“HOW it went missing, nobody knows — it seemed to simply vanish. Though some say that a police officer took it home as a grim memento.”

After Jimmy (Likkenson) made this revelation, he added, “And that’s supposedly why ‘the curse remains’ — because the knife that killed them has to be thrown down into the well, holy water mixed within it, to rid the grounds of McCurry’s foul spirit and free the ‘trapped souls’ of his victims.”

Total silence then fell upon the four, young college students, who were just coming into view of the old, abandoned factory.

“I guess that’s it,” said Melanie (Smart), who nervously, reluctantly agreed to spend the early October evening at the non-functional plant. “So they made spoons, forks, knives and stuff like that?”

“Yeah, and a few other kitchenware items,” replied Ezekial (Bowman). “Most of the machinery is still in there, but they’re pretty much all seized up, from lack of use for so long. That’s one reason they’re demolishing it tomorrow, before developing a small memorial park.”

The factory, KitchenWareWorld, had closed down permanently in late 1957, right after declaring bankruptcy; it had four floors and a basement: Its ground floor was elevated by two feet to allow for the structure’s basement’s horizontally narrow though long windows, just slightly below the ceiling, thus giving the basement access to much needed daylight should there be a power outage. Though utilized as factory goods storage space, a protruding, stone cemented well orifice was situated at the basement’s southwest corner.

The well, just over 109 meters deep when measured with sonar, was repeatedly scheduled to be dismantled, drained then filled with cement; however, the job was continuously delayed, until it was finally decided to leave it be altogether. Initially, the well held clean water, but by 1970 the well’s base water entrance and exit were clogged firmly shut — first with dense dirt from the farm yard which had stood in place of the factory grounds until 1953, and then with factory refuse dumped during the many years of an absence of water polluting laws; thus, the very same well content, liquids and all, occupied the deep pit ever since. Then finally, in early 2006, after a young girl fell into the well and drowned, the city’s council and mayor voted unanimously in favor of demolishing the factory and recycling its contents.

“They like to say that the ‘poor economy’ closed it down,” said Candace (Florance), sarcastically, “though only the fools and tourists don’t know, or simply don’t believe, that it was because of the killings.”

“Where’s the guy, now; I mean, where’s he buried?” Melanie queried, again with nerves on edge.

“At the asylum cemetery,” Ezekial answered before adding, “by way of suicide. The townsfolk didn’t want him in the regular cemetery, and his own relatives wanted nothing to do with his remains. His grave was placed somewhere amidst the other unmarked stones, so his corpse wouldn’t be dug up by twisted devil worshippers and other souvenir orientated people, if you know what I mean because … ”

“Does anyone here know the names of his victims?” Candace interrupted, without intended inconsideration.

“Uh, yeah … ,” Ezekial spoke up, again: “Rebecca Timms, Robert Stevens, Sandra MacDonald and, uh, Nick Johnson.”

“You’ve read up on this a bit, huh,” she noted.

According to all accounts and the killer’s own open confession to police, Andrew McCurry — a.k.a. Madman McCurry or the Lanky Lunatic — was one of the managers at KitchenWareWorld who’d totally lost his composure when he’d lost his grasp on reality after being informed by the CEOs at headquarters that he’d “very soon be laid off for budgetary reasons.” Following the grisly killings, corporate financial matters significantly worsened, with the horrific deaths being a formidable liability, especially in the field of advertising and retail.

McCurry, with less than three years left before he could retire at 65, decided that some factory staffers hated him — though he had no realistic idea of their identities, because his stern hand managed all of the “laborers below me in rank” — and a few had “even conspired, and succeeded, to get me fired!” Thus, as his final act as a manager there, McCurry selected four employees (all in their early twenties) and told each to stay an extra (overtime paid) two-hour period following their morning shift, at 11:30 a.m., to assist him with “a task.”

That day at the factory, there was to be a “Dead Period” for two and a half hours, from noon until 2:30 p.m., during which building electrical adjustments were to be made involving the main power juncture box just outside of the factory (and McCurry, unlike the four staffers, knew that power to the factory’s two, large elevators would thus be cut off). When the morning shift ended and the whistle blew, all of the factory’s morning shift staff, except for the four, began to leave.

McCurry was aware that it took half an hour for the morning and afternoon shift employees to exchange places but that the latter employees, on that day, would not begin showing up until 2:30 p.m.; and McCurry discreetly remained behind as the four, all stationed on the second and third floors, were individually told that he or she “need not worry about the electrical work being done — the bosses are just being overly precautious” and to “keep working till I come get you, O.K. I won’t be too long.”

