Soon after, Maple Street was busy with army personnel and cement trucks speeding up Copper Mountain Road to the Factory. Walter glowed with satisfaction. A small Sheriff in a small hick town had shook branches all the way to the top and monkeys fell to the ground. Still, as Walter had said a couple of times, it was far from over.
Chapter 63
After nearly a month, the Doctors thought the three children would have suffered muscle atrophy but with proper rehabilitation and exercise, their strength steadily improved. It was their mental state that suffered the most and was mysteriously not improving. Although physically fine, the hospital still had not released them to their parents. They came to visit every day only to be greeted with dark and blank eyes that saw nothing and looked at nothing. It was clear that they would not improve without psychological help.
At the start, protection for Doctor Fran Jorden and her children was the only reason she came to Sheriff Cornwall with the incriminating documents. Now, learning of the children’s mental condition and dire need of counselling, conscience and ethics screamed to remind her that it was all her doing. She understood that she was the wicked witch that lured them into the oven. A few days later Doctor Fran Jorden, with her Masters in psychology and specializing in the treatment of children’s emotional distress entered Twin River’s Hospital and walked over to the Psychiatric Ward. After a week of preliminary evaluation, she understood that she was in for the long term. None of the children responded to treatment and remained blank of eyes and mind.
There were occasional sparks in the young dark minds although not of conscious effort or due to treatment. All three children were the only ones in a private room paid for by Ruth Albright. At night, when all was quiet in the Ward, only nightlights softly glowing and the children were in bed, young eyes suddenly snapped open at the same time. A power unfelt by sane minds once again took control of innocence. As if in a hypnotic state, three children slipped out of bed and with bare feet, walked across a cold floor.
As if each knew what the other was going to do, in unison they sat cross legged in the middle of the floor facing each other with joined hands. Nothing was said, nothing was thought, all staring at something that was not there. A soft glow of rainbow colors glistened in their faces. As if by magic or evil, they lifted a few inches off the floor to float in mid-air. As if a soft wind had picked up, their gowns started to flutter. Then, slowly, as if on a slow merry-go-round, they started to circle.
Out in the hall two women watched the strange event through a window in the door. Nurse Emma was Head of the Ward and whispered,
“Now you see why I called you?”
Doctor Fran Jorden slowly nodded and whispered back,
“I guess I have to believe you now. You say this happens every night?”
“Yes, and always at exactly this time. What you are seeing is not the strange part. Keep watching their faces.”
As the unholy circle of children slowly circled, Doctor Jorden gasped in horror. Although it was Amina’s body, it was now Alexander’s face. On Robert’s body was Amina’s face and the faces slowly rotated as if taking turns trying on each other’s face.
Doctor Jorden asked,
“Have you told anybody else about this?”
“Are you kidding? Who would believe me?”
“Okay, let’s keep this between us while I try to figure it out.”
Chapter 64
Sheriff Walter Cornwall was in his cruiser turning left off Maple Street onto Jasper Street. It had rained all night but now, by mid-morning the dark clouds politely made way for the sun. Isaac was in the passenger seat and asked,
“She is a scary woman. Is that why you asked me to come along, as back up?”
After a chuckle Walter said,
“Once you get to know her, she is really a very nice woman.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Since school and trust me, you don’t want to know how far back that goes.”
Walter then tried very hard to be comical by impersonating an old man sitting in a rocking chair drinking moonshine.
“Why you young’ns ain’t got no knowing of that far back.”
“Yeah, very funny. How long will it take for me to realize that she is really a nice person?”
Walter chuckled and said,
“Well, you are young so perhaps within your lifetime.”
A big truck was parked in Ruth’s driveway with lettering on the side reading, ‘Expert House Repair’. Ruth, in her dogged determination, or as Walter had called it, ‘stubborn old fool’ had decided to fix up the house rather than move into one of her many newer ones. This was the house of her memories and had no intention of giving it all up just because it had been reduced to shambles. One of her favorite sayings was, ‘money can fix anything’.
Walter parked on the street and walked through the front gate. As yet, the gate had not been repaired, still broken from when Rick ran over it with his pickup truck. It was leaning against the fence and still suffering the effects of a twelve gauge shotgun. The gaping hole in the attic wall so recklessly gutted with a chainsaw had almost been completely repaired. It only needed matching shingles on the outside.
As the front door was open, there was no need to knock. The first thing Walter and Isaac saw was a cleaning crew putting things back the way they were before Rick Calhoun frantically tore everything apart looking for the fortune in cash he suspected was hidden somewhere in the house. Little did he suspect that it was in the coffee jar he held in his hands while offering to make coffee for Deputy Grant Lloyd.
