She heard his lighter flick, an inhalation, then smelled the sharp tang of cigarette smoke.
“Okay. Okay. I guess I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to trust you, but you better be right about all this. I’ll wait till then, but I’m not happy. Yes, the second Sunday in September. Yes, here, where the hell else? Okay. Yes. Same time as usual. Spread the word. Get everyone here. Everyone. And make sure you bring the diary!”
Olive pressed her back against the building, listened to the front door open with a jingle, then slam closed.
The second Sunday in September. She had to be here, to find a way to sneak in and hide. To see who was coming and what they were up to.
And what they might say about her mother.
CHAPTER 19
Helen
AUGUST 4, 2015
“Did you tell Nate what happened with the Ouija board last night?” Riley asked when Helen called her the next morning.
“Oh god, no,” Helen said. She could only imagine his derision, talking about unconscious micro-movements of the muscles and whatnot. She pressed the phone against her ear. “But I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I want to drive out to that Donovan and Sons place. How far is it?”
“It’s about an hour away. It’s been closed for ages. I’d actually be interested in taking a ride out there to take a look, but I can’t go with you this morning. We had two guys call out sick at the salvage yard and I’ve got to go in. But you should totally go check the mill out. It’s really easy to find—you basically take Route 4 all the way up to Lewisburg and it’s right in the center of town.” She gave Helen directions, then went on to say, “I did a little research online last night. The Donovan and Sons Mill used to make heavy canvas—they had a big military contract. There was a terrible fire there back in 1943. A dozen women and one of the foreman died. The mill closed right after, stood abandoned for ages, but it looks like they’re turning it into condos now.”
“I’ll take a ride up there and let you know what I find,” Helen told her, hanging up and looking out the window to see if there was any sign of Nate yet. He’d crept off early in the morning with his binoculars, camera, and wildlife notebook while Helen was still in bed. Bird-watching, or maybe out looking for his white deer.
That was Hattie. Riley’s words echoed in her brain. Nate should be careful.
Helen wrote him a note saying she was going to do errands and would be back by lunchtime and that she thought they could finish up the plumbing.
She couldn’t very well tell him she was going to visit a mill because the Ouija board told her to. He’d be making her an appointment with the nearest shrink, talking about stress and delusions and Riley being a bad influence. She felt a little pang of guilt. This was the first time she’d ever told a little white lie to him, ever omitted the truth.
But it was for the best, really.
* * *
. . .
The drive was pretty and didn’t take nearly as long as she’d expected. On her way out of town, she passed Ferguson’s, the pizza and sub shop, and, on the outskirts of town, a place she and Nate hadn’t ventured into yet: Uncle Fred’s Smokehouse—advertised by a sign with a smiling cartoon pig holding a plateful of bacon, which seemed profoundly wrong to Helen.
She drove through forests, past green fields full of white-and-black Holsteins grazing, and through tiny, picturesque villages with gazebos and little white churches. It was all postcard perfect: a landscape without the billboards, big-box stores, strip malls, and eight-lane highways she was used to in Connecticut. She thought of her father and how he always talked about building a cabin out in the woods, someplace where he could hear himself think. He would have loved this: all the forests and fields, how the air smelled fresh and green. It was like going back in time. She imagined the landscape had changed little since Hattie’s time. There were paved roads and power lines now, but the hills, mountains, and fields were no doubt the same. Had Hattie ever come this way, riding in a Model T perhaps, or on the train, along the old tracks Helen spotted running beside the road here and there?
After forty-five minutes, she saw the sign welcoming her to Lewisburg, HOME OF THE STATE CHAMPION LEWISBURG LIONS! She found the old mill without any problems: a sprawling brick complex along the riverbank. There were construction vehicles of all sorts: a bulldozer and crane, trucks full of lumber, a fleet of electrical contractor vans. Helen pulled up alongside a sign advertising one-, two-, and three-bedroom condos and commercial spaces for rent. She parked the truck and got out.
“All right, Hattie,” she muttered to herself as she stood looking at the brick building nearest her. “What am I doing here?”
She walked down a brick-lined path to one of the buildings, where a sign on the front door warned, HARD HAT AREA. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Applications are over at the office,” a voice behind her said.
“Huh?” She turned, saw a tall, wiry guy in a white hard hat. He was wearing clean khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt and carrying a clipboard. A foreman or manager, she figured.
“There’s an office set up in that blue trailer back there,” he told her, gesturing with his thumb. “You can pick up information and an application for the condos, apartments, office spaces.”
“Actually,” Helen said, “I was just hoping to have a look around. I’m interested in local history and I understand the mill was once an important part of the town.”
He nodded. “It sure was. Until the fire anyway. I suppose you can look around, if you want. Just steer clear of the work areas, okay? It’s not safe.” He started to turn away.
“Do they know what caused it?” Helen asked. “The fire?”
“I’m not sure they ever found out,” he said. “The worst of the damage was down at the north end.”
