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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/AtomicShades on 2023-06-26 20:14:39+00:00.

I don’t think regular human beings are prepared to come face to face with what was, what is, and what is to come, all in the same teary eyed, naive, thoughtless gaze. It’s too much for our small minds to handle, I think. I’ve experienced that once or twice in this lifetime. Taking a Michigander and shipping him off to a foreign land where nobody knows anything about you except your last name and rank can be overwhelming to say the least. It may be nihilistic of me to think so, but listening to the sounds of artillery rip your friends to shreds, hearing them call for God, their mother, or any other variety of final requests they may make, knowing their demise is nearing with every second, puts the value of individual lives in perspective.

By the time the black suits and billionaires decided the fighting was done and I was sent home, I had nothing but a small satchel of personal effects, used battle rags, and nightmares, I had forgotten what it was like not to sleep on four hour intervals trading time with a fearful, wide eyed kid from the Bronx, or a too-cool-for-school black kid from the south, with the occasional appearance by the freckle faced kid from down the street that enlisted with you, hoping he wouldn’t die alone in a trench full of strangers, which of course, he did. Either way, I made it home in one piece.

On the morning of July 26th, 1959, fifteen years after my return home from the Pacific, my clammy hands making the ink of the morning paper bleed onto the countertop as I stood wide-eyed, taking in the absolute horror of a story that I had found nestled between the personal ads and the sports section. It would be a falsehood for me to say the small voice in my head wasn’t pleading to the universe that it was fiction with every word my brain tried desperately to process as I scoured the story, which stretched nearly the entire page. A new recurring column perhaps? As if the world wasn’t full of enough horror, at least for the working class Joes like myself.

The story detailed the gruesome journeyings of a couple of green, naive kids from my hometown. According to the story, on August 16th, 1936, a Sunday, the boys were experiencing the standard end of summer blues, and wanted to finally do something daring, more daring than sneaking out or making prank calls like most fifteen year old boys do. On that day, these two young men decided to poke around one of the two abandoned copper mines located on the outskirts of my hometown, Copper Hollow, Michigan.

The town was cleverly named for the copper mines, which were first discovered by miners from the Northeast who followed the large river that ran through my town down South. The mines provided a huge economic boom for the area and Copper Hollow quickly sprawled into what it is today, which is still a small town by most people’s standards. Unfortunately for the mining industry, both of the mines were closed down in the early aughts under circumstances that rang mysterious to say the least. I remember my father telling me at the time that a lot of the miners were getting sick, not from the mining itself, but from something else down there. A lot of the guys that descended into the sprawling depths of the mines came back different to say the least. Many of them would be committed to the Asylum up in Traverse City, but even more would just starve themselves to death, without the courage to kill themselves off quickly and with too much fear to continue living. My father said that it was all a bunch of ghost stories to keep people out of the mines.

Officially, many thought the workers went on strike, being miners at the time made very little, and never returned. Others thought the copper ran dry. Many that were close to the workers who were laid off at the time of the mine’s closing all claim that there were other, far more powerful and sinister things at play that forced its closure; nevertheless, the mining ceased and the formerly mineral-rich ground was sealed forever, or so I thought. According to the article, the workers, in a craze, boarded up all of the entrances except for one. This specific mineshaft was one of the first to be closed down, and was forgotten when the rest were sealed up.

I remembered the initial story back in the 30s almost immediately. It was unclear to the authorities which of the two boys decided to convince the other to explore the abandoned mine, or which one of them objected, if they objected at all. If you’re superstitious like me, the first thing you’d wonder is what possessed these two young boys, who grew up hearing about how dangerous the mines were, and how eerie the circumstances of their closing were, to one day decide to venture into their abyssal depths.

The article went on to recap from its initial story, that despite the best efforts of law enforcement, of course, only one of the two boys, a kid named Billy McKinnon, a young Irish fellow a few years younger than myself, made it safely back to the surface. The child was immediately rushed to the asylum fifty miles north of here for questioning, babbling on about some of the most horrifying things you’ve ever heard.

From the beginning, they tried their best to pin a murder on Billy. The case had two major problems, the first being that no corpse was ever found, and the second being that police were convinced by the insane babblings that he made from the moment of his capture that he not only didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, but didn’t hold the mental capacity necessary to stand trial for murder. They shipped him off to the asylum in Traverse City, where he remained until today. The story indicated that after all this time, after years of authorities from multiple agencies contacting him, trying to get closure for the Jacobs family, a family I’d known through other acquaintances, he had finally decided to come forward with his portion of the story, to clear his name, and agreed to finally speak to authorities.

A week after reading the article, I ran into a family friend of mine by the name of Archie Rucker, now a detective, who informed me he was in the fluorescent laden room when the now 38 year old Billy was being questioned. Initially, according to Archie, Billy seemed too scared to talk, but once pressured, he gave a full account of the events that took place, and even now I find it hard to comprehend exactly what Archie told me was said. To make sure they got everything, they brought in a stenographer from downstate, near Mt. Pleasant, I think. Under the table, Archie sent me a copy of the transcript. This is what they were able to type out between the babbling and groaning from McKinnon.

***

On the morning of August 16th, 1936, my best friend in the whole world, Alex Jacobs and myself, decided that we were bored. To us, we were far more bored than any of the other kids in the neighborhood, whose parents had spent hundreds of dollars on toys, vacations, and expensive frozen desserts to beat the heat of the midwestern summer. We were broke, with only a few cents for the occasional Coca-Cola, a couple comic books, a deck of worn playing cards, and the type vivid, at times explicit imagination that ranged from deciding whether the Three Stooges or Popeye would win in a fight to observing how much bigger Laura Crowley’s chest had gotten over the last year. Boy stuff.

In the shadow of the morning sun we talked over the activities for the day, beginning with riding our bikes along the same trails of the town square, buying an ice cream soda from the creepy corner store owner they see every day for groceries anyhow, strolling the park, or doing something different, something fun, something dangerous. Honestly, a part of me wanted to one up Alex on the toughness scale, and another part of me didn’t understand what we were agreeing to, or understand the powers that be that aligned our destinies on this sunny, perfect morning. Regardless, somehow, we agreed to explore one of the abandoned copper mines, a former source of prosperity, peace, and happiness that slowly turned into a cesspool of legend and mystery.

The first mine was out of the question. Unlike the haphazard exit of the second mine, the first had been demolished using dynamite when it was shut down to avoid anyone ever entering. Plus, that mine didn’t come with the shock factor the second mine had. The second mine was the one that carried the stories of ancient power, political and economic corruption, and the allure of a dangerous, daring adventure. I’m sure you can understand that a lot of this is a blur to me, I don’t remember which, but one of us decided on the second, and the other quickly agreed. The forgotten entrance we decided to use was a long-time hangout of some of the older teenagers, ne’er-do-wells, and miscreants for as long as I can remember. On this particular day, the entrance to the mine was untouched and unguarded, which left a perfect opportunity for us to not only enter the mine unbothered, but also unseen and undetected by the watchful eye of anyone who would try to stop us if they saw us.

The entrance to the mine began small enough that we had to duck to get inside, but then opened up into a large, towering cavern, lined with railroad ties, rope, and nails the diameter of a dollar piece. A sturdy piece of architecture to be sure. My father is a steel worker, so I stole a couple of his big flashlights to make sure we didn’t go in blind. I knew he wouldn’t miss them, we wouldn’t be gone th…

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