I open my eyes and feel the chill. The air is really musty in here. I’m standing inside a stone warehouse in a large open room that’s mostly empty. There are machine parts in here—large parts that look like they could fit on railroad cars. The train tracks don’t run by here, but I wonder if they did years ago. 

What am I doing here? 

I can tell I’ve been drinking. But am I going in and out of a blackout? No. I just—I can’t remember how I got here. The windows show that it’s dark outside. 

“It’s an abandoned warehouse west of the Fox River.”

Jack’s words. I reach into my pocket and find the address he scribbled down for me. This is where he led me. I continue to walk, but I don’t feel like I’m the one pushing myself. I don’t even feel like I’m the one moving.         

I touch one of the machine parts on the floor and feel a coating of dust coming off it. It makes me sneeze, which echoes throughout the big room. I stop for a minute and listen for any kind of movement anywhere. 

I use my iPhone flashlight to see where I’m going. There could be a dozen men sneaking up on me, but so far I haven’t seen or heard anybody. 

At the back of the large room/warehouse, I find a stairway that leads to the main floor, the one adjacent to the parking lots where the black cars were parked. Maybe I’ll find more up there than just some old dusty machine parts.  

Am I crazy for coming here trying to figure out if Jack is out of his mind? 

I get to the main level and exit the stairway through a door. When I direct my iPhone forward into the new room, I can’t make out what I’m seeing. 

This room is definitely not empty and abandoned. It doesn’t have that musty smell, and it definitely doesn’t appear to be abandoned and empty. At the back wall in the center is a massive stone sculpture that I have to get closer to make out. It’s the shape of a house almost, with larger sides and then a sloping roof and a chimney going up to the ceiling. The large opening makes me think of Chicago pizza. That’s when I get it. 

It’s a massive brick oven. 

It has an opening the size of a refrigerator. As I point my iPhone toward the ceiling, I figure this is somehow connected to the smokestack on top of the building. 

I look around the oven but don’t see any signs of anything. No drug paraphernalia. No pizza toppings. Nothing of any kind. 

There’s a table nearby with tools on it, then another table covered by a plastic tarp. 

What in the world is going on here? 

Something about all this gives me the major creeps. I’ve seen enough shows to not like tarps. Especially on tables. Especially inside large, abandoned warehouses. This is where bad things happen. In movies, of course. 

Or maybe in Appleton. 

Six months ago that would have been a joke. But now the voice that says it isn’t kidding. 

I keep getting that weird feeling that something has covered Appleton just like the gray tarp spilling over the sides of the flat table. 

I can smell a faint burning scent, probably from the oven. But there’s something else I can smell. Like something you clean with, something my mom might use to clean the house. 

There’s nothing else here. 

What if Jack was right? What if there really was a dead student brought to this place?

That thought really creeps me out, and finally pokes me enough to let me know I need to get out of there. Then I hear a door opening and really know I need to get out of there.

The sound is coming from behind me, so I sprint to the back of the room and turn off my phone light and touch the wall with my fingertips. If someone turns on a switch I’m in trouble. I keep fingering the edges of the wall until I reach a corner and feel the edges of what must be a door. Just as the light above me turns on, I’m closing the door behind me and heading down a hallway. 

I run as quietly as I can, at the same time trying to turn on my phone’s light again. When I finally get some light I see a door ahead me. I open it and see an office that’s definitely being used. There are two desks, a computer, a phone, lamps. I close the door and keep heading down the hallway. 

To my relief, there is a door that leads outside. I’m a bit afraid of using it because I don’t want to set off any alarms, but I don’t really have a choice. The door barely makes a sound. I’m back outside in the cold and the slightly brighter light. I don’t stop running until I reach the bike path. I don’t go to my car for a long time, but just stay on the path, looking out to the street and the parking lot and the industrial building in the background. 

The towering spiral of the smokestack makes an eerie outline in front of the hanging moon. For a second I close my eyes. When I open them again I see blood-red smoke spilling out of the top of the stone chimney. The sky turns the same color and suddenly looks as if it’s on fire. I quickly close my eyes and rub them, then open them again to see the peaceful night sky. 

I need to go to bed. But maybe before I do that, I can find some sleeping pills. 

I don’t want to see what kind of dreams await me tonight.