Miller nodded. “At first, we thought it was the storm picking up, and Little Harry Stentler says something about it being the ghost, just joking around, and we’re all looking for matches and running into each other and thinking it was all pretty funny, and we got the lanterns relit.” He picked up the glass, saw it was empty, and switched back to the pint. “Then the wind came back and blew them all out again.”

Alva glanced sideways at Sam. This whole scene was getting out of hand—she’d come to demand her crew return to work immediately, not to listen to ghost stories. Really, people’s obsession with the supernatural was ridiculous. Did they have so little terror in their everyday lives that they had to invent some? “So it was windy that day,” she said. “What does this have to do with you refusing to return to work?”

“I thought it was wind, too,” Miller said. “Maybe not entirely, maybe my imagination was starting to fire up, but I didn’t want to spook my crew, so I just laughed again and relit the one I was holding. And as the light flared up—” He took a sharp breath in and drained his pint.

“What did you see?” Sam’s words were gentle, the smallest push.

“A hand,” Miller said, his voice almost a whisper. “A lady’s hand, white and long. It just sort of reached past me, over my shoulder, real delicately.” He swallowed. “It opened the glass, and pressed one finger down on the flame. Tamped it right out.”

“Someone was playing a joke on you,” Alva said. “One of your men—”

“Lady, I could see through it,” Miller said. “I could see right through the damn thing. ’Twasn’t no joke.”

“Classic manifestation,” Sam murmured, scribbling away. “And your crew? They didn’t see the hand?”

Miller shook his head. “If you ask me, they were playing with us, the ghosts. A whole pack of ’em. Harry, he swears up and down he heard footsteps behind him, but every time he turned around they started coming in a different direction. Jeb saw a little boy, pale as could be, with his hair wet and … and water coming out of his mouth, like he was drowning. Ed, now, he swears he saw a … a noose. Coming down from the ceiling like a snake, coming right at him—”

He broke off, clutching the empty glass in front of him. “There are bad things living in that place,” he rasped, looking straight at Alva. “You should go back to the city and pretend you never heard of it.”

She held his gaze, feeling the weight of the dark walls pressing against her lungs. It was ridiculous, his story—this whole meeting was ridiculous, a farce. She needed to breathe; she couldn’t breathe in this horrible dark, dirty place—