Heard Through Itching Bones

20260512

Written for Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls Of Pandemonium”, Day 12.

If Maggie had been asked what she was doing at The Dig, she probably would’ve mumbled something about looking for work. But nobody asked. There was no need. They understood. Nobody even glanced up as she wandered onto the site. It immediately felt like she belonged there.
This part, above ground, made it clear that The Dig had started as a mining operation. Very professional. She had no idea what they’d been mining for. Had they heard the strange call bubbling up through their feet? Had prospecting brought them here, and their machinery disturbed something within the mountain?
No way to tell, now. Tools intended to carry ore were reassigned to shift rock and soil, clearing the way deeper.
Maggie paused when she saw the collapsed figure. From his work clothes, which stood defiant against the elements far better than their wearer, he must have been in charge. His badge said “Foreman Blythe”.
Despite his big grin, he wasn’t living up to his name. Staring at the gaping cavity in his skull, almost certainly inflicted by a pickaxe, Maggie felt the first stirrings of wanting to go home. It was only six miles. She’d walked further before.
But…
The call. It’d been itching in her bones for days. She had to at least look.
So she walked past the remains of Foreman Blythe, who presumably hadn’t registered the call, or worse, had chosen to ignore it, and into the tunnel.
Ah.
In here, the pulse swiftly became clearer. Not a heartbeat. Not breathing. But something equally, undeniably alive. A sensation you felt rather than heard, particularly through your feet. Maggie’s feet carried her deeper without waiting for instructions. At least, not from her.
Deeper. Closer. The beat grew ever clearer, its unrelenting cadence the same kind of mesmerising as listening to ocean waves. So peaceful. Each pulse washed away a little more stress, a little more thought, a little more self.
Then she saw another body, and her mind was dragged back to reality.
Unlike the poor foreman, there was no sign of violence here. They’d simply collapsed. Pick in hand. Trying to walk back up the tunnel?
Maggie knelt, her hands automatically seeking a pulse.
There. Faint, and slow. But they were alive.
Too heavy for her to move. She should get help. But she felt certain nobody outside would listen. She should call an air ambulance.
The scrap of her mind which clung on against the waves buffeting her psyche cried out in warning. Certain that bringing more people here would be a bad idea - if this place had managed to call to her from six miles away, what might happen?
But if she didn’t…
Their life fluttered against her fingers. Ebbing.
As she wavered, torn, her other hand dropped to their pickaxe and tugged. It didn’t come loose, their grip locked in place.
This… her mind flinched away. It was terrible. But it was what the call wanted. And at least it wouldn’t trap others. So she let herself pry the tool from their hand and left them in the tunnel.
Deeper. Closer.
The air grew close and warm and moist. Rusty water dripped down the walls and pooled in sticky splodges.
She… could hear it, now. The vibrations tickled her ears as well as her bones. It was near.
She didn’t register the digging until she’d already reached them. The strikes of pickaxe and shovel and bare, bloodied hands perfectly in sync with the pulsing which called them all.
Red oozed freely wherever tools marked the stone. Drops thrown into the air with each wave of strikes. Its tang coated her tongue and throat and lungs. Like she was slowly drowning.
Please let it be so.
The crowd packing the end of the tunnel didn’t look up at her approach. Didn’t make room for her. Given how some of them were grinding their own limbs down to grisly nubs, she doubted there was much left of them. Internally, that is. All they had left was the call.
It was unrelenting. Undeniable.
And imprecise.
Maggie hefted the pickaxe. Its weight felt right in her hands. Not unlike the mattock she’d been using for garden work since she was a child. Sturdy. Powerful, even.
She raised it in a smooth swing, and, perfectly in time with the others, perfectly in time with the pulse of the call, drove the pick through a skull into the rock.
Would Foreman Blythe have cheered? Or would he have wept, to see what had become of this venture?
Blood and brains splattered across the stone, mixing with the ruddy liquid. Easy. So terribly, terribly easy.
Again, in time with the next pulse, letting the call fuel her, she swung, and another figure was left crushed and bleeding, still trying to dig with their last gargling gasps.
It was probably pointless. Probably too little, too late. Certainly murder.
But.
Maybe. Maybe it would slow things down enough.
She knew she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t drop the pick, couldn’t turn away. Her body wasn’t her own anymore. Before long, she’d be just like these poor corpses broken at her feet. Subsumed.
All she had left was hoping that it might have made a difference.
Alone, cooling flesh squelching under her boots, the last fragment of her mind sobbing and praying, Maggie kept digging in perfect time with the pulses. Deeper. Closer.

Prompt was “Write about a group of miners who uncover something horrifying while digging deep into the Earth”.