It was a beautiful summer Saturday in Bedford. The trees glowed with life and the sky was a vibrant blue with only the occasional cloud to ruin the days. A freshly mowed lawn of grass skirted around the Morrison home, and the push-mower was parked sloppily in front of the half-opened garage doors. The kitchen hummed with life as Ms. Morrison prepared several sandwiches for lunch, with a special surprise waiting in the cupboard.

Upstairs, in Jeremy's room, two kids sat on the single bed. Between them, an office binder was opened, filled with typed pages.

"You wrote all this yourself?" Jeremy asked, head cocked as he read off the pages.

Anna, sitting on her haunches right next to him but only coming up to around his neck in height, nodded, "Yeah. Uncle Marcus gave me a typewriter on my last birthday. It makes doing this stuff super easy, and I don't like writing with pencils even though Mr. Sanders makes me do it anyway. It's the first time I've tried something like this. It was meant to be for a project for school, but I just kept writing and writing..."

"Did'ja get an A?" Jeremy cracked a small smile.

"No," Anna frowned, "I went over the word limit a bunch and he said the grammar was no good. I got a B."

"Wow, he's tough. My English teacher would'a given me an A for something like this," Jeremy looked back down at the book, seemingly conniving something... before losing the plot and shaking his head.

"Well, that's Mr Sanders. He says it builds my character or something, whatever that means," Anna paused, before adding, "He's really an okay guy, though."

"Well you won't need to do stuff with him for much longer with the break n' all. Are you gonna come to camp with us?" Jeremy asked, looking away from Anna's book at his friend.

"I can't," Anna sighed, tail flicking in annoyance, "Dad wants me to stay and study over the summer. And he doesn't like the idea of me going to camp, cause of the other kids. He likes teaching me stuff over the summer, and he wants me to take some extracurricular stuff that I was interested in."

"Wow. It sounds like you're gonna enjoy not going to camp," Jeremy looked back down at the pages of Anna's book.

"Well I kinda enjoyed the whip stuff," Anna's memories went to the time she snuck her 'totally not a toy' custom bullwhip out to her friends' meetup and did whip tricks all day until Indiana caught her and grounded her, "And sometimes he takes me to go for walks in the forest and to go and explore around. But it's always either in the big city or real close to town. I wanna go with you all. It sounds fun."

"Probably can't anyway, I think it's probably just for boys or something," Jeremy tried to soften the blow, before changing the subject, "You said your dad told you the stuff in this book is real?"

"Yeah," Anna nodded, "And I believe him."

Jeremy snickered, placing his finger on a page, "'And then when Indiana Jones woke up, he was on a ship in the Underworld. The cavern stretched out in all directions and towered under him, and he realized that he was looking up at the crust of the earth he walked on above him'. You telling me your dad discovered the world's hollow as a wormy apple and nobody knew about it?"

Anna blushed slightly, crossing her forelegs and looking away, "W-Well... it happened! Swear!"

"Sure, you know my Dad tells me all kinds of things and I'm not sure all of them are real-" Jeremy paused as a shout emanated through his bedroom window.

"Anna! Anna! Dinner time!"

Anna sighed, taking the notebook and closing it, "Well, time for me to go. When do you go to camp?"

"Monday," Jeremy sighed, "Real shame we can't go together. But I'll see you next month, promise!"

Ever since Indiana had returned from his trip to Easter Island in late January, more and more neat things had appeared around their home. A radio set had been purchased to sit with the rest of their furniture in the lounge, which Anna found entertaining to listen to while reading or working on her homework. Their old icebox had been sold off and in its place a brand new refrigerator was put in - which was apparently just an icebox but it used electricity instead of ice. A car had found its place in their garage, which had until now just been a place where the cobwebs and critters had dominated.

To the music coming in over the radio, the Joneses ate their dinner - tomato soup and crackers. A meal of average complexity and splendor for the extremely mediocre adult in charge of the kitchen. Still, even though it came from a can, it was effective enough to sate Anna's tastes.

Anna was a lot of things, but she wasn't fussy about food.

"How was your day?" Indiana asked casually, chewing on a soup-soaked biscuit.

"I showed Jeremy my writing project," Anna said, pausing to slurp the soup from her spoon before adding, "He said that the earth isn't hollow."

Indiana winced, "I told you not to spread that story around, Anna. That was meant to be just between you and me."

