Page 19 of Some Kind of Haunted

He points. We’re on a paved two-lane road, and right before us there’s a brown highway sign with a white arrow, pointing down a gravel one.

The Old Mine. One mile.

The sign looks like it’s weathered like wood, though it can’t be. I’m pretty sure all road signs are made of aluminum. Even here.

More importantly, “Why are we driving toward a mine?” I ask.

“The brown sign means it’s some kind of historical marker.”

“Okay. So?”

“So, I want to go take a look.”

There is something so un-Logan in all of this, I feel like we’ve gone through some strange role reversal. “Logan. We have groceries in the back.”

“They’ll keep.”

“You’re aware that you’re a lawyer, not a miner, right? Also, literally nothing we bought will keep in this heat. Have you learned nothing from my lifelong interest in food safety best practices?”

By which I mean my paranoia and anxiety—six of one, half-dozen of another—but he ignores me, pulling into a parking lot that is little more than a glorified ditch. There’s another brown sign with the words Old Mine on it. Then there’s a little overgrown path that’s nothing but a suggestion in the tangle of shrubs and other once-green things. Just hidden enough to think better of traipsing down it, to my mind.

The mine must be down that way, but why would anyone want to see it?

Clearly, no one does. Hence the overgrowth.

But Logan is out of the car and already moving toward the path.

I am not going after him. I do not care about a mine. We don’t have to be joined at the hip, and we haven’t been for quite some time. Before this trip, we were living separately as perfectly functional adult twins who text each other incessantly and call each other at least once a day, which is serious distance for people who used to share a womb.

I repeat this to myself for less than thirty seconds before he disappears into the grass, and then I’m scurrying out of the car to follow him.

Alone out here is worse than every other alternative.

And I’ll admit, it’s pretty. The leaves are putting on a fall show of reds and yellows that glisten almost gold in the sunlight. The prairie grasses, or that’s what I’m assuming they are, sway in the breeze that’s cooling everything off enough that my sweater feels appropriate at last. It even smells nice out here, like . . . fall.

Like crumbling leaves and whispers of winters yet to come.

I catch sight of Logan once I’m on the path. He’s ahead of me, but I can see his destination. It appears to be the entrance of a cave with a kind of crosshatch of rusty metal that has been drilled across the opening.

Clearly, to keep people out.

As we get closer to the mine, I start to prickle all over and slow down accordingly, but Logan is striding ahead.

“Remember how people in horror movies always see the scary Keep Out sign and keep going?” I yell at him. “Why are you doing that?”

But he keeps moving closer to the opening, like he’s considering squirming his way through the gap between metal and cave and actually going inside.

A sudden wash of terror grips me, almost like I can see him doing it. Almost like I can feel his end. “Logan!”

He stops, swaying slightly on his feet. And when he looks over at me, it’s like he’s been in a trance.

It sends something cold and sickening through me. Goose bumps break out all over me, and my sweater isn’t keeping me warm at all anymore.

“We need to go,” I tell him firmly, like a mother would to a disobedient toddler. With just enough snap to make them understand you’re serious.

And it works, because Logan backs away from the mine and then it’s him following me down the path, back to the car. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I, even though I’m shaking from the inside out.

I glance back as we’re walking away, not fully meaning to. Just with half a thought to assure myself this was nothing. Absolutely nothing.