Chapter 9

“That Goddamned smell!” Gary choked out. “What the hell is that?” He coughed into his palm. Camilla did likewise. The sulfur-laden atmosphere burned her eyes and the mucosa in her nasal passages.

They’d arrived in the narrow passage between the low green drying shed, and the whitewashed cinderblock wall of the mill. She remembered her cousin’s description of descending the phantom steps into 1958 and watching the three tall smokestacks belch toxic effluent into the air. Woozy and muddled, she glanced around and caught sight of the smokestacks over her right shoulder. The air above all three shimmered in the light cast by invisible, upward pointing spotlights—unnecessary light-pollution, she thought distractedly—but she detected no billowing gray-white smoke. It was also unexpectedly quiet in the courtyard: no thunder of the dyers and driers inside the three-story building; no shat-hoosh of the weaving flats on the 2nd floor. It took a moment to remember that production was scaled back in preparation of the mill shutdown in 1965. Or was that 1964, she wondered? She couldn’t remember. She flinched as a hand dropped onto her shoulder.

“Did it ... do this to you ... before?” Bill wheezed. She hadn’t seen him crawl over beside her.

“Worse this time.” She noted that, though disheveled from the experience, all four remained clothed. “Maybe because it was four of us, instead of just me.” She rubbed her roiling stomach. “I feel like an elephant kicked me.”

“After it kicked me in the head,” Gary coughed. He glanced over at Maggie. “You okay, doll?”

She laughed derisively and looked up and down the narrow passage. “Are we in Lisbon Falls?” She poked the pavement beside her right hip with a fingertip.

Gary responded in a nasally Humphrey Bogart voice: “I can tell you we ain’t in Kansas, anymore, sweetheart. Did anyone get the license number of that Greyhound bus that ran us over?”

“Beep-beep, Richie.” Maggie grinned at Camilla. “That sounds so natural, doesn’t it?”

“Just rolls off the tongue,” Gary agreed. He pushed onto his knees, and then shakily took his feet. “This is definitely not Marshall, New Hampshire, you all.” He stared at the cube-shaped drying shed and the walls of the surrounding mill. Camilla hadn’t expected the entire ground floor to be windowless. What could be seen of it, anyway.

Gary help Maggie to her feet. “Why is it so quiet?” she whispered. Using Camilla’s shoulder as a crutch, Bill took his feet, and then assisted her to a standing position.

“The daytime shift probably just left?” Gary ventured. Even as he suggested this, lights on the 3rd floor began to switch off, reducing the illumination in the courtyard by half.

“I don’t like this,” Maggie said nervously. “What if they catch us here?”

Camilla ignored the question, having spotted a steel chain strung between the side of the drying shed and the mill, isolating them and the half-dozen bulky green containers arrayed against the wall. Suspended from the chain at the low point was a large metal sign. Her guess was the front side bore an admonition to remain outside the cordoned off area until the damaged sewer pipe could be repaired. Twenty yards beyond the end of the drying shed stood a rusted, 12’ tall chain-link fence. Beyond that lay a sparsely populated parking lot. The gate which Bill had described in the book was off to the right of the shed, hidden behind the corner. “Fuck me,” she muttered. “The mill is really real.”

Turning to face Bill and the others, she said: “If the steps exist in 1963, they must be right here.” She swept a hand to indicate the side of the squat green building, to where the green bins sat against the mill wall. “It’s exactly as you described it in the book.” She glanced over her shoulder, remembering Jake’s repeated encounters with the rabbit hole’s temporal guardian, the so-called “Yellow-Card Man.” Knowing he was dead didn’t stop her from lowering her voice to a whisper. “My guess is we’d find them between the bins over there.”

Spaces ranging from twelve inches wide to three feet separated the six bulky containers. If the storage bins never moved, they’d provide nominal protection for the steps, she thought. Only ... she shook her head, just as Gary gave voice to her sudden doubt.

“Even if the steps were invisible,” he said, scratching his head, “someone would eventually stumble over them working in this area. That someone would either climb the steps into Al’s Diner’s in 2011—” He glanced down the length the passage. “—or wherever they led to in real life, and then trigger a reset when he came down them again.”

Maggie completed his thought in a tight voice: “Or run off in a panic for his supervisor when he found them. Which means that everyone in the world would know about the rabbit hole by now.”

Gary shook his head. “We wouldn’t be standing here if that was true, Mags. They’d have this place locked up tight as Fort Knox.”

“Or Area 51,” Camilla muttered. A sudden thought popped into her head. “Wait...” She turned and stared down the length of the passage. “Maybe ... maybe you can only ascend the steps if you descended them in the first place. Or even find them, for that matter! Which means—” She laughed harshly. “Which means we’re wasting our time here, because—”

“--none of us came down the steps!” Gary exclaimed. Laughing, he kicked at the air directly before him, and then at odd distances either side of the original kick. Then, along with the others, he jumped as the remote in Camilla’s hand beeped loudly and flashed bright blue. An instant later, they jumped again as a raspy voice from behind them demanded: “What the hell are you kids doin’ here?”

Camilla whirled, expecting to discover the disheveled Yellow Card Man standing beyond the chain. Instead, she discovered a heavyset, cigar-chewing mill worker with thinning hair and a weather-beaten face. He wore a grey uniform shirt over grey work trousers and scuffed black boots. The label stitched over his left breast pocket announced his name as Will Foley. Below the name was stitched his position as Mill Foreman. “Hi,” she croaked, instinctively removing and palming the remote control.

Foley stepped up and over the low-slung chain. “What are you kids doing here?” he repeated. “You up to no good? You planning on vandalizing the walls?” He glanced at Camila’s right hand, still clutching the remote, and then those of the other three. “Some punk spray-painted filth on the outside wall over the weekend. Was that you kids?”

Camilla and the others instinctively backed away, shaking their heads. “No, sir,” she croaked in unison with Maggie and Gary. Bill sidled up beside her and now nudged her with his elbow.

“Now might be a good time to make an exit,” he muttered. “Say to midnight, last night?”

Camilla glanced at him sharply, and then at the others. The mill foreman advanced on them slowly, hands bunched at his sides, determinedly chewing the stub of cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“Where you kids from? You’re not local—I don’t recognize a one of you. You outside agitators? Up from Portland, or something? What’s that thing you got in your hand there, missy girl? That ain’t a knife, is it? You wouldn’t be planning on knifing old Will, would you, missy?”

Camilla half-expected Foley to charge them and try to wrest the remote from her grip; instead, he stood there, chomping the cigar with fists planted on his wide hips. His thick gut pushed four inches out over his wide black belt; even in the dim illumination, she could see thickly corded biceps straining his shirt sleeves. She winced as he hocked up a mouth-full of phlegm and spat it onto the cement by his right boot. At least he hadn’t directed it at her.