They awaken Tuesday morning to discover that Rebecca has painted her bedroom blue. But not just any blue, rather a particular shade which is meant to ward off ghosts. Without even hearing about what Jeremy and Emily discovered last night from that book, she had already reached the conclusion that there must be some sort of haunting at work, and took this preventative step.
“This is what’s known as haint blue,” she explains, “it’s a Southern tradition.”
“Hmm, well, if nothing else, it is kind of soothing,” Denise counters, though this comment has the opposite effect as intended, for Rebecca openly sneers at her.
On this day that manages to be both overcast and bright, they are hanging out in Rebecca’s room. Despite having every working window in the house wide open, to bloodlet the paint fumes, the aroma is still borderline headache inducing. It probably doesn’t help that the rooms on the south side of the second story have no windows, therefore the air flow isn’t fantastic. These would be one bathroom, a pair of installations including Rafael’s yarn maze, and then the giant walk-in closet housing The Collection in the southwest corner. Some air does presumably travel up and down the stairwells, which carve up the middle of the floor, but otherwise they rely on a breeze from what windows do exist – those found in the bedrooms, and one along the back wall, where the stairwell rises to its conclusion.
The other two stories have been aired out to roughly a similar extent. Still, as Rebecca undertook this project in the middle of the night, without breathing a word of it to anyone, and continues to operate as if in a daze following Jen’s disappearance, some of the other girls have thought it a good idea to hang out in her quarters for what remains of the morning, consoling her. Without coming right out and saying so, of course.
“Part of me wants to say fuck this place and get the hell out of here,” Emily says, even if not quite true, “especially in light of what we found out last night.”
“But…,” Denise cracks, aware of a missing second half to this sentence. She is sitting in an easy chair, some kind of gold lamé looking thing, in an especially dim corner, and is sketching this current scene right now, as well as scribbling quotes in cursive coming from each of their mouths.
“But that’s just it!” Emily laughs, “I just can’t imagine myself going through with it. I do still love it here. I don’t know, there’s something about this place.”
As Emily casts her gaze around the messy, freshly painted room, with its scuffed hardware floor, mismatched furniture, and clothes strewn everywhere, Grace suggests, in her forever kind, red lipsticked smile, “you can’t stop thinking about your work, right?”
“Well, no, it’s not that – well, it’s not just that, because admittedly I haven’t done a whole hell of a lot yet,” Emily says, laughing again, “although I have a ton of ideas. One in particular I might start soon, which would be a bit of a departure for me…”
“I know what you mean. I can’t stop thinking about my projects, either,” Grace muses.
Although some of the snider contingent have questioned whether Grace’s work more accurately falls into the interior decoration category more than it does art, most have concluded that it’s just weird enough to qualify for the latter. She hasn’t undertaken any wall painting flights of fancy like Rebecca, but did, for example, staple dozens of post cards all along one wall of the stairwell, the one leading up from the first floor. The typewritten ones about sending a letter to the president, a question she continues posing to tour guests and other visitors now, too. On the wall of the next stairwell, meanwhile, between floors number two and three, she has glued a bunch of random newspaper and magazine articles, discovered in and cut out from the boxes upon boxes being stored behind the front counter downstairs. Few have anything to do with this place or anything else remotely local, and follow no discernible pattern otherwise. Thus far she has just fitted them in by shape, after cutting out those that interest her.
“But that’s not mostly it, is it?” Denise asks Emily, though more a statement than a question, punctuated with the smug half-smirk of those who already know the answer. “This place has gotten in your head. Now it’s a mystery that you want to solve.”
Emily hesitates for just a second, saying, “uh…,” followed by a hesitant nod, coupled with still more laughter, and admitting, “yeah, I guess you’re right, sis.”
When Clay shows up mid-afternoon, Jeremy uses his appearance as an excuse to conduct this long simmering time experiment. This concern is very much a guy thing, he supposes, as he turns left out of Otherwise’s long drive. With Kidwell nowhere in sight, his parents flailing away in the kitchen, and even a vaguely harried Liam occupied with vague paperwork concerns in his office, every other soul on sight, even those who were consoling Rebecca earlier, is concerned at the moment with his or her most pressing art project.
On one hand Jeremy supposes this is kind of cool, that the highly artistic and even only sort of artistic are getting down to brass tacks with what is supposed to be the whole point of this extended retreat. But as a practical concern, it’s somewhat annoying right this moment. In the end, he and Clay were eventually able to coax Marcus and Tony into participating as well, both of whom admit they are only in some vague “conceptualizing” phase of their next projects and can pretty much mull this over anywhere.
