“Have you checked on them?” asked Judge.
“I only check on people that’s in trouble, young man.” Sheriff Lila was teasing him. “I don’t check up on working folk minding their own business. I’m the sheriff, not the town’s babysitter. No one’s made a peep of trouble.”
Judge squared his shoulders. “Well, I’m not in law enforcement myself, but I think you owe it your voters to go take a look at Slope. The people there are sick.”
“Are you being serious? Or is this for the sake of your show?”
“I’m serious, ma’am,” said Judge, who looked serious indeed, but who was too small and young-looking to convince the sheriff. If Stefan had been here, or Kaye or Drew? But people didn’t think Sally and Judge were old enough to understand anything.
“Well all righty,” Sheriff Lila said. “I will take a drive up the mountain as soon as this storm lets up. If you say Slope’s having some troubles, I’ll look into it. Might be more convincing if someone from Slope proper would let me know about it, though.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think they can,” said Judge.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Sheriff Lila, speaking to the camera. “As soon as the storm clears, I’ll drive on up there, and see how everyone’s doing. If people are getting sick around here, for whatever reason, I expect I should know it. Give me a phone number, dear, so I can get in touch with you.”
“Okay, sure.” Judge produced his cellphone from his pocket and began to thumb-type. “Oh by the way – your cousin who went to Cloda for help. Did it work? Did Cloda cure her husband’s wanderlust?”
“As a matter of fact, her husband died not too long after that,” Sheriff Lila said with a sigh.
“Are you . . . kidding?” asked a wide-eyed Judge.
“Not a bit. He died from something wrong with his bowels as I recall. Now my cousin’s married to a very well-to-do man, very respectable. They live up in Rolla. Four kids! Every time I see them, they seem real happy, like peas in a pod, those two.”
Chapter Ten
Othernaturals Season 6, Episode 5
Eyeteeth Mountain, Missouri; June 2015
Kaye was behind the wheel of the Mercedes - her turn to drive at last! - when they set out to find the Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chair Factory, which must be around here somewhere despite the fact that the only directions they’d gotten were pointed fingers in the general direction of “that side of the mountain.” Joey Baker said, “Oh it’s just up the road a piece; when you get to the fork, instead of going to Slope, you go the other way.” To this, Greg said, “We never saw a fork in the road,” referring to the fact that they’d already been up the mountain once, and to this, Joey Baker assured them, “Oh you can’t miss it,” despite the fact that they already had.
Kaye wasn’t worried. Storm or no storm, there was only really one road on the mountain and she didn’t mind the idea of trekking around exploring it. Driving something as powerful as the all-terrain vehicle was gratifying to her inner child, the part of her that liked to have the biggest and best toys. She was pleased that Greg got her on film doing this, and she made rather a show of thrusting the vehicle into a lower gear when the muddy road tried slipping out from beneath them. “I feel like such a badass,” she told him and their audience, wheeling them around a corner, slinging a pleasing wave of muddy water up behind them. “If there weren’t so many trees I’d plow right into the forest and see just how off-road we can really get.”
Her jolly mood wore down as they climbed the hill, however, because the storm was wild today, so loud and violent that she understood why Sally had called it “unnatural”. It felt like a living thing setting out to shout the mountain down. She began to feel like the captain of a submarine, forging through a dark ocean trench.
“You’re quiet over there,” she said to Stefan. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond them. “Something worrying you, sweetie?”
“Hmm. Does the sky look green to you?”
Kaye was from Oklahoma and she knew tornadoes. She’d lived through spring seasons during which it seemed tornado warnings were daily, and she had at least three friends whose homes had been badly damaged by storms. She and Milo had always been lucky, situated outside the path of destruction. A greenish cast to the sky was never a good sign. She, however, had been watching the road too carefully to notice the sky. Now she slowed even further and peered upward, squinting through the rain. “I can’t tell.”
“Tornadoes don’t happen in the mountains,” said Stefan, though he did not sound assured. “They only land on flat ground.”
“And trailer parks,” added Greg.”
“Of course there doesn’t have to be an actual tornado for wind to tear the shit out of everything,” Stefan murmured.
Kaye felt better taking a humorous tone about this; sarcasm seemed like a ward against danger. “Look, if you’re having some kind of spooky premonition, let me know so I can get us to some shelter.”
“Shelter where, exactly?” Stefan laughed too before he noticed that was a legitimate concern. “I haven’t seen a single building I’d trust to protect us.”
“Then please ask Brentley to go scout us a cave,” said Kaye practically. “And Brentley, if you please, something without bears or cougars already inside.”
“Ooo, I don’t have a problem with cougars,” said Greg, winking lecherously at Kaye. But enough of that. He reminded them, “We’re going to a factory. Factories are made of steel and concrete and stuff. We’ll be safe in there, you know, except for the cursed giant and his minions.”
However, the factory was not, as Greg had hoped, made out of “steel and concrete and stuff” but of wooden planks, same as every other building they had seen in these mountains, if in better shape. It resembled nothing so much as an enormous tool shed of a single story, unpainted except for a sign in front that declared in blue and green paint, “Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chairs.”
