The Factory Read online

  Later that evening, as per habit after supper, Ruth prepared for bed. In her nightgown, she came into the living room where Gary was attentive to the TV and said,

  “I’m going to bed now. Don’t forget your promise to me about not bringing anybody into the house.”

  It was one of the few times Gary had deliberately told a lie. Although he had trouble doing it, he looked up at her and forced out the words,

  “No grandma, I promise.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore voices from the attic again.”

  Another lie was forced out of his mouth,

  “Maybe I left the radio on or something.”

  There was a long look between them, one that made him very uncomfortable. Finally she said,

  “Very well. Goodnight now.”

  It was eleven o’clock. The moon and stars were hidden behind dark clouds threatening rain. Gary was at his bedroom window signalling with the flashlight toward the forest and tree house that the coast was clear. The retuning flashes indicated ‘message received’. A few minutes later there was a knock on his bedroom window and he opened it. When she scampered into the room he whispered,

  “We do have doors you know.”

  Standing in front of him she proudly said,

  “I know, but this way is more fun.”

  Before closing the window he poked his head through and looked down to the ground. He saw no visible way she could have climbed up here. Looking back at her, she saw his question, produced a tomboy grin and said,

  “I can climb up anything.”

  It was a silent tip-toe up the narrow stairs to the attic. At the entrance he pulled the string and a light illuminated his proud invention over on the table. As he walked in, she stood at the door taking in all the shadows and creepiness of the attic. Excluding the fact that there were no legs on the mannequin, she thought it still looked very scary. Gary turned and whispered an order,

  “Hurry, close the door.”

  After obeying, she walked past the mannequin and in a joking manner said to it.

  “Good evening Mrs. Albright.”

  Not seeing who she was really talking to, Gary thought it was his grandmother and fearfully snapped around. The fear in his expression was so obvious that she asked,

  “What’s the matter with you? Did you see a ghost?”

  Although Gary had often described to Sam what he was doing up here in the attic, going into great and boring detail of his creation, this was the first time she had actually seen it. Scanning it up and down, she silently admitted that she was impressed. It really was a great web of tangled wires and lights. She asked,

  “Why would you construct something like this?”

  It was a sheepish reply,

  “I don’t know. I just like doing things like that.”

  She drew the obvious conclusion.

  “You’re crazier than I am.”

  Somehow, he took that as a compliment.

  When hooking up the batteries, the colorful LED bulbs greatly added to the creepiness of the attic. The speakers crackled and Gary excitedly said to them,

  “Hello, are you there?”

  After a moment of silence, Gary repeated the question but again there was no reply. An hour passed with no communication. He saw in Sam’s eyes that she did not believe him and therefore felt a great urge to defend himself, saying,

  “Honest, I spoke to her. She is in there somewhere.”

  When more time and silence passed, he too started to question what had really happened.

  Eventually Sam felt drowsy and tried to fight heavy eyes. It was a battle she was quickly losing. She sat in the chair looking at a frustrated Gary who continued to fuse wires to this and that while feverishly trying to prove that he was not crazy. While deeply engrossed with his creation and Sam held captive between sleep and awake, Gary did not see what was happening in the attic behind him. As if the attic was a pond of water and somebody had thrown in a stone, everything started to pulsate. With colorful LED lights shinning on the mannequin, it again started a macabre dance of madly swaying arms. Pages of the newspapers piled high against the far wall started to flutter as if in a gentle wind. A drowsy Sam slowly turned her head to see through half closed eyes what was obviously impossible and therefore was simply attributed to a strange dream.

  Then it happened. A young girl’s voice echoed through the attic,

  “Hello?”

  Gary snapped alert and Sam opened lazy eyes, asking,

  “What? Was that you?”

  Excited, Gary announced,

  “I told you.”

  Although groggy, Sam sat up and paid attention. Again they heard,

  “Hello? Is anybody there?”

  Gary answered,

  “Yes, I am here.”

  Sam interjected,

  “Why are you communicating with us? What do you want from us?”

  The disembodied voice said,

  “Help me! Can you help me?”

  Sam replied,

  “Yes, we would like to help you. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know where I am. It is dark.”

  Gary looked to Sam and said,

  “She told me she is dead.”

  Sam asked,

  “Were you killed? How did you die?”

  “I don’t know how I died.”

  “Then how do you know you are dead?”

  “I hear nothing, see nothing and feel nothing. All I know is that I am supposed to look for something.”

  “Who told you to look for something?”

  “All the other voices tell me to look for something but I don’t know what I’m supposed to find. Can you help me find it?”

  Sam was quick to recognize the frugality of discovering where the voice was coming from and changed tactic.

  “Are you from here, Twin Rivers?”

  “Yes, I think that was my home.”