Conveniently for McCurry, the factory machines the four operated were noisy and also required them to wear ear protection gear. When the opportunity came, McCurry (who married at twenty-nine but divorced at forty-two, with no children) firmly rigged the fourth floor’s stairwell doors to lock-in onto that floor anyone who’d enter. Then, taking in a deep breath, he went to each of the four employees and told him or her (of which the other three were oblivious) to come to his fourth-floor office.

There, he closed the door (which he’d long ago found could only be locked from the outside of the office) behind the staff member, and rather than tell the employee what he’d like him or her to do for the extra hour, he then began to pace around his office, erratically. He worked himself into a frenzy, ranting about his “evil” bosses; he also went on about how some of his employee underlings really hated him and a few even conspired “to have me canned!”

That’s when matters would turn, for the employee, into a horrific nightmare: McCurry suddenly went quiet, opened his desk drawer and pulled out a large, black handled, KitchenWareWorld knife — the largest the factory produced — and chased the screaming employee out of his office and (eventually, at least) to the locked shut stairwell doors.

The only exception to McCurry’s detailed plan was the first of his victims, Rebecca Timms, who fled to the stairwell doors and found one door barely ajar (due to McCurry’s incompetence), allowing her to run down to the basement and eventually hide behind the well. But it all was to no avail: McCurry was close enough behind and came across her lost shoe just a dozen feet from the well, behind which came her audible whimpering. “I then killed her and dragged her back up the stairs, to my office.”

The remaining targeted employees, attentively at work, could not hear their colleague’s desperate screams from up above, then below, and therefore did not act upon them. It was on public record that he callously admitted, at police headquarters, to laying “a curse on each of them, just before I stabbed them, no more than ten minutes of each other — ‘may your soul be trapped in your horror for eternity,’ I told them.”

Police got McCurry when they were called in by an electrician working on a connector wire site situated just below a fourth-floor window who’d noticed McCurry calmly looking down upon the four, neatly aligned corpses lying face down. McCurry was charged, tried and convicted of the four first-degree murders after having reluctantly pleaded guilty at his court appointed lawyer’s behest (though he was spared the death penalty, for having been found “criminally insane”).

After only three weeks of incarceration, though, he escaped from the asylum one night, fled back to KitchenWareWorld and easily broke his way into his former office, after first breaking into the basement and its hazardous chemicals storage room. Sitting in the office desk’s chair, he pulled out a bottle of scotch whiskey he’d been saving for retirement day, carefully poured into it a package of powder form cyanide and drank as much as he could before falling over and giving up the ghost.

In the spring of 1983, in an attempt to cleanse the abandoned factory of McCurry’s corrupted spirit, as well as free the four victims’ trapped spirits, a young though confident priest dropped his blessing kit, consisting of a crucifix, three one-liter bottles of holy water and one small bottle of blessed red wine, and ran off after an unseen “force — like some cold stench blasting into me — shoved me back, very hard, three times.”

Two and a half years later, five otherwise bored teens found the dusty kit, took it with them down into the basement, to the well, and there they smoked marijuana; then, one teen drank the wine and carelessly poured the blessed water down into the well, into its mixture of mostly unhealthy elements.

“The doors are just over there,” said Jimmy, pointing.

“They’re locked,” Ezekial moaned, jerking on the two entrance door handles until his second attempt, with greater effort, popped one open.

“Okay,” said Jimmy, pressing the light button on his Swatch. “Let’s say we meet back here at … eleven. Alright?”

“I say we all stay together,” Melanie strongly though meekly suggested, then added in an unconvincing tone. “It could be dangerous.”

“Nah,” blurted Candace, brazenly, “we’ll cover more ground if we spread out.”

Each went his or her way (though Melanie was the last to budge) with a large flashlight in hand.

Jimmy readily found his way to and up the stairwell, skipping the second floor and climbing right up onto the third floor. There, flashing his light around the machinery, he took only three steps to his right before finding himself standing next to the aged shift card puncher; with it were about three dozen metal pockets, in which almost all of the former employees’ shift cards still sat, collecting dust.

Wow, he marveled. Why are they still here? Hey, maybe the victims’ cards are still here.

With his illuminating flashlight, he visually scrolled down each row of cards, hoping to locate at least one of the victims’ cards. They’d sell for a bundle — no problem! However, his prospects of finding such dimmed in his mind as he approached the very last of the cards. Nada … Damn!