As they entered the house, from the Livingroom they heard Ruth arguing with one of the carpenters. They stayed and listened. In frustration she yelled,
“It’s not the same meaning you Slovakian poor excuse for a carpenter. Yes, ‘profound’ can also mean deep but just because something is dug deep does not mean it’s a profound hole. An outhouse is dug deep but nothing down there is profound.”
Isaac looked to Walter and asked,
“Maybe we should come back at a better time.”
He cast a wicked smile and said,
“No, she is in a good mood now so let’s take advantage of it.”
They slipped into the kitchen and were surprised to see Sam’s mother, Gloria Jackson sitting at the table sipping tea. Although she tried to smile at them, it was too difficult to fake and so she gave up. When Ruth came into the kitchen, Isaac took a quick defensive step behind Walter. Walter looked at her and said,
“Having trouble with the carpenters?”
“Yes, and good afternoon to you as well. I swear that man never misses a good chance to be stupid.”
“Then why are you using him?”
“Because he is the caretaker to all my other properties.”
Retaining her malicious tone, she added,
“About time you came. I called you over an hour ago.”
She then pointed to Gloria and said,
“She has something important to tell you about her husband.”
When looking at Gloria, both men saw gloom and doom. With face to the tea cup, slow eyes rose in their sockets to look up at Walter. Recognizing her reluctance to speak, he sat across from her. Isaac’s eyes never left Ruth, the danger in the room. He decided to remain standing and ready for a quick retreat if necessary. Walter used his best consoling tone and asked,
“What is it Gloria? Is something wrong with your husband?”
Ruth had gone to the counter to make tea for her guests when she snapped,
“Of course there is something wrong with him, that’s why she came and told me and why you are here. I swear Walter sometimes you can be as slow as worms.”
Ignoring what came naturally to Ruth, Walter gently said to Gloria,
“Talk to me.”
All the words came out with difficulty, as if she didn’t want to say anything. She whispered,
“Gordy is dying. His condition is getting worse but he refuses to let me ca
ll a doctor or take him to the hospital.”
Walter understood why. There was nothing medically wrong with him. He had been contaminated by a science the Factory was trying to understand but couldn’t. What good could doctors do for him now? She continued,
“He fades in and out, invisible and then visible again but now lately for longer and longer he stays invisible in that stupid blue dim light.”
Walter was shocked by what she said next.
“He has been calling for you.”
Ruth snapped,
“So get your butt up there while there is still time.”
Isaac was the first out the door. Approaching the car, he asked,
“Are you sure you two are friends?”
As he helped Gloria into the front seat of the cruiser and Isaac slipped in the back, he said,
“Are you kidding, she loves me.”
Gloria was right. Gordy was in the bedroom in what was clearly a death bed. Walking into the bedroom Walter saw Sam sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed. Although weighed down by dejection by seeing her dad in this condition and knowing that he was not long for this earth, there was still strength about her, ever attentive ever hopeful. He looked gaunt and his eyes were practically ready to roll out of their sockets. A thin bed sheet took the shape of what was underneath, sometimes, nothing at all. Although large orbs were attentive to the ceiling, as if frozen in place, Gordy understood Walter was in the room. His chin started to quiver and then his mouth opened. It was obvious to all in the room that he was trying to say something. Gloria had to look away. His voice was reminiscent of how they sounded in the tunnels, softened and as if echoing off the walls. Walter wondered if the missing parts of him were still back in the crystal cave. Gordy struggled to push out the words,
“Turn water off.”
As soon as the cryptic words were heard, the bed sheet that was molding his form went flat and a soft blue light illuminated the pillow. Isaac stayed at the bedroom door held in wonder and amazement. Walter turned to Gloria and asked,
“What does that mean, turn water off?”
A blank expression indicated that she too had no understanding of it. Confused, he again asked,
“Is that all he wanted to say to me, ‘turn water off’ or was there more?”
“No,” said Gloria, “that’s all he has been saying for hours.”
He looked to Isaac and asked,
“Do you understand what that means?”
As Isaac too shook his head, Sam triumphantly said,
“I do.”
Chapter 65
This was not a good idea. It was starting to rain again, just a drizzle but Walter knew it was going to get worse and be very dangerous here. Sam had led them into the arm of the steep Copper River Gorge and to the vent tunnel where she and Gary had first snuck into the Factory. Because it had rained the night before, the normally racing water was now torrential and angrily roaring through the narrow canyon.
Raging water smashed into boulders making them wet and slippery on top. It was tricky and dangerous leaping from one to the other. To Sam, it was brave and daring but to Walter and Isaac it was reckless and dangerous. With Sam leading the way, Walter yelled at her to slow down but the roar of the river muted the desperate request.
