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I came out and returned via this route last time, but…”\n\n“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.”\n\n“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.”\n\n“They?” Emily asks, with a slight smile, half joking.\n\n“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.”\n\nFor 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.\n\nEmily 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.\n\nBut 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.\n\nBack 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.\n\n“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.\n\nAfter 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.\n\n“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.”\n\n“No, actually, I’m trying that right now…,” Emily murmurs, distracted as she fidgets with her cell, “the signal kind of sucks out here…”\n\nBy 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.\n\n“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.\n\nTwo 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.\n\n“Hello there!” this figure calls out, “you the phone guy?”\n\n“The phone guy? Huh? No, ah…,” Jeremy explains, turns to nod at the car, “we just kinda got lost, I was hoping you could…”\n\n“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.\n\n“Oh! Uh…Jeremy Ado.”\n\nThe two of them shake hands, and Harry asks, “Ado?”\n\n“Yeah, rhymes with Play-Doh. That’s kinda what I usually tell people. Look, uh…”\n\n“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.\n\n“What is that back there, anyway?” Jeremy questions.\n\n“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.”\n\nHe 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?”\n\n“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.\n\nHarry’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.”\n\n“Hmm. Cool,” Jeremy says, genuinely somewhat impressed by this unexpected twist. “So you plan on, what, like, setting up grants or something to have…”\n\nKidwell 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.”\n\n“You already started, huh? I mean, it looks like the place is in pretty decent shape.”\n\n“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?”\n\n“Artists? 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      "title": "\"The Doom Statues\" - Chapter 1",
      "body": "![IMG_5906 watermarked.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNY793X3isNHrxdjBaaetdp2fD68ZvTuHBbfn3mHa8Dqh/IMG_5906%20watermarked.jpg)\n\n“This is some seriously creepy territory,” Emily says, as they turn from the paved road onto one composed of half dirt, half stone.\n\n“Yeah and this gravel road makes it even better,” Kay concurs, equal parts sarcasm and queasiness from the back seat.\n\n“The funny thing is, I didn’t come this way last time,” Jeremy, their driver, tells them, “thank God for those maps on our phone. I must have taken a wrong turn away from the normal route, but this will work.”\n\n“Wait a second – you’ve been out here before?” Kay gasps.\n\n“Well yeah, whose idea do you think it was?” Emily wonders, smirking as she spins around to face her best friend. “He said he’s got something to show us.”\n\n“That may be true, but…never mind. There’s a little one in the car,” Kay jokes, then glances over at her four year old son, Noah, and his hair. Yet the youth is mostly tuning out all conversation, sitting still and cataloging the scenery from his baby seat.\n\n“I think I might start coming this way instead, though,\" Jeremy croaks, smiling though serious, pleased with himself, \"the gravel road part’s a nice touch.”\n\n\"You mean you plan on driving all the way out here again?\" Kay says, adds, \"this better be good.\"\n\n“What are we even seeing? You told me but I forget,” Emily says.\n\n“You’ve heard of a gravity hill?” he asks.\n\n“No….”\n\n“Well, okay, a gravity hill they’ll tell you is an optical illusion. There are these places where it looks like you’re going uphill but you’re actually moving downhill. Except…I don’t know, you'll just have to see it. This whole area’s weird.”\n\nThough the directions guiding him that first time were vague, with the false far outweighing the true – a common predicament, in the flood of information now overwhelming everyone online – Jeremy did manage to find this nifty little urban legend, or make that a rural one, just a week ago. Traveling alone and charting these winding roads through the forest, northeast of Stokely, itself a blip on the map and nearly an hour away from their own hometown.\n\nViewing this hill that initial occasion, at night, was spooky enough, but in a sense less satisfying. Too dark to really make out as much of the horizon, even with proper headlights and all. Now, however, accompanied by his girlfriend, Emily, and her faithful sidekick Kay, not to mention the ultra-impressionable Noah, it should not only prove more fun, showing them this peculiar sight, but also a little easier to discern visually by day.\n\n“Isn’t this cool?” Jeremy asks, at the wheel even though this nearly brand new Beamer belongs to Emily’s parents. With those two out of the state on a mini-vacation, she determined on a whim that this would make the perfect vehicle for this quaint little day trip, even if she personally didn’t feel comfortable driving it and the car wasn’t technically supposed to leave the house.