S2, E5 | An Enemy of Oneself

“This just doesn’t make sense” Avon murmurs to himself, sitting at the end of the dining room table closest to the sliding doors whilst staring into the screen of his laptop, running through long walls of text without any end in sight. Stepping through the home’s entrance, Penny leaves her bag atop a table off to the side of the foyer and wanders further into the home, her arrival earning a passive recognition from the man she approaches.

“How was your day?” he inquires as he normally would, not receiving much in the way of an answer at first as he continues reading the documents on the screen, his mind too preoccupied to notice his wife’s heels tapping along the floor closer. Without placing a voice to her reply, Penny rounds the dining room table and closes the computer’s screen, snapping her husband out of the fixation his eyes had glued themselves to as she climbs into his lap.

“I like where this is going” Avon remarks initially, hearing his wife’s breathy laugh react to him whilst the fingers on her hands lock together around the back of his head, prompting him to do much the same around his wife’s waist. “My day is much better now” Penny replies, a long and drawn out sigh preceding the remark as she leans in, her lips locking against the man recently-immersed in his investigation, his full attention now paid to the woman in his lap.

Growing more intense the longer it lasts, the kiss the husband and wife share eventually leads the author to lower his hands from his partner’s lower back to just beneath her, lifting her up as he steps out of his chair. “Let’s make it an equally good night while we’re at it” Avon rejoinders, turning around the way in which his spouse had travelled to direct their display of affection toward the bedroom at the opposite end of the home, Penny’s laughter cheerfully bouncing off the walls.

“Avon!?” a young- yet maturely declarative- voice calls out from beyond the residential plot’s front door, accompanying the request for an answer with a set of knocks from the knuckles. Rolling his eyes before closing them and shaking his head, Avon reacts visually with the same dissatisfaction that his wife voices aloud, “you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me” she remarks with a sigh, climbing down from her husband’s arms as he steps past her.

“Beau, you are the ultimate cockblock” the author remarks upon opening the door, greeting the officer he’d already recognised the voice of. “Thanks, but my presence alone usually isn’t the reason for that. My good looks seem to get the job done without fail” the younger officer replies, nodding to the author as he steps into the home, familiar enough with the town’s newest residents to grant himself entry without the need to ask.

“Good evening, Mr. King. Apologies for the unannounced arrival” Jake quips as he enters the home, doing so much more cordially than his younger colleague does. “So am I” Avon replies, a remark that his wife wastes little time in doubling down upon from afar, “make that three.”

“Actually, make it four. I’d much rather be coming here to chat or for a barbecue than why we’re here” Beau reassures, playing the sarcastic cop well enough to warrant his own clarification. “Mr, King, we wouldn’t otherwise disturb you with this had it not been for the target on the backs of you and your wife” Jake explains, standing closer to the door whilst his fellow officer stands closer toward the rear patio doors with his arms crossed.

“We found your book in a cabin owned by a man named Harlington Spears. Does that name mean anything to you?” the older cop questions aloud, looking into the momentarily in-thought writer’s face as he ponders internally, searching through his head for any recollection of such a name. “No. I don’t believe I’ve ever even met someone named Harlington” Avon answers, his genuine effort proving to be of little use, “but if he had my book- so what? Plenty of people do.”

“As true as that is, most of them don’t have a direct connection to a man who just used- if not orchestrated somehow- an act of domestic terrorism in order to escape prison like Harlington does” Beau corrects, his face wearing an obvious displeasure in the remark. “This guy is connected to Rico Martinez?” Avon questions aloud, only for his inquiry to be glossed over by his wife, who finds a deeper rooted interest in the comment their guests make, “did this Harlington guy blow up the hospital?”

“The only thing we can guarantee is that it wasn’t Rico. Other than that, we don’t know who blew up the building” Beau corrects, wanting to address the more-pressing concern before moving onto anything else. “Harlington isn’t only connected to Rico Martinez, but he lives in his old house” Jake proceeds, returning the dialogue to its initial point, “well, he did before he seemingly vacated the premises.”

