Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Abby dislodged a broom handle from its head, Maureen doing likewise. Maureen suggested Paul whittle the broom handles to points but he instructed them to tape exacto knives to the ends. The knives’ blades were small and brittle but razor sharp.

  Abby also had her screwdriver. Jean simply adopted a hammer.

  “Are we gonna check the cardboard room nor not?” Abby asked. “We don’t even know if the windows aren’t blocked in there.”

  “It’s too big and dark,” Maureen said, “and there’s too many places for someone to be hiding.”

  “Well we’ve gotta check the back docks and the paint room—there’s a door that goes outside in the paint room. Either we go through the cardboard room or down through the molding area, but we gotta try it.”

  “Let’s wait until the fucking truck comes!”

  “Paul,” Abby whined for support.

  He sighed. “We should try it. Waiting for the truck might be waiting too long. I don’t know how many of the workers are dead but whoever killed them is pretty clever to overpower them, so time counts. With all the weird stuff going on, I don’t think we’re dealing with just one sick person, anyway.”

  “I’m not going in that cardboard room or downstairs!” persisted Maureen.

  “Come on, girl,” Abby babbled, “we can’t just sit around waiting to get killed, too!”

  “Nobody’s come up here after us yet—if we stick together up here in the light we’re safe! If we move we’re gonna walk into a trap! Come on, Paul, we’re okay here for now.” Maureen was almost crying again, clutching her makeshift spear for support.

  “Abby and me will go move the curtain and peek into the cardboard room,” Paul formulated aloud. “Well, no, we’ll go in the caf and look through the door that goes into the cardboard room—it’s deeper in so we’ll get a closer look in there. From there we should be able to see the windows. If they’re foamed we’ll stay put up here until ten or so…but after that we should try to get down to the paint room.”

  “The Westman guy will call Ted,” Maureen snapped. “We don’t have to move anywhere—they’ll come to us! ”

  “The killer will come to us before that,” retorted Abby.

  “Shut up, Abby! Let Paul decide!”

  “My life is in this, too!”

  “Listen,” Paul hissed, “both shut up. I said what we’re gonna do; Abby and me will peek into the cardboard room. If the windows aren’t sealed we’ll use rope or rags or whatever and climb down to the street.

  Come on, Abby. You two stay right here.”

  “I’d do anything for a .45 Magnum right now,” Maureen muttered tremulously.

  “No such thing,” Paul informed her as he and Abby started away.

  The cafeteria. They slunk to the door at its end. In the door at face level, a glass window with crisscrossed metal mesh. Had they parted the great canvas curtain with the translucent plastic window in it to peek into the cardboard room, they would have had to look (or even walk) down the short aisle with the storage cage on its right, but this far end of the cafeteria gave directly into the large warehouse area.

  Abby hid around the corner, saying nothing, spear ready, and Paul poked one eye up like a periscope, scanning the gloom beyond through the dirty glass and spidery mesh.

  So dim; only a few fluorescents on. Rotting wooden ceiling, battered beam supports gouged by clumsy young fork truck drivers, walls of painted brick. It looked so old. An archeologist peering through a chink in some ancient barrow. Unmade boxes by the thousands, flat and stacked taller than humans, rested on wooden pallets, some piles piled on top of each other to almost brush the ceiling. A chasm-maze, with two large corridors for fork truck access and many narrow, twisty tributaries. Along the right wall the cardboard piles were so congregated that some piles were boxed in and nearly impossible to get at. Some of these stacks were only as tall and wide as a refrigerator, but a good number were boxes that could contain a refrigerator, and flattened out their surface area was great.

  Piles of this type were like mesas with hundreds of layers of strata.

  Shadows had collected like black rainwater in the hollows and spaces in-between; shadows were boxed in, fenced in, partitioned in like captured creatures. A zoo of shadows.

  At the far end of the room was a fire escape. But Paul didn’t have much hope about that. He turned his eyes to Abby and whispered, “The windows on both sides look like they’re covered, too.”

  “Shit.”

  Paul peeked again. Also at the far end of the room was the doorway leading to the freight elevator that communicated between all three floors, and the stairs that did likewise. More dim light came in through this opening. It looked as far away as safe ground across a mine field.