\n\n“Yeah, we’ll see how cool if you scratch up the side of this frickin’ car,” Kay grovels, only three-quarters joking, as this gravel road narrows and overhanging tree branches press ever nearer, on both sides.\n\n“Don’t worry, I think we should be back on solid pavement here soon,” he says.\n\n“Yeah, I think I see it, actually,” Emily seconds, nodding to where this lane ends into an abrupt T-intersection ahead.\n\nJust past where the trees finally open up again, with a charming stone cottage on the right and field to their left, another solid bank of forest directly before them, this stop sign presents its pair of choices. Even though the internet connection is spotty out here, memory and the occasionally cooperative maps on their phones both seem to indicate they should turn left, and so he does.\n\nThe three adult occupants are all 19 and have known one another since at least the third grade, possibly longer – on this point memories diverge, and nobody has yet bothered to unearth a yearbook from those elementary days. This pair of females, Jeremy knows, are both artistically inclined, live relatively close to one another, and share similar senses of humor. Unlike them, he's never really had a creative bone in his body, so it's hard to say how all three of them wound up so chummy, years before he and Emily began dating. Once middle school hit, or thereabouts, and it became more apparent that they were more or less central figures in their tiny village's in crowd, of course, everything about their friendship felt like a preordained eventuality, as did his courtship of this amazing woman beside him.\n\nThough somewhat on the thin side, Jeremy's always been tall, and in at least as good of shape as basically every other average kid he knows. Thus he extended a token effort toward athletics, with modest interest and even less success, until his sophomore year. This roughly coincided with his taking up smoking, and also a burgeoning mutual attraction with Miss Emily Garverick. Somewhere along the line, it became obvious to both that the longtime friendship was turning into jokes about flirting, which itself begat actual flirting. Even so, it took them a solid year to really do anything about it, and begin dating in earnest.\n\nNearly as tall as Jeremy, and a curly haired blonde to his sandy brown, Emily has thus far successfully avoided taking up smoking, and of course she's always had her painting obsession against his total lack of interest in the arts. But in nearly every other aspect they are pretty much the same. They fall into your same basic late teenage category, given to a little bit of partying with alcohol and maybe the occasional weed, nothing else really edgier than this. Still, a little shiftless, which is maybe the product of their nothing town – a town almost as lame as that Stokely or whatever it was they just drove through – and working stupid jobs with no real prospect of anything else on the horizon, though they’d all performed at least decently in school.\n\nOf course, when her lifelong best friend, Kay Hutchison here, found herself with child at the age of 15, that did somewhat complicate matters in her specific case. Especially as baby’s daddy was basically of no use at all. Even in these modern times, there’s a horrific stigma attached to pregnancies at that age, and Kay’s suffered all manner of abuse in the court of public opinion, basically just for deciding on her own that she was quite happy and excited to have this kid. Even Kay's own parents have made little effort to disguise that they’re not exactly thrilled by this development, yet have if nothing else allowed her to remain living at home without pressure to figure out a career, thus far anyway.\n\nJeremy has just begun to wonder if he made a wrong turn somewhere, when he rounds a corner and realizes they have crossed the top – or is that the bottom? - of the hill he’s been seeking. It just looked different this time, having approached from the opposite direction. And though he says nothing, the first words out of both girls’ mouths are some variation of a “whoa” and a mild curse, marveling at all this graffiti on the road.\n\nSome in paint and some chalk, these markings cover much of the expected bases in defacing the road. Mostly lighter colored and/or pastel, featuring a wild assortment of handwriting styles and subject matter, plenty of names, few actual drawings, but maybe just a little more demented bent than usual, given the nature of this site. Among these are a baby sized chalk outline of a body, an assurance that CLOWNS LIVE HERE, as well as a question written in a girl’s looping cursive, asking simply Do ya love me?\n\nHaving reached the bottom of this hill – or the starting line, to be more precise – Jeremy knows he’ll have to turn around, and yet there’s no immediate place for doing so. He continues ahead as the road inclines upward once more, then at the peak of this slight rise, finds a gravel drive leading to a rickety, wooden, two story house, its exterior grey and warping. An old man in the back yard is burning trash in a barrel, and turns slowly to regard them with a dirty glare.\n\n“Ooh hoo hoo!” Kay chortles from the back seat, “did you see that? He looks pissed! I’ll bet he’s tired of this shit.”\n\n“Well yeah!” Emily agrees, “wouldn’t you be? He’s probably burning the bodies of the last dumbass kids to try this!”\n\n“It could be their spirits haunting this place,” Jeremy cracks.