Emily had awakened with a start just prior to sundown. After spending most of her day painting the mural, in between telling Jeremy he was an idiot over the phone and in text, she returned here for what was supposed to be a quick nap. It was already a little past three in the afternoon then, but she didn’t feel like tracking him down right that second, figured she would allow him another hour to work out this lunacy and maybe possibly show up. She had passed out in her baggy jeans, fully clothed, with even a couple of only slightly dented plastic paint bottles in her pockets, ones she’s been using for touch ups in a couple of spots.
Now she gasps out loud, snapping fully awake with the terror of those aware they’ve overslept. Reaches for a phone and observes that another text from Jeremy came through while she was sleeping, saying he’s by the side of the road, and then six more from Denise. Most in that playfully angry tone familiar to siblings everywhere, Emily’s sure, where first her sister is saying answer the goddamn texts, thank you very kindly, then asking if she’s dead in here, followed by some random article share which has nothing to do with anything whatsoever — a link to some review of these colored pencils that she says she really wants. Asking if she can have these for her upcoming birthday.
She scrambles to throw on some clothes, reaches for the car keys hanging on a nail by the front door. Well, at least he’d been smart or lucky enough to have left these behind. Although surely she could ask any number of her truly awesome fellow residents for an assist in this matter. Right now, for instance, as soon as Emily barges out the front door of her cabin, dashing down the trio of wooden steps, her eyes land up the smokers behind the main house. Though chatting and engaged in their own conversations, smile and hold up a hand in her direction. Ditto Kathy Drucker, who is up on the third story roof, pacing as she talks into a phone, beaming and waving when she observes Emily down here on the lawn.
By the time she reaches the end of the drive in Jeremy’s car, it’s nearly dark outside. That happens mighty fast, she supposes, this time of the year. Some maps depict the road in front of Otherwise as Pine Bluff Road, even though Kidwell says days ago he was never asked for a name, despite funding much of its construction expense. Turning left onto Pine Bluff, she rockets off into this clear, chilly, eerily quiet night. Even that scene back at Otherwise felt somewhat fantastical, considering she couldn’t really hear much of anything, just a tiny vague murmur and the windchime tinkling of their occasional laughs.
Less than ten minutes later, Pine Bluff dead ends into Stokely Farm Road. Okay, this is all as expected. While she agrees with Jeremy that it seems strange that driving this takes an hour, something about the terrain’s layout must be out of whack in their minds. Turning left onto it, she believes that this road takes them much further out than needed, if just walking a straight line from it, through the woods to Otherwise. And that Pine Bluff doesn’t bear directly south, either, though it appears to, but more in a major southwest direction.
That’s what rational thought says, anyway. Yet after a good twenty minutes driving this hilly landscape, though aided by an admittedly gorgeous moon, lighting up the random fluffy cloud in its otherwise clear vicinity, she concedes that this road is almost hypnotically repetitive, and easy to get lost within, somehow, even while making no turns. In fact she would almost swear she has passed some of these markers before, like for example these damn single story, redbrick ranch style homes with their attached carports. These things are everywhere out here.
Emily’s chuckling to herself about this thought, driving through a relatively flat, higher section of road, and considers that it’s really pretty how a moonbeam illuminates this one section of forest to her left. Then slams on the brakes when she realizes the light actually has more of a sickly greenish-blue quality to it, and this isn’t a moonbeam at all.
Sure, she really should keep driving, because Jeremy’s surely pulling his hair out at the marina by now. Then again, does she know for a fact this is where he still remains? It seems highly likely he caught a different ride from someone — which she ought to have asked around to determine, come to think of it, though still half asleep at that moment — or, reasoning things through at last, took off through the woods himself.
So with the engine running, idling at this spot in the road, she finds herself captivated by this sight. The Ruiner, of course, clad in his familiar top hat and trench coat, she can see from here. He must light up a good eight foot circumference, all around him, everywhere he walks. Rolling down the window, Emily determines she can even hear him talking, in that static laden, unintelligible, intercom speaker voice. But, though if he were stomping toward her, this might make for a different, far more terrifying story, he’s actually moving away, walking in some random looking, vaguely zigzag pattern.
Something about this makes for a much more comforting thought. She eases the car over, fully into a field beside the road, and shuts off the engine. Though it’s truly possible he is somehow mesmerizing her from afar, she concedes, Emily doesn’t believe this is the case. What if he’s actually trying to tell her something? And anyway, if she were somehow sneaking up on an apparition, following it instead of the other way around, wouldn’t this be a crazy thought, a truly unique and possibly useful experience?
Easing out of the car, shutting the door with a light click, she allows a slight giggle and acknowledges that this is insane. A fun kind of insane, though. And anyway, while this is still probably the work of some bored prankster, if not, everyone knows that a ghost can’t actually hurt you. You can only spook yourself to death fearing them. And so looking both ways out of habit, though she hasn’t seen another car in forever, Emily dashes across the road, so as not to lose sight of The Ruiner.
