Gravestone
Page 20
“You’re still here.”
“Walk with me,” she says.
She’s not carrying any luggage or even a purse.
Because in dreams they don’t have to, get it?
“Don’t confuse this with a dream,” Jocelyn—the adult Jocelyn—tells me.
“Then what is this place?”
“I told you—it’s in between the two other places. That’s the easiest definition I can provide.”
“But I’m sleeping in my bed, right?”
“Technically, your body is. But what about your soul?”
“I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“In your dreams you experience things that are just off. Perhaps you’re doing something you’ve already done. Or you’re in a crowd of strangers naked. Something that you fear or you remember or you regret—those get mixed in with the subconscious and turn into dreams. But this isn’t a dream.”
She stops and looks at me. In her high heels, she’s the same height that I am.
She smiles and says, “Give me your hand.”
I do what she tells me, and she places the hand on her cheek. I can feel her face move gently as she talks.
“This—all of this—it’s real, Chris.”
“You’re older.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Then—then what?”
“You can’t imagine how many surround you. But those whom you do see, you have to choose to trust or not.”
“Like Poe?”
“Like all of them.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. It’s not my place.”
“Because you’re like a figment of my imagination?”
She shakes her head.
“You’re in a tough place, and I cannot help you. This—this right here—this is not a help. This is just a passageway, a glimpse.”
I don’t get what she’s saying.
“There’s a reason you can see this, but of course I cannot say.”
We keep walking, and I can see the change of light and colors that show we’re close to the plane.
“You shouldn’t get on.”
“I don’t want to wake up,” I tell her. “Let me stay here. Let me get on that plane.”
God, is she beautiful.
So why did He have to take her? Why?
“This is just a shell,” she says. “One day you’ll understand. One day—I hope—you will see.”
Then she closes her eyes, and I see everything around me do the same.
And when I open mine again, I know exactly where I am.
61. Creeper
I don’t wait for art class to talk to Kelsey. I find her between first and second periods. I see her walking with Georgia and interrupt them.
“Hey—can we talk?”
Georgia glances at me like I just walked off the set of a zombie movie. Kelsey nods, and this just seems to disgust her friend, who walks off.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, really.”
“Georgia seems really happy.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Kelsey—I didn’t expect that to happen.”
“What to happen?”
Something did happen, or almost happened before Poe interrupted us.
“Just—leaving you like that. It was rude. I can explain, but not now.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, and I don’t want—” I fully intended to apologize, but then I hear myself say, “Look, would you want to do something again?”
She glances at me and seems genuinely surprised.
“Something without Dan. Just—just us.”
“Sure.” Everything about Kelsey and the way she says sure is different.
“Great.”
I walk away and wonder why I just asked this girl out when all I wanted to do was save face.
You couldn’t help it.
But I could. I’m not interested and I have ten thousand other things going on right now.
You have unfinished business.
But that’s crazy. I know that I just hate having someone angry or disappointed in me.
That’s all and nothing more.
The clouds look threatening as we stand at the edge of the clearing and look out at the set of boulders. It looks different during the day, without the flickering of the fire coating the trees. Poe was easily able to drive here, to this place Sheriff Wells called The Grounds.
“This place has always creeped me out,” she says.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Sure. With Stuart. He liked coming up here—he thought it was the perfect place to smoke in peace.”
I gather that Stuart wasn’t just smoking cigarettes.
“There was another place Jocelyn showed me, by Marsh Falls,” I say. “Do you know where that is?”
“Sure.”
“I saw people meeting there, a group of people. Like some underground church thing or something. Jocelyn had started meeting with them.”
“Was the pastor one of them?”
“Pastor Marsh? No. I think they were meeting in secret because of people like the pastor. Maybe they can help us.”
“Have you been back there?”
I shake my head.
“And this Jared guy—you trust him?”
“Yeah. He’s been right with everything he’s told me, everything I can prove anyway.”
“So why doesn’t he just go tell someone who can help?”
“He’s still looking around—hoping to find his father.”
Poe’s eyes shift over the scene of the rocks on the top of the hill in front of us. I glance at her and count the five earrings in her ear.
“I don’t think you should say anything to him for now. Until we’re sure we can trust him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“We have to find some kind of proof, and then we have to tell someone who’s away from here.”
“I have the proof I need. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“But nobody’s going to believe you. I mean—Chris, I still barely believe you. It’s a crazy story.”
“I know.”
“Everybody believes Jocelyn moved away. I mean—she sent me emails. That’s how ridiculous this is. You say the sheriff is even in on it, right?”
“I don’t know about that. I just know that he didn’t believe me. He thinks just because I got into some trouble back at my old high school, I’m not telling the truth.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Stupid stuff. Partying. Nothing major.”
