“The Doom Statues” — Chapter 36

Upon returning to Otherwise, the two sides switch, and both are able to duplicate those from the first experiment. Or at least thereabouts — not quite as familiar with the route as Tony, it takes Jeremy roughly twenty-two minutes to find the cemetery. Curiously enough, those other two manage to drive it in about exactly an hour, though Clay insists he wasn’t speeding. Still, even these slight disparities do nothing to dispel the experiment’s incongruities.

Jeremy resolves to get a more detailed map on paper somewhere, preferably some older ones, even if it means driving up to Winston-Salem, or the state capital in Raleigh. He also makes a point of sticking around the graveyard until Clay and Tony arrive, just for one final piece of confirmation, even though he and Marcus have already long run dry on conversational material. They randomly inspect tombstones, first in conjunction and then separately, and are eventually reduced to texting people, and further eating up their data plan to scroll random social media sites.

“There has got to be something about this terrain we don’t understand,” Jeremy tells him, not for the first time, after Marcus has finished explaining his next planned performance art piece. And this is a phrase Jeremy will repeat once the other two arrive in Clay’s faded red pickup, too, and they’re standing around in a light mist, discussing the…