The Windowless Building

1. JASON.

The Windowless Building sits in the grassy valley below our house, at the edge of the woods, on a tract of land that is leased out to a local rancher. The woods cover the hills at the edges of the valley, old-growth gnarled oaks with thick, twisting branches from which moss dangled and under which thick green miners lettuce and lush grass grew. From our house, we could look down at the barn and stables of the ranch, and enjoy what seemed like our own little nature preserve in the surrounding area. The thick, gnarled trees rise up from the far side of the valley up to the housing tract beyond. In addition to the barn and stables, however, there is one other building in our little slice of rural refuge. Unlike the ranch buildings, it is silent, mysterious, and inscrutable.

When we were kids, we all had a spoken agreement with the rancher as to where we could play. We could have the run of the fields and the woods, and were free to wander there at will. But of course we needed permission to enter the two-acre fenced enclosures where the barn and stables were. The only stipulation was, when the strange men in white uniforms came to the Windowless Building to do whatever it was that they did in there, we were never to be seen in the area. If they ever caught us playing down there when they showed up, they would yell at us and threaten us; "You Kids are Trespassing!" When those guys showed up, the informal deal we had with the rancher was off the table.

So, we played down in the field endlessly, having all the kind of outdoor adventures that all young kids have close to home. Digging in the dirt hoping to find gemstones. (All we found was rocks.) Chasing deer and squirrels, and hoping for a rare sight of a fox or a coyote, and secretly dreaming of coming across a Bigfoot. (We never did, but Mauro once spotted a bobcat, and that was still a pretty big deal to us.) Or, running around in the woods with toy guns and pretending to be "army men" fighting various Bad Guys, or whoever the enemy de jour was. And occasionally coming home with a rash from the poison oak. We would catch frogs and tadpoles, find snakes and be afraid even of the harmless garter snakes (until we were old enough to tell them apart from the REAL dangerous ones.) Sometimes we would hang out with the rancher and think we were real ranch dudes. Mr. Mackay was always friendly to us and let us entertain that notion, though I suppose we were never more than annoying kids to him. And if we were feeling really adventurous and our parents were none the wiser, (as most of them forbid it for safety reasons), we'd grab our flashlights and head over to Hillson's Cave for an afternoon of spelunking.

As kids, we were always fascinated with the Windowless Building. Its utter otherworldly strangeness seemed to both attract us and creep us out at the same time. For one, it was built right into the side of the hill. The woods crept down the hillside right behind it, and it sat just at the edge of the spreading oaks. It was just a façade- a long, low single story structure with only a front to it. Even the sides of the building were built into the slope of the hill. It had a flat roof that was covered with grass and shrubs- a natural sod roof, and so if you came upon it from above, you might think you were just approaching the edge of a steep hillside or a cliff. A thin layer of asphalt led from the highway at the bottom of the valley, just a couple hundred yards away, to a driveway that ended in front of it in a wide courtyard parking lot. The façade was made of stacked flagstones, with two pillars framing the front door on the left side of the building. To the right of the front door, the remainder of the building featured four painted metal panels that oddly resembled steel garage doors, with three more flagstone pillars between them. From the front, facing it, it almost looked like any one of the modern looking houses in our suburban neighborhood that we lived in up here in the foothills.

Except for one striking detail: It had no windows. The front door- a large green painted metal door- was set into the flagstone wall under the front porch, with two concrete steps leading up to it. There was no front window you could peer into, not even a peephole in the door. The four metal panels that made up the remainder of the front façade were similarly blank, with no way to peer through them. There was a back door, cut into the side of the building where it merged into the hill, but this was similarly blank and inscrutable.

Countless times, I remember standing at that front door, wondering of the strange purpose of this building. Who lived here? Who would design such a home, and be so utterly antisocial as to not even be able to look out of a window or even a peephole? Countless times I knocked on the door, but to no avail- nobody ever came to answer. From time to time, I could hear strange machinery whirring and humming inside of the building. Odd noises, clunks, relays, and strange mechanical hums. Never loud clanking or roaring, just the subtle hum of fans and electricity. But nonetheless, I was stumped. What really went on inside of this strange building?

