with disgust. “Because,” he explained, “if anybody had answered, we could have said we were looking for someone, and then left. No one ever thinks you’re sneaking in somewhere if you make a lot of noise.” He called out once more: “Anybody here?” A pair of pigeons, frightened by the sudden disturbance, burst from their nests in a flapping of wings.
When silence had fallen once more, Jeff raised his hand, pointing toward the rear wall. “If there’s anything in here, I bet it’s back there,” he said.
Brett gazed into the gathering gloom, and saw the top of the stairs that led down into the basement below. It was in the basement, his father had told him, that Con Sturgess’s body had been found. Brett’s heart pounded harder, and he felt a cold sweat breaking out on his back. “I bet there’s nothing there at all,” he said, though his voice quavered slightly in spite of his efforts to keep it steady. Jeff, catching the slip, grinned.
“Scared?”
“Hell, no,” Brett lied. “What’s to be scared of?”
“Ghoooosts,” Jeff intoned, then snickered. “Come on.”
They started toward the back of the building, with Brett following reluctantly. They had gone only a few yards when Brett felt his skin crawl.
He had the eerie feeling of unseen eyes watching him.
He tried to ignore it, keeping his eyes on Jeff’s back, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Instead, it got worse.
There was something else in the mill—he was sure of it. But he couldn’t be sure where it was. It seemed to be all around him, following him. Suddenly he could stand it no longer, and whirled around to face whatever was stalking him.
Nothing.
His eyes scanned the tangle of structural supports, searching for a movement, but there was nothing there. Nothing, at least, that he could see.
And then, once again, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his spine began to tingle.
There was a sudden feeling of movement behind him. His stomach lurched. Something touched his shoulder.
Screaming, he jerked free, and whirled once more.
Jeff was staring at him, laughing. “Gotcha!”
“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me!”
Jeff regarded him with knowing eyes. “You were already scared, weren’t you?”
“I … I thought I heard something,” Brett lied again.
“Well, you didn’t, ’cause there’s nothing here,” Jeff replied. “Let’s go see what’s downstairs.”
Without waiting for Brett to reply, Jeff headed once more for the staircase. Brett, unwilling to stay where he was, or admit by leaving that he was frightened, followed close behind. But when Jeff started down the stairs, Brett stopped, peering fearfully into the blackness below. “I’m not going down there.”
“Chicken,” Jeff taunted.
This time, Brett ignored the taunt. “It’s dark down there, and you can’t see anything.”
“I can see all the way to the bottom of the stairs, and I’m going down whether you come or not.”
Brett said nothing, only shrugged. He was staying where he was.
Jeff started down the stairs, but with each step he took, a little more of his confidence slipped away.
He began to wonder what might actually be waiting in the darkness below.
According to Beth Rogers, there was a ghost here.
But that was ridiculous. He didn’t believe in ghosts.
He tried to remember how funny the ghost story had been a couple of hours ago, when they’d all been lying around on the floor of Tracy’s library.
But it didn’t seem so funny now, not with the dank gloom of the old building gathering around him.
In fact, now that he thought about it, the darkness itself was almost like something alive, reaching out for him.
He stopped near the bottom of the stairs, and tried to shake the feeling off.
He wasn’t scared of the dark. He’d never been scared of the dark, at least not since he was a baby.
But now, here, he found that the dank blackness below was something very much to be afraid of.
Here, he didn’t know what the darkness concealed. It wasn’t at all like being in the dark at home, where you knew everything that was in the room around you, and could identify every sound you heard.
Here, the darkness seemed to go on forever, and the sounds—the little rustling sounds he was beginning to hear now—could be anything at all.
Mice. They could be mice, or even rats.
Or something else.
Something you couldn’t touch, but that could touch you.
He wanted to go back now, but it was too late. Brett was waiting above, and he’d laughed at Brett. If he came back up now, and admitted he’d been afraid