  Again Paul looked to Abby, straightening up. “I can’t be sure about all the windows, but after all the others we’ve seen I don’t think they’d miss any unless they ran outta glue.” He listened to his own collected, gritty and pensive tone and he reminded himself of characters on reruns of TV war series. Combat, Rat Patrol. Factory battleground—but who were the Nazis?

  “If Maureen and Jean could only take care of themselves,” Abby said,

  “you and me could make a run for the stairs and hit the paint room.”

  “And what if we make it out? We leave them while we run for help?”

  “No…well, one of us could.”

  “You?”

  “That’s not what I mean! Either of us. The other one could stay and guard the door so it doesn’t get glued—I dunno.”

  “Alone? Would you want to do that? No way…we keep together.”

  “Well let’s all try it—no one will jump all four of us.”

  “At ten we’ll try it.”

  “Then we wont’ be up here when the trucker tries to get in. Let’s try the paint room now, and if it’s locked too we can come up here again and wait. You said time counts.”

  “I’d do that except for the risks. It’s better to make them come to us instead of us going to them.”

  “Yeah, Paul, yeah, but wouldn’t it be better for us to go to our own rescue instead of waiting for our rescue to come to us?

  “Yeah—at ten we’ll do that. Let’s go.” Paul began turning away.

  “Paul—”

  ”Look, I’m in charge. Go for it alone if you want.”

  “Would you let me go if I tried?”

  Paul looked at her. “Don’t be stupid. No way.”

  Abby smiled. She looked satisfied, as though complimented.

  Paul switched his attention longingly toward the food machines. He didn’t trust the coffee or soda machines, but a wrapped candy bar couldn’t be too dangerous. Except for pins stuck in it. Oh for God’s sake. Paul produced change and moved to the candy machine.

  Feeling for some change of her own, Abby said, “Let’s get some for Maureen and Jean, too.” While she waited for her turn Abby floated to the door at the back of the room and peeked through the glass and mesh window.

  She only saw the little boy for a half second as he crossed the central aisle and disappeared into one of the narrow off-shoots in the cardboard labyrinth.

  “Jesus Christ,” she hissed, scrambling away. “Paul, hurry up! Hurry!”

  “Shh, what?” he hissed back, darting to her. She seized his arm.

  “I saw a little boy in there.” He could feel her shudder against him.

  “He went behind some boxes. It’s the same little boy I saw earlier tonight.”

  “Little…the one who was sitting in the cafeteria?” Paul whispered. “I saw him—that was hours ago!”

  “I saw him, I swear. He has a brown coat and blond hair.”

  “My God, where’d he come from?” Paul pulled away from her.

  “Maybe he was hiding back there all the time. Paul, wait!” Abby seized his arm again as he started for the door. “Paul…what would he be doing here? What if he’s one of them? ”

  “Them?”

  “He’s small…he c
ould sneak around easy. What if he’s been helping them cover the windows and everything up here when we weren’t looking?”

  Paul’s face was grave. “Did he see you looking?”

  “No, he wasn’t looking this way.”

  Chewing his lip, Paul glared at the door. Enemy within reach? He clicked his Buck knife open. “We should go in there after him. But what if the others are back there, too? What if they want us to follow the boy?

  Maybe they let you see him.”

  “I don’t know. It seemed like an accident that I saw him, though; he was already moving when I looked, and how would they know I was gonna look?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul breathed, feeling a murderous impulse.

  “Then again,” Abby mused, “what if this poor kid needs help?”

  ««—»»

  Jean began making coffee for herself. Maureen suspiciously eyed the wall of solidified black foam, so near, afraid the hot flow might resume.

  She could still smell a stink as of melted plastic from it. She couldn’t remember the foam downstairs ever smelling quite like this. She looked to Jean and wondered how she could seem so calm and nonchalant after all this, especially where just a short while ago she had been in hysterics after discovering the hand in the vending machine. Was she simply brave, or was she in her own little world? She was reassuring Maureen as she made her coffee in her chic, short dark hair cut, but tacky purple earrings and purple/black-squiggled white T-shirt and unfaded designer jeans.

