PROLOGUE

Tyler felt adventurous, like when he was back in high school, and he and Len Grant would get into all sorts of mischief, sneaking into the neighbor's backyard to swipe beers from their outside fridge or nearly breaking their legs, daring each other to jump from the third-floor balcony of the abandoned Aspen Star Motel. They managed to survive all that, but to this day, Len still sometimes complained about his ankle.

Of course, Len grew up. He got a girl and a "real" job and lived in Denver now doing a nine-to-five and spending his money on baby clothes and more recently toddler clothes. He was a full-fledged adult, and the adventures that occupied him now were weekly coffee dates with Jennifer and the occasional theme park visits they took with Dustin, trips that Dustin would never remember but that would no doubt constitute the focus of Len and Jen's empty nest wistfulness when Dustin eventually spread his wings and flew from the nest.

Len and Jen. Heh.

His amusement at that childish rhyme was as good an indication as any that Tyler himself hadn't grown up yet. He had, literally and figuratively, never left his nest. Tyler's parents had moved out of town, too, but Tyler still lived in their house and sent them rent sporadically. He still stayed up late eating potato chips and drinking cheap beer, splitting his free time between binging anime and playing video games. At twenty-nine years old, he had to admit that he didn't look like a teenager anymore or even a twenty-one-year-old college kid, but he still felt like one.

Of course, all of that would change once the new distribution center opened. This tiny town, as unimportant and useless as it might be, happened to be located conveniently between Spokane and Boise and right next to the 95. Rather than ship lumber, granite and the various metals—precious and otherwise—that still trickled out of the mountains west to Oregon or south to Boise and then east to Butte, shipping companies could take a direct route hugging the mountain range, shaving hundreds of miles and thousands of dollars of fuel per shipment.

And the jobs would take Granger from being one of a million tiny little towns that seemed to exist for no reason other than to exist to an important economic hub. Aside from the jobs the center itself would bring, there were the obligatory highway expansions and refurbishments that would come along with it and the multitude of service and entertainment jobs that would follow after.

Granger, like Len, was growing up.

The sun, still low in its journey, sent light but no warmth over the early morning mountain chill as he hiked. He headed toward the construction site, although so far, no construction had started. They were still clearing the ground where the massive warehouse and parking lot would be built. The building itself was supposed to have nearly three acres of floor space. Tyler shook his head. That was an obscene amount of building.

As he grew close, he was surprised to hear machinery. The week before, the excavators had accidentally uncovered an old mineshaft. Usually, that meant a halt to any kind of work until a survey team could be sent in to determine if there were any structural integrity issues in the surrounding bedrock.

Then there were the rumors of ghosts. Of course, the construction crew was mainly out-of-towners, so they didn't know the place was supposed to be haunted. Not that it would matter if they did. Business was about the most adult thing Tyler could think of and had no room for superstitions and fairy tales. Still, safety was a very real consideration. Even if the powers that be didn't particularly care for the health of their employees, the lawsuits that would follow any kind of accidental death were the stuff of nightmares for land developers.

Well, maybe they had fast-tracked the survey and determined that everything was safe.

When he reached the site, he saw that there were only a few backhoes and one bulldozer. From a distance, the echoes of the mountains made it seem like far more activity was taking place. He saw perhaps a half-dozen men in hardhats. The machines seemed almost lazy as they tore apart the ground and created piles of gravel and soil.

Caution tape covered a gash on the wall of the excavated earth where the entrance to the old mine was located. It was only forty or fifty yards from where he stood, and all of the construction was another hundred and fifty to two hundred yards away. More than enough distance for him to reach the mine without being seen.

Again, that sense of adventure came over him. "You ready to get into some trouble, Len?" he asked.

He chuckled at himself. Len would get a kick out of hearing that Tyler was talking to him when he wasn't there. He could almost see his friends easy smile, hear the sarcastic lilt in his voice as he said, "I knew you liked me, man, but I didn't know you were in love with me like that."