“So what’s the point in telling me this?” Avon queries, sliding his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants as he glances back and forth between the officers, their faces going mostly unchanged from what he’d been able to see from his home’s warm lighting. “We think that Mr. Spears may be sheltering Rico Martinez for the time being” Jake soon responds, “they’re probably waiting for the heat to die down before Martinez gets into whatever it was he tried to get free over.”

“Do you think we’re targets of him- or, rather- them?” the author proceeds to question, able to hear the deep breath that the younger officer takes in along his right. “It’s certainly possible. One of the strongest suspects we have behind the people doing this to the two of you is Rico Martinez” Beau explains, noticing Penny’s face as it drifts away, looking into the distance as she turns around with dissatisfaction, “if he is, then Harlington may be another person we can attach to this case.”

“And this is all because you found a book?” Avon questions aloud, watching as the younger officer uncrosses his arms and shrugs his shoulders. “The scene that we found in that home was of two seats set up opposite each other. Under one of them, we found your book” Jake explains, using one hand to illustrate his speech whilst the other slides into his pocket for residency, “it’s not a very firm string to make assumptions with. It may be a coincidence or more- we don’t know yet.”

Frowning, Avon remains standing with his arms crossed whilst his wife retreats down the hallway toward their bedroom casually, her hands falling upon her hips as she turns back around once far enough away from the discourse. “What book was it?” the author inquires, looking to his left to find an uncertain expression paid to him from Jake, the older officer’s face quickly taking toward his partner’s own.

“It was ‘The Garden Manifesto’” Beau answers, watching as the writer pulls his eyes away and begins staring at the wall directly opposite himself, not yet uttering a word in return. “Is there something wrong, Mr. King?” Jake wonders aloud, noticing the squint that comes over the writer’s eyes from the man’s side, an immediate reaction to the question not paid to the officer that stands by.

“Not at all” Avon answers after a short pause, sucking on the corner of his mouth as the inner flesh of his lips are pulled against the front of his teeth. Speaking not another word on the matter, the author stares forward intently whilst thoughts are kept within his head, rummaged through like stored away boxes in search of something more than what was hidden aside.

= Remedy Hills is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“You mentioned the coffee a few days ago” Beth remarks, one leg kicked over the other as she still sits with her arms restrained, the itches that her wrists have been plagued with from the scratchy rope that ties around her wrist having become easier to disregard in recent days. “Something about how it was easier to stop drinking it than others” she reiterates, looking at the man that sits in the rocking chair opposite herself, his hands draped over the ends of its armrests.

“Yeah, that part was the one that I wasn’t too excited to get into” Harlington confesses, looking toward the exposed wax candle that sits on the table at the room’s centre. “Everything else about the idea of a cover-up and people wanting to not catch the killer are- even if far fetched- at least not beyond the realm of imagination” he continues, looking at the flame that bathes his face in the faintest amount of light whilst shaking his head, “the coffee is just a slice of a bigger part.”

“You mean this web you’re still trying to convince me of?” Beth questions back, challenging the man’s comments as his eyes take upward, looking at his prisoner. “You started trying to convince me that Remedy was alive before my hands were behind my back” the runaway young woman recalls, staring toward the face that pays her much the same, undivided attention, “don’t shy away from continuing to try and spin it more than I’ve got no choice but to entertain it.”

“It’s not a lie” Harlington corrects, having waited for his imprisoned accomplice to finish voicing her thought aloud before interjecting his own into the equation. “Everything about Remedy- the town, the people, and the things in it- just works differently here than it does anywhere else” the kidnapper continues, gently swaying back and forth in his seat as he speaks, “I don’t know how else to explain it other than saying the town itself is alive. There’s a force that won’t let this place go.”

“And what proof do you have of that other than the fact that I got lucky and escaped a car crash uninjured?” Beth wonders aloud, expecting a displeased frown to come over the opposite man’s face. “The coffee” he instead answers, not taking long in doing so, as he attends to the woman’s dejections toward the claim.