\n\nUpon turning around, he creeps down the current hill until bottoming out. Here, after lining up his car as well as possible between two wooden posts that someone painted with single, horizontal purple stripes, to mark the proper starting place, he comes to a complete stop.\n\n“So what is the point of this, anyway?” Kay questions.\n\n“Just watch,” Jeremy tells her, then demonstrates. “Okay, you’ll see that the car is now in neutral and that we are completely stopped, right?”\n\n“Yeah,” both girls reply at once, with a tone of voice suggesting a shrug.\n\n“Okay then, so see what happens...when I take my foot off the brake...,” he mutters, lifting his knee a little more than necessary to show them he has done so.\n\nThough staring at a fairly steep incline, with no gas and the car in neutral, the BMW does indeed begin to ascend this hill. Will continue doing so for approximately a quarter mile, even around a curve in the road. Though Kay insists this must be some sort of trick, especially as she can’t fully see what Jeremy’s up to in the driver’s seat.\n\n“You’re hitting the gas!” she declares.\n\n“But even if I was, it’s in neutral!” he points out, directing both of his hands toward the steering column in the middle. “We were dead stopped and the car’s in neutral!”\n\n“Whoa...,” Emily says, running a hand through her long, curly blonde hair with a wicked, appreciative grin, “that was...tripped out...”\n\nThey are stopped at the top of this hill, near where the curve in the road straightened out and momentum ground to a halt at last. Still, no other cars have materialized, which affords them a chance to deconstruct this occurrence. Jeremy shifts the gear into park, and they sit for some seconds in pure silence.\n\n“Okay, so what is this place allegedly about?” Kay asks.\n\n“Well, actually, allegedly,” Jeremy explains, “common sense would bear this out, and there also a number of similar places around the world, but...apparently you are not really moving uphill here. It’s an optical illusion. Apparently we are actually moving downhill. Although, man, I don’t know...it doesn’t look that way, does it? Plus I have another theory on that, which I wanna point out to you guys at some point.”\n\n“Let’s do it again!” Emily cheers, softly clapping her hands together, “I wanna film it!”\n\nJust as Jeremy is about to shift into drive, Kay blurts out a suggestion. \"Hey! We should back down the hill. Wouldn’t that prove...something?”\n\nJeremy weighs this thought for a second, lips pursed, before sharing a glance with Emily. When they shrug in unison, he nods and agrees to give it a try. Throwing the car in reverse, they begin creeping back the way they came, in the same lane, gradually picking up steam as they approach and then reach the longer, straightaway portion.\n\n“This is so weird!” Kay marvels, facing forward again. She extends her arms and flaps her hands to indicate the breadth of this scene. “I mean, look at this! This is clearly a hill!”\n\n“I know!” Jeremy agrees, half turning in his seat toward her.\n\n“I wanna check something,” Kay says, extracting her cell phone. With the photo app pulled up, she points it at the road, though not actually snapping any pictures. “Now what does it look like...,” she wonders, “if I zoom in to crop out the horizon...hmm. No, I guess it still looks like a hill, either way.”\n\nAs they bottom out near the purple striped posts, backing ever so slightly past them, they can feel the car strain up the next hill behind them, until Jeremy brakes and then shifts into drive once more. He coasts again to the starting line, and Emily pops her door open, begins climbing out before he's even arrived at a full stop.\n\n“Alright, I’m getting out,” Emily explains, phone in hand, “I’m gonna post this and see what everyone has to say.”\n\n“Good idea,” Kay tells her, “Jeremy here's gonna do the same.”\n\n\"I'm gonna do the same?\" he questions. \"How's that?\"\n\n\"Yes, because I'm driving now. I gotta find out firsthand if this for real!\"\n\nJeremy waves his hands around at the dashboard, console, and pedals before replying, “but you can see, I’m not performing any, fuh, uh, sleight of hand up here...”\n\n“Yeah, I know, I know, but it’ll drive me nuts not to prove it. Just let me try.”\n\nAs Emily exits, Jeremy slides over to accommodate Kay, with Noah remaining alert yet wordless in his child seat. Kay slips in behind the wheel, and they begin moving once more, while Jeremy, though only remembering to do so a quarter of the way through, starts filming their journey on his phone. Noah at last seems fully engaged now, wide eyed and open mouthed, staring out the window - if still not fully comprehending what makes this such a peculiar phenomenon. Kay continually mumbles that she can’t believe this, can’t believe this, and at one point even throws it into park. As expected, the vehicle jerks to a halt, though the instant she switches back to neutral, they begin accelerating all over again.\n\nAfter rounding that bend in the road, and the car finally stops, Jeremy mutters, “actually, that made me think of a second reason why this is just wrong....”\n\n“Mom, what are we doing here?” Noah questions at last, despite untold minutes of silence throughout this process. This causes both adults in the car to break out laughing, though the kid remains in character, so to speak, appearing completely serious.