Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “I’m gonna try the phone again,” Jean decided, returning to the little shipping office half under the stairs.

  “This is fuckin’ spooky, man.” Maureen hugged her arms and hunched her shoulders. “No shit—where did everybody go? Even Donna?”

  “They must have all got sent home and they forgot to tell us—that’s all,” Jean said. She wasn’t getting anything. “Well Dave wouldn’t go but he’s probably in the paint room or whatever. Smoking a joint or something. This damn thing.” Jean slapped the phone down, looking utterly disgusted.

  “What about Donna?” Maureen stressed, eyes on Steve, still hugging herself. Steve’s eyes were gently fluttering shut.

  Jean didn’t have a quick reply for that.

  ««—»»

  Abby’s keys jingled louder in the concrete stairwell. She touched bottom first and reached out to push the door open.

  “Wait!” snapped Paul behind her.

  Turning, Abby said, “What?”

  Paul scowled at the blank spot below the stairs. “My bike is gone.”

  “Gone?” Abby stared. “What the fuck?”

  “It was here when I came down like twenty minutes ago. Come on.”

  Paul pushed past her and through the door.

  The radio in the main molding room was still on (I meant to turn that off, thought Paul) and playing another over-dynamic, turgid heavy metal song. Abby stepped to the door leading outside.

  “You got change for the pay phone?”asked Paul.

  “Yeah.”

  Paul started to turn away.

  Abby went to turn the knob and push against the door. The knob didn’t turn and the door didn’t push. “Hey.” She pulled back and looked at the knob. “Hey Paul, I think they locked us—” She broke off.

  Paul came back. “It’s locked? ”

  “Check this out, man!” Abby glided her finger down the edge of the door where it joined against its frame. Then her eyes and finger followed the top outline of the door as Paul stepped up beside her. She said, “Is this glue or foam or something? It looks like somebody glued the door shut!”

  “No shit, it does, ” hissed Paul. He gripped the knob and fought it and it slipped through his fingers. Butting his shoulder lightly against the metal door didn’t jar it. “It does look like somebody squirted glue around the edges of the door and then shut it.”

  “Even the bottom, see? And the hinges.”

  Paul gingerly poked the amber-colored substance that had bulged out from the crack between door and frame. It had hardened solid, whatever it was. There was a slight, unfamiliar, unpleasant chemical stink to it.

  Beads of it had squeezed from the crack and dribbled down like candle wax, leaving hard resiny trails. Paul, once a molder, a five year Rim Corp veteran, didn’t recognize the stuff.

  But he did recognize it. He had seen it not a half hour earlier, similarly coating the edges of the little window at the landing halfway up the stairs to the second floor. A strange, quick cold surf washed over Paul.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew the battered Buck knife he was never without but never wore in a visible sheath, and he opened its ugly sharp blade with a click that drew Abby’s attention.

  Abby didn’t protest—she relished the dramatic. She said, in a furtive whisper now, “Somebody did this on purpose, Paul.”

  “I know.” Paul found himself lowering his voice, too, his eyes darting through the chains and mold presses, the beams splashed with hard foam that looked like diseased flesh. “The window on the landing up here looks glued shut, too…somebody’s being a real wise-guy.”

  “I have to get to a phone!”

  “Let’s go try the back door on our floor.”

  Abby ducked back into the stairwell, and after a last suspicious glance into the molding area, Paul lunged after her. He considered wedging this door open, but if someone wanted to glue it they would simply unwedge it. Had practical jokers stolen his bike, too? Played with the intercom? Smashed that Schnapps bottle in the ladies’ room?

  “You’re right!” cried Abby on the landing, kneeling at the window.

  Paul knelt beside her. “My God, check it out! The whole fucking thing!”

  Paul stared numbly. When he had noticed the window before, the gum had been soft and a drip had run down the glass. Now not only the edges were glued—the entire surface of the glass was sheeted over with the amber substance, which had also streaked down a bit to the landing floor.