Rain pounded down all around as they drove into the parking lot. There was only one other vehicle there: Elton Baker’s monster truck, haphazardly hulking across enough spaces for three ordinary cars. The Mercedes was dwarfed next to it. Light spilled from the facility’s windows. Visibility was too poor to make out anything more than faint movement inside.
There was a heavy steel door set in the side of the building with a helpful “ENTRANCE” sign above the “Hours of Operation” sign which told a lie: 7:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., it said. Beyond, the faint sounds of woodworking could be heard.
They threw jackets over their heads and splashed to the doorway, letting themselves in without trouble. They found themselves in a small, cheap reception area that smelled of sawdust and coffee, its only décor being one manufacturer’s calendar hung crooked on a wall, paged to the wrong month, and one plant that was badly in need of watering. There was a lone metal desk, a lone metal filing cabinet, a lone woman sitting listlessly staring at them - Kaye assumed this was one of Slope’s fading citizens, though it was hard to tell. Like every other worker they had met, she appeared physically exhausted, everything about her wearing steadily downward from her clothes to her hair to her face. Before her a telephone and older-model computer were installed. The computer was powered down, the phone silent, and the receptionist was doing nothing.
Greg worked fast, panning his camera around the room, but the receptionist said nothing to stop him.
“Good morning,” said Kaye, trying to get the woman’s attention. She got as close as she dared, though keeping the desk between them, to assess the woman’s health. It felt like more of the same, a general malaise of lifestyle, poor nutrition, poor sleeping habits, mediocre hygiene, no personal grooming. Kaye would attribute the same symptoms to chronic depression.
Her subject slowly recognized that three people stood before her, waiting for some sort of response. “Hi – what do you – how can I help you?”
Stefan put on a charming smile and introduced them. “We’d like to see the factory,”
The receptio
nist responded by moving her eyes from them to their surroundings. After a moment her brows lowered in confusion. “This is the factory,” she replied after a glacial pause.
“May we go inside?” Greg was already pushing open the double doors, taking film.
“I should call Elton,” said the receptionist. She studied the phone with intense concentration and then picked it up, punching a button. “There are people here,” she told the receiver. She found them again with her eyes. “Elton is coming.”
Elton Baker shuffled through the double doors a moment later, ducking to fit beneath them, a mask and pair of goggles askew on his face so he could speak to them. He looked perfectly bewildered, which might or might not have been a good sign. “Why are you here?”
“You remember us, sir? We met at Ardelia’s house on Sunday.” Greg explained briefly who they were. Neither Elton Baker nor the receptionist seemed to understand a single word. Greg said, “We’d like a little tour of the famous Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chair Factory.”
Elton took in some information: the camera, the expectant faces. “This is the rocking chair factory,” he informed them.
Greg nodded. “We’ll do a brief history of the Baker family and of course a family-owned business would be part of that. May we have a look around?”
“We’re working,” said Elton. About this, he sounded confident.
Stefan stepped in, “Here’s the thing, Mr. Baker. Rosemary Sharpe – the lady in charge – she only cares about the supernatural. We’re here because Cloda Baker is a practicing witch. We’ll focus on that. We’re not here to question your business practices or your workers.”
Elton remained in the doorway, blocking their view and their path, probably not even intentionally. “Nana Cloda?” he asked eventually.
“Oh yes!” Kaye declared. She’d raised a toddler; she could speak this language. “Your Nana Cloda. She’d like you to visit her. Maybe when we’re finished here, you could come for a ride with us.”
“Go for a ride,” said Elton. He stepped toward the front door, which effectively got him out of the way.
“Yes, we’ll go for a ride in a few minutes,” said Kaye. “And won’t that be nice, and much easier than we were expecting it to be?”
Stefan thanked Elton, who stood like the trunk of a sequoia next to the factory’s entrance, then held the door wide and let Kaye and Greg walk first onto the factory’s main floor, a broad expanse of concrete floor with painted yellow lines marking off work stations. The lines indicated work stations at which various chair parts were being constructed. Kate quickly counted 12 people at work on the assembly line. They wore surgical masks, no doubt to keep from breathing sawdust, goggles to protect their eyes from the same, and ear protection for the obvious reason. The whir of machines was loud indeed, punctuating itself as different woodworking devices revved on and off. There were no voices. The workers were silent and intent, heads bowed. Beneath the smell of wood and varnish, Kaye felt the ignorant desperation of bodies being run ragged.
“Oh my god,” she said sadly as she observed the room.
“We’re all doing a good job,” Elton said from behind them. “We make rocking chairs.”
“Get the footage you need and let’s get out of here,” Kaye said to Greg. “We have got to get Elton to his grandmother so she can put a stop to this.” She went to the closest of the workers, who was robotically rubbing a long dowel with sandpaper, and tried hard to get the man’s attention. It was fruitless, yielding nothing but his insistence that he “had work to do” and he had to “make rocking chairs.” She dared not interrupt any of the workers using machinery - frankly, it was a wonder that none of them had lost fingers, if they had so little awareness of their surroundings.