“Remedy Hills runs on the coffee. Anyone that drinks the coffee here just can’t help themselves but continue to drink it all throughout the day” Harlington proceeds, folding his hands atop his lap whilst his elbows rest along the sides of the rocking seat. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the crack of dawn or an hour after sundown- everyone in their home is drinking the coffee. When they stop, the town does everything in its power to convince them to take another swig.”

“Or perhaps the fact that caffeine is a drug and drinking it so much makes it impossible to go cold turkey without some side-effects has something to do with it?” Beth argues the opposite, only for her claim to fall on deaf ears. “Beth. I need you to tell me in good faith that you could expect to walk into a town anywhere else in this country and see everyone that calls it home running a pot of coffee at eleven at night” Harlington retorts, “I’m assuring you- no one does that.”

“So Remedy Hills has a coffee addiction unlike anywhere else in the country. Alright, let’s just pretend you’re right” the woman responds, knowing internally that such a case is likely somewhat true, “how does that correlate to the entire town being alive? Not just the people being alive, but the whole damn town being alive?”

“It doesn’t” Harlington responds, providing a rebuttal that the woman across from him had not come around to anticipating. “The hooks that caffeine has on this town is just one of the easier things to point to in lieu of actually showing you how the town’s alive. It’s one of the first examples I go to” he furthers, trying to lend credence to his argument, “the town hasn’t truly slept since the murder happened, and now- until the case is truly solved- the people in it won’t get to either.”

“There’s a lot more sense to make out of a claim like that than there would be if you’d been arguing that the coffee was drugged and we got hooked onto it” Beth responds, watching the slight amusement that her kidnapper takes in the claim. “If you’d told me that, I’d be more inclined to believe there was something fishy going on” she remarks, a comment that her abductor simply nods along with, “I’ll be honest, I’m a lot less inclined to believe this is the doing of a living town.”

“Of course you are. I’d look at anyone who’d argue otherwise a lot less pleasantly than I look at you” Harlington retorts, not blaming his company for the doubt they present. “Let’s pretend that the town’s coffee intake were more easily-explainable than the town being alive for a second. We’ll keep our feet rooted in reality and try to be sceptics that don’t want to be swayed” he proposes, looking off to the quaint cabin’s side as he searches through his mind, “explain the fog.”

“What do you mean ‘explain the fog’?” Beth queries without much of a pause, listening to the faint creaking of the wooden chair that her kidnapper rocks gently in, “we live near the Appalachians. We’re bound to get fog.” Puckering his lips and nodding, Harlington sits with that conclusion in his mind as the lean in his seat takes him all the way back, only for the feet that he presses against the old, wooden floorboards to refuse him any descent from the peak of his recline.

“Since when has fog ever just fallen over some place in one massive swoop?” the man queries, pointing out the flaws in the woman’s explanation, “and since when has it only lasted a matter of minutes- sometimes seconds- at a time before disappearing without a trace?” Glancing off to the side, Beth thinks of an answer for a few seconds whilst the man across from her waits on, refusing to interrupt the train of thought that eventually arrives at a destination without a station.

“I don’t know. It’s weird fog and we’re a weird town” she concludes, triggering another humoured reaction from her captor, his smile widening from ear to ear as his head bows, trying not to look at the source of his amusement out of respect. “That’s not how fog works and I know that because I’m a grown ass woman. I get that, alright?” Beth chirps, calling her abductor down from his gleefully indulged state of emotion, “it’s still better than explaining it away on some supernatural town theory.”

Lifting his eyebrows as he lets out a sigh and shakes his head, Harlington lets the joints in his legs release from their statue-esque stiffening as the rocking chair leans forward, allowing him to step away from its restraints. “What does it matter anyway? You’re just making an empty statement without telling me why you have it or even what the point of it is” Beth proclaims, watching as the man walks off for the kitchen, his eyes wandering toward the fridge.

