Hellfire

9

Jeff Bailey and Brett Kilpatrick presented an odd contrast as they walked along River Road. Though they were distant cousins, Jeff was blond and gangling, while Brett’s thatch of dark curly hair gave the same clear evidence of Celtic descent as did his compact body. They were approaching the point at which River Road crossed the railroad tracks, where they would turn right, cross the trestle over the river, and head north toward their homes near the country club. It was the long way around from Hilltop, but neither of them had felt like taking the shortcut directly down the hillside to the river.

“How come she was even there?” Jeff asked, casually kicking a battered beer can that lay by the road. It arced into the air, then dropped back into the drainage ditch. “Tracy hates her.”

“She lives there,” Brett replied. “Tracy tried to switch the party, but her stepmother found out. She’s sure a creep, isn’t she?”

“She’s a local — they’re all like that.” Jeff watched idly while Brett took careful aim on the beer can, then snickered when it rolled only a few feet ahead. “And you think you’re going to make the soccer team next year?” At St. Francis Academy, where both of them spent nine months of each year, the soccer team was the team to be on.

Brett ignored the gibe. “Can you believe the dress she was wearing?” he asked, bringing the subject back to Beth Rogers. “It looked even uglier on her than it did on your sister. And when Tracy started telling that story about the ghost, and she believed her, I thought I was gonna piss my pants.”

Jeff skidded down the shoulder into the ditch, and kicked the can neatly back up onto the road. Then, as they came to the railroad tracks, he glanced across the street, his eyes falling on the scaffold-covered walls of the mill.

“What about the ghost she claimed lives in there?” he asked.

“Give me a break,” Brett groaned. “She was just trying to look smart. Or she’s so dumb she really believes there’s something in there.”

Jeff eyed his friend, a mischievous grin playing around the corners of his mouth. “Want to go in and take a look?” he challenged.

Brett hesitated. All his life he’d heard stories about the mill, and he knew as well as everyone else in Westover that Mr. Sturgess’s older brother had gotten killed in the building years earlier.

And according to Brett’s father, no one had ever found out exactly what had happened to Con Sturgess. It was supposed to have been an accident, but everyone knew that old man Sturgess had always claimed it wasn’t.

Then he saw Jeff watching him, a smirk on his face. Ignoring the knot of fear in his gut, he nodded. “Why not?” he asked, aiming one last kick at the battered can and missing completely. He followed Jeff down the tracks toward the back of the mill. “How do we get in?”

Jeff surveyed the building, then shrugged. “It’s got to be a cinch. I bet they aren’t even keeping it locked up.”

Brett’s eyes followed Jeff’s, but he didn’t feel nearly as confident as Jeff sounded. “What if someone catches us?”

“So what? All we’re going to do is look around. What’s the big deal? Besides, they’re working on it, right?”

Brett nodded.

“So everybody pokes around buildings that are being restored. If anybody catches us, we’ll just tell them we wanted to see what was going on. Come on.”

They followed a spur from the main line that led to the long-abandoned loading dock at the rear of the mill, skirted around a pile of trash that had accumulated against the dock itself, then scrambled up to try the freight door. It was securely locked, as was the door to what had once been the dispatcher’s office. After trying two more doors, they jumped off the dock, rounded the corner of the building, and started walking along a newly cleared path that paralleled the side of the building. Halfway to Prospect Street they came to the metal door that had always before been carefully locked.

Today the lock was open, hanging loosely from the hasp.

“See?” Jeff asked. “What’d I tell you? It’s not even locked up. We can just walk in.” He reached out and grasped the knob, then twisted it.

It turned easily.

“H-how come it’s not locked?” Brett asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. “S’pose someone’s inside?”

Jeff’s eyes raked him scornfully. “It’s not locked because the workmen were too stupid to lock it,” he said. He pushed the door open, and stepped through, but Brett still hung back. “You coming, or not?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Brett suggested. He glanced to the west, where the sun was sinking toward the horizon. “Isn’t it pretty dark in there?”

“You can see fine.” Jeff sneered. “Either come in, or stay out, but I’m gonna look around.”

Struggling against his fear, Brett stepped through the door and closed it behind him. For a moment the deep shadows blinded him, but then his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the interior, and he looked around.

Somehow, he had expected it to be empty.

But it wasn’t.

Already, the floor had been subdivided by the skeletal shapes of newly constructed framework, and in the roof, several holes had been cut for skylights. Now, in the late afternoon, little light came through the holes, and it seemed to Brett that all they did was make the place even spookier than it already was.

And the framework, he realized, was almost like a maze. Almost anywhere, there could be someone hiding.

