Vampire High Sophomore Year

11



The right thing. You grow up thinking there’s always a right thing and a wrong thing. Then you start to realize that sometimes there’s no right thing. Or that something might be wrong or right, depending on how it works out. Or that there’s more than one right thing, and you have to make a choice. Like this time.

How could I not just forget the whole idea, now that I knew why nobody talked about Crossfield, and what had happened there? Ileana wanted me to. Justin would agree. Nobody but Turk really wanted to go ahead with this thing. Which was a pretty good clue that it was a bad idea.

But what good would leaving Crossfield alone do? It would always be a painful memory, no matter what else happened there. Wouldn’t it be better to try to make something good grow in that place? Something that could make Ileana smile?

I didn’t know. But, since I didn’t, I thought the thing to do was to push it a little further and see what happened.

On Monday afternoon, Turk and I went down to the courthouse. We were going to find out who owned that mill.

The Gomorrah County Courthouse was a red brick monstrosity from the nineteenth century that had been designed to look like a castle by somebody who had never seen a castle. It had turrets and gargoyles and tall, narrow windows covered with iron bars. There were even ramparts that looked like they’d be good for pouring boiling oil down onto the cars driving by.

And of course it had dungeons.

Not real dungeons. Just offices. Three levels of them, all underground and all as small and dark as if the people who worked there were serving life sentences. But jenti aren’t too hot for natural light, so it made a kind of sense to build it that way.

The hall of records takes up most of the first floor basement, but you can’t find the documents about Crossfield there. To find those, you have to go to the annex, which is down on the third basement floor, at the end of the hall, behind an old-fashioned oak door, which is locked. The door has a window of frosted glass and the word ANNEX painted on it, and the word HOURS under that. Under that, there’s nothing.

I knocked. Nothing happened. I knocked again. More nothing.

“Move over, Cuz,” Turk said then, and started dragging one long, black pinkie nail all over the door.

“Turk, what is it with that scratching thing?” I asked.

“Back in the seventeenth century, they got so refined at the French court that they decided knocking was rude,” Turk said. “So they started scratching at the door. And the longer the nail on your little finger was, the politer you were. I just like it.”

“Doesn’t seem to work any better,” I said.

Turk started to scratch on the glass. Figure eights, spirals, curlicues, louder and faster. When she got to the zigzags, the door opened.

There was a tiny white-haired man glaring at us from behind the door. He was wearing a suit so old he looked like a character in a play.

“What do you want?” he snarled.

“Fire,” Turk said.

The little man turned even paler.

“Get outta my way,” he squeaked, and pushed past us. He went scuttling up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps faded into the stones.

“Turk, that was the lowest lie I’ve ever heard you tell,” I said.

“What lie?” Turk said. “All I did was say the word fire. Is it my fault if he draws false conclusions?”

We went into the annex. Turk shut the door behind us and locked it.

“Now, where’s the stuff on Crossfield?” she said.

It wasn’t hard to find it. There was one wall of shelves with big leather-bound books on them, and the words CROSSFIELD TITLES at the top. The only other things in the room were a wooden desk with a chair, a gooseneck lamp, and a big map on the wall opposite the books.

“Perfect,” I said when I saw it.

It was Crossfield, divided up into lots and numbered. There were spidery words on some of them. SIMMONS MILL, PRESCOTT MILL, TURNER MILL.

Turk put one of her long nails on the Simmons Mill.

“That’s the one we want,” she said.

I made a note of the plat references and found the volume that matched up with it.

The deeds for that piece of land started in the 1650s. They ran through the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, up till when the Simmons Mill had closed in the 1930s. Then they stopped.

The last owner listed was Grover Simmons.

“Eighty years nobody’s paid any attention to that place,” Turk said. “Grover Simmons has got to be long gone.”

“Unless he’s a jenti,” I said. “Then he could show up tomorrow.”

“No contact information, is there?” Turk said. “Running down ol’ Grove ain’t gonna be easy.”

The office door rattled.

“Hey, let me in to my place,” an old voice squeaked.

“See if you can find anything with old telephone numbers or addresses,” Turk said. “I’ll handle this.”

I went searching through the shelves of books. Turk went over and leaned against the door.

“It’s locked,” Turk said.

“I know it’s locked. Unlock it and let me in,” the voice said.

“How do I know you’re supposed to be in here?” Turk said.

“It’s my office. You saw me in it. Let me in, you brats,” the voice said.

