The Crossroads

He has a fierce hunger for a cheeseburger, fries, and a thick chocolate shake.

But the Burger Barn is gone. Something called Chuck E. Cheese has taken its place.

He wants that cheeseburger bad. Hasn’t had one in fifty years.

He jams the Thunderbird into reverse and peels wheels.

No one sees his car. No one hears it. They sense only a slight movement of wind, feel a cold swirl of air.

He makes a hard left turn and heads toward the river.

I’ll go down to the factory, he thinks. Follow somebody on lunch break. Find a cheeseburger.

He has no concept of time. It is four a.m. Nobody will be going to lunch, especially no employees of the Spratling Clockworks Factory, which shuttered its doors in 1983.

He pulls into a crumbling parking lot outside an enormous redbrick building—an empty shell three stories tall with arched windows. The giant Spratling Stands the Test of Time sign is rusty and faded.

He had started working for Julius Spratling in 1951. He pushed a broom, cleaned up trash, and flirted with the factory girls—many of whom he took out back to his secret love nest.

The machine shop. It was his passion pit—even after he was married.

In the east, the sun begins to rise. Somehow he understands he has to leave. When dawn comes, he’ll be gone. But he knows he will return come nightfall. He senses it.

He has work to do, unfinished business.

He also has time.

If that lightning bolt couldn’t send me to hell, what on earth can?