In the silence, Brett could hear the pounding of his own heart.

“Hey!”

The sudden sound jabbed Brett like a needle, and he felt his whole body twitch with a sudden release of tension. Then he realized the sound had come from Jeff. “Jeez!” he whispered loudly. “What did you do that for?”

Jeff gazed at his friend with disgust. “Because,” he explained, “if anybody had answered, we could have said we were looking for someone, and then left. No one ever thinks you’re sneaking in somewhere if you make a lot of noise.” He called out once more: “Anybody here?” A pair of pigeons, frightened by the sudden disturbance, burst from their nests in a flapping of wings.

When silence had fallen once more, Jeff raised his hand, pointing toward the rear wall. “If there’s anything in here, I bet it’s back there,” he said.

Brett gazed into the gathering gloom, and saw the top of the stairs that led down into the basement below. It was in the basement, his father had told him, that Con Sturgess’s body had been found. Brett’s heart pounded harder, and he felt a cold sweat breaking out on his back. “I bet there’s nothing there at all,” he said, though his voice quavered slightly in spite of his efforts to keep it steady. Jeff, catching the slip, grinned.

“Scared?”

“Hell, no,” Brett lied. “What’s to be scared of?”

“Ghoooosts,” Jeff intoned, then snickered. “Come on.”

They started toward the back of the building, with Brett following reluctantly. They had gone only a few yards when Brett felt his skin crawl.

He had the eerie feeling of unseen eyes watching him.

He tried to ignore it, keeping his eyes on Jeff’s back, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Instead, it got worse.

There was something else in the mill — he was sure of it. But he couldn’t be sure where it was. It seemed to be all around him, following him. Suddenly he could stand it no longer, and whirled around to face whatever was stalking him.

Nothing.

His eyes scanned the tangle of structural supports, searching for a movement, but there was nothing there. Nothing, at least, that he could see.

And then, once again, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his spine began to tingle.

There was a sudden feeling of movement behind him. His stomach lurched. Something touched his shoulder.

Screaming, he jerked free, and whirled once more.

Jeff was staring at him, laughing. “Gotcha!”

“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me!”

Jeff regarded him with knowing eyes. “You were already scared, weren’t you?”

“I … I thought I heard something,” Brett lied again.

“Well, you didn’t, ’cause there’s nothing here,” Jeff replied. “Let’s go see what’s downstairs.”

Without waiting for Brett to reply, Jeff headed once more for the staircase. Brett, unwilling to stay where he was, or admit by leaving that he was frightened, followed close behind. But when Jeff started down the stairs, Brett stopped, peering fearfully into the blackness below. “I’m not going down there.”

“Chicken,” Jeff taunted.

This time, Brett ignored the taunt. “It’s dark down there, and you can’t see anything.”

“I can see all the way to the bottom of the stairs, and I’m going down whether you come or not.”

Brett said nothing, only shrugged. He was staying where he was.

Jeff started down the stairs, but with each step he took, a little more of his confidence slipped away.

He began to wonder what might actually be waiting in the darkness below.

According to Beth Rogers, there was a ghost here.

But that was ridiculous. He didn’t believe in ghosts.

He tried to remember how funny the ghost story had been a couple of hours ago, when they’d all been lying around on the floor of Tracy’s library.

But it didn’t seem so funny now, not with the dank gloom of the old building gathering around him.

In fact, now that he thought about it, the darkness itself was almost like something alive, reaching out for him.

He stopped near the bottom of the stairs, and tried to shake the feeling off.

He wasn’t scared of the dark. He’d never been scared of the dark, at least not since he was a baby.

But now, here, he found that the dank blackness below was something very much to be afraid of.

Here, he didn’t know what the darkness concealed. It wasn’t at all like being in the dark at home, where you knew everything that was in the room around you, and could identify every sound you heard.

Here, the darkness seemed to go on forever, and the sounds — the little rustling sounds he was beginning to hear now — could be anything at all.

Mice. They could be mice, or even rats.

Or something else.

Something you couldn’t touch, but that could touch you.

He wanted to go back now, but it was too late. Brett was waiting above, and he’d laughed at Brett. If he came back up now, and admitted he’d been afraid to go any farther, Brett would never let him forget it.

Holding his breath, he took another step.

He listened to the noises, and began to imagine that they were voices.

Voices, whispering so quietly he could barely hear them.

He took another step, which brought him to the basement floor. Bracing himself, he edged into the horrible blackness around him.

And then, out of the darkness, he sensed something coming for him.

