After they make their way down, around the left side of the construction lot and the cliff it created in the side of the hill, they are too exhausted to care about hiding. They walk down the middle of the street, from one streetlight to the next, their shadows shrinking and stretching every which way. Beyond the tunnel of light, empty driveways carve the trimmed lawns at regular intervals, only to be cut off in turn by the shut white garage doors at the bases of indistinct, dark shapes of houses. It reminds Chloe of walking with Rachel after the play, on that day when they almost left.
If only they did, a bitter thought comes.
Still, the memory is welcome, because it takes her mind off the cave and people in dark robes.
"Should we go to the dorms now?" Steph asks, adding, "Today?"
"Step-douche must have parked his ass on the living room couch by now," Chloe says. "What better time for some campus breaking and entering?"
"Drum roll, please…" Chloe Price says to Max Caulfield on Blackwell campus on October 9th, producing a chain of keys with a flourish. "I present the spare keys to Blackwell. Thank you, step-prick."
"You are such a boss, Chloe!" Max says. "I just… don't want you to get into anymore trouble."
"We'll stop and grab some food first," Chloe says, seeing Steph's haggard face.
Steph nods.
"Better yet," Chloe adds, "you take the car and get some food for both of us, then come back for me."
"What? Why?"
"I need to take another quick hike."
"Another hike? Chloe, we're still like two miles away from where the car is parked, and you can barely stand straight."
"I'm fine."
"Where do you need to go?"
"The… hospital."
"Why the hospital?"
"I wanna check something."
"OK, I'll come with."
"Steph, it'd be a waste if both of us go there. Get the food and I'll be done by the time you come back. Two birds, you know?"
"Are you gonna tell me what you're looking for?"
"Just want to check my memory."
Steph accepts it, or just lets it go, because they come to a small pond, with curving driveways on either side of it and a security booth between them on the other side. There is a blue light flickering inside the booth.
"Should we go around?" she whispers.
"We don't have time for that shit," Chloe replies.
They keep walking, following the right driveway. There are barrier arms across both roads: entrance and exit, and Chloe walks past the one blocking the exit without sparing the booth as much as a glance. Steph does spare one as she follows, and reaps a dubious reward of a guard's face, open-mouthed and goateed. She gives a quick wave.
"What if he calls the cops?" she whispers, catching up to Chloe.
"I wish," Chloe says tiredly. "Save us an hour of walking."
The guard must not have called, because there are no cars on the dark road. With forest walking being sketchy in the dark, they stay on the pavement, which is a longer route in terms of distance, but actually turns out shorter in terms of time. Still, by the time they reach the hospital parking lot there are very few cars left in it.
"Here," Chloe says, handing the truck keys to Steph. "Take good care of her."
Drum roll, please.
"I'll just come with," Steph says, looking down at her shoes and making no move to accept the keys.
"Steph, I can see you're about to die of starvation."
"I can wait twenty minutes."
"You don't need to!"
"Chloe, last time I left you alone to get food you almost got run over by a train!"
"But didn't!"
"I can wait twenty minutes."
"There are no trains here."
"You might find one."
"Pfft. Are you just going to hang around the truck for twenty minutes then? Steph, I don't want you to come with me, because I might have to… break into the archives or something."
"Is this about Claire?"
"Two truths and a lie," Rachel says three years earlier on the train.
"Yes, and… maybe something else," Chloe says.
"Well, you're gonna need a lookout."
Chloe stares at Steph to see if there's a chink in her armor anywhere, then looks to the sky and groans.
"How much battery you have left?" she asks.
Steph checks.
"About 40. Why?"
"Probably gonna need your flashlight."
"Chloe, are you seriously going to cut the power to the hospital? There are patients in there…"
"No, no. We're not going to the hospital. We're going to the cave."
Steph says nothing for about a minute, then asks why.
So Chloe tells her about the flashback.
"And why did you lie to me?" Steph asks.
Chloe sighs, start to speak a few times unsuccessfully, then says, "I mean, you know why. You're starving. You're tired. I know you don't want to go back into the dark woods right now for another wild goose chase. I was going to just be in and out."
