Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “Yeah, good idea.” Abby and Maureen let the door swing shut and close them in the stairwell with Paul, crouching down on the steps below the rim of the window in the door.

  Paul was halfway up. He resisted the temptation to glance back down at the girls, afraid of what might be waiting at the top of the stairs when he looked back. The next step squealed agonizingly. Paul sneered and drew in a whistling breath.

  He could swear now that not only were radios playing over the intercom upstairs, but a radio or two in the sanding room beyond the painting room as well. Yes—positively. He could distinguish a tinny-sounding Hispanic station in there amongst the rock cacophony.

  Almost to the top. When he reached the last step, the pinnacle, would some giant ectoplasmic hand come around the corner, yanking him by the neck or shoving him down the stairs to shatter his bones?

  He had to go up there. Had to.

  Four steps. Three. He could see more of upstairs, the wheeled paint racks filled with parts sprayed earlier by a living Steve. Two steps. Paul stopped below the top step.

  He couldn’t bring himself to look around the corner to his right. The hand, or whatever it was Maureen had seen, would be waiting there.

  Paul shifted to the far left of the step, away from the corner. Slowly, not breathing, he leaned his body into the room so as to see the first of the paint booths.

  The carousel was on. The overhead conveyor belt with hooks on it, from which parts were hung so that they could be sprayed as they slowly passed in front of the paint booths. A few large pieces, already painted, filed into view from behind the paint booth Paul could see. They floated out of view. Now just empty, paint-encrusted hooks. The belt rotated.

  Now something new came floating out from behind the first paint booth.

  Paul winced, recoiled back against the mesh that prevented him from toppling off into the elevator shaft to his left. He recognized the object from its first signs of appearance. Purple and black-squiggled T-shirt, the back of it impaled on a carousel hook, hiked up to show midriff and back.

  Arms dangling, head slumped, hair draped to hide features. And the purple and black squiggles joined by white splotches; on her midriff and back and across the thighs and crotch of her designer jeans, too. Flecks in her hair. Jean had been hung on the conveyor belt and spray-painted.

  “What do you see?” Abigail hissed up at him.

  Paul stepped up on the last step and turned around the corner.

  Abigail saw only a sliver of Paul up there now. “Paul!” she whispered harshly. Spear haft slick.

  He ignored her. He ducked down quickly behind a wooden shelf and Abby lost sight of him fully.

  “Jesus,” Paul breathed. He was mesmerized. He felt faint. But there was also a crazy, triumphant exhilaration…unaccountable perhaps. Under less emotional circumstances, he might have compared the sensation to seeing Bigfoot, or a flying saucer. A ghost.

  At the end of the room, beyond all the paint booths, were those plastic hanging strips cutting off the painting department from sanding. And behind the strips, it danced.

  It looked watery through the dusty, thick strips, but was close enough to them to almost brush against them. It was dancing to the intercom’s hideous soup of sound, dancing a spastic marionette rain-dance, too absorbed to have noticed him. Paul watched it in stricken fascination. Its head and body, those of the child they had seen. Blond hair, Oliver Twist face. From what Paul could see, the face remained impas-sive, lips pressed in a gentle almost-smile. Eyes bright and harmless. The brown winter coat was gone. It wore trousers and a blue and white-striped T-shirt. Dirty, once-white sneakers. And the pale, skinny arms flopping in dance were three times their normal length, having two elbows each, ending in gigantic bony white hands with immense fingers.

  The legs were three times their normal length, requiring two joints each, also. Subsequently, the trousers were more like shorts. The feet were normal in size.

  Paul could clearly see, once the more salient arms and legs had been assimilated, an adult-sized naked and erect penis poking up out of the boy’s trousers.

  The dancing creature was mantis-like and floatingly graceful, not like a person on stilts. It was tall. The arms raised up like those of a gibbon and the blond head bobbed agreeably to the body’s frenzied gyrations.

  Paul found it hard to will himself to move…to think.

  “Paul!” he heard Abby hiss behind and below.

