Wired4Wonder's Tales

  The Black Vein The town of Ravenwood had been abandoned for decades, left to rot in the shadow of Black Vein Mine. Once a thriving coal town, it withered when the miners struck something they shouldn’t have—something that seeped and pulsed beneath the earth. The last workers to escape spoke of a black, living substance creeping from the tunnels, consuming everything it touched. No one believed them. Until the town died. Elliot Graves, a geologist with a fascination for the unexplained, had read all the reports. Urban legends, he thought. Superstitious nonsense. The state had hired him to investigate after surveyors reported the ground shifting unnaturally around the old mine. When he arrived, the air smelled of decay. A dense fog clung to the hills, curling like fingers around the mine’s entrance. His boots crunched over brittle bones—small animals, mostly, their bodies hollowed out. The entrance gaped before him, a wound in the rock. He turned on his headlamp and stepped inside....