Steve Shell

The approach in question often involved a visit from a special representative of the Barrow Mining Company, someone with the requisite skills to clarify for the more intransigent residents why accepting the Barrow's offer was, in fact, in the best interest of them, their families, and quite possibly everyone they knew.

If the landowners proved more resistant than usual, a member of the Barrow family might need to pay a personal cost.

Now, for decades, this duty fell to EP's younger son, Benuel.

A visit from a dead man, making quite the impression on most folks who suddenly found they might be willing to reconsider the bearer's generous offer after all.

Over the years, however, Benuel started to be...

more of a problem becoming less predictable harder to control he he might be sent to a tiny coal camp as a misbegotten holler in west virginia tasked with ridden the barrows of a meddlesome tax assessor and end up laying waste to the entire town it's a common thing with haints who have overstayed their welcome on this mortal plane you see clinging to a life that has long since ceased to be theirs to claim their behavior becomes more erratic

and dangerous.

And while E.B.

had no concern for the collateral damage his younger boy might do to the communities where he was sent, Benuel's disobedience was becoming a problem.

Replacing a town's entire labor force was costly and inefficient.

Benyuel was fast becoming a liability in the field, and Conrad had the whole of the Barrow clan's business interests to attend to on his father's behalf, and thus E.P.

turned his eye to the concept of producing another heir.

The process of expanding the Barrow family was lengthy and was delicate work.

See, Conrad and Benuel were not AP's only progeny, no.

They were simply his only children fit to represent the public face of Barrow Mining Company, the only ones who could pass relatively unnoticed amongst its human workforce.

Yet something had to be done, and so E.P.

instructed his sons to add more links to the great iron chain that suspended the black box that had been prepared for him.

And they lowered him even further into the earth, deep beneath the grand home office he had constructed.

Conrad barred the door that led to the building so that none might disturb him and dismissed the staff for several months so none could carry the tales of the sounds that echoed up from beneath the family's headquarters.

The foundations trembled.