  Paul scratched at the stuff with the tip of his knife; it left a faint whitish scratch, but not a deep one. He positioned the tip under a bead at the outer edge of the rectangular mass and tried to wedge the blade between the stuff and the wall. He exerted more force. The blade ground against the wall, couldn’t slide under the plastic-like material. He tried to pry away a swell of the stuff, using the knife as a lever, but the knife just grated and skidded off.

  “Don’t stab yourself,” Abby cautioned.

  Paul rose. “Let’s go try the dock door.”

  ««—»»

  Maureen and Jean could tell something was wrong when they saw Abby come back first, and Paul with his knife in hand. Steve softly whimpered.

  Abby and Paul strode straight past the girls. “Stay here,” Paul said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Just wait.” Paul hit the switch that would light the dock, then tried the knob to the door that led onto it. It turned. He and Abby passed onto the dock. It was cold: they could see their breaths a little in the stark light.

  “Jesus Christ!” Paul said.

  “I don’t believe this, Paul—how could anybody do this out here without us hearing ‘em?”

  “We’ve all been talking and scurrying around,” Paul supposed. He drew closer to the door that opened to stone steps leading down to the driveway. There was a window—normally—in the door; now it was hidden under a hard sheet of resin-like plastic, or plastic-like resin. The four edges of the door were sealed with it. Paul drifted sideways to the first of the three dock doors trucks backed up to. Resin squeezed out around the edges. Next door: resin. Third door, too. Paul squatted, seized the handle with both hands and tried to jerk the door up when he rose. The jolt through his body was hernia-inspiring. “Ugh—shit,” he grunted. He straightened, hands sore. His right shoulder felt torn.

  “This is fucking scary, man,” Abby said. “Let’s keep checking windows. How about the dock doors downstairs?”

  “Why do I get this feeling they’re glued, too?” said Paul. “Wait a minute.”

  Abby followed Paul back into the shipping department. Abby brought the other two up to date while Paul picked up a screwdriver and poked in a tool cabinet across the room for a hammer. He couldn’t find one. Coffee cups—some tool cabinet.

  “No way!” Maureen exclaimed. Abby led Maureen and Jean out to the dock to show them what they’d found. Paul turned to a large scale on which boxes of parts were weighed. There were three detachable weights on the slide. Paul removed the heaviest of them and tailed after the three women.

  He found them congregated at the sealed window. “Move, move, move. Somebody go back in and watch Steve.” They parted to let him through but all three lingered to watch as Paul positioned the screwdriver in the very center of the window like a chisel. He brought the weight back, then against the butt of the screwdriver with a crack. The blade skit-tered across the plastic surface an inch or two, leaving a faint scratch.

  Paul tried again, with more force. Skitter. The stuff was slick like obsidian but not brittle; it didn’t shatter. Didn’t even crack.

  “God,” Maureen breathed.

  Paul hammered the screwdriver repeatedly, twelve solid blows, doing his best not to let the blade slide. When he removed his tools there was an asterisk of scratch lines but no gouges; no cracks. He sighed. “Okay—

  Abby and I are gonna keep checking doors and windows while you two stay with Steve. Keep trying the phones.”

  “I just did; I can’t get a call
out,” Jean replied.

  “Yeah, well keep tryin’…and don’t leave this floor if you can help it.”

  “What do ya thinks goin’ on? ” Maureen asked.

  “I have no idea,” Paul said. He led his crew from the dock back into the shipping and refinishing department. He instantly noticed that Steve was gone.

  ««—»»

  After the initial few moments of frantic excitement Abby suggested,

  “We should spread out and look for him!”

  Paul came out from the elevator shaft, started for the cafeteria.

  “I’m not spreading out anywhere,” Maureen said, hugging herself.

  “Everybody just stay there, stay together,” Paul called back. “I’m gonna look in the men’s room.”

  Abby sprang after him. “You two keep together,” she warned Maureen and Jean.

