wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was starting to look like they were going to be almost real sisters after all.
Tracy could hardly believe it.
She skipped down the path toward the stable, doing her best to keep from laughing out loud.
Beth had actually fallen for it. Just because of a name written in an old book, she’d actually been stupid enough to think it was proof that her dumb ghost was real.
She sauntered into the stable. Peter Russell was mucking out the stalls. He looked up at her and frowned.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to come down here anymore,” he said.
“There’s some stuff I have to get,” Tracy replied, her eyes narrowing angrily.
“What kind of stuff?” Peter challenged. “Your dad told me the stable was off limits.”
“None of your business,” Tracy replied, but when she tried to brush past Peter, he stepped out into the aisle and blocked her way.
“It is too my business. And until your father says different, you stay out of here.”
Tracy hesitated, wondering if she should try to talk him out of it. And then she had an even better idea.
She’d just wait for Beth, and tell her what to get out of the tackroom. And Beth would do it, too. Now that she’d shown Beth that old book, she was sure Beth would do anything she asked her to do.
Anything at all.
25
A kind of somnolence hung over the house all that day, and more than once Carolyn had to resist an urge to go to her room, close the curtains, then lie down in the cool half-light and let sleep overtake her. But she hadn’t done it, for all day long she found herself obsessed with the idea that hidden somewhere in the house was the key to whatever evil lay within the mill.
For a while, after breakfast, she tried to fight the growing obsession, telling herself that Phillip was right, and that there could not possibly be anything inherently evil about the old building. She reminded herself that Phillip’s father, in his last years, had been senile, and that Abigail, in those last weeks of her life when she had changed her mind about the mill, had already been weakened by a heart attack.
And yet every argument she presented herself with fell to pieces in the face of her growing certainty that there was something in the mill that neither Conrad nor Abigail had quite understood, but had nevertheless finally been forced to accept.
Finally, after lunch, she started searching the house.
She began in Abigail’s rooms, opening every drawer, searching through the stacks of correspondence the old woman had kept filed away, looking for anything that might refer, even indirectly, to the mill.
There was nothing.
She went to the basement, then, and spent two hours searching through the jumble of furniture that had been stored there. When she finally emerged, covered with the dust and grime that had collected through the years, it was only to climb the long flights of stairs to the attic, where she began the search once more.
Again she found nothing.
But it was strange, for she did find that the Sturgesses, apparently for generations long past, had been inveterate collectors. Aside from enough discarded furniture to fill the house half-again, she had found box after box of old albums, piles of scrapbooks, cartons of personal correspondence, and even yellowed school reports done by Sturgess children who had long since grown up, grown old, and passed away.
And yet, among the collected detritus of the family’s life, there had been not one scrap of information about the mill upon which their fortune had been built.
In the end she decided there was a reason for it. The records, she was certain, would have too clearly reflected the realities of the mill — the theft of her own family’s share in it, and the appalling conditions under which it had been run. The Sturgesses, she was sure, would not have wanted those records around as a constant reminder of the sins of the past.
Eventually giving up the search, she wandered into the dining room to sit among the portraits of the departed Sturgesses.
She dwelt for a long time on the picture of Samuel Pruett Sturgess, who today seemed to be mocking her, as if he knew it was a descendant of Charles Cobb Deaver who was gazing at him, and was laughing at her efforts to discover the secrets he had long since destroyed.
At last, as the afternoon faded into the kind of hot and sticky evening that promised no relief from the humidity of the day, Phillip came home. He found his wife still in the dining room.
“Enjoying the pleasure of their company?” he asked. When Carolyn turned to face him, he regretted his bantering tone. Her hair, usually flowing in soft waves, hung limply around her shoulders, and her white blouse was smudged with dirt. Her face looked haggard, and her eyes almost frightened. Phillip’s smile faded away. “Carolyn, what is it?”
“Nothing,” Carolyn sighed. Then she managed a weak smile. “I guess I’m behaving like an hysteric. I’ve been turning the house upside down all day, trying to find the old records from the mill.”
“They’re probably in the attic,” Phillip observed. “That’s where practically everything is.”
“They’re not,” Carolyn replied. She pulled herself to her feet, and started out of the room. “And if you ask me, old Samuel Pruett destroyed them all himself.”
For a moment, Phillip thought she must be joking, but there was nothing good-humored in her tone. He followed her into the library, where he fixed himself a drink, then poured her a Coke. “What about the girls?” he asked. “Any problems?”
Carolyn sank into a chair, shaking her head. “None at all. They’ve been together all day, and I kept waiting for the explosion. But it hasn’t come.”
Phillip’s brows arched hopefully. “Maybe,” he suggested, “you were wrong this morning.”
“I wish I could think so,” Carolyn replied. “But I don’t. I just have a feeling something’s going to happen. And I wasn’t wrong about the mill this morning, either,” she added. “I really do want you to close it up again.” She met his eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t explain it, but I’ve just gotten to the point where I believe your parents were right. There’s something evil about the place, and I think your whole family knew it. I think that’s why I can’t find any records. And I mean, none at all!”
Phillip hesitated, then, to Carolyn’s surprise, nodded. “You might be right,” he said at last. “Anyway, I can’t really say I think you’re wrong anymore.” His gaze shifted away from her for a moment, then came back. “I went down there again today, and something $$
As clearly as he could, he told Carolyn about the strange experiences he’d had — the odor of smoke he’d noticed in the mill when he’d been there with Alan back when the restoration was just beginning, and the sense of panic he’d had the day Alan had died.
He even told her about the hallucination he’d had, as if he’d slipped back a century in time, and felt as if an angry mob had been reaching out to him, trying to lay their hands on him.
“I felt as though they were going to lynch me,” he finished. “And I went back this morning.”
“And?” Carolyn prompted him.
Phillip shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t like being in the place alone, but I kept telling myself it was nothing — that the place has so many bad associations for me that I couldn’t feel any other way. But the longer I stayed, the worse it got. And I couldn’t go into the basement at all. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. Every time I looked down those stairs, I had the feeling that if I went down them, I’d die.” He fell silent, then drained his glass and set it aside.
“What did you do?” Carolyn finally pressed when it seemed as if Phillip wasn’t going to go on.
“Went to see my accountant.” He chuckled hollowly. “When I told him I was thinking about giving the project up, he told me what I told you — we can’t. Only he had the numbers to back himself up with.”