"He thought it was fake anyway, so it doesn't matter," Anna shrugged, pursing her lips and rocking back and forth in her seats a few times as she took another spoonful, eyes locked onto her father.

Indiana raised an eyebrow at her unusually intense stare, before muttering, "So, uh, excited to learn Spanish? You know, there's some people down on Talon that speak it... I met them during the, uh, Ford's big new year's bash..."

"Hey Dad," Anna suddenly interrupted.

"...Yes?"

"Soooo I can't go to camp with Jeremy and Tommy and Bob, right?" Anna asked, suddenly leaning a cheek into her forehoof and smiling up at him.

Indiana, somehow, knew exactly where this was going as soon as he saw Anna's demeanour change. Still, he asked: "That's right. Why?"

"Wellll, maybe I could visit them while they were there? I mean it's just about, like, thirty minutes fly from here? Probably? I'd be back before dinner and we could still do all my classes and stuff," Anna wiggled slightly, then waggled her eyebrows.

Indiana briefly considered the merit of the proposal. She was in for a lonely summer, considering most of her friends were going to be out of town. Then again, though, the entire point of not sending her off to one of these activities was to limit her exposure to a large amount of other children. Besides, just because she claimed to have been able to navigate perfectly well over the Pacific Ocean didn't mean she was going to be able to find her way from the deep woods back to town easily.

He shook his head, "My answer's still no."

"OH COME ON!" Anna screamed, making Indiana wince in annoyance, "I'm not even going to be doing anything until next week! What am I supposed to do? Just sit around and do nothing all day!?"

"Go flying, read some books, go to the library..." Indiana listed out some obvious answers.

"I could go flying to where all my friends are!" Anna threw her forehooves in the air, making her bowl rattle with her sudden movement.

"I said no, Anna," Indiana said firmly, "Listen to your father."

Anna paused, mouth agape. Her face morphed into one of barely reigned anger as she pouted, cheeks reddening. The feathers on her wings puffed out as she broke eye contact and folded her forelegs. A long pause reigned as Indiana continued to eat, the obstinate Anna continuing to stew in her anger from her place across the table.

"Are you going to eat?" Indiana eventually asked.

Anna responded to that query by growling, jumping off her chair, and running upstairs.

Indiana simply sighed and picked up her bowl and plate, taking it to the kitchen. Once she got over herself and realized how hungry she was, her punishment would be a cold dinner and then an early bedtime.

Anna, however, never came back down from her room. Instead, she sat on her bed, staring intently out her window as the gears in her head turned. She still had one day before Jeremy left for camp, and even if her father decided to ground her for her behaviour, she could still easily fly over in the night and knock on his window. Taking her pencil and her notebook, flipping to the next blank page after the 'the end' of her story, she began to write her epic battleplan...

Step 1: Wake up at midnight

The alarm bell rang, the clock going off 7 whole hours before it was meant to. Anna, initially grumpy at being woken up in the middle of the night, was suddenly filled with energy as she remembered what that night was supposed to be. Silencing her clock as soon as possible, she paused, sitting up in bed as her ears panned for any sign of movement from the bedroom on the other side of the wall that her bed was pushed up against.

Nothing. She grinned, tossing off her blankets.

Step 2: Gather supplies

First, she opened the door of her bedroom, taking another look around and biting her lip. With a rush, hooves padding on the carpet, she made her way down the stairs. Under the kitchen sink, a flashlight with some batteries were stored. She took it, along with a few crackers out of a jar in the pantry. For the road, of course.

Going back to her room and closing the door, she waited once again to see if she had roused her father. A soft snore drifted across an alert ear, assuring her thundering heart as she inched towards her bedroom window. She stuffed the flashlight and batteries into her bag, along with her notepad and pen. Taking a ruler from her school supplies and undoing the latch on her window, she flew outside.

Step 3: Never leave home without the whip!

Over the roof and down to the opposite side of the second floor, she found herself level with the study. There was no light coming from the inside, and the curtains were drawn. Her father liked his privacy when he was in his study and also didn't like it when she showed off her whip training to her friends without his supervision. After the fifth time she'd smashed something, cut somebody up, or lost her whip in a tree, he'd locked it up in his study to only be brought out when it was practice time.

The ruler's thin, wooden frame slipped under the window crack and forced the latch holding it closed. With a thrill, Anna pumped her hoof as the latch unlocked and the window slid open. She carefully parted the curtains, breathing a sigh of relief when the study was, indeed empty. The paranoid part of her had wondered what would've happened if her father had fallen asleep in his study again, which was a paranoia that had not been fully dispelled even after she heard his snores from his bedroom.

