Daniel Thompson, a young college professor, is awakened from a strange, terrifying nightmare in which factory workers are interrupted from their catatonic, zombie-like tasks by a manager who takes a baby from one of the workers up to a mysterious, bearded man on the mezzanine of the dark factory. In the dream, Daniel runs away from the frightening scene through the darkness along a path that is surrounded by pumpkins that have terrifying faces carved into them in spite of the fact that they are still on the vine. The ringing phone frees him from the dream.

     Daniel’s sister, Deidre has called him in the night to tell him of their father’s death. Daniel returns to the family farm in Maria Bay, a coastal town, where we learn that neither Daniel nor Deidre were close to their father, a widow who lost his wife when the children were both young. Deidre harbors some resentment of Daniel, feeling that her father favored Daniel, the younger of the two, because he was male. At the farm where Deidre meets Daniel upon his return, Daniel shares that he cared nothing about his father’s plans that he take over the farm some day, and wished only to get away from Maria Bay as soon as he could. They discuss the tasks of seeing to their father’s will and making funeral arrangement, and Deidre then leaves Daniel at the farm to see to her own family.

     Daniel takes a nostalgic walk past the familiar cornfields and through the pumpkin path where he finds himself at the ruins of the Black Cat Toy Factory. Seeing the faded image of the Black Cat painted on the brick above the open entrance, he raises his beer and surprising himself, makes a toast. “To the Black Cat Toy Factory. May you rise again one day.”