“Well, those stories certainly aren’t anything new, are they? I’ve heard them all my life. And I suppose there’s some truth to them, too.”
“You mean children really did work in the mill?”
“Absolutely. And it wasn’t just this mill, either. There were mills and factories all over the Northeast where children worked. And it wasn’t much fun, either. Most of the children your age had to work as much as twelve hours a day, six days a week.”
“Th-that’s what Mom told me,” Beth stammered. “And she said that a lot of the children died.”
Phillip’s eyes clouded slightly. “Yes, I suppose that’s true, too. But it’s all over now, isn’t it? All that happened a hundred years ago.”
But Beth didn’t seem to be hearing him. Instead, she was once more looking out over the town. Even without following her gaze, Phillip knew that her eyes were fixed on the mill.
“Uncle Phillip? Did … did the mill ever catch on fire?”
“On fire?” Phillip echoed. “What on earth makes you think that?”
“It just—I don’t know,” Beth floundered. “I was just thinking about what Mom and I saw the other day, that’s all.”
“I thought we’d agreed that was just an optical illusion,” Phillip said carefully.
“But what if it wasn’t?” Beth asked. Her eyes brightened, and the beginnings of an eager smile came over her face. “What if we were sort of looking into the past? What if it did burn, and sometimes you can still see it?”
“Now, that,” Phillip chuckled, “is a story I haven’t heard before. How on earth did you come up with that one?”
“But what if it’s true?” Beth pressed, ignoring her stepfather’s question. “Could something like that happen?”
Phillip shrugged. “It depends on whom you ask, I suppose. If you ask me, I’d say no. But there are plenty of people who claim that whatever happens in a building never goes away. That’s the whole idea of ghost stories, isn’t it? That people die, but instead of going to heaven they stay around the place they died, scaring people?”
Beth fell silent, thinking about what Phillip had said. Was that what had happened to her the other day? Was that what she had heard? A ghost?
Beth didn’t believe in ghosts.
Still, she’d heard something in the mill, and she had seen something from the mausoleum that same day.
And there was the dream, too.…
She turned away from the view of the town, and wandered back into the meadow. From the tree where she was tied, Patches whinnied softly, and pawed at the ground. Beth started across the meadow toward the horse, then stopped as something caught the corner of her eye.
She looked around, and frowned slightly.
A few yards away, a small depression, almost barren of the lush grass that filled the rest of the meadow, dipped slightly below the clearing’s floor. In the morning light, it almost looked as if the grass on that spot had been burned away.
And from where she stood, the spot looked exactly like a grave.
Suddenly she became conscious of her stepfather standing next to her.
“Beth? What is it?”
“Over there,” Beth said, pointing. “What’s that?”
Phillip’s eyes scanned the meadow, but he saw nothing unusual. It looked exactly as it had always looked. “What?” he asked.
Beth hesitated, then shook her head. “Nothing,” she replied as she untied Patches and remounted the big mare. “I just thought I saw something, that’s all.” Then she grinned. “It must have been another optical illusion.”
“Either that,” Phillip laughed, “or you’re seeing things. Come on. We don’t want to be too long, or you’ll be late for Tracy’s party.” He swung easily up onto the Arabian, and cantered out of the meadow onto the trail that led around the hillside to the paddock. But before Beth followed him, she looked once more around the little meadow.
The strangely sunken area was still there, and the more she looked at it, the more certain she became that it was, indeed, a grave.
And in her own mind, she decided whose grave it was.
It was Amy’s grave.
By the time lunch began, Beth wished the floor would open up, and she could just fall through.
It had begun after she’d spent almost an hour trying to decide what to wear for the party, and finally settled on a green dress that she’d found in the thrift shop almost a year ago. Now, of course, she never shopped at the thrift shop, but she missed it. The thrift shop was an adventure. You never knew what you