by Bea Bledsoe
Across the small ravine, a makeshift wooden bridge had remained. Leigh put her foot onto the wooden plank and tested it against her weight. The board wobbled but stayed firm. She bounced lightly once more before scampering across it. Then she gestured to Henry, who mouthed “What am I doing?” before darting his way over the rapids. Just beyond the bridge, dilapidated wooden steps curved to the right.
“Up here.” Leigh went first up the stairs, her legs remembering this particular ache from her childhood, of the weight of cornmeal bags slung across her back. The White Devil Mill appeared ahead, its peak looming against the sky. The mill was falling apart, and Leigh was sad to see that the millwheel had succumbed to the pull of the river, rocking back and forth in the foam. The rest of the mill - essentially a narrow house on stilts above the river – had also fallen into disrepair; rotted boards barely held together as weeds pushed through them. The empty windows stared at Leigh with an unnerving hollowness. Leigh had a sudden flash of Carl Bunter’s empty eye sockets staring up at her and shivered. She stepped toward the building, the hair on the back of her neck raising. Something felt wrong about this place. The empty valley below was eerie, devastating, but this felt different. The White Devil Mill felt dangerous; like something was watching them. Everything in her wanted to run.
“Hello?” Leigh called, but only the roar of the river answered her. A rock whistled by her ear from behind as Henry threw a fist-sized rock against the door of the mill, which slammed open upon impact. No one emerged, but a chipmunk skittered out into the light before retreating to the woods. Leigh swallowed as she walked toward the door.
“You don’t have to come in with me. I just need to look around.” Henry snorted, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could feel something was off, too.
“I can’t decide which I would hate more, staying out here alone or going in there, so I think I’ll err on the side of company.”
Leigh pushed open the door with her foot. “What a gentleman you are, made of pure Harvard stock.”
“That’s what they say.” Henry muttered. “Or what they did say, before my body was putrefied and eaten by whatever lives in this hole.” They stepped inside. The interior of the mill was one large vaulted room with several small levels. The dark wooden floors were covered with a fine dust and peppered with a trail of small footprints. Henry flashed on the flashlight.
Beyond the door, a platform holding two huge wooden barrels rose up before them. Pipes from the ceiling shunted down into the long-abandoned grain bins. On the far side of the room, a giant wooden spool sat flush against a wall painted with the symbol for the mill: a white devil dancing over grains of wheat with a naughty smile. The room looked exactly has Leigh remembered it. She took the flashlight from Henry and watched the light bounce against shelves and empty jars. The only sound was the slow creaking of the wheel outside. Leigh turned to shine it on the rear wall, and jumped back when words leapt out at her.
“Henry! What is that?” She stepped forward, hands shaking as she raised the flashlight. The wall was smeared with cornmeal dust and in the dust was a single dragging handprint. Underneath it was a wall covered with words. Leigh felt her heart began to pound as adrenaline released in her veins. She moved closer, her hands brushing off the dust. They weren’t just words. They were names. A long list of them, written angrily in white chalk. The list was long and messy, changing form as it went from floor to ceiling, the disjointed names all running together. Leigh knew the names before she even started reading them. They weren’t in alphabetical order, but rather some chaotic form.
Kristin Kassel - Cecil Francis Abbcock -Lois Wayne - Beattie Majorie- William Zenith- Jessilyn McGuiness - James Dyer
Her fingers trailed downward until they came to rest on the two names she knew so well: Darlene and Skip Montgomery, separated by about sixty names. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth and pressed the other against the words, struggling to keep it together as her fingers traced her mother’s name. Had they been here? What did this mean? She could feel herself sliding, as though tectonic plates were shifting underneath her feet as she struggled to grab onto what was left of her life. She knew this place. What had happened here?
“Leigh.” Henry whispered gently. She didn’t want to look back at him, didn’t want him to see her.
“What?” She snapped sharply, the word like a shard of glass in her throat.
“Look.” He crouched down, aiming the flashlight at the waving line of names. Her breath caught in her throat.
