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Mae isn’t sure when her head gets all light like it’s being filled with helium, trying to float her up out of the underground she dragged herself into in hopes that it’d let her go after all the time it’s kept her pinned down. She just knows that she was standing in front of the pit and everything feels way too goddamn aligned, it feels like it’ll be worth something and she doesn’t want it to be. She knows the cultists are dicks and that they’re wrong and they said they don’t hurt the town but Casey’s parents put up posters and– yep, now that she’s looking back at it, that’s when her head hits the ground. When they said he wouldn’t amount to anything, so why bother? Every life in Possum Springs has value, but some don’t have enough to justify floods that might just be coincidence.
She isn’t sure when she broke those ribs – if it was right when her legs gave out, and she was tugged away from the edge just as her body toppled towards it, or if it was after. Either way, when she wakes up, she doesn’t do so in the hospital, unlike the last time she collapsed like that. Instead, it still smells like dirt and for a second she thinks it’s a nightmare. But then her mind pieces the sore shapes knitted across her stomach with the ache she’s pretty sure is real, and she’s still in the mine.
She remembers this place – it might’ve been a dream that time, maybe. Either way, it’s somewhere she passed through sometime that feels recent, it’s a room with wood planks packed into dirt like any mineshaft, but there are pews, like the ones at church. That’s where she finds herself, slumped against that splintered, dusty, dark wood with her shirt rolled up to reveal an ace bandage that’s definitely wrapped too tight. She doesn’t know what to do, though. Mae feels like she’s tied up, though the feeling weighs down her wrists and ankles as opposed to inhibiting her movement physically. It’s that goddamn song, telling her she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be and that she’s going to die.
When Mae fights past that calm, she spits a trail of bile onto the ground – she doesn’t have anything else in her stomach to throw up. After that, she screams. Gregg, Angus, and Bea finally left her. They probably think she’s dead for the second time in however many weeks, and in however many more, she will be. If her mind felt wrong because she was too far away from the center of everything, being closer is worse. Colder, lonelier, and she feels like her heart’s slowing down. Maybe they sedated her too, maybe it’s not just that twisting melody grabbing her by the skull and pressing down on her temples ‘til she thinks it’s beautiful. At least it’s not taking her closer. If before, it was a slope, now she’s on even ground until it falls out right beneath her feet. She knows exactly how many footsteps it’d take for her to get eaten alive.
Thank god she’s still scared – if not, she thinks she might walk there for herself. No – this time, she’s going to get dragged into the ground, she’s been so goddamn angry and scared but at least now she knows why, and now she can do what she can to prevent it. It isn’t anger issues, it’s not anxiety, it’s not how tight Possum Springs feels, but it’s what’s under. It’s not all in her head – sure, there’s trauma, but the wound’s still fresh enough that it’s not too late to bandage it. She just has no idea how. She screams again, just so somebody might call the cops even though it’s really her battle to fight. Her chest hurts and she thinks she might pass out again. Her ribs feel like this mine, like they’re old and fragile enough to cave in and kill everything living inside. There’s one good thing about the song, and that’s that it dulls the adrenaline. She won’t breathe the bone out of place.
And that’s when the footsteps start, crunching against the stale ground. Or she might be hearing things – it could be percussion for that Goat thing’s shrill, melodious harmony with all the lives it’s eaten just to apparently keep them from falling into something worse. Mae gets her answer, though, when one of the bullshitters in question stumbles toward her. They’re taller than her, the way almost everyone is, and just having a face to pin everything on makes her feel her heartbeat again, beating against the bandages tied too tight and probably breaking her ribs more – but who cares, all her bones are going to break if there’s a bottom of that pit.
