We saw many beautiful mountainsides and we even spotted a BUFFALO! (It's a big deal). The really interesting scene that we passed was an abandoned dairy farm. There were tractors that were new and the grass was mowed, so someone was taking care of the property, but there were no cows, the buildings were rusted and would easily qualify as condemned. As our car rolled by, my sister and I were fascinated by the sprawling property at the foot of the mountain. And as the wheels of our car made a slight turn, I said, "At the foot of a purple mountain there lie an abandoned dairy farm."
My sister and I looked at each other for a brief second, (she was driving after all) before I whipped out my green moleskin agenda to write out the phrase. It had potential and my sister agreed. Let's see what you think because the next night, I had a dream. I now present to you the story that started with that farm:
The Place Between
At the foot of a purple mountain there lie an abandoned dairy farm. The yellow bus that drove by was the most frequent visitor, passing the farm two times a day, Monday through Friday, but hardly any of its passengers gave it a second glance. There was one however, who was daily transfixed.
Pressing her cheek and forehead against the cool window, Cassie watched the farm closely. Whenever she passed by this place, her thoughts would slow and drift to what might have happened here. There were stories, of course. This was a small town mountain area, but none of the people who had been around when the farm was active were alive any more. So the words that passed amounted to small talk, nothing more.
Kids at Cassie's school had talked about groups of boys who had crept around the ploughs, stalls, and range trying to find any clue, only to run out with a cloud of dust following their feet. Whatever was in that place was not something worth risking your nose for, so most teens, however daring and typical in all other respects, avoided that place. Even merely passing-by was enough to give Cassie the chills. It always felt like someone or something was watching back.
Cassie turned up her iPod and pulled the hood of her thick sweatshirt over her head and let the steam from her breath blur her view of the farm.
The first two classes of the day dragged on like normal. Thursdays were "block" schedule, so she had odd classes for two hours a day, the same was the case on Tuesdays for even numbers. The only benefit of this was having two and a half hours in her art class before lunch. It gave her almost enough time to be creative. Her other classes were alright, but to she was ready for summer, and this was only February. To say she was burned out or suffering from senioritis was an all too true cliché. There was still one AP test awaiting her and several more months ahead, but Cassie was done. She already knew that she was going to community college. Wasn't that enough? She didn't want to go, but she would be the first in her family to attend college. As someone who wanted to escape the mountains through art, college didn't seem like the right path, but at least the college was outside of the mountain. The whole setting the path for her family's advancement thing was a big deal, but she tried not to think about it.
Lunch after the second class consisted of cinnamon Poptarts that she bought off a cart in the lunch court. While she stood in the impossibly long line, Cassie wondered what life was like where "winter" was more of a reality and every part of the school was indoors. Even here in the Southern California mountains where it did snow occasionally, she stood outside with her peers in the lunch court, fighting almost like animals to get to the blue carts before the stupid end of lunch bell rang.
With lunch being a mere 35 minutes long, Cassie's hands were still coated in pastels as she munched on her Poptarts; the choice she faced after art class was: 'wash my hands and miss out on the chance to get food or imbibe chemicalls and get food.' Food was normally the winner of that competition even though the choices at the cart were never that exciting. After four long years of lunch court lunches, Poptarts were the only 7-11 like food that she could stand. If she never had to look at a taco pocket again, she would only be too happy.
"It's not even real meat, you know," Cassie's friend Mike said to their friend Chelsea as the three of them ate as quickly as possible. "It's from a bull's t-"
"Then it is real meat," Chelsea took an enormous bite of her taco pocket simply to spite Mike.
Cassie thought about how in the city where the community college was, even the thought of taco pockets in a high school lunch court must be revealed as heinous crimes against humanity.
"On a not disgusting note," Chelsea skewed while covering her mouth and chewing at the same time. "Cass, are you going to come to the library after lunch or go back to lab?"
As much as Cassie would have liked to go back to the art lab to work on her senior project, she had promised the librarian that she would help reshelf. Shrugging, Cassie brushed poptart crumbs from the top of her Hunger Games T-shirt. She tried to keep it as clean as possible as the golden-mocking jay shirt was the very first purchase she had made with money she had earned from her part time job. "I really should go see Marley. I promised her on Tuesday that I'd help out."
"You better get the paint and chemicals off first, Cass," Mike strongly suggested. "I can't even imagine how deep you'd be in if you soiled the books in the library. I'm pretty sure that's when the library demons would come out and eat your soul. There's no chance of surviving that."
"Wow, you're so dumb" Chelsea teased, throwing the plastic wrapper of her taco pocket at Mike.