Creeping inside, she squinted as the light of the full moon outside illuminated the room in a pale glow. She had no actual idea where he would've kept her whip, and hoped dearly it was not in the small safe that found its place on top of one of the shelves in the corner.

Remembering an incident from a few years ago, she looked down towards the drawers of the desk itself. Opening one, she found his revolver, holster, and bullets again. Shaking her head and opening the other, she beamed as she laid her eyes on the prize - a pair of whips. One of them was her father's spare, the other was hers.

Grabbing it, she shoved the whip drawer closed and hurriedly backed out of the study, dragging the window closed behind her and taking wing back towards her bedroom. There, she made her final preparations by throwing off her pijamas, shrugging on a dirty pair of pants and a shirt and clipping her whip to her belt, just like how she was trained to in practice time. Finally, she fished around amongst the toys and random junk spread across her bedroom floor until she found a brochure.

"Camp Hadley," Anna whispered to herself, opening the brochure to the map of the site. A short walk north from the main camp area was an old, rusty railroad. A spot on it had been circled in red, along with the words '1AM'. A quick check of her alarm clock saw its hands pointing towards 12:13.

Step ~~5~~ 4!: Fly to the camp and meet them by the old railroad!

Hopefully the wind was in her favor and the boys hadn't messed up some part of the plan. Anna took one look around, making sure she'd not forgotten anything. A draft blew in through the window, from an unusually cool summer's night. The cold didn't bother Anna's fur-coated hide, but she hoped her friends had remembered to pack a jacket despite the season.

Putting on her backpack, she closed her window behind herself before taking wing into the night. She'd be back by sunrise, and her father would be none the wiser.

Step 6: Have a great night and be back by morning!

Indiana awoke in a cold sweat, one of his many recurring dreams still fading before his eyes as his heart pounded in his chest. What a strange twist on the same formula that nightmare had been: not only had the entire trench erupted into laughter as he watched that man die of gas, but they hadn't even been laughing at the death. They'd been laughing at Indiana pissing his pants... which he apparently hadn't even been wearing!

Lowering himself back into the pillows, Indiana suddenly winced as he realized the pressure in his bladder was not just an artefact of the dream. Tossing off his sheets, he gave a glance towards the time: 1:13, before shaking his head and walking out towards the bathroom.

One flush later, Indiana went to grab a drink of milk from the refrigerator to calm his nerves before getting back into bed. However, as he passed the door to his study, a noise caught his ear. A flapping of paper, followed by a draft whispering from underneath the door.

His forehead creased as he tried the handle. Still locked, but the draft was strange. He never left the window of his study open, ever. Not since it had been broken into by his daughter.

A familiar gut feeling prompted him to slowly backtrack towards his bedroom. Gathering his automatic from under his pillow and keys from the side of his bed, he cautiously made his way to his study and unlocked it, allowing the barrel of his gun to go through the door first. On the other side, he found an empty room, a window left barely ajar, parted curtains, and papers blown from the desk all over the floor.

With an annoyed grunt, he stepped inside to close and latch the window properly. Switching on the light, he looked around to make sure nothing had been taken, just in case it wasn't just that he had forgotten to close the window after letting in some air the previous day. His eyes immediately landed on the drawer with his revolver in it, which was hanging open... but otherwise undisturbed.

Frowning, his hand went to the other drawer at his desk, opening it to find his spare whip... and nothing else. A flash of realization crossed his face as he turned, walked through the study door, and grasped the handle of Anna's bedroom door. The hinges squeaked softly as he peeked inside, finding nothing but an empty bed.

"Anna?" he said in a level voice, flicking on the light and entering the room properly. Even with the lights on and a full survey of the room, there was no sign of her. Raising a hand to his forehead, Indiana swore, "Goddamnit Anna. Why're you growing up to be so much like me?"

Three boys stalked their way out of the lodge. Escaping via the window and carefully crawling down the roof had been quite a thing, but after jumping down to the ground and exchanging a few whispers, there was no sign of any lights coming on around the camp or any shouts from the counsellors. One of the boys took out a dynamo flashlight, operating the crank and reaching into a pocket, procuring a small bronze compass. With a tilt of his head, he urged his two friends towards the forest on the northern border of the camp, their footsteps as they ran propelled by the fire of rebellion and the fear of being caught.