\n\n“I’m gonna stay behind up here. There’s something else I wanna see,” Kay announces, and then steps out, as Jeremy immediately does the same.\n\nWhile they stand for a moment in the road, staring down the apparent bottom, a white minivan materializes, creeping down the opposite hill, near the old man's driveway, and pulling up beside Emily at the starting block. A light mist has begun falling, to accompany the thin veil of fog which never evaporated on this cool summer morning. Figuring that this minivan is surely here to commence its own experiment, and can spot them at the top, Jeremy declares that he should move the car, then begins in that direction.\n\nJeremy executes another nimble turn, on this flat peak bordered by a slight strip of woods and field beyond on both sides, then makes his way down in proper fashion. Still, the minivan has yet to move. The driver is a lone middle aged man, a bit on the hefty side. Emily is leaning against his vehicle, talking to him through the passenger window he has cranked halfway down. Jeremy also hits the button to drop his own window, which Kay must have rolled up, and shouts a hello out to the two of them.\n\n“You tried this before?” Jeremy asks the guy.\n\n“No, but I’ve been meaning to,” he says. He has curly black hair and just the faintest trace of beard stubble, smiles broadly and readily enough, although it does bother Jeremy, for reasons he can't place, that this dude is wearing a business shirt and tie. Not to mention wraparound shades, despite it not being the least bit sunny today. “There’s all kinds of urban legends online about this place, too,” he adds, turning to nod his chin at the road ahead.”\n\n“Yeah, I read some of that junk myself...,” Jeremy replies.\n\n“Urban legends?” Emily asks, perking up, intrigued by this angle.\n\n“Yeah...something about...this girl felt some thump on the back of her car,” the guy tells Emily, “that part must have happened right here? Anyway, supposedly she got to the top of the hill and got out to look, and saw fresh handprints on her trunk lid?” Turning to Jeremy now for confirmation, he asks, “that’s pretty much the story, right? And it all took off from there?”\n\n“Yeah but why would you just randomly get out to look at the top of the next hill? In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night? Seems a little too convenient.”\n\n“Exactly, exactly,” the guy agrees, nodding as he stares at the road some more.\n\n“Anyway I don’t really care about any of that crap,” Jeremy allows, “I just want to know what is or isn’t actually happening. But yeah, Emily, allegedly that’s how this all started.”\n\nAfter the man sighs and says something about he supposes it’s time to try it, they wave and wish him good luck. Jeremy’s watching the minivan in his side mirror, then the rearview, while Emily, though also glancing a couple of times up the road at his progress, crosses and eventually climbs back into the passenger seat. Within thirty seconds, a panting Kay arrives, reclaiming her original spot as well.\n\n“What was that all about?” Jeremy asks.\n\n“Well,” she wheezes, winded though having merely strolled down the road, “you’re probably not gonna wanna hear this, but...I decided to walk it, except with my eyes closed. And if you do that, I mean, you can tell after one step that you’re actually moving uphill. Even though it looks downhill. I mean it’s completely obvious, trust me.”\n\nEmily isn’t sure why, but feels as though she’s been punched in the gut with this revelation. Furthermore that for some strange reason, she’s fighting off the urge to spin around and reach over and – only playfully, of course – strangle her lifelong best friend here. Just wrap her hands around Kay's throat and give it a healthy squeeze. How dare Kay deflate one of the most interesting mornings they’ve experienced in who knows how long, possibly years? But instead, Emily offers a fake, though passably authentic looking smile, and suggests, “hey, didn’t you say something about a lake? The first time you came here?”\n\n“Yeah,” her boyfriend nods, flicks an index finger at the road ahead of them, “I came in from that direction. You drive past this fairly good sized lake. Not much going on, but it's pretty.”\n\nEmily shrugs and offers, “let’s go that way, then.”\n\nThey begin moving in this direction. Past the old house and possibly even older man still burning trash in a barrel, eyeing them warily. At the top of that crest, just past the home, there’s another dip and a gradual bend left, down and up another rise, where this road abruptly ends into a more significant one. Faced with this pair of choices, knowing his way home from here, Jeremy turns left.\n\nSomething about this terrain reminds Kay of what she always pictured Scotland would look like. Hilly and fog drenched, sure, but abundantly green, too, with the road a series of long sweeping curves. But it’s not exactly a land she would care to walk, say, alone on a moonless night. Which is why it so startles her, bogged down in these thoughts, when Noah speaks up, croaking something about this small cemetery on a hill to their right.\n\n“That one doesn’t have too many doom statues,” he says, pointing a finger in that direction.\n\n“Doom statues?” she and Emily repeat at the same instant, with Jeremy joining in as all three of them share a laugh. Obviously, by this he means tombstones, though she doesn’t bother to correct her son. These little slips of incorrect phrasing will someday seem charming – in fact they already do – and she’s in no hurry to rush through this era.