Lights in the trees, tents, kids in costumes: it takes her a minute to get her bearings and identify the entrance to Blackwell pool. She's behind the stage. It's the day of the Tempest.
But what is she doing backstage? She's not one of the theater kids…
Dana Ward, dressed in white, is in the corner, rocking back and forth and mumbling.
Dana! Didn't we just…?
She walks over.
"Hey, Dana!"
"Did Damon dig Doug's garden, or did Doug dig Damon's?"
"Uh… if I know Damon, it musta been Doug doing the digging… Say, Dana, have you seen…?"
Who? I'm looking for someone. Who am I looking for?
"Betty bought a bit of butter, but she found the butter bitter."
"No, it wasn't Betty."
"Clueless, klutzy Chloe crowded careful creatives."
"Hey, wait a second."
But Dana ignores her and continues rocking and mumbling. Weird fucking chick.
She smells smoke. That's right, the forest fire! She can't see it because of the building, but the giant cloud it's causing is drifting inland, blotting out the setting sun. What was it about that forest fire? She sees costumed Hayden nearby. He's got his hand up in a stupidly dramatic gesture.
"Hey, Hayden. You gotta help me, man. And don't you give me no tongue-twister bullshit like Dana."
He looks straight at her, like he sees her.
"My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father's loss, the weakness which I feel…"
"Yeah, listen, that's great, but that's not what I'm here for." What is she here for?
"My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father's loss, the weakness which I feel…"
"Dude! I said… Wait. My father's loss? The weakness which I feel?"
She knows this.
She knows. She continues when he falls silent.
"The wrack of all my friends, nor this man's threats, to whom I am subdued, are but light to me…"
"All corners of the earth let liberty make use of."
"Space enough have I in such a prison."
The lights blind her.
She's on stage, and Rachel is down on her knee in front of her, holding her hand. She's not moving. Frozen.
"What sayest thou?" A voice says from the audience.
"What?" She shields her eyes from the lights.
There is no one in the seats, except a raven perched on the back of a chair.
She knows.
"Ugh. Fine, Willie," she says. "Yes. I will fight your bullshit war with you. Just let me find her."
Something stings her finger. When she looks, she sees that she's bleeding from a cut. Rachel is still not moving, but her finger is bleeding, too. Reaching out, Chloe touches the blood with her own.
The raven caws and takes off, and suddenly she's flying through the air above the Blackwell quad, past the trees trunks and the windows of the photo lab and drama lab, under the canopy, towards the dorms and along the wall and up to the middle tower, from which Kate Marsh would attempt to jump in another future, diving down as if to follow her fall, then swooping along the lawn towards the woods at the last moment, towards the woods, towards the partially obscured totem pole, and then she's back at the lighthouse and her face hurts.
Across the cairn, Sera shoots a quick glance at some spot in space roughly 45 degrees up and to the north, but says nothing. She puts her thumb in her mouth.
"How long was I out?" Chloe asks, rubbing her sore cheek.
"No time on this end," Steph says.
"We touched thumbs a second ago," Sera adds.
"Right," says Chloe. She starts to dust herself off mechanically and to get up, but realizes that she's already standing and turns the motion into this awkward touching, smoothing of her clothes.
"How long was it for you?" Steph asks.
"A few minutes I think," Chloe mutters.
"There was this weird clap, like a distant thunder," Steph says. "And a gust of wind."
Sera gives her a look, but neither confirms nor denies it out loud.
"So did it work?" she asks, instead.
"Something did happen," Chloe says, staring off towards the town. "I felt like I was about to be taken somewhere, shown something, but then I got blocked."
"Blocked by what?"
"I don't know. Something cold and wet and slick."
Something catches her eye on the signboard with the map, besides the old skull and bones. In the name "Arcadia Bay, Oregon," printed in the bottom right corner, someone has connected the bottoms of the "legs" of the "A" with a straight line, making the letter look like a triangle pointing up. Likewise, the top of the "Y" has been closed off, which made it look like both, a triangle pointing down and a tornado with a slanted funnel. How long has that been there?
