Prologue
or, The Not-So-Long-Ago

On the front walkway of the Bob Burger Recreation Center, a giant 
inflatable Turkey sways in the November wind. "The 4th Annual Cold 
Turkey Run" proclaims a sign on the turkey's midsection, "5K fun-
run for childhood vaccinations. Free clinic inside." The morning 
sun shines a crisp, hard light in the sky. This being November in 
Colorado, the sun will be generous enough to stick around for a 
few more hours, before plunging the world into darkness around 5 
PM.

Across the parking lot, middle-schoolers on Thanksgiving break 
navigate their way through the bowls and rails of the skate park. 
The baseball diamond lies empty. Toddlers run giddily toward piles 
of cottonwood leaves.

The Recreation Center sits in the heart of Lafayette, a smallish 
city north of the Denver metropolis, and east of the Republic of 
Boulder. To the middle-school skateboarders, Lafayette is a 
doldrum of pretty parks, farmer's markets, trailer courts, and 
beer fests. Nothing is open after 8 PM, and the popular pastime is 
driving to the neighboring town of Louisville (hard "s") to get a 
poster framed at Hobby Lobby. The main attraction is a massive 
market-tested megachurch, which doubles Lafayette's population 
every Sunday.

On the far end of the Recreation Center's parking lot, and far 
from the mind of anyone on a skateboard, sits the Lafayette 
Cemetery. Its granite headstones are visible from the Center's 
second-story running track, serving as motivation for the regular 
power-walkers.

Two skateboards roll out of the park, and are kicked up into the 
arms of Sean and Gerry, friends since the third grade. Sean lives 
in the Old Town neighborhood, a ten-minute walk from the 
skatepark. Old Town was a grid of minuscule houses packed like a 
Manhattan subway train, houses that grew more cracked and creaky 
with each rainstorm. Gerry will follow Sean as far as the bus 
stop, and hitch a ride to the Blue Heron suburb on the edge of 
town. In English class, he had endured half a semester on 
Shakespearean tragedy, and so he relished the thought of fifteen 
minutes on a bus, where he could read *A Dance with Dragons*; now 
*there* was some literature. 

Sean speaks up: "I heard Connor is going to Vail with his family 
for Thanksgiving break."

*And wouldn't it figure*, thinks Gerry. "Lucky for Connor. His 
parents probably have their own place up there, the 'winter 
home'." Gerry knew this was true, in fact, and had asked Connor 
when he might be able to join him, and play paintball on his 200-
acre ranch. "And I get to spend another Thanksgiving in 
Lafayette."

"I mean, I'll be here tomorrow," says Sean, "and maybe we can play 
some ice hockey at the Y..."

Gerry responds with a decent imitation of crickets.

"All right, whatever," says Sean, adding with a smirk, "This week, 
I'm just going to be thankful for all I've been given."

Gerry smiles. "Yee-up. Let's just be thankful for a safe, sterile 
holiday, devoid of all fun and excitement."

"Thankful for a week of watching Grandpa yell at football games," 
adds Sean, "and another year of rejection from Sofia."

"Another holiday dinner, listening to Mom and Aunt Val argue 
politics," says Gerry, "and the same three movies on TV, because 
Thanksgiving is the world's most boring holiday, and I like in the 
world's most boring town."

Sean isn't sure what makes him look over at the cemetery just 
then. Maybe he thinks it's odd that the mist in the cemetery 
hasn't burned off yet, especially when it's so dry this time of 
year. To dissuade his unease, he laughs and says "And this is the 
part where the Ghost of Christmas past comes out and attacks me, 
right?"

The next voice that speaks belongs to neither Sean nor Gerry. It's 
a voice that comes from the tall bushes they have just passed, 
giving them a heave of terror that curls their insides until 
breakfast felt like it might come up again.

"No ghosts, my friends, only a creature of the night."