Leigh Mae Montgomery, it said, written in the same scrawl, except unlike the rest of the names, it had a messy circle drawn around it. The last name on the list. Leigh felt like she was falling, and then she was falling as she tripped over an overturned wooden pail on the floor. It shot away from her as Henry reached out to steady her. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay.”
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Yeah. I’m okay.” She wasn’t, but she raised her phone and took a picture of the names, the flash illuminating something huge in the corner. She turned and walked toward an overturned grain barrel that faced the wall, enormous enough to walk into. With a deep breath, she squeezed herself between the wall and the opening.
Someone had been living in here. There was a small fire pit with black coals and a hole cut out of the top of the barrel to let the smoke out. At the end of the barrel was a narrow cot, a ratty sleeping bag, and a handful of blankets. Underneath the cot sat a dozen frayed paperback books and a handful of clothes. Empty cans of food were scattered around the barrel: bean and soup cans, wrappers from noodle packets. Leigh slowly walked toward the cot, the world spinning around her. She knelt next to it and raised her flashlight, not breathing as a chill shot through her. These were her books: she recognized the worn copies of The Boxcar Children, Hatchet, Alice in Wonderland, and Anne of Green Gables. She knew those books like she knew herself. Why were they here?
“Anything?” Henry’s voice cracked through her numbness.
“Someone has been living here.” Leigh straightened up, standing in front of the books that had her name written inside the covers.
“Looks like it.” Henry said. “And I found this.” He held up a bright green sweater. It was tattered, with a snowflake pattern at the breast. There was something oddly familiar about it, like she had seen it before. Leigh reached for it, but just as her fingers brushed the fabric, a faint buzzing sound outside the mill made her jump. She grabbed Henry’s arm instead, feeling his pulse pounding.
“What the hell is that?” he asked. The faintly electronic sound was so foreign out here in the wild. He shook his head. “Is that a car?”
“No. It can’t be.” She answered. “Cars can’t get up here. ATVs either.” Their eyes met and suddenly they were both running for the door, the buzzing sound growing louder as they exploded into the welcome light.
11
Outside White Devil Mill, a deep blue sky hovered over the dark silhouette of the pines. Leigh skittered to a stop as Henry ran a few feet ahead of her. He whipped around, scanning the forest for any sign of movement, his feet crashing loudly through the foliage.
“Wait! Quiet!” She held a finger up to her lips and he froze. For a few seconds there was only the roar of the river and the whisper of the trees as they waited, but then there it was again, the buzzing, coming from their left. Leigh turned, she was quick; but Henry was much faster. He shot past her, sprinting after the sound as he disappeared into the trees. “Henry!” Leigh screamed after him, but it was like the forest had swallowed him. He was an athlete, after all, and the only thing Leigh was at Harvard was a liar. A slow liar, apparently. Branches whipped past her face as she tore through the trees, yelling his name. “Henry!”
“Here!”
She barely had time to think what she was doing before she exploded into a clearing of Indian paintbrush, the red wildflowers clustered in flaming bunches. She trampled them underfoot as she ran toward Henry, who was kneeling on the ground. Her heart stopped for a
second. “What happened? Henry, oh my God, are you okay?” Relief washed over her when she saw that he was fine; he was just searching frantically for something in the underbrush of the trees. “What are you looking for? Henry talk to me-” She stopped midsentence as the buzzing returned, and this time it was right above her head. Leigh froze and slowly looked up.
The sleek white body, like something out of an alien movie, was not what she expected to see here in the wilds of Blackriver; but upon seeing it, she realized why the sound had sounded familiar. She had heard it many times, in the Yard at school, where engineering students played with their endless stream of toys.
It was a drone.
She watched as the machine, roughly the size of a large shoebox, lowered itself in front of her. It was held aloft by four rotating black blades, thrumming with a sound reminiscent of a bee’s wings. Underneath its cylinder body, a giant black lens rotated back and forth. A trickle of fear made its way up her spine. Leigh had always had a dislike of drones; there was something about that autonomous blank eye that implied not just seeing but watching. Anger unleashed within her as she watched it rise above her.