"What I don't want," Steph says, seething, "is for you to get lost, or hurt, or… when you're running around in the dark woods alone. I flew over here to help you. I'm here to have your back. Forget about me, how is it going to help Rachel if you disappear too?"
Chloe feels hot.
"Come on, Steph," she says, "it's not a big deal. I was just going to dip in there for a literal minute…"
"Let's just go," Steph says, cutting her off, and stomps away across the parking lot.
"Fuck," Chloe tells the truck softly, before hurrying after her.
It's hella dark in the woods. There is no paved option, so it's all sketch from here. Steph turns on her flashlight. It seems like a pretty good time to finally discuss their first trip to the cave, but she's not talking. Not even asking why Chloe is going there after seeing the vision, which is actually a good thing, because Chloe doesn't really know.
To look for clues, maybe. See if any of the robed freaks dropped an ID. If they ever existed, that is.
On top of their exhaustion from the earlier hike and hunger, the weight of silence is almost unbearable. To get the fucking trip over with, Chloe unconsciously picks up the pace until she's almost running, dodging tree trunks and ducking under branches like a ninja cat. Which feels almost good for about five minutes, at the end of which she's hugging a tree, wheezing like a stalled engine of a rusty ass truck and feeling like she's about to vomit her lungs. Steph hangs from the next trunk over, not looking much better, though still stubbornly silent.
"Guess I can't lose you that easily, huh" Chloe says when she finds air. "Worthy adversary."
She adds when Steph makes no reply, "How long are you gonna stay mad at me, Gingrich?"
"I'll let you know when I'm done," Steph rasps.
"Can you, like, pause it until we get back to the truck?"
"No, I can't pause it!" Steph hisses. "How do you pause it?"
"Pretend, then?"
"Pretend? OK, Chloe Price," Steph says in a robot voice, helped by some arm movements straight out of C3PO repertoire, "I am no longer mad at you. Are you happy now?"
Chloe reminds herself of the gravity of the moment, of the dark empty woods, of the impending cave, of the fact that Steph might get fatally offended, but she's so tired, and the little performance is so ridiculous, that none of these things, nor a hand she rushes to clamp over her mouth, work to prevent her from bursting with laughter.
She tries to reign it back in, spinning away and shaking her outstretched hand back at Steph in a gesture of simultaneous denial and apology, and bursts into laughter again.
"I'm… I'm sorry," she gasps out between her convulsions. "I can't… I can't stop it."
In the dark, she can only see Steph's silhouette and for a few nerve-racking moments, as she helplessly laughs, she can't tell how Steph is going to react. Then, thankfully, Steph's shoulders begin to shake. The contagion spreads, and for a solid minute both of them are laughing their asses off, not knowing why. Until the laughter slips off into the woods as quickly as it came, leaving them, again, with silence, fatigue and a creeping chill.
"Still mad at you," Steph says, turning her light back on and flashing it in Chloe's face.
"Ugh," Chloe shields herself with both hands. "OK."
"Which way is it?"
"This way. Not far now."
Sure enough, the path begins to rise, and soon they see the dark mouth of the cave farther up the slope. The climb is easier than the one to the top of the hill back at the Pan Estates, but their bodies still remember that one, and Chloe's legs begin to shake. She has to help herself with her hands at times, and even with their help, there is a moment in which she doesn't believe she can make it up there. But then she knows she has.
It's the smell.
She stops and looks back at Steph, and turns on her own flashlight. She directs the beam inside, sweeping across the ceiling and the sides. Nothing moves, except shadows.
Max Caulfield, dressed in Rachel's flannel shirt and black jeans, opens the door to room 224 at the Blackwell dormitory.
She steps inside.
Steph pulls her beanie off, puts it over her nose and mouth, and follows.
The cave seems smaller than last time, but it also expands into a larger, almost circular chamber as they go deeper, which she doesn't recall either. There are no lost wallets or random photographic evidence that they can see. Thin beams of their searching flashlights pick out weird runes, or possibly hobo signs running up the walls, which would have been worth exploring more maybe, if not for the smell of rotting flesh and the threat of the eldritch horrors assisted by an army of robed Arcadia Bay freaks.
