The Miller’s Daughter

Skip Chamberlain is too drunk to be driving tonight. The pool-bottom blue digital clock in the dash gleams 11:11, and he thinks to himself “make a wish, asshole.” Miller’s Mill Road winds wet and black through the trees, and Skip stares zombie-like through the drizzle at the pavement sliding beneath his old Ford. “I wish I’d see The Miller’s Daughter,” he mutters to himself.

When they were kids, Tommy Bradley’s big brother Tim died out here on a rainy night. Everyone knows the last thing Tim Bradley saw on this earth was The Miller’s Daughter. She’s haunted these woods since she was run down by one of her father’s log trucks nearly sixty years ago.

Skip isn’t drunk enough to see ghosts. He’s arguing with himself about whether he’s actually too drunk to drive, while splitting his attention between the shoehorn-shaped spade of street threatening to dig under his headlights and flip his Ford into the night, and that goddam clock that still says 11:11 as though time has stopped.

He isn’t drunk enough to think time can stop, and – glancing up beyond the dash – he’s certainly not too drunk to see that fat bitch waddling across the road, her big, wet eyes shining black in his headlights. He cranks the wheel too hard. He feels the tires release from the wet road. As he sees the bottom of the ditch lunge at his face, Skip Chamberlain catches the briefest glimpse of The Miller’s Daughter with her back arched and face toward heaven.

Squinting at that fucking 11:11 beaming down at him, Skip realizes he's looking up at the old Ford’s glove box. He rolled it. He rolled his car into the ditch because he tried not to run down The Miller’s Daughter.

No. That’s not right. He didn’t swerve to avoid a ghost. That’s ridiculous. He saw her after he swerved. It was a dog. A fat, yellow bitch of a dog, and he missed her. He hopes. Half rolling, half crawling, he gets himself out the driver’s window and pulls himself upright. His head hurts like hell, but he can walk and he can see no sign of the dog.

The golden blush of the lumberyard radiates above the shallow row of trees masking the road from the monstrous lateral mountains of stacked logs. When Skip slips on the steep bank of the ditch and catches himself from sliding back down into the muck, he realizes his right hand is bloody red. Fuck. He must have hit her after all. Which means he rolled his Ford for nothing.

Well, fair is fair, he thinks to himself, as he slides back into the ditch. He reaches his bloody hand up under the driver’s seat and fishes out his old claw hammer. The least he can do is make sure she’s dead, and if she was hit hard enough to bleed, she couldn’t have gotten far.

Miller’s Mill at night is a scary-ass place. On a wet night, adrenaline-high and drunk, stalking a wounded dog, Miller’s Mill is a labyrinthine mess of raw wood and shadows. Skip hears whimpers and follows them between two precipitous pyramids of forty-foot logs. There’s gore on the ground and the whimpers he hears are not from a single dog. There are a few overlapping cries and they don’t sound like full grown dogs.

Puppies. That wobbling bitch wasn’t moving so slow because she was fat. She was pregnant with a litter of puppies.

Somehow this reminded him of a detail in the story of The Miller’s Daughter. An irony, of sorts. She was hit by one of her father’s log trucks when she ran out into the road to save the dog she’d got as a birthday present. She’d just scooped it up into her arms, trying to lift it to safety. They both died instantly.

Skip stumbles toward the little cries, hammer raised. The Miller’s Daughter passes through him from behind. He feels her. She takes his breath away for an instant, but in the soft glow of her light he sees three puppies squirming behind the body of the yellow dog. Without stopping to think he brings the hammer down on her head as hard as he can swing it. His momentum drops him to his knees. She never even flinches. She is already dead. But the puppies aren’t.

He raises the hammer three times. Once for each of them. Drunk or not, his aim is perfect. They’re soft little whimpering heads don’t stand a chance.

High up on the pile of logs he hears another soft yip. He looks and sees a ghostly hand calling him upward. There, halfway up the wet pile of split-bark logs, sits one little yellow puppy.

Not for long.

Skip climbs the pile, slipping and skinning his knee. He’ll teach that dog.

He swings the hammer, but he’s still too far.

He throws the hammer.

As it spins toward the small little dog, he feels a hand on his ankle. He watches as the yellow puppy seems to float safely above the wood, but the wood begins to move. To roll.

To crush him.

The last thing Skip Chamberlain sees on this earth is The Miller’s Daughter.