Ghost Shadows

by Thomas M. Malafarina

Then the sides of the gaping maw separated opening to reveal an enormous black orifice. The blackness seemed bottomless; as if it were not so much a mouth, but an opening or a passageway to some unimaginably horrible place.

  Before he realized it, Evan's head was inside the thing's mouth, which closed tightly around his shoulders. His flesh boiled and bubbled beneath its slimy touch. Soon Evan's pitiful cries became muffled and were finally silenced. The sides of the slit rippled even more frantically slowly working the rest of Evan's twitching body further inside. His body thrashed and flayed as it was sucked deeper inside the beast. Within a few short moments, Evan Flint was completely gone.

  The creature remained in the hallway for a few more moments; then it slowly faded from sight until it was completely gone along with the man whose greed had made the creature’s temporary existence necessary on that clear and magical Christmas Eve.

  Mill Monster:

  A Ghost Story

  Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.

  —Federico Garcia Lorca

  Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life such an instrument ought to record something . . .

  —Thomas Edison, 1928

  The aged rusting hulk sat in the back of an unlit, seldom used section of the machine shop, looking like the decaying remains of some giant once-great weapon of war. Its olive drab paint had long since become flaked and chipped. The decals which once bore its machine number, #137 and its model name "Mill Master," were now barely legible.

  The same was true of its other decal, the special one that had been purchased and placed on the side of the machine as a token of endearment by its long time operator so many years ago. The decal depicted a stylized cartoon of the machine in action, its huge caricature mouth filled with gleaming white teeth in the process of ripping bars of metal to shreds. And beneath the sketch in large horror-movie style font characters were the words "Mill Monster."

  The machine had been one of the first computer controlled machining centers in the factory, purchased brand new in the mid-1960s, when the owner, Nate Bartinski was still a young, forward thinking engineer determined to make something of the failing factory his father had left to him when he passed away. Nate graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Industrial Engineering and had just started working full-time at the plant with his father when Nate Senior was struck dead with a massive coronary at the age of fifty-five.

  Nate Jr. was no stranger to manufacturing, having been raised around machinery and having worked every summer and every break from school in his father's plant since the age of sixteen. But suddenly he found himself in the unfamiliar role of factory manager and he had to quickly adapt and learn to survive in order to protect the jobs of the fifty-three men employed at Bartinski Manufacturing at that time. The plant was located at the west end of the Schuylkill County town of Ashton, Pennsylvania.

  Taking over operation more out of necessity than desire, Nate quickly began to modernize the facility in every way possible. He learned about some new technology called Numerical Control or NC machinery. Although the technology was new to him and other small-size manufacturers, it had been in use since the early 1950s by those larger manufacturers with military contracts. He learned of the machinery because Bartinski Manufacturing made most of its money from military work so he had many contacts throughout the field.

  He decided he needed to bring this modern technology into his plant, and with a line of credit from the Ashton National Bank he purchased the American made Mill Master in the summer of 1968.

  In its day, the Mill Master was considered state-of-the-art technology. It could perform the work of five men running traditional manual machines. Although the motivation for most companies who purchased such equipment was to eliminate jobs; this was not the case with Nate Bartinski. He was looking not only for ways to keep his current workforce, but to help them to become more productive so he could to purchase more machines and hire more employees. He knew he would be able to not just save his father's business, but grow it as well.

  And as things worked out, his plan was very successful. The Mill Master was capable of cutting through metal easily and when it was in production, shredded hot metal chips flew through the air and piled high on the floor around it. This was at a time before machine enclosures and protective guards, so the machine operator had to be on the alert for red-hot flying shards. The machine’s cutters sounded like a growling beast as the milled away layer after layer of steel. This was how it got its nickname "Mill Monster."

  Its first operator was a young man about Nate’s age by the name of Joseph DeNunzio. Joseph was the first generation American son of two Italian immigrant parents. Although he was the man with the lowest seniority in the shop, he got the job because he was young and was not afraid to attempt to master the new technology. Most of the older machinists who had worked their entire careers on manual equipment had no desire to become involved in such “new-fangled equipment”; no matter how many times Nate tried to tell them it was the way of the future. He believed that the new technology would soon replace most if not all of what they thought of as conventional machines. And he had been correct.

  The Mill Master was controlled by means of a computer program punched onto a one inch Mylar tape placed in a tape reader. Since they had no one with the knowledge of how to write programs for the machine, Joseph volunteered to learn how to do so. He took the programming manuals home and after a few days he began punching out programs on a tape preparation device Nate had purchased for him. And from then on, the Mill Master began making Nate's company money, and lots of it.

  Joseph took quickly to the machine and to programming, and within no time at all he had it chomping its way through part after part making precise, accurate, and repetitive components of the highest quality. The more Joseph used the machine the more proficient he became. He loved working with the equipment, and with Nate's permission and using his own money, Joseph designed and had the special Mill Monster decal made placing it proudly on the side of the machine.

