There Is A Place On The Mountain Called ‘Borrasca’ Where People Go To Disappear

When I pulled up to his house the next morning, I could tell it was all over for Kyle. His skin had taken on a yellowed color and his voice was flat and void of emotion.

“It’s not over yet, Kyle,” I said as he dropped into the seat next to me.

“Yes, it is, Sam.”

“No, I don’t believe that. Kimber’s dad is missing too, you know. Maybe it was him instead that was, that…” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more.

“You know we’re living in hell. Drisking, it’s Hell in our reality.”

I couldn’t disagree. The town I’d grown to love seemed so unfamiliar to me now. Whitney hadn’t been an outlier like I’d thought, missing people were the norm here. “And that would make Jimmy Prescott the king. He’s Satan, himself.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth Kyle punched the car door, awaking from his deadened state with rageful vigor.

“I’ll fucking kill Jimmy Prescott! Where is that motherfucker? You know he’s involved in all this, Sam, you know-“

“Maybe. Partially.” I said, staring out the window. “His dad created the town that bred this shit but I’m pretty sure the Prescott’s are just running drugs. You know, the powder.”

“Yeah… and so what, he’s recruiting people to be- to be drug mules or something?”

“Probably.” I agreed for Kyle’s sake, though I didn’t really believe it. The sound, the great beast machine of Borrasca gave off the distinct stench of death. And though I knew that physically that was impossible, to smell death all over the mountain, it didn’t change my mind about it.

We drove over to 4th Street Gourmet Coffee and Bakery and went in to buy our usual provisions of Rockstars and beef jerky. As I paid for the four-pack of cans and meat I saw Meera waiting on coffee at the opposite end of the bar. I could tell that she was in a good mood, something that I hadn’t seen much of since I’d started working for her. It was probably a good time to tell her I was calling out of work for my 5th day in a row.

“Hi Meera,” I muttered when I approached. “Ah…I can’t come in again today. I’ve got some, some really important-“

“Sam! Oh my gosh, how are you?”

“Um…I’m okay.” I stuttered.

“Good!” She said, brightly. “Don’t worry about coming in, I’ll hold down the fort and I’m sure I can call Emmaline in if I need help. But really, Sam, what have you been up to lately that’s so important?”

My mind blanked. Just as I started to stutter out some bullshit about helping my dad, Kyle appeared behind me.

“We’re trying to find Borrasca.” He said with all the gravitas of a eulogy.

“Ah, yes. Owen told me you’d asked him about that. You know that’s just a story, Sam; that legend has been around since I was a kid.”

“Yeah, well, we’re looking for our missing friend, Kimber. We think maybe she’s… there,” I trailed off lamely.

“Oh really? I thought I heard the Destaros were staying with relatives in Maine over the summer.” Meera shrugged. “Anyway, good luck, boys.”

“Thanks.” Kyle’s voice was sour and I knew his patience was thin.

When we got back into the car we each popped open a can of Rockstar and started chugging. I knew better than to ask Kyle if he wanted to smoke since I was sure he hadn’t lit a bowl since Kimber had disappeared. He finished the energy drink in under a minute and crumpled the can in his hand.

“I don’t like your boss,” he said.

“Meera? Why not?”

“I don’t know. She’s just…off.”

“Well she’s been going through some shit.” I wasn’t going to elaborate any further.

“Why were you asking her husband about Borrasca anyway?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t know. I was just making small talk and I thought he might know. He seemed to know about a lot of other things.”

“And did he?”

“Nah.” I took a long gulp of the sour drink and slowly brought it down to my lap as I recalled something Owen had said. “Well, actually, yeah. He called it ‘a’ Borrasca instead of just Borrasca. You know, like it’s a thing instead of a place.”

Kyle lowered his Rockstar. “And is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it. I’ve googled everything weird about this town but nothing ever came up.”

“Did you spell it right?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Do you know how to spell it?”

“No.”

I pulled out my phone.

“No, fuck google.” Kyle said. “We need to talk to Kathryn Scanlon again. That’s what Kimber would say.”

He was right. Kathryn Scanlon may be the most knowledgeable person in town and was probably the right person to ask. I pulled out of 4th Street Coffee and prayed she was at her office this early. When we parked in front of Drisking Arts and Antiques I was disappointed to see that the store was dark. Kyle pointed to a small, cardboard ‘OPEN’ sign hanging in the corner of the door and I prayed that it was for Kathryn’s office.

I was relieved to find the door unlocked and we hurried past all the antiquities and blown glass to the back of the store where we found an open door and Kathryn sitting behind her desk.

“Boys!” She stood up when she saw us. “You’re up quite early for summer break. How did the essay do?”

“Eh…great,” I said. “Actually we’re here for more help.”

“Personal interest,” Kyle added.

Kathryn raised her eyebrows. “Color me impressed.”

I needed to get right down to it. If by some small chance Kimber was still alive then every second counted. “We’re here because we want to know if Borrasca is a thing or a place.”

Kathryn raised her eyebrow. “I remember that legend as a kid. I’d actually have to tell you I didn’t know if it wasn’t for Wyatt. He knew so little about so much,” she laughed. “A sort of jack of all trades…anyway, he told me an interesting fact once about Borrasca – it’s both!”

