“Was in the town of Hawley
When the people was burned and killed,
In a textile manufactory
Called as the Hawley Mill.”
THE SECOND floor of the mill building was a cavernous space so large Frank Carter’s flashlight beam nearly vanished in the darkness, casting only a vague blur of illumination against the far walls. The wooden floor had been replaced a hundred years ago, after the fire burned the first floor to ash in 1907, but the renovators hadn’t refinished it yet. The floor was varnished, though the sheen had been worn off by eighty years of footsteps until the mill was shut down in 1989. Grooves in the oak and holes for bolts still marked where rows of massive cast-iron sewing machines once whirred and clattered, filling the chasm with an ear-splitting din.
Now every step Frank made in his sneakers could be heard, the slightest squeak of his rubber soles echoing back from the void. He switched on his night-vision goggles and pulled them down over his eyes. The entire empty expanse appeared in all its glory, as if it were bathed in a sickly greenish-gray light.
Hawley Textile Mill had been empty since the last serger was hauled out of the building in the nineties. There had been an attempt to renovate the property as a shopping mall, but a series of injuries, accidents, and overall bad luck plagued the construction crew until the investors withdrew. For almost twenty years now, the mill building had remained untouched.
“I’m not seeing anything on the infrared, Houston,” Junior reported over the headset.
“Are you still on the fifth floor?”
“I’m just finishing my sweep.”
“Where are you, Savannah?”
“Third floor.”
“Anything on EMF?”
“Sure enough,” she drawled, “if electrical wires get you all excited.”
“We were warned the building still had juice to keep the security systems active.”
“I know, sugar.”
“If anyone’s interested,” Frank interrupted, “I’m currently on the second floor with the goggles. Not that it’s important or anything. Maybe I’ll just go stick my head in a bucket of water. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? God, I’m so depressed!”
Houston laughed at the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. “Keep your head dry, Baba. You’ll short out the headset if you get it wet. What have you got?”
“Nothing. Just checking in.”
They’d all insisted on adopting ridiculous nicknames when they founded C-Troop Paranormal. Or more specifically, everyone but Frank had insisted on it. Frank thought it was lame. Savannah—Tamicka Jones—her nickname was pretty obvious. She wore her Savannah accent as a badge of honor. But Houston had never lived in Texas. His nickname came from manning the consoles for all the cameras and coordinating communications and data collection, as NASA’s base in Houston did for the astronauts. Junior was fresh out of college—Frank’s younger brother, Louis.
Houston had inflicted the name “Baba” on Frank, supposedly because he fussed over everybody too much. “Baba” was Russian for “old woman.” Frank hated the name, but once Louis had gotten wind of it, there had been no escape.
“I’m on the fourth floor now,” Junior announced. “I smell something.”
“Did you fart?”
Junior snorted into the mic. “No, asshole. It smells like burning.”
That was worrisome. The building had been inactive for almost two decades. The only thing Frank could think of that might smell like burning was faulty wiring. “Junior, are you sure you’re smelling something burning? Maybe it’s something else—cleaning chemicals or—”
“No, Baba. It definitely smells like… smoke. I don’t think it’s electrical….”
“Maybe it’s an apparition,” Houston suggested. “After all, there was a fire here in 1907.”
Maybe. But Frank didn’t like leaping to paranormal explanations when there might be something more mundane—and in this case, potentially more dangerous—causing it.
“Guys!” Junior exclaimed. “You should see this. The infrared’s lit up like a Christmas tree!”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything is showing hot—real hot. All the walls, and the floor, and the sewing machines…. But I don’t see anything when I look with the naked eye.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “All the sewing machines were taken out in the nineties.”
“That can’t be right. I can see them right in front of me.”
“Camera seven is pointed right at you, Junior,” Houston interjected. “You’re standing in the middle of a big ol’ empty space.”
“But I can see them.”
“Child, what are you smoking down there?” Savannah asked.
“I’ve got the camera recording. You can see them for yourselves.”
Frank was inclined to believe him. Junior had a good head on his shoulders, and a vision of something from the past was hardly unusual for the type of work they were doing. But Frank doubted anything would show up on the camera. Whatever Junior was seeing, he wasn’t likely to be seeing it with his eyes—not directly.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’m coming up there.”
He strode across the empty expanse toward the stairwell at the back, but before he was halfway there, Savannah reported, “I’m in the stairwell, going down. I smell something too.”
“What?” Houston asked.
“Junior’s right. It smells like… something’s burning. I could swear it’s smoky.”
“You see smoke?”
“Well… I don’t know. It just sort of… feels smoky.”
Frank broke into a run. “Junior! You’ve got the infrared. Do you see any heat sources on that floor?”
No answer.
“Junior?”
Still no answer.
Houston said, “What are you doing, Junior?” A pause. “Junior!”
