Hey guys, welcome back. Get ready for more brain teasers :p
Chapter Five: Morning Blues
The Next Morning - Two Whales Diner
When Chloe and Rachel woke the next morning, they headed to the Two Whales in search of breakfast as they often did. There wasn't really anywhere else to go and Joyce's food was second to none. This early, there were very few customers. The usual clientele consisted of truckers taking breaks from night long drives, on duty police officers waiting for the call, sometimes Blackwell students and other Arcadia residents.
Joyce smiled knowingly when Chloe and Rachel entered the diner, stepping out from behind the counter to approach them. "Well, look who it is. Lemme guess, you came here for free food, right?"
Chloe offered her a sly grin. "Why else would I come?"
"To see your poor mother working her ass off," Joyce suggested as she put her hand on her hip. "Lucky for you, I'm feeling charitable today."
"Morning Joyce," Rachel greeted the older woman with a smile, "how are you doing?"
"Could be better, could be worse. Same old, same old. As you can see, business is booming," Joyce mentioned sarcastically as she spread her arm towards the nearly empty diner. "You might have to wrestle someone for a seat."
"What do you expect? This place is a dump," Chloe stated without any tact. To her credit, she wasn't wrong. The Two Whales had seen better days, not great still but better.
"A dump that keeps you fed," Joyce reminded her daughter, returning to her work. She already knew their orders off by heart.
Taking the second booth on their right Chloe and Rachel sat down, the blonde with her back facing the door. They waited, the bluenette grumbling about how long this was taking. Joyce came to the table with a pot of black coffee while they were waiting on food. Rachel poured herself a cup, Chloe following soon after. Having a sweet tooth, Chloe tore open several sugar packets and poured them into the drink giving it a stir. She also added some milk, too. Rachel, on the other hand, left hers as it was.
Chloe frowned as she watched her friend sip the black coffee. "How do you even drink it like that?"
"I could ask you the same question," Rachel replied, watching the blue-haired punk stir her own drink.
"Dude, mine is more than drinkable." Chloe took a long sip to demonstrate her point, satisfied with the balance. "I can guarantee it tastes better than the black sludge you have there."
Rachel shook her head, warming her hands on the cup. "That concoction is practically diabetes in a mug, but it seems we'll have to agree to disagree." It was then that Rachel noticed Chloe idly running her fingers over something scratched into the table, finding it strange. "Hey, what you got there?"
"Hmm? What do you mean?" Chloe returned the question, genuinely oblivious to what she was asking.
Rolling her eyes, Rachel shooed her hand away to get a better look at the carved section. What's in my pockets? Can you guess?
"Oh shit, not more of this." Without another word, Rachel began digging around in her pockets, taking it literally. At this point, who knew? Giving her a strange look, Chloe watched her empty her pockets. "What are you doing?"
"Checking," she stated matter-of-factly, not finding anything of note, "you should too."
Chloe shook her head, seriously wondering if Rachel was officially going crazy. "What, you think something will have magically appeared out of thin air since the last time you checked?"
"Less complaining and more searching," Rachel insisted.
Reluctantly, Chloe complied with the demand. She fumbled around in her pockets, turning them inside out. Hell, she couldn't even remember what was in there. "All I got are my keys, some cigarettes, a parking ticket and eighty-six cents, nothing special or-"
Noting the sudden halt, Rachel stared at the bluenette. "Found something?"
Chloe frowned as she stared at the small pile of items. On the surface, there was nothing special or strange about them, as everyday as could be. The longer she focused on them, the more she felt like they were important. There was something lingering at the back of her mind trying to push through. She felt an eerie sense of déjà vu, sitting here with the contents of her pockets spread across the table. Why did this feel so familiar?
Sighing, she glanced back up from the table. "I… I don't even know what's going on anymore, Rach. This is too weird. I feel like there are things I should be remembering, but there's nothing there. Maybe I'm just imagining it all, freaked out by the weird graffiti shit."
Joyce came over then, interrupting the conversation to bring them some food. The pair thanked her, keeping quiet on their previous conversation until they were alone again. Rachel took a bite from the waffles Joyce had brought over, chewing thoughtfully. "Somehow, I don't think so."
"Not more of the spiritual voodoo bullshit, please," Chloe sighed as she got started on her bacon and eggs. Nothing dampened her appetite.
Taking a sip of her coffee, Rachel's eyes flickered back to the carved message. She was desperate to find out how it all linked together. "As much as you don't want to admit it, there is something going on here, something clearly related to you. Me too, probably other people."
"Okay, say I believe that, what could possibly have happened? Any theories on that, huh?" Chloe asked, sounding increasingly frustrated by the insistence there was something bigger going on here.
"That's what we're trying to find out now, if you've forgotten," Rachel reminded, taking another bite before continuing. "Look, I don't know what's going on anymore than you do. All I know is that something really isn't right."
Chloe gave her a strange look, like she'd said something incredibly obvious. "This is Arcadia Bay, nothing's ever right."
"And maybe there's a reason for that," Rachel insisted. "I know that deep down, you want to find out just as much as me, if not more. So, suck it up."
Chloe didn't say anything, frowning. There wasn't much she could say. Rachel was right, even if she wouldn't admit it. Whatever was going on, they were too deep to stop searching now. Still, the bluenette was skeptical. This was all just so… strange.
After they had finished up at the Two Whales, they went back to Blackwell. Chloe said she had a headache and returned to Rachel's dorm room. As for the blonde, she decided to wander around for a while. That seemed like the right thing to be doing now. Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel spotted the school's janitor/handyman, Samuel, pottering around like he always did. She watched him finish up whatever he was doing and sit on one of the benches, feeding the birds and squirrels that had gathered around him.