But then, wham! — scored, and on the very last card: There it is! “Robert Stevens, Unit #308.” Come to poppa!

Brushing off the card’s thin film of dust, Jimmy felt inexplicably strange. And it was in an instant that the world completely changed for him: Jimmy found himself in an unmanned yet humming factory, well-lit by a midday sun, whereas he and his college mates had entered the premises at just past a darkening 8 p.m. In this new ‘reality,’ Jimmy was in what must have been one of the factory’s few offices; and, soon enough, he was confronted by a graying, tall, lanky man, looking to be in his late fifties or early sixties. The man had just stepped in behind Jimmy, shut the door, walked past him, stood behind a varnished oak wood desk and glared at him.

What the … What is this?! Where am I?! Jimmy thought loudly in his mind’s ear, while quite stunned and bewildered. And where’s that bright light coming from? He looked through the office’s side window, to one of the fourth floor’s large, southward windows, through which the lowering autumn sun’s light shone; he then looked back to the man, who just began to ramble on about something. And who in the hell is he?! It took a few moments before Jimmy could adequately focus on, and thus fully listen to, what the rather wiry man was saying.

“ … was you who helped con my bosses into firing me — you, Robert, and your cohorts hate me, and … ”

The man’s rant drifted off as Jimmy tilted his head to one side, looked past the man’s aging head and into the office wall’s small mirror. In it, Jimmy saw, of course, no one but the reflection of his own deeply puzzled facial expression. Who’s he calling “Bob”?

Jimmy then looked down at the cotton cloth nametag sewn onto the man’s white dress shirt’s left breast … This all has to be a joke — it has to be!!

“Bob? … Bob?! … What are you … ?! Robert Stevens!! Look at my face when I’m addressing you!!”

But Jimmy had soon enough bleakly realized who the man was and who the man thought Jimmy was.

“You’re … ,” Jimmy choked out, barely, “you’re McCurry — Andrew McCurry.”

“Yeah?” the frustrated Lanky Lunatic responded, “your brilliant point being … ?”

“Hey, McCurry — I mean, Mr. McCurry — I’m really not the guy you’re … ”

“Oh, bullshit!” McCurry blasted back, instantly, while opening his desk’s drawer and pulling out a huge kitchen knife, with a shiny, foot-long blade. “I’ve really had enough!”

“Oh, God!!” Jimmy yelped, spinning around and slamming face first into the office door’s window, leaving it severely cracked. “Oh, shit!!”

“You’re not getting away, Bob!”

“But I’m not Bob, damn it!!” Jimmy squealed, grabbing and turning the doorknob, slamming the door open as hard as he could before bolting out. He ran between sparkling clean, operational machinery units, all the while looking around for any way out. Spotting the elevator doors at the floor’s east end, he immediately went to them, futilely repeatedly and forcefully pressing the elevator retrieval button. When about ten seconds had lapsed and no elevator car, light or sound came about, Jimmy realized he was in real trouble, and he was experiencing terror like nothing ever before. God, oh, God! Please let this just be a nightmare!!

“Sorry, Bob — no way out!” came the yell from the knife wielding Madman McCurry, only 50 feet behind Jimmy. “No way out!”

Where the hell is everybody?! Jimmy looked all around at the large, lifeless floor. It’s all fucking empty! There’s just the damn machines!! He then wondered about the other three floors, not to mention the basement, though it usually was unmanned, anyway. And where’s that buzzing coming from? Are there workers there?

Eventually, though, he cut through the scramble within his mind to remember: The stairs, the stairs! The stairs have to be working! That’s how I got here in the first place!

He spun around to look all along the walling. Now, where the hell were they? … There! Again, he bolted, this time towards the floor’s mid-west-side wall, as directly as possible.

“There’s nowhere to run away to, Bobby — you little, fucking rat!” McCurry yelled with apparent glee, taking a short cut to his intended victim, in between the machinery.

When Jimmy, dodging the machine units, arrived at the stairwell doors and pushed the handles, repeatedly in vain, all hope was lost. They’re locked shut! They’re locked solid fucking shut!! he screamed within his mind’s ear, instinctually continuing to pull and push the doors’ handles, to no end. It slowly yet assuredly sank into Jimmy’s beleaguered mind that he was indeed not dreaming but rather, somehow, in a different reality — a different world.

He could then hear from behind, the slowing run, then shuffle, of the crazed man’s shoes on the floor; the sound was very soon followed by the sharp, cold pierce of McCurry’s knife into Jimmy’s upper back and into his rapidly beating heart.

