She’d seen ancient remains of buildings poking out through theNew England landscape, like the bones of dinosaurs left to fossilize in the sand. There was a cemetery with seventeenth-century graves right behind the Hollywood Hits multiplex, and the abandoned State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, which had long ago inspired Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitarium, loomed large above a hill, close to the bustle of a highway and the glow of the signs of fast-food restaurants. But she’d never peeked at the skeletal remains of the Wingrave Manufacturing Company.
It was a three-story mansard structure of dark red brick. Many of its windowpanes were broken and crude graffiti had been splattered along its walls.
“I used to play here as a kid. Come,” Noah said. He lifted a corner of the rickety fence that seemed ready to crumble into dust, slipping across the perimeter and holding the fence up politely so that she could follow him.
They walked around the building. She snapped several photographs and saw pigeons staring down at them from the windows.
“When did it close?”
“Oh, like 1980. It held on longer than the other textile mills. By the fifties all the work went south, and then abroad, where manufacturing is cheaper. They tried bringing in Colombian workers in the seventies to handle the machines, but it did no good.”
Noah kicked an empty glass bottle, sending it rolling into a patch of yellow grass.
“What did your grandmother mean about a tech hub?”
“There’s a software company that she wants to buy. The headquarters would be moved here. My grandfather owned a cannery, but Carolyn says textiles and fish are old-fashioned. She’d like to build a new empire made of zeros and ones.”
“How do you feel about that?” she asked.
“I go to the same school Carolyn attended and study what she wants me to,” he said, tossing her a sharp smirk. “Do you imagine it matters how I feel?”
For a second his mask of indifference cracked. He was vulnerable, just as he’d seemed the night of the party when she’d helpedhim find his cellphone. He took out a cigarette and lit it. When he offered her a drag, she shook her head and began walking again, rounding the building.
“What’s your family like?” he asked.
“Small.”
“How small?”
“My parents divorced when I was five years old. My mother worked in sales and traveled a lot, so my great-grandmother basically raised me.”
“What was she like?”
“Tough. She lived through a revolution.”
She met a monster and survived,she thought. She pictured the countryside, long ago, the mountains of Hidalgo with their thick canopies of fir, oak, and juniper. That had been Nana Alba’s world, a countryside still steeped in folklore and superstition, in tales of witchcraft, devoid of fax machines and cable TV. Once again, Minerva found herself thinking of Beatrice Tremblay and her musings on witchcraft.
Minerva took more pictures of the building, then paused to lower her camera. The day had been warm, but the building shadowed them and the evening had brought with it a cool breeze. Shadows stretched and grew as the sun descended.
“What did your grandfather think happened to Virginia?” she asked.
“Everyone said she ran away with that man.”
“Santiago.”
“Yeah.” Noah contemplated the façade of the factory, with the graffiti running up and down its padlocked doors. “That one.”
“He really thought that?”
“One of the detectives he’d hired said maybe it was a serial killer. It’s not like murder is a modern invention. They might still be alive now.”
“That would be a really old serial killer if they were around in 1934,” she said.
“Monsters don’t age. They live forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“My grandfather thought maybe Betty was right. That there had been a supernatural occurrence. When Betty still came over, before she got too sick, they used to sit together and talk about Briar’s Commons, how it was haunted. It irritated Carolyn when they’d carry on about it—you heard her; she can’t stomach horror stories. My grandfather and Betty spent whole evenings sharing ghost stories and local legends. I learned a lot about headless horsemen and demonic black cats by overhearing their conversations.”
