by Ron Ripley
Kurt stood up and paced around the small room they had placed him in. His eyes kept returning to his phone, which lay on the bed. He was waiting for his shop steward to call, to see if there was a way he could get out of having to wait for an evaluation. It was standard when any officer’s partner died, but Kurt felt as though it only made the experience harder to deal with.
He couldn’t even tell anyone how Bill had died. Not just because they wouldn’t believe him, but also because he didn’t believe it himself.
From his back pocket, Kurt took out a business card and turned it over. On the back was a name, a number, and an address.
All belonged to the man who had tried to save Bill, the bald-headed, scarred individual who looked like a gladiator out of some movie about the ancient Romans.
Kurt had seen some hard men in his time, but none of them had looked as brutal, or as ruthless as Shane Ryan.
And Kurt couldn’t tell if that was good or bad.
Shane Ryan was a distant second to the disbelief that continued to swirl in Kurt’s thoughts. Bill had been a big man. A strong one, too. The thing that had attacked him was nothing more than a ghost.
Ghosts can’t kill people, Kurt told himself. He had been repeating the statement since calling for the ambulance. Since he had done as Shane had suggested, telling dispatch it was a heart attack.
Part of Kurt thought that it was.
But then he remembered what he had seen. An image of the map in his apartment had flashed in front of his eyes as well. The people who had died in or near the mill. The boys who were missing.
None of it seemed real.
He had the same surreal feeling as when his ex-wife had filed for divorce. Complete and utter amazement.
A knock sounded on the door and then it swung open, jerking his thoughts back to the present.
“Hello,” a younger woman said. “I’m Doctor Himmel.”
“Hey,” Kurt said.
She was a tall woman, probably a good two or three inches taller than he was. Her shoulders were wide and she had high, prominent cheekbones. She had brown hair clipped close to her head, and her eyes were dark brown. The doctor had the appearance of someone who didn’t suffer fools.
Kurt could appreciate that.
“Why don’t you have a seat,” she said. It was more of a command than a request, and Kurt did so in silence.
Doctor Himmel walked over, pulled a stool close, and sat down on it.
“Your partner died,” she said.
Kurt nodded, the three simple words striking him with the force of a slap.
“Preliminary examination says it was a heart attack,” the doctor continued. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”
“Thanks,” Kurt said, his voice raw.
She nodded.
“It’s my job,” she continued, “to make sure you’re okay before I send you home. We both know the symptoms of shock, Kurt. And I have to make sure you’re not hiding any of them. Is that understood?”
Kurt nodded, not trusting his voice anymore.
“Good.” She leaned back, looked at him and added in a gentler, but still firm voice, “I will do this as quickly and as painlessly as I can. Alright?”
Kurt bobbed his head and ground his teeth to keep the tears locked in his eyes.
Chapter 22: Dangerous Reading
Shane sat in his chair in the library. The lights were off, and he was in darkness. He had closed the curtains, blocking the moon and starlight. In the room's stillness, he heard the rumbling of the oil furnace through the radiators and the pipes in the walls. The room had a hard chill to it. Courtney had come out of the oubliette and was somewhere near the door.
She fluctuated between sadness and rage as she spoke with him.
“You killed me,” she hissed.
Shane had his eyes closed and his hands upon the desk’s leather blotter.
“I did not,” Shane argued. His eyes moved against his eyelids, tracking her by the sound of her voice.
“You might as well have,” she snarled.
Shane didn’t respond.
A book was knocked off a shelf. Then another, and then a slew of them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered a moment later.
“It’s alright,” Shane replied.
“There’s something wrong with me,” she continued. “There’s something eating away at my heart.”
“I’m sorry, Courtney,” Shane said.
"You should be!" she screamed, and he winced.
The sound of books being thrown filled the room. In the darkness, he could hear her panting.
Then suddenly, her voice was in his ear.
“Would you stop me if I tried to kill you, Shane Ryan?” she hissed.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Good.”
And the chill was gone.
Heat boiled out of the room's radiator, and Shane knew she had returned to the sanctuary the oubliette offered her. He wasn't surprised to find a tremble in his hand as he turned on the desk lamp.
Shane’s heart found its natural rhythm and someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Shane said. He picked up the whiskey bottle and poured himself a drink as Frank entered.
“I thought you were cutting back,” Frank asked, glancing at the chaotic pile of books on the floor.
“I am,” Shane said. “This is the same bottle I opened this morning.”
“You’re almost done with it,” Frank said, sitting down in a chair across from Shane.
“Ah,” Shane said before he knocked the liquor back. “But I’m not done with it. There’s the important part. The key ingredient.”
Shane poured himself another shot.
“Is it?” Frank asked.
“Yes,” Shane said. “I would have finished this bottle around dinner time before.”
“That’s only about seven hours ago, my friend,” Frank said.
“Progression not perfection,” Shane chided. He drank the second shot and put the tumbler down beside the bottle. “There. This bottle might even live to see the dawn.”
His hand no longer trembled.