They peer at her and with that goddamn headlamp turned off and the cloak shrouding their face, they look like they might not be human. But they know her name, and so they say “Ms. Borowski. It seems your body made the choice for you, and I find that I don’t often get to thank those who the Black Goat needs. Of course, I regret that, and thank you for doing the best thing you could for our town.” Mae wants to scream again, to fight if her limbs decide they want to move, but she needs words. She needs to tell them that she doesn’t want this, god no, even if she’s never leaving this town, she should at least get to stay in it. She breathes harder, ribs stinging and hot under her skin and all her muscles tighten and she can’t do anything she was taught and she regains enough control to stand under the Black Goat’s watchful eye.
“I’m- I’m not–” fuck, she’s dehydrated. The sentence comes out shaky, like a minecart on a dirty rusted track. “I’m not going to die. But Possum Springs, it will collapse if you drag anyone you deem as lesser than down here.” She bares her teeth. This isn’t anger like the kind that’s overexposed and underdefined, beating someone down with a baseball bat, or the anger that comes with being still. This is a big cosmic thing that buries her and crushes her ribs and makes her collapse to the ground. “You’re at least going to take me to the hospital, it hurts it hurts it hurts,” and she’s weak again as they tower over her.
Mae drops back onto the pew and everything feels massive. The song is louder and she can barely begin to describe it. It’s sort of…whistling, maybe? But not whistling in the way a bird whistles – it’s more like a rocket or a firework. Plus some deep, blurry strings. This place – this tiny underground church – was created as a place to let that resound. They probably drop people right in the hole more often than not, but this is a place to let them acclimate if they’re having second thoughts. That’s probably why she isn’t down there already.
“Ah, so you’re still angry,” the shock in their voice is poorly disguised. When your cult is under everything, it doesn’t really have to worry about PR. Evidently. She’ll make fun of that to Bea, who knows all about customer service, but her dread comes back in full swing and shit, she’ll probably never see Bea again. “You’ll be able to move again if you let her puppeteer you, you know?” They have a certain clarity to their voice that drips humanity back into it, and it’s the stupidest fucking thing. He’s talking to her like she’s a kid – he could’ve been one of her teachers, maybe.
“Leave,” Mae says, though this isn’t her mine and this isn’t her town and she’s scared. “And let me leave, too. Please.” She won’t do anything, but the song softens, rests or lulls or takes a breath and she raises a fist. Hits the cultist square in the face and he says “Fine.” Clearly, they underestimate her.
Next, it’s a waiting game. The song calls and her chest hurts like hell and bloody death and she has to stay awake the whole time just so she doesn’t wake up with even more bones broken, looking up at the creature that beckoned her as she dies. She’ll be okay, though. She’s been exposed to certain distances from the hole, and after a while, it seems quieter. She just has to be fine and everything else will come after.
Her eyes hurt, her legs and arms are stiff, and the song makes her wish it was enough to make her still want to be dead, but it’s all so fucked up, and it’s not cerimonious at all when she gets used to it and rises to her feet. She pukes up the little the cultist brought her on the second day, the time she just focused on the ground, once she’s moved just ten feet. Nobody wants her to be free but herself. The Goat thing wants her down here, at least twenty-five middle aged men who are part of the cult and anyone who’s still annoyed by her who isn’t. But there’s Bea, and Gregg, and Angus. And Germ, and Mae’s mom and dad. And Selmers. And Mr. Chazokov. For every name that she wants to say again, to their faces, she takes one step. She realizes what the cultists are doing all this for, and exactly why it won’t work.
Possum Springs is a community. Everyone’s missed, when somebody skips town people talk about it, and they’re scared of the same shit, and they’re tired. And being scared enough to switch those letters around and make it ‘sacred’ doesn’t amount to anything. They take away from the community to fortify the rest, and it’s hell. Mae has to tell someone, that’s what the community is for, isn’t it?She walks through the mine in the wrong direction, the song is screaming wrong wrong wrong and her chest is screaming it hurts it hurts it hurts and her throat is screaming just to goddamn scream, and the rickety elevator is the key to making sure she sees her friends again, and she’s going to use it.