Cider Brook. Carla Neggers
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if it owned the place. She could hear an unseen rooster crowing in the summerlike stillness.
If she remembered her map correctly, the farmhouse was at a hairpin turn in the road, which then wound back toward the village. That meant the stream under the bridge definitely was Cider Brook.
She lifted her backpack again and slung it over one shoulder. She would strap it on properly once she was on her way again. She crossed the bridge and left the road, pushing through knee-high ferns down a steep incline to the edge of the brook. The brook was narrow here—far too narrow to support even a small cider mill—but would widen farther downstream. The coppery, clear water was shallow, winding downhill over and around rocks and boulders that created natural pools and mini waterfalls.
She brushed away a mosquito buzzing by her head. A hundred years ago, this area had been largely farmland. Now much of it had been reclaimed by a mixed hardwood forest.
An old cider mill could easily be tucked in the woods, and she could walk right past it.
At the rate she was going, she would be finished with Knights Bridge well before her uncle and cousin headed back this way. She hadn’t calculated the exact distance from the bridge to the reservoir, but it would be a pretty hike—an adventure, even if she didn’t come across a nineteenth-century cider mill.
More mosquitoes found her, and she stopped alongside the brook to refresh her bug spray. Thunder rumbled off to the west. She looked up at the sky, hazy and blue directly above her but with ominous dark clouds behind her. Tucked in the trees as she was, she couldn’t see far enough to get a sense whether the storm was coming her way or moving off in another direction. This late in the season, she hadn’t considered she might run into a thunderstorm. Of course, once she thought about it she realized a storm wasn’t out of the question.
She noticed a trail on the other side of the brook. She had a feeling she was close to the spot where Cider Brook curved toward a dirt road that jutted off the paved one she had followed to the bridge. If she got in trouble with the weather, she could always work her way out to the road and find a house or a shed or flag down a car. Something. Right now, she wanted to get across the brook and on the trail.
Adjusting her backpack, Samantha tested a jagged, half-submerged rock. When it didn’t move, she stepped onto it, then jumped to a flat-topped hunk of granite, the cold brook water swirling and gurgling, soothing her sudden sense of dread as more thunder growled. She leaped to the opposite bank, sinking slightly into the soft ground, and thrashed through ferns and skunk cabbage onto the trail.
Lightning flashed, and the darkening clouds created eerie shadows. She picked up her pace. She didn’t need a detailed weather forecast to know a nasty storm was bearing down on her. The trail continued to follow Cider Brook into the woods. As she’d anticipated, the brook widened as smaller streams joined it on its gentle descent toward Quabbin.
As the trail curved past a huge, old red-leafed tree, she could see sunlight ahead—a clearing of some kind. A simultaneous bolt of lightning and ferocious clap of thunder propelled her into an outright run. Trees swayed in strong wind gusts, and she could hear the hiss of rain in the woods behind her. Fat raindrops splattered on the dirt trail.
Breathing hard, debating whether she should seek shelter in a protected spot in the woods, she emerged into a clearing. She came to an abrupt halt in front of an old rough-wood building, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet, tucked next to a small stone-and-earth dam and quiet millpond.
Damned if she hadn’t found her cider mill.
Or a cider mill, anyway.
It resembled the one depicted in the painting in her grandfather’s office, but it was run-down, obviously abandoned and definitely not new or painted a rich, vibrant red.
Hail pelted her, an unpleasant reminder of her immediate situation. It was dime-size and quickly covered the ground.
“Ah, damn.”
Of course there was hail.
She bounded up to the mill’s solid wood door, but it was padlocked. Why, she couldn’t imagine. Three small windows were encased in thick, dirty plastic. A garage-style door, where wagons had once unloaded apples and loaded cider, was boarded shut.
She knew how to pick a padlock. Her uncle had seen to teaching her that particular skill himself. “It’s only to be used in self-defense, Sam. No breaking into a vault or anything like that.”
She noticed faded Do Not Enter and Danger signs to the left of the door.
Lightning lit up the sky, and thunder echoed in the woods.
She needed to get inside.
Now.
Two
The storm was fierce, intense and downright unnerving, but Samantha rode it out inside the dusty, empty cider mill. With the rain stopped and the thunder clearly off to the east, she had her grandfather’s flask out of her jacket pocket and was debating whether to imbibe now or wait until after dark.
Then she smelled smoke.
Smoke? She groaned in disbelief. Wouldn’t that just top off her day?
She tucked the flask back in her pocket and breathed in deeply, hoping the smell of smoke had been a trick of her imagination. The mill consisted of a single room with rough-wood walls, wide-board flooring and a pitched ceiling with open rafters. It would go up in flames in no time if it caught fire.
The smell didn’t dissipate, and it wasn’t her imagination. It was definitely smoke.
Could the wind have carried smoke from a chimney in a nearby farmhouse?
What nearby farmhouse?
She could taste smoke now, feel it burn in her eyes.
She reached into the open compartment of the backpack at her feet, grabbed her four-by-nine-inch documents pouch and slipped it into an outer jacket pocket, opposite the one with the flask.
A strange hissing noise seemed to come from beneath the floor by a half-dozen old wooden cider barrels pushed up against the wall. In another moment, smoke, visible now, curled through cracks in the floorboards and floated up to the rafters as if it were a living thing. Samantha stared at it, transfixed. She couldn’t delude herself. She was in a fire.
She didn’t have a minute to waste. She clicked into action.
She knew she had to leave everything—tent, sleeping bag, food, water, toiletries, bug spray, first-aid kit, flannel pajamas and her merino wool wrap, a gift from her mother. So much for watching the stars come out, envisioning life here in the early eighteenth century.
More smoke poured through the floorboards.
Samantha dropped low, remembering that was what someone was supposed to do in a fire, with rising smoke. She pulled her jacket collar over her mouth and nose and launched herself toward the door.
She swore she could hear flames under her in the mill’s cellar.
Her eyes were blurry and watery with smoke, but she could see an orange, fiery glow by the north wall. She felt the heat of the fire now. Sudden, intense.
How long did she have before the old, dry wood exploded into flames?
Stifling a surge of panic, she crouched even lower, coughing as smoke filled the enclosed space. She kept moving. She had to get out of here before she collapsed due to smoke inhalation.
Flames burst through the floorboards by the barrels and crawled up the wall, bright and terrifying in the gray light. Fire and smoke seemed to join, forming a monster ready to consume everything in its path.
She got onto her knees, gasping for air. Her hand fell from her jacket, exposing her to more smoke. She covered her mouth and nose with the crook of her arm and decided she would crawl on her belly if she had to...but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. There was no pirate rogue to save her. She had to save herself. She had to stay conscious, get moving,