“What do you mean?” I leaned over her desk.

“Well the term ‘borrasca’ is just old, outdated lexicon. The word was used by miners to describe an underperforming mine.”

“A mine…” I whispered.

Kyle shook his head. “We’ve been looking at mines.”

“So all the mines in Butler County are Borrascas?” I asked.

“Well, generally it’s only the first mine in the system to run dry that is called a Borrasca.”

“Do you know which mine ran dry first? In our mining system?” Kyle asked from where he stood near the door, repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Ah, not off the top of my head, no,” she laughed. “I can look though, I think I have those records here somewhere.” Kathryn walked behind her desk and opened a drawer of loose files. “This is an odd thing to be interested in for boys your age but I guess I should be glad you two are so eager to learn, especially over the summer.”

“Yes, ma’am, very eager,” said Kyle.

“Is the Borrasca, the first mine that ran out of ore, um, was that by chance the same one those kids disappeared in?”

“The McCaskeys? Oh no, I don’t think so. That particular mine was the southwest mine and was very close to town. I think it was one of the last to close, actually. Ah! Here we go. This folder should have that information.”

Kathryn spent far too long moving books around on the desk to make room for the stack of papers she had. Kyle and I paced around the room nervously, trying to appear casually interested while the energy drinks started coursing through our systems.

“Here, we go! The first mine to close was the north central mine, which was…yeah, actually one of the first to open.”

“But where is it?” Kyle walked over to the desk and braced his arms on it. “Where is that mine?”

“Um…” Kathryn pulled over a different stack of papers and started to fumble through it. After the longest minute of my life she made an ‘a-ha!’ sound and pulled out a large, yellowed piece of paper that had been folded into a standard A4 size. She unfurled it on the desk and leaned over to read the markings. I could see from where I was standing near the doorway that it was a map and I knew we weren’t living this office without it.

“Let’s see. That mine was up further on the mountain, a little harder to get to. See?” And she pointed at a small dot on the map that was at least four miles from where we’d been looking.

“Can we take this?” Kyle asked. “We’ll bring it back.”

“Of course! I’m sure I have copies. Listen, if you boys are going exploring-“

“I’m bringing my dad.” I lied.

“Oh! Excellent then, you guys have fun!” She yelled at us as we rushed out of the building. We didn’t stop to answer her, ‘fun’ was far from our minds.

“It’s- it’s- it’s so far from where we’ve been looking,” Kyle stuttered. “We need to go there now. And we need to get a gun.”

“A gun? Where are we going to get a gun, Kyle?”

“From you dad.”

“He’s not going to give us a gun, man.”

“Fine, then let’s scout the place first and then we’ll come back with a gun.” That didn’t seem like a good idea to me either but what choice did we have? After studying the map for several minutes we realized the easiest way to access the mine was still through the West Rim Prescott Ore Trail.

We parked at the trailhead and made the familiar hike down the well-marked trail and then up the beaten path, realizing that we’d have to travel past Ambercot Fort on the way. And I knew in my heart that we were on the right trail. We were walking the same path that so many people before us had on their way to Borrasca. But what had they found there?

We passed the treehouse, which was as silent as the morning. We walked on in the woods, further north than we had ever been before and soon we were flying blind, hiking in the general direction of the dot on the map and hoping we were still on course. Within an hour I began regretting that we’d come without provisions and that we were exceptionally emotional and unprepared.

By noon we had been hiking for four hours and it seemed to me that we were lost. I tempered the welling panic with thoughts of Kimber and Whitney and the answers to the mystery that had absorbed my life for so many years.
Kyle, for his part, said nothing and kept his eyes straight and his mission his priority. And then, just as the sun teetered on the apex of the day, we saw an emptiness through the trees and the hard lines of manmade buildings. Kyle quickened his step and I rushed to keep up.

When we finally broke through the tree line I choked on my own deep breath and stumbled back against a tree as I looked over the quiet encampment. A large, wooden sign post that was almost as long as the entire clearing was still standing near the entrance of the mine. It had to be a century old and though most of the letters had rotted off over the years, from those remaining I could guess that it had once said: DRISKING UNDERGROUND MINE.

What was left, however was: SKIN ND MIN

“The skinned men.” I whispered.

“That way,” Kyle pointed to the north end of the camp.

We stepped out from the shadows and into the vulnerability of the clearing. There were several large buildings still standing and the boarded up entrance to the ore mine was set back in the mountain.

“We’re not getting in there,” I whispered.

“Let’s try that building,” he said, and pointed toward the closest one, which was the largest and at least two stories tall. We counted to three and then ran across the camp to the large wooden doors of the old building. They were cracked open and when we squeezed inside I had no doubts that death was indeed present at Borrasca.

We were standing in what I guessed was a refinery and in the middle of the room was a large silver, conically shaped machine. A conveyer belt fed into it and the room had a sour smell. Even the dirt beneath our feet seemed to have taken on a crimson tint.

“This is the machine. This is where they take them,” I said. “People die in here.”