  Maureen glanced nervously at the door to the stairs running parallel to the elevator; she half expected to see Steve’s face pop up in the window the moment Paul and Abby were out of view. She shuddered. “One minute he’s in a ball and won’t move, and the next minute he gets up and runs off.”

  “There’s gotta be a normal explanation for all this, don’t worry,” Jean reassured her, maintaining her air of unruffled confidence. She seemed the most calm and nonchalant of them—but whether that was good or bad was another thing.

  No one in the cafeteria. Abby pointed out the window up by the ceiling over the pay phone. It was capped in plastic, a few beads having dribbled half way down to the floor. Paul picked up the phone and tried it, to no avail.

  “Abby,” he said, “I told you to stay with the others.”

  “You shouldn’t be left alone, Paul—something dangerous could be happening.”

  Abby wanted to be in the thick of the excitement; this was an adventure for her so far. Not that she didn’t worry about Paul. He looked past her into the shipping area. “Go see if the windows in there are all sealed.”

  “Oh my God—I didn’t think of that!” Abby was whirling around already.

  “I didn’t either. I’ll check the rest rooms.”

  The men’s room was empty save for Paul’s anxious reflection. He stealthily floated into the ladies’s room. The shattered Schnapp’s bottle, empty booths. Paul still gripped his Buck knife. He went back into the cafeteria and heard his name called simultaneously. Abby started to run for him but stopped when she saw him coming. Maureen and Jean were staring up at something intensely.

  “Don’t tell me,” Paul said, following their eyes.

  “Now when did this happen?” Abby asked him. “It wasn’t like this when we came in today. The only time when we were all out of the room was just a few minutes out on the dock…right?”

  The small windows near the ceiling to either side of the room were sealed over with that mysterious yellow-brown material. These windows were normally covered with thick translucent plastic anyway and the effect was similar. Wasn’t it possible that they had been this way all along and they simply hadn’t noticed, Paul wondered. Paul hoped.

  “I’m scared,” Maureen said. She eyed the knife in Paul’s fist. “Do you think the company is doing this or is it some sickie or what?”

  “Maybe Steve did it. He’s acting like a sickie,” Jean suggested drily.

  “Could, um, could some kind of insulation around all the windows have melted and then got, I don’t know, hard again?” Maureen didn’t sound convinced by her own proposed theory.

  “No,” Paul said firmly. “Somebody’s got some kind of glue gun or something and is going around squirtin’ this stuff. It’s gotta be.”

  “There’s glue guns in post-ops,” said Abby. “You stick a tube of hard glue in ‘em and it heats it up into glue. That could be it.”

  “Whoever did the dock must have come in from the parking lot, glued the truck doors and the window in the door,” Paul mused, “then glued the edges of the door and gone back outside to the parking lot.”

  “Somebody’s playing a joke.” Jean rolled her eyes.

  “So what do we do? ” Maureen persisted. “Where’d Steve go?”

  Paul sighed, nibbled his lip, his eyebrows bunched over his nose.

  “Abby and me will keep looking for Steve and for a way out…you two stay on this floor and stay together no matter what. Don’t even go to the bathroom alone.”

  “What if Steve pops up and tries to hurt me and Jean?”

  “I’ll knock him on his ass, don’t worry,” Jean said, bunching a fist.

  Paul resisted the urge to roll his eyes himself. To Abby he said, “Let’s start upstairs. Maybe Steve went back to work,” he added sarcastically.

  Maureen protested, “Shouldn’t you try downstairs first? If there’s any windows or doors not glued up you should get to them before anybody else does, y’know?”

  “Yeah, but Steve could hurt himself.”

  “Well maybe he went downstairs.”

  “Okay, yeah, you’re right.”

  “Maureen and me will look upstairs for him,” Jean offered.

  “No we won’t—Steve’s acting crazy!”

  “You and me both worked in nursing homes, honey—you used to have to deal with those violent grannies like I did. We can handle it. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Good for you—I am. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I think you’d better just stay right here like I said,” Paul ordered.

  “Let’s go, Abby.”

  “Sucka-lucka,” Jean dismissed in that special language of hers.