  Dressing to look fashionable in a factory was an idiosyncrasy…but looking fashionable in a life or death situation was an absurdism that occurred now even to someone like Maureen, nineteen and not inclined toward abstract philosophical musings.

  “The sickie that’s doing this is afraid to get face-to-face with us or he’d already come after us, right?” Jean said, her back to Maureen. “All we have to do is wait for the truck driver and he’ll call the boss and he’ll send in the Marines.”

  “Yeah. S.W.A.T.,” joked Maureen wanly. “Just wait, that’s what I say.” Hugging her meaty upper arms.

  “Bloss is taking good care of us. You sure you don’t want a nice hot coffee, honey?”

  “No. I just wanna get the fuck out of here.”

  “We will soon, trust me.” Jean turned from stirring her coffee to brandish her hammer. “Any weirdo who comes up here gets the lumps from me, believe me.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll hide behind you.” Maureen unconsciously heard a rustling sound up around the stairs to the third floor, unconsciously glanced up. Her heart shook under a mallet blow. She sucked down the plastic-fla-vored air. A face peered down at her from a tear in the translucent plastic insulation that blocked off the staircase all along one side. “Jean, Jean! ”

  Jean whirled, looked up, squeezed her hammer’s handle. The face was peering down at her, too. “Hey!” she said.

  It was a little boy’s face. Shortish dirty blond hair in loose bangs, bright-eyed, perhaps a little smile. A sweet, innocent, pale and sensitive face. An Oliver Twist face.

  “Hey—hey, kid!” Maureen gasped, her dazed heart reeling.

  “Kid, come down here!” Jean coaxed, lowering her hammer.

  “My God, who is he?” Maureen breathed. “Kid…come down here!”

  “Where’d you come from?” Jean asked.

  Innocent face, no response, innocent blink.

  Jean came around the office partition. Maureen bolted up out of her chair after her. “Jean, wait, let’s get Paul!”

  “Go get him. I’ll get the kid down here.”

  “Don’t go up there—it’s dangerous!” Maureen had caught Jean’s arm.

  “I’m not going up; I’m gonna tell him to come down.”

  “Let me get Paul first!”

  “Go and get him. I’ll just stand down here and tell the kid to come down.”

  “Alright, but don’t go upstairs.”

  “I won’t.”

  Maureen let Jean go and the fashionably-dressed teenager reached the windowed door to the staircase leading up to the painting department.

  Jean took the door handle and Maureen hesitated in running for Paul, hung back and watched Jean open the door.

  In the cafeteria, Paul and Abigail heard the scream.

  Jean opened the door and what she saw Maureen couldn’t tell, but Maureen saw her face open in disbelief and horror, and Maureen saw a hand shoot out and grasp Jean around the neck in a fist, as a normally-proportioned hand would grasp a cucumber. This hand, bony and white and delicate, was triple the size of a man’s hand.

  Maureen shrieked. Jean’s eyes bulged and with a tremendous yank she was gone from view, her hand jerked free of the door handle it had tightened on in reflex. The door banged shut after her.

  Paul and Abby ran. Maureen ran. They met in-between.

  Maureen smashed into Paul’s arms. He stumbled back, lost his footing and fell. Maureen dropped to her hands and knees, sobbing frantically. Abby crouched by her. “What? What is it?”

  “Jean,” the girl blubbered, “Jean, Jeeean! ”

  Paul scrambled to his feet. Abby looked up at him. “Jean,” she said.

  Paul spun. Eyes darting. No sign of Jean. Back to Maureen.

  “Where is she?” he snapped, gripping his knife.

  Maureen used Abby to pull her quaking body back to its feet. She pointed a quivering arm. “Upstairs…oh God…a hand…a giant hand came out, a giant hand! ”

  Paul again spun. Upstairs? A giant hand? The window in the door leading upstairs showed nothing, apparently, behind it.

  “What hand?” Abby was asking Maureen.

  “Ohhh, ohhh, I wanna go home, I wanna go home! We have to get out of here! I want to go ho-ho-ho- home! ”

  “What happened to Jean—did she go upstairs?” Paul hissed, eyes on that window across the room. “Maureen! Where did Jean go?”

