Are You Haunted (part fifteen)

Are You Haunted

(part fifteen)

“It wasn’t Doyle alone who saw her. When they started doing the special work, Drybrook retired most of the old hands. Others they moved to New London, a different mill Drybrook owned where they waterproofed cloth for tents. But some of the young city folk, bought here to work the second shift, the ones who had to leave after dark… Because you remember they had the blackout those days. It was a good, dark walk to town. Some saw that light, and some said they saw a person or persons moving in it. This was on the road going north—the way to housing the government put in.” Summers pointed, turned, and pointed again. “You came by the south, but nobody from the plant took the highway. We had quite a few sightings for a while.”

“But…” Powell had pictured the accident as long ago, in the last century.

From the hillside, the walls that remained could be seen a few feet high, the rooms exposed by these gridlines bulldozed full of rubble.

Leveled off, he guessed, for safety’s sake.

Every square foot sat littered in glass, myriad glints of it. The mill in Doyle’s time was skylit, hundreds of windowpanes above the work floor. And these had not been shattered, but fragmented.

“What happened? How did it burn down?”

Summers shook his head. “Blew up.”

“I hope no one…”

How densely packed the chambers were, though; how devoid, how sanitized, how stripped the entire site was, of any debris much larger than a splinter of glass. The explosion had been catastrophic. He supposed he was naïve to hope no one was hurt.

“Did they get out?” Powell looked at Isobel.

A call came, and Summers shaded his eyes like a forest ranger spotting a wisp of smoke. Lloyd Guy jogged down the lawn to a short concrete wall, split under pressure, the shifted earth below almost a flat tier. A drop too sharp for a man in dress slacks and oxfords.

With no great alacrity Guy put a leg over, settled his other leg, and sauntered to them. “Where’d you come across them cockleburs, Summers?”

“If you’re meaning Mr. Kenzie and Miss Gilshannon, they came out in a car. A very distinctive car. You may want to have a look at it, out of curiosity.”

Isobel flung a hand. “You know Dennis will have driven it off. You must have seen him pulling away, when the truck went by just now.”

“You been living up at Concord,” Guy said to her. “You used to stay down here with your granddad one time, but he’s dead now.”

“Do you know Isobel Gilshannon, the Chief has been asking? I hear she’s married to a Tovey, but won’t take his name. Puts on airs and won’t wear a skirt. And did you talk to them at the Crown, at Doyle’s, at St. Lizzy’s, those,” Isobel’s mouth formed a b, meant to be read, “teachers who remember me, maybe, before I left them all, at fourteen?”

“I talked to Dennis Tovey. Old man, not your husband.”

“Uncle Dennis likes me.”

“I do my job, ma’am. I talked to Mrs. Drybrook, before I came out and made you get yourselves off the property once.”

15

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part sixteen)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)