by Angie Fox
The mill sat on the edge of a cold, rushing creek. It was tall, at least three stories high. Pale moss clung to the rough-cut stones that made up the exterior walls. There were six windows on the side facing us, none of them still glazed. Thick, gnarled bundles of Virginia creeper wound in and around the broken glass like spiderwebs.
“Any sign of ghosts?” I asked, picking my way over the uneven ground.
“Yeah, they like to warn me before they pop up,” Frankie said, gliding next to me.
I stopped short of the place. “I only hope the floor will hold me.”
The upper window in the middle had a massive branch protruding from it, too thick to be an apple tree—it was most likely an oak, judging from the trunk I could see poking from the roof. The apple trees weren’t out of the picture, though, growing so close to the building they almost seemed to be swarming it.
“Let’s just get it over with,” Frankie said.
“There,” I said, pointing to a dark patch at the base of the wall. “That looks like a cellar entrance.” And our best option. The front staircase had mostly collapsed, but the cellar stairs appeared to be constructed from the same stones that lined the creeks in the area.
And as I spoke, a guttural, droning growl filtered up through the cellar door, echoing off the stone.
“Have I told you how much I love going into haunted basements with you?” Frankie asked.
“Sometimes it works out,” I reminded him.
He closed his eyes. “Why do I get myself into these things?”
The wooden cellar doors had collapsed inward, exposing a set of stone steps leading down into the darkness.
“Because we are needed,” I said as I spied the shadow of a man in the first-floor window. A ghost.
Perhaps the very ghost who didn’t want us on his property.
There was no going back now. And no telling what he’d do when he realized we weren’t leaving.
“Merry Christmas to me,” I whispered as I drew the flashlight out of my purse and descended into the ruined, collapsing cider mill.
7
I reached out to steady myself on the cold stone foundation as I worked my way down the stairs. One, two, three…
Dry leaves crunched under my feet.
I could do this.
A wispy cobweb clung to my scarf. With a shudder, I brushed it off.
The air smelled of mildew and earth and, faintly, of apples. Despite the leaves, the stone steps were slick with condensation. The walls as well. It was a relief to finally get to the bottom, on step thirteen.
“Molly is due at my place in an hour,” Frankie said from a spot near my left shoulder.
We wouldn’t leave his lady waiting. “We’ll make it,” I assured him.
The beam of my flashlight caught long wooden boards piled against the wall closest to us. “Those must be the pieces of the waterwheel Donna mentioned.” My nose wrinkled at the smell of rotting wood.
Frankie let out a low whistle. “Forget about the cider, in a place like this they could’ve set up an applejack still, maybe two or three. Disguise them well enough and even the sharpest cop couldn’t have nailed you without tasting it first.”
“Your mind is a wonder,” I said, turning my light in a slow semicircle in front of us.
“I really am kind of bummed prohibition ended,” he admitted. “I now lack an outlet for my creativity.”
Unfortunately for me, he’d found plenty. Like the racetrack he’d tried to start in my backyard this past summer. “I don’t see any little pigs.”
Perhaps it had been unwise to let Donna leave so quickly.
“Here, piggy, piggy, piggy,” I murmured. “Heeeere, mama sow,” I added. It would probably be an easier rescue if they were bunnies or birds, or even skunks. But I didn’t want to discriminate. “It’ll be fine,” I promised myself as my light scanned the nooks and crannies.
The cellar walls were all the same dark, hard granite that lined the creek beds in town. It made sense. The mill had been built on a creek able to power the waterwheel. All the same, the rock didn’t reflect light well. I had to squint to see across the twenty or so feet of cellar floor in front of us.
“I think there’s another staircase across the way,” I said. There was natural light over in that direction as well, filtering down through a big hole in the ceiling caused by the large, thick tree growing up out of the floor of the basement. This was the bottom of the oak tree, then.
“I think there’s someone watching us,” Frankie said under his breath.
“Ghostly?” I froze. Certainly not human. No one in their right mind would be down here this time of night—or at all. Well, except for me.
The beam of my light cut across the darkness, revealing wet stone and broken casks. And then I heard it. A deep, rhythmic breathing coming from the corner near the stairs.
“There,” I said, directing my light toward the crumbling steps. “I’ll bet it’s the animals.”
“This is your show, not mine,” Frankie said, letting me lead the way as we crept toward the noise.
I had to watch where I put my feet to keep from tripping on random chunks of wood, disintegrating cotton sacks with a stylized black W stamped on them, and the dozens of apples littering the floor in various states of decay. Some lay black and shriveled while others hardly showed a wrinkle. It seemed fresh fruit was still dropping from the apple trees invading the windows upstairs. It was kind of amazing that the oak tree was the only tree growing out of the floor.
“How about that?” Frankie pointed toward the far wall, where the hole in the ceiling joined with an opening that appeared deliberately crafted, most likely where the stairs originally started. Over the top of the hole hung a massive steel hook.
“What’s that?” Thick rope attached the hook to a wooden pulley. The entire contraption dangled over the rounded edge of what appeared to be an old cider press. It all looked perfectly fine except…the pulley was spinning. Very, very slowly, but it was definitely spinning.
