Firelight crackled warmly in the mine and cast dancing shadows against the carved edges of the stone walls. Keiske couldn’t have been happier with what they’d found.

“Not too shabby, eh?” Keiske asked, turning his cooking fork over the fire.

Shun and Tsukasa both nodded their approval, all previous doubts now gone. The entrance was narrow and they used the old boards to block out the wind. The mine itself widened after a few feet into a decent sized cave of sorts and that was where they’d made their camp.

“Plenty of old planks we can use for firewood,” Keiske pointed out, “and the smoke doesn’t seem to get stuck inside so no worries about bad air, and listen,” he paused, cocking his head to one side as if listening for something, “no dogs.”

He laughed and Shun joined him. Tsukasa was less amused but smiled all the same as he ate his dinner.

“We could really make this place into something, you know?” Keiske went on. “Think about it. No one really comes up here, and there’s enough room we could stash all sorts of stuff in here, maybe even get a generator and hang some lights or something?”

“Dream on,” Tsukasa told him. “Tonight’s fine but I don’t think I’ll come up here again.”

“What?” Keiske asked. “How come? This place is awesome!”

Tsukasa responded with a dismissive shrug and left it at that.

“What about you, Shun?” Keiske asked his other friend.

“There’s a lot of places we can go camping,” Shun said after a brief hesitation, “and I think I prefer the ones that don’t require trespassing or several miles of hiking to get to.”

Tsukasa nodded his agreement.

“No sense of adventure,” Keiske sighed in disappointment.

“No desire to get caught, either,” Tsukasa added.

“Fine,” Keiske conceded. “Thanks for coming out tonight at least. Maybe I’ll just spruce it up myself and you’ll change your minds when you see it then.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Shun admitted.

A soft growl echoed up from the dark depths of the mine and all three of them froze, listening.

“You all heard that, right?” Tsukasa asked.

Both Shun and Keiske nodded.

“It could have just been some rocks settling back there,” Keiske said, though without total conviction. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a small spray can. “I brought a few cans of dog spray, just in case,” he admitted.

“Give me one!” Tsukasa demanded and Keiske quickly handed one to both him and Shun.

“You sure it’s just dogs down there?” Shun murmured as the three of them edged around the campfire so it was between them and the source of the growl.

“Probably just some stray,” Keiske said. “Look, we can just leave if you’re that worried.”

He turned to begin making his way towards the exit but froze in place. Standing in the entrance of the mine, silhouetted by the smoke and illuminated in both fire and moon light, stood two large dogs. Their fur was matted and clogged with dirt and rocks and their hackles were raised. Both had their teeth bared and looked ready to pounce.

“I think I see it,” Tsukasa said and Keiske realized that the other two were still staring down deeper into the mine. They didn’t know about the dogs behind them.

He allowed himself a brief glance back down the mine and, sure enough, he could see forms in the darkness taking shape as they drew nearer to the fire.

“We’ve got a couple over here, too,” he told them.

Keiske felt them stiffen beside him at his words and they each turned slowly to see what he was talking about. As soon as he saw them, Tsukasa thrust the can of dog spray out in front of himself and charged forward, shouting incoherently and spraying wildly.

“NO!” Keiske cried out but he was too late.

The air in the mine filled with the peppery vapors of the dog spray. His eyes and throat burned and his vision swam as tears flooded down his face. He could hear both Tsukasa and Shun coughing. He also noted the distinct rise in angry snarls coming from the dogs.

Moments later Tsukasa cried out in pain and his shouts turned into screams. Guttural barks and growls mingled with Tsukasa’s cries. Keiske wanted to help his friend but his vision was still too obscured for him to locate exactly where Tsukasa was.

Regardless of his poor vision, Keiske stumbled forward towards the sound of his friend but as soon as he did, Shun also began to cry out in pain. The noise of the dogs was all around and echoed off the stone walls of the mine, making it impossible to tell what sounds were echoes and which ones were the actual source. Try as he might to get nearer his friends, their cries for help only grew fainter along with the sounds of the dogs.

A cool breeze and sudden drop in temperature told him that he’d somehow stumbled outside of the mine. He tried to wipe his eyes clear but only made things worse. He must have had some of the dog spray residue on his hands and all his rubbing had accomplished was to smear even more of the irritant into his eyes.

“SHUN!” Keiske shouted back into the mine which was now ominously quiet. “TSUKASA!”

No response came. He wanted to go back in after his friends, but the terror those dogs had filled him with, along with his current blindness, froze him to the spot.

“HELP!” he shouted hopelessly.

He was miles away from the nearest house and no one would be out this far at night.

“I’M GOING FOR HELP!” he shouted once again into the mine.

There was nothing else he could do, and so he began feeling around on the ground for the old dirt road they’d followed to find the mine. It was excruciatingly difficult to find the road only by touch. He had to tap around with his feet, trying to determine whether or not this flat area or that one was the road. Plants grew plentifully on the road so just trying to find a place clear of brush was useless. Eventually he thought he’d found the road and began inching his way along it, each step needing to be made carefully to ensure he didn’t leave the road.

The hours crept by, or possibly they were just minutes stretched out and lengthened by the situation. As the sky gradually lightened, so too did Keiske’s vision slowly return. His eyes still felt like sandpaper had been scraped over them but he had learned to resist the urge to rub them. His nose, mouth, throat, and lungs also still burned. He wished he had some water to try and wash some of it out of his mouth but at the same time he worried that, just like rubbing his eyes had been the wrong thing to do, perhaps swishing water around in his mouth would make things worse.

*

“So that’s it, then?” the police officer asked when Keiske fell silent in his story. “You wandered back into town after leaving the others?”

“What else could I do?” Keiske pleaded. “I couldn’t see and there were so many of those dogs.”

“Right,” the officer grunted. He obviously didn’t believe in spectral ghost dogs. “Look, we’ve already sent some people up to the mine.”

“Thank you,” Keiske sighed in relief. This was the first time anyone had confirmed that help had been sent to his friends. “We were camping just a few feet inside, where it opened up. I don’t know how far in the mine goes though.”

“Well, they’ve already gotten there” The officer explained. “The mine’s completely collapsed.”

Keiske went numb.

“What do you mean?” he asked and then added with sudden understanding, “That’s why the dogs appeared; they knew there was going to be a collapse in the mine!”

The officer just shook his head.

“Well,” the officer said quietly, “whatever happened, there’s a crew working on seeing if they can dig out your friends. Hopefully the collapse was just near the entrance. Maybe something about the heat from your campfire loosened some old rocks. Either way, we’ll find your friends if we can.”

With that, the officer left and one by one everyone else in the room slowly followed. There didn’t seem to be much else any of them could do in the meantime but wait. Keiske’s eyes still itched but the worst of the burning was over. His lungs and throat were also relaxing now as the irritant continued to break down and lose its potency. Yet for all his fear and discomfort, he couldn’t help but know that he had been the lucky one whom the dogs had, for whatever reason, chosen not to attack and drag down into the mine.