Turning to see the diseased man behind them turns Sean and Gerry's 
legs to jelly, their throats too dry to scream. The man's skin is 
devoid of color, and thick mats of black hair, home to every local 
species of insect, run down to his ragged, reeking clothes. This 
pale man steps out of the bushes, off the curb, and takes a very 
polite bow.

"Good morning," says the man, "I am Fodor Glava: coal miner, 
vampire, and guardian spirit of Lafayette. I came to Lafayette, 
all the way from Transylvania, to work deep down in the labyrinth 
shafts far below us."

Sean looks over at Gerry, and sees the same mix of terror and 
confusion he was sure covered his own face. Yes, this was really 
happening.

The vampire continues. "I died of the Spanish Influenza in 1918, 
and they threw my body in the communal grave like some plague-
ridden livestock! For one hundred years I have kept watch over 
this city, and now, the time has come that I would have words with 
you."

Gerry, who has survived middle school so far by trying to make 
people laugh, snaps his fingers at the vampire. "Wait a minute, 
you're not like the pretty-boy vampires from those movies."

The vampire, apparently named Glava, laugh, and it sounds like 
diesel engine clogged with sludge. "Believe me, child, you would 
not want *me* to take my shirt off; no, I am trying to take the 
wool off of your eyes! That "peace and quiet" you find so painful 
was won with great sweat, and more than a little blood."

Gerry finds more of his courage restored, and challenges Glava. 
"Sweat and blood? You mean cowboys, prospectors, hard winters, 
*Little House on the Prairie* stuff?"

Sean joins in. "That's old news, freak. This is Colorado, name me 
one town out here that doesn't have those stories."

Glava shakes his head and coughs up a few decades of phlegm. "No, 
no! You are in no ordinary land, children. This is *coal country*. 
The men and women who lived here, in the Not-So-Long-Ago, changed 
all your lives... forever."

The vampire arches his back, raising his arms to the grey autumn 
sky. "Spirits! I call upon you this cold November morn!"

Sean and Gerry brace themselves as a great gale blows the rock-
hard cottonwood leaves on the ground into a swirling funnel.

"These children have forgotten their forefathers!" cries Glava. 
"People no longer remember the stories of old! I summon the 
spirits of this cemetery to roll back the years, to speak and live 
as you did them!"

The sky dances, the cars on the road start driving backwards, and 
the spirits of the cemetery clutch their own headstones to pull 
themselves from the earth. They hurry left and right, and soon a 
hulking tower of wood is rising above the evergreens. Gerry 
recognizes the movements of the spirits; he's seen it before in 
theater class. The undead souls of the cemetery are putting on a 
performance for them.

"Spirits!" calls Glava, "Tell us of your harshest sorrows, and 
most joyous delights! Spirit us across time to a little camp 
nestled in the hills: the Columbine Mine!"

Sean and Gerry watch the years roll back. As the spirits set their 
ethereal stage, Glava sings the song of his city:

  *Through blistering deserts and bone-chilling rain,*
  *They came from all corners to a treeless plain*
  *On steamships and wagons to where mountains look down;*
  *There were jobs to be had, deep underground.*

  *The road to the schoolhouse was worn and unpaved,*
  *Wives prayed each morning their husband be saved,*
  *With ghost stories whispered 'neath a kerosene lamp,*
  *While miners walked hard through the mist, cold and damp...*

  *Battle the sadness with laughter and mirth,*
  *When a day's journey west seemed the ends of the earth,*
  *Work for a living in the darkness below,*
  *How strange it all seems... but it was not so long ago.*

  *There was so very little on which to depend,*
  *Except love from your family, or kindness from friends,*
  *To protest one's lot was a dangerous crime,*
  *A coal miner must know his place--and that place is the mine.*

  *In church and dance halls the music ran wild,*
  *There were stories and legends in the mind of each child,*
  *Spiting the fear, how the choir would sing,*
  *Here in the tenement camp, Coal is King.*

  *Battle the sadness with laughter and mirth,*
  *When a day's journey west seemed the ends of the earth,*
  *Work for a living in the darkness below,*
  *How strange it all seems... but it was not so long ago.*