  “The hand came out and grabbed her! I heard it pull…I heard her thumping up the stairs…it was dragging her…oh my God! Oh my God…” Maureen hugged Abby and shook violently and cried. Paul had begun to take a step forward toward the door when Maureen lifted her head and told them, “There was a little boy upstairs looking down at us…he tricked Jean into opening the door!”

  Paul faced her. Abby said first, “A little boy? With blond hair?”

  “Yeah—did you see him?”

  “Yeah, I saw him out back just a minute ago!” said Abigail.

  “You two stay here,” Paul said.

  “Paul!”

  “Jean might still be alive.”

  “She isn’t; you can’t leave us! They’ll get you!”

  “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave us!” Maureen babbled.

  “I just have to look,” Paul said, and despite their chorus he made his way stealthily toward the door, knife held before him, body tense and flushed. Unreality flush. Giant hand?

  “Maureen, let go,” Abby coaxed her gently. Maureen took a step aside to hug herself so that Abby could bring her make-shift razor spear to plunging position.

  Only several yards between Paul and the door. He didn’t dare blink.

  Closing the distance. One yard. Several feet. Arm’s length. Paul stopped.

  Knife in right fist, he reached out his left hand. Eyes on the window.

  Only his reflection and dark wooden stairs showing through it.

  Fingers brushing cold handle, closing. Paul jerked the door open, let go, blocked it from shutting with his foot to free both hands.

  Dark steps. Light above, and nothing up there.

  Paul glanced at the steps for blood and saw none.

  “Jean!” he shouted up the stairs.

  The intercom crackled to life throughout the factory and loudly broadcast a number of radios playing simultaneously. They could be heard, even without the benefit of the public address system, originating from downstairs, so loud was the volume. On one station a rabid radio announcer urged listeners to come on down to some kind of car show on
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  “Sun- dayyyy! ” Superimposed over this were a heavy metal song and Karma Chameleon, by Culture Club.

  Maureen whimpered, reduced to a tremulous gelatin.

  Paul hardened at the unrelenting onslaught, as if insulted.

  Challenged. He grimaced. Shot a look over his shoulder. “Abby, don’t leave Maureen for a second; I’ve gotta check upstairs for Jean.”

  “No, Paul, no— don’t leave us!” Maureen wailed.

  “Look…”

  “I’m scared, Paul,” Abby said. She took a few steps forward.

  Maureen advanced accordingly.

  “I know, but…”

  “They’re everywhere, Paul! They’ve gotta be downstairs now…they were in the cardboard room a minute ago and then upstairs. They’ve got us surrounded. Don’t’ walk into a trap like Jean did. They’ve got her—she’s dead.”

  “A big hand grabbed her, I saw it, it was gigantic—it couldn’t be real!

  It was too big!” Maureen sobbed. “I’m not kidding! It was like a monster hand!”

  “Could this be ghosts? ” Paul said.

  “No way,” Abby said.

  “Look, I told you this place is haunted. The little boy we saw, the radio, all these weird phenomena…it could be a physical haunting, like a poltergeist.”

  “Don’t get weird on us, Paul. Maureen’s just imagining things ‘cause she’s upset.”

  “I didn’t imagine it! I saw it! Did we imagine the hands in the sandwich machine and Steve in the degreaser?”

  “I’ve gotta look for Jean, just for a minute,” Paul repeated.

  “No, Paul.” Abby.

  “I’ll just stop at the top of the stairs and look from there. You can wait at the bottom step and watch me—how about that? I’ll stay in sight.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah—I won’t leave the top step.”

  “Okay. But be careful.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Abby and Maureen approached the staircase and Paul waited for them. When they reached him Paul let go of the door and Abby held it open. Paul began to ascend, stealing one delicate foothold at a time like a mountain climber, insinuating himself on each step to minimize the creak.

  Knife held before him.

  Maureen glanced behind her, across the room at the window in the canvas curtain blocking access to the cardboard room. She imagined a sweet child’s face there, perhaps smiling, blinking innocently at her—seeing her but not seeing her. She conjured this in her mind and shuddered. She crowded Abby into the stairwell and whispered, “Let’s close the door and get down so nobody coming upstairs or through the cardboard room can see us, okay?”