Return to The Quarry

Afterward

So in the end, in a way, I did get married. But as you probably imagine, I wasn't the only bride that season. Just like she suggested, Abi married Nick only a few weeks into July. She was lovely, of course, and he was a picture, the two of them surrounded by friends, but no bad memories. Both feel they can live free at last of the shadows of the past, so much so that they have each pursued long-put off interests: Nick has begun getting his feet wet in culinary school, while Abi is working on publishing her own children's picture books.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, Max and Laura made no bones about starting a family. Last spring, Laura gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Bridget Rose Brinley. I always liked Irish names, but then again, I'm prejudiced. I suspect that another baby is on the way, but we'll see. Laura is no longer terrorized by the sight of a police car, and Max, no longer chained by guilt over what he did to Laura, is putting his time to better use by loving his little family to pieces.

Jacob never stayed in Nevada, not when all he really wanted was in New York City. He got a transfer to the NYPD, moved in with Emma, and the two are perfectly happy together. That is, outside of the cosmetics left on the bathroom counter and the dirty jokes made with watermelons and cantaloupes. There's something about confidence that makes a person stand out, and Jacob was put forward to take his detective's test. This was in no small part due to Emma's unwavering support. She herself found the courage to strike off alone and not require the attention of the world to make her feel safe. While I don't understand the whole business of how she puts her pictures out to audiences, one of the first ones she made was a demonstration of how women can recreate my style – hair, clothes, and how to make up their faces the way I did. I was flattered to say the least. She even directed her audience to see another picture of an altogether different kind, also featuring me.

Grace and Anton still broadcast their radio show, only now, they gained international attention when they broke the story of what happened to me and that writer, Ginny Brown. They even won some big award for it. There were people who thought the story about my disappearance was all applesauce at first, but then, when they got some judge to allow them to excavate the earth beneath the Lodge, the critics started to pipe down. I was later buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, and Ginny was buried someplace else, I think in her hometown. Later, Grace and Anton got someone – I don't know if it was the Coast Guard, or who it was – to dive down and see what was still at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Santa Barbara. They found traces of the house we had there, and evidence of human remains, though I don't know what they found or whose they were. They did manage to retrieve an unopened bottle of gin, however, and the Los Angeles police were able to confirm that it contained a heaping dose of methyl alcohol. Now the world knows the whole story, and at long last, the wondering has come to an end. But good on Grace and Anton, and that "show" they got on the television. I'm only now learning what the television is.

Marriage, I'm also finding out, is like the New York Stock Exchange. Sometimes it's bull, sometimes, it's bear, but whatever it is, there's profit to be made if you're willing to do the work. And seeing an analyst, Kaitlyn is starting to work that out for herself. She and her husband are doing just fine, even to the point that his business (he's a gardener of some kind) works with Kaitlyn's. I'm guessing she builds the houses, he does the lawns and the flower beds. It's a lovely arrangement that they're making work, kind of like Mary Pickford and Doug Fairbanks.

Dylan and Ryan, are having an absolute ball. Postcards from Switzerland, Turkey, Spain, Japan, heaven knows the places they've been! I think they're a good pairing, what with Dylan patiently helping Ryan to thaw a little and not be so hard on himself, and Ryan pushing Dylan to take charge of things when he would do well to do so. I think it's the most marvelous thing anyone could do, to be recklessly, carelessly in love while you're too old to care if you're being silly, but still young enough to get away with it.

While there's all these new frontiers to explore, there are some that are quickly forgotten. As time goes on for those adventurers, so does it for the place once known as Hackett's Quarry. The hotel, of course, was a total loss, burnt to the ground leaving nothing but a burned out hole in the ground. The rest of the place, with no one to mow the lawns and trim the bushes, is slowly being taken back by nature. Every second, vines grow silently up walls and over eaves. Grass swallows up the steps of the cabins, and the overgrown boughs of the trees bend low enough to almost to conceal the roofs. The pool, first filled with rain, then a greenish swamp, before finally becoming a brackish, sludge filled pit is becoming home to small trees that grow larger and split apart the cement and tiles. The weight of woodbines pull down chain link fences and railings. Seasons of snow and wind level the Radio Hut, and once a broken tree limb pierces a roof here or a window there, the elements, to say nothing of furry interlopers, make their way in and set about their dismantling work. As it always does, the natural world exacts its pound of flesh. Patiently, soundlessly, constantly bringing anything a man touches back to its elemental starting point. Soon, the lamp posts topple and the asphalt splits. Signs rot away, and the timbers of the Lodge disintegrate and collapse in on itself. The ruins, in no time at all, are no longer visible for the tendrils of the earth that weave their way over top of everything. In a few short years, no vestige of human habitation remains. The resort fades from people's memory. Before that, no one thinks about the summer camp, or the name Hackett that owned it. No one remembers the quarry, or the rum-running operation that bubbled beneath the surface of the earth, unseen. No one old enough to remember is still alive. Soon, only piles of boards and broken glass serve as the reminder that humans ever walked that earth, and those, only visible if one knew to look for them.

Yes, right now, the wilderness has reclaimed the quarry, but someday it might be the home to something else. Perhaps a camp. Perhaps another hotel. In some iteration, it is possible that human feet will once again tread paths and small animals may scurry away from the sound of human voices. But whatever it will be will have long forgotten the horrors that played out on that very site years ago. Monstrous, unspeakable things that no one in their right mind would ever believe. For right now, all remains still and silent, or at least as still and silent as a forest alive with flora and fauna can be.

But the stones remember. Though silent and unchanging, they will never forget all they have witnessed, and when everything is just right, they can be coaxed to speak.

And who knows? When the conditions are right in the last remaining days of summer, when the full moon shines down on the banks of a lake as still as a sheet of glass nestled between halls of quartzite, the stones might speak. Out of the mists of time, they might produce the ghostly afterimage of the seven young forms they once saw gathered around a phantom campfire, the embers of which have long since gone cold and dark. And if one listens closely enough, through the hum of the insects or the rustle of the night wind in the trees, over the call of distant birds, one might just hear over nature's symphony the electronic pulse of quiet music. The clanking of beer bottles. The snap of burning twigs. And if one stays perfectly still, holding their breath and not moving an inch, perhaps they would hear the words uttered from voices long ago . . .

"What did you have in mind?"

"How about the ultimate game of secrets and lies? Truth or dare . . ."