Watching as the man’s figure is entrenched within the warm light from the machine’s interior, Harlington’s hostage thinks quietly to herself in the moment of silence that her kidnapper pays her. Listening to the retrieval of a glass bottle, Beth watches as the cabin’s owner steps toward the opposite end of the nearby room, grabbing a bottle opener from within the drawer it resides in.

“With all of these questions that you’re asking me, why don’t I ask you one?” she finally decides upon, mimicking the course of action that he’d taken with her, “why do you believe the town is alive?”

“Because I saw it myself” Harlington answers without hesitation, doing so just as he snaps the cap off his bottle of beer and lets the metal piece fall to the ground, jumping along the floorboards without a purpose before slowly coming to a stop upside down. “A few years ago, I found myself on hard times” he speaks, lifting the bottle’s rim to his lips as he takes a swig, sighing with relief, “I got a call from a friend who offered me a job taxiing people around.”

Interested in hearing the man’s comments for reasons other than her lack of another choice, Beth sinks further into the sofa she’d been left upon and allows the man to continue speaking. “One night, I got a call from someone who wanted to be driven out of Remedy” Harlington proceeds, returning to his chair with the drink in tow, “usually, I wasn’t supposed to take people out of town. But, this person, she just sounded like she needed something to go right for her that day.”

Wrapping his fingers around one of the armrests, the abductor sighs as he lowers himself into the seat, again lifting the liquor bottle to his lips. “She probably wasn’t any older than her mid-twenties, but she was dressed like she didn’t belong in a town as small as Remedy Hills” Harlington confesses, “I asked her why she was trying to get to a place like that. She obviously didn’t belong, and it seemed like even she knew that. The whole thing just seemed unusual.”

Staring back into the candlelight, the abductor begins speaking slower than he had as he furthers along the story, unsure of just how much attention his captive audience is truly affording him. “She said there was more to everything than just what it looked like. There was always something more- and that applied to people too” Harlington admits, lifting his right leg over the left as he begins rocking in his seat once more.

“She said there were too many people that couldn’t see that. For that reason, she was going to do whatever she could to change that” the man speaks to a woman who resides in silence, her mind not too certain on how to react to the words that are being spoken. “She stayed quiet for another few seconds in the backseat before she started talking again” Harlington remarks, “she said that- if people could never close their eyes- they’d eventually have no choice but to see everything.”

Turning his eyes to the ground, the man sits without absolute stillness for nearly a minute before snapping out of the daze, another drink taken from his beer whilst Beth watches on, not wanting to speak up until the story is finished. “She said she wouldn’t let them” Harlington finally mutters, looking back to the woman opposite himself before reiterating, “she said specifically that she wouldn’t let them. I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t need to- she stopped talking after that.”

Though she tries not to subscribe herself to the horror-like ambiance that comes with the man’s declarations, Beth struggles to not succumb to the hair-raising chill that surrounds her, a part of her mind following the story along as if it were a tale told around a campfire. “After a while, we got to her destination and I parked along the side of the road, I heard the door close after a second or two and thought nothing of it” Harlington proceeds, the tension in his face deepening.

“But then I didn’t see her” he explains, deep in thought about the night that he can’t shake from his head, “I checked all around the car. I looked in the back, I looked through the windshield, I looked everywhere. I hadn’t even taken into account where the hell we were.” Again sipping from the bottle, the man’s face never slips into a descent from its sour and confused visage, curiosity wrapping itself around him like a snake to its prey.

“Aside from an old apartment complex that didn’t look like it had been lived in for years, all she had me do was park on the side of the road” Harlington proclaims, his face almost managing to illuminate out of the stupefaction that the night left him with. “We were in the middle of nowhere, and this chick was nowhere to be found, and I had no idea why the hell everything felt so odd” he continues in quick succession, his words again being spoken at a regular pace.

