dress she was wearing?” he asked, bringing the subject back to Beth Rogers. “It looked even uglier on her than it did on your sister. And when Tracy started telling that story about the ghost, and she believed her, I thought I was gonna piss my pants.”
Jeff skidded down the shoulder into the ditch, and kicked the can neatly back up onto the road. Then, as they came to the railroad tracks, he glanced across the street, his eyes falling on the scaffold-covered walls of the mill.
“What about the ghost she claimed lives in there?” he asked.
“Give me a break,” Brett groaned. “She was just trying to look smart. Or she’s so dumb she really believes there’s something in there.”
Jeff eyed his friend, a mischievous grin playing around the corners of his mouth. “Want to go in and take a look?” he challenged.
Brett hesitated. All his life he’d heard stories about the mill, and he knew as well as everyone else in Westover that Mr. Sturgess’s older brother had gotten killed in the building years earlier.
And according to Brett’s father, no one had ever found out exactly what had happened to Con Sturgess. It was supposed to have been an accident, but everyone knew that old man Sturgess had always claimed it wasn’t.
Then he saw Jeff watching him, a smirk on his face. Ignoring the knot of fear in his gut, he nodded. “Why not?” he asked, aiming one last kick at the battered can and missing completely. He followed Jeff down the tracks toward the back of the mill. “How do we get in?”
Jeff surveyed the building, then shrugged. “It’s got to be a cinch. I bet they aren’t even keeping it locked up.”
Brett’s eyes followed Jeff’s, but he didn’t feel nearly as confident as Jeff sounded. “What if someone catches us?”
“So what? All we’re going to do is look around. What’s the big deal? Besides, they’re working on it, right?”
Brett nodded.
“So everybody pokes around buildings that are being restored. If anybody catches us, we’ll just tell them we wanted to see what was going on. Come on.”
They followed a spur from the main line that led to the long-abandoned loading dock at the rear of the mill, skirted around a pile of trash that had accumulated against the dock itself, then scrambled up to try the freight door. It was securely locked, as was the door to what had once been the dispatcher’s office. After trying two more doors, they jumped off the dock, rounded the corner of the building, and started walking along a newly cleared path that paralleled the side of the building. Halfway to Prospect Street they came to the metal door that had always before been carefully locked.
Today the lock was open, hanging loosely from the hasp.
“See?” Jeff asked. “What’d I tell you? It’s not even locked up. We can just walk in.” He reached out and grasped the knob, then twisted it.
It turned easily.
“H-how come it’s not locked?” Brett asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. “S’pose someone’s inside?”
Jeff’s eyes raked him scornfully. “It’s not locked because the workmen were too stupid to lock it,” he said. He pushed the door open, and stepped through, but Brett still hung back. “You coming, or not?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Brett suggested. He glanced to the west, where the sun was sinking toward the horizon. “Isn’t it pretty dark in there?”
“You can see fine.” Jeff sneered. “Either come in, or stay out, but I’m gonna look around.”
Struggling against his fear, Brett stepped through the door and closed it behind him. For a moment the deep shadows blinded him, but then his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the interior, and he looked around.
Somehow, he had expected it to be empty.
But it wasn’t.
Already, the floor had been subdivided by the skeletal shapes of newly constructed framework, and in the roof, several holes had been cut for skylights. Now, in the late afternoon, little light came through the holes, and it seemed to Brett that all they did was make the place even spookier than it already was.
And the framework, he realized, was almost like a maze. Almost anywhere, there could be someone hiding.
In the silence, Brett could hear the pounding of his own heart.
“Hey!”
The sudden sound jabbed Brett like a needle, and he felt his whole body twitch with a sudden release of tension. Then he realized the sound had come from Jeff. “Jeez!” he whispered loudly. “What did you do that for?”