I remember asking Mom and Dad about it a few times. They didn't seem to know though. "It may be a bomb shelter," Dad would say, which would always conjure up images of war and destruction. To us naive kids, that actually sounded kind of neat. It was cool dreaming about growing up and playing soldier as a kid, marching around with a toy gun and pretending to be fighting the Nazis. In fact, when we were little, we often did just that, in the meadow and the woods surrounding the Windowless Building. But the possibility of being in an actual nuclear conflict was clearly wasn't something I would ever want to experience or even fantasize about. So, maybe it was a bomb shelter. Or maybe it was a water treatment plant, as our neighbor, Mr. Dillard, claimed. Once, I asked the rancher, Mackay, to see if he could set it straight, but he admitted he didn't really know either. He said he leased the land from a company called ThullTech. Some big pharmaceutical company, he claimed. They owned the land, and so maybe the building was some kind of storage facility. Or so he guessed. All anybody knew was, the place had been there since before our houses were built, nearly 25 years ago, and yet nobody had any conclusive idea what it was for.

So if nobody really seemed to know, I resolved to ask someone who did know. And one day, I decided to do just that. I was in my late teens by then, rapidly finishing up high school, and getting ready to go off to college in just a few months. One Saturday morning, as spring was slowly sliding into the summer and I was preoccupied with girls, prom, graduation, and homework assignments, I glanced out the window and happened to notice that the men in white uniforms had pulled up to the Windowless Building in one of their unmarked vans. THEY ought to be the ones who would answer my questions, I thought. So I hurriedly put on my shoes, slipped out the back fence and climbed down the hill. Skirting the fence line of Mackay's horse ranch, as I always did, I approached the Windowless Building and the white unformed men. It can't hurt to ask, can it?

"HAY YOU!! THERE'S NO TRESSPASSING HERE!" I had been walking across the field, deep in my own thoughts, and suddenly stopped in my tracks when I heard a loud voice. One of the workers was standing on the edge of the paved drive and was facing me, scowling. I quickened my pace and walked up to him, hoping to at least get a chance to speak to him.

Before I could get a word in, however, he barked, "You can't be down here! You need to leave!"

"I'm...Uh, Hey I was just wondering..."

"What are you DOING here?! You're not supposed to be here!"

"I just live right up the hill..." I said, pointing.

"I don't give a fuck WHERE you live! You aren't allowed to be here! This is PRIVATE PROPERTY."

"Well, I was just wondering, is that place a water treatment plant or a storage..."

"Get. OUT. LEAVE. Now!" The man said, pointing back up the hill where I had come from. "Or I will have you arrested."

"Sorry sir, but look man, I was just wondering...I just came here to ask, uh, what do you guys DO when you're down here? Is this a..."

"None of your business, that's what it is. You kids know you aren't supposed to be poking around here. Now go back up home!"

"Well look sir, I'm sorry, I just..."

"Get out of here! Go back up to your house! I can have you arrested!" He was shouting now, beet red, and advanced on me, fists clenched, clearly threatening.

I hated the feeling of being punked out like this, and he seemed to only get angrier the more I tried to reason with him. And he clearly wasn't going to tell me anything about the building, either. But what choice did I have? I considered responding with a few choice words. Who the fuck was this asshole, threatening me like this, especially on my own turf!! At least, what all of us neighborhood kids had always considered to be our turf. I mean, we knew better than to be here when the workers were around, all the kids knew that, but I had thought that since I was older, they would be a little less rude and confrontational. Not the case, though. Although I hated myself for doing it, all I did was slink back up the hill, seething with rage. And with no answers at all.

That summer was marked with mostly joyful anticipation of heading off to college, of summer activities: parties, hanging out at the drive-ins, and cruising around with the buddies looking for places to hang out where we wouldn't be rousted by nosy neighbors or overzealous law enforcement. And working at White Cliffs Pizza delivering pizza. By mid- summer I had even managed to save enough cash to buy my first car- a 2004 Subaru Forester. Well used, nothing fancy or fast, but it had nice cargo capacity and off road capability. I figured it would be the perfect ride for when I was up at the University and we could road trip over to the coast, or go get lost on those logging roads in the Willamette National Forest.