  Abby selected a Phillips-head screwdriver as her weapon to bring along. Paul saw this and didn’t think to dissuade her.

  ««—»»

  The two of them stole out of the stairwell and into the first floor shop like two sailors boarding the drifting, creaking, vacant Mary Celeste to check for signs of life that were never found. Paul remembered reading about that mysterious abandoned vessel; undisturbed belongings were found on board preserved in mid use. A partially eaten breakfast. That story had always intrigued and haunted Paul.

  On the radio in the large molding area the song Synchronicity by the Police

  played through a screen of rasping static. The radio sounded even louder than the last time Paul had ventured down here.

  Paul hovered in the doorway as if listening to the song. He sharpened up as Abby squeezed around him. She whispered, “Look at the punch cards.”

  “Yeah, right.” Paul felt glad to have Abby beside him as they skirted around the smaller, black foam molding area. They came to the punch clock and its racks for cards either IN or OUT. Paul ran his eyes down the line for OUT but Abby had already found Donna’s card in IN and plucked it out.

  She held it under Paul’s nose, saying, “She didn’t punch out, Paul.”

  Paul pulled more cards from IN. Names he knew from deflashing.

  “No one in deflashing punched out but they’re gone.” Just for comparison he examined the cards in OUT. The molders and post-ops crew, all sent home, had all clocked out properly. He reversed a card and inserted it into the clock to see if it were still functioning, and the card was stamped on its blank side with the correct time. He dropped the card back into its slot thoughtfully.

  They walked past the degreasing tank quickly and downstairs into the maintenance office to try the phone again. Paul couldn’t get an outside line—only that muted, remote busy signal—so he dialed for the phone upstairs. He heard Maureen snatch up the receiver anxiously. “Hello?”

  “It’s just me testing. Call me if you need me. Seen Steve yet?”

  “No. Did you check the windows down there?”

  “We’re gonna do that right now.”

  Up from the sunken office, they again passed the degreasing tank into which parts were lowered in a cage to be rid of grease in a chemical bath. As required by law, the names and properties of the chemicals involved were posted on the wall beside it—chemicals with mile-long names, all of which sounded utterly unhealthy, l
ike the ingredients listed on a box of cereal.

  In the separate, large main molding area brittle pieces of “flash”

  crackled under their shoes. “Look.” Paul pointed his knife toward the ceiling. The high, castle-like windows were familiarly sealed, to the surprise of neither of them. Abby grunted with grim acceptance. Paul advanced on the radio, now playing a less interesting song, and shut it off with an irritated snap. The sudden silence was a contrast so eerie that Paul could almost hear the last note of the banished song echoing faintly in the corners like a dying wind-blown moth. A Mary Celeste blanket of stillness came settling down on them like a collapsing parachute.

  The plastic debris snapped under their feet louder as they returned to the general shop area. Deflashing still empty, post-ops still empty. At the far end of the room they stopped at a segmented overhead garage door like the three on the loading dock upstairs. Even though the amber was quite evident around its edges Paul gave it an obligatory, ineffective tug.

  As one they turned to a wide doorway branching off from the room.

  Through it they could see the small elevator that ended on the third floor where they had found Steve buried in boxes. Opposite the elevator, stairs which led up to the dark cardboard room on Paul’s floor. Between the elevator and stairs were those hanging plastic insulation strips, smeared with grease. It was too murky beyond to see anything through them from here, but back there was the rear loading dock, mostly used to unload the drums of paint that were stored in the paint room, which was behind that curtain of plastic strips also.

  “Well,” said Paul, stepping forward. The motionless strips with darkness behind them seemed to beckon him and repel him simultaneously.

  Paul remembered the story he had told the girls only tonight—how a molder had once seen the lights flick on and off through these strips, and on investigating had seen a mysterious figure on the back dock disappear behind a pile of old molds—not to reappear.

  There was a loud crash somewhere in the shop behind them.

  “Shit!” Abby hissed, jumping and spinning, Phillips-head ready.