The abandoned road if nothing else offers them a straight path, carving through forest and then eventually the overgrown field, in a northeasterly direction. They’ve barely exited into this sea of tall, straw colored vegetation, when the Hazelwoods’ trailer emerges into view, atop a handful of hills in the distance. Upon reaching a spot where it looks that the most direct line is to leave the road, they begin stomping their way through this rough terrain, in a loosely single file fashion.
They’ve crested a couple of the smaller mounds and are nearly over a third when Jeremy, in the lead with Emily and Denise right on his heels, draw up short as their eyes land upon a peculiar sight ahead. On this side of a small, arc shaped tree strand, to the right, a barren and by appearances perfectly round plot of land sits undisturbed. Completely devoid of vegetation, although everything else around it continues to grow, wild and unchecked.
“Whoa…”
“What the…?”
Stepping lightly down this hill’s backside, they initially tiptoe around the circle itself, awed into silence by this spectacle. It takes a moment or two before the first person — Tony — risks setting foot inside it. An incredulous smile upon his face, he spins around in a circle, hands out as he makes eye contact with the others, the universal gesture for I don’t know what to tell you, as he then kicks at the ground with his hiking boots. The soil here is a strange, almost moldy looking greenish-black, a shade not normally associated with dirt. With a hesitation that will later seem comical, if none ever quite admit as much, the rest of them watch for a few seconds, to see if anything happens to Tony, before they all join him.
“I’ve heard about places like this!” Kay marvels, “I think there’s another famous one, like, not too far from here! Something about the…high salt content or something? That’s why they think nothing grows in these spots?”
“Actually I saw a documentary debunking that,” Tom explains, with a playful smirk as he looks up from his sketch pad, “on TV once. The salt theory, I mean. They had some dude from the state’s land division out testing the soil, and he said he couldn’t figure it out.”
“Yeah,” Denise says, testing the soil’s hardness with one running shoe herself, “now the experts believe that the reason nothing will grow in these spots is…everyone tramping over the soil, to see why nothing will grow in these spots.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. It is kind of weird, though, isn’t it?” Jeremy offers, casting his eyes in every direction to size up the dimensions, “and I can’t think of any natural reason why something like this would be a perfect circle. At least it looks like one, doesn’t it?”
“We should figure out a way to measure it,” Emily suggests.
“Yeah!” Jeremy concurs, pounding his left fist into the open, upturned palm of his right hand, “what’s something we could use to measure it? Or what’s even the best way to measure it?”
“Come on, you’re acting like the leader of the group,” Tom cracks, smirking as always, “can’t you figure something out?”
“Mmm, I’m more of an ideas man. I don’t actually know how anything works,” Jeremy jokes, laughing.
“We could do paces,” Rafael suggests.
“Eh, but then how would we know the pacer was walking a straight line? We need something consistent to lay across…”
“Explain to me why this matters again?” Denise cracks.
“I don’t know. Fuck it. Something to do, anyway,” Jeremy says with a shrug.
“I’ve got this nifty little measuring app on my phone, actually…,” Emily explains, absently, distracted as she fiddles with the device, “but I can’t seem to get the damn thing to pull up…”
“Dead zone,” Rafael ominously declares, shuddering as he glances around the group.
Tony and Kay are crashing around in vain, through the slight strand of trees, desperately hoping for a fallen limb long enough to span the circle. The rest remain within the moldy looking, green-black patch, glancing around and either rubbing their chins or scratching their heads, most wearing the same dazed grins. Tom Drucker the only exception, as he continues scribbling away in his sketch pad, and eventually says, in the offhand manner of someone who thought of this long ago, “you know, I’ve got a huge box of unused pencils. In my backpack…”
“Yes! That’s it! They should be enough to cover…what’s this look like, twelve, fifteen feet maybe?”
“Yeah but even then how would we know this is a straight line?” Emily questions.
“Well, at least we can eyeball it, if we leave them in place,” Jeremy says.
As Tom unslings his backpack, and withdraws the mostly full, 100 count box of №2 pencils, the rest begin working in an unspoken assembly line fashion. Even Tony and Kay return to pitch in, as they piece together a pair of intersecting lines, in the form of a plus sign across the circle. And while each would surely conclude this doesn’t pass for scientific scrutiny, to a person, down to even Tom Drucker, they admit amazement that this meets the eyeball test: almost exactly 19 pencils across, both ways, with just the tiniest sliver of an eraser extending beyond the circle. No less than three different people pull up the calculator function on their phone and crunch the numbers, to conclude that this amounts to 11.875 feet, give or take a smidgen.
Denise feels it’s to her point, though, that nobody really knows what significance this has, if any. Therefore may be a complete waste of time. Not to mention getting them nowhere closer to finding a trace of Jen. Yet she’s just standing here the same as everyone, staring at this sight of the crossed pencils, dumbfounded, with her arms folded in front of her. This is when she notices a slight breeze picking up, and that she’s shivering. She begins rubbing the goosebumps on her arms to stay warm, but then also casts a glance skyward, realizing that time has really gotten away from them, and it’s nearly twilight.
“Man! It’s almost dark already!” she observes.
Kay looks up as well, and chuckles, saying, “oh wow! I guess you’re right! What time did we leave, even?”
“See, this is what I mean,” Jeremy tells them, gesturing vaguely toward the dark, “there’s no way it only takes fifteen minutes to walk to that cemetery.
“Well, I don’t know, I’m telling you it does,” Emily snaps, a curious edge to her voice. “Did anyone happen to notice the time when we left? Or at any point?”
Everyone else shakes their head to the negative, with the exception of Tom, who continues sketching — in this instance, the bizarre sight they’ve half stumbled upon and half added to, with these pencils. “You know, it is the middle of autumn now. Nightfall arrives that much sooner,” he says, without looking up.
“Okay. What we do about…visit those people at the trailer? Up the hill?” Rafael wonders, in his clipped, mostly correct English, as he nods in that direction.
Emily grimaces and says, “ugh, I’m saying at this point, let’s not. I mean, are they really gonna tell us anything?”
Jeremy clears his throat, appraising the distance to that trailer himself and says, “well, you know, it doesn’t look like much, but it’s probably at least fifteen minutes from here, tromping through the weeds, up those hills. And then at least half an hour back to camp, probably more.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” she agrees.
“I really wanna find out what they know, though!” Denise protests.
“Well, have at it,” her sister jokes, giggling, unfurling a hand in that direction.
“Some other time,” Jeremy allows, “for all we know, she might have already returned. We can always come straight here tomorrow, if need be.”
“What should we do about these pencils, though?” Tony asks, hands in front pants pockets, as he nods down at them.
“Eh, I say leave them,” Tom shrugs, “keeps us from having to redo the experiment. I can bring my compass and protractor set out tomorrow if you wanna get crazy with these measurements.”
“Get crazy,” Kay repeats with a chuckle, as they begin their march back to Otherwise.
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