Slowly falling to the floor, Jimmy’s grip on the door handle loosened, and the life flowed from his body. All the while, he, taking his very last breaths, could hear his tormentor’s whispery victory slur. “There you go, you lousy rat. There you go — though with a final word: May your soul … ”

____

IT was approaching 9:15 p.m., and Candace had just made her way up onto the fourth floor. Now, where’s his office? she thought, directing her flashlight onto parts of the floor, with its litter of various machine parts. Walking along next to the wall, approaching a small room with its windows covered by what appeared to be tar paper, all that really caught her attention was a large entanglement of some aged, discolored, discarded clothing laying on the floor, in a corner where the wall met that of the small room.

She flashed her light beam throughout the pile of clothing (kicking aside some old, 1950s style jeans, brown dress shirts and knee-high skirts) and noticed a slightly torn, white blouse with some nylon stockings wrapped around it. Kicking apart the three pieces of clothing, she decided to pick up the blouse, which was stained with a blotch of what appeared to be dried blood surrounding a two-inch tear in the back.

And then a sudden burst of sunlight fully illuminated the entire floor. She found herself in some office space with a neatly organized desk before her. A door slammed shut behind her, a strange looking man drifted past her from behind and stopped behind the desk to stand there, staring at Candace with a menacing expression. She looked down where the torn blouse had been firmly in her hands, but all was gone.

“Ms. MacDonald,” he addressed her, “do you know why you’re here, right this moment?”

What, what’s going on? Candace was absolutely stunned, while somewhat squinting from the totally unexpected, bright daylight. Where am I?! Who are you?!

“Well?” he asserted. “Talk to me, Sandra!”

What? Who’s Sandra? … and Ms. MacDonald? her thoughts raced. Then, looking down at his shirt’s nametag — What the fu … ?!

Pulling open his desk drawer and retrieving the deadly, bloodied object intensely frightened Candace into grimly muttering, “Oh, Christ — no! … ”

____

SLIGHTLY lifting his left arm, Ezekial flashed some light onto his old-style wristwatch and saw that it was 10:34 p.m. Being close to the center of a (to him) boring second floor, standing next to many conveyor belts stretching through various machinery, he wondered where in the large, dead factory his college mates were and what might they have discovered. Probably nothing, he thought, just before illuminating what must have been employee lockers. Hmmm.

Ezekial walked over to the beginning of one of sixteen lines of what were basically identical to high school lockers. He went through a few dozen of them — all containing naught but men’s, brown dress shirts and light orange overcoat uniforms (with empty pockets) — before reaching locker number 213. There was nothing unusual about the overcoat within it, except … What is that? Ezekial, lighting up the locker’s entire interior with his flashlight, noticed a cut, a good six inches long on the coat’s left sleeve; and surrounding the sleeve’s entire cut was something rather brown. Could it? … Could it be blood?

Placing his flashlight into his right hand, he grabbed onto the sleeve’s cuff to get a better look … when everything suddenly lit up with bright daylight.

Ezekial (a backslidden Christian, though his parents were faithful Presbyterians), who believed in the existence of God and His counterpart, the devil, was (as were Jimmy and Candace) stunned at the sudden, supernatural contradiction in both time and space. Where am I? Where’s that light coming from? And who’s that guy?! Ezekial thought, just before reading the full name on McCurry’s shirt’s nametag.

“So, Nick Johnson … you hate me so much you want me canned before I can retire with my goddamned hard-earned pension, huh?!”

Who’s Nick!? Ezekial instinctually looked down at his own clothing, for he felt somewhat constricted by his apparel, and noticed that he was wearing something that looked like what he had, just moments before, been examining.

“Don’t say anything if you don’t want to,” sighed McCurry, “but I just wanted to let you know that you failed.”

It was while Madman McCurry was pulling out his bloodied knife that Ezekial could hear within his mind’s ear all of what he’d heard and learned about the knife/well legend. It was enough to engage him to not run for his life but to fight for his life by blatantly challenging history and forcing the knife from the controlling, bony hands of a very twisted and enraged man.

Now, how in the hell do I get to that damned well?! sped Ezekial’s mind, his adrenalin flowing fast after having briskly knocked McCurry to his office floor with a very powerful left hook to his jaw, while Ezekial maintained his tight grip on the bloodied knife in his right hand. He, however, did not manage to come out on top of things without first receiving a formidable slice to his mid, left arm after McCurry successfully swung his knife. Even so, Ezekial wouldn’t get revenge upon McCurry — the law and God can do that — who seemed to be unconscious.