“Where’s that?” Helen asked.
“Here, I can show you,” he said. “I was heading down that way anyway.”
She followed him down the walkway to the right. On their left, the massive old brick mill loomed. It was a beautiful building, three stories tall with large windows, a big bell tower over the front entrance. There were men on the roof, and she could hear power tools and hammering inside. Beyond it, she heard the murmur of the river. The man in the white hard hat walked quickly, speaking as he went along.
“The story goes that management was tired of the girls sneaking out for smoke breaks or to meet their fellas or whatever it was they were sneaking out for. So they took to barring the doors from the outside once all the workers were in. Let ’em out when the bell rang for lunch, then at quitting time.”
“They locked them in?” Helen was horrified. Her eyes fell on the tall doors leading into the mill, imagined fists pounding on them, the crushing weight of all those women trapped inside pushing, desperate for escape.
“That’s what folks say. The ones who remember. The ones who made it out of the fire. I’m from right here in Lewisburg, so I grew up hearing the stories. That day, maybe someone was having a smoke inside because they couldn’t go out anymore? I guess we’ll never know how it started, but they say the building went up fast. Dry timbers, all that cotton.”
They got to the end of the building, and Helen could see that the whole last quarter of it was redone in new brickwork, the bricks a more vivid red, the mortar more pale.
“This whole end of the building was gutted. We had to tear it down, rip everything out, and rebuild.”
Helen looked over to the right, down along the river where a massive amount of rubble had been bulldozed into a pile: burned and snapped boards and timbers, rusted machines and gears, a small mountain of bricks with black fire marks.
“Since they couldn’t get out the doors,” he said, “they broke windows, jumped through. Some made it. A bunch didn’t.” He shook his head, the hard hat shifting a little. “Hell of a way to go.”
H
elen imagined what it must have been like to be trapped inside, lungs filling with smoke, the heat from the fire growing stronger, screams and chaos all around you. Hopefully it was the smoke that got them, not the flames.
“You know,” he said, “between you and me, it’s probably a good thing you’re not interested in a condo.”
“Why’s that?”
He looked around, lowered his voice. “You couldn’t pay me to live here.”
The skin on Helen’s arms prickled.
This was it, she thought. This was why she’d come.
“Yeah, I had a whole crew, the HVAC contractors, quit on me last week. These weren’t wimpy guys, and they weren’t stoned teenagers—not the sort to get spooked easily, if you know what I’m saying.”
“What happened?” Helen asked.
“They were down in the basement, the lower level, working where the turbines used to be. They came tearing up the stairs, screaming. Three big dudes—they’d dropped their tools; they were pale and shaking and totally flipped out. They said they’d seen someone down there—a woman. Her face and arms were all burned up, skin just hanging off like loose wallpaper. That’s what they said.”
Helen said nothing, just waited. He went on.
“We went down to look, me and some other guys. There was no one down there, of course. But you could smell something. Kind of like burnt hair…or burnt flesh. No reason for a smell like that down there.”
“Wow,” Helen said. “Incredible.”
“Yeah, that HVAC crew never came back. And lots of other freaky stuff has happened. Guys seeing and hearing things. Tools going missing. Lights turning on and off. The place is haunted. No doubt.” He looked at the building long and hard. “I mean, when you think about it, how could it not be?”
Helen looked, too, then her eyes moved from the newly rebuilt section to the junked materials from the original mill.
Helen took a few steps forward, picked up one of the discarded bricks that hadn’t made it to the large pile. It was old and worn, most likely made from red clay and kiln fired, and one side was stained black. She could almost smell the smoke. Feel the heat. Hear the screams of the women as they beat on the latched door.
“What are you going to do with all this?” Helen asked, gesturing at the rubble, still clutching the brick, not wanting to let it go. It felt almost alive to her: alive with history, alive with the things it had seen and heard, the tragedy it had been a part of.
He frowned, surprised by the change of subject, or maybe by the stupidity of the question.
“Have it carted off to the landfill.”
It seemed terrible to her, to have materials with such history just thrown away. They should be in a museum. Or used to build a memorial for the people who died in the factory fire. Not just thrown in the dump.
“Even the bricks?”
“All of it.”
“Mind if I take some? My husband and I, we’re building a house, trying to incorporate local materials—things with history. These bricks would be perfect.”
He gave her a puzzled, slightly amused grin. “Sure, Madame Historian. Knock yourself out,” he said. “Take ’em all if you want. I guess they are a one-of-a-kind item.”
“I appreciate it.”
* * *
. . .
Nate came out of the house to meet her when she pulled into the driveway. He looked excited. “Look what I found in the hunting area at the general store,” he said, holding up a box. “I walked into town to grab a sandwich for lunch and spotted this.”
Helen looked. “An outdoor wildlife camera?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “It’s got night vision! It’s motion activated. And I can set it up so that it sends the images and videos right to my laptop.”
Helen looked at the orange price sticker: $110.