  “Thinking that was a strange answer. Everybody knows where they are from, Gary asked,

  “Don’t you know for sure?”

  “No, I remember very little. It is all dark.”

  Sam asked,

  “Do you remember your name?”

  There was a long pause and then a slow hesitant reply,

  “I think it was Amina.”

  When hearing the name, Sam jolted backwards. It felt like she had been hit in the head with a hammer. After a pause, and sounding more confident, the voice proclaimed,

  “Yes, I am Amina from Twin Rivers. I remember a puppy dog.”

  A sad voice then added,

  “They won’t let me go. Will you help me find my mom and dad?”

  A strange expression flushed across Sam’s face and she blurted out,

  “Yes. We will come for you.”

  And then Amina’s fearful voice quickly added,

  “They are coming.”

  Surprised, both asked at the same time,

  “Who? Who is coming?”

  The speakers went dead and the mannequin lost its desire to dance and flaying arms went limp. The newspapers settled down and the waving motion of everything in the attic returned to the way it should be, motionless.

  Both were attentive to the spiritual voice and missed the paranormal events going on behind them. He looked to Sam and waited to hear her take on what had just happened. Mystified, after a long stare at the weird contraption she said,

  “That voice came from all this tangle of wires and computer parts didn’t it? Where did you get all this stuff from?”

  Gary told her about how he and his dad went to the Factory and stole some computer motherboards. She said,

  “Then that’s where her voice came from, somewhere inside the Factory.”

  She looked hard at Gary and asked,

  “Are you going to help me save her or not?”

  When Gary finally although hesitantly nodded, Sam added,

  “Then we have to get inside the Factory and search for her.”

  That was not w
hat he had in mind about helping but a commitment was a commitment and so reluctantly he again nodded his agreement to locate the source of the mysterious voice.

  It was getting onto early morning and Sam had to get home before her mother opened her bedroom door and saw her missing. Back down stairs in his bedroom, at the window she prepared to escape the way she came. Sitting on the sill with one leg already outside, she paused and said to Gary,

  “Let’s sneak into the Factory tomorrow and see if we can find Amina. Meet me in the treehouse at noon and wear dark clothes.”

  When she was gone, he tip-toed down the hall checking to make sure Grandma was still asleep. When seeing that the door was closed, he understood that he had gotten away with his lie. Returning to his bed, he collapsed and slept for the few hours still available to him.

  Chapter 14

  Cold air from the mountains had cleared the clouds and revealed a sky filled with heavenly stars. With only the light of the full moon to guide Sam through the forested block, she expertly maneuvered the crooked trail toward her home. Her head was full of things she believed in, ghosts and Tarot Cards. What she had just heard and now seen pointed to them being real. Strange unexplainable things can really happen. What happened to her dad greatly added proof of it. She didn’t know if Amina was really alive and talking to her through that contraption Gary somehow created or if she was dead and really a ghost. It was a mystery that she made up her mind to explore and she knew exactly where to look.

  She also understood what just happened in the attic was a million times more unexplainable than just a mysterious voice coming through a chaotic tangle of haphazard wires and tubes connected together by computer parts. While half asleep on the chair she saw something in the attic that Gary did not. While he was held spellbound intently staring at blinking lights and crackling tubes, something off to the side had caught her attention. At first she thought it was only a dream and ignored it but after the weirdness of the voice, she understood that the mannequin really danced and the pile of papers really fluttered without benefit of a draft.

  She had looked at her hands and realized she too was caught up in that waving motion. Her body was dancing without benefit of movement. It was a freaky sight. However, when asking Gary if he saw it too, he seemed impervious to the question. He was still held spellbound and calling out to what he thought was a ghost inside his invention. Seeing the mannequin dance and twist in all sorts of contortions bewildered her sleepy mind. Conceding that she was tired, she originally accepted that none of it really happened. But now with a clear mind, she had to admit that she had seen things like that happen at home. She now accepted that everything she saw and heard in the attic really happened.

  Once through the empty lot, she jumped over the fence and ran across her back yard. The way she snuck out of her bedroom was the same for getting back. With the help of a sturdy drainpipe attached to the side of the garage she scampered up to the roof. She then balanced across the top of the roof and over to her bedroom window. It was an eerie sight to see. Silhouetted against the glow of the bright full moon as if it were a spotlight, one saw the shadow of a wispy girl balancing on a tightrope if at a circus. As she had done a hundred times before, she squeezed through her bedroom window.

  Her bedroom was typical of a girl her age, messy with clothes scattered on the unmade bed as well as on the floor. She too had a desk in her room and it was cluttered with books from mind reading and how to communicate with ghosts. A notebook was open and on the pages were written strange numbers and equations more associated with a mad scientist. Sam was a strange girl.