Finally standing on the biggest boulder, she stopped and pointed to a cliff wall. She yelled something but again the deafening roar would not allow it to be heard. However, both looked in that direction and saw at the bottom of the cliff a large mound of concrete. She would explain later that this was where they had snuck into the Factory and where the steel ladder broke off the wall. Turning in the direction of the torrent flow, she pointed downstream. Both saw the end of the gorge and the river disappearing into the great cave there. It was as if the mountain had a giant thirsty open stone mouth guzzling water. Suddenly Walter understood where the water was going and the cryptic words ‘turn water off’.
Safely back at the car and driving Sam home, Walter had questions for Isaac.
“So what do you make of that Isaac?”
Isaac responded,
“When I first saw the crystal tunnel and the water running through the crystal formation I phoned my Professor friend at the university about it. He admitted that whenever fast moving water smashes against stone, a tangible electrical field can be detected. It’s small but measurable. Crystal already has energy fields so when the river collides against the crystals down there I guess it’s not too bizarre to think that such energy is greatly amplified.”
From the back seat, Sam contributed,
“Dad said that when the underground river runs through a copper vain, it picks up trace elements of copper and that does something to the river. He said that when water with copper in it hits the crystals the copper acts like a conductor and creates a charge of some kind that greatly amplifies the strength of the crystals.”
Isaac agreed, adding,
“There are all kinds of theories about energies created from stone. It has been proven that the pyramids in Egypt emit trace energy. Even the Stonehenge and obelisks all over the world emit a small energy of some kind.”
Walter stopped the car in front of Sam’s house and watched as she disappeared through the front door. However, it was not her intention to go home. Watching from behind the curtain, she waited for the police car to disappear and then ran through the front yard and down the street toward the tree house. Knowing that Gary was in the tree house, she rang the bell and scampered up the ladder. Before poking her head through the hole in the floor, she put him at ease by yelling up at him.
“Put the bat down, it’s me.”
Gary wanted to stay away from the house while the workers fixed it up and Grandma finished yelling at them. This was a quieter place to hang out. Sam was strangely quiet, sitting at the table looking at the crystal ball. As if to the crystal ball, she said,
“Amina loved her long black hair. She is going to be pissed when she discovers that she is bald.”
While driving along Maple Street, as Isaac thought, back to the precinct, he said to Walter,
“Unless you intend to divert a river right through town, I don’t know how you are going to stop the water from crashing against the crystals, or as that poor man said, turn the water off.”
Walter parked in front of the library and said,
“I agree. Turning the water off is unacceptable. However, I think the intent of what Gordy said was to turn the ‘energy’ off. Maybe destroying the crystals and letting the water continue its natural path through the mountain might work just as well.”
Isaac thought about it for a second and then said,
“Yea except the government came and blocked all the tunnels off now. We can’t get to the crystal cave.”
It was only then Isaac realized that Walter had parked in front of the library. He asked,
“Why are we stopping here?”
“Because you are getting out.”
“I am? Why?”
“Because you are going to get me the engineer specifications of the copper mine.”
“Why?”
“Right now I would rather not say.”
“Why?”
“Because you would instantly come up with a hundred reasons why it is not a good idea.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home, I have a dinner date with my wife. Call Dean when you have them and he’ll pick you up.”
“What if I have a dinner date?”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Then get out.”
Chapter 66
After dinner and right after Jeopardy, their new pastime was to sit on the couch looking at apartment brochures for sale. True to the predisposition of most men, Walter didn’t care what the kitchen of their new apartment looked like or its ability to function efficiently. In the seemingly hundreds of brochures he had seen so far and forced to sit next to Edith in his uniform looking at, (in fact it was only ten), h
e was already trying to stifle yawns. The apartment he really liked had a perfect ‘man cave’ right next to the bathroom but was viciously denied because the built-in refrigerator had a pull out freezer compartment at the bottom. Apparently, there was no way on this earth that she could live with that. Walter was starting to visualize himself in bed snuggled into a very deep and soft pillow.
The next morning, because it had been slow on the night patrol, Ed and Collin had already opened the precinct and started early on their reports. When Walter and Edith parked their car and entered the office, she looked at the ‘report board’ but saw no reason to yell at them, they were dutifully pinned ‘in’. Her persistent training, or as most thought, nagging about pinning in or out had finally paid off. Not accustomed to smiling in the morning she allowed just a smirk to sneak out. Walter however had to quickly back up and move his pin to ‘in’.
A few minutes later Isaac entered Walter’s office carrying a large plastic tube with a label reading ‘Copper Mountain Engineer Specifications’. Walter looked up to see Isaac bearing a silly grin. As Isaac placed the tube on the desk, he said,
The Factory Page 33