Godfrey had never actually been inside Twygrist–it was the kind of place you drove past, and said, vaguely, that one day you really must explore it. Spooky-looking old place, you said comfortably, and drove on and forgot about it. But clearly he could not do that now, clearly he must investigate, and so he took a torch from the glove compartment, locked his car, and went up the slope.
The eerie dusk-light was lying over Twygrist like a shroud. When Godfrey pushed the door open the stench of dirt and decay met him head on. Dreadful. Like a solid wall of black sourness. There was a smell of damp as well–that massive volume of water in the reservoir, held back by the sluice gates!–and there was a dull rhythmic beating of something overhead. It was several moments before Godfrey realized it was the horrible old memorial clock, ticking away to itself, reverberating inside the mill’s emptiness. It was rather a macabre sound: like a monstrous heart beating somewhere deep in Twygrist’s bones. Godfrey found himself remembering the classic Gothic tale about the murdered heart that went on beating after death. Edgar Allen Poe, was it? Yes, it was, and it was not a story you would want to remember in these circumstances. Still, he would take a quick look round to see if there were any clues that might indicate Amy’s whereabouts, and then he would go back to Quire.
He shone his torch, trying not to squeak in surprise when the light fell on the massive silent machinery. Everything had long since fallen into disuse, but you could see how it would once have operated. There were the millstones that once had ground the corn, and the culvert where the water would have rushed in from the reservoir, and a chute for tipping the sacks of grain down from the mezzanine floor above. There were the huge mute waterwheels enclosed in their vast, rotting tanks, their teeth festooned with dripping cobwebs.
There was something extremely menacing about the waterwheels. Godfrey thought that even though it must be dozens of years since they had moved, there was still a latent energy about them, as if it would not take much to call them into clanking, ponderous life. If the sluice gates were opened–or if they gave way with age–and the water came pouring into the mill once more, would the force of it smash the half-rotting tanks? It seemed strange to have wooden tanks, but perhaps they had been more durable than metal. Metal rusted and corroded; wood, if you treated it carefully, lasted well.
The lower tank had not lasted very well, though. Even from where he stood, Godfrey could see how the wood had crumbled to an unpleasant sponginess; he could see long pallid streaks near the bottom. Some sort of timber infestation, most likely. There had been a small patch of dry rot in Quire’s attics–like a network of thin strands of spun cotton, it had been, and the surveyor had said the spores would multiply and spread at an alarming rate, and they must have it treated absolutely at once. Godfrey remembered it had cost a great deal of money to get rid of it.
It would cost an even greater amount of money to get rid of the dry rot in here because it looked as if it had spread over most of the tank’s side. In the light from the torch it almost looked like long pale strands of hair growing out of the split corner, wetly plastered to the old wood.
Pale strands of hair…It was curious how this half-light could play tricks with your vision. Godfrey could almost imagine there was a hand within the hair–a thin hand with long tapering fingers, reaching out in supplication…
At this point he realized he was shaking so badly that the torchlight was shivering, lending a horrid semblance of life to the machinery. He made himself grip the torch more firmly and the eerie illusion vanished. Godfrey remembered that light and shadows were notorious for twisting quite ordinary things into something sinister-looking. Still, he would reassure himself before he went away.