Beth looked away, then felt Phillip’s hand on her shoulder. She started to pull away, but couldn’t. Finally she turned to face him again. “I … I just don’t know what to do,” she said. “I want to do the right thing, but all that ever happens is that I mess it up. Like this morning, down at the stable.”
“All that happened down there was that you didn’t know what you were doing. And whatever Tracy might have said, there wasn’t any harm done. In fact, I’ll bet Patches was happy to get out of the stall, even if it was only for a couple of minutes. Most of the time, all she does is just stand there.” He smiled reassuringly. “Would you like to learn how to ride her?”
Beth’s eyes widened eagerly. “Could I?”
“I don’t see why not. In fact, if you want to, we could go out tomorrow morning. We can both get up early and have breakfast with Hannah, and be back before anyone else even knows we’re gone. What do you say?”
“That would be neat!”
“Then it’s a date,” Phillip said. He stood up, and started toward the door. “And for God’s sake, turn the radio back on. This place is too big, and too quiet.” Then he was gone, and Beth was alone again.
She switched the radio back on, then flopped over onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Suddenly, for the first time since Tracy had come home, she felt a little better. Maybe if Uncle Phillip really would teach her to ride …
With the radio playing softly, she drifted into sleep.
When she woke up, the dream was still clear in her mind.
She lay still, thinking about it, reliving it, then rolled over to switch off the radio that was still humming softly on the nightstand.
She had been back in the mill, but it hadn’t been at all the way she remembered it from this afternoon.
Instead, it had been filled with people working at all kinds of machinery she’d never seen before. But they hadn’t seemed to be able to see her, and she’d wandered around for a long time, watching them work.
And then, faintly, she’d heard someone calling to her. The voice had been muffled at first, and she’d barely been able to hear it. But as she’d wandered toward the back of the building, the voice had grown stronger. She’d suddenly realized that it was coming from downstairs.
She’d gone to the top of the stairs, and listened, hearing faintly but distinctly, the voice, calling to her again.
But then, as she’d started down the stairs, a hand had fallen on her shoulder.
“You can’t go down there,” a man’s voice said.
She had stared up into the face of the man, and realized that he looked strangely familiar. His hair was iron gray and there was a hardness in his eyes that frightened her.
“But I have to,” she’d protested weakly. “Someone’s calling me.”
“You can’t go down there,” the man had said again.
Then the voice had called to Beth again, and she’d struggled with the man, trying to twist away from his grip. But it hadn’t done any good. The man’s hands had only tightened on her, and begun dragging her away from the stairs.
And then, with the voice from the basement still ringing in her ears, she’d awakened.
Now, in the silence of the room, with the darkness of the night gathered around her, she could almost hear the voice again, still calling to her, even though she was awake.
She got up from the bed, and went to the window, peering out into the night.
A full moon hung in the sky, and the village, its lights twinkling, lay spread out below. In the distance, almost lost in the darkness, was the dark silhouette of the mill.
Beth waited, half-expecting to see the same strange light glowing from it that she’d seen from the mausoleum this morning, but tonight there was nothing.
She watched for several long minutes, then finally turned away and began undressing. But when she finally slipped under the covers and closed her eyes, the memory of the dream came back to her once more. Once more she heard the strange voice calling out to her, a strangled, needy cry.
“Beeettthhh. Beeettthhh …”
And in the depths of her memory, the same voice echoed back, calling out the other word, the word she had seemed to hear in the mill that afternoon.
“Aaaaammmyyy …”
Amy.
Amy was calling to her. Amy needed her.
But who was Amy?
As Beth tossed in her bed, trying to fall back into sleep, she knew that somehow she would have to go back to the mill. She had to find out.
8
Tracy Sturgess woke up early on Sunday morning, her eyes going immediately to the open window.
Outside, the day was bright and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. That meant they’d be able to play tennis and croquet that afternoon, two games Tracy was an expert at and that Beth Rogers could barely play at all.
Tracy smiled to herself as she thought about it. She could picture Beth now, clumsily running around the tennis court — barely able to return a serve — while the rest of them watched, clucking sympathetically while they tried to keep from giggling out loud. Maybe they’d even play doubles, and Tracy would get Alison Babcock to be Beth’s partner. Alison was almost as good at tennis as Tracy herself, and the two of them had already planned it out. Alison would act as if she was going for the ball, then step aside at the last minute, telling Beth that she was only giving her more room. And Beth, not knowing what was going on, would keep on trying harder, and it would get funnier and funnier. And the best part of it was that even if Carolyn was watching, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, because it would look like they were all doing their best to help Beth have a good time.
Tracy stretched, then lazily got out of bed and wandered over to the window to look out onto the grounds. On the lawn, Ben was setting up the croquet court, laboriously studying a book, then measuring the distances with a tape measure. Tracy had insisted on an English court, with a single stake in the center and six wickets arranged around it. She and Alison had planned this, too, then practiced the unfamiliar layout with Jeff Bailey and Kip Braithwaite. Tracy could hardly wait until she saw the look on Beth’s face, particularly when Beth had to ask how the game was played.
“Oh,” she’d say, pretending to be surprised. “I thought you said you knew—” And then she’d pretend she’d suddenly remembered, and offer Beth her best sympathetic expression. “You meant the
And then, of course, all the rest of them would use Beth’s ball to get around the court fast.
As Ben placed the last wicket into the lawn, Tracy’s eyes wandered down toward the stable, and suddenly her happy mood vanished. Her father and Beth were in the paddock, saddling Patches. Next to Patches, already saddled, was her father’s favorite horse, an enormous black Arabian gelding named Sheik.
Tracy’s chin trembled with fury. She turned from the window and began struggling into a pair of jeans and one of her father’s old shirts. Ignoring the tangled mess of her hair, she slammed out of her room, and started toward the stairs.
“Tracy?” she heard her grandmother call from the far end of the corridor. “Tracy, darling, what on earth is wrong? Where are you going?”
Tracy spun around, her eyes glittering with anger. “He’s doing it again! He’s down in the paddock with her, and he’s going to let her ride my horse again!”
