“The Doom Statues” — Chapter 3

As they are leaving with pamphlets and all kinds of other information in hand, Kidwell points out, heartily chucking as he does, that if they had never turned off onto this road, they were actually moving in the right direction and would have reached Stokely in less than fifteen minutes. Which is exactly what happens, as Jeremy and Emily climb back into the car and drive to the main route, Stokely Farm Road, continue onward into town. Though unfamiliar with Stokely before their first passing through it earlier, there’s not much to the town, and soon enough the four of them have settled in for lunch at a diner, possibly the town’s only sit-down restaurant. As far as they can determine, this charming hamlet consists of two state routes, crossing at one of the three traffic lights, with this Stokely Farm Road spilling in just a block northeast of that intersection.

“I don’t know, I’m kinda excited about this…art retreat concept!” Emily cheers, turning the pamphlets over in her hand, then examining them again. “I think I’m gonna hit my parents up for this — they’re always telling me I should find some sort of passion in life. You could come, too, Kay! We all could!”

Though Jeremy just scoffs, tucked low in his booth but also examining some of the paperwork Kidwell had given them. Kay offers a rebuttal, saying, “yeah but you’ve got that whole…painting thing, which you’re good at. I love to dabble, but I’m not really good at anything. Plus I’ve got…well…,” she breaks off and points down at Noah, her hand above his head. He’s busy playing a portable video gaming gadget, though, and paying no apparent mind to this discussion.

“That’s not true — what about those chalk drawings, of, like, dolphins that you used to do? Remember those? On black construction paper?” Emily points out, giggling as she recalls these. “Those were awesome!”

Kay rolls her eyes and says, “come on, that was like fifth grade.”

“They were still cool! I’m sure you could totally get back into that groove in no time! And are you saying your parents wouldn’t keep Noah for, like, a month or whatever? Of course they would! I mean, you already live there…”

“I don’t know…,” Kay sighs, “even if they would, I’m sure it’s a lot of money just to completely suck, and not follow through on anything anyway. Not to mention, there’s probably a limited number of spots and…”

“Come on, who are we kidding,” Jeremy grumbles, tossing the pamphlet aside, “dude was a shyster. Charming and probably harmless shyster, but still. He would obviously take anybody willing to pony up the cash for that crackpot scheme.”

“You really think so?” both girls ask, with just slight variation.

“Pssh,” Jeremy scrunches up his face to retort, “totally. Anyway, I’m way more interested in that gravity hill business. I still can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You kids talkin about that spot way out offa Stokely Farm Road?” their waitress asks, returning with the food they’ve ordered — breakfast, all around, though it’s mid-afternoon. This woman is 60 years old if she’s a day, with a gold name tag bearing the name Doris and attired in the kind of powder blue diner uniform that fell out of fashion half a century earlier, a matching skirt and button up blouse which look like one solid piece.

“The gravity hill?” Jeremy repeats.

Doris nods, dispensing their plates, and says, “yessir, I’ve heard all about it over the years but taint never been. They say if you put a buncha flour on yer trunk before you start, then you can see handprints in it by the time you get up top. Somethin to do with a young girl s’posedly killed herself there. But then I also heard the handprints was just yer own residue from openin and shuttin the trunk, and the whole thing’s an optical illusion anyway so I don’t know…”

Trailing off in this manner, Doris departs twice as abruptly as she’s arrived, the battle worn swiftness of a veteran waitress, leaving the three adults at the table to chuckle in her wake.

“She’s right, though, at least the part about the illusion,” Kay offers, “like I said, if you close your eyes and walk it, you can totally tell.”

“Okay, but the whole thing doesn’t make sense,” Jeremy says, straightening up in his seat in a manner not even the food’s arrival could inspire, “what are we saying, then, that it’s a hill inside a hill? Or that the other side is an optical illusion, too, even though I’ve never heard anything about it working if you go that way?”

“Hill inside a hill? What?” Kay questions.

“Yeah. Think about it,” Jeremy tells her. “Well, okay, like, we turned around in that old man’s driveway…”

“Burning bodies,” Emily jokes, “that’s probably what really happened to Doris’s girl there…”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, glancing over and humoring her with a slight laugh, “but so anyway, think about it. We turn around in the old man’s driveway, okay, right?”

“Yeah?” both girls reply.

“Okay, then we clearly head down that hill — I mean, clearly — and bottom out at the end of it. Nobody ever said going up in that direction was any sort of gravity hill or illusion, so we have to take that one at face value, right?”

“Sure, I mean, whatever,” Kay shrugs.

“Sure,” Emily agrees.

“Well and then there’s an obvious shift in the opposite direction or whatever you want to call it, once you throw the car in neutral from there. So what is this, some kind of hill inside a hill? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“I still don’t follow,” Emily admits with a grimace, and Kay laughs, mostly at Jeremy’s plain agitation.

“Okay…,” he says, clasping his hands together, attempting to explain it slowly, “once you come down that hill from the old man’s driveway, you are clearly at the bottom, unless you’re saying that hill is inverted also and you’re really at the top. Otherwise, if we agree we are at the bottom there and that the road obviously isn’t flat from that point and is obviously moving in a different direction, and there isn’t any kind of dip in the road, then that other direction must be up!”

“But what are you really suggesting?” Kay says, “come on, this goes against every known, like, physical law in the universe!”

“So what are you saying then? I mean, based on what I just laid out? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, I’m just telling you: walk the thing. Walk the thing and you’ll see what I mean,” Kay tells him.

“Hey but wait a second,” Emily interjects, more to soothe these suddenly escalating nerves as much as anything else, “what about when you put the car in reverse? Did that…prove anything?”

Jeremy raises his eyebrows and says, “well, actually, that’s a good point because it proved….” But then he stops and trails off before smacking himself in the forehead.

“What?” Kay asks, with Emily right behind her.

“That actually proved nothing. I remember clearly putting the car in reverse up there. It should have been neutral. Dammit! I just wasn’t thinking. So yeah, that proved nothing. But the rest! I’m telling you, I don’t know…”

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