“So, I got this sickening knot in my stomach and got out of the car. It was just such a weird thing that I just wanted to make sure she was alright and we were actually at the right place” the man proceeds, still going without a reply from the woman in his company. “I got out, called for her, and heard nothing back” he remembers, shaking his head without a clue in the present time just as he had that night, coming up empty for a reasonable explanation, “it’s like she just straight up vanished.”

With a slight widening of his pupils, Harlington looks at the floor once more, the same hair-raising reaction taken as the woman that he speaks with. “When I went back to get in my car, I caught just the smallest glimpse of a piece of paper on the telephone pole I’d parked a few feet away from. I didn’t see anything the first time around, but it was enough to warrant a second look” the man proceeds, carrying his line of sight back toward the restrained Beth, “it was a missing person’s poster.”

With a squint of her own, the hand-tied former librarian looks forward without much of an idea over what to say if anything at all. Keeping his eyes glued upon the victim of his abduction, Harlington jumps forward in time from that night, detailing only the most vital pieces worth remembering. “After I saw it, I got back in my car and drove to the police station” he declares, rocking in his seat slowly, “I told them what happened, I left, and when I walked out of there- fog was everywhere.”

Resting his beer upon the table just one leg’s length away, Harlington couples his hands atop his lap once more whilst his involuntary guest listens in, having asked for this in the first place. “They found her body not too far from where I dropped her off. She’d been dead for weeks by then, and when they followed the evidence- It led them all the way back to my boss...” the man confesses, watching Beth's eyes widen as he pauses, building up to the reveal he makes a point of, “...Rico Martinez.”

“Stop” the woman immediately responds, shaking her head in disbelief at the result in which her abductor had come to, neither finding the sense in it or wanting to. “The taxi company was just a front for Rico’s other dealings. It was a way to wash the money that he’d bring into Remedy. I was one of the only people he employed- hand to god herself” Harlington doubles down, surrendering the belief in his recollection to the woman who it’d been uttered to.

“Apparently she owed him a ton of money and he had her disposed of when she didn’t pay it back. Cops didn’t buy my story, wouldn’t leave me alone, but the people in Remedy didn’t care” he continues to recall, shaking his head just as Beth does, “the evidence was cut and dry. Even if they thought my story was as fishy as Rico thought it was, there was no denying that my hands were clean in this matter.”

“That can’t be- no, you’re- you- no” Beth immediately refuses, the shaking of her head proving to be the opposite reaction of the repeated nod that her captor takes. “The people demanded justice and the cops switched their focus from me to Rico. It didn’t take long to bring him in” Harlington explains, standing firm in the stance that he takes, “Rico thought it was bullshit and that I was a rat, and the public assumed that I made the story up as cover- that I didn’t wanna snitch directly.”

“‘Cause that’s what you did” Beth replies, refusing to buy into the claim that the man makes, only for his vehement standing to persist. “It’s not. I bought Rico’s old cabin off the state when it went up for auction and most of the people in his little network fucked off to keep their business going on somewhere else” Harlington doubles down, assuring the woman’s of his accuracies in the story spun like a tale, “people think it was phoney, but I- I’m telling you-  I saw that woman that night.”

“She was dead, that’s bullshit, and I don’t believe you” Beth replies, only for the extension of Harlington’s finger to lift toward her, refusing to let her continue with such a stance for much longer. “You don’t have to. Most people don’t. There’s a very select few, but you’re certainly not alone in that” he commands,  “but I’ve got people that see what I see. As long as that’s the case, I can sleep well at night for the most part.”

“Harlington, I don’t believe you” Beth proclaims again, reaching a decision that the man had already been long prepared for. “Of course you don’t. I already told you that you wouldn’t, I don’t expect your mind to change” the man rebukes, shrugging off the woman’s conclusion for the dismissal he cares to pay it, “the fact of the matter, however, is this- the guy that thinks I ratted on him is now on the loose and most likely coming after me.”

