Grayling Furniture Factory E-Book

Jacob Wilhelm

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

GRAYLING FURNITURE WORKS

The Grayling Furniture Works...it’s really a place you want to stay away from. Very far away, and then some more distance is the best advice. The abandoned factory is a cursed spot heavy with the spirits of too many dead folks – and it’s heavy with the evil that plays gleefully among the rubble.
Or is it all just superstitious tales told by old drunks, stories whispered between girls?
That’s the general attitude taken by real estate developers after they pick up the land for pennies on the dollar. Come hell or high water, there shall be a luxury housing development bestowed upon this land.
One problem.
Our enterprising developers need to eliminate the generalized public fear of the place.
Better do something quick.
And let’s not spend too much money getting the job done.
Let’s hope they survive.

Leseprobe

Jacob Wilhelm

Grayling Furniture Factory

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Title

THE GRAYLING FURNITURE WORKS

by

Jake Wilhelm

FRONT MATTER

COPYRIGHT

Title: The Grayling Furniture Works

Author: Jake Wilhelm

Cover design: Jake Wilhelm

(c) Jake Wilhelm 2017/EP Dowd Enterprises. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in shape or form by any means, electronic, mechanical, copying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my father, for his inspiration and support

GRAYLING FURNITURE WORKS

Outside the focus group room, Keith Elyen and Chad Coughlan paced like expectant fathers. Coughlan had done his job, leading the focus group of people Seattle-Tacoma area home-buyers through the benefits of buying into the firm’s luxury Puget Sound side property. Then, Keith had given his usual fantabulous job of presenting the homes and the facilities that would soon be built upon the land, homes and facilities that felt like a dream from each homebuyer’s personal heavens if they had a half brain in their head.

The folks just lapped up all the details, visions of visiting their favorite banker to see about a mortgage dancing in their heads – well, Keith had a habit of making fans thanks to his sturdy yet stylish home designs, designs people wanted to live in. Plenty of oohs and ahhs. Things went great.

Keith and Coughlan had done the easy part.

Then came the info related by the non-partial focus group mediator.

That didn’t go as well.

Judging by the sound of 49 people trying to talk at once, and one person laughing like a hyena huffing nitrous oxide, the purpose for the focus group had been confirmed.

Outside, the two men stopped pacing as, obviously, their dreams of a luxury planned community were torpedoed, sinking with all hands, and otherwise generally getting screwed sideways. Keith wiped his wet forehead with an already soaked handkerchief and sighed. “I told you this was doomed.”

Coughlan, majority partner and resident nitwit in Coughlan and Elyen Properties shrugged. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, adjusting his tie. The nitwit hadn’t even broken a sweat yet.

*

It had started with an excited Coughlan bursting into Keith’s office. “Come take a drive with me, buddy. I just scored the perfect property! It’s in your hometown.”

“Grayling?” Keith asked on the run, because when Coughlan was excited, it was best to just try to keep up. Coughlan rushed past the cubicles of their employees and rushed the elevator at top speed, hammering the down button. Keith hadn’t even had a chance to grab his overcoat, and, of course, it was raining.

In the Lincoln, Coughlan forced his way through downtown Seattle traffic, saying, “I got the property for pennies. Waterfront frontage, 53 acres. This shit is off the hook, Keith. I might as well have paid for a rock farm in the mountains for as much as we got this property for.”

Keith nodded. “Sounds good. How much?”

Coughlan gave a surprisingly low figure. Keith should have known, but he didn’t. Not yet. Probably his mind trying to ration the bad news.

“Profit margin is going to bonkers on this shit, man.” Coughlan rammed the Lincoln between a garbage truck and a very startled mother with a baby carriage and took the freeway on ramp.

The firm had just finished a 45-home luxury development in Bellevue. They had battled cost overruns in nearly every aspect of the project, and not all the homes had sold as of yet, but things were looking good since the national economy just kept getter better. So, they were sitting OK, more bucks coming in then going out, always a good situation. Still, they needed a break and it sounded like Coughlan had found one.

Off the freeway, through bustling downtown Grayling with its one block of downtown and a hillside of threadbare blue collar homes. There were several reasons Keith rarely came home, the main one being the sad fact that this was all Grayling had to offer. The same general store huddled on the corner of Main and First, the Bluebell Café next door, and, well, we’re out of town now.

But not too far out of town.

A sinking feeling punched through Keith as Coughlan triumphantly pulled off the road and stopped at the very familiar chain link fence just past the railroad tracks.

“You didn’t,” Keith said.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Chad, you didn’t get stuck with this place, did you?”

“Hop out and open the gate, willya?” Coughlan handed over a key. “The gold colored padlock is ours.”

Keith almost told Coughlan to turn around, get the hell out of here. Wished he had never met Coughlan at college, was never taken under the football player’s wing, never got wrapped up in the housing business.

“Afraid the rain is going to melt you?” Coughlan teased.

OK.

It was really just stupid stories told by even stupider people.

Don’t you remember Carrie screaming?

Keith stepped from the Lincoln, and, yes, he remembered Carrie screaming. Outside the Lincoln, the air was heavy, and it was wet and he didn’t have his overcoat and it didn’t matter because he heard screams and did not feel the rain. He unlocked the gold padlock, worked the leaning gate open and shivered as Coughlan drove in.

The old furniture factory complex huddled under the dark skies; fallen brickwork, blank windows, toppled smokestacks, crumbled brick walls exposing large rooms like the teeth in a rotted man’s face. All reflected in the giant puddles that had taken over the property; these reflections were even worse. They were the true face of the Grayling Furniture Works; these reflections were the pieces that talked, that damaged, that played with your soul.