"Wait!" Lola called as Christine turned on her heel and headed toward the office. "We need you to help us!"

"No, all you need to do is quit bothering me." She yanked the door open, glancing over her shoulder and shooting us each a glare. "If you really did try to spend the night there and you aren't just messing with me, then what's best for all of you is to do the same thing me and my friends tried to do—forget what you saw and move on with your lives."

Then, she stomped into her office, slamming the heavy door behind her. It crashed against its frame, the sound echoing through the empty library for a moment before dissipating and leaving the space in a hushed quiet.

"What do we do now?" Carter finally broke the silence.

"I can't even hear what she's thinking from out here." Lola kept her voice low enough that only the two of us would hear. "The wall must be too thick."

My hands balled in fists at my sides, and my jaw clenched as I glared at the door. The voice of the girl screaming from within the factory echoed through my mind. If she really was a ghost, had Christine and her friends heard her too and just pretended they hadn't? Was that what was eating her up inside?

Or...was it more sinister. Had they seen the cult as well? I thought about the burns on her arms...the ones that supposedly all of her friends sustained as well. When Lola and I went to the factory, there was a fire in a hearth or something at the center of the gathering of cloaked figures. Had the cult done something to Christine and her friends?

She said we just needed to forget and move on, but we couldn't do that. Whoever that girl was that was screaming needed help desperately.

Not only that...something in my gut told me the Renson Factory had to be connected to the mind reading ability that manifested the day I moved to Sycamore Falls. Figuring out what was going on there was my only chance at fixing my problem...and Lola's.

"She's going to tell us what happened," I finally said, my voice coming out as a growl.

Before Lola or Carter could say anything, I stormed around the desk and banged on the office door with the side of my fist. "Christine!" I called. "You can't just hide from us in there!"

With my head against the door, I could make out snips of thought. Fire...Never going back...just forget what happened. Forget.

Fear and anxiety radiated off her, pulsing through my nerves along with my own emotions like I was feeling the same pain she was. A nauseating ache pounded through my temples.

"Please," I softened my tone. "We just want to talk to you. We really need your help. I know you don't want to talk about it, but we can't just forget what happened and move on. And, it seems like even though you tried, you can't either. At least not entirely. It still haunts you, doesn't it?"

Finally, after what felt like forever, the door slid open a crack. "You really aren't giving up, are you?" Christine asked.

"We can't," I replied. "We can't just forget what happened, because..." I stalled, drawing a blank on what to say next.

"Because it wasn't just the three of us that tried to stay on Ninth Street last night," Lola jumped in. "Our other friend...Maggie...was there too. And now, we just don't know. Something's really wrong with her. She needs help."

"We thought if you told us what happened to you that night, it might help us figure out what we need to do for her," I continued. "It could at least be a start. Please. We don't have any other leads."

Christine let out a heavy sigh, her gaze shifting between the three of us. I'm not sure if they're telling the truth, but I don't think they are trying to trick me either. They look scared. They're just teenagers after all...the same age I was when...

"Fine," Christine finally said. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. "I'll tell you about that night, but you have to promise not to tell anyone I told you." The last thing I need is more people coming in here and asking me about what happened. "And after this," she raised a finger like she was about to scold us, "you will not bother me about it again."

"We promise," Carter said.

Lola and I nodded in agreement.

After pursing her lips and considering it for another moment, Christine finally ushered us into her office, closing the door once we were all in. She took the seat behind an antique oak desk, leaving Carter, Lola and me the green and yellow checkered sofa that looked and smelled like it belonged in the seventies.

Carter coughed as he took a seat, a plume of dust releasing from the upholstery. I sat next to him. Lola glared at the sofa for a second like she was trying to decide if it had cooties or not before giving in and taking the spot on my other side.

Christine picked at her fingernails, thoughts spinning around her mind rampantly.

"I've...never really talked about this before," she said. "I don't know where to begin."

"Maybe start with when you decided to spend the night on Ninth Street," I suggested.

"Right," Christine said, her voice lowering to almost a whisper. "I'm sure you've heard all the stories. I mean, you tried to stay there yourselves." She looked between the three of us. Or so they say.

"Anyway," she continued, "when I was in high school, me and my dumb friends decided what could go wrong? Spend the night there and see if the stories about the factory bell were true." She shook her head, pulling the sleeves of her shirt over her hands repeatedly.

"So that's what we did. The night before Halloween, we brought our sleeping bags, flashlights, snacks...beer." She rolled her eyes, shaking her head slightly. "The boys thought it was some sort of party. Get us girls scared and a bit tipsy so they could cuddle up to us.

"We set up camp in one of those houses right next to the factory. The living room window was broken, like a mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth. Through it, we could see the Renson Factory, towering into the sky like some sort of castle. The glow of the setting sun behind it made it look like it was on fire."

She shuddered, crossing her arms in front of herself. "It's going to sound weird when I say this, but it felt like it was watching us. Or...like something inside it was." She chewed on her bottom lip and glanced towards the door. Why did I agree to talk about this?

"And then what happened?" Lola prodded.

Christine shook herself, returning her focus to the three of us. "We started drinking. Playing a few games..." A pause. "One of the boys suggested, rather than just sitting around and waiting to hear some dumb bell chime, we break into the factory ourselves.