Falling silent, Beth licks her lips and looks away, staring into an unimportant corner of the home as she sits with her thoughts, shaking her head slowly. “If you don’t want me to keep talking, I’ll stop right now. At the end of the day, it was you who asked why I bought into this town being alive” Harlington responds, reminding her of such a fact, a return to the initial inquiry that brings the woman’s face back toward his own, “I’ve bought into it because I’ve seen it.”

“Stop talking” Beth counters, watching as the man lifts his hands in surrender, displaying his palms to his hostage and reclining in his seat once more as the audible silence commences, falling over the living room with ease.

|

Whilst his wife sleeps on the opposite side of the home, Avon searches through the treasure trove of information that his laptop affords him, the various screens his eyes wander into paying him looks of one picture after another of the soul that had been spoken of earlier in the night. “Harlington Spears” the search bar of the social media page he visits reads, affording the man a look at the various profile pages that apply to such a name or one similar.

Glossing over one photograph after another, the man searches through unfamiliar visage after unfamiliar visage with no end in sight, the desire to find anything that stands out to him giving him the energy to carry on with his endless navigating of the screen. From social media, the author takes his attention to the main web page itself, looking through the browser with the same man’s name written on its own feed, offering thousands of pages to be seen by those who stumble upon them.

Hanging his head, the trial that unfolds begins to take its toll on Avon, who presses his palms against his eyes as his lips part to yawn, the stretching of his arms bringing him back into the moment. For another few seconds, the man aimlessly wanders toward anything with the mention of the name before conceding defeat, reaching for the computer’s lid with the intent to close it before taking his eye to one, final headline- wanting to lose sight of the screen in good faith.

“Remedy!” the man mutters aloud, hurriedly returning the laptop’s lid to an upright position as his widened eyes fall upon the headline to an article relative to the town in which he resides, finding more hope than he had all night long. “Local business owner arrested in connection to grizzly murder of young girl” Avon whispers, reading the bold headline before running his sights down the lengths of the page.

“Spears (left), pictured beside-” the author further grumbles under his breath, reading the description of a group photograph before losing sight of the text, his undivided focus instead being paid to one face out of the many that appear within the image. Falling silent, Avon suddenly pulls back and rubs his eyes once more, diving forward into the screen again as he falls upon one, particular visage.

“Found you” he whispers in disbelief, looking back toward the small text underneath the picture, searching out the name that accompanies the appearance familiar to him, “Devin Reed.” Reclaiming possession of his mouse, Avon directs his cursor to the bottom of his screen and pulls up the video that’d been meant for his eyes only, finding a similar stature and complexion to the amateur film’s subject to the one displayed in the group portrait.

Returning to the browser, the sleep-deprived writer looks up the subject of his interest before a smile dawns upon his face, one that’s joined by enough clarity for the man to leave his seat and take toward the home’s rear patio door. Brought to a strange peace of mind from the cabin-front photograph, Avon steps onto the balcony of his backyard and triggers the storm lights, staring into an empty plot that stretches toward an equally-empty line of trees, the scene coming together for him.

At the same time, the cabin depicted in the image that hooks Avon’s fascination finds itself hosting life it hadn’t anticipated since its evacuation earlier in the day. With its lights on, the woodlands-based home is visited by a man in a set of heavy combat boots, their bottoms traipsing through the interior from one end to the other and back again.

“Where the fuck is it!?” a man angrily growls, pushing over furniture and throwing lamps across whatever rooms they reside in, looking for similar answers to the ones that the town’s newest resident had sought out. Eventually finding his way to the kitchen, the intruder finds himself in possession of a stack of letters, the contents of one in particular affording him a very pleasant discovery.

“I’ve got you now, you son of a bitch” Rico murmurs, reading off an address separate from the one his old cabin had been fitted with off an electric bill, a vindictive smile stretching from ear to ear. With keys jingling in his hand, the escapee takes to the driver’s seat of a stolen sedan and hits the open road in search of his target, one that his mind has been enraptured by since the moment he hit the open road.”

== Remedy Hills ==