Through bush and bramble, the boys tramped down a barely-kept trail, following the compass needle constantly northwards. They only stopped occasionally to wind the flashlight back up, the moonlight failing to fully pierce the canopy overhead and light their way. Eventually, they stumbled out of the bushes onto an area that had been paved with a gravel bed and topped with rusty, metal rails and wooden sleepers.

"Anna!" Jeremy shouted into the forest.

"Shhh!" Tommy elbowed the other kid in the ribs.

"Ow! What was that for?" Jeremy complained, rubbing the spot.

"They'll hear us, nitwit!" Tommy argued in a low, raspy whisper.

"We're ages away from the camp at this point," Jeremy rolled his eyes, pulling his light jacket closer to him as the unusually cold night's chill bit at his exposed skin.

Bob was the last to burst from the bush, wheezing and panting as he finally caught up to his two, more agile friends. Reaching down to his pair of expensive, sturdy boots, he began to undo the laces, muttering, "I got a stone or something in here."

"I can't believe we're doing this," Tommy muttered, "If my pa finds out about this, he'll skin me. My behind will be black and blue before I can say Kentucky."

"At least your dad only owns a belt," Jeremy said, winding up his flashlight again as he searched the surrounding trees for any sign of their friend, "Anna's dad owns a real bullwhip, you know? Imagine how much that's gotta hurt whenever she's due for a whooping."

"Surely Dr Jones doesn't use it for that," Bob said, removing his right boot and shaking it out vigorously.

"What else does he use it for, stupid? Swinging from trees like Tarzan of the Jungle?" Tommy said, bopping Bob on the back of the head.

"Hey!" Bob complained, finally removing the pebble from his boot.

The fluttering of wings in the air silenced the boys as Jeremy finally turned his flashlight skywards. A gold-colored rat-bird descended upon them, forehead crinkled and a frown on her muzzle as she landed in front of them, "Hey! I told you to meet me east of here!"

"Nuh-uh! I followed your instructions and just went north from the camp!" Jeremy said, holding out the compass towards her, "See?"

"No, on the brochure map you can clearly see the place I circled had an old water tower near it. That's up over there, you're west of that!" Anna complained, jabbing a hoof down the tracks.

"How was I supposed to know that?" Jeremy shook his head, winding up his flashlight again, "Your dad know anything?"

"No, he was asleep when I left. As long as I'm back by morning, it'll be fine I think," Anna said, leaning to the side to look towards Bob and Tommy, "Hi."

Bob took a hand off of the job of re-doing the laces on his boot to wave. Tommy gave a nod.

"So, what're we doing tonight?" Anna asked, looking back towards Jeremy.

"We heard the coolest story from one of the older campers yesterday, while we were sitting around the fire," Jeremy grinned.

Bob groaned, "Oh come on. I don't wanna hear that. That was scary!"

"Don't be such a baby," Tommy urged, bopping the other boy on the back of his head.

As the two scuffled behind him, Jeremy walked up to Anna and began to explain, "Well you know how Hadley was an old mining town?"

"Yeah?" Anna asked, giving a glance as the two boys wrestled each other, before turning her attention back to Jeremy.

"Well they say that somewhere in the woods, there was an old mineshaft where they dug for ore. There was this rich old guy who owned the mine, named Hadley of course, that was super mean to his workers. Keeping them in debt by hiking up the prices on food and stuff, since he owned all the grocery stores in the town, and giving them long hours and low pay," Jeremy crouched, getting on Anna's eye level before continuing, "One day the miners said they had enough. They had one of them strikes, and before people could come to break it up they stormed the owner's cabin and dragged him off.

"They threw him into the deepest shaft in the mine along with all of his money. Mysteriously though, even though they went ahead and broke up the strike a while after, disaster after disaster kept hitting the mine," Jeremy raised his flashlight, shining it up his chin to shadow his face creepily, "Fires, collapses, floods. They ended up shuttin' it down. When the miners finally left, they told stories about seeing a ghostly man, shambling about the shafts like every bone in his body was shattered. They didn't ever find the Hadley's body either!"

Anna rolled her eyes. She was nine years old now, stories like that didn't scare her like they did when she was eight! Besides, her real nightmares were scarier than random stories, "You trying to scare me or something?"

