‘It’s a branch,’ said James, pointing the flashlight’s beam at a broken bough that had smashed through one of the second-floor windows; it lay atop shards of glass. You could feel the cold wind blowing in the shattered window from the top of the stairs.
‘Wow,’ said Allan. ‘That’s some wind.’ He noticeably shivered.
‘What should we do?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ said James. ‘For right now. I’ll clean it up later.’
‘Well, at least we know it wasn’t a ghost,’ said Allan. ‘Just a powerful wind.’
We scrambled down the stairs and back past the breaks and the sifters and the packer and the sewing machines suspended from the ceiling by a system of ropes and pulleys, where the flour bags would be packed and sewn shut. We went back in the store and into the office. James sat down at the dusty rolltop desk, with metal clips and papers all over it, small notebooks, pens, pencils, more clips and a few postcards, too. Old photos of the mill and damsite — some black-and-white and some grainy colour — and a few old photos of the millers and employees over the past seventy-odd years of the mill’s two-hundred-year existence. James opened the bottom drawer of the rolltop desk and produced a bottle of whisky, with a note written on masking tape taped to it, and he read: ‘DRINK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.’
He stared at it and added, ‘This qualifies,’ and unscrewed the cap — the seal was already broken — and he took a deep swig, then passed it to Allan. After taking a swig, Allan passed it to me and I sipped lightly, then passed it back to James.
‘Man,’ said Allan, ‘don’t worry about who shut off the light. It was either you or some freak thing, you know. But it was probably you. Big deal.’
‘It wasn’t. I know it sounds weird, but I know it wasn’t me.’
‘Maybe someone else’s been here,’ I offered, ‘like your dad, for example.’
‘He’s away,’ said James. ‘He’s with his buddies in New York for the weekend.’
A crash was heard, from we weren’t sure where, and we all jumped.
‘I think that came from outside,’ said James. ‘It sounded like it came from the dock.’
And he stood up and left the office and walked toward the loading dock; we followed.
‘It’s just a cart,’ he said, leaning over the dock, looking down at the parking lot, looking at a handcart lying on its side on the gravel and asphalt. ‘It should be inside, anyway,’ he added. ‘I don’t know what it’s doing out here.’
James jumped off the dock and picked up the handcart and righted it and walked it over to the ramp and rolled it up to the dock, leaning in the wind as he walked. ‘You know what?’ he said. And then paused.
‘What?’ said Allan. ‘We’re on tenterhooks.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s of no consequence.’
‘What?’ we said.
‘People have died in this mill, you know, like worksite accidents.’
‘So?’ said Allan. ‘So we’re back to the poltergeist hypothesis? Are you saying it’s more likely that the ghost of a dead miller shut off the lights than you? Because if you are,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s a little much.’
‘First off, I’m not saying it was a ghost of a dead miller, for god’s sake. Secondly, there have been ghost stories surrounding the mill, of course.’
‘Why of course?’ said Allan, scratching at his head.
‘Well, you know,’ said James, ‘it’s a two-hundred-year-old flour mill. It’s an old building and kind of scary at night and people have died in the building, is all I’m saying, which means it isn’t surprising that some ghost stories surround the place.’
‘Like what?’ said Allan. ‘The Ghost of Christmas Past floats through here from time to time? Or maybe Casper?’
‘Forget it.’
‘No, no,’ said Allan. ‘Tell us your ghoulish tales.’
‘All right,’ said James. ‘Get bent.’
‘If you have a ghost story,’ I said, ‘I want to hear it.’
The wind was louder than the falls out back, but the falls could still be heard distantly, buried beneath the wind.
‘No, it’s just this one guy,’ said James, looking at us wearily, ‘named Matthew Higgins died in the mill around 1952, got caught in a belt and it snapped his neck, a piece of clothing or something, and after he died some strange stuff started happening, I heard.’
‘Like what?’ said Allan.
‘Like just equipment started acting up all the time,’ he said, ‘and there were power outages all the time — and the millers would hear footsteps.’
‘What’s so strange about that?’ I said.
‘When no one else was around. When they were milling alone. When they were milling at night. There’d be reports that they’d heard footsteps. Even now, today, like sometimes Tadek says he hears footsteps at night when he’s milling alone.’
‘Man,’ said Allan, ‘the mill makes quite the racket when it’s going — of course Tadek hears shit. It’s an audio illusion or something, you know. What he perceives he hears he doesn’t really hear. It’s just a bunch of banging that sounds like footsteps.’
‘Yeah,’ said James, ‘but sometimes his tools have been moved. Sometimes he says he knows, like knows for a fact, that he didn’t leave some tool where he finds it.’
‘Does he ever drink on the job?’ I said.
‘He doesn’t really drink at all.’
‘Maybe he just forgot that he’d moved whatever tools,’ said Allan.
‘I don’t think so. He’s got his routines.’
‘You know ghosts aren’t real?’ said Allan. ‘You know that, right, James? Like, once you’re dead you’re dead and you don’t communicate with this world because you don’t exist, like your ego and shit, it doesn’t exist at all, so how would you go about haunting your old job site?’
‘I’m not saying I believe in ghosts,’ said James, ‘but I do believe there are mysterious things that go on in this world and the universe that we can’t explain.’
‘Well, when you put it like that, yeah of course,’ said Allan. ‘But that doesn’t mean that the ghost of some Higgins guy’s floating around the mill moving Tadek’s tools.’
‘I’m not saying it’s Matthew Higgins.’
‘Or some other ghost.’
‘I’m not saying it’s a ghost.’
‘You kind of are,’ said Allan.
‘I’m not. What’s a ghost, anyway?’ said James.
‘I’m not following,’ said Allan.
‘Records are ghosts, for example, and books and movies,’ said James.
‘Books and movies and LPS are all just records — inanimate objects,’ said Allan. ‘We’re the goddamn ghosts!’
‘Haunting the planet temporarily,’ said James.
‘Something like that,’ said Allan. ‘Haunting each other at least.’
It wasn’t raining, though I imagined it pouring, the mill pond flooding the banks.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s just agree that it wasn’t the ghost of Matthew Higgins that shut off the office lights and not worry about it because there’s nothing to worry about, you know.’
‘Agreed,’ said Allan.
‘Yeah,’ said James. ‘All right.’
‘Don’t be mad,’ said Allan. ‘We just don’t believe in ghosts like you do.’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Well, but I don’t not believe in them, either. It’s not a matter of belief. You have brushes with them or you don’t.’
‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Allan.
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’ he said. ‘You’re acting like only the elect get contact with the spirit world — and the rest of us go on living with the illusion that we’re the only, like, sentient beings on the globe of our type, the human type, or with human-type intelligence, but you know, they’re not alive … ’