The Becoming - a novella Read Online Free PDF

under his
bed, between the mattress and the box spring. There was no way in the world he
would be able to pull off a fake fever if he had to fool a thermometer as well
as his mom, but as long as he didn’t stay under the covers too long again or do
anything else stupid, in a few minutes Mom would leave for work and he would
have the whole day to himself.
    The whole day to
do a little exploring.
    Tim McKenna wasn’t
in the habit of ditching school. He didn’t earn straight-A’s or anything like
that, but knew how important it was to his mom that he get an education, “so
you can do something with your life,” she would say wistfully, the unspoken
message clear even to a twelve year old, that she hadn’t done that, and
look where it had gotten her.
    So even though he
didn’t care much about school, most of the time Tim followed the path of least
resistance. He attended regularly, paid attention in class—more or less—and
generally did at least enough work to keep his mom happy. They had always been
close, but when his dad abandoned them, going out for a drink and never
returning—a scenario straight out of some depressing country song—their bond
had deepened, moving from a typical mother and child to a pair united against
whatever the future might bring.
    Until his mom had
found Matt, of course, but that was another story. Matt was okay, Tim knew Matt
cared about his mom and was happy she had found someone to make her stop crying
every night after she thought he was asleep, but Tim wasn’t in the market for
another dad and mostly just tried to stay out of his way.
    Despite the fact
Tim wasn’t exactly a pro at skipping school with a fake illness, he had known
the minute his teacher covered the infamous Tonopah mining tragedy in history
class last week that he was going to take a little field trip out to the site
of the disaster the moment he could work out the details.
    He had to check it
out for himself. The disaster involving the Tonopah Mining Company had
everything a kid could want: explosions, fire, crooked business owners
sacrificing the safety of their workers for the savings of a few dollars,
death, destruction. Heck, there were even legends of murderous ghosts! The
whole thing had happened almost a hundred years ago, but it was still a darned
good story, even if it was ancient history.
    He learned in
history class that the mine had had a notoriously poor safety record for
decades, and then in 1925 a worker simply disappeared, vanishing without a
trace after a suspicious underground fire. Government authorities had come in
and abruptly shut down the entire operation, sealing up the entrance to the
main shaft and throwing the mine’s owner in jail for negligence to boot.
    But the best part of
the whole story was that the mining camp was located only a couple of miles
away and had never been destroyed. After they finished sealing the thing off,
everyone had simply walked away. What had once been a busy, heavily-traveled
road between the center of Tonopah Township and the Tonopah Mine had fallen
into disrepair and was now nothing more than an overgrown path through the
woods, with the Pennsylvania forest mostly reclaiming the land for itself. Tim
assumed the mine was also heavily overgrown—no one he knew had ever been there,
so he could only guess—but he figured if he looked hard enough it would be
pretty easy to find.
    Tim had listened, spellbound,
over the three days Miss Henderson recounted the tale, amazed that an event
which had made headlines all over the country—heck, all over the world —had
taken place right here in little Tonopah, Pennsylvania, the town where nothing
exciting ever happened. Tim was immediately filled with enthusiasm about
the prospect of exploring the old mine and just knew his small circle of
friends would be as well.
    But he had been
disappointed. No one would agree to skip school to trek out to the mine for a
little field trip. As the newcomer in town, and a smallish,