"How long ago did you drop acid?" Sera asks suddenly.
"What?"
"Flashbacks, time distortion, entities. How long?"
"… Ten days. Give or take. Not that I know it was acid. I don't know what it was. I took a lot at once, with booze. Was out for three days. The flashbacks started when I woke up."
"And you thought they were spirits talking to you? Helping you look for Rachel? Those were acid trips."
"I don't care what they are - spirits, acid trips, brain damage - as long as they help me find her."
"They're not doing anything, Chloe! There is no 'they'. It's just your brain, on drugs, randomly making shit up."
"It's not random, though! Well… most of the time. Some… of the time. And it's been working."
"Working how? You have no idea where she is really, or what happened to her! You have nothing."
"We learned and found more in a week than your police did in three! Her backpack, bracelet, letter, where she's been, who she met with, all because of the clues we got from these random acid trips. Yeah, they're fucking random and confusing and never very clear and direct, but they are helping. We are getting closer."
Sera looks at her with an upsetting mixture of patience and annoyance.
"Chloe," she says, "I know how drugs work. Trust me."
"You don't know shit, Chloe!" Frank Bowers rages. "You were part of her problem. Always trying to take her away from me. Always!"
"Nobody knows how drugs work," Chloe replies. "Nobody knows shit."
"So what's the plan now?" Steph asks, before Sera has a chance to respond.
Sera's face responds just as clearly. She can't wait to hear what Chloe's next bullshit plan is.
"I think we have to get back to campus," Chloe says, not looking at Sera.
"Back to the dorms?"
"Not the dorms. The raven... uh, it was taking me away from the dorms in the end. Towards… you don't think it would be the Tobanga do you? That would be super dumb."
"Buuut, it would make sense," Steph says. "There was a totem like that in the cave, remember? And burning that… did something."
She's right. It did something. Felt like a lot of something. Not to mention the weird phone call right after. She remembers thinking about burning the Tobanga on their way to Rachel's room the night before and not having the "cocktail" handy. What if the stupid totem really is the key, and she could have freed Rachel then, yesterday? What if a day's delay turns out to be the difference between…
No.
"OK, let's go see," she says. They start back towards the trail. Sera doesn't move.
"I'm going to stay here for a bit," she says, adding when Chloe turns to go, "Chloe, I will give you until the end of today, because I let you talk me into it, but if the day's delay turns out to be the difference…"
"I know it already!" Chloe shouts, before stomping away. "I fucking know it!"
There is nothing to say after that the entire way down from the cliffs, and it doesn't get any better in the parking lot, because the truck's driver side window is busted and two left tires are slashed. Chloe rushes forward, cursing. Steph follows closely. There is no one around to either ask or stab for it.
The glove compartment is gaping open. Good thing she had the gun with her. What's not great is that she didn't take Rachel's heavy-ass backpack with her to the lighthouse, and now it, and all the stuff inside it, including the laptop, are gone.
"Aw, that's just hella fucking awesome," she says, fighting tears. The loss of Rachel's stuff is somehow hitting her harder than the damage to the truck. Thankfully, it also reminds her of the leftover Molotovs, and as she checks the truck bed and discovers them still wrapped in their dirty blanket inside the milk crate, where whoever fucked with her truck hasn't bothered to check, and as the thoughts of making whoever did this pay with fire take her mind off the guilt from losing Rachel's stuff, Chloe's mood slightly improves.
Still, it feels shitty not to have transport suddenly. She calls Mike's Garage for a tow. It's going to be a while, since Arcadia Bay is full of shitty cars that break, so they begin to walk back, discussing who could have done it. Not that the discussion amounts to much. Could be the Vortex Club. Could be random assholes passing by on the highway. Could be the fucking spirits. What difference does it make now? She's not going to make a police report. Might as well write it off to Arcadia Bay: a coastal town that will disappear you, murder you, or, if it can't, it will fuck up your car just to spite.