\n\n“No, I guess not,” Kay agrees. As they pass the graveyard, she observes that many of the tombstones are faded, the names barely legible, and some have even fallen over with age and neglect.\n\n“Grandma told me there are ghosts in the doom statues,” Noah adds, in the same deathly serious croak.\n\nKay clicks her tongue and says, “grandma told you that? I’m gonna have to have a word with that woman...”\n\n“Yeah,” Noah nods, “but only if there are evil men there. And zombies, vampires, or skeletons.”\n\n“Noah honey, that’s not true,” she says, “for one thing, there’s no such thing as zombies or vampires or...well...uh...”\n\nShe trails off, fighting back a sudden urge to ask Jeremy to floor it, anything to change the subject matter. But the boy, to his credit, has always been headstrong, he is not easily shaken from a topic that holds his fascination.\n\n“Can I come visit you when you’re in your doom statue?” he asks Kay, peering up at her with expectant eyes.\n\n“Yes, Noah, of course. Now can we drop it?”\n\n“You gotta wait at least five years for that, buddy,” Jeremy jokes, half turning to hold up all five fingers in his right hand.\n\nEveryone laughs, including Kay. Noah doesn’t seem to get the joke but is giggling along with it anyway. Yet even despite the laughter, which feels like a tremendous release at this point, she’s also shuddering, wishing they had never come this way.\n\n![The Doom Statues smashwords cover.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQt8bHEVk7ZLLzXo68jsfobguKJT4QQwaZKt5YvWxBfD7/The%20Doom%20Statues%20smashwords%20cover.jpg)\n\nLike the story so far? Pick up the entire tale from your favorite store below!\n\nPaperback: https://jasonmcgathey.com\n\nKindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NFJMR57?ref_=k4w_oembed_jYd5cjRRwEfTcN&tag=kpembed-20&linkCode=kpd",
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They will be okay.\n\nOnce the unavoidable vague if nervous giddiness associated with even bad news wears off, however, many will wonder what this means re their future president, then. Much subsequent hand wringing will ensue. Some muse that an outsider would represent the best thing for this company, while others opine that an outsider is about the last thing this company needs. And all the while their lame duck of a president admits that he really isn’t sure what he plans on doing after leaving this place, only that it isn’t this.\n\nThe very structure of this enterprise is an odd one, though it’s somehow worked, on a mostly uphill slope, for over 25 years. Bellwether Snacks, a wholesale operation shipping packaged goodies around the globe, was founded decades upon decades earlier by one Walter Locke, a former peanut vendor turned self-made multimillionaire. He and his faithful wife, Beatrice, both now safely in their late 70s yet still quite active, slowly increased their holdings and their spread across the years, to its current state of a half dozen distribution centers throughout the United States. In 1979, as a “hobby,” Beatrice persuaded Walter to let her open the Healthy Hippie Market, a funky little shop on a major thoroughfare, in a major city. A store dedicated to the sort of lifestyle its name might imply – green, local, sustainable. Over the years the ol’ Healthy Hippie has undergone a mind-boggling array of permutations, until reaching this dim summer morning, and the announcement that its flagship store is, well, throwing in that flag.\n\n\n\tEdgar arrived on the scene eight years and some change earlier, in yon sepia tinted January of two thousand and seven. In retrospect, it must have been obvious to everyone that he was slumming it. A lot of them were. 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      "title": "\"Days Without End\" - chapter one",
      "body": "![Days Without End paperback front.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmS4SNFHD2mC9tTG1sKEm1chyeoVWvzHmskzqRu4NUQctn/Days%20Without%20End%20paperback%20front.jpg)\n\nIt’s the week before spring break, and after pawing out the crumpled napkin from my sports jacket pocket, I wind my way across town to the coordinates scribbled upon it. Am not exactly astounded to discover it’s an apartment complex, and a fairly typical one for this age bracket — low budget enough to appeal to the college crowd, just barely respectable enough so as not to horrify the parents. It goes without saying that only a certain temperament of landlord is able to tolerate the day-trading aspects of this market, between the roommates and the partying. But any fears I held about this venture are instantly obliterated. The units in question form a neat circle around this small grassy plot with trees, and before I’ve even parked in one of the slots alongside it, the precise coordinates of Tom Bowman’s residence are obvious without consulting my cheat sheet. A long line extends from some third floor apartment, trailing straight down the flimsy (could they possibly be plastic?) cream colored exterior steps, straight except for the pair of landings this giant, many legged beast lumbers across, that is. Those gathered — young, mostly, though not exclusively by any means — are an animated bunch, too, chatting to their neighbors in the queue, or shouting to someone much further removed.