“Where is everyone?” She hissed at it. “Where are my parents?”
The drone stared silently back, its glass gaze cruel and inhuman. It had begun rising away from her when all of a sudden there was a yell, followed by a loud crash. Without warning, thick pine needles were showering all around her, her cheeks pecked roughly with small branches. What the hell? Leigh covered her head with her hands as the branches fell around her, the smell of sap overwhelming. When she looked up, Henry was standing proudly in front of her, his hands raised in the air triumphantly.
“YES! YES!” He pumped his fists in ridiculous fashion, not noticing that she was covered in pine needles. “Come here, you little alien!” Utterly confused, Leigh looked behind her. On the ground in front of her a huge pine branch lay on its side, and tangled in its needles lay the drone, whirring sadly where Henry had plunged the branch right through one of its rotors. Moving past Leigh, Henry stepped forward and plucked up the drone, careful not to tangle his fingers in the whirring blades. The drone made a whining sound as he freed it from the pine needles. He stared straight into the camera and then, without a word, pulled open the battery pack on the back and yanked out a large silver square. The drone went dead. Then he shrugged at Leigh. “My roommates have one. You know, for parties.”
She looked at him for a moment before carefully taking the drone from him. She flipped it over, surprised at its heavy weight. Yes. Yes. Yes. On its smooth white underside, a square black sticker offered up its owner: Open Skies Drone Photography and Video. Cody, Wyoming.
Her lips curled in a smile. Henry leaned over her.
“There are drones for practically everything, but this is a photography drone; note the huge lens. And I’m thinking if this thing just flies around taking pictures all day….” Henry began. Leigh interrupted him in her excitement.
“Then we need to find its owner!” She held it up. “The basin has always been a popular area for photography because of the river, but you would have to know the area pretty well to know where the mill is.”
Henry glanced back at the where they had come from. “Yeah. It’s not exactly on the beaten path.”
Leigh stared straight at the drone uncomfortably. “They didn’t just know where the mill was.” She paused. “They knew where we were.” She closed her eyes for a minute. “Maybe whoever is controlling this drone saw what happened here, saw what happened to the town.”
Henry shook his head. “Possibly, but it doesn’t record it on the drone. A fancy one like this sends its images to a satellite, and then the satellite sends them back to the company. The hard drive isn’t here, it’s probably at their office in Cody.”
That’s when Leigh felt it, a glimmer of hope, like a tiny spark in a sea of ash.
“Then we need to go to Cody. Today.” Leigh ran her hands over its robotic body of the drone. “We can take Napoleon back into town…” She stopped midsentence as the words felt hollow. There was no town. “I need to look the owner of this drone in the face.”
Ten minutes later, they were riding down the slope on Napoleon. Leigh tried not to focus on Henry’s one arm around her waist; the other was holding the drone. After a long period of silence, his strained voice crept forward.
“My house brothers use the drones to spy on sorority pool parties.” He said quietly. “When I first saw them doing it, I thought it was funny. Now I think it’s kind of disgusting.”
“It’s actually really disgusting.” Replied Leigh. “Why didn’t you speak up?”
Henry was silent for a moment. “I don’t know.” His voice was honest. Leigh reached out and squeezed his hand.
“You should next time. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I know that’s not who you are.” There was a moment of silence and she felt him release a long breath.
“Are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure you picked me out at that bar because I’m just like them.”
Leigh weighed that for a second. It was true, but she had been wrong. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that both Henry and she were playing a game of identities at school. He, playing the witty jock, and she, playing…well, literally someone else.
They passed by the trail to the White Devil Mill. Leigh gave Napoleon a kick; she wanted to shake off the mill like a rotting coat. There was something terrible about it.
“I mean, obviously I picked you at the bar for your incredible javelin skills.” She joked, guiding the horse back toward the clearing.
Henry flexed his arm muscles in response and Leigh enjoyed it a little more than she would have liked.