"Hi, Samuel," she greeted as she approached him, some of the animals scarpering. Others remained, pecking and nibbling at the ground.
It took few seconds for Samuel to even notice she was there. "Ah, Rachel…"
While he was always distant, in another time and place, he seemed worse than usual today. "You seem a little distracted."
"Distracted…" he softly muttered to himself, "yes, that might be the word for it. Same goes for you."
"You can tell?" People didn't give Samuel enough credit. He was very perceptive.
He gave her a slow nod, watching the squirrels dart around nearby. "Samuel spends a lot of time on the outside, peering in. Observing. Different perspective."
"And what do you see, then?" Rachel asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
"Lots of things. Hear them, too. Things other people don't take the…" he hesitated, putting unnatural emphasis on the next word, almost like he was giving a subtle hint, "time to pay attention. But, Samuel thinks maybe you do."
Picking up on the peculiar intonation, Rachel made a mental note to consider it later. "You might be onto something there."
"There's plenty to find, hidden away in plain sight. They see it but they don't." This muttered comment was highly paradoxical, although Rachel could relate given recent events.
"You're nearly as vague and cryptic as me, you know that." Usually, Rachel could get a read on people with ease. For someone like Samuel, who defied convention, it was much trickier to work him out. Didn't stop her from trying, though.
"Not the only thing we have in common. You see it too with help. Detached, yet connected. Similar, yet different." Samuel stared at her, eyes so intense as if he was trying to look into her soul. He almost appeared to be searching for something himself, verification.
Rachel did find the sudden attention a little unnerving. "Now, that makes even less sense."
"Follow the path until its end. Answers might be waiting." With that, Samuel shuffled away to get on with his work as if nothing had happened.
It was no secret that Samuel was… unique, the nicest way of putting it. Many found him creepy and avoided him, others poked fun at him. Unlike most, Rachel had taken the time to get to know him better. They'd had some pretty in depth conversations about the more spiritual side of things. Samuel saw things differently, noticed details other missed. It was nearly impossible to get a straight answer out of him, but there was almost always some kind of hint that he knew more than he was letting on. That was what Rachel found the most intriguing about him.
If she had understood him, a debatable point, he seemed to know something about what she had been looking into. Question was, could she get it out of him?
Meanwhile, Rachel's Room
Chloe flopped down on the bed, sighing. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get all the weird happenings out of her mind: ominous graffiti, muddled up dreams, serious déjà vu, Rachel's weird internal GPS for finding these signs…
"Ugh, why me?" she groaned, covering her eyes with her hand. "Can't I have a normal day for once in my life?"
Her life had been a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, more downs. This… she wasn't quite sure what this was. A good thing? Something bad? Or was it in between, in the gray? However much she tried to wrap her head around it, she drew a blank. Maybe she should just stop thinking about it.
She shuffled over to the edge of the bed, checking the bottom drawer of Rachel's dresser for her weed stash. Since she practically lived in this room these days, she did keep her own emergency supply. Often, they shared anyway. Opening the window, she lit the joint and inhaled deeply. Standing by the open window, she exhaled the smoke cloud.
As she glanced out, she noticed Rachel talking to Blackwell's handyman/janitor, Samuel. He was a strange one, for sure. Chloe hadn't talked to him much personally. Still, he didn't seem like a bad guy, a little intense sure, but not bad. With people like Nathan Prescott prowling around, Samuel didn't even come close to comparing.
As hard as she tried, Chloe couldn't make out what they were saying, probably something very spiritual and weird. Both Rachel and Samuel were suckers for those two topics, it seemed. After some time, Samuel scuttled away back to… whatever it was he actually did around here. Chloe rarely saw him do anything other than feed squirrels and occasionally paint stuff.
"Hey! Are you smoking without me?" Rachel called up, narrowing her eyes when she noticed her blue-haired punk friend hanging out of the window.
Chloe grinned, hiding the joint. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. You'll have to come up and check."
"Don't even bother trying to hide the evidence. I'll know," Rachel threatened playfully, making her way into the dorm building.
Shattered fragments of a being swirling in the void, trying to reassemble. Distorted muffled whispers and memories - things that had been, would be and may never happen - all shifted, a constant changing state. So many possibilities.
At the center of it all, a ghostly specter, a presence dimly glowing, acting as a gravitation point to the swirling mass of broken pieces. For the moment, it was little more than an indistinguishable orb of raw energy, rough around the edges. Recently, it had grown in size and luminosity, drawing a few smaller shards towards it. It quietly hummed in the silence, several thin tendrils of light connecting it to the human world, to certain people.
One of these tendrils was thicker and glowed a faint orange, brighter than the others - an anchor. The presence was able to provide a direct, yet subtle influence through this particular strand. It could offer guidance, encourage certain already existing thoughts and feelings. Not much, but enough. Without that particular connection, the presence would gradually fade out of existence. For that reason, most of its energy was being directed into that one link.
In its drastically weakened state, the presence could do very little. It would take time to recharge, and even then it may never return to its original state. That was why it relied on the person on the other end of the main tendril, to do the things it couldn't in the physical world. In turn, the presence would offer protection and guidance - a way to secure both itself and its worldly counterpart. They needed each other to remain in existence, the vital connection working both ways.
The presence had little in the way of a plan, other than trying to keep itself ticking, to grow in power to the point where it could actually do something substantial. It had plenty of motivation to escape this state of limbo, neither dead nor alive.
All it could do now was wait.
The plot thickens… have an awesome day and see you next time.