The Widow Level

a short story

It started with the shadows between the support timbers on the seventh level, about 1,500 feet down. Not that they were darker than they should be, heaven knows everything’s dark in a mine shaft, where guttering oil lamps and tallow candles barely push back the prehistoric dark, filling the air with the acrid bite of burning whale oil and the waxy sweetness that catches in your throat. No, these shadows seemed to move wrong, like they weren’t quite following the swing of the miners’ lamps the way shadows should. Like they were reaching when they should have been retreating.

The old-timers, particularly the Welsh and Irish who’d brought their superstitions across the ocean in the bellies of coffin ships, called it the Widow Level. None would tell her why, though their eyes would slide away when she asked, finding sudden fascination with their bootlaces or the coal dust embedded in their callused palms.

Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, her mother used to say. Brandy was beginning to understand why.