“Why is it—” As I watched, a thread from the rope holding the pulley in place broke. The pulley shivered and dropped a fraction of an inch downward, increasing its spin. “Oh, mother of pearl.” The rope just a foot above the pulley was dangerously frayed.
The hook itself was big enough to impale something if it landed wrong. That, plus the pulley—they had to weigh hundreds of pounds. If they fell, they’d crush anything underneath. Not that I planned on getting anywhere near.
I shined my light into the darkness at the bottom of the ruined staircase, trying to make out the animals we’d come to rescue among all the broken barrels and sacks.
All I could see was an enormous lump in the middle of the pile of detritus, dusty and—furry? “I think we’ve found them.” I took two steps closer, tiny ones, just to confirm in my head what my racing heart had already figured out.
Frankie stopped short next to me. “Is that what I think it is?”
I swallowed nervously. “It sure is,” I said, barely finding my voice.
“A sow is a pig,” Frankie said, as if he didn’t want to be seeing what he was seeing. “A pig,” he insisted.
“I know.” He was right. Well, half-right. Trick was, a sow could also refer to a female bear and, “That’s definitely a bear.”
8
It wasn’t just any bear, either—it was a mama black bear, with three little cubs nestled up against her rising and falling belly.
“Butter my biscuit.” I backed away until my shoulders hit the far wall.
Frankie went right through it.
The large mud-spattered hulk of a black bear rolled to its side and let out a long, stuttering groan. The babies snuggled closer and I held my breath. I pressed a hand to my chest, where my heart thudded so hard I could feel it against my ribs.
That was a big bear. I mean, not huge as far as bears were concerned, but it could tear me apart like a chicken wing.
What had Donna been thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking, that was what. Only two years dead and it had somehow slipped her mind that a bear could eat me for lunch. Or dinner. Or whenever it felt like a nice, juicy Verity snack.
I took a deep breath. Then another. Calm down. The bears are asleep.
That was a reassurance I’d never thought I’d have to give myself.
“Frankie,” I hissed, spotting the tip of his hat through the wall next to me.
As if he had anything to worry about. A live bear couldn’t attack the dead. “Get out here, you ninny.”
His head jutted through the wall, up to his chin. “There’s no need for name-calling.”
“Or you hiding,” I whispered as the rest of him stepped through.
“Force of habit,” he said, straightening his tie.
And a perk of being dead. “I certainly wasn’t expecting bears,” I said, my breath barely a whisper. Or a mama one at that. “There’s got to be a way to handle this.”
“Like sneaking out the way we came,” Frankie said, as if he were agreeing with me.
I gave him a long look.
“You are not going to wake up a bear,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “If you get mauled to death, we could be stuck haunting this popsicle stand for decades.”
His concern warmed my heart. “Of course I’m not going to wake a sleeping bear,” I hissed. Hands on my hips, I surveyed the mess in front of us.
We did need to get mama and the babies out of the way of that heavy, dangling hook. Just because mama was dangerous didn’t mean she or her snuggly little cubs deserved to die. And to be crushed to death? I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And no question about it—that hook was coming down soon. I chewed my lip.
Frankie rubbed his eyes. “I told you this was going to take more than an hour. I told you we were in for a long night.”
“I don’t think we have that long,” I said.
He jumped when another thread in the rope snapped, and the pulley and hook dropped a little farther and picked up more spin.
For once, I hated being right.
Stars. It might be easier to move that pulley than to provoke a mama bear in her den.
Now that I thought about it, I realized that had to have been Donna’s solution. After all, I was living. I could move things in the earthly realm.
There was only one problem.
“We need to get up to that pulley,” I murmured. And the bears were lying around and somewhat on the staircase we needed to take.
I didn’t need a lot of space, just enough staircase to tightrope one foot up after the other. I shined my light on it again and, well, that was a big bear.
“Don’t even think about it,” Frankie warned.
“I’m light.” But with the three babies curled up next to their mama, there was no way I could get to the remnants of the stairs without stepping on someone. Even if I could make it past them, the stairs didn’t appear too stable, especially toward the top. We didn’t need a bunch of stone steps falling down on those babies any more than the pulley and hook.
“We’ll find another way.” I pushed off the wall. “Let’s go back outside and slip in on the first floor.”
“It would have made our lives a heck of a lot easier if your ghost buddy had told us to come packing for bear,” Frankie said, gliding next to me, keeping an eye on the bears. I could see the glow of him off my left shoulder as I picked my way past fallen apples and debris.
Donna had tried to be clear. “We just didn’t understand,” I said, trying to escape as quickly as I could.
“I think she tricked us,” Frankie insisted. “She thought nobody’d be crazy enough to do this if they knew.”
“Don’t always assume the worst.” Donna cared about all living creatures, me included. At the same time, she’d been low on power and maybe she wasn’t thinking straight.
Or maybe she’d seen an easy solution that I hadn’t yet.
In either case, complaining wouldn’t help. We needed to commit our energies to the task at hand, and I needed to focus on making it up the crumbling cellar stairs without tripping.