  Exhausted and with shoes still on, she lay fully clothed on her bed. A small nightlight cast eerie shadows on the wall. At times, when fatigued she would stare at the shadows and pretend the shapes moved and danced for her. On the ceiling, in the glow of the night light she saw more mad science equations written by her. What made them strange was that she did not remember doing it or even how she could reach that high. Stranger yet, she felt that they were somehow important to finding Amina but did not know why.

  It was still early morning and Sam reasoned that the household should be dark and silent. But it was not. From her bed she once again heard her mom and dad arguing in their bedroom down the hall. Most was muffled but as always, she heard enough to understand that it was the same old argument. It hurt Sam dearly that her mom and dad could not get on like in the old days, before it happened. She heard mom scream,

  “But it’s wrong. There is something not right with you. We have to go to the hospital, I’ll drive you.”

  There was an adamant denial from Gordy,

  “No! If they find out, they will take me back to the mine. I’m getting better.”

  Gloria countered,

  “No you are not. It’s happening more and more.”

  A door slammed and under the gap of her bedroom door Sam saw the hall light come on. A shadow cut though the thin glow and she understood one of them had walked out of the bedroom. She got up and tentatively opened her door just a crack to see her dad in his robe walking down stairs. She suspected correctly that he was going for the bottle. Leaving her bedroom and walking through the hall past the master bedroom she heard a most hurtful sound. Her mother was crying. It tore at her soul knowing that like many times before, no matter the kind and supporting words she said to her mom, the crying did not stop.

  She tip-toed down the stairs to see, as she knew she would, dad sitting at the kitchen table looking intently at the bottle of scotch. Sad eyes looked up to see his daughter peeking around the corner at him. He tried to smile but it would not come. She loved her dad. Before it all happened they were close. He helped her build the tree house. Now she tried not to hate him for making her mom cry so much. He indicated for her to come and sit next to him.

  Slow steps dragged across the kitchen floor, pulled a chair back and she sat looking at a despondent dad. Gordy Jackson was the perfect miner. With his short stout body it was as if he was born to spend his life working in tunnels. With a sad voice he said,

  “I’m sorry honey. I really am.”

  By the fawn eyes looking back at him he understood she believed him. He continued,

  “You know I love your mom as much as you right?”

  Sam nodded her belief of his declaration. He then added,

  “It’s not me. I don’t mean to be like this.”

  Again, she knew that. Nobody would ever want to be like that on purpose. He said,

  “You know honey I would do anything to keep you and your mom safe. That’s why I can’t go to the hospital or back to the people in the mine.”

  She understood that too. Why would anybody go back to where it all happened? It would only make things worse. As if to confirm his declaration of love, he repeated,

  “Anything. I’ll do anything to keep you safe. If you are ever in trouble and need help just call and I’ll be there for you.”

  It was hard to force words past the lump in her throat and when it finally came, there was a tear in her voice,

  “I know dad.”

  They then sat in silence bathed in love for each other. She saw her dad slowly reach for the scotch. The strange thing that happened next was somewhat diminished by the many times she had seen it before. As if it were only an illusion of a mean magician, his hand went right through the bottle like it wasn’t even there. His arm started to shimmy in the same manner she saw the attic shimmer. Gordy turned slow eyes to Sam and said,

  “It’s starting. Best you leave me now.”

  Chapter 15

  It was mid-morning when Gary woke to muffled voices somewhere in the house. Groggy, he got out of bed and ventured down the hall. He stood half concealed behind the kitchen door and saw a police officer talking to his grandmother. He was an older man with messy straight gray hair. Both were sitting at the kitchen table and he was holding a cup. Gary understood that Grandma must have made him a cup of tea.

  Staying hidden, he heard the officer
say,

  “Yes I understand that Ruth. I know what he did to your daughter. I was the arresting officer, remember? But that doesn’t give you the right to shoot him. He came to the precinct and filed a complaint. Despite what he did in the past, I have to investigate a firearms violation. What you did was illegal and chargeable.”

  Undeterred, Ruth projected a defiant attitude and protested.

  “I don’t give a hoot if you have to arrest me. That no good bastard is not taking my grandson from me. I will not lose him again. He has no right to Gary.”

  “I’m sorry Ruth, but by law he has every right to him. He is the legal father.”

  Ruth was not deterred by the legality and snapped,

  “If he comes near my grandson, I’ll kill him, I swear.”

  “Okay, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Let’s get to the complaint shall we. I need a report from you. Tell me what happened and I’ll help you with it.”

  Still fuming, Ruth told Sheriff Cornwall what happened on the porch yesterday morning. He asked,

  “Did he threaten you or Gary with physical harm?”

  “No, he just swore at me and said he was coming for his son.”

  She suddenly slapped her hand on the table and yelled,

  “He will never get Gary. I’ll go to jail before that happens.”

  The sheriff calmly nodded and said,