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Synopsis of “Shaft Number 247”
This short story is long, but it has a bunch of dialogue in the middle, where one character is telling another stuff, and I think I can do the synopsis shortly.
The main character, Driscoll, works for Control, as the manager of the night watch shift for a large mining complex with hundreds of shafts. There are nearby cities and more. There is a person on the shift with him, Wainwright, who is struggled and hearing things in the shafts after his best friend was pronounced dead a few months back .
It’s been getting worse, and a few other folks look oddly suspicious of his friend, Deems, and what is happening. So Driscoll tries to research Deems, and it’s been deleted, so he heads to Wainwright’s apartment to find out what has been happening. It turns out that shaft number 247, the first shaft dug and used to explore the area, has been badly rusted, corroded, and water and such is getting in. There are signs that the doors are opening from the outside, which implies that something is out there, turning them. Deems went to there and headed out, up, to live Out There.
After hearing this, a few days later, Driscoll hears an alarm, knows its coming from 247 instinctively, and rushes to head there. He finds water cascading in, some foul smelling stuff, and begins to invoke some dark primal urging of living outside and such in him. He sees some small humanoid creature reaching for him, but it’s flushed away. Wainwright has left.
He;’s placed on administrative leave for a week pending an official hearing. He decides to head out, and he break cameras, lights, and more, on his way out, and then again gets the visions as he closes with 247, and then opens the door to head Out There.
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