“Great,” she said, thinking that she could only imagine the rumors going through the town now. Witchcraft books, night-vision cameras—she could almost understand why people were freaked out by the two of them.
“Oh, and I got most of the plumbing finished in the downstairs bathroom,” he said. “All that’s left is the flange for the toilet.”
“Fantastic,” Helen said. She’d been amazed by how fast Nate had picked up working with the copper pipes. He had a real knack for soldering—all his joints were perfect every time. “I think maybe you were a plumber in a past life!”
He grinned at her. “How were your errands?” he asked.
“Look what I got for us,” she said, showing him the pile of bricks she’d loaded into the back of the truck.
“Wow! Where’d they come from?”
“An old mill. They’re renovating it, turning it into condos and offices. I got the bricks for free.”
“Cool,” Nate said. “How’d you find them?”
Hattie sent me.
“Craigslist,” Helen said without missing a beat. “I thought we could use them for the hearth for the woodstove.”
“I thought we were going to use slate from the quarry in town,” Nate said, frowning a little. They’d visited the quarry, and Nate had loved the texture and gray-green color of the stone.
“We can still get that and use it for something else. Maybe the kitchen floor?”
“I think that might be a little pricey,” Nate said. He was already worried that they were over budget. The money they’d inherited from Helen’s father had seemed like so much at first, more than enough to build with and live on for at least a year. But there had been unexpected outlays: the price of lumber up here was higher than they’d originally budgeted for; the professional furnace and water heater install took a huge chunk of money; the ongoing expense of all the beer, wine, and take-out food because cooking in the trailer was depressing and difficult. The money was going fast. Faster than they’d imagined and planned for. Helen looked at the accounts and was sure they’d have more than enough to finish the house, but she worried that Nate might be right—if they kept going at this rate, they wouldn’t have much left over to live on. They hadn’t thought much about what they were going to do for income when the time came—it seemed so far away.
Of course, it didn’t help that Nate was splurging on hundred-dollar night-vision cameras. She shook the thought away, told herself she was being petty.
“Maybe we could get the rejected slate pieces for cheap, you know? The weird shapes that broke and aren’t square. I think it could work. We could do like a funky mosaic thing.” Her dad had done a floor like that for an artist friend of his and it had turned out beautifully.
“Maybe,” Nate said.
“These bricks—they were just so cool, and I love knowing that they came from a real mill up the road. Think about it. It’s like I pick one up and feel this instant connection to the past. I can practically smell the grease, hear the hum of the looms, feel the cotton dust in the air.”
Smell the smoke of the fire, she thought.
If installing the beam had helped Hattie come back, would installing the bricks draw one of the mill workers back? The burned woman with skin hanging off that the contractors had seen in the basement, maybe?
She shivered.
Nate smiled at her, kissed her nose. “I love you. I’m not at all sure that cotton dust is a thing, but I love that you imagine it is. And saving these bricks from the landfill by reusing them in our house—can’t really complain about that.”
“Cotton dust is definitely a thing,” she said. “Wanna help me unload these?”
“Sure,” he said.
She moved the truck up closer to the house and pulled down the tailgate, and they started pulling the bricks out, putting them in a stack next to the house.
“These are in pretty good shape. They’ll have to be cleaned up,” Nate said. “All the old mortar scraped off.”
Helen nodded.
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“Some of them look like they’re from a chimney stack or something. They’re all black on one side.”
Helen said nothing, feigning ignorance as she continued to stack the bricks. At last, she said, “You were up and out early this morning.”
“Went for a walk. That heron was in the bog again. Such a beautiful bird.” There was that wistful look he got again, the one that reminded Helen of his deep love and respect for nature. “I got some good shots of it. I was thinking I’d print the best one, maybe have it framed? We could start a sort of gallery up in our library with photos of the local wildlife. Maybe even some of my sketches as I get better at it?”
“I love it,” Helen said, gathering an armload of bricks to bring to the house. “Did you see your white deer?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”
He was leaving something out, she was sure of it. And she felt oddly comforted, knowing that she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“But I do wonder if maybe there’s a group of them. I’ve been reading about these white Seneca deer in New York. It’s really interesting—there’s a population of about two hundred of them living on a protected reserve that was once an old army depot. They’re white-tailed deer, but they’re leucistic, which means they lack pigmentation in the hair. They’ve got brown eyes, not pink like true albinos.”
“Leucistic, huh?” Helen said. She loved how excited Nate got when he learned something new like this, like he couldn’t wait to share it. Mr. Science in action.
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had something like that here? A whole population of white deer! I was thinking I could do a study, write a paper.”
Nate had been talking about one day writing articles and papers for scientific journals since she’d met him, but back in Connecticut he’d never had the time or found a subject inspiring enough.
“Sounds great, hon,” she said, only half paying attention because her mind was on other things. She was working out the best way to get the bricks into the house as soon as possible, to test out the theory and see who, or what, they might call back.
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