The dreaded "end-of-lunch-get-your-butts-to-class" bell screamed across the campus.
All three teens groaned. Lunch was never long enough.
"Well," Mike stood and pushed his nose-length bangs out from his face, "I'm off to rejoin camp-not-college bound and go to class, you class-snobs."
Chelsea and Cassie were enrolled in a college course that came to their high school on their non-block days, so there were two days a week when these students did not have class. Everyone else enrolled in these courses would skip and go home as there was nothing binding them to remain on campus, but Chelsea and Cassie took the after school bus home, so there was nothing for them to do, but volunteer twice a week in the library.
Pulling her rucksack higher on her shoulder, Cassie shoved her Poptart wrapper in her bag then said, "I'm going to go to the bathroom to clean up. See you later, Mike." Cassie waved to her friend as he went off to class. Through the stream of students moving this way and that all over the walkway where the three had been sitting, Cassie said to Chelsea, "Tell Marlie I'll be by in a bit."
"K!" Cass heard Chelsea shout, but Cassie was already headed down the hall to the girl's restroom.
She was relieved that the smell of pot did not instantly smack her in the face as she entered the bathroom. She hated the smell and though one of her really good friends had been expelled for carrying, she was glad with the crack down the school was doing to reduce smoking in schools mainly because the smell gave her headaches. It always fascinated Cassie as to what rules came about for why - she and her friends strongly believed that many of the school's rules came straight out of sitcoms or reality TV, which were both so unrealistic. For example of such a policy, having security guards posted outside of the restrooms during lunch to deter illicit behavior. She knew where this idea came from; she and her friends would always laugh when they saw on kids on TV sneaking smoking cigarettes in bathrooms at lunch or during class. The truth was, it was pot they smoked in bathrooms before school, cigarettes they did in the parking lot after school. Lunch time, not so much.
The last girl running late to class skipped out from the dim, grey bathroom, leaving Cassie alone, which suited her fine. Scrubbing her hands clean of the paints she used, Cassie wished she had taken a second to pull out her iPod. Listening to her music as she scrubbed her hands similarly to how a doctor would while prepping for surgery made the time pass more quickly. A strange thought crossed her mind - she swore she could hear something muffled by the sounds of the water running out from the spigot. 'Did I leave my iPod on and not realize it?' She wondered. She kept turning the automatic spigot on, with her wet and dripping hands not stopping to give herself the chance to analyze the sound. From what she could hear, it sounded like grinding, like a jamming guitar in a hard rock or death metal song. She didn't think she had anything like that on her iPod. 'Maybe it's the construction? They have been digging up room 103 for a while.' The students had been told to avoid 103 while the white suited people cleared the left over aspestus out from the ceiling, but the white-suited guys typically didn't work on the room while the students were there.
The spigot began to close off the flow of water.
Cassie would later remember that she had only brought her gaze to be level with the mirror before the running water stopped and the earth beneath her dropped.
She fell.
Down, down she went as the floor of the bathroom had crumbled beneath her feet!
The drop seemed an eternity, but she hit the ground about as hard as one would falling playfully off a still swing.
The abrupt stop left her hip panging a little, but Cassie was a bit too. distracted to really mind the forming of a bruise.
"What the hell was that?" she asked the darkness and the moist circulur, dirt hall she found herself within.
Looking around, Cassie realized that the hole she had fallen through must have been very deep. Looking straight up she could not even see the light of the bathroom from where she fell. Darkness was all she saw above. But, before her, there was a glow of light down the hall and around what looked like a bend.
She wanted to shout to see if anyone would hear her, but she had seen enough horror movies to know better than to bring attention to herself in so odd a place. Checking behind her once more and seeing that only a wall was behind her, there was no other option but to go forward.
She had to walk through crouched down and hunched over. The tunnel was barely big enough for a dog to have walked though standing up, the medium-height teen found it difficult, but eventually she made it to the bend. She was happy to reach the opening - there was such a strange feeling within the hall - it felt like she wasn't alone. The weirdest part was that it was not an unnerving feeling, just an acknowledgement that she wasn't the only one down here. She could not yet decide if this was a feeling of comfort or a feeling of fear.
The bend was short and it led to the most peculiar place. Taking a step out from the bend, Cassie was able to stand straight up in a decent sized room. 'This must be how Dorothy felt when she realized she wasn't in Kansas.'
The first part of the room was a dirt floor and the second half had blue and white tiles. There was a worn stainless steel table in the center of the room with a low hanging lamp dangling from a dirt ceiling. The bottoms of what appeared to be roots dangled here and there from the ceiling. It looked as if someone had tried to make a garden and breakroom kitchen into an interrogation room, but forgot to put a door on the other side, leaving instead a big, tall rectangular hole.