  This startled but helped him. On hands and knees, Paul scuttled backwards, keeping his burning eyes locked on the creature. He made it around the corner and the vision left his eyesight.

  Paul rose and came down the steps at a considerably greater speed than with which he had mounted them.

  ««—»»

  “You said you wouldn’t do that,” Abby scolded him as he descended.

  “Shh.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  Paul reached the girls and hustled them out the door and into the bright shipping department, making sure not to let the door slap shut on its spring. The two young women saw his bloodless, glassy-eyed intensity. Paul shot a glance over his shoulder and herded the girls across the room toward the cafeteria.

  “What?” Maureen whimpered.

  In the cafeteria, Paul pulled them by the elbows into the corner where the pay phone was positioned. He knew better than to try it again.

  “What did you see?” Abigail whispered. “Jean?”

  “Yeah—she’s dead.”

  “How? ” Maureen sobbed.

  “I don’t know, but she was hung up on the carousel and she was sprayed with paint.”

  “What?”

  “Hung up on the what?” cried Maureen.

  “The belt they hang parts on to paint. Listen, now. I know you’re not gonna believe this…maybe you will, Maureen. I saw…the thing that’s doing this. It isn’t human.”

  “What do you mean?” Abby asked.

  “Maureen was right. I saw this thing dancing around to the music up there in the sanding room. It was the little boy we saw, Abby…except it’s changed. It has arms and legs too long for a human being, now, and giant hands like Maureen said.”

  “Oh God,” breathed Maureen.

  Abby hissed, “You’re crazy, Paul—are you sure what you saw?”

  “I got a good look at it. I watched it. It looks like the same boy I saw in the cafeteria hours ago, but it has arms and legs longer than I can describe. They have multiple joints. Whatever it is, it was disguising itself as a normal little boy. Either it folded its limbs up to look normal or it grew them longer.”

  “For Christ sakes, Paul.”

  “Look, I saw it, alright?”

  “I saw it too, Abby—it’s real.”

  “Well, what is it? A freak or…something from outer space or something?”

  Paul tossed a look toward the doorway. He could see the door to the elevator. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s from another dimension. Or maybe it’s some kind of elemental spirit that’s taken on a physical form.” There was a savage glittery excitement in Paul’s eyes.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Paul.”

  “Can we kill it?” Maureen sniffled.

  “It’s solid, apparently. But not necessarily. If it is solid, I don’t see why we can’t kill it. We’re not exactly gonna go hunting it down, though.

  I think we should make a break for the back docks while it’s upstairs.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Abby said.

  “Well let’s go—hurry,” Maureen whined.

  “Okay, let’s go. Stick together.” Paul moved.

  Maureen scrambled, terrified to be left even a foot behind him.

  Abby leapt after her, still with her spear. Factory Amazon.

  Paul hesitated at the doorway into the abysmal cardboard room. The girls piled behind him, Maureen’s hand on his back.

  “Let’s go, Paul, we have to hurry! ”

  Paul gave the cavern a quick scan through the glass, th
en pushed the door and plunged into the gloom.

  The two young women dove trustingly after him.

  ««—»»

  The three of them darted down the main, central aisle in the labyrinth of stacked cardboard, across rough slabs of metal laid down to protect the sagging floor from the wheels of fork trucks. One of the few night light fluorescents high overhead fluttered and ticked, turned amber. It caught Maureen’s anxious attention. She looked up and moaned as she darted and her toe caught the edge of one of the metal slabs and she came smashing down on her forearms. She yelped.

  Abby tripped over her, stumbled in momentum but caught herself, managing not to skewer anyone on her lance.

  Paul skidded, wheeled around, sprang to Maureen.

  The intercom still raged, the sound hollow and eerily distant in here.

  Paul took Maureen’s arm to help her up. She bucked with sobs. Paul’s eyes trailed across Maureen’s back to where her shirt had hiked up, revealing smooth lower back curving sumptuously into soft hips. She got to her feet and he let go of her arm. Maureen looked at the torn skin on her forearms and squealed another sob.

