The Knocking at Wheel Peevor by Fox Miller

No one works down there anymore. The last functioning mine in Cornwall closed in 1998. The engine houses now stand as monumental gravestones to an age forgotten by most. My journey from the bungalow where I lived to the nearest bus stop would always cut through Wheal Peevor; a trail around several such monoliths crowning the abandoned mine beneath. Sometimes Mr Arthur’s sheep would jump over his poorly maintained fences and spread themselves across the trail, before eventually being wrangled up again by the irritable farmer. On a late autumn day, I came across one such sheep munching on tufts of grass beside it’s lamb. I passed by, not getting so close as to spook the pair. I didn’t even consider going to Mr Arthur’s house. He was an unwashed, unpleasant miser who I disliked being near, let alone talking too. Anyway, I would be late for the bus and the sheep certainly couldn’t fall down anywhere. The shafts were completely blocked off to anything but the tiniest dog. As I was considering this, I came to one such shaft in the shadow of an engine house. There was a heavy, metal grid sealed over the hole, like an oversized barbecue grill. I remembered tossing small stones through the gaps when I was younger, listening for the eventual “plop” as it hit the flooded depths far beneath my feet. I didn’t do it anymore. Perhaps I’d ran out of good stones to drop. Perhaps I’d just grown bored after the one hundredth “plop”. As I left the hole and it’s memories, I heard a sound behind me.

A damp knocking. Three echoing thumps, each evenly spaced from the other. I turned back to the hole. Was I hearing things? I had to be. Perhaps I was tired. All the same, I left Wheal Peevor at a slightly faster pace than usual. As I sprawled out onto the seat of the bus, my mind couldn’t help but wander to the stories my mother used to tell me.

The Knockers were the spirits of the underground. They helped the miners find precious metals and alerted them to crumbling shafts by tapping on the cold cavern walls. You never angered a Knocker unless you needed a deep stone tomb. They’d travelled the globe with the tales of Cornish miners, but some must have stayed behind. I used to wonder what had happened to them, in those cold, lonely tunnels where no light reached. What were they doing down there? What had become of them?

Throughout the day my mind drifted from such old stories to everyday troubles of school life. Maths, English Language, Lunch, etc…

When I left the bus stop, I noticed sea mist drifting in from the northwest, clouding the land in fog. I didn’t even change from my ordinary pace back through Wheal Peevor until I came back to the shaft.

Out of the haze, I saw a lone sheep looking down through the grill. Its distressed cries sent a shiver down my spine. There were scrape marks leading from the centre of the path all the way to the grill, as if four little hooves had been dragged through the metal and into the hole.

Upon noticing me, the distraught sheep hopped away into the bushes, out of sight. I approached the grill slowly, expecting to see the metal stained with blood. I almost willed there to be a monstrous hole in the metal, where something ferocious had burst from. Some proof other than marks in the dirt. But the grill looked as sturdy and unbroken as ever.

Slowly, I picked up a stone and let it fall into the hole as I had done in years prior. It was a relief to hear the stone eventually “plop” into the water, though I couldn’t quite define why. There was silence for a long moment after it’s echoes faded, and I was just turning away when I heard a horribly familiar sound.

“Knock, Knock, Knock.”

The chillingly regular beat I’d heard before. All thoughts of self-preservation abandoned me as my eyes were drawn into the depths, looking for any sign of a tangible shape in the darkness. I didn’t know what I’d find. Something humanoid perhaps? Or something beastlike?

“Knock, Knock, KNOCK.”

The sound was becoming louder! I ran out of Wheal Peevor as fast as I could, not daring to look back. I dived into the house and slammed the front door shut as though my life depended on it, much to my mother’s ire.

My father investigated the trail on Saturday morning. There were no bleating sheep on the path, nor sounds from the hole. He didn’t even consider that the scrape marks belonged to a lamb.

Despite his investigation, I never journeyed through Wheal Peevor again, deciding instead to walk beside the road. I pressed my shoulder up against the thorny bushes whenever a car came hurtling by, but it seemed safer than the alternative.

Through my bedroom window and between the trees, I could see the engine houses towering over the fields day after day. I never looked at them in the same way again. As I slept through the nights which followed, I dreamed of the horrible creatures lurking inside those tunnels. And I would wake in the dead of night to the sound of knocking beneath the floorboards.

Edited by Fal Writing