“You? Partying? You seem a little too good to do that.”
“You really don’t know me, Poe.”
“No, I don’t.”
She looks like she’s about to say something else, then stops herself.
“How do we go about getting proof that Jocelyn was killed?”
“I want to know what the pastor is hiding,” Poe says. “Because I’m betting it’s going to be pretty ugly. Just like them all.”
“What do you mean ‘just like them all’?”
“Every week you hear of some priest caught molesting kids or some big-name preacher who condemns gays caught with some male ‘buddy.’ It’s all a crock. They’re all the same.”
“I don’t think Marsh is going to sit down for an interview.”
“I want to see those emails from his wife.”
“They’re in the car. I’ll leave them with you.”
“I think you need to find out what he’s hiding at his house.”
“Are you kidding?”
Poe shakes her head, and her dark hair falls over her face. She brushes it back as if it annoys her. “Doesn’t he spend all his time at that church?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably.”
“So you go when he’s onstage preaching.”
“What? Break into his house?”
“Why not?”
“What if someone catches me?”
“And you think Pastor Marsh has some kind of proof at his home?”
“A creeper like that? Absolutely.”
62. Alone
The next day, Poe comes up to me. “Here’s that book I borrowed from you. Make sure you look at it before returning it to the library.”
I’ve never seen the book before, and I’ve never loaned a book to Poe.
In my English class, I open it and find a folded sheet of paper inside. It’s one of the emails from the stack I gave to her. Written at the top is a note: Did you read this?
I’M A PRISONER IN MY OWN HOUSE.
I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I’M GOING TO BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE.
I’M LIVING WITH A MONSTER. SOMEBODY, BUT NOT THE MAN I MARRIED. NOT A MAN.
HERE’S A PERSON WHO FEIGNS HAVING A CHILD IN ORDER TO TELL STORIES ABOUT HER IN HIS SERMONS. WHO WOULD DO THAT? PEOPLE BELIEVE IT, TOO. EVERYBODY AROUND HERE IS DRINKING THE KOOL-AID.
IF YOU GET THIS—IF YOU’RE STILL THERE—THEN YOU NEED TO COME GET ME.
WE’RE NO DIFFERENT FROM THE REST. THE TENTACLES OF TUNNELS REACH US.
FIND THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS, MAYBE A HUNDRED YARDS AWAY. THERE IS A DOOR THAT LEADS DOWN INTO THE TUNNEL. FROM THERE YOU CAN GET IN.
IF YOU CAN GET IN, THEN MAYBE I CAN GET OUT.
I HOPE THERE’S TIME.
I HOPE HE DOESN’T FIND OUT.
PLEASE HELP.
I look up and stare at the teacher and see her looking at me, waiting.
“Chris, do you have any thoughts on this passage?”
“Yeah.”
“Then please share.”
“It’s dark. It’s brutal. It’s the point of no return.”
Mrs. Norton gives me a puzzled glance.
“What does it mean to you?”
“That we’re all alone,” I say. “That we’re all alone and that nobody’s ever going to get there in time to help. Nobody.”
63. The Project
It seems like there have been more guests at the Crag’s Inn as the weather has gotten warmer. I asked Iris about it once, but she said the inn is full year-round. I would’ve thought she was making that up, but I’d already realized that Iris was one of the last people in the world who would ever lie.
Today, as I show up driving my mom’s car (and no, I don’t have a license yet, and yes, I probably shouldn’t be driving), I see a group of men standing at the side of the lodge. There are four of them, and they seem to be talking about something serious. They glance at me, then resume their conversation. I get out of my car and wave at them. I receive a couple of nods. One of the guys with longer hair and a goatee is smoking a pipe.
Inside, I find Iris ready as always for whatever my task will be today. It’s been an unusual job, to say the least. Sometimes it’s work outside, cleaning or cutting or trimming or hauling. Then other days it’s something inside, like painting a room or boxing up belongings and bringing them out to the side of the driveway or organizing photos by the date on the back.
That last one was quite the job. It was fascinating to see all those pictures, mostly black-and-white and some of the earliest taken in the ’20s. The photos were all of people, most of them taken around what appeared to be the Crag’s Inn or the mountains. I might have gone through a thousand photos that day, making piles of 1920s and 1930s and so on, sorting them out by the year.
There were pictures of men and women in the woods and around campfires and walking along a dirt road and by the creek. They obviously were taken around here. But I couldn’t find any pictures of the town itself.
I ended up asking Iris about it.
“I guess you’re right,” she said.
She didn’t seem either surprised or curious.
“Who are all these people?”
“Guests.”
They all looked different, from their ages to the color of their skin. It seemed like everybody came to the Crag’s Inn for some reason.