\nI exit my vehicle and approach the activity. Slow of foot, as I’m not sure what my next move will be, I grin and cross the paved circle, staring at the spectacle skyward. And it’s only upon drawing closer that I realize there’s another line, closer to the building itself, streaming down the staircase at a much more industrious clip. These folks, all business, are toting plates full of some at present undefined food in one hand, and more often than not a red Solo cup in the other. Unaware of my surroundings, I stand gaping openmouthed in the lawn, bewildered as I gaze up at this spectacle. And thus have forgotten all about plotting where to go from here, when it’s decided for me anyway.\n“Ha ha! Nice!” I hear the voice call out from above, though its origin is not immediately obvious, “you picked a good time to show!”\nThe voice belongs to Tom Bowman, of course, and I finally spot him, just a head poking over the top rail, that and one hand clutching what looks like a cast iron frying pan. Appraising the current state of this enterprise himself, I gather, albeit from the superior vantage point of a third floor walkway, and with a personal stake in the matter. Or so I am guessing. He definitely seems at a glance in much sunnier spirits than our initial encounter, which lends credence to his possible involvement in whatever racket this is.\nShouting something about “executive privilege, folks, executive privilege!” Tom manages to encourage my assent in between the two lines, up the stairs, and signal those in both that they should afford me passage, without yet moving from that walkway himself. It’s interesting to note he has technically not yet said anything all that amazing, or funny, or remarkable, or even notably intelligent, on either of the occasions I have met him. Still, you can somehow readily sense these traits below the surface — confidence, no doubt, charisma when he’s in the mood, who knows what else. The line itself offers proof of a drawing power, true, whether or not it’s entirely his doing, but it’s obvious that, as I make my way up the steps, from the goofy, intrigued grins turning in my direction as I pass, the constituents of this queue are fascinated that I rate a VIP entrance…just as the longing, doe eyed gazes from females (and likely some of the males, truth be known) closer to Tom indicate that he must, indeed, represent some sort of legend around these parts.\n“Heh heh heh, nice, nice,” he claps me on the back and reiterates, in a tone reminiscent of a grizzled sergeant of multiple desert campaigns — all that’s missing is the cigar clamped between his teeth.\nIn this fashion he escorts me into the well-kept but surprisingly small apartment. The line continues to snake within, naturally, leading to a breakfast bar of sorts separating kitchen from living room, though currently in use as an ersatz restaurant counter. The fare, as if the spices wafting through the room weren’t explication enough, I’m soon told is Americanized Mexican, for this is the latest iteration of a semi regular tradition: Taco Townhouse. Held, as always, on the most alliterative day of the week for them.\nDo campus authorities turn a blind eye to these shenanigans? And what’s the over/under on law enforcement eventually getting involved? Should the landlord rightfully request a piece of the action, or is he receiving such monetary recompense already? These are but a handful of the many questions swirling through my head, compounded by the sight of this shorter, wavy blonde character soon introduced to me as Benny Fordham, shaking hands, chatting nonstop, and collecting money in exchange for the plates kids are picking up from the counter, as well as the beer he is pumping from a keg.\n“Aren’t you worried about the, eh, legal ramifications?” I eventually blurt out. Tom and I are standing in a narrow free space between the back of one couch, the turnaround lane beside the counter, and the keg where Benny’s pumping.\n“Well actually not at all,” Tom beams, waving to a pair of couples holding up their plates as they smile and give a thumbs up before exiting the place, as he somehow also nods to these two other girls in line and shakes the hand of some guy moving in the opposite direction, “or yes and no. I mean, yeah, I suppose if someone wanted to get really shitty about it, we’d be fucked. But basically you’ll notice there’s this big ass bowl of St. Patrick’s Day beads by the door…”\n“St. Patrick’s Day beads?”\n“Yeah, you know, green plastic beads, with, like, a shamrock in the middle?…anyway so the deal is technically this is a fundraiser, and they’re buying these beads, and just so happen to get a free plate of food for showing up. Plus we’re throwing in beer because we’re all friends here and everything. As long as we donate x percentage to the Family Harmony Association Of America, nobody cares. It’s for a good cause.”\nI will eventually learn to stop asking questions. But not today and not before wondering, aloud, “but aren’t you worried about the cops shaking down, say, a couple hundred underage kids wandering around with beer?”\n“Are you kidding me? This is a college campus. They block off the streets on football gamedays for that very scenario. I mean, yeah, they could get a burr up their ass or something, but like you said, that would be the equivalent of bringing a shotgun to a mosquito infestation. They know better than to even waste their time.”