Frank heard a sound. It was incredibly faint, but he thought it might be a scream—a man’s scream. Junior’s scream. It wasn’t coming over the headset but from somewhere high above him, muffled by distance and two floors. He ran harder and slammed through the door to the stairwell, smashing it against the wall.
Smoke. There was smoke in here. He could smell it too. “Goddamn it! What—”
He didn’t get to finish the thought. A door slammed open high above him in the dark stairwell and Louis was screaming. Frantic footsteps stumbled down the metal stairs, and as if from a great distance, Savannah shouted, “Junior!”
Frank ran up the stairs as his brother’s footsteps came clattering down toward him in the dark, dissolving into a cacophony of noise—the sound of a man falling down a flight of metal stairs amid shattering technical equipment. The agonizing scream ended abruptly as Louis’s body crashed into the landing with a sickening thud. The fragments of his headset and camera rained down around him.
FRANK STAYED with Louis while they waited for the ambulance, clutching his hand to reassure himself that Louis had a pulse. He had no idea how to assess his brother’s injuries. He could tell he was still breathing—that was it. Otherwise he was unresponsive. He was bleeding and it looked as if his leg might be broken, judging from the sickening way it twisted underneath him.
Please, God, don’t let his back be broken….
Savannah turned on the lights in the stairwell and came to sit with him while Houston made the 911 call. He kept checking in with Frank while they waited for the ambulance.
“I don’t smell it anymore,” Savannah commented quietly, holding one of Junior’s limp hands in both of hers.
Frank looked at her, uncomprehending. Then slowly it dawned on him. The smoke. He couldn’t smell it either. Not a trace of it.
He tried to speak, found he couldn’t, and then cleared his throat to try again. “His face looks burned.” The side of it Frank could see was puffed up and red.
“He’ll be all right, sugar. Just hang in there.”
When the paramedics arrived with a stretcher, Frank and Savannah got out of their way. The only thing Frank could learn from them was that Louis didn’t appear to have a broken back or neck, but he had several injuries to the head and body that were potentially life-threatening. And yes, his leg was broken.
Though he felt he was barely holding it together, Frank insisted on helping Houston and Savannah do a quick lock-up of the building while the ambulance took Louis to the Hawley Memorial Hospital. The team couldn’t leave until everything was secure, and after what had happened to Junior—whatever had happened to him—Frank couldn’t bring himself to leave anyone alone in the building. But as soon as that was done, they all piled into the company van and went straight to the hospital.
THEY SPENT the next three hours in the ER waiting room, hearing nothing about Louis’s condition. Had Louis been conscious, Frank might have been allowed into the ER with him, since they were family. But with Louis unresponsive and possibly needing surgery on his leg, Frank had simply filled out reams of paperwork about Louis’s medical and family history, praying he hadn’t forgotten about any allergies to medications, and then been told to wait.
“I don’t know what happened,” Houston said, keeping his voice low. There was an old woman napping in a chair by the television set. “He was waving his hand in the air in front of him, like he was trying to touch whatever he thought he was seeing. Then he started freaking out—waving his arms around, hitting himself, and staggering back. He ran through the door to the stairwell.”
“I know,” Frank said. They’d been over it a million times. The camera equipment was packed into the back of the van, too difficult to reach without unpacking everything in the hospital parking lot. They’d have to review it later. But the three of them were all roughly on the same page. It appeared Louis had seen a vision of the fire—perhaps he’d felt he was in the fire. The way Houston described it, Louis may have thought his clothes were on fire before he panicked and ran for the exit. Then it appeared he stumbled blindly down the stairs and fell.
The camera footage might tell them more, but Frank doubted it.
Junior, Frank thought, you’d better come out of this. I want a full report, you little pipsqueak! No lying down on the job.
He didn’t know what he’d do, if…. No. He refused to think about that. Louis would be fine. He had to be. He was the only family Frank had.
Around two in the morning, Savannah put a gentle hand on his arm to pull his attention away from an insipid miracle sponge infomercial. The doctor was approaching.
“Are you Frank?” the woman asked, smiling and extending a hand.
Frank shook it. “That’s me. I’m Junior’s—Louis’s—older brother.”
“I’m Dr. Khambatta. First, let me tell you your brother is doing well. He hasn’t yet regained consciousness, but his condition is stable.”
“Can I see him?”
Her smile turned wistful. “It’s well past visiting hours, but I can take you back for a short time to see him. Your friends may see him during visiting hours tomorrow.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?”
“Yes, I do. He has a mild concussion, and we had to operate on his leg to reset the femur—it was broken in two places—but he should recover fully.”
“What about the burns on his face?” Savannah asked.
Dr. Khambatta appeared confused. “Burns? No, there are no burns. His face is fine.”