Not that she's afraid.
She's too tired for that shit. Too pissed.
Here they come with their guns, guns, guns.
She feels the gun in her pocket. Might not do much good against spirits, but the first creepy robed motherfucker who jumps out at them will get a surprise of his life.
She's kind of almost hoping one does, she realizes. So that she can find out who it is, who the rest of them are, and so that she can make them pay for what they did to Rachel, and to her, and for what they made her do.
Which was… what, exactly?
"Nothing good," Evan Harris tells Max Caulfield in October of that year. "Nothing good."
No one jumps out.
Their beams converge on the scowling faces of the leaning totem. The top one seems to be of an owl, with huge round eyes. And under it, at the base, the corpse of the doe, like a girl lying on her side, under a brown blanket, with her face to the wall. A girl that's been dead for weeks. There's a length of rope tied around the totem, covered in dark spots.
Chloe bends over and retches, wipes her mouth. Steph makes a sound like she might follow suit, but holds it in. Chloe turns off her light, slips off the backpack, pulls out a cigarette and her one remaining Molotov. An old hand arsonist now, she lights the cigarette, inhales gratefully the smoke that for a moment gets rid of the all-pervading stench, looks up at Steph, who's flashing the light down at her hands, and unhurriedly ignites the rag. It flares up, sending the army of shadows that were creeping silently closer to scurry away from them in every direction.
All of the totem's eyes go big.
"Oh, Max, nobody even knows who brought the Tobanga here," says Michelle Grant.
Exhaling the smoke upwards, Chloe heaves the bottle at it. It's a direct hit this time.
Right. In. The. Dick.
The bottle breaks, spilling fire, which instantly engulfs the totem, the rope, and the doe. A sudden gust of wind rushes past them from the mouth of the cave, as if sucked in towards the fire, which grows improbably tall and bright.
The totem's eyes glare at her through the flames.
There is a flash, and suddenly it's Nathan's eyes that she sees. Shocked, scared. There is a wall of mirrors on the right, reflecting solid darkness. She feels no pain, but for some reason she cannot stay upright. She falls.
To her knees, then on her back. She's in the junkyard now, gun in one hand, blood in the other. Above is the clear blue sky and then, Max's face.
She stabs the doe, again and again, screaming.
The scream turns into a whale song, which turns into a train horn. She's on the rails, foot caught in the points. The train's cowcatcher, rusty as all hell, smashes into her.
Flash. Another muzzle flash, another place, another time, another killer, same gun. Mark Jefferson's indifferent face and the gun's black barrel growing, spinning.
Spinning, spinning, turning into a huge tornado. She's on the cliff by the lighthouse, alone, watching the storm grind the first row of Arcadia Bay buildings to a pulp and toss the pulp like seeds across the sky.
Flash. Nathan's face again, this time behind a camera, flashing, flashing, flashing.
"Chloe, wake up! Chloe!" Steph's voice, finally.
She opens her eyes and sees Steph's face, uncovered and quite beautiful in the fire light. The entire cave is bright as day. The air is clear. The smell is gone. Arching her back, she looks back at the totem. The paint is running, turning all the faces furious.
"Oh, you like that?" she asks.
She laughs. Cackles, more like, getting to her feet. It feels good. Feels right. Feels like a bit of a weight removed from the old shoulders, and not just the weight of the beer bottle filled with gasoline.
Steph stands there staring at the fire and her, amazed.
"Chloe, was that? Did it…? Did we…?"
"It was something that needed to burn," Chloe says, euphoria evaporating as the understanding slots in, "but… I don't think… we're done done. Done here, though."
The way back is easier somehow. Lighter, too. She can see stars between the treetops, and it seems like their light is enough to illuminate their way. Which is good, because her phone is at 4% and Steph's number can't be much higher.
"What do you feel like?" she asks a few minutes later.
"Huh?"
"Food. I'm kinda starving."