“I can’t see you now,” Turk said. “How do I know you’re the same guy?”

“Unlock the damn door and you’ll see I’m the same guy,” the voice said.

“Okay, I’ll try,” Turk said.

She rattled the lock for a long time.

“It’s not working,” she said.

“Turn the key!” the voice said.

“There’s nothing here,” I said.

Turk nodded.

“Oh, wait,” she said. “I see a key. Hold on.”

And she opened the door.

The little man pushed into the room. His eyes were glaring.

“You lied to me,” he said. “You said there was a fire.”

“No, I didn’t,” Turk said.

“Yes, you damn well did,” the little man said.

“No. I said the word fire completely without context,” Turk said. “You drew your own conclusions. It’s part of a living art project I’m working on, throwing out a word and seeing how people react. You’re the best one so far, by the way. Thanks for your help.”

“Get out of my office and don’t come back,” the little man snarled.

“But wait,” I said. “You’ve helped her with her homework. Now you have to help me with mine. My local history project. That’s why I came here. Everybody says you know more about Crossfield than anybody else.”

“Who said so?” the little man said. He sounded curious now.

“Well, everybody I asked about it,” I said.

The little man crossed his arms.

“Well, maybe I do know more about Crossfield than anybody else,” he said. “But that don’t mean I have to tell what I know. Just because these are public records don’t mean I have to shoot my mouth off. But anyway, what’d you wanna know?”

“I’m doing research on the Simmons Mill,” I said. “And I don’t find any records for the—the chain of title—after 1932. Why is that?”

“Chain of title? You’re not here about the other thing?” the little man asked.

“What other thing?” Turk said.

“Nothin’. Forget about it,” the little man said. “Anyway. The Simmons Mill. Maybe I can help you.”

He pulled out the same volume that Turk and I had looked at and went slowly through the Simmons documents page by page.

Finally, he said, “It ain’t here.”

“So I was right,” I said.

“Looks like it,” the little man said.

“But somebody’s got to own it, right?” I said.

The little man shrugged.

“Look, just end your research thing where the paper trail ends,” he said. “1932. You lucked out, kid. Almost a hundred years you don’t have to write about.”

“Hey,” I said. “I go to Vlad Dracul. If I turn in a paper that stops in 1932, I’ll be lucky to get a C. Isn’t there anything to update this with?”

“No, there ain’t,” he said. “That place could be in Frontierland by now. Probly is.”

“What’s Frontierland?” I said.

“Aw, it’s this old thing,” the little man said. “See, Crossfield ain’t really a part of New Sodom. I mean, it is, but it ain’t. So there’s this old law. Goes back to 1676 or something. When a piece of land in Crossfield stands empty too long, and nobody knows who owns it, anybody who wants it can homestead it. There’s certain things you got to do to claim it, and you got to stay there a certain time, but then it’s yours.”

“Wow, that would make a great footnote,” I said. “Can I see the document?”

The little man sighed, went to the bookshelves, and climbed up on a footstool.

“I shouldn’t have to do this after what you kids done to me,” he said. “I’m only doing it ’cause I’m a public servant.”

“We appreciate it,” Turk said. “And anyway, you were great.”

“You really call that art?” the little man said. “Scaring someone?”

“Sure do,” Turk said.

“Nutcase kid,” the little man grunted. “Anyway, here it is.”

AN ACT FOR THE TENURE OF EMPTY WASTES

When it shall hap that a farm or steading of any sort shall be left untenanted for the time of three yeares, and no owner be writ down in the towne records, whoso shall tenant it and build thereon a cabin or a wigwam, and plante corne, and dwell for seven yeares upon it, shall have possession of said farm or steading so long as it shall please him. To keep or to sell, to leave unto descendants, and to do all things that may be done with a farm or steading.

“They had all these places standing empty, see?” the little man said. “From the war. And nobody wanted to go back to Crossfield. So they tried to give it away, and that worked pretty good. Like you saw, there was somebody owned where Simmons Mill is up until the Great Depression.”

“And this is still on the books?” Turk said.

“Yep,” the little man said. “Just me and the rest of the guys in records know about it. Well, us and a few old-timers. Kind of a joke. Tear down the old mill and put up a wigwam. Plant some corn and stay there seven years and it’s all yours.”

“Gee, imagine somebody trying to do that now,” Turk said.

The little man laughed.

“Good luck trying to grow corn in September,” he said. “Anyway, that dirt’s solid rock.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll do our best.”