\nI’m too overwhelmed to entertain further argument, and am even eventually roped in to assisting in the kitchen, though I cannot say how. One minute I’m just behind the trenches pitching in, and that’s that. I do recall that in following him around such swarms and obstacles, onto this next locale, I have an opportunity to observe the casual ease with which he conducts himself. Moving with a briskness that is somehow slouching and swaggering at once, impatient to get on with the next big thing. And I think that others just naturally pick up on these qualities. It’s presumably from this cauldron of magic that Tom Bowman draws his powers, enables him to hold those around him in such a mesmerized state.\nTo his credit, though, he is not just some finger snapping figurehead, he pitches in as well, in something of a roving instructor role, bouncing from station to station. Occasionally he relieves Benny at the beer keg, and sometimes one or both are also helping on the cooking and/or plating end, but mostly it’s me in there, along with three others. Two of them are slightly scary looking carnie types, in their late twenties or early thirties, I’m guessing, with pock marked skin, tattoos and scars battling for supremacy over most visible skin, you name it, the kind of haunted eyes which hint at drug problems past or present or both. But the third is a meek, totally normal looking kid in round, wire framed glasses, neatly shorn brown hair, and a collared, long sleeved blue and black plaid shirt which he covers with a white cloth apron while quietly running the show in this kitchen. Someone else eventually addresses him as Brad, though I don’t quite catch the last name.\nThe kitchen is a cozy, cylindrical affair, ten by five maybe with just enough room for one person to slide in between the appliances, sink, and counters which line the two longer sides of its interior. Yet there’s one other strange detail I don’t remember encountering or for that matter hearing about, in any kitchen, ever. Flanking both sides of the sink, two to a side, the four upper wooden cupboards extend outward to an incongruous length and depth, to the extent they reach the counter and cover all but maybe a three inch strip of it. And the reason for this, it soon becomes apparent, is that these cupboards all house multiple dishwasher racks full of clean dishes — when one wash cycle is finished, rather than bothering to unload it, they just slide the entire rack into a vacated cupboard. There’s another rack inside the machine itself, of course, for loading dirties onto, and then a couple more spares leaning inside the cabinet underneath the sink.\n“Oh that, yeah, heh heh. That was my idea,” Tom chuckles, when a break in the action permits me to ask. And then as if telepathic, scanning the next question formulating in my head — or, more likely, because he’s been asked the same countless times — adds, “I mean yeah, sure, maybe we should have asked the landlord first. Maybe it’s kind of unusual for renters to remodel a kitchen like this. But is this not an improvement? I mean, these extensions we’ve added make them brand new cabinets, practically. So is the guy really gonna care? Who would complain about that?”\nWhether predating this taco experiment or made necessary by it, I’m not sure, but at any rate this does speed up our turnaround times. And the handiwork is fairly incongruous, doesn’t even look all that bad unless you examine closely. You could even argue it makes a certain bit of wackily perfect sense. Although precisely the kind of invention only a lazy college kid would think was cool — or maybe that for which, as with so many other innovations, lazy college kids are the joyful early adapters. And only once it catches on with enough people elsewhere does this become the norm.\nHours later the carnies are dispatched and the apartment is mostly empty, aside from a trio of girls I’m never formally introduced to, who laugh and talk loudly over an already blaring television in the living room — fruity, crushed ice drinks are involved, for the blender never stops churning — while I find myself seated at a small round table, in the dining area just barely large enough to hold it, while Tom, Benny and Brad finalize their take for the day.\n“Seventeen. A little over seventeen,” Brad eventually announces, having been entrusted with the actual tallying of the piles and assembling figures on a scrap of paper.\n“Seventeen?” Tom questions, pausing mid swing — he had been pacing around with a random golf club for hours, taking practice hacks every now and again, and now sits smacking it into the open palm of his free hand.\n“Yeah. A little over,” Brad confirms.\n“What’s your ROI on this enterprise?” I ask with a chuckle, “how much do you have invested?”\nTom begins to smirk, I’m almost positive, before grimacing instead and glancing over at Benny. “Our expense,” he half declares and half asks, “pretty minimal, wouldn’t you say, there, Benny boy?”\nBenny, who is leaned back in his chair with an actual lit cigar, blinking as he stares inward at some imaginary point above the table, joins the real world long enough to concur. He flashes a dark, cryptic smile and flicks his gaze in my direction momentarily, says, “yeah, man, pretty fuckin minimal.” Chipping in with a mighty involved assist, he and Tom both, but mostly Benny, had been separating the bills into piles for Brad to sweep through and tally, and Benny is perhaps still preoccupied with this count, double checking each standing mountain in his head. The cigar smoke, while ordinarily off-putting, is welcome here in that it’s blasting away the cheap Mexican restaurant smell.