Jeremy glanced over his shoulder towards the two other boys, who had both paused their fighting. Tommy immediately looked away, pretending as if he hadn't been caught with a wide-eyed expression and trembling lips. Bob, for his part, was frozen, shivering in his boots.

"Well I thought it might be a cool place to check out," Jeremy said, finally lowering his flashlight again.

"Did they tell you where it was?" Anna asked, tilting her head.

"No, 'course not, but it's gotta exist I figure. You could fly and try and see where it is," Jeremy said, looking back and forth down both wings of the railway, "They probably moved ore back and forth on these tracks. The mine would probably be connected somehow."

"Good point," Anna hummed, before her ears suddenly perked. Giving a sly look over towards her friends, she said, "You know, if what they said about the money was real, I bet our folks would be pretty stoked if we found it."

"If it's even real," Tommy muttered, "It's just a story. People fib all the time in stories."

Bob blinked, breaking out of his stupor, "Even if we did find it, we'd have to tell everyone we broke the rules. We'd get our hides tanned!"

"Not if we also get them a bunch of money, stupid!" Tommy said.

"Come on, Anna can you find it?" Jeremy urged.

Anna shrugged, "I'll try. Wait here a sec."

Anna shot off like a rocket into the sky, disappearing against the blanket of stars and the full moon as she gained altitude. Jeremy's flashlight beam searched the sky, failing to find her before he needed to lower the light and recharge it again. For a while, they were left in the night silence, with nothing but the distant rustling of leaves, the hoot of an owl, and their own breathing to break the silence.

"I hope we got the right stuff," Jeremy murmured, "Should we go back to try and get a rope? Won't we need one if we're going down a big mineshaft?"

"You want to go and steal now?" Bob grimaced.

"Nah. The shed with all the supplies would definitely be locked," Tommy shook his head, "You aren't actually thinking of going down into some dank old pit because of a campfire story, right?"

"Well, it might be-" Jeremy started, before suddenly the fluttering of wings filled the air and Anna's form descended back from the night sky.

Anna huffed and puffed a bit, having used more energy than usual to fly at a speed sufficient enough to impress her friends. Pointing down the railway, she said, "I saw it. The railroad splits off a few miles in that direction, leads to a place with a bunch of abandoned buildings and mineshafts."

The three boys looked at each other, then back towards Anna. Jeremy shrugged hesitantly, "Well... we should at least check it out. Beats sitting in the dark and playing truth or dare all night."

Still uncertain, the four friends set out down the tracks. The metal and sleepers, along with the gravel bed beneath them, kept the grass from growing so long underfoot that it impeded walking. The light of the moon, along with the pale beam of Jeremy's dynamo flashlight, lit up their way between the curtains of trees that bordered the old tracks.

"Mom always says not to go on the railroad tracks..." Bob said, breaking the silence of boots and hooves on gravel.

"There ain't gonna be no trains here," Tommy pointed out, kicking a boot against one of the rusted tracks, "You gotta have straight, nice tracks. These ones are all busted up and covered in grass. 'Sides, these are all the wrong gauge for anything else other than those minecart things."

Tommy, being the son of a railroad company foreman, knew more than the other children about the trains. His wisdom was not questioned as they continued their walk. Anna, forced to slow herself to keep pace with the others, sighed as her heart grew slightly heavy. While initially, all she had been afraid with in her plan was her father's anger, now that she was knee-deep in the plan, all she could think about was his disappointment instead.

She shook the bad thoughts out of her head. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Everything would be fine, and she'd be back in bed in the morning like nothing ever happened. If things went exceedingly well, she could maybe even sneak out again another day!

It took a very long time to cross the distance needed to reach the branch-off in the railroad to reach their destination. Anna realized that they wouldn't be able to spend too much time exploring if they wanted to be back in camp by morning, as it was already nearing 2AM. She mentally attempted to stoke the fires of adventure and friendship as they began to walk down the side-track, puffing out her chest as she lead the way.

"Whoah... it really does exist!" Bob said as they turned a corner.

An old wooden fence had been erected over the railroad. A gate, too tall for any normal boy to climb over, blocked the way forward into a clearing in the woods. In said clearing, a creek wove through a few old, musty-looking structures. An old waterwheel had collapsed into the river next to some sort of mill, and several rusty bucket minecarts sat at the end of the railroad they had been walking along. A sign on the gate read "NO ENTRY - HADLEY AND CO. MINING COMPANY".

