Breathe it, touch it, listen to its sounds, Mrs. Riley had said. I pulled on the long grass, feeling its sharp edges. I took a deep breath and smelled the salty water. The creek lapped gently, slipping between grasses and stones. The birds sounded exceptionally loud and sweet to me. I emptied my mind of everything but the mill and felt as if I were walking in a dream.
Since I had left both basement doors open, I entered the mill easily. I looked across the room at the wheels, then forced myself to go to them, to touch the biggest one. I wrapped my fingers around a metal tooth and gripped it hard. Rusted saws and metal circles that looked like disembodied steering wheels lay here and there. It wasn’t a cozy place for two people to meet. The next floor up would be drier and brighter, I thought.
I saw the stairway along one wall, the same as in my dream, like a tilted ladder with wide wooden treads and no handrail. I walked under it and pulled on each step to see if it would support my weight. One split in half and two others cracked, but they were spaced well enough for me to climb to the trapdoor.
When I was near the top of the steps, I pushed against a square piece of ceiling. The trapdoor was heavier than it looked. I managed to shove it up, swinging it back against a wall, carelessly assuming the door would stay. It slammed down on me. I was stunned by the force and clung to the top step, feeling dizzy. There were small, scurrying sounds-the mill’s residents.
Determined to get to the next floor, I pushed against the trapdoor again. Then I grabbed a long piece of wood and placed it diagonally between the floor and the hinged door to prop it open. I climbed through and looked around the first-floor space.
Though the windows were shuttered, crooked seams of light shown through cracks in the plank walls. In one corner of the room was a round iron stove, missing its chimney pipe. Barrels and bins, burlap bags gnawed apart by rats, and frayed rope were strewn about. Narrow chutes built in long rectangular sections with elbow joints looked like the arms of wooden people coming down through the ceiling.
The ceiling itself gaped with holes. The trapdoor above the stairs to the second floor appeared to be open. Gazing up into it, I suddenly felt light-headed.
I found a millstone, half of a pair used for grinding, and sat on it. Closing my eyes, I ran my hands over its rough surface, feeling the long, angled ridges. Waves of confused images and sensations washed over me: the sound of voices, Thomas’s face, Matt’s, the clock chiming, the sound of engines, my name being called, footsteps against a hard surface. I wasn’t sure what was inside my mind and what was outside. I couldn’t tell what was then and what was now, when I was Avril and when I was Megan. Everything seemed real but distorted, the sounds and images stretched at the edges.
Hunching over, resting my head on my knees, I saw moving lines of light. I struggled to focus.
Light between the floorboards-that was it. Someone with a flashlight was walking downstairs. Did the person know I was here? Instinct told me to hide. I crouched behind a pair of barrels.
Peering around the edge of them, I saw the orb of light dodge its way up the stairs, held by an unsteady hand.
“Child? Are you here? It’s Lydia,” she whispered as she climbed the last step.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I need to talk to you. I have seen something and must warn you.”
Before I could emerge, another voice cried out. “Megan!
Are you in here?”
It was Matt. At the sound of his voice Mrs. Riley moved quickly, hiding behind a bin.
“Where are you?” Matt called. I heard him walking below us, then hurrying up the steps. “Megan? Answer me!”
His words brought back the memory with sudden force.
“Answer me! Answer me, Avril!”
Thomas’s hands gripped my shoulders. He shook me so hard my head snapped back. He started dragging me down the mill steps. My chest hurt. It felt like straps of steel had tightened around it. Every breath was agony.
I pushed away from Thomas, gasping, desperate for air.
He held me tighter. I tried to speak, but the darkness was closing in on me. I needed air!
I staggered to my feet, grasping the barrels to steady myself. Matt spun around. I was in the present again. I was Megan. But Matt’s eyes were identical to Thomas’s.
He started toward me.
“Run, child!” Mrs. Riley cried. “Run before he hurts you.
We both turned toward her. The surprise on Matt’s face quickly changed to anger.
“Shut up, old woman,” he said. “You’ve done enough.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she replied, her eyes bright, challenging the fire in his. “Are you remembering now, Thomas?” she asked. “Are you remembering all of it now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why you came to me three years ago, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Riley continued. “You were seeing her face. She had come back to haunt you.”
Matt glanced at me, then back at Mrs. Riley.
“But you didn’t think you’d see her in flesh and blood again, did you?” she prodded.
“Your mind is twisted,” he said. “It’s been twisted for years. You’ve preyed on my grandmother’s fears. You knew she wanted to make Avril sick that night so she couldn’t meet Thomas. You gave her the redcreep and told her how much to put in the tea, but she cut that amount in half, and Avril was well enough to go. It was another dose, a later dose, that killed her. Still, you convinced Grandmother that she had given her sister too much, that she was responsible for her death. Grandmother had always been jealous, hurt by the attention Avril received, wishing that Avril would get out of her life. It was easy to change those feelings into guilt.
You enjoyed torturing her with false guilt.”
“I did enjoy it,” Mrs. Riley admitted. “She was so selfrighteous. But I believed it, too. I realized a second dose had been given”-her voice softened-“but I was so in love with you when you were Thomas.”
Matt took a step back from her.
“I was so naive,” she continued. “I couldn’t believe you had done it. It had to be Helen, I thought. I couldn’t accept that my Thomas was a cold-blooded murderer.”
He was the murderer? Waves of fear and nausea washed over me. Matt, not Grandmother, was the one who should fear me. Did he know it? I remembered the strange way he had looked at me the day we met. He had known from the beginning.
“I should have realized that it was Helen you wanted all along,” Mrs. Riley continued.
Matt’s dark eyes burned in his pale face.
“Avril was too unpredictable, too much of a flirt. But the fortune was hers. So you played up to her and killed her, then you and Helen got everything.”
His fists clenched.
“Nothing has changed since then,” Mrs. Riley added. “You still depend on Helen’s money. You will be loyal to her till the end.”
“You’re wrong,” Matt argued, “dead wrong.”
“Even when the other boys would come here to swim,” she said, “you couldn’t bear to be in this place. You told me so yourself.”
“I was an idiot to trust you.”
“Karma,” Mrs. Riley said softly. “Justice at last. Sixty years ago you wanted nothing to do with me, Thomas, not when you realized you could have the Scarborough girls.”
Matt turned his back on her. “She’s crazy, Megan. Let’s get out of here.”
“No.” My tongue felt thick in my mouth, and I struggled to speak clearly. “Stay away.”
“She’s a liar, a troublemaker,” Matt said. “I told you that before. You can’t believe her.”
“I do.”
He took two steps toward me. One more and he’d trap me behind the barrels. I moved my hand slowly, then
