"The Doom Statues" - Chapter 2

They pass the lake in a flash, just one S curve of a bridge, which slips through the narrowest visible point between its shores. To their left, the slightly shorter expanse, and a sign indicating it’s the reservoir for the nearby town of Stokely, where a small, placid pool tumbles over a dam, apparently leading the way southwest to that town. Meanwhile, to the right, it fans outward to accommodate the expected variety of jet skis, fishing boats, and recreational craft. They cruise past a tiny marina and then the land closes in around them once more, all forest, on a slight uphill swing that eventually gives way to peaks and valleys again.

A few miles along, having moved in essentially a straight western line despite the ups and downs, Jeremy slams to an abrupt halt. Fortunately, there isn’t anybody directly behind them, or else they might have gotten rear-ended. For that matter he can’t remember passing a car heading the other way, either, since at least the marina, maybe longer. The problem is that while the main road appears to sweep gradually to the left, another route of identical importance branches off to the right at this juncture, the angle only slightly less acute. Both possible paths are equally tree lined and to further complicate matters, there’s no street sign on either.

“What’s the matter?” Emily asks him.

“I can’t remember which way to go. I came out and returned via this route last time, but…”

“Wouldn’t it be to the left?” Kay suggests, pointing her own finger now in that direction, “it said back there that the left side of the lake was some reservoir for Stokely.”

“No, you know what, I don’t think so,” Jeremy says, and whips the wheel to the right, begins accelerating up that road, “it seems like it should be, but that’s where they get you.”

“They?” Emily asks, with a slight smile, half joking.

“Eh, you know what I mean. I feel like I looked that up once, but it’s just a bunch of bullshit dead end streets. Let’s try this, I think it’s correct.”

For the next twenty minutes, almost nothing about the landscape changes. Emily mostly stares out her passenger window, observing that on both sides, even the trees are nearly unwavering in their uniformity: thin but towering pines, ranging from, she guesses, between sixty to eighty feet, and none with branches except near the very top. They’re just these impossibly tall, slender, vaguely creepy looking objects she’s not sure she’s ever seen before.

Emily begins to wonder if she’s the only one among them feeling this lead weight of increasing dread. Sure, her cell phone still shows a healthy signal, and there’s plenty of daylight, so even if they were to run out of gas or something miles from civilization, it would only prove a hassle, not exactly life and death. But she can’t shake the feeling that this entire trip was a mistake – and if not, then daydreaming herself back to the living room couch, curled up with a book and some background noise on the TV, sure sounds like an improvement over the current situation anyway.

But they reach a passage where another road, splitting off perpendicular to the right, is clearly a newly laid one, its fresh black asphalt and impeccably drawn lines unblemished. Not to mention that the power lines cutting through look the same, that distinct open wound of a recently carved path through the woods. Nobody has to say a word, as Jeremy instinctively turns in that direction.

Back this way, as elsewhere, they do encounter the occasional driveway leading to a house, although these are almost exclusively sparkling, mint new gravel paths cutting through the woods, back to homes which are in some cases not yet built. Though out here even these are sparse, this has the makings of a burgeoning sub-development, which brings with it the hope of civilization. Still, apart from spotting a few carpenter looking types yanking supplies from the bed of a battered red pickup truck, off to the right hand side of the road, near one of these sites, they encounter no one. After another couple miles of this, Jeremy decides he’s had enough, and makes to turn around.

“You know what, eff this. I’m gonna ask those guys back there how you get out of this mess,” he explains, in so doing.

After pointing themselves back the way they came, Jeremy begins driving at a relative crawl, so as not to miss that site. Nonetheless this entrance does seem to creep up on them, despite the glittering, large white rocks which fill this lane, back to that red pickup truck and those workers. It’s even out in the open, somewhat, hugging a stretch of woods on one side, true, but bordered by maybe a half-acre of low cut grass on the other, before that too is hemmed in by trees on its opposite end. A slight rise from the road, up to that truck and whatever log cabin looking structure this is that they’re working on.

“I thought you were kidding,” Kay remarks from the back seat. “Is this even necessary? I mean, one of us could just pull up Mister Google’s map on our phone.”

“No, actually, I’m trying that right now…,” Emily murmurs, distracted as she fidgets with her cell, “the signal kind of sucks out here…”

By now, Jeremy has already parked just shy of the hill’s crest, where the lane bends at roughly 90 degrees and cuts in front of the cabin, parallel to the road below. It’s only upon taking a few steps toward the apex that he observes there are in fact a number of structures in various stages of completion, some out in the open and some tucked back into another strand of woods, behind this front building.

“Excuse me!” he calls out, to the trio of gents who are studying a blueprint of some sort, the document unfurled across the truck’s open tailgate.