Then again, Len was grown up now. Maybe he'd just chuckle politely while texting his wife about the grocery list. How time flied.

Tyler pressed his back against the dirt and edged his way forward, keeping his eyes on the machines and the crew as he slowly navigated down the steep slope toward the mine. No one turned to look at him, and when he reached the caution tape, he immediately slipped under it and into the gash.

As he scrambled away from the entrance and into the darkness, deja vu hit him pretty hard. He thought of Len and how the two of them would likely be hushing each other and pushing one another for each imagined noise the other made. The surprisingly adult thought came to him that those friendly squabbles were just their way of reminding each other that they weren't alone.

"Don't worry, Len," he said to the air. "They won't hear us."

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, pushed the switch on, and then hit the back twice to get the light to stop flickering.

As he made his way over the uneven tunnel floor, Tyler could hear strange noises coming from within. Creaking and moaning echoed through the dark corridors like an old black-and-white horror movie.

He really wished Len were with him. They would have been laughing about how creepy it all was, and the laughter would stop it from being creepy.

"Hey, Len, that moan sounded like your mom."

"Screw you, Tyler," he said, deepening his voice to sound like Len's.

"Weird. Your mom said the same thing to me last night."

"I wouldn't know. I was too busy banging your sister."

"That explains why she was crying this morning."

He continued to banter with his absent friend as he worked himself deeper into the mine. The flashlight flickered again, increasing the already macabre atmosphere. "Getting' spooky in heah," he said, affecting the exaggerated Brooklyn accent that always left Len rolling in laughter.

A rush of cold air blew from one of the shafts to his left. Tyler shivered, not just from the cold. His flashlight flickered again, and he grunted irritably as he smacked it hard.

Too hard. The torch flew from his hand, skittered across the ground and went out. Tyler's smile vanished, as did every good feeling he had.

If Tyler had survived long enough to make it to the surface, he would have thought that this was the moment he grew up. It occurred to him quite clearly that a man who was five weeks away from his thirtieth birthday had no business sneaking around in an abandoned mine shaft like a damned high schooler trying to find an outlet for raging hormones and latent fear of adulthood.

"All right, Len," he said, no more humor in his voice, "time to stop being stupid."

He dropped to his hands and knees and shuffled slowly along the floor in the direction of the dropped flashlight. The moaning coming from all around him no longer seemed exciting or even spooky. It was downright terrifying.

"Come on," he said softly. "Where are you, you bastard?"

How was there no light at all from the surface? He had been walking for two minutes. There was no way he had made it so far into the mine that it should be so dark.

He tasted copper and realized he had bitten down hard enough on his cheek to draw blood. He opened his mouth and the click his teeth made when he closed it again echoed through the chamber like a gong.

"Come on," he whispered again. "Come on, I know you're around here."

Finally, his fingers fell on a smooth, cool cylinder of metal. He made a sound halfway between a cry and a groan and leaped to his feet, fingers fumbling with the buttons. No light came when he clicked the on switch, so he swore under his breath and unscrewed the back of the housing.

There was the problem. The batteries had been knocked loose. He pushed first one down, then the other and carefully screwed the back on.

He took a deep breath and clicked the button once more. When a beam of light revealed a perfectly ordinary cavern and not a swarm of bats or a pile of bleach-white, splintered bones, he moaned again in relief.

He laughed at the sound that escaped his mouth, and said giddily, "Hey, Len, that's the sound your mom made when I was with her last night."

"Really? Sounds like a scared little wimp whining because he's afraid of the dark."

"Screw you, Len!"

His glee had returned, but beneath it was the very mature realization that he needed to get out of here and fast.

As often happened with such realizations, this one came too late to save him. He turned around and took two steps back the way he came.

Then strong arms wrapped around his chest, and before he realized what was happening, he was yanked backwards so forcefully his feet left the ground. The flashlight clattered to the ground. The beam flickered, then went out.

A soft breeze blew through the mine, carrying with it a soft moan that rose to a piercing shriek.

Then the cave went silent.