"I don't know. Is there a Chinese in town?"
"There used to be, but, like everything else, it got murdered by the Prescotts. Wouldn't be open right now, anyway. ACFC is also closed, if you're into gross breaded stuff."
"The diner then?"
"Ugh. How about Up All Nite? It's donuts and coffee mostly, but they have, like, bagel sandwiches too."
"Well, seems like we're gonna be up all night, so coffee might be good."
Just as they get back to the parking lot, Chloe's phone rings. She pulls it out of her pocket and stares at it, as the long slow rings float away into the night in almost visible, ever-widening circles.
There is no name or number on the caller ID.
"Hello?"
It's a man's voice that answers. Hoarse, vaguely familiar.
"You think you're gonna walk around burning down what that thing tells you and nobody's going to do anything?"
"Who is this?"
"All of the rules are getting broken, so now everybody's going to get involved. And they will know who you are. You need to stop and get the fuck out while you can."
"Yeah. I'm not going anywhere."
"You don't get it. You think it's an adventure? You think you're getting a reward or something for this? There is no reward. They will disappear you. You and your friend. And no one will ever find you."
"It's you who don't get it, dipshit. I'm not stopping until I find Rachel. You can tell that to all of your friends."
There's a shocked pause on the other end. Rachel's name at work, once again.
"What? Rachel?" he repeats. "Rachel is gone!"
Suddenly it's her turn to be speechless. It's not just the words that hurt. It's the incredulity in the voice of someone who's just heard something impossible.
"Fuck you!" she bashes her way through it. "She's alive! And I'm gonna find her."
He exhales.
"Oh my god. Is that what it told you?"
"Nobody told me shit. I just know it."
"You know it, because it wants you to know it."
"It? What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The thing leading you around. Raven. Thunderbird. Whichever of them it is in your case."
"Oh, so 'the thing' is lying, but I should trust you instead, an anonymous asshole on the phone telling me to stop looking."
"These dark gods, they don't fucking care about you! They just care about their war. We are nothing to them. Echoes, shadows. We're not even in the same reality. They'll tell you whatever you need to hear to make use of you. And when you become a casualty, they just move on to someone else."
"But you care, huh? Well, since you care so much and know so much about it, why don't you help me? Tell me what's going on. What happened to Rachel. Give me some names."
There's another long silence. Finally, he speaks up again.
"I don't have names for you. Just… don't trust anyone."
He disconnects.
"Who was that?" Steph asks.
Chloe shakes her head, looking down at the phone.
"Didn't introduce himself. Sounded familiar, though."
She shakes her head again, but the thoughts, of course, come.
Fuck, could he be telling the truth? What if all the flashbacks are a lie? What if Rachel IS gone and all she's been doing is burning shit down that someone else needs burned?
Just like she was stabbing things when someone else needed things to be stabbed…
Chloe, the stabbing arsonist pawn.
No.
No fucking way.
"I don't give a shit about the truth!" Chloe Price says in the Blackwell courtyard back in the future. "I just want to find my friend right now. It scares me to think where she could be… Do you think she's…?"
"Alive?" Max Caulfield finishes. "I have to think that, Chloe. Her spirit is so powerful here…"
"Maybe too much power…"
Too much power.
"What did he want?" Steph asks.
"He wanted us to run and hide, because somebody's gonna get upset about our fires."
"Wait. How did he…?"
They stop in the middle of the deserted parking lot and look around. Nothing moves anywhere. It feels peaceful, safe. The cones of light hanging from the streetlamps look like white wigwams belonging to a tribe of benevolent giants. No one could be hurt on their watch.
Chloe shrugs.
"Maybe he dreamed about it."
They climb into the cabin of the truck and just sit there, enjoying the feeling of their limbs finally getting some rest. After a minute, Chloe rolls up a joint.
"Since we're going after the munchies," she explains. "Wanna hit?"
"I think at least one of us should have her wits about her," Steph replies.
Chloe lights the joint up, inhales and offers it again, "Or we could both have the wits."
Steph shakes her head.
Chloe shrugs again and starts the engine.