into Jeremiah, these were the two he trusted the most. He put his hand onto the table, something the three of them had done when they were younger, and he was unsurprised to see Wayne and Scully do the same.
"Let's figure out exactly what we'll need and get a good night's sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we're heading back to Jeremiah."
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