The idea is that they want a witness for verification, and then that each team will switch sides to see if they can duplicate the results, or possibly even improve upon them. At first Jeremy had toyed with the idea of suggesting that Clay take Marcus, if only because – and though some might term this a racist thought, Jeremy hadn’t meant it that way, believing it instead a progressive pairing – the thought of saddling such a backwoods hick with an urban black artistic type, in the middle of the woods, seemed like it might be a hilarious but genuine learning experience for Clay. For both of them, probably. But then more practical concerns won the day, in that at least he and Tony have both already been to the cemetery, so splitting up made more sense. Especially as this is the leg of the experiment which Jeremy considers most incredulous, the fifteen minute walk times that some were claiming.
This drive is already proving an eye opener, however. One in that it’s becoming obvious to Jeremy right away that he’s not as advanced as he would like to believe, and also has almost nothing to talk about with Marcus. The artist in this equation is full of ideas, and pontificates at length about hidden agendas and corporate control and the ways this is keeping all marginalized people, thanks to as he explains it their government’s buddies in big business and advertising, mostly yearning for just a little bit more out of life. How this keeps them on a hamster wheel preoccupied with just that, even for the few who reach it, to the extent they’re completely oblivious to and uninterested in the big picture.
It’s quite a speech, melodic and flowing and full of insight. Yet Jeremy is aware that he’s not faring much better than someone like Clay would, by way of intelligent response. In fact it’s only the presence of someone like Clay who makes Jeremy feel a little less bumpkin-esque. Not necessarily during his school days, where he fared well enough academically, was popular and mostly liked by his teachers. But certainly in the work place, folks yukking it up over his latest comical yet apparently effective hack, some going as far as to label him a hilljack. And then multiplied tenfold out here, yes.
So this is the first grand revelation. The second is when they have just reached Stokely Farm Road and turned left upon it, when Clay rings his number and says they’ve arrived at Fairlawn Cemetery. This can only mean Jeremy’s internal map is more screwed up than he would have ever dreamed possible, for he and Marcus have barely skirted this massive section of forest.
“There’s no fucking way!” he insists, however, resisting that thought for as long as he can. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nope, they be up there, for real…,” Marcus says, glancing at his own phone. The four of them had all connected with location markers on a phone app before leaving, and he has these coordinates pulled up now.
“Are we at least on the right track, then? Is this the shortest route?” he asks, after hanging up with Clay.
“According to this,” Marcus nods, inspecting the more mainstream map virtually everyone in the universe uses, “according to this.”
But as Marcus also relates, which Jeremy has seen on at least four separate occasions himself, the omnipotent mapping program hasn’t quite gotten around to detailing these boondocks down to the letter. There’s just one huge vague blob of forest, without even so much as a house to drill down into, and no giant lake depicted anywhere.
The two of them drive for another half hour, without observing anything remotely remarkable. Their scenery, while pretty enough at first, becomes an exercise in dreariness, with even what sights they do encounter beginning to all look the same after a while, the farmhouses and little brick ranch homes tucked into the woods. Passing traffic is almost nil, too, and nobody comes up behind them. At one point Jeremy even pulls over to the shoulder, to inspect the route they’re on himself, but it still shows them pointing just about perfectly due east, as expected. And so they keep rolling.
Another fifteen minutes or so will pass. During a break in conversation, Jeremy starts telling Marcus about his dream with the bees last night, which even its narrator has to admit is one of the few interesting things he’s said this entire trip. And Marcus accordingly shows more interest in this than anything else Jeremy has uttered, too. Finally, at long last, the shimmering gold on blue of a large water body looms ahead, first on their left and then the right, and a marina just before that S curve and the bridge leading over it.
Both crane their necks slowly, to take in the marina, before continuing across the bridge and over the lake. This means Fairlawn Cemetery should appear on their left any second now. Although Tony already long ago texted both of them to explain hey dudes we got bored and left. See ya back at camp, they have to complete this journey, in order to determine anything at all. Therefore, when the graveyard appears, almost hidden, flush against the woods on that hill, Jeremy slams on the brakes and whips into that little gravel lane. He was hoping by some miracle to spot the caretaker today, but they’re not this lucky. Instead he notes the time it took them to drive out here: an hour and ten minutes.
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