I took them deliberately—enduring the wet and the rot—and breathed a gigantic sigh of relief when we emerged into the night.
I bent over to regroup and enjoy the fresh air and the sweet, solid ground.
Safe.
Sort of.
But not done. I straightened and began searching for a nice opening to slip through.
There were three windows at the ground level on each side of the building. One of those had to be my ticket. I shined my flashlight along the wall to get a better look.
Dang. I hadn’t counted on how densely the trees had grown in around the mill.
Twisted tree limbs blocked all three lower windows, and where there wasn’t a branch there was leftover glass jutting from the window ledge. I’d navigated broken glass before when there’d been room to maneuver, but in this case, I simply wouldn’t fit.
The front door appeared solid, locked to a stone frame on the right-hand side via an enormous rusted padlock with a long U-bend holding the two pieces together.
And that was it. No missing boards. No gaping holes.
“I think I need some lockpicking advice,” I said to my ghost. It would be a dream come true for him. After all, how many times had he tried to “help” me break into places illegally?
I’d always refused.
But this was less of a breaking-and-entering situation and more of a rescue.
“In this case, the best way in is through,” Frankie said. “That wood’s gotta be as old as the mill itself. It’s not going to hold up to more than one or two good kicks. Just give it the boot.”
“And here I’d thought you’d want to show off your skills.” I glanced down at my formerly white Keds, now streaked with mud and goo. They weren’t the best shoes for kicking down doors, but he was right, the wood was completely rotten.
“I prefer a challenge,” my ghost said. “A chance to be an artist.”
Right. I leaned forward so I could brace against the sturdy stone wall, and kicked down right next to the iron latch beside the lock.
Nothing happened but the latch rattling a little.
“Seriously?” Frankie asked. “Are you trying out for the ballet, or trying to break down a door?”
I kicked harder. I was starting to get winded. Not that I’d admit it to him.
Luckily for me, he was nowhere near running out of motivational suggestions. “Come on, pretend it’s one of Virginia’s hoity-toity chaise lounges,” he said as I shifted my purse around so that the urn banged against my back instead of my side, “or that gold-framed, fur-stole-wearing portrait of herself that she keeps over her own mantel, or her sinister, smirking—”
I lifted my foot again.
Crack! The wood around the latch splintered on the third kick. I slipped sideways, but my tight grip on the wall saved me from a tumble.
“You see?” Frankie crowed as I stepped off the frame and heaved the broken door open. “You just needed to narrow down, tap that bad blood. You just had to think of her face.”
I gasped and waved away the dust and dirt I’d stirred up. “I’m a nice person. I’m not—”
“You have a dark side, just like everybody else,” he stated.
Before I could argue, a glowing light appeared in the doorway I’d recently liberated.
“Frankie, look!” I took one step back and then two as the figure lengthened into the shape of a man in a pressed white shirt turned up at the sleeves. He wore a tie and a vest with suit pants creased down the middle.
“Nice threads,” Frankie said as more of the man began to take form.
“Can I help you?” the figure bit out, a little too sarcastic for my taste.
Then again, I did just kick down his door.
The man didn’t have legs. Not yet anyway. I stared openly as his face took form. The squareness of his jaw, the dimple in his chin—those cheekbones. Oh, my word. He looked li
ke he could be Ellis’s brother. He had the same broad shoulders, same short, wavy hair, and the exact same eyes. In fact, he looked more like Ellis than Ellis’s real brothers.
“I—” I gasped.
He studied me with the same exasperated expression Ellis would get before we’d ever dated, when he used to pull me over with his police cruiser and argue with me. This ghost was ticked.
I didn’t know what to think. Except that we were on Ellis’s family land, at an old family cider mill, and this had to be a relation, or my name wasn’t Verity Long.
“Was that entirely necessary?” the ghost challenged, gesturing to the broken-down doorway.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to cause damage.”
“It wasn’t an accident. You just kicked his door down,” Frankie reminded me.
“Don’t help me,” I hissed over my shoulder at my ghost, who merely shrugged.
“You could have just knocked,” the ghost said, which made him sound more like Ellis than ever. But paler, of course.
“We’d actually like to come inside,” I said as brightly as I could. It never hurt to ask. “I’m Verity Long and this is my associate—”
“Rudolph Valentino,” Frankie said without hesitating.
The 1920s movie star. The sheik. Sure.
“Never give your real name when breaking and entering,” Frankie’s voice sounded in my ear. “Why make it easier for this guy if he decides to get the cops involved?”
I thought we were done tangling with ghostly law enforcement after our last case.
The ghost looked at us like we were out of our minds. “Phineas Wydell,” he said slowly, not making any move to invite us in. He probably knew Frankie was lying, and even if he didn’t, we weren’t making ourselves out to be very good visitors.
I grinned. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wydell.”
He waved me off. “Call me Phineas, please.”
“Merry Christmas, Phineas,” I said. “I’m sorry about the door. And”—I glanced at Frankie—“him.” No sense sugarcoating it. “We’re here to help some animals in the earthly realm. My boyfriend and I can come by and repair the door next week. But for tonight, I’d like to duck inside for a few minutes and move that big hook.”