“Kimber isn’t here. Come on.”

I was only too happy to squeeze back out the door of the building and tiptoe around the side. We rounded a corner and almost ran into a recently waxed, shiny, green truck parked against the building.

“This is Jimmy Prescott’s truck,” I breathed.

“I know whose truck it is.” Kyle growled.

We were now on extraordinarily high alert. Kyle dropped to the ground and began to commando crawl around the building. I followed him waiting to hear a shout or a gunshot but there was only the dragging sound of our bodies through the dirt.

As we crawled around to the back of the building, Kyle turned to me and put his finger over his lips, then pointed at a one story brown building that was only a dozen feet away from us. He got into a crouched position and moved as fast as he could across the gap between the two buildings. I did the same.

As soon as I reached the wall next to him Kyle whirled around and put another finger to his lips and then pointed up to a window directly above us.

There were noises coming from inside and even to me, a 17 year old virgin, the sounds of sex were unmistakable. We could hear an animalistic grunting and the tired, objecting groans of an old mattress. Unable to help myself I whispered “What the fuck?” to Kyle but he was already gone, all caution abandoned, running around the side of the building.

I followed him in through the first door we came upon and was hit in the face by an invisible wall of the stench of great suffering. The smell knocked me back, but Kyle kept running. I followed him in, past crates of ramen noodles, MRE’s, bottled water and boxes I had no time to read. I crossed another threshold and I was suddenly surrounded by people. So many people. I skidded to a halt and realized I was standing in a sort of dorm. Rows and rows of beds on either side of me with people strapped to them, some of them wearing dirty rags and some wearing nothing at all.

Many seemed to be bloated and I waited for one to call out to me but they all remained silent, some watching me through tired, dead eyes and others turning away their heads away from me. Looking around I realized they were all women and the bloating I saw seemed to be…pregnancies. Some were confined to their beds with straps and others were not.

I looked around the room for Kyle and saw him standing a little further in the long room looking back at me with the same confused, wild expression I was sure was on my own face. I saw the realization cross his bewildered features and called out to him but he was already running again.

I lost him before I’d taken five steps to follow. I figured it was probably best to just keep running, spread out and look for Kimber. I didn’t see her in this room and I was sure she would have called out to us if she was.

I looked around for another door and saw one cracked open on the left behind a row of beds. I stared straight at it as I made my way there, desperate to avoid the sad, desperate eyes of the women around me. First we help Kimber, then we help the others. I will come back and help you all, I promise. As soon as I find Kimber.

Without a thought I pushed the door wide open as soon as I’d reached it and found the source of the noises we’d heard outside the building.

It was Jimmy, something I’d been expecting to see, but the scene before me was not. He was hunched over the bed of an almost unrecognizable, unresponsive Kristy, treating her like an animal. She watched me through half-opened eyes but she didn’t call to me for help. I thought I saw a tear run down her cheek before she turned her face away from me to face the wall on the other side. “What the fuck?” I didn’t even realize I’d spoken out loud. I had never seen this depth of human suffering.

Jimmy’s head snapped around to look at me and briefly registered surprise before he smiled at me in a way that turned my insides to ice. He didn’t stop what he was doing and I wanted nothing more than to run over and push him off of Kristy but to my utter shame I couldn’t force myself to come any further into the room.

“Sam! Sam!” Kyle’s voice echoed through the building and immediately cured me of my paralysis. I found myself running back into the miner’s dorm and away from Jimmy Prescott and the long suffering Kristy.

“Kyle!”

“Back here, hurry, please, I fucking- I found Kimber!”

I followed his voice through the maze of beds and rooms as a cacophony of noise began to follow me.

“Help us. Please.” Their voices were weak.

There were maybe only a handful of girls yelling at me but it sounded thunderously loud as if filtered through my guilt. The weight of their misery dropped down upon me and it almost pushed me into the rotting, wooden floor.

“I will! I’ll get help, I’ll help you!” I promised them as I followed Kyle’s voice, still screaming desperately from an adjacent room. I sprinted across another threshold and saw him, hunched down near a corner bed helplessly yanking on a leather strap attached to the post.

I slammed into the bed and fell to my knees, trying to work out what he was doing and how I could help him. I tried not to look at the bed because I knew I couldn’t see her like that, I couldn’t bear it. If Kimber looked at me through the same accusing, empty eyes as Kristy and the others I might lay down on the ground beneath her and curl up into a ball.

“Go around the other side! Unbuckle the other two straps!” Kyle had the high pitched voice and wild, desperate eyes of madness. I ran around the other side and did as he’d said with shaking hands.

“Oh, boys!” Jimmy’s voice rang out from somewhere in the building. I had just freed Kimber’s ankle and was working on her wrist. She whimpered when she heard him and buried her face in my shoulder. “Do you think you’re hiding? I know where to find you. I know right where I put that girl.”

“I’ll fucking kill you, Prescott, you sick cunt! I’ll fucking stomp all your bones and bleed you out you little motherfucker!” Kyle had lost all reason and strategy. He was filled with rage instead of fear and it scared me even more. I pulled Kimber’s wrist from the final strap and yelled, “Go now!”