'Am I dead?' Cassie wondered as she slowly walked toward the table with two chairs. 'Like, did the chemicals in the art lab finally get to my brain? Is this a trip?' Cassie waved her hand quickly in front of her face trying to see if there was a trail after it, but no, it appeared normal.
Out from the rectangular door, a tall man wearing a brown twead suit emerged holding a folder almost over flowing with papers. "Ah, there you are Miss Cassandra Jordan. Welcome, welcome." His accent was English and he was a handsome, middle aged man who looked starved of sunlight and any sense of fashion, but he seemed friendly enough. "Won't you please take a seat? We have a bit of business to go over and I'd like you to be comfortable. I'd serve you tea, but, unfortunately and please forgive me, we don't have much time. My name is Martin Lathin and again, it is my delight to welcome you here."
Cassie was transfixed on this man. The whole experience thus far aside, she was mesmerized by the sound of this man's voice.
"Is everything alright, Cassandra?" Martin took a seat and lay the file on the table.
Realizing that she had probably singed this man's coat with her intense gaze, she quickly apologized. "Yeah, yeah, um, sorry." She pulled the seat out on her side of the table and sat down. "I've just never met a real person with an English accent. And you're just so..." Cassie struggled to find a word that didn't seem offensive, but she settled to say, "So English."
Martin chuckled. After the short list of shocking events that she had just endured, it was interesting to him that his accent was her greatest point of interest. It also fascinated him that teens from above were the same as teens anywhere. No matter the circumstance, if something caught their attention that was where it stayed. He did imagine that having a foreign accent in a remote mountain town would be something of great surprise as well.
"So..." Cassie's brain began to tune in to regular lines of thought. "What is this? Am I being kidnapped?"
"No, no," Martin quickly and firmly assured. "Far from it, in fact. It's far more an honor, of sorts."
"Like, I'm going to get a free ride to college kinda honor," Cassie wondered, "Or am I a sarafice for the mole people?"
Chuckling, Martin began, "You see, Cassandra, -"
"Cassie," she interrupted. "You can calll me Cassie. Or Cass. Cassandra takes too long to say and it's kinda annoying."
Nodding slowly trying to recall what he had been saying, Martin did not in the slightest feel put off by her interruption. She had every right to feel nervous. "Er, yes, Cassie, the people that I represent are at risk of losing their cultural connections to the greater world. And as such, that is something I intend to correct."
"What do you mean by 'represent'? Are you, like, some kinda lawyer?"
Raising his shoulders, Martin thought how best to describe his position within the community. "More like a politician with administrative responsibilities. It is my duty to ensure that my community stays far from harm from both within and beyond. You see, Cassie, like my post, your intended role is an honor, but it comes with responsibility."
"What kind a' responsibilities?" Cassie flashed to an image of her room; one of her daily chores was to make the bed and she was certain she forgot to do that this morning. She was not sure that she was necessarily the best qualified candidate for whatever came. "Could you, uh, give me a few more details. I'm getting a little nervous."
Nodding to show his understanding, Martin explained, "My people and I have kept our eyes on you for a long time." He lightly patted the file before him. "We are aware of your volunteering your Sundays at that older woman's farm and that you have frequently been a voice for those who could not speak for themselves. That's what we hope you can be for us, but it must remain a great secret. You see, on our side, we would ask you to be something of an ambassador. For those above...those outside of our community...well, I'd imagine if they found out they'd have darker intentions for you. Which is why it is so important that you never telll a soul about what I am about to reveal to you. You see, the last ambassador that we had several years ago, well, once people on the other side found out about his secret life, they took his business, his ranch, everything from him. They ruined him."
That odd feeling of being in a room with more people than she could see returned to Cassie. This was sounding like a significantly heavier task than making the bed. Clearing her throught to try to shake the feeling of being watched and being creeped out, she asked, "What is it that's so worth hiding? Is there like a gold mine down here or something?"
Martin crossed his fingers over her file and smiled. He had waited years to describe this wonderful place to others and this at last was his opportunity. "More than you will likely initially believe. Tell me, Cassie, what do you know about fairy tales?"
A look of extreme interest and confusion crossed Cassie's face, as from in the opening of the tunnel behind her, a hundred golf-ball sized eyes peaked out to see their new human ambassador.
To be continued...
Say whaaaa? What's down there? Where is Cassie? Who is this Martin? Want the answers?
Then we'll see you next week!
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
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