“How did it go?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know,” Shane confessed. “I don’t know if she’s okay. I don’t know if she’ll ever be the way she was, right after she died. I’ve read that some ghosts, well, they deteriorate as time goes by. Some do it quickly. Others take a long time. Some never do. I don’t know if Courtney’s had a temporary hold put on her sanity, or if the little sane bits I see are the remnants of who she was. It’s confusing as all hell, though.”
Frank cleared his throat and then said, “You know, I thought things were in good shape when she was locked up.”
“I couldn’t stand the screaming. Every night. I could hardly sleep.” Shane said, sighing.
“And now?” Frank asked.
“I’m sleeping better,” Shane told him.
“Is that because Carl’s in the room?” Frank said.
Shane chuckled and shook his head. “No. Carl being in the room means she doesn’t murder me in my sleep.”
Frank snorted. “That’s not much comfort, my friend.”
Shane shrugged, what little mirth he felt, leaving him. “I’m having a hard time right now, Frank. Dying isn’t something I’m worried about. At least not at her hands.”
“You may want to see someone about that,” Frank said, his voice filled with concern.
“Probably,” Shane said. “But I can’t be bothered right now. We’ve got the Mill to keep me occupied. Maybe after that.”
Frank shook his head. “You’re not suicidal, right?”
“Right,” Shane said. “I just don’t know how hard I’d fight if Courtney came at me.”
“You’ve still got the iron on your fingers,” Frank pointed out.
Shane nodded. “Like I said. I’m not suicidal. I won’t take any unnecessary risks, but, well, I don’t even know at this point.”
“Okay,” Frank said
. “Fair enough. You going to try and get some sleep?”
"Yeah," Shane said, standing up. Frank did the same, and they left the room together, Shane shutting the door and locking it behind him.
“What’s the point?” Frank asked.
“A little reminder,” Shane said, putting the key in his pocket. “I want to make sure the rest of the house understands she’s to be left alone. A closed and locked door should do the trick.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Frank asked.
“Then I’ll help them remember,” Shane stated.
“Alright,” Frank said, turning towards his own bedroom. “See you in the morning.”
“You got it.”
Shane walked to his room, passed through the open doorway and paused at his bed to strip down. The air was cold on his bare flesh, and as goose bumps rippled along his skin, he slipped between the sheets. He didn't bother with a lamp. The pale light of the moon poured in through the windows. Shane put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.
In a few moments, he heard Carl.
“I’m here, my young friend,” the dead man said in German.
“Thank you,” Shane said. He yawned.
“Would you like me to send Eloise to the library for you?” Carl asked. It had been the same each night since Shane had given Courtney sanctuary.
“No,” Shane snapped. “Leave her alone. Am I understood?”
“Of course,” Carl answered. He didn’t sound embarrassed by Shane’s sharp words. Shane knew that the dead man would ask the same question the next night, and the one following that as well.
“Good night, Carl,” Shane said.
“Good night, Shane,” Carl responded.
In the silence of the room, Shane listened to the rhythm of his heart and waited for sleep to claim him.
Chapter 23: The Sounds of Machines
Benjamin Bergen hadn’t slept well in decades.
The slightest noise woke him, forcing him to wear ear plugs when he went to bed. His fire alarm was designed for deaf people, a flashing light bright enough to punch through his eyelids and force him out of whatever drug induced haze he had managed to sink into.
While Benjamin never felt rested when he woke up in the morning, his body and mind at least got the sleep he needed. The drugs and the ear plugs were unpleasant, but they worked.
Nothing had woken him up in over seven years.
He was surprised, then, and furious, when a loud, rattling sound interrupted his sleep.
His eyelids, feeling as though they weighed far more than they should, fought him as he sat up in bed. He ripped the ear plugs out and looked around, blinking as he identified the noise was that of machines.
Someone, it seemed, was running construction equipment at three in the morning.
Muttering, Benjamin got out of bed, stumbled to the wall, and jerked the curtain away from the window. Glaring down at the street, Benjamin saw nothing.
Not a single piece of machinery. Not even a car.
There wasn’t even someone walking by.
The street below his apartment window was dead.
Benjamin knew he didn’t have to worry about the rest of his building because he owned it. All of it. He had taken an old warehouse and built a small apartment in a second-floor office.
Flashing lights caught his attention and Benjamin pressed his face against the cold glass of the window.
Half a block down, he saw the old Slater Mill. Bright white light flickered behind the windows, and it was from there that the sound of machines seemed to originate.
It was a horrible sound. One that made his teeth ache and eyes throb in their sockets. Benjamin stomped away from the window, snatched his phone up out of its cradle, and dialed the police department.
“Nashua Police Department, this is Danielle,” a woman said when the phone was answered.
“Hey,” Benjamin snapped. “You’ve got some kids or somebody in the Slater Mill raising all kinds of hell.”
“Sir,” the woman said, her voice cold. “We have officers there.”
“I can see lights coming from the building,” Benjamin spat.
“Sir,” the woman repeated. “We have officers there.”
“What, inside the building with their cars?” he demanded.