  As the years went by Joseph's skill grew, as did the company's profits, and soon Nate was able to purchase other computer-controlled machines, each one more sophisticated than the last. Within a few years, the technology of the new machines quickly made the Mill Master seem antiquated. With the advent of mini and microcomputer technology as well as Computer Numerical Control or CNC machines, the Mill Master soon was considered obsolete. However, it still had its place with the company and continued to manufacture the same parts it had been making for many years.

  Although he worked with and programmed all of the new equipment, Joseph never had the same attraction to any of these as he had to the Mill Monster. It was his first machine and as such, held a special place in his heart. Then when the invasion of dramatically inexpensive Japanese CNC machines hit in the late 1970s to 1980s virtually wiping out all U.S. machine tool builders, Joseph found himself becoming frustrated with the lack of quality in so many of the new pieces of equipment from overseas. Joseph had done his best to try to talk Nate out of buying the foreign equipment. But as Nate had explained, every year more U.S. machine tool manufacturers disappeared, while the quality of the foreign machines continued to improve at an exponential rate. Eventually they soon had little choice but to accept the reality and buy what was available.

  “Joe, you surely know I would love nothing better than to buy only U.S. made equipment, but my hands are tied here,” Nate had told him. “Most of our favorite domestic machine tool builders have gone belly-up; and even finding replacement parts for our current machines is becoming a nightmare.”

  Joseph conceded, “Yeah, I know what we are going through but it still makes me sick to my stomach to see the way the entire U.S. machine tool industry is just vanishing. The imported stuff, even the best of it, can’t c
ompare with what we used to get stateside.”

  Even though Nate’s company was not in any danger of losing work to the many new manufacturing companies opening up around the world, because he primarily dealt with military work, many U. S. manufacturers who already had lost work to foreign companies were now starting to bid against his company, trying to steal what work he had.

  By the late 1990s both Nate and Joseph were in their early forties and both had wives and families. They had grown to become much more than simply boss and employee; they had become good friends. They also shared a mutual respect for each other’s abilities. Nate understood how important Joseph had been to his success and Joseph was thankful that the years working for Nate had allowed him to build a career in the field of modern manufacturing technology. During the previous ten years, Joseph had risen to the position of factory manager and no longer had as much hands-on activity in the shop, but he enjoyed those few times when he still got to interact with the younger engineers and machine operators.

  Each year the Mill Monster seemed to run less and less. When it had mechanical or electrical problems, its replacement parts were hard if not impossible to find. Often Joseph had to reverse engineer the components for the machine and make them on other machines just to keep the old Monster going. Both Nate and Joseph realized the machine should have been scrapped many years earlier, but it was a symbol for both of them. The Mill Monster was the machine that allowed their company to become the success it had become. So they kept it functioning as best as they could for as long as possible.

  Then, one day life unfortunately in a manner as cliché as the subject of a bad country western tune, Joseph came home early from work early one day and found his wife in the act, as they say, with another man.

  Insane with rage he immediately went to his dresser drawer and withdrew his gun, which he always kept loaded and ready.

  “Joseph! Please. My God! Please don’t!” His wife pleaded. The man with whom she shared her bed jumped clumsily from beneath the covers, stark naked, in a last ditch attempt to charge and overpower Joseph. But he never got the chance. With a single blast of gunfire that sounded like a bomb in the close confines of the bedroom, the man’s chest exploded in a veritable shower of crimson as he flew back against the far wall from the force of the blast. He seemed to strangely hang motionless in the air for a moment before sliding down along the wall, collapsing to the floor like a tattered rag doll. In his wake was a wide streak of red smeared down the wall.

  During the second or so before the man fell, Joseph thought he recognized him. Was it Jim? Jim Erikson? The plumber? he thought. He found it hard to tell with the splatter of gore. He turned to his wife and asked, “Sandy? Really? Jim Erickson? Was that really the best you could do?”

  His wife was staring at him as if in a trance, unable to speak coherently, her breath hitching in her chest and coming in short uneven gasps. She was stippled with blood, gore, and fragments of crimson flesh.

  “P—pl—please, Joe. Please . . . don’t do this! I—I love you, Joe,” she somehow managed to stammer.

  Joseph just looked down at her and even after her feeble pleas for mercy and her eventual screams of terror he proceeded to fire shot after shot splattering the back wall with her blood and brains.

  Next, without a moment’s hesitation, Joseph lifted the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The pistol had either misfired or was out of bullets. Joseph couldn’t recall how many bullets he had fired, nor did he care as his mind was broken and he was beyond all reason.

  With no emotion, or remorse, Joseph simply turned and left the room, went downstairs and grabbed several bottles of alcohol from their liquor cabinet and then found a disposable lighter in a drawer in their kitchen. He walked back upstairs then doused the blankets, the corpses, and all the curtains with alcohol while in between taking generous gulps for himself. Once this was done he flicked the lighter to life and set the room ablaze. Then Joseph calmly left the house and headed back to work; the only place he truly felt at home.

