"The Doom Statues" - Chapter 19

Distracted by this pond, Jeremy and company have gotten no further than skirting it. They approached from the left side, nearest the woods, but then rounded the top and have come back around down the opposite side. He wouldn’t consider himself a nature nut, but there is something peaceful and enchanting about this body of water.

“Well, alright,” he says at last, after a long spell staring at the placid surface. “Enough of this. I suppose we should keep moving, no?”

While the other two lead the way, Lydia, as she has for most of their outing, lags a few paces behind, snapping endless photos with her high dollar film/digital hybrid camera. When asked, she explains that like many “serious” photographers, she prefers shooting to film, but this digital storage option gives her a nice backup if running out, or if absolutely needing an image on the fly.

“We need, to like, dig a little deeper on this place,” Denise insists, “I’m telling you. I’ve been saying this all along, and that incident last night confirms it.”

“I guess so,” Jeremy says. He had picked some random pink and yellow, late season flower from near the pond’s bank, and is now absently ripping off petals one by one.

“You guess so? What, like, you don’t think that’s a big deal? Or you don’t believe her?”

“No, I do,” he replies, grimaces, looks over at Denise. They are now marching side by side up a slight incline, behind the pond, a hill parallel to but not nearly as steep as the larger one behind the school. “It’s just…I don’t know, I still think it was just somebody clowning around. I mean do we really know any of these people? What about Marcus, he kind of fits the basic body shape she was describing. Or Emily even said it looked like somebody on stilts. This could be anyone. They had a little too much punch and were feeling frisky, or maybe somebody even put them up to it.”

“No,” Denise says, and has clasped both her hands together, pointed forward like someone about to dive, is making a chopping motion downward with every stressed syllable. “Well, I mean, maybe. But that doesn’t really change anything. We need to go into town and dig around some. Stokely has a library, I’ve seen it. Plus you have to get some curtains up, for real. I know you threw that fucking blanket up after she started freaking out, but…”

Jeremy nods a handful of times, yet questions anyway, “haven’t you tried looking some more online? The connection’s been decent lately.”

“Yes and no. But I mean, if you’re talking about really old history about some tiny little town in the boondocks, that shit’s not gonna be online. Meanwhile the major cities want you to pay for every single article. It’s like you’re fucked either way.”

Thinking that they haven’t heard much from the third member of their party in a while, Jeremy glances behind them. But Lydia is still dutifully marching up the hill, all business, with a furrowed brow as she stares at a strand of trees to the northeast. “You don’t say much, heh?” he calls out to her, grinning.

It takes a couple of seconds for Lydia to register that she’s being spoken to, but then awareness reaches her face and she looks ahead at them, returns his smile, if cautiously. “Sorry. I just really get into my work. There are a lot of interesting things to capture out here.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” he concurs.

“Okay, but listen,” Denise continues, “we’re allowed to go into town, you know. I realize everyone is kind of enchanted with this notion of disconnecting and…”

“I haven’t looked at my phone once since I’ve been out here,” Lydia murmurs, though already engrossed in snapping pictures again, “shut it off, in fact. It’s beautiful.”

“See what I mean? So yeah, that’s fine and all, people can enjoy their little retreat, but we’re allowed to go into town if we want. Kay and I have already discussed that we’re gonna beef up the locks on our cabin a little bit. There’s a little family hardware store, there’s a library. I say first thing tomorrow, we head into Stokely, or maybe even up into Winston or something if need be. It’s time to figure some shit out.”

By now, they have reached this hill’s apex, which faces a thin strip of various trees, spilling out from the forest Emily and company are exploring to the south. The larger slope slants down to meet them, right along with it, and from here they can see a long, wavy stretch of field, mostly covered by assorted wild grass and weeds, to the east. But also, though distances are basically impossible to judge, they can just barely make out a puff of what looks like chimney smoke, beyond the fifth or sixth hill.

“No way…,” Denise marvels.

“What do you think? Should we check it out?”

Slightly out of breath, they have come to a stop here, allowing Lydia to reach them. When Jeremy repeats his question, she too absorbs the view ahead in fine detail, silently nodding. Side by side in a row now, they strike off in that direction.

“Actual people. Civilization. I don’t believe it,” Denise jokes.

“But see what I’m saying?” Jeremy tells her, “if we can walk it, so can somebody else. I don’t even think Kidwell’s proposed fence would absolutely keep people out.”

“Hmm, well, let’s see what we’re getting into up here, before we jump to conclusions.”

As they crash through the brambles, selecting the best route consumes most of their conscious energy. Sometimes they are charting separate paths, while other occasions find them moving single file. Yet at nearly the same instant, after traveling across a few soft hills in an increasingly winded silence, they arrive with a distinct solid thud upon this singular curiosity: an overgrown, cracked, but mostly intact section of asphalt highway, with a line of yellow dashes down the middle, solid white ones near each shoulder.

“What the hell?” Jeremy wonders, jumping up and down on it, as the other two do the same. Staring in both directions at what they can see of the road, which is almost nothing, amid this riot of tall yellowish brown overgrowth.

“Yeah,” Denise agrees, looking down with equal parts bafflement and dread, “this seems a little random.”

Still, that chimney smoke looms ever closer, by appearances belonging to a small house or possibly a trailer, just two or three steep hills ahead of them. And so they continue on.

Like the story so far? Pick up the entire tale from your favorite store below!

Paperback

Kindle