"So we gathered up our flashlights and headed down the street, right up to the front door. It wasn't even locked. It was just open...like it wanted us to be there. We went in, and almost like something was beckoning us, we went down the hall...toward the basement."

My breath caught in my throat, and Lola stiffened in her seat. She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes, the color draining from her cheeks.

I tried to keep my breathing steady as Christine recounted the trip into the factory.

"The basement was so much bigger than I'd imagined it would be. I didn't even know at the time what sort of factory it'd been. Furnaces all around, and in the center some sort of hearth or something." She ran her hands back through her long hair to brush it out of her face.

"We didn't know what it was. The boys started messing around and poking at it. There were other things there too...strange tools...a set of dark cloaks hanging from the wall. I didn't know what they were, but just looking at them freaked me out.".

She paused for a second, picking at her nails like she was suddenly transfixed by the chipping turquoise varnish. "You know when you hear the phone ring, and you just know it's bad news?" She turned her eyes up, her gaze running over the three of us before stalling on me.

"Something bad has happened. You can feel it in your gut—in your bones."

I nodded along with her, my breathing suddenly shallow. Empty of oxygen. It felt like her deep brown eyes were seeing through me—like she was the one reading my mind, not the other way around.

"As much as you don't want to pick up the phone, you do anyway, because in the end, you know ignoring the facts won't change what's happened."

It was like that. I just knew...something bad had happened.

"After seeing those cloaks...seeing that hearth, all I wanted to do was go home." Christine's voice drew me out of my thoughts. "I knew we shouldn't have stayed there. But we did anyway."

Chills rippled over me, and a bead of icy sweat slithered down the back of my neck. How much of that had she said out loud? How much was just in her mind? Or was it even in her mind at all? Was it just my own thoughts confusing me?

"Something about that place...it just seemed...wrong." I can't tell them about the voice I heard. They'll think I'm even crazier than they probably already do.

"What happened next?" Lola asked. Her hazel eyes stretched wide, her attention completely focused on Christine, probably in reaction to the same thought I'd just heard about the voice.

Christine placed one hand on her temple and pinched her eyes shut. "We went back to the house where we'd set up camp. That's where things get hazy. I only have flashes of memory. I don't know if it's from the alcohol...or something else. The next thing I knew, I was walking down the middle of the road. Alone. And..." She ran her hands over her arms.

"The burns," I said.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"You don't remember how you got them?" Lola asked.

Christine shook her head. "I don't know." She glanced to her left and right, like she was checking to see if someone else was in the room even though the door had been closed the entire time. She leaned forward, her voice dropping an octave. "Whatever caused the fire that burned the factory and killed those workers...it wasn't just an accident. I don't think they were just there for the night shift."

She licked her upper lip, her voice taking on an urgency as she continued. "It doesn't make sense that the guy that owned the place would be there in the middle of the night. They were doing something there...something that got them all killed.

"There is something about that place that is wrong. It has an energy to it. You feel it too, don't you? And that's what's messing up your friend, Maggie. That's why you can't just move on...why none of us really can."

She paused, and I held my breath. Even her thoughts had gone silent.

"Something's haunting that factory," she finally continued, "and it won't rest until it gets what it wants."

***

It was like coming up from being underwater when we finally exited the library. The damp, cold air was refreshing after sitting in the musty office for so long. The smell of rain lingered in the atmosphere, and the air carried a dense heaviness, like a storm was brewing on the horizon.

"What the hell?" Carter said. "So she really doesn't remember what happened that night?"

Lola's face was pale. She crossed her arms over her chest, either trying to keep warm or just freaked out. "It seems like it," she replied. "Even in her thoughts, she didn't give anything about it away." She looked to me. "What do you think?"

I shook my head. "She's right. Something bad happened in that factory. I...just don't know what. I don't know who those cloaked figures we saw last night were, but they must be responsible for what happened to Christine and her friends...the burns. They did something to them."

"But what about the girl you heard screaming?" Carter asked. "Who's she? How is she connected?"

I ground my teeth. Even after hearing Christine's story, I felt just as lost as I had before.

"I don't know," I said. "We need to find out more. We need to go back there and check it out." I paused, the girl's cry echoing through my mind. A scream of desperation—agony. I didn't know if she was still alive or a ghost, but she needed help. "We need to go back there today."

Lola glanced at her phone. "Shit."

"What?" Carter asked.

"It's quarter to noon already." She bit down on her lower lip. "I'm sorry. I've got to get to the football game."

"Seriously?" Carter asked. "That's what you're thinking about right now? A football game?"

"I never miss a game," she said. "If I skipped, it would be suspicious. But we can meet up after. Promise!"

"What time does it end?" I asked.

"Around four," she said. "I've got dinner with my family tonight, but I'll be free at eight."

"We can't meet at my place," Carter said. "My parents will be home, and I don't think they'd be cool with...this."

"My sister's having a sleepover tonight," Lola said. "My mom and dad wouldn't be okay with me having boys over, considering Val's only in eighth grade." She looked to me. "What about your place, Jay?"

My mom probably wouldn't be home, and she wouldn't care if I had friends over, anyway. In fact, she'd probably be happy to see me hanging out with someone, even if the activity of the night was investigating a satanic cult and talking to ghosts.

"Okay." I nodded. "I live at Nine Beechwood Road. We can meet at my place and head over to the factory from there."