“Well, I didn’t just row in high school. I was in track and also the relief pitcher for my high school baseball team, the Beacons.”
Curiosity about his past got the better of her as they passed through a clearing filled with craggy rocks. Leigh had a flash of memory and saw herself leaping off of them, one of her mother’s dresses tied like a cape around her neck.
“So…tell me about your parents.” She asked gently. Behind her, she felt Henry straighten before giving a half-hearted laugh.
“What do you mean, ‘tell me about your parents’? I mean, they are nice people. Normal.”
Leigh kept her voice steady.
“I’m just wondering why you were so keen to hop on that plane with me at the airport.”
“Because I wanted my two thousand dollars back.” He said emotionlessly.
“Yes, but you could have gotten that later. I’m pretty good at reading people, Henry, and it seems to me that this laissez-faire attitude is just as much as an act as the one I put on at the bar.” She stopped the horse and turned around to face him. Henry’s eyes had darkened, and he was gripping the end of the drone so hard that his knuckles were white. She continued to speak.
“I’m just saying, stable people don’t normally climb aboard planes with girls they don’t know.”
He stared at her for a long moment before turning away. “I know you, Leigh.”
His words were sure, and she felt an unfamiliar warmth spreading out from her heart. She faced forward again. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out sooner or later.”
“Are you always so sure of yourself?” Henry asked softly. She closed her eyes, remembering her first weeks at Harvard, trying rapidly to reinvent herself to fit in after that boy had made fun of her at the bar.
“No.” She answered truthfully. “Not at all.” She let out a long breath and was about to tell him about it when she saw a flash of something blue in the woods. Leigh sat forward. There was something foreign in the trees.
A figure.
Her breath caught as she blinked, making sure she was seeing clearly, but the vision remained. There was a person in a pale blue dress was standing underneath the trees about a half mile from where they stood, staring at them.
Then, the uninvited thought: You don’t belong here, Leigh. She grasped Napoleon’s mane hard underneath her hands. Henry, oblivious, started talking again.
“So, the thing about my parents...”
“Be quiet.” Leigh snapped, heart thundering in her chest. “Someone’s watching us.” When Leigh looked back again, the figure had moved out of sight. What exactly was she seeing? She carefully climbed up onto her knees on the horse’s back. “Be still, boy.” She murmured, raising her hand up to the level of her eyes and squinting in the filtered forest light. She waited a second, and there it was again; a pale blue shadow moving among the branches. The shape of a person. The shape of a girl. “There!” She cried.
Henry sat forward, following her pointed finger. “I don’t see anything, or maybe…” He said, but at his voice, the figure turned and plunged into the trees, vanishing into the thickest parts of the forest.
“Dammit!” Screamed Leigh and without letting herself think it over, she turned and shoved Henry off the back of her horse. He slid off Napoleon’s backside and landed hard on his feet. “Sorry!” Leigh apologized, right before she drove her heels swiftly into the horse’s side. Napoleon shot forward, and Leigh gripped with her knees to hold on as he galloped wildly down the hill, rocks skittering under his hooves. Staying on without a saddle was difficult already, but staying on while Napoleon plunged downhill at a gallop was almost impossible. Leigh squeezed with her knees so hard that her muscles screamed in agony until they reached the bottom of the hill. Then she sat up straight, her eyes combing the woods; she knew she had seen something, knew she had seen someone. Her eyes narrowed in on a narrow patch of trees and rocks to the right. Nothing; and then…there it was, the blue dress fluttering in the smallest breath of wind. The headache was threatening to return, and Leigh fought it with every inch of her.
“Yah!” She kicked Napoleon again, breaking him into a long trot. From here Leigh could mark a handful of trails that led back down to Blackriver. On the left, she passed a small waterfall that she knew trickled down into Marrow Pond, and at the base of the waterfall was the figure in the dress. She was shrouded by a branch overhead. When she saw Leigh, they darted sideways around the edge of the waterfall and up a steep embankment.