\n“Oh, but wait, wasn’t there some charity angle? How does that work?”\n“Weeeeeelll yyyyes there is a charity angle, a charitable cause we like to support, and currently that is like I said the uh, Family Harmony Association Of America,” Tom replies, and strokes his goatee while explaining these finer points to me, “so yeah, with a rake of just over seventeen you figure, after expenses and services rendered and whatnot, paying various folks for their time even as we are truly blessed to have some fine volunteer hands pitching in…eh, we’ll probably end up cutting them a check for two and some change.”\n“And the rest?”\n“The rest we split three ways. Brad here usually puts up a fight,” Tom taunts, and we both flash our eyes over in that direction, where the figure in question, with his metal frame glasses and collared shirt, his mousy brown hair a staticky looking bowl cut, does appear mighty conservative in general and whiter than a clean home team jersey, “but in the end we can always talk him into it. Simon and Edgar have already been taken care of, so, we’ll probably call it an even fifteen and divvy that up between us. Nice even number. Then everyone can do whatever needs to be done with their share.”\nThey apparently consider my services charity work as well, and that’s fine. I didn’t lend a hand expecting compensation, and don’t mention it. Instead offer only a short, final question, asking if by this he means paying expenses.\n“Yeah,” Benny instead responds, lighting up with a broad smile from the depths of his low seated position, “that’s it. Expenses.”\nIn the name of brevity, it’s probably best to omit the conversational loops taken for the next hour, how we arrive upon this road trip. All I know is that it’s 11:30pm and I’m dreading the forty some miles home, the alarm that will sound in about six hours. Talk has remained mildly compelling throughout, as Tom paces the apartment expounding on various topics, opening windows, fiddling with his Zippo lighter, putting it to use on cigarettes — both his and Benny’s — and joking with the girls. The other two remain foils of sorts, Benny saying little aside from his mumbled wisecracks, Brad picking his lip and barely offering anything at all. The ladies — a Kristen, a Tiffany, and a Hillary, if I’m not mistaken — do occasionally pause en route to the blender, and they’re all variations of short, skinny, bubbly types of varying hair color, pale as you would expect an Ohioan in April, friendly and chatty but not terribly interested in our little dining room powwow. And things become a lot quieter in their neck of the hardwood floor, anyway, when I catch glimpses of a water bong being passed around the couches. Tom it goes without saying isn’t immune to their charms, though even in partaking during the course of his travels, the pot doesn’t seem to diminish his energy the least, an energy that is apparently somewhat legendary in these circles.\n“Fuck it, man, we should just drive to Florida,” Benny offers.\n“Eh, I mean, yeah that could be cool and all, but that’s such a clichéd thing to do at this point,” Tom demurs, “I would almost be inclined to checking out Alabama or something, which does have surprisingly good beaches.”\n“How would we get there, anyway?” Brad questions.\n“Well, I mean, you do have a car, Bradley, heh heh,” Tom says, and as he happens to be standing right there anyway, squeezes one of his friend’s shoulders, adds, “in fact you are the only one among us who does have a car at the moment.”\n“Yeah, but that’s my parents’ car, and I’m pretty sure they’re not gonna just let…plus I’ve got that paper to write. I probably shouldn’t go anywhere.”\n“Of course you’re going somewhere! It’s spring break! What kind of lunatic assigns a paper due the first day back anyway! Besides, you can write it during our travels or something. I’ll drive.”\n“You’ll drive?” Brad offers, which seems just as likely a stall tactic, to divert further discussion of his going anywhere, than genuine surprise.\n“Sure. Screw it. What the hell. Straight shot down 75, we can be somewhere in fifteen hours. I’ve done it before, driven the entire thing nonstop. Both ways, even. We only stopped for gas and drive through restaurants, kept right on cruising.”\n“Bullshit,” Benny challenges, “I mean, granted, I’ve only known you since Greenlee, but come on.”\n“He doesn’t sleep, though!” Brad says, eyes plainly coming alive to recount this legend, “even back home. Everybody kinda knew it.”\n“Be that as it may, I’m gonna play the my fuckin ass challenge card.”\n“You want Miami? South Beach? It’s a little bit further, but we can do Miami. I’ll bet you everything you just made today that I can do that, even, in one shot. Stopping only for gas and drive thru.”\nBenny ponders this proposal at length, staring down at the table, the piles of cash assembled still. “Mmm, I don’t know, man,” he mumbles, “that might just be barely possible. If we’re gonna bet, let’s bet on somethin juicier. What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed awake?”\n— — — — — — —\nWant to read more? Find out what happens next by picking up the ebook and the paperback!",
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