You know how the story goes. There's an old mill, closed a long time, lots of ugly stories about the reasons why floating around town. The patriarch of the family that owns it dies, and his son resolves to turn it into a classy little shopfront. Even when people die under mysterious circumstances, even when his stepdaughter insists she's made friends with a dead girl who lives in a little room behind the stairs in the basement of the mill, he pushes ahead.
It ends badly. Really badly.
In a lot of ways, it's about the stepdaughter, Beth, feeling uprooted by her mother marrying a rich guy who lives in the big house on the hill. None of her old friends want to spend time with her anymore, and her stepsister and step-grandmother are snobbish assholes who treat her as garbage. She's trying not to make like difficult, so she's ends up with no one to confide in, except a ghost.
But it's also about the limits of what you can force to happen. The stepdad, Phillip, ignores any objections to the project. His mother objects that it isn't what his father wanted? Ignored. His wife Carolyn, Beth's mom, suggests that maybe there is something wrong with the mill and it should just be torn down? Ignored. Too much money sunk into it now.
And by that same token, Phillip tries to brute force the halves of his family together. It's to his credit that he defends Carolyn and Beth from his daughter and mother's cruelty. But he can't undo generations of claptrap about breeding and one's proper station in life. His daughter in particular, goes round the bend to what seems an excessive degree on Saul's part. Not the cruelty, but the fact she ultimately deigns to get her own hands dirty trying to get rid of Beth once and for all. Up to that point, Tracey's been content with harsh words and backhanded comments, spreading rumors among her friends. Suddenly she's up to murder she's going to clumsily disguise as suicide.
Like I said, it ends badly. For everyone, since this is one of those horror stories that ends on an ominous note, rather than a hopeful or relieved one.
'And even though he was crying, she knew immediately that he, too, had retreated into a private world where the mill could not penetrate. He, like herself - like all the children - had escaped into another world, oblivious of the world in which his body toiled.
The fire was spreading now, sending tongues of flame out across the floor as billows of smoke rose from the rags and filled the room with a choking fog.'
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