She tiptoes on the gently downhill trajectory, into this forest. Despite her best efforts, the crunching leaves sound like gunshots to her, although it doesn’t appear The Ruiner has noticed her presence in the slightest. Sticking as far back as she can while still able to see him, Emily darts from the tree to tree, peeking around each before moving on to the next. If she had to guess, she would say they are moving, however meandering the basic pattern, in what is pretty much a northern route. So it’s possible he really is leading her back to Otherwise, and that, however frightening in appearance, this is actually a friendly spirit.
While lodged behind a tree, Emily risks extracting her phone, pulling up its map app, mostly just for the compass feature. As expected, while her actual location shows a vague blob in the middle of nowhere, they are pointed just a tick to the west of true south, below Otherwise. Pine Bluff Road is depicted on here, right where she’d expect, although oddly named Girls Academy Road on here at the moment. So it must be some sort of glitch.
She puts the phone away and continues following her spectral friend. Much like the woods she has marched through a couple of times, out to that cemetery, the terrain here is mostly hilly, with miniature rises tucked into the larger sweeps of landscape. The trees, however, are mostly not those weird, tall, branchless pines, but rather a mix, more in keeping with what she’s seen of the Wooley Swamp side of their property.
Emily reflects that it would be fascinating to bring Tom out here and have him catalog these trees as well. This sets her off into a reverie, as she absently trails this spirit, or teenage cutup, or whatever it is, thinking about how maybe in some weird way she and her fellow artists are actually historians. And botanists and sociologists and media theorists and who knows what else, all rolled into one. Or at least fractions of these, each his or her own unique mix. These documents they are creating, they not only record the people, places, and things around them — however oddly at times — but become a piece of the record themselves. The very act of participation, kicking up dust around here, both learning and becoming points for others to learn themselves. Or something like that.
I mean, what do most people even really know about the nature of ghosts, she thinks? If that’s even what this is. Ghosts might have gotten a…bum rap, when most of them are completely harmless. This entire stroll has been without incident, peaceful and possibly helpful, one might argue. There’s something about the aura this being is projecting, even — which, okay, probably does rule out the whole local-in-a-costume concept, which she wasn’t really buying anyway. But Emily would swear she could feel the vibe projecting outward from this entity, casting a wide swath in front of its advances. And this is how she knows she is perfectly safe here.
Something changes slightly, though, as The Ruiner begins to meander in more of a NNE direction. But, again, surely he has a good reason for this, and she still clings to this theory that he’s guiding her back to Otherwise. After all, that place represents his main, ahem, haunting grounds as well. Shielded by the tree, although it’s debatable he would even notice this glow amid his own, were he even to glance back here, she extracts her phone once more, confirms that her sense of direction is good, and they are still on course, if pointed a couple degrees or so to the east now.
It’s when she puts her phone away and peeks around the tree again, however, that the first major shift occurs in this dynamic. He just stops. This unexpected move throws her for a loop to the extent she freezes right where she is, out in the open, before recovering enough to dash to the nearest tree.
Her heart is suddenly hammering through her chest, though she couldn’t say why. Maybe the reality of the situation is finally hitting home, even as she attempts blocking out this intrusive thought: you are lost in the middle of a gigantic fucking forest, chasing a ghost around. Upon recovering, though, she risks another look around the frayed bark of this tree.
The Ruiner is bent over at the waist, sideways to her in a small clearing, a place where the dirt is visible for once, amid this otherwise consistent blanket of leaves. Then he does the craziest thing — he starts knocking on the ground. Waits, and then repeats the process, a second and third time. Finally, he reaches down, and pulls on a ring of some sort, for she can see this hatch door he has lifted open. With the door held so, peering down at whatever he’s glimpsing there, he startles her into heart attack territory yet again, by turning his head ever so slowly in her direction, until he is plainly looking right at her.
Emily wants to pull away, she does, and it’s not that she’s mesmerized, or that he’s cast a spell upon her. Rather that she feels compelled to confirm for a fact that these things are happening, knowing that otherwise, she will always wonder if she imagined the entire episode. So yes, she continues staring back at him, for as long as she has to, at that grinning face, and the eyes she still can’t quite see in the shadow of that hat brim.
Then he just begins walking again, as if none of this ever happened. Eventually she recovers the courage to begin trailing him, too, albeit figuring there’s no point in hiding behind trees now. Only when he resumes that staticky intercom voice does she realize he had stopped talking during that knocking episode, which is one reason it had sounded so preternaturally still. That would explain some of the weirdness, anyway.
And even so, something is off. She can’t initially put her finger upon it. But Emily gradually becomes aware that this figure has just sort of zigzagged his way in more of a north-northwest direction, then fully northwest, then kind of sort of actually facing west and finally abruptly southwest, to where he’s now completed a quick little half circle, with her at its center. She recognizes that aura is subtly changing, too, becoming darker. Then it hits her with a force that would suggest she’s been in some trance: The Ruiner is facing her, now, and the energy he’s projecting is one of pure menace.
He begins striding toward her. Okay, this is bad. Clearly this was the dumbest idea, ever. Emily takes off running, back the way she came.
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