Shade

Chapter 6 - Vessels

I was awakened by the sound of gunshots. There were four or five of them spaced out over several minutes. Though my heart leapt at first, it wasn't sustained my any thoughts of dread. There was no urgency to the gunfire and, at the very least, no accompanying screams. Jonas remained fast asleep beside me. I supposed he was used to it.

I got up and looked out the window. It was early morning. I could see distantly in the orchard that Walter had set up a collection of targets, cans and ceramics on a sawhorse by the tree line. He stood with a rifle taking aim about fifty yards away. It didn't exactly align with my expectations for a group of liberal, peace-loving artists, but I conceded that was a stereotype. Perhaps with a large rural property of my own, I would have owned a gun and shot cans as well.

Despite Jonas's ability to sleep through percussive blasts, I made an effort to not rouse him from his slumber. He looked so innocent and sweet when he slept. I could imagine him at any age in his twenty-six years sleeping exactly the same way, with his cheek and lips mashed against his pillow. I attempted to creep silently to the bathroom, but my effort was immediately curtailed when I accidentally kicked something across the hardwood floor.

I flinched and looked back to Jonas. He didn't even move.

I had kicked a book, a small black leather-bound journal. I assumed it belonged to Jonas, but as I knelt to retrieve it, that feeling faded. It was old and dusty; it didn't match the modern notebooks covered in brightly colored stickers and stamps on his desk. The pages were ripped and yellowed on the edges. I flipped it open. The penmanship was elegant and old-fashioned. The pages smelled like smoke. I found a passage and read:

"Miss Bonnie Dunham's sitting on quite the stake. James must have done well for himself before our nation's schism dried up the mines. I'll do my part here. The labour is not too difficult; Bonnie seems to see to that. I won't be toting manure like some of the other men. Jack Wyatt says she's sweet on me. It's almost more than that. Her eyes... wander when she speaks to me... as if she's searching for a part of me that can satiate her hunger."

I could nearly hear a voice in my head to match the words, a kind young man, genuine and nervous. I stopped reading. I thought I felt a shadow drift behind me, but there was nothing; no wind stirred the curtains; Jonas was in the same position. I set the journal down on his desk.

I considered the passage and my vivid drug-addled dream as I showered. I remembered the cuts on my wrist and hands, but they were unmarred as I scrubbed with soap and water. I couldn't believe the horrors were solely the creation of my mind, but I had no other explanation. I felt there was a correlation with the passage in the diary, but I couldn't connect the pieces. I wondered if there even was a connection, or if it was simply something I subconsciously wanted to be true.

I had broken into abandoned buildings with friends as a teenager. We had done séances with Ouija boards and freaked each other out. But I had never experienced anything paranormal I felt was genuine. I was too much of a rationalist. But I wasn't entirely closed off to the idea, either. Much like the uninvited tarot reading I had received at Burning Man, I wasn't willing to completely disregard something that was believed in by a large percentage of humans.

I always found the shower a wonderful place to think, have epiphanies, or make confronting personal decisions. I made a choice to not be scared, to not allow my imagination to run wild. I wanted to be open to whatever happened during my time at the commune. I wanted to allow myself to fall for Jonas regardless of his relationships in the past. I wouldn't judge him any differently than I would judge myself.

Jonas was still asleep, so I went downstairs in search of something to eat for breakfast.

I found Evelyn in the kitchen sitting at circular wooden table painted blue and swirled with a rainbow of colors on the top. A fruit bowl sat in the center filled with peaches and bananas. Evelyn was zoning out with a cup of steeping tea. A lazy curl of steam danced in front of her face. She didn't do anything to acknowledge my presence.

I found the kettle on the stove and a box of teas to choose from.

"There's a different feeling in the air," I heard Evelyn say. I wasn't sure if she was speaking to me or rhetorically.

"Hmm." I shrugged. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she said distantly. "Have some tea."

I selected a mug with an illustration of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh on it. He had a speech bubble that read "Oh d-d-dear." I sat adjacent to Evelyn on a creaky wicker chair.

"Does Walter shoot at inanimate objects every morning?" I asked, trying to sound as friendly as possible.

"If the proper mood compels him," she replied. She stirred her tea and finally looked me in the eyes. "It feels different, doesn't it?"

"Yes?" I laughed in my discomfort. "I'm not sure what you're getting at."

Evelyn didn't laugh with me or even smile. She gave me direct eye contact which was too intense to maintain.

"I don't know how else to put it," she said. "This place, it feels different."

"Well I wasn't here before, so I don't know how it's supposed to feel."

"No. No you weren't."

She turned back away to her thoughts. My stomach gurgled.

"Are these peaches for everyone, or..."

"Can I show you something?" she asked.

I nodded, though I was still half-reaching for the fruit bowl. Evelyn sighed.

"Yes, this is a commune, Kit. You can have a peach."

She led me outside on a narrow path to the firing pit. I walked carefully behind her, spilling tea on one hand and dribbling peach juice on the other.

"Yesterday, I was a bit dismissive with you when you said my pottery looked like a skull," said Evelyn.

"Oh, that's fine. I really know nothing about pottery. In fact, the more I'm here, the less I feel like an actual artist."

"No, it looked like a skull, Kit," she said. She stopped walking and folded her arms, gazing upon her cooling shelves with contempt. "They all do."

There were twenty of them all together lined up evenly on four shelves. They each had distinctive pitted eyes and nostrils. Their jaws, closed or agape, expressed pain, like they had died in agony. It was hard to describe, but looking at them made me feel dizzy and sick.

"And you didn't..." I began.

"No. I couldn't have done this if I planned it. Not in a pit fire. I could have intentionally sculpted and glazed these, but I didn't. My work is about allowing the unexpected to happen. It's colorful, often whimsical, earthy. Never this, never horrific. These were two separate firings..."

I had no explanation for her.

"Well whatever you did this time, maybe next time do the opposite? You'll get smiley faces, or baby faces-" Evelyn shot me a look. "Or no faces."

She finally cracked a smile. She put her hands on her hips and looked at me with warmth for the first time.

"I'm reading too much into this aren't I? I felt like maybe it was some sort of omen."

"Sometimes I feel like I make decisions and I don't know why I making them," I said. "And then I come to realize I was leaving breadcrumbs for myself to follow. Like there's a part of my brain that wants to teach me something I didn't know I already knew. Maybe this is some sort of message that you subconsciously sent yourself."

Evelyn processed my words. She nodded, first to herself and then to me.

"Thank you, Kit. I like to think that everyone who comes through here comes for a reason. I have faith we'll figure this out together."

The skulls stared back like a Greek chorus, lamenting the very mystery they dared us to solve.