  The shop was completely empty as it was shut down for the weekend. Being the factory manager, Joseph had his own key. He walked through the dark building, moonlight shining in through the tall windows and roof skylights, slowly making his way back to his favorite machine, his first machine of its kind, the Mill Monster. He powered up the rickety old machine and searched through the tape storage cabinet for the program he wanted. It was a reel of tape labeled with the number O0001. It was the very first program he had ever written for the very first job to run on the machine. Looking back after some twenty or more years Joseph realized it was just a simple single deep-hole drilling program, but at the time, it had seemed as if writing it was an almost insurmountable challenge.

  He loaded the Mylar program tape into the machine’s ancient mechanical tape reader and pressed the cycle start button. The giant tool changer on the Mill Monster roared as it searched its carousel for the right tool. Joseph knew where the starting point, or origin of the program was in relation to the size of the table, as he had not only written the program but had run the job many times throughout the years.

  Then, as he saw the long, two-inch diameter spade drill come into the mill's spindle, he walked up to the machine, hoisted himself up, and leaned backward, lying across its long table and resting the back of his head against its cold cast iron surface. Looking upward through glazed, tear-filled eyes, he saw the steel drill bit rotating rapidly above him in the machine's spindle; at about six hundred revolutions per minute. Joseph could feel the slight table movement as it automatically positioned itself, preparing to carry out its programmed instructions. But instead of getting out the danger zone he simply lay still, staring upward at the large rotating cutting tool.

  Next, the Mill Monster did exactly what it did best, what it was programmed to do. It followed the commands of its programmer and brought its tool down toward the table at a rapid feed rate of two hundred inches per minute before slowing down to its programmed feed rate of about two inches per minute. However, before it reached its slowdown point it had already punched its way partially into Joseph's skull, as he knew it would, not quite killing him instantly but rendering him essentially paralyzed, and if he were fortunate enough, brain dead. No one would ever know if he had come to his senses at some point and had realized the mistake he had made, but if so it was far too late for such misgivings.

  Then the machine continued its programmed deep hole in and out peck-drilling cycle feeding its way about an inch deeper down into the man's skull before retracting part way out then repeating the process until its final programmed depth was reached. With each peck and retract the spinning tool sprayed a circular area of about twenty feet in diameter with blood and gore as Joseph’s body involuntarily thrashed about madly in a unholy dance of death.

  That night when the fire department went to Joseph's house to put out the blaze the firemen discovered the charred remnants of Joseph's wife and her lover. At first, they assumed the dead man had been Joseph but one of the volunteer firemen thought he recognized the man as being Jim Erikson, and upon examination of the man's charred wallet contents they confirmed it was him, and not Joseph.

  Ashton police chief Max Seiler Jr. soon put together a scenario, which placed Joseph DeNunzio at the top of his suspect list. They searched the house for Joseph's body, assuming a murder-suicide, but did not locate him. Their next thought was that Joseph had fled the scene, skipped town and was now in the wind.

  Seiler knew Joseph worked for Nate Bartinski and that they had been good friends for many years so he immediately drove to Nate's home. He hoped Nate might be able to offer some insight into where Joseph might have gone.

  “Chief Seiler, there’s absolutely no way I can believe Joseph DeNunzio would ever be capable of such an horrendous act,” Nate told the police chief. “I just find it impossible to comprehend.”

  The chief hesitated for a moment then replied, “I know it must be tough for you
to consider, Nate, but when a man is emotionally pushed past the brink of reason, anything is possible. The important this is that we find Joseph and at least bring him in for questioning; if for no other reason, then to exclude him from the suspect list. But to be honest with you, it doesn’t look very good for him. And so the important question is, Nate . . . where might Joseph have gone?”

  “But Max,” Nate continued only partially listening to the police chief, “we’ve both known Joseph for years. Do you really think—” he stopped himself short having finally comprehended what Seiler had just asked and suddenly realizing where Joseph most likely would have gone. “Follow me, Chief,” Nate said. “I think if Joseph went anywhere it would be to my factory. It’s probably the one place in the world he considers almost like home.”

  Entering the darkened factory, the group immediately heard the sound of a machine idling, its motors running and emitting an echoing growl, sounding like a wild beast in the otherwise silent cavernous facility. Following the sound they saw the machine’s operator light and control panel glowing in the minimal lighting provided by moonlight streaming through the skylights, looking as if it were a museum piece on display. In the center of the macabre tableau they found Joseph's decimated body lying atop the machine table, his arm dangling limply downward, blood dripping from his extended fingers, pooling on the concrete floor in a glistening puddle of crimson gore.

  The machine had completed its programmed cycle and had returned to its home position with the tool spindle now stopped, resting high above the table. Staring at the now stationary drill bit Nate saw clumps of hair, torn flesh, and what appeared to be brain matter clinging to the tool as droplets of blood plopped from its tip as if in slow motion falling to the barely recognizable mangled corpse below. Somehow Nate managed to hold back the scream that was desperate to escape his throat, but instead he turned and vomited uncontrollably.