So, that summer was mostly joyful and fun. Except, for the one time where it wasn't. Two days after graduation, Mauro Palmieri had been driving on the winding Round Top Valley road with his girlfriend, Krista McKirk and another couple, Jane and Bryce. All four had been partying up in the hills, as we often did. Mauro had undoubtedly been showing off the alleged handling skills of his dad's Mustang which it turns out he rarely even had permission to drive. Only that day, he had conned his dad into letting him borrow it. It was, after all, early in the day and he had no plans on drinking, he had even told his dad so. So, while taking a spin on a back road after leaving a party, he had taken a corner too fast, tried to over correct, but had spun the car out and it had gone over the bank, flipping twice. They told us that Mauro was found dead at the scene, and Jane had crushed her spine and would likely be paralyzed from the neck down. Christa and Bryce had serious injuries, but both of them managed to recover. Mauro had been the designated driver and to his credit, had remained sober. But it had mattered little in the end.

This loss had hit me hard. Although Mauro and I weren't as close as we had been- by the time we had gotten to high school we had grown apart, moved in different circles, and hung with different crowds- we were still friends. At the memorial service, all the neighborhood kids- Rick and Glen Amherst, Gina, and Mauro's brother Paul all got together and reminisced about how we used to have the run of the hills, the woods, and the fields of the neighborhood we grew up in, and all the funny things we used to do together. Before things got complicated by the complexities and the pecking order bullshit of high school. The Amhersts and I were still close, as was Dillan Smith and his younger brother Danny from up the street- Rick and I were in the same class and still hung out. Gina Hussain had been a close friend in third to fifth grade, then a huge crush of mine in junior high, but in high school, she had turned into one of those goth-type, white makeup, black clothes chicks and generally avoided all of us by then. But that day, it was like, we had all grown close again. The old neighborhood gang. I remember after all the ceremony and all was said and done, we all had the same thought- let's get away from all this formality and just be like kids again.

After all the formalities, Dillan, Danny, Rick, Glen and I had wandered down below to the ranch, and made our way across the valley. I had asked Gina to tag along but of course she declined. Paul had opted out as well, making up some excuse. We would normally have cornered some beer and even a bowl of smoke to take with us, but not surprisingly, nobody even thought of it on this day. We were in a somewhat lighter mood by then, just joking and reminiscing about catching frogs in the big pond, and about how Mauro had once thought he had found a fossil dinosaur bone at the edge of the wood- it had just been a cattle femur bone, but he never believed us when we told him that. Then, remembering all the times we had romped through the woods and climbed onto the roof of the Windowless Building, imagining it as some kind of ancient temple or shrine in our many imaginary sword and sorcery quests. Or, sometimes it doubled as a command post in our imaginary World War 2 reenactments.

After a bit, we found ourselves sitting on the concrete porch of the Windowless Building, in front of one of the featureless painted steel panels. We were just enjoying the shade, for it was a pretty warm day. Inside, the machinery was eerily quiet. Not even a peep, or a hum, or a click could be heard from inside. Dillan and Rick were laughing about how we used to play dodge ball in the street, two or three on a side, and Mr. Weisnitz would come out and yell at us, because he was always afraid a stray throw would ricochet off his precious vintage Cadillac (which he always insisted on parking on the street instead of in the garage, for some reason.) "He probably loved that car more than he loved his family" joked Rick. The sad thing was, that was probably true, ironically enough. I replied that one of our other past times was standing on the street listening to Mr. Weisnitz scream at his wife and use some pretty colorful language whenever he was mad at her- we kids could even hear it even from outside.

"Yeah, this field was probably stampeded by us thousands of times," added Rick, glancing wistfully across the valley at the fenced enclosures where the stables and barn were located.

"I remember that time, Mauro got trampled by the horse." That odd memory just reoccurred to me.

"Yeah, that was freaky...the horse just charged at him out of nowhere. I have no idea what set it off." Danny replied.

"Yeah, that's right- I totally forgot you were there."