  “You’re alright, Maureen, come on,” Abby urged.

  “You okay?” asked Paul. He felt a stab of pity for her amidst all this danger, and wanted to put his hand on her or arm around her but couldn’t.

  Paul was shy about touching women. To the point of fear. Though he had kissed and fondled his girlfriend of some years back—years without a girlfriend since—the girl who had left him and gone off to college, he had never had intercourse with her. Or anyone. Paul had told his cousin Ray that he had had sex with her. Paul had told Ray, perhaps for more authen-ticity, that he had been impotent with her at first. Paul had lied. And he didn’t feel good about it.

  All the night lights in here now flickered, and one by one sputtered to pulsating amber. The gloom around them became richer. Maureen pressed her body impulsively against Paul and knotted her fists in his black Tshirt. “It knows we’re in here, Paul! Let’s go back!” Maureen glanced at the doorway at the back of the room. “It can come down from the sanding floor the back way—we might walk right into it!”

  That was a strong possibility, Paul realized. It could be hiding around the corner of the doorway even now. He unconsciously held one of Maureen’s torn arms, damp with sweat.

  “We can run for it!” Abby insisted.

  “No—we should turn back. We’re gonna wait for the truck.”

  “No way, Paul!”

  ‘We’ll barricade ourselves in the shipping room. Listen! I’ll use the pallet jack to pile the Westman skids in front of the curtain. We’ll use shipping string, boxes, tables…”

  “How do we barricade the elevator? And, and what about the plastic near the stairs? It could tear right through that. There’s no way! ”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Maureen sobbed, “it’s dark! ” They stood naked in a no-man’s-land between their base camp and the shadows in which their enemy moved.

  Paul’s mind teetered on a balance beam of indecision. His previous leader’s cool faltered—he was almost willing to relinquish command to Abby, who seemed receptive to that concept.

  Abby whipped her head. “Paul!” In swinging her spear around in a new direction the razor point scratched Paul’s belly.

  He hardly noticed, tensed his whole body. “Where?” he whispered.

  “Over near the corner—let’s move! ”

  “Did you see it?” Maureen gushed in a squeaky whisper.

  “Let’s get out of the open! ” Abby turned and leaped out of the main aisle, scrambled lithely over a short pile and ducked behind a giant stack.

  Paul pushed Maureen after her. Maureen was only too willing to follow, and retained enough survival coordination for quick response.

  Paul crouched by them in this narrow cardboard ravine. “It probably heard you,” he said.

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  “Did you see it clearly?”

  “I just saw a shadow move out of the corner of my eye. It was near the cafeteria wall, the corner with all the circuit breakers. Maybe that’s why the lights went down.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If we make a run for the shipping department it might cut us off, or if we make a run for the back docks it might cut us off. It could be anywhere behind that cardboard.”

  “Oh, God,” Maureen sniffled. “Paul, please get us out of here!”

  “I’m trying to.” Paul’s lead pentagram amulet swung like a lazy pendulum—with all this running around it had been thumping his chest but he hadn’t tucked it inside his shirt. Whatever power it might garner for him as a witch, he needed all the help he could get. He glanced at Maureen beside him. Face pasty, eyes red, on the verge of swooning. She looked back at him meekly and he quickly looked elsewhere. “Stay here,”

  he muttered. He crept to his right down the narrow, trash-littered back aisle that ran parallel to the right-hand wall of dusty brick. Stacks of cardboard pressed up against the wall could have given access to the small windows high up, but they were sealed over.

  From a new position Paul ventured an eye around the edge of a cardboard pile, his nose pressed to the cardboard and inhaling the dust of months settled on it. He sat back and bottled a sneeze, wrested control and peered again, this time holding his breath.

  Mesas and plateaus. A cardboard skyscraper city-scape. Weak fluttering amber illumination. He saw much shadow but none of it moving.