Leaving me the Molotov's might have been your last mistake, you piece of shit town.
When they get to the beach, Frank's RV is back in its spot. Feels like chances of getting a ride from him are pretty slim, so they keep walking. The Two Whales is nearby and about as inviting as it ever was, and after a hesitation, they go in, Chloe trying to nonchalantly conceal beer bottles plugged with rags sticking out of the pockets of her leather jacket.
Thankfully, Joyce is not on duty, and Beth, who gives Chloe a not very friendly glance from behind the counter, either doesn't notice the bottles or wisely chooses not to comment. No one else in the diner pays her any attention. By the time Beth comes around with a pot of coffee, Chloe has rolled the jacket into a ball and wedged it between herself and the corner of the seat.
"What will it be?" Beth asks, with zero enthusiasm.
Steph orders waffles and Chloe opts for the eggs and bacon, disintegrating the food almost before the plate stops vibrating from behind placed on the table before her, not because she's hungry, but because she wants to go. This desire intensifies when a tow truck from Mike's drives by, dragging her truck behind it, and everybody in the diner suddenly does pay attention, looking first at it and then at her. She groans, giving Steph urging looks.
"Should we go?" Steph says finally, pushing away a half-finished waffle.
"Are you sure you're done?"
"Yeah, I'm good."
Steph pays the bill, and they get out on the street, heading south. The front page of the paper in the machine by the entrance has a headline "STORM," and Chloe forces herself to keep walking without stopping to read the small print. Claire, the homeless lady, is in her spot in the alley behind the diner and watches them intently as they pass. There is a distinct gravitational pull towards her, as if she has something important to tell them, and here too, Chloe looks away and keeps walking.
It takes them a good half hour to get to the Blackwell stadium, which is about as far as they can get, because the place is crawling with campus security. Which, when you're trying to trespass with two Molotov cocktails sticking out of your pockets, is not optimal. They circle back a block and try again, closer to the dorms this time, but there is a patrolman on the corner there as well, and an Arcadia Bay PD car parked by the curb on top of that.
"What the fuck is going on?" Chloe says through clenched teeth. Did somebody get whacked?
Leaving Steph with the loaded jacket at a neglected playground nearby, Chloe approaches one of the guards, whom she knows vaguely without knowing his name, and who knows her vaguely as "Dave's kid." The mall cop is about sixty and sports a bright white goatee a la Arcadia.
"Hey… man," she says. "Have you seen David?"
"Hello, little lady. No, I haven't. Would you like me to radio him for you?"
"No. That's, ugh, fine," she says with a wince, struggling to keep it civil and ignore the little lady thing. "Say, what's the deal with all the extra police at Blackwell?"
"Not extra. Just holding the perimeter at entrances. There was a break-in at the dorms overnight."
"No shit?"
"Yes, erm, no. So if you want to see your father, I'm afraid I will have to radio, because I can't let you in today. We're on lockdown."
"Nah, it's not urgent. I'll call him later," she says, before walking away from him, adding as she turns away, "And he's not my father."
Fucking lockdown bullshit. Yes, there was in fact a break-in. So fucking what? Not like they stole anything. Not like anyone cared about Rachel's room in the first place. This fucking town again. First the truck, now the lockdown. It's almost like it doesn't want her to be on campus. Too bad Blackhell is sitting between the town and the woods, and your mall cops aren't going to stop anybody who really wants to get in. Especially not someone who just took a hella blood oath.
She gets back to Steph and tells her the news.
"Seems we're going back into the woods," she says, getting a very brief and weirdly orange flashback of a couple people she can't make out walking through the woods.
"I've been reading the news while you were gone, too," Steph says. "Apparently there is a storm coming."
"This is my storm," Max Caulfield says on the cliff, on Friday, October 11. A huge twister is approaching the town below across the bay. Trucks, boats, and pieces of houses are in various stages of being dislodged. "I created this... All of this."
Fuck all of that, okay? Chloe thinks, phasing back in.