“How do all these people know about this place? I mean—do you do a lot of advertising?”
Iris only smiled.
A little later I asked her why I was organizing these pictures. I could understand showing a montage of guests who had stayed with you, but none of these pictures had labels. They were all nameless strangers—some smiling, some creepy looking, some looking stoic and others looking busy.
“When you have a place as special as this one, it’s important to document it for future generations.”
I didn’t want to insult her with the next question going through my mind. But Iris seemed to pick up on my expression and answered it anyway.
“There are many places in this world that are unique, Chris. That have a truly unusual history. Do you believe that?”
“Sure.”
I just didn’t believe that this particular place was that unique or unusual.
“Sometimes it’s not what’s on the outside. It doesn’t have to be spectacular or impressive or ostentatious in order to be remarkable. Sometimes, the smallest of things can be absolutely exceptional. Just this morning I was visited by a swarm of hummingbirds. They surrounded me on the deck outside. It could not have been a more glorious way to wake up and see God’s morning glory.”
I could understand that, but I still couldn’t understand these pictures.
But I still did my job and did it as well as I could.
“Do you want any coffee?” Iris asks me today.
She’s never offered me coffee before, so I say sure, why not. I don’t really like coffee, but I’m learning to try new things. Even if I don’t necessarily want to.
“I needed to make some extra for our guests. Did you see them?”
“Yeah, outside. Talking at the side of the inn.”
“Good,” Iris says, disappearing and then bringing me a cup. “Would you like anything in it?”
“No. I’m not much of a coffee drinker. I’m flexible.”
“You’re making good progress,” she tells me.
Drinking coffee is good progress?
“So are you ready for something different today?”
“Yeah.”
She smiles and sits and urges me to do the same.
There is a formality around Iris that’s grown to be not only interesting but kinda admirable. Most people in this world are rude and loud and obnoxious. Okay, not most people, but a lot of people. People you see on reality shows and in the news. People who seem angry and irritated at life when they wake up. Iris is reserved and well-spoken and always seems so … so dignified.
Maybe she’s royalty from England hiding out in our creepy neck of the woods.
“How good is your composition?”
I stare at Iris and shake my head. “My what?”
“Your writing. Are you a good writer?”
“Not really. Average probably.”
“Then average will do. Go on, sip your coffee; you’ll need the extra caffeine.”
She hands me an old book that I realize is a journal.
“I’d like you to begin a project that might take some time. But you’ve earned my trust, and you’ve shown that you’re ready. I’ve had you do most of the labor that I need done at the moment. But this is the most important thing I could ever ask you to do.”
I open the journal and see cursive handwriting in faded black ink. I try to read a little of it, but can’t.
“Every innkeeper has had a journal and passes it down to the next person. The history of this inn is inside these pages.”
“It’s hard to read.”
“Yes.”
She leaves for a moment. I sip my coffee and wait. She comes back with a laptop.
“This is probably a little more to your liking.”
It’s a MacBook, and by the looks of it, a brand-new MacBook.
“I’m giving this to you, Chris. You will need this as you work on this project.”
I hold the computer in my hand and probably have my mouth halfway open in shock.
Couple hundred bucks a day is one thing, but a MacBook …
“For now, it will stay here while you work on this project,” Iris says. “But you will be able to keep it when you finish.”
“As payment for—”
“No,” she interrupts. “In addition to your wages.”
“This is, uh, quite a lot.”
“There’re no strings attached. It will be yours. But not for some time. Because this is a rather large project. And it’s ultimately why I wanted you to come here and work.”
The way she says you makes it seem like she invited me to come here in the first place. Mom was the one who pushed for me to be here. And that seemed random.
“They say that you can do things like load photos on a computer like that. Is that true?”
I nod, then think of the gazillion photos I’ve helped archive. I must have turned white, because Iris laughs.
“No, that’s not what I’m thinking. Not those photos.”
“Okay.” I try to suppress a huge sigh of relief.
“The main thing I want you to do is to write a report. You can do that, right?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“I’d like for you to write a history of this place, a kind that is easy to read and would be informative for newcomers. For people like yourself who don’t know about this place and its history and can’t scan messy journals to discover the truth.”
“Where will I get the information?”
“There’s far too much information. And that’s not counting the journals. I will show you. You will work in a room that I have ready for you.”
I nod again.
“I promise there will be other things to do—ways to get exercise and get away from the research and writing. But I believe that you’ll find it interesting. I hope you do, at least.”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Sure about what?”
“Sure about this endeavor?”
I nod.
I’m not sure about anything, not since having moved to Solitary. But it’s work and I can earn a MacBook, so why not? It can’t be that hard or boring, right?