Two of them appear to be about the same age as Jeremy, maybe a little older, though the third is probably in his mid-forties. All three glance over their shoulders, apparently having paid their arrival no mind until now, as only this older figure fully turns to regard him. Then smiles and takes a few steps in Jeremy’s direction. He’s wearing a long sleeved denim shirt to go with matching blue jeans, has a curly mop of loose brown hair worn a bit shaggier than is custom in this day and age. Even while overall the kind of middle aged character who will always look younger than his years, and, if slightly flabby, is also more muscular than the typical guy his age.

“Hello there!” this figure calls out, “you the phone guy?”

“The phone guy? Huh? No, ah…,” Jeremy explains, turns to nod at the car, “we just kinda got lost, I was hoping you could…”

“Harry Kidwell,” this figure says, extending his right hand. He has a pencil tucked behind one ear and is holding one of those L shaped metal ruler type gadgets in his left.

“Oh! Uh…Jeremy Ado.”

The two of them shake hands, and Harry asks, “Ado?”

“Yeah, rhymes with Play-Doh. That’s kinda what I usually tell people. Look, uh…”

“Sorry, you said you’re lost?” Kidwell replies, rubbing absently at a millimeter or two of grey-brown beard stubble, as he eyes distant buildings – most likely considering whatever kind of work lies ahead – in the woods behind them. After leveling out just behind this front building, the lane rises again maybe 50 yards ahead, before curving into those trees.

“What is that back there, anyway?” Jeremy questions.

“Oh that. This. Everything here,” Kidwell chuckles, nodding finally at this cabin beside them, with its slender wooden porch, nearly flush with the ground, and firewood logs stacked in a neat symmetrical triangle against one wall, beside the front door. Then he squints up at Jeremy and explains, coupled with his winningest smile, “I guess you might call this the kookiest idea I’ve ever had. Or one of them, at least, heh heh. But yeah,” he straightens up and sighs, adopts a more somber tone, “my grandmother died a while back, and I inherited a nice bit of property here.”

He begins to stroll, past the cabin, and Jeremy instinctively follows. Lost within his thoughts about the tasks ahead, Harry draws up short, as soon as the breadth of the property comes into view, and continues his monologue. “So anyway, yeah, I’m in the construction business, you know, that’s just sort of what I do. At first all I could think about is how many plots I might possibly carve this into, pop, I don’t know, at least three-four houses in here and sell ‘em. But then it hit me, you know: wouldn’t it actually be kinda cool if I reopened this place?”

“Reopen? Why, what was it before?” Jeremy asks. A second or two later, the car horn sounds out, though he turns to raise both of his arms and fix Emily with an impatient what the hell? glance. She responds by flipping him off.

Harry’s nodding at this property, as though still amazed by what he’s been given, glances over at Jeremy and then returns to beholding this wondrous land again. “Oh, well, you probably don’t know, but this used to be – well, it went by a few different names, over the years, though basically always the same concept. Central Carolina Artists’ Retreat, that was the final incarnation, the last ten or twelve years there.”

“Hmm. Cool,” Jeremy says, genuinely somewhat impressed by this unexpected twist. “So you plan on, what, like, setting up grants or something to have…”

Kidwell only peers sidelong at him now, with a slight smirk and admits, “well, that’s what my grandmother tried, here and there anyhow, you know. But no, I’m not quite rolling like that. I mean, yeah, if this thing really takes off like I expect it to, then yeah, it would be great to maybe look into awarding some residency type situations down the road. For the time being, though…see, it’s gonna be a somewhat loosely organized, half educational, half retreat type structure. I’ll be charging the artists, in fact we’ve already gotten some enrollees in the program, but trust me it’s definitely a fair, slightly below market, even, fee for room and board.”

“You already started, huh? I mean, it looks like the place is in pretty decent shape.”

“Yeah, but we got a lot more to do if we hope to hit this September 1 open date. I mean, it’ll happen, but…” Kidwell trails off, then laughs and says, “hey, you don’t know any artists, do you?”

“Artists? Like, what kind?”

“Any kind,” Harry shrugs, “like, we’ve already got this husband-wife duo on board, and this older guy that’s into some kind of media pastiche nonsense – oop, I mean, pieces, masterpieces, heh heh – and then also this young girl that actually does some pretty nifty, uh, I believe what they refer to as found object type work.”

Though getting out of this massive forested region had seemingly turned into a major hassle, Jeremy’s thinking now that this could turn into an amazingly lucky break. He doesn’t believe in providence or any of that crap. It’s just this, pure random good fortune, which, even while considering himself a slight pessimist, he thinks that maybe decent breaks are allowed to happen to anyone every now and then. That the law of averages pretty much says they have to.

“Actually…”

“You an artist?”

“Me? No. But my girlfriend Emily is actually pretty damn good with a lot of this stuff.”

“Oh yeah? You don’t say!” Harry replies, beaming. Even in the moment, Jeremy’s aware that this guy is transparently about half impressed, half huckster, or maybe more like 20/80, but doesn’t care. Soon enough, he’s spinning on his heels and shouting Emily’s name, waving for her to come on up here.

“What?” she irritably demands, upon exiting the vehicle, though marching to meet them just the same.