She doesn't know if she wants to ask. If she wants to know. If she cares.
"Might be here by nightfall, they say," Steph says.
"How bad," Chloe forces out.
"Heavy rain. Gale force winds."
"So, weather. Have a raincoat in your pack?"
"A windbreaker."
"Good enough. Just make sure you're downwind from me when you break that wind, Steph."
"Har, har."
They set off, Chloe leading them in a circle, wide enough to the point where they pass by the Caulfields' old house, which is a street over from Chloe's. It's been repainted ugly green. They enter the woods through an empty lot in the no-man's land between "Trash" and "Posh" Bays. Chloe knows this neck of the woods like her own neck, so they have no trouble making their way back up hill to Blackwell, observing the guard at the parking lot checkpoint from the cover of the foliage.
They keep circling, past the swimming pool and the main Blackwell building and smaller outlying buildings. It takes them almost an hour to get to the spot from which they can see the dorms and the courtyard, which is, also, crawling with uniforms. One of the uniforms is Samuel, sweeping the sidewalk. As they watch, he stops and looks up the hill in their direction, though it's impossible for him to see them in the trees.
As he returns to sweeping, before, presumably, switching to painting, they linger in place, Chloe waiting for some sort of sign, but with none forthcoming, they leave their observation post and begin to descend towards concealed Tobanga's approximate position. Chloe is not sure what she's going to do when they get there. Is she going to just set the thing on fire, in the middle of the school quad and in view of all those cops, probably including the stepdouche? She keeps hoping for a sign, hoping secretly that it wouldn't come to that. Of course, if she was a hundred percent sure it would save Rachel, she would do it in a heartbeat, but she's pretty fucking far from a hundred percent of that at the moment.
They climb down the slope, glimpsing the town and the campus here and there through the branches, and after a while it begins to feel too long. Sure enough, they stumble out of the woods in the wrong spot, behind the main building nearly all the way back to the pool, and nearly run into a bored patrolman with his face in his phone.
"Shit, we got turned around," Chloe grumbles, reentering the woods and turning south towards the dorms. "Come on."
They head back there, through the woods that are weirdly thick. The ground rises again, then falls again, and when they come out a couple of minutes later into the clearing, it's somehow behind the dorm on the south side.
"OK, what the actual fuck?" Chloe ask out loud.
"What?" Steph asks.
"How do we keep missing it?" Feeling like she's being watched, Chloe slinks away from the treeline, though keeping the building in sight this time.
"OK, the dorm is right there, right?" she says. "Keep an eye on it and don't lose it, Steph. Come on."
They move slowly up from the dorm, a few yards back from the tree line, but close enough to the edge to see the building's wall, the benches, the trash cans and the courtyard in front of the dorm in between the trees and use them as references. Samuel and his broom are nowhere to be seen. A security guard is rocking back and forth on his feet in front of the girls' entrance. In the distance, there is another one by the boys entrance as well. Finally, Chloe spots the totem through the trees to the right.
Spots it and get this ringing headache right through the middle of her skull. What the fuck is this? Has her zero-sleep diet finally caught up to her? I dont have time for this.
She pushes on, grabbing the trees for support and helping herself with her arms. The faces on the totem come into view and it's like a fucking liberty bell getting hammered with her head inside it. Stuff's crackling inside her brain. The faces turn blurry.
"Chloe, wait!" the voice comes. Steph.
"Huh?"
"Your face."
My face what? She feels salt in her mouth and touches it with her hand and her hand comes back red. She's bleeding from her nose. She chuckles at the familiarity of it and at the wrongness. The fucking nosebleed. So the headache is real. The sign. Is that the best you can do, fucker? Because I'm not stopping for the nosebleed. And now I know for sure that it's you.
"Let's go, Steph," she think she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve and pushing on, grasping with one hand for the bottle in her pocket, while groping for the light with the other. Branches come at her face and she ducks, laughing, but she stumbles over some roots and falls, and falls, and again she falls.