Page 15

Every rural locality has legends and spooky circumstances. It comes with the territory.

Rumors get out of control; there’s never enough police presence to figure out mysterious deaths; farmers and churches often cook up lies to keep curious teenagers off their properties. There were lots of rotting houses, abandoned ranches, people building weird things in the woods.

But Rose Town was something else.

It was a settlement about two miles away. Half of it was ancient industrial-era buildings and tenements, the other half was aborted construction projects. It was a much bigger place than where everyone lived, with better land, closer to fresh water, and shady trees up and down the streets that grew fruit free for the taking.

The steel mill was there. Had been bought and paid for four times over since Rose Town had been abandoned back in the 1940s.

But no one could live in a place like that.

It takes a lot to get investors to agree that a location is haunted. Being afraid of ghosts and ghouls was for wary townspeople, not suits from the city. So it meant something for a place so valuable to sit uninhabited. For a mill full of machinery to lie coated in dust.