"Holy crap..." Tommy muttered, pushing past the rest of his friends before looking up at the top of the gate, "Come on, let's jump the fence!"

Anna simply took wing and flew to the top of the fence, watching as her friends clambered their way up between the planks making up the blockade. Bob tried his best, but was grateful when she eventually took out her whip and lowered it for him to grab onto. After being pulled the top, he tumbled over the side and ungracefully fell with a thump and a pained grunt to the ground on the other side.

The other children, however, were too enamoured with the sight before them to care about his pained struggles on the ground. The looming structures, barely illuminated by the moon and the waning beam of Jeremy's flashlight, were dead silent. The wind picked up, whistling through empty yards and rustling the trees. Something howled, making all except Anna freeze in place.

"J-Jeremy, didn't you say this place was haunted?" Bob muttered, standing in a half-squat as his knees quivered slightly.

"Y-Yeah..." Jeremy muttered, only to jump as another light suddenly flashed on behind him.

Anna wielded her own, battery-operated flashlight. The one that her father would generally use to change the fuses when it was dark out. Thankfully, despite its age, it still worked just fine, its wider, stronger beam replacing Jeremy's as the other child decided he didn't want to bother winding up his light again.

"You know, this is cool and all, b-but maybe we should get back to camp," Tommy said, backing up slowly and placing one boot on the bottom plank making up the structure of the gate, "We should make sure we're b-back in time, after all!"

"What, you scared?" Anna asked, "I thought I was the girl here! Chicken!"

"Nobody calls me chicken, spitwad!" Tommy said, jabbing a finger at her.

Anna's giggles filled the air as she instantly spread her wings and flew out of Tommy's range. Swinging her flashlight around, she gestured towards the camp, "Come on! Let's explore. Maybe we can find the shaft they threw that guy into!"

Jeremy took a deep breath, following Anna as she hovered deeper into the old mining compound, "Well, we may as well while we're here..."

The other two boys looked at each other, before hurrying to follow along. The only thing worse than being in a spooky, abandoned mine was being alone in a spooky, abandoned mine. The only thing on their side of the creek was the minecart building, which was only filled with dusty old planks and a few boring rocks. The bridge across the creek had collapsed at some point, so the boys went to wade across it.

Bob screamed as something splashed next to him, causing him to fall over and land in the water with a crash. Tommy helped him up as Jeremy scrambled back up onto the bank, eyes scanning the water for whatever caused the noise. Anna's light went down into the water, where a few dark figures moved with the current downstream.

"It's just some fish," Anna said, comfortably and dryly hovering above the water.

"I thought it was the loch ness monster or something!" Bob said, unsteadily wading across the rest of the creek and flicking water off his hands and arms, "Dangit, I hope this dries before we go back..."

The cabins had mostly been cleared out, leaving only empty bedframes, cobwebs, and critter droppings on the floors. They moved to cabins on higher ground, which seemed to be a bit more homely than the square blockhouses built down near the creek. Some of them were even signed, with one building being labelled as a stockhouse, another as a foreman's cabin, and finally one with a (collapsed) fence labelled 'Hadley'. It was the only building in the area that had glass windows, which initially excited the four...

...until they searched it and found there were no secret passages leading to treasure, locked chests, or anything at all for that matter. It too had been cleared out.

"They probably sold everything off when the mine shut down," Jeremy finally reasoned, "Well, better get back now..."

"We still got a few more hours until sunup," Anna retorted, exiting first out the front door of the Hadley cabin, "Besides, we haven't even checked the mineshafts!"

"Those're dangerous!" Bob said, dusting off his hands and smearing dirt across his wet clothes, "They could collapse or something!"

"We won't go too deep," Anna insisted, flying ahead down the hill.

Past the cabins and structures of the mine was a tall, rocky hill. Several shafts, now overgrown with grass and trees, had been dug into the side of said hill. There were a few shafts that went directly down as well, tighter and more constricted than the full sized, sloped ones in the side. The ground-born kids gave the straight, vertical drops a large berth. Anna, however, stared directly down into them with curiosity. Ladders lead down a few of them, which were just wide enough for a grownup to fit and spacious enough for a child to fit comfortably.

Jeremy finally wound up his flashlight, shining it down one of the horizontal shafts in the side of the hill, "Nothing but rocks and beams down there."

