GHOSTED Part 3

GHOSTED: A Mystery in Four Parts Part 3

“This is fucking daft,” Keri said to Trey. They were standing in the dirt parking lot beside Trey’s Camry, getting rained on. The shoot was completed, and Trey’s lights and equipment were stowed neatly inside the car. They had no reason to remain in Shayham, and Keri was so eager to be gone she could almost feel the momentum of the car and hear the tires as they sluiced through the flooded highways.

“You’re right,” Trey said looking back at the bulky square shape of the mill, the red of the bricks and the black of the iron of the place washed out by the weak light of the distant streetlamps. “That room can’t flood. It’s not flooded now, and if the water isn’t getting in there now, in all this rain. How would that much water ever get in there?”

“A mystery for another day.” Keri said. She wanted to punctuate the comment by getting into the car, but she didn’t. She stood there, waiting.

He ran the flashlight beam over the brick wall of the mill. “Something is off about the underside of this thing.” Trey said. ““Take your light. Go into the head of the stairs in the big room. I’ll go under and we can meet up.”

“This is idiotic,” she said. “You’ll fall in the bloody river and drown and then Paul will say a fairy carried you off.”

“Paul wasn’t saying that.” Trey said. “You were saying that. He said a guy with an axe.”

On that bright note, Trey walked to the edge of the mill and disappeared around the corner. Keri saw his light fade into shadow of the of the cavity beneath the mill even as she followed Trey out of the rain and back into the rotting mill.

Keri was attuned to the mill now, and it didn’t frighten her as it had before. The two hours or so of boredom they’d spent filming the place had mortared familiarity over fear. Her first thought was at least she’d be out of the rain for a moment.

Her cranberry doc martens were so soaked she didn’t notice for a moment or two that she was treading in water.

She shone the light down and saw water cresting over her boots and running into the eyelets. The water carried a scrim of colorful chalk dust on its surface—melted faces, she thought wildly. A large piece of chalk lifted by the deluge roll up over her foot.

Keri didn’t think, ‘I was wrong’, and rationalize some natural phenomenon to account for a localized river surge or other bizarre flash flood event.

Her thought was This is how they all went.

“Fuck me,” she said quietly, and turned her light towards the stairs that led beneath the mill, sunken into the floor, sealed by a chain link fence and impassible. Trey was down there, and if this room was flooding, he was already underwater.

She heard a rattle and a bang; identified the clamor as the chain link fence heaving against the flood, or, more terrible, being pushed against by Trey, trapped below.

Keri ran to the grate because to not do so would be cruel, but of course there was nothing to be done.

The water was surging up so powerfully from below that it was forced into the shape of the fence, scores of small diamond-shaped fountains arcing upwards and spilling out to flood the room.

She saw Trey’s flashlight, spinning in the tumult. The steel light couldn’t float, but the water was being pushed up so fiercely that the small flashlight was trapped against the links of the fence.

She saw, for instant, fingers on the links.

They were too small, too pale, and too feminine to be Trey’s. The fingers were green.

Then they were gone.

Trey’s flashlight spun, came up through the fence, and rolled along the floor, pushed along the concrete by the last of the water as the pressure ebbed.

Keri was on her knees; light shining through the fence, pulling at the links with her left hand, watching as the water receded with terrible swiftness.

“Trey…” She whispered. She didn’t have the courage to shout. She pulled on the fence, her strength barely registering against the firmly bolted frame. She collapsed, crying, but not for long.

Her ear to the wet bricks, Keri heard something moving under the mill: crunching as if of bones, and a rough, sliding sound.

Hooves on gravel and scree.

Her imagination conjured the image she’d always pictured of the kelpie: a drowned, long-dead horse, upright and moving.

Keri got to her feet in a single, panicked lunge and then froze in place, too terrified to move, to abandon Trey.

She saw Trey’s Maglite, still lit, lolling gently in the receding water.

If she took his flashlight and went to the place where Trey had gone beneath the mill, she could watch the water flow into the Manomet and see if there was anything else there.

Something squelched in the mud below her, followed by another rustle of sliding gravel and the clump of what could only be a hoof.

“Fuck that,” Keri whispered, and she headed for the parking lot.

Keri had never seen a ghost or spoken to an angel but there was no doubt in her mind that she’d just been in the presence of something supernatural, something both predatory and unreal, but with a mind and a will and a complete awareness of Keri Boyle and that thing was rejecting her. or releasing her, but whatever that thing was, and whatever its reasons, Keri understood that it was allowing her to live when it did not have to.

She was not escaping as much as being let go, so she was going. She was going, as far and fast as she could, on shaky legs and with crying eyes, she was going.

She ran to the Camry, pulled the door open and got behind the wheel. Her already soaked clothes now streaked with color from the chalked floor, squelched when she sat and doubtless stained the upholstery.

Trey had the keys.

She hid inside the car for just a minute or two, but that was too close to the mill for comfort. She set out and walked away from the river, away from the bridge.

The bus station lights were on.

She went there.