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Chapter 1: What historical significance does the Siskin Mill hold?
Siskin always had the mill. It was more of a novelty, a tourist attraction mentioned in a footnote in pamphlets for its historical value. Back when the town thrived on its lumber industry, in the days when America was still rosy-cheeked and young, the Siskin Mill had been popular.
It's hard to believe that the crumbling collection of rotten wooden structures, nuzzled up alongside the riverbed, used to be a source of pride. rather than a half-forgotten eyesore now serving as a shelter for vermin and derelicts. No one in Siskin paid the mill a second thought.
They knew it existed, to be sure, but it was more like an antique, a rusted classic car you'd see on cinder blocks in some overgrown yard, or a nice old house that you'd loot for broken furniture. There was talk about tearing it down, maybe developing homes along the riverfront. These aspirations never amounted to anything but bluster.
People quickly forgot about them for more pressing current matters. The only ones who paid attention to the mill were some of the local teens, if the childish, crude graffiti and beer cans that littered the cobwebbed lumberyard were any indication. And of course, the town council's mysterious correspondence. In short, the general populace ignored the mill.
It sat along the river, dark and cold and teetering on its own destruction, like a body that refused to die. Through most of the year, the mill was quiet, its machinery ancient and rusted, its blades worn by years of weathering, and the lumber still loaded into its chutes rotting into fungi-ridden pulp. One humid summer night, a night like many before it, the mill woke up.
From somewhere within its deep, filthy interior, rusting machinery coughed to life as the saws ground and gnashed their dull teeth. The building shook and rattled with an ungodly amount of noise, breaking the morning stillness with a cacophony of grinding, rattling, and cutting as it convulsed violently like a sick dog. Fifteen minutes of terrible, agonized industry passed before.
With a loud, unceremonious thud, a single canted log rattled its way down the chute and came to a stop in the collection bin. The log itself was, contrary to the noise and activity, almost completely ordinary. The only difference separating it from any other piece of lumber was the writing emblazoned on its smooth surface.
It was as if someone, a person with an uncanny talent for whittling, had chiseled a statement into the pulpy interior, a clipped sentence that was nonsensical in its current context, a vague blurb condensed into eight simple words. Whatever it meant, it must have been important enough for someone to write it, even in the astronomical chance that anyone would visit the location to read it.
And, had the events of the following morning not taken place, that would have been a foregone conclusion. It started when the people of Siskin opened their newspapers. The Siskin Gazette, a well-established newspaper in town, was almost as old as the mill itself.
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Chapter 2: How does the Siskin Mill awaken after years of silence?
And this wasn't to mention the pile of bodies waist deep that had been burned into a single blackened mass of twisted limbs and burnt fabric found near the store's service exit. The stench of charred linen and scorched flesh hung through the waterlogged store, and one fireman left the store to vomit after discovering a tiny body trampled in the rush to escape.
The second revelation emerged a few hours later. Witness statements from survivors described how the usual fire exits had been blocked shut, with one door sealed via the panic release jammed by a crowbar. there had been no fire alarm. The patrons were only alerted when a plume of choking black smoke burst into the showroom.
It was as if someone had deliberately blocked the exits to cause as much death as possible. A horrifying theory only strengthened when the fire marshal discovered two empty gasoline cans and a pair of gardening gloves in the dumpster across the street.
It was very possible, the marshal suggested, that whoever had started the fire had an impressive knowledge of the store's fire exits, considering they had known enough to jam the exit door in the employees' only break room. They also would have known how to disable the fire alarm. The store employees, or even the manager, wouldn't possess that knowledge.
Whoever had done it wanted to ensure the most destructive fire possible, and knew exactly how to maximize the death toll.
This struck the town of Siskin with all the pain of an oncoming fever. Not only were 15 dead in such a terrible fire, but the marshal pointed to a culprit. One of their own was responsible for the crime. They had a few suspects already lined up.
A former employee caught stealing from deposits, a vagrant known for his petty vandalism, and a couple of teenagers spotted hanging around the plaza up to no good. Theories ranged from revenge to insurance fraud, along with simpler explanations, like a sick prank gone horribly wrong. And now, the people of Siskin feared more destruction was to come.
To have two fires happen in the span of only a few days was, after all, something that did not happen here, and some of the older, more nervous residents worried for their homes and businesses. But the Siskin Fire Department, in a press conference led by Fire Chief Green, assured the townspeople that everything was under control.
These fires, though unfortunately fatal, were nothing more than terrible coincidences, nothing anyone needed to worry about. For the next three days, the town returned to some degree of normalcy. The Sycamore Hill shopping plaza reopened a day after the fire, and those who had lost loved ones were given a complimentary shopping voucher for up to $50.
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Chapter 3: What shocking headline appears in the Siskin Gazette?
After all, there was no reason whatsoever for Green to, in the span of one week, suddenly drop everything and throw his life away by committing lethal arson attacks all over town. He had no financial troubles, and at his last physical, the doctor noted his relatively decent health. Why would a man like Green suddenly go on such a violent crime spree? Green himself had no answer.
As he sat in the police station, still reeking of gasoline, he acted like a sleepwalker, just woken up from a dream. He sat at the table, dazed and weary, asking the officers why he was sitting there in a blanket and in his underwear. The last thing he remembered, he said, was reading the newspaper in his office. And even then, that was a blur.
The past few days were nothing but a fuzzy, half-recollected daze to him. Green couldn't explain the gas cans and diagrams in the lumber mill's office, as he had no memory of acquiring them. The fire chief pleaded with his interrogators that he was innocent and that this was a terrible mistake.
Although such a scandal might have been the talk of the town for months afterwards, with the endless updates on the fireman turned arsonist case and the search for a new chief to replace the humiliated Mr. Green, Siskin recovered at an unusually rapid pace.
After only a day and a half since the revelation that Walter Green had been the culprit, everyone in town suddenly found the matter to be irrelevant, a sort of sensation that the story had come and gone with all questions answered.
Walter Green was released from custody and allowed to return home, having been granted an unbelievable act of either leniency or mercy with no charges brought against him. He was welcomed back to the fire department with open arms, his crew joyfully celebrating his return with a barbecue and a couple of cold beers.
No one seemed to have any ill will, let alone any memory, that he had just a few days before been involved in some of the worst crimes the town had ever seen. Indeed, everyone agreed that the past few days had been a terrible blur, with no one able to accurately recall anything of note from the period.
There had been fires, yes, but no one could pin down exactly why they happened or who had caused them. Those who died in the Siskin fires, such strange and awful mysteries were given funerals. They were quiet and dignified, much like the people themselves. And they appeared briefly in the obituary section of the Gazette before it moved on to more important matters.
The Siskin High School gym and the furniture store at the Sycamore Hill shopping plaza were rebuilt in only a few days, with little to no aesthetic or visual changes. Even the worn paint and cracks were replicated, a testament to the architectural skill of Siskin craftsmen. By the time July rolled around, the town had once more adapted to its usual conservative routine.
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