"Yeah, cuz we were gonna get a horseshoe from Mackay, for luck. I don't know, it must not have worked for Mauro!" I replied, sadly. In many ways though, Mauro HAD been lucky. He had a hot girlfriend (Who I always secretly admired) and had been captain of the wresting team, and his parents clearly had more money than the rest of our families.

"So... what's up with this place, anyway?" I said, turning my head to the featureless, windowless steel panel behind me. "We used to play here all the time; does anyone even know what this building IS?"

"It's Hitler's Bunker, remember?" replied Rick Amherst, laughing.

"Oh yeah, that's right!" I said.

"No, it's the temple of Bal-Saget! Where we killed the Chimera! Remember?" added Danny Smith. The building had served both of those imaginary purposes over the years. Rick had always been a military history buff, and it was he who had always organized our mock toy gun battles in the woods, as we ran around shooting at imaginary SS battalions (or at each other.) While the younger kids, Danny and Glen, had been Dungeons and Dragons fantasy geeks, and would pretend to raid it for imaginary treasure.

"Yeah but... has anyone actually been inside? What is it REALLY used for?" I asked.

"I don't know, I thought you would know, you guys are the ones who live on this side of the street." Rick replied

It was true; the Amhersts lived across the street so their backyards did not face the valley, so they did not come down here as extensively as the rest of us did, preferring instead to have the run of water tank hill which was behind their house (and which often doubled as Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi when we were all just plastic-toy gun toting kids.) Although they spent many an hour roaming down here with the rest of us.

"Yeah, it's weird, I never found out. Nobody around here really seems to know. This place is just...like, here. Just taking up space...Makes a nice Temple of Ball Sack Cloth I guess." I replied, jokingly. "But I've always kind of wondered what was actually inside, for real, like."

"Isn't Bal-Sagoth... isn't that one of those cheesy scary-clown metal bands?" Rick quipped.

"Yeah, maybe, I dunno...don't listen to that shit. I just made that up 'cause it sounded all magic like." Danny replied.

"There's some kind of machinery in there I think. I've heard, like, electric motors, some kind of fans n' shit- I dunno, maybe it's, like, a water treatment plant or like some kind of pump house?" said Dillan.

"I've always wanted to go inside and you know, check it out. I mean, it is kind of a weird place, you gotta admit." I said.

"I dunno, Just looks like a building. Like maybe a pump house. Big whoop." Rick replied with a shrug.

"Well, I heard this one time; remember Julio? Well, I remember this one time, he was saying he actually found it unlocked one time and peeked in." Dillan added.

Julio was one of those cool older kids who all the younger guys had looked up to. I never figured out what happened to him. He went to juvie for a while, for some of the usual bullshit kids get in trouble for; then his family must have moved away or something, because after a while we never saw him anymore. But what Dillan said piqued my interest.

"So, what did he say was inside?" I asked, wanting to pick his brain.

"He said, he just like peeked in. But I think he said there were these like, tanks and machines. Like tanks full of water with wires and pipes going into them. He said it was pretty dark so you couldn't see much. I think he didn't stick around, I guess he just peeked in."

"Hmmm...that's weird." My head was spinning, here was at last a guy who seemed to have an answer to the age old mystery of what this building actually was. Although, Julio hadn't been around for a few years at least, so it wasn't like I could ask him directly. Wires...pipes, tanks full of water...

"...Sounds like it is just some kind of water treatment plant."

"Yeah, probably" I admitted, although in spite of this, my curiosity had only been further stimulated. I stood up and casually wandered over to the front door and tried the lever. Locked, and the interior as inscrutable as always. Not even the telltale hum of machinery or the occasional click and whirr of whatever was in there.

"There is a side door, over there..."

"Yeah, I think that was the one he said he tried, that was unlocked," Dillon said.

I wandered around to the far side of the building, where a small alcove had been cut into the side of the hill. The eaves of the concrete roof and the sandstone façade of the building met at the backside of the hill, which had been bricked up with sandstone blocks to match the architecture. It was almost cave-like here. I tried the latch on the blank metal door. No luck. As it had always been for the last 18 years I had tried unsuccessfully to peek beyond it, the door was locked up tight. Not even a peephole to look into. Inside, a faint whirr began, as whatever strange machinery there was behind that door began to slowly rev up.