Anna narrowed her eyes, looking down one of the vertical shafts. Wordlessly, she began to descend into it, her wingspan just barely fitting through the constrained space. The boys turned around to survey the area, only to find Anna completely missing.

"Anna?" Tommy shouted out.

The wind howled through the area, the shafts echoing with ghostly moans as the wind funnelled through them. The three boys inched closer together as Jeremy's flashlight swept the treeline for any sign of their feathered friend.

"D-did it get her? The ghost?" Tommy whispered.

"I dunno..." Jeremy said, beginning to inch back towards the buildings and the gate, "W-We should get out of here, A-Anna will catch up I'm sure..."

Suddenly something clutched Bob's leg from the shaft he was a few inches from. He screamed and fell, viciously kicking and yelling his lungs out as he backpedalled. Jeremy's flashlight was levelled at the shaft as the two other boys jumped back, illuminating Anna, who was rubbing her muzzle from the impact of one of Bob's boots.

"I thought you were the- the g-g-g-g-ghost!" Bob said, slowly getting up, panting heavily.

"Don't scare us like that!" Jeremy shouted, clutching his flashlight angrily.

"I wasn't trying to scare you," Anna claimed with a slight giggle, before looking down, "I think I found something down here."

The three boys moved hesitantly towards the edges of the shaft, looking down to where Anna's flashlight was illuminating. Below about twenty meters down, the shaft moved diagonally, blocking out whatever she had been looking at.

"I don't see nothing," Tommy said, "Come on, let's get out of here."

"Come on, I'll help you down," Anna said, patting the ladder that lead down the side of the shaft, "If it breaks, I'll catch you."

"The only thing breaking will be a couple'a bones if we fall down there," Tommy argued.

"What're you, chicken?" Anna goaded, before flying down enough to give the kids space to mount the ladder, "C'mon! You'll see!"

Tommy, fists clenching at the word, hesitated for but a moment before mounting the ladder leading down. It creaked with every step. Anna hovered just below him every step of the way, holding out her forehooves to catch him if he would fall. After a few tense seconds, he reached the bottom of the pit, breathing heavily and looking around, eyes wide.

Jeremy gave one look to Bob, before grimacing and taking the plunge. Handing his flashlight down to Anna, who handed it down to Tommy, he began to scale the ladder. He too made it to the bottom successfully, leaving only Bob at the top. As little as the boy wanted to descend into the mine, the desire he felt to remain alone at the top as more ghostly howls emanated from the mines was even lower.

Anna hovered just below him as he descended the ladder, each rung creaking under his boots. About five rungs from the bottom, a loud crack rang out as the aged wood gave out under his weight. With a shout, he stumbled backwards off the ladder, landing right on top of Anna.

The two tumbled head over heels down the shaft until they reached the bottom, where they slid down the diagonal slope all the way until they crashed to the floor of a horizontal chamber. Anna gasped breathlessly as the weight of her friend pinned her down against the roughly-hewn stone of the shaft floor, squinting as Jeremy's flashlight aimed down at them, the other two descending down the diagonal slope with a bit less chaos.

"You okay?!" Jeremy asked.

Tommy reached out to give Bob a hand, "It's okay. I think Anna cushioned my fall."

"Oww..." Anna muttered, finally being allowed to get up as her overweight friend was finally lifted back onto his feet.

"Great. What're the chances now that fatso gets back up the ladder?" Tommy asked, placing his hands on his hips.

"Hey! Don't call him that, pinhead!" Jeremy spat, before looking back at Anna, "What was so important that we had to come down into this dusty old place, anyway?"

Wordlessly, Anna reached for her flashlight, which had fallen and gotten trapped under her. It was fortunately still fully functional. Levelling it down the passage, she illuminated an area at the end of the tunnel, where it met in a T-junction. At first, it seemed like a bundle of old, ragged cloth. Nothing they hadn't seen while searching the cabins up on the surface.

However, as they approached it, mouths slowly gaped and eyes widened as the light more closely illuminated it. Bones ran under the moldy, rotten clothes that were once some sort of expensive suit. Hundreds of paper bills surrounded the skeleton, covered in dust and cobwebs. Above it was the longest, deepest shaft they had seen so far, capped off with a wooden roof.

The four friends looked at each other, faces illuminated by the backlight of their two flashlights. In unison, they murmured, "Mr Hadley..."

Author's Note

Time for Daring Do's version of the Last Crusade flashback scene!

Also yes, Indiana Jones canonically finds the hollow earth.