Ezekial turned, opened the office door with his very shaky hand and just began his race to the basement when he noticed it: To his immediate right rested the horrific results of the fate of his two college mates (he suddenly realized that he actually saw them as good friends). Although they both lay dead, facedown, he could still tell that it was the two, very young adults.

Jimmy had fairly fresh blood staining a straight tear in the upper back of the brown dress-shirt he was wearing (I thought he was wearing a white T-shirt when we got here last … ). Candace lay wearing a knee-high skirt (though she came, in the real world, wearing slacks) and a white bra, with most of its rear straps dark red with blood that had come from the gash almost right in between her small shoulder blades. What did that freak do with her shirt?!

Ezekial, regaining his composure, turned and ran past all of the machinery, towards the stairwell doors, pushing and pulling the door handles once he arrived. Fuck! The asshole must’ve locked them shut! Finding the elevators inoperable, he unsuccessfully searched for anything with which to break open one of the stairwell doors’ very small, wire meshed windows. No choice, he resigned, and walked back towards McCurry’s office, slowing down as he approached, to quietly peer into the office from behind some factory machinery.

He’s still out cold! Ezekial noticed, relieved, before further searching for some sort of very solid metal object. There! That’ll do! he decided, grabbing onto the rubber wrapped handle of a large, steel mallet.

It took him no more than a dozen seconds to fully smash his way through a door window, reach for the handle on the other side and pop it open; and the determined, encouraged, young college student raced down the stairwell to the basement. There, Ezekial quickly looked about until he spotted the well. Running to it, he thought what should I do? Where should I go after dropping it in?

Everything was answered once he reached the well, looked down into its mouth, into the pitch blackness, held the bloodied KitchenWareWorld production-line utensil over the center of the well’s orifice and released it.

Instantly, as though nothing so mindboggling ever had occurred, Ezekial, looking up and through the basement’s windows, found the world once again surrounded by night, the well before him and some source of bright light from the well’s opposite side. From there, amongst the otherwise dead silence, he could hear quiet whimpering. He slowly walked around the well’s circular wall, peered, and it’s Mel! he exclaimed within his weary mind’s ear, extremely relieved to see a squatting, cowering, trembling Melanie. She actually escaped!

“Mel?” he queried quietly, noticing, with the help of the illumination from her flashlight, that no bloodstain marked her clothing.

“Oh, Zeek — thank God, it’s you!” she burst.

“Are you hurt at all, Mel?”

“I don’t think so. All I did was bend over and pick up the, the … ,” she muttered, then began to cry, “ … the shoe, and I was really there, right in his, his office, in the daytime; and he, he — McCurry, himself! — kept calling me Rebecca and Ms. Timms before pulling out a huge, huge knife and, and … ”

“I know, Mel,” Ezekial whispered, slowly wrapping his arms around her until she calmed considerably, “I was really there, too. And he called me Nick Johnson.”

He slowly helped Melanie up, making sure she was stable and could stand on her own.

Although no one but the soured spirit of the mass murderer himself knew it, the well was the only location within the entire factory around which McCurry’s ghost was quite uncomfortable. Besides, the evil entity’s consciousness figured, why would she actually try to hide behind a simple, five foot tall, stone cemented well wall rather than leave the building, altogether?

Ezekial and Melanie ran as though their lives still depended upon it, while not seeming to care that the knife had gone where legend had dictated it must go. Although that extra dimensional world had instantly dissipated back to contemporary reality — in which the factory was old, abandoned and, finally, free of Andrew McCurry’s befouled spiritual presence — they sprinted till they made it out and down the road. They agreed to not relate their horrible ordeal to anyone, lest they’d stand accused of trying to fool the townsfolk.

As for the other two, their remains (probably) lay in some other dimension, some other reality or world, to not ever be recovered in this temporal plane. Hopefully, however, their eternal souls had found infinite peace the very instant that the knife touched the holy water tainted liquid contents of the well.

The next day, Melanie and Ezekial attended the memorial at the old factory just before it was to be demolished. They had expected, as was formally scheduled, that Mayor Rex Rodrigez was going to make the memorial speech. But to their utter amazement, the former factory workers and failed Madman McCurry would-be victims Rebecca Timms and Nick Johnson — the latter, with his shirt sleeve rolled up, having a noticeable six-inch scar on his mid, left arm — gave the speech, both tearful and looking about seventy. They stood side by side as each offered words of condolence for McCurry’s two, long ago deceased victims, their families and for the little girl who had drowned in the well.