He opened his mouth, but fear choked his throat and no sound came out. From behind him, he felt himself being pushed. He staggered in the darkness, and reached out to find something to brace himself with.

There was nothing.

Now, as he realized what was happening to him, his fear released him, and a scream erupted from his throat — cut off a moment later as he pitched forward and fell.

In a flash, he remembered the story he’d heard about how Tracy’s uncle had died, long before he had even been born. It’s happening again, he thought. Just like it happened before.

In an instant that seemed to go on forever, something hard and sharp pressed against his chest, so cold it seemed to burn as it punctured his shirt, then his skin.

His own weight as he fell thrust the object into his heart, and he heard himself gasp, felt the final racking stab of pain, then heard his own blood bubbling into his lungs.

As he died, a draft of cool air blew around him, and then he smelled a familiar odor.

Smoke.

To Jeff Bailey, death smelled like smoke.…

Brett heard the soft thump of something falling, then silence closed around him once more. “Jeff?”

There was no answer. He called out again, louder, sure that his friend was trying to scare him as he had before. “Come on, Jeff. Quit fooling around.”

Still there was no answer, and Brett took a tentative step down the stairs.

And then, a chill passing through him, he was suddenly certain that Jeff was not fooling around. Turning, he dashed toward the door they had come through twenty minutes earlier, hurled it open, and charged out into the gathering dusk.

“Help!” he yelled. “Somebody help me!” In panic, he began running toward the street in front of the mill.

“All right, son,” Sergeant Peter Cosgrove said a few minutes later. “Just try to calm down, and tell me where your friend is.”

“D-down there,” Brett quavered. He pointed down the stairs, now brightly lit by the worklights that were strung throughout the building. “Something happened to him. I … I don’t know what.”

Cosgrove’s partner, Barney Jeffers, trotted down the stairs, a flashlight in his hand. A moment later, as he flashed his light around the darkness of the basement, they heard him swear. At the same moment, brakes squealed outside, then an ambulance crew with a stretcher hurried through the door.

“Over here,” Cosgrove called. He turned his attention back to Brett. “You stay right here, son. I’m gonna find a light for the basement. Okay?”

Brett nodded mutely, his eyes fixed on the staircase. What seemed like an eternity later, the lights in the basement suddenly flashed on, and he could see Jeff lying on the basement floor. Blood, mixed with dirt, soaked his shirt, and the stillness of death lay over him like a shroud. Brett’s stomach heaved, and he turned away.

“What do you think?” Cosgrove asked Jeffers half an hour later. The ambulance was gone, and they were standing at the top of the stairs while a crew worked below, photographing the site and searching for evidence. Cosgrove was ninety-percent certain they wouldn’t find anything.

“Same as you,” Jeffers replied. “I think the Kilpatrick kid was telling the truth. Looks to me like the boy went down to look around, couldn’t see anything, and tripped. If he’d been anywhere else, he might have skinned his knee. As it was, he landed on that pick.”

“What the hell was it doing lying there?” Cosgrove muttered angrily.

“You want to charge someone with criminal negligence?” Jeffers inquired.

“I’d love to,” Cosgrove replied, his voice tight. “But who do you charge? Might just as well charge the Bailey boy. If he hadn’t been trespassing—”

“It was an accident,” Jeffers interrupted. “Sometimes things happen, Pete. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Cosgrove sighed, letting the tension drain from his body. “I know,” he agreed. “But it’s weird, too, you know?”

“Weird?” Jeffers echoed.

Cosgrove looked around, his eyes surveying the interior of the mill. “Yeah,” he said. “Weird. All my life, I’ve heard stories about this place, and how dangerous it is. Stupid stories. So now they’re fixing it up, and what happens? They aren’t even done, and we already got someone dead. That’s what I call weird.”

Jeffers looked at his partner curiously. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”

Cosgrove shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “You didn’t grow up here, like I did. Something like this happened once before. Must have been forty-odd years ago. That time it was Phillip Sturgess’s brother. Conrad Junior.”

Barney Jeffers frowned. “You mean he died? Here in the mill?”

“Not just in the mill, Barney,” Cosgrove said darkly. “Right here. At the bottom of the stairs.”

Jeffers uttered a low whistle. “Jesus. What happened?”

“That’s the thing,” Cosgrove went on. “No one ever found out. No one ever knew if it was an accident, or murder, or what. But it was just like this one.” He fell silent for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Weird,” he muttered. “It’s just — well, it’s weird, that’s all.”

Then, his face grim, he started toward the patrol car, bracing himself for what was ahead. He was about to call Jeff Bailey’s parents to tell them their son had died in the mill, a pickax through his heart.