Harlan’s Mill

Harlan’s Mill wasn’t much of a town anymore. Back in the seventies, when the paper mill still ran three shifts and the river stank of sulfur and money, it had been something. Folks had jobs, kids played Little League on the field behind the high school, and the diner on Main Street served coffee strong enough to wake the dead. But the mill closed in ‘89, right after the big layoff, and things just… faded. Houses sagged. Stores boarded up. People left if they could, or stayed and drank if they couldn’t.

Tom Reilly came back in the fall of 2005 because his dad died. Heart attack, the coroner said, but Tom knew better. Harlan Reilly had been drinking himself slow for twenty years, ever since Tom’s mom walked out and never looked back. The funeral was small—just Tom, a cousin from Portland, and old Mrs. Granger from down the street who brought a casserole nobody ate. They buried him next to an empty plot that was supposed to be for Mom, but she was God knew where now.

The house on Maple Lane hadn’t changed. Same peeling green paint, same creaky porch swing that groaned like it remembered every argument. Tom was forty-two, divorced, a failed writer with two unpublished novels gathering dust in a Brooklyn apartment he couldn’t afford anymore. Coming home felt like stepping backward into a life he’d outrun. But the house was paid for, and the quiet might do him good. That’s what he told himself.

The first weird thing was the smell. It started faint, like wet earth and something metallic, rising from the basement. Tom figured it was just mold—old houses in Maine got that way. He aired it out, ran a dehumidifier he’d bought at the hardware store in Castle Rock. But the smell lingered, especially at night. He’d lie awake in his childhood bedroom, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling, and feel the house breathing around him.

He ran into people, of course. Small towns don’t let you hide. At the IGA, Mrs. Granger cornered him by the canned goods. “Your dad talked about you all the time,” she said, eyes sharp behind her glasses. “Said you were gonna be famous.” Tom mumbled something about trying. Later, at the diner—now called Millie’s Place after the old owner died—Sheriff Daniels nodded from his usual booth. Daniels had been a deputy when Tom was a kid; now he was gray and heavy, nursing coffee and pie like it was medicine.

“You staying long?” Daniels asked.

“Thinking about it,” Tom said.

Daniels nodded slow. “Town’s quiet these days. Good place to write.”

But it wasn’t quiet. Not really. At night, Tom heard things. Scratching under the floorboards. A low humming, like machinery far away. And whispers—soft, overlapping, like a crowd murmuring just out of earshot.

He started writing again. About the town, the mill, the way the river had turned black after the chemicals leaked in ’82. Kids used to dare each other to swim in it; one boy, Joey McAllister, came out with blisters that never healed right. Joey left town young and never came back. Tom wrote about that, and about his dad, who worked the night shift until the end, coming home reeking of pulp and regret.

One evening in November, the power went out during a storm. Wind howled like a living thing, rattling the windows. Tom lit candles and went down to the basement to check the fuse box. That’s when he saw it: a crack in the concrete floor, new and jagged, running from the wall to the old coal chute. Something dark seeped from it, slow as syrup.

He knelt, flashlight in hand. The crack widened as he watched—no, that couldn’t be right. But it did, inch by inch, with a sound like bones grinding. The smell hit him full force then: rot and river water and something older, hungry.

From the darkness below, a hand reached up. Pale, bloated, fingers webbed with what looked like roots or veins. It grasped the edge, nails scraping concrete. Then another hand. A face followed—swollen, eyeless, mouth working soundlessly. It looked like his dad, but wrong. Like something had worn his skin too long underwater.

Tom scrambled back, heart hammering. The thing pulled itself higher, body twisting unnaturally, bones popping. More came behind it—shapes that had once been people. Mrs. Granger, her casserole dish still clutched in decayed hands. Sheriff Daniels, badge tarnished and green. Joey McAllister, skin blistered and peeling in sheets.

They didn’t speak, not exactly. But Tom heard them in his head, a chorus of whispers: We waited. Down in the hollow. The mill fed us. The river kept us. Now you come back, and the hunger wakes.

He ran upstairs, slammed the basement door, shoved the old china cabinet against it. But the house shook. Floorboards buckled. The whispers grew louder, intimate, like lovers murmuring secrets.

Your dad knew. He fed us a little every night. Just enough to keep us quiet. But he stopped. Heart gave out. Now it’s your turn.

Tom grabbed his keys, bolted for the front door. The porch swing creaked though there was no wind inside. Outside, the street was empty, houses dark. But he saw movement in windows—pale faces pressing against glass, watching.

He drove to the diner, the only place still lit. Inside, a handful of folks sat at the counter: old men in flannel, a waitress with tired eyes. They looked up when he burst in, soaked and shaking.

“They’re coming up,” he gasped. “From under the houses. The mill—”

The waitress smiled, slow and sad. “We know, honey. We’ve always known.”

Sheriff Daniels stood from his booth, pie forgotten. “Town’s got its secrets, Tom. Best to let ’em stay buried.”

They moved toward him then, not fast, but inevitable. Hands reaching. Eyes empty but knowing.

Tom backed out into the rain. The river roared nearby, swollen and black. He thought about running, about screaming for help that wouldn’t come.

In the end, he went home. The basement door hung open, the crack now a gaping maw. The smell welcomed him like family.

Some say Tom Reilly finished his book. Others say he just disappeared, like so many before him. But on quiet nights in Harlan’s Mill, if you walk past the old house on Maple Lane, you might hear typing from the basement window. Steady, relentless. And underneath it, the whispers.

The mill never stays empty long. The town sees to that.