  What might be peeking out of it, back at him, as he pecked now—its eyes so keen perhaps that it saw his one sneaky eye? That made his eye feel huge and soft and vulnerable. He pulled back and returned in a hunched ape-walk to where the two young women hunkered down.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.

  “Great,” said Abby.

  “Well what the fuck do you say we do?”

  “I told you what to do but you waited too long. We have to make some kind of move—we’re too boxed in here.” Abby didn’t realize her own pun.

  “Yeah,” Paul muttered.

  “Are you sure you saw it?” Maureen asked Abby hopefully. “Maybe you imagined it ‘cause you’re scared.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  Mixed with the music on the P.A. they heard a D.J.’s voice, but it was distant and garbled. Paul strained to listen, hoping to hear the time. It had to be pretty damn close to ten, right?

  Abby contemplated the waning lights. “If these go out all the way we’re dead. Let’s make a run for the back docks, Paul—time is running out.”

  “Why is it picking us out one by one?” Paul wondered. “It couldn’t have gotten everyone one by one—it had to…I don’t know. Maybe ‘cause we’re onto it, but it seems a little scared of us.”

  “Paul,” Maureen said, hands on his arm, “if we go back in shipping we can hear the truck when it comes and we can yell for help. He’d hear us if we were out on the dock. The back dock is too far away, and what if we finally get there and find out it’s blocked, too? Of course it’s blocked; everything else is blocked. Everything. The truck could be out there right now. You said we could make a run for the dock later if the truck didn’t come. We’re closer to shipping than we are to the other door in here—maybe if it’s scared of us a little it wont’ attack us if we all run for it together, holding hands so nobody gets left behind.”

  Paul had been nodding. “Yeah, you’re right. The thing wants us to run for the back docks. That’s why it let me see it dancing—to scare us into running and leaving the shipping room. We gotta get back in there. But listen…we won’t run. If it sees us run it’ll think we’re scared of it, even if we are. If it sees us calm and alert maybe it’ll keep its distance.”

  “Well if it pops up I’m running,” said Abby.

  “No, listen.” Paul bulged his eyes and thrust his jaw at her, hissed through clenched teeth. “That’s what it wants—to scatter us. No one takes off on the others. We’ve got to keep together to ke
ep strong.”

  “We won’t hear the truck because of the intercom.”

  “We’ll wreck the intercoms up here. There’s one in the aisle.” He nodded toward the curtained corridor leading into shipping.

  “I’m not hanging around in there while we try to—”

  “Shut up, you’re wasting time. Let’s…”

  A blurred streak, as a hand of clammy white loomed up for a mil-lisecond, fingers spread to their full impossible breadth, before flashing down at them where they huddled. They barely had time to react, a half-cry starting from Maureen as she fortunately lost her balance on the balls of her feet and toppled onto her back. Paul had thrust his weight backwards as well—not thinking to swing his knife—as the hand lunged for his throat.

  The bony fingers, only as thick around as a slender man’s fingers but apparently with extra joints, gripped the front of Paul’s black T-shirt with its shiny Chinese dragon decal.

  Now Paul swung his knife, before it could tug him over the stack of folded boxes to where it hid on the other side. The blade buried itself, with a grinding glance off bone, in the pallid flesh between thumb and fingers. Maureen was screaming hysterically off behind him.

  Abby hesitated with her spear, numbed in horror.

  A very thick, greenish-gray sap flowed casually from where the Buck knife was imbedded. The fingers tried to pull at Paul but he jerked on the knife as if it were a stick shift in a car, and resisted using his other hand to dislodge the fingers lest it grab that. “Abby!” Paul shrilled.

  Abby jabbed with her spear. Just grazed her target, but thrust again with more force. Only nicked the narrow wrist. Her jabs were like the horribly ineffectual blows and bullets, slow motion and weak, Paul remembered from his dreams. Punches he threw, bullets he fired at dream opponents—so frustratingly anemic. He watched the spear jab and the glistening sap ooze where his knife had jammed, where blood would be jumping in a human being.