The latest Saturday tour draws just seven paying customers, three of them at the kids’ price. This latter development occurs late in the afternoon, even, as a woman with three kids she is babysitting arrives and tells Grace, “we had a terrible time finding this place! It seriously took us over an hour, and I live just down there off the state route, in Stokely!”
“Really? I’m sorry,” Grace tells her, exuding genuine warmth, “I know someone else was telling me something about…uh…a GPS…”
“Well yeah the GPS!” the woman cuts her off, “it had us all over the place. Sometimes it didn’t even show this road, then other times it did. But I’ll tell ya, you guys need to get some signs up somewhere, too. I mean they ain’t even one down at the end of the drive yet, at the entrance.”
The woman is otherwise genial, however, and Grace’s much more intimate 4pm tour proceeds without a hitch. Still, this piece of news, while disturbing, does help solve for them the declining attendance mystery. Somehow nobody noticed – although it’s true that few of them ever leave the place, and even then only rarely – that the giant wooden sign at the bottom of the drive was indeed gone, and the same applied to a pair of much smaller ones, at each end of this relatively short road.
All of which also lends credence to their belief that most of the weird happenings around here can be placed at the feet of some local jackasses. Maybe not the disappearance of Ben and Lois, but with even Jen having apparently simply gone somewhere nearby, choosing to cut off all contact with everyone, their apparent deaths remain the only detail that can’t be explained away in this manner. And even then, while it’s possible four play is involved there, a fluke chemical mishap is the most likely culprit.
Or at least, this is what most of them believe. Kay isn’t quite sure what to think, though still inclined to give Otherwise the benefit of the doubt. Particularly as she has talked Tony into staying. Yet as she stands in this communal bathroom, female edition, and gazes in horror at her mouth in the mirror, it’s obvious that they can’t explain away everything as a prank, or some sort of shady dealing. Like for example how it’s roughly 2:30 in the morning and here she is with a second lost tooth in her hand, staring at its bloody former home. Or how she could positively swear, as she tosses the tooth in a trash can and plays with her jawline now, that her mouth in general has sort of gotten wobbly and loose. Possibly even elongated.
The other thing is, if she’s got this secret and has told nobody else, then what other similar, inexplicable occurrences are her fellow residents holding onto? This implied fact surely increases the odds that something paranormal is going on here. Even so, she really does love this place. If only she can hang in for another month and a half without anything else strange or bad happening, then they can return home and life can go back to normal, possibly even better than normal with the experiences and connections formed here.
She’s thinking this, and then nearly jumps out of her skin to hear a female voice plainly murmur, “I know what this is all about, I do…”
Kay feels the color drain from her face, holds onto the sink with both hands to steady herself. Then regards her own mortified expression in the water spotted mirror. Except any sort of paranormal explanation wilts as she continues listening, and can plainly hear footsteps crunching through the grass outside. Tiptoeing so as to not add any noise herself, nor drown out anything else this person or persons might say, Kay eases her way over to the door and gently pushes it open. This side of the building faces the main house’s backside, however, so there’s only so much of the lawn she can glimpse from here. A second listen confirms that these sounds originate from around the corner, to her left, and so she exits, gently edges in that direction, her back pressed against the building’s exterior like a character in an action movie.
Though the voice had been a tad too quiet to determine its owner, Kay is nonetheless taken aback to peek around this corner and witness…Emily, clad only in her pajamas and a flimsy pair of slippers, traipsing off toward the barn. Emily gives no indication about being aware of Kay’s presence, however, so she follows her dearest friend. In the course of which will hear Emily, who admittedly has been acting mighty strange the past couple of weeks, say something else about, “this is where I belong, isn’t it?”
Her tone isn’t necessarily of someone talking to herself, but more how you would speak to someone that can’t actually hear you – a character on the television, maybe, or an email sender you’re replying to. Which throws Kay for a loop, but only for a moment, until she clears the back corner of this bathhouse and has an open shot of the entire scene. It’s here that she catches her first glimpse of The Ruiner.
The sickly green-blue glow is impossible to miss, flickering near the open side entrance to the barn. And while Emily is apparently drawn to him, this monstrosity has the opposite effect on Kay. She freezes in her tracks and lets out a loud whelp, one loud enough to draw Emily’s attention at last. She whips her head around, to regard Kay with the wide-eyed look of someone just busted mid-crime. Yet what is most horrifying is that Kay would swear The Ruiner turns his head ever so slightly in her direction, too, having spotted her as well. And that he even smiles when doing so.
When she regains her composure, Kay makes a point of remaining calm, as she walks backwards away from these two figures. Something tells her she dare not turn her back to them. Yet in so doing, she witnesses Emily making some sort of oh well, whatever, kind of expression, as she faces The Ruiner again, and continues striding toward him. The last Kay sees of them, they have both disappeared into that barn.
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