"Sir," the woman said, anger creeping into her voice. "I've told you that we have officers on the scene. If you don't get off of the line, I will report your position to a unit, and they will come and speak with you."
Benjamin bit back a curse and slammed the phone into its cradle.
He went back to the window, looked out again, and didn’t see a single cruiser near the Mill.
“Bull,” he snarled. Benjamin turned around, tugged on his boots, pulled his jacket over his pajamas, and left his apartment. He trudged down the stairs, left the broken peace of his building, and hurried towards the Mill.
When he reached it, there weren't any cruisers. Or police officers. Or anyone. Period.
Told you so, Danielle, he thought. Benjamin came to a stop at the fence that surrounded the Mill and considered what he should do next. The rational part of him said he needed to go back and give the police a polite and intelligent report as to what he had seen.
The irrational part disagreed.
And Benjamin agreed with the irrational part.
He went around the fence until he found a gate, and the gate, he wasn’t surprised to see, was open. Shaking his head at the stupidity of others, Benjamin pushed his way in. The door to the Mill was ajar, and he shoved that open as well.
When he stepped into the hall, only a small rectangle of it lit by the moon, he grimaced. The air stank of machine oil and sweat. On top of that, it was cold in the building. As if someone had turned up an air conditioner and set it to sub-arctic temperatures.
Benjamin pulled his hands into his sleeves as he winced at the sound of machinery that ran on the second floor. He tilted his head back and saw lights flicker between the stairs.
Somebody’s up there, he thought angrily. Determined to get them to stop their racket, Benjamin stormed up the stairs. The boards of the door were broad and the gaps between them wide. Through those same gaps the racket flowed.
The noise rose and fell, and it sounded like the work floor of Nashua Plastics, where Benjamin had worked when he was still a student in high school.
He knew it couldn’t be that because Benjamin had watched when all of the machinery had been pulled out of the Slater Mill. Benjamin had even been there when the chain link fence had gone up.
The work floor, he knew, was empty.
At least it’s supposed to be, he thought. Still furious over his interrupted sleep. Benjamin grabbed hold of the bent metal handle of the door and yanked it open.
The noise ceased, and a dull, sick light filled the long room.
Half-formed images of ancient textile looms dominated the cavernous floor. Shapes, roughly similar to people, pulled back into the shadows.
A single man walked down the center of the floor, and as he moved, his old work boots were silent.
Benjamin felt the wrongness of the situation, and he moved back to the door.
The man sprang forward, covering an impossible distance. Before Benjamin could turn to run, he felt a cold, hard weight slam into the small of his back. The blow sent him sprawling to the floor, the rough wood gouging his cheek. Benjamin was too surprised to cry out, even as he felt the rush of warm blood race down his face.
He tried to scramble to his feet, but a boot pressed down into the small of his back, thrusting him again to the floor. The weight remained there, a terrible, debilitating cold settling into his flesh.
Benjamin groaned, tried to crawl away, but the pressure was too much.
With a whimper, he ceased to resist. A cold finger stabbed him in the back of his neck where his skull met his spine. The stranger pushed, and Benjamin gasped in a mixture of horror and pain as the digit pierced his flesh.
Thunderous waves of ag
ony crashed over him, and Benjamin went blind. He heard his limbs hitting the floor rather than seeing them. It was a curious, staccato sound that reminded him of children banging on school desks.
The noise of his own death chased Benjamin into darkness.
Chapter 24: Heightened Concern
Frank had finished his morning prayers and sat in the parlor. He didn't often visit the room, and so each time he went in, there was something new to see.
This morning Frank had discovered a series of small photographs, each one in a small, brass frame. They were of a young boy, starting from a picture of the child as a newborn until what looked like a high school photograph.
The child was undoubtedly Shane.
Shane’s eyes had held a mixture of joy and genuine pleasure in the early photographs, those that showed him as an infant and a toddler. Even the few representing the beginning of his school years.
Others, taken when Shane was slightly older, reflected something else. There was sadness and fear in the eyes. Dark shadows revealing a lack of sleep. Fear and grim acceptance in the line of his chin.
For the first time, Frank understood how difficult Shane's childhood must have been, and he wondered exactly how much his friend hadn't told him.
“He was an intense child,” a voice said from behind Frank, the words causing him to jump in his chair.
Frank twisted around and saw the little dead girl, Eloise. She stood inside of the door.
“Was he?” Frank asked, watching her as she went and stood by the hearth.
“Oh yes,” Eloise said, nodding. “It was ever so difficult to get him to play with me at first. I am afraid I frightened him the first night.”
“Did he ever forgive you for it?” Frank inquired.
“Of course, silly,” she said, grinning. “Wouldn’t you forgive me, Frank?”
Frank smiled and nodded. “Of course, I would.”
She sat down on the floor and looked at him.
“Tell me,” Frank said. “Did he have many difficult days here?”
“Nearly all of them,” she admitted. “It was fear, at first, of me and Thaddeus. The dark ones and the old man. He befriended Carl early, but there was one, the bad one. The one who wanted to hurt him and his parents. And everyone who came into the house.”
