Page 12 of The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan’s Mill #6)

I stopped in the middle of the bridge, notebook in hand. The river burbled below, its surface dappled with light. The bridge was constructed of rocks and wood, its planks uneven but solid underfoot. I leaned on the rail and let myself take it in.

“The mill is a ruin framed by water and vines, a gothic silhouette on the riverbank. It’s something Lord Byron might have written odes about if he’d gotten himself lost in Wisconsin.”

I grinned at the line and underlined it twice.

Nobody at the magazine would print that, of course. The sub-editors would delete it without thinking twice, knowing it would ostracize any readers who didn’t have a clue who Byron was. But I’d submit it anyway… because it felt true.

The whole scene was picturesque in a haunted kind of way—the kind of beauty you had to earn by stepping off the main road and letting a town’s past find you.

Crossing the bridge, I made my way to the mill’s entrance.

The closer I got, the more the air shifted…

it was cooler, touched with the smell of wet timber and mildew and the metallic scent of rust. More ivy snaked up from the earth, claiming the outer walls.

Windows had shattered long ago, leaving jagged frames with the odd shard of splintered glass.

I tried the door, a heavy old thing warped by rain. It gave way with a tired groan, as though I’d just woken it up, while the hinges seemed to whisper to each other, “We have a visitor! Someone has come to visit us!”

Inside, the mill greeted me with stillness. With each footstep, the wooden planks moaned beneath me. I tested every board before stepping on it, half-expecting to plunge straight through into the river below.

Beams of sunlight speared through the roof in places where shingles had long since given up, catching the dust and setting it afloat like a galaxy of stars suspended in the air.

But it was the actual mechanical heart of the mill that took my breath away.

It was like a cathedral of industry.

Great iron cogs sat locked in place by webs and dust. Pulleys that once hoisted and turned now sat still as statues. I brushed my hand over one of the gears and it felt like I was touching the bones of something ancient and wise.

I could almost hear the noises it once made in its glory days—flour sacks thudding, belts spinning, the rushing of water churning, the constant creak of the wheel as it drew life from the river.

I stood for a while in the shafts of light, letting the creaky bones of the place sigh peacefully around me.

After a while, I found a set of stairs clinging stubbornly to one wall, its planks warped but still intact.

I climbed cautiously to the upper level.

Sunbeams poured in through the holes in the roof, splashing across the rafters and broken boards, turning the ruin into a patchwork of shadows and golden light.

From above, the whole place revealed itself differently—the cogs and pulleys stretched below like the skeleton of some long- extinct dinosaur while the river glinted through the cracks in the floor.

I leaned on a railing, scribbling in my notebook: “When the magazine sends a photographer, this is where I’ll send them first. The mill demands to be seen from above. Dark bones, shafts of light, beauty in decay… the very definition of chiaroscuro!”

Part of me didn’t want to leave the mill and its ghost-like otherworldliness, but I still had more to explore.

Eventually I made my way back down the stairs and stepped out into the daylight, pulling the door closed behind me, letting the mill rest once more.

I left the mill behind, following the riverbank as it twisted its way deeper into the woods. The path quickly became guesswork as I made my way over rocks and roots.

The sound of the river shifted. It was less of the gentle gurgle I’d heard on the bridge, and more of a restless push. The kind of water that was on its way somewhere.

Then, somewhere ahead, I heard it… a deeper roar, steady and thunderous.

By the time I rounded a bend, I saw the spray catching the light.

Rainbow Falls wasn’t Niagara, but it didn’t need to be. It was its own kind of wild.

The river gathered itself at the lip, foaming white against jagged rocks, then plunged over the edge in a swift-moving sheet of water that split on one or two jutting outcrops before disappearing into a rising mist at the bottom.

The sunlight streaming through the mist created an unmistakable rainbow that arched across the river at the bottom, sending it off with a flourish of color as the water continued on its journey.

Carefully I stepped over several rocks, closer to the edge. The spray cooled my skin. The rocks were slippery with moss. The water rumbled with enough force to warn me that one slip and I’d be carried straight over the edge, battered on the jagged rocks and sent to a watery grave below.

Slowly I inched my way back.

Yes, I loved taking risks, but there was a difference between being adventurous and being reckless.

That’s when I heard another sound competing with the roar of the falls.

It was thunder, not from the cascading water, but from the sky above.

I looked up to the sun disappearing behind a bank of quickly gathering clouds, black as Edgar Allan Poe’s raven.

A summer storm was approaching.