“Right,” said Greg. “Which one of them is Tina? Maybe we can mention her friends to her.” He located Sally’s friend and approached, waving his hands to get her attention. She was varnishing with a tiny spray gun, the motion she made somewhat like that of an orchestra conductor over the shining wood before her, unexpectedly graceful in light of her sleepwalker’s expression. He said jovially, “Tina, hi! Can you hear me? We have your phone. We’ve been trying to call your friends. Roxy, and Jody?
“It’s Julie,” corrected Kaye, sing-songing the names to Tina as Greg filmed them. “Roxy and Julie and Brenda. Do you remember your friends?”
Tina pushed her mask aside clumsily. “What?” When Kaye repeated the question and the names, Tina said, “I have to work. I make rocking chairs.”
Kaye pretended like this was girl talk. “Who’s your best friend, Tina?”
She wanted to believe she saw something pass over Tina’s face, a flinch of recognition or regret. Whatever it had been, it was squashed a moment later as she reverted to the standard response to confusing questions. “I should get Elton.” Ah, what luck - here he was, hulking behind them. Tina said plaintively, “Elton, there are people here.”
“Are we going for a ride?” asked Elton.
“In a minute,” Kaye promised him. The size of the building was confusing her; it had seemed much larger from the outside. She deduced the reason: the workshop was walled off from the back half of the room. When she charged for the swinging double-doors that separated the two halves and burst through them, she did not know exactly what she had been expecting, but what she found was a warehouse with rocking-chair sized boxes packed in as tightly as they could be, floor to ceiling, as if someone had been eager to fill the room to capacity. There were a couple of truck-sized delivery doors in the back that were as good as blocked off.
Greg whistled softly. “That’s a lot of unsold rocking chairs. I wonder how long it’s been since they actually shipped any.”
Kaye had her own musings. “It’s like a riddle. If a rocking chair factory stops shipping in the forest, does it make a sound? Who would ever notice?”
Meanwhile Stefan had been consulting with Brentley, and suddenly took off walking in another direction across the factory floor, between the yellow lines of the work stations. He seemed to have a clear purpose, so Kaye and Greg followed, and Elton, still interested in going for a ride, lumbered huge behind them. Stefan led them to a distant wall. Between the dusty windows were the signs of a workplace mounted on the walls, such as an old-school punch clock and several stained advertisements. One poster in faded pastels showed a mother rocking a baby, with cursive print suggesting “Rock Her to Sleep in the Country’s Finest Rocker”. The others were of similar sentiment: homey, comforting.
Stefan’s interest honed on a bulletin board dotted with dozens of pushpins holding up announcements, flyers, photos, and a couple posters of work safety warnings. The board was about the same size as a pool table and was covered almost entirely with two or more layers of paper. Stefan put his hand on the board, and shuddered hard.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Kaye asked. He glanced back at her meaningfully. Following his actions she stepped forward and put her hand on a gritty piece of paper that told of a 2013 Christmas Party. She had no helpful Brentley inside her to let her know when the supernatural was creeping about, but she did feel something physically beneath the paper, making strange ridges in the corkboard. She pulled the paper aside, tearing it away from its pins, and found beneath it another paper, this time a staff memo about steel-toed shoes. Together she and Stefan tugged away enough paper to find the corkboard surface and see a latticework of slender twigs glued there, forming a pattern of neat squares. The junctions were sometimes tied together tight with grimy strings.
“Are those sticks or straw?” Greg held the camera close.
“I think they’re willow twigs that have been whittled down,” said Kaye. It was an elegant job. The ends of the twigs were all burned rather than cut.
By mutual consent she and Stefan began to pull away more and more paper, stacking the pushpins in Kaye’s hand, letting the torn paper drift to the floor. They were making a mess, yet Elton stood nearby watching without complaint. Soon they coul
d see that the board was covered with the willow latticework, hundreds of squares, hundreds of intricate knots. A noticeable amount of hair sprigged out from the glue, in lengths and colors various enough to suggest the contributions of many people.
With a wince Kaye said, “It looks like that awful banner we made in Clancy.”
“It’s covered with magic,” Stefan said. “I wish Fletcher was here; he could read it better.”
“Is this the source of the curse? What is it doing?” Kaye looked back at the silent employees with their heads bowed over dowels and planes and pegs and rocking chair pieces. The smell of wood was sweet and pungent in the air. She turned her gaze hard on Elton and demanded, “What is it doing to them?”
Elton remained his usual helpful self. “We’re working.”
Stefan had been listening again to his inner friend. “Brentley doesn’t think this is a malevolent charm. It feels like it’s just a working-place spell, like a morale booster.”
“Morale booster!” Kaye declared. “Well it’s doing a piss-poor job, I’d say.”
Greg jumped into Rosemary’s role, which was to assure the villains present that villainy in the supernatural realm was punishable only by a higher power than themselves and that they were certainly in no trouble from the Othernaturals. Looking around the side of his camera, he adopted a friendly tone and said, “Mr. Baker, all we want to do is help the people. It’s kind of our thing. It’s not like anyone could prosecute you for having a twig spell in your factory. The last time we saw something like this, the guy who had set the spell hadn’t realized how bad it could get. People were in real danger before he understood what he’d done. We can help you out of this before it gets too serious, see?”
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