S2, E7 | Morals and Priorities

As the sun rises, Beth presses her back against the cabin’s exterior, sulking with her head bowed as the sound of shovelled dirt colliding with the ground greets her ears. Pulling upward with a grunt as he discards one dirt pile after another, Harlington sweats over the makeshift grave as he stands within it, the dirt’s level almost reaching that of his hips.

Controlling his breaths so as to not wind himself, the theory-proven abductor slaves over the hole that he creates within the earth’s surface before coming to a stop, inspecting the burial plot before glancing toward the tarp-wrapped body that it’s meant for. “Do you think it’d be immoral to bury someone like Rico in a shallow grave?” Harlington inquires, taking his eyes toward the seated woman a few yards away, “‘cause I’m getting tired and you don’t seem too thrilled about helping.”

“How are you just acting like this is normal?” Beth wonders aloud instead, completely dismissing the man’s question as she lifts her face toward him, still shaken from the sights she was exposed to. Sensing a longer conversation than just what the quandary would indicate, Harlington lets out a lengthy sigh before thrusting the shovel’s tip into the soft dirt he stands atop, pressing his hand against the thigh of the leg that he lifts from the hole, lifting himself back to ground level.

“We just watched a man be killed by a ghost, and you’re just digging a grave- like it’s your job” the woman continues, visibly distraught in the many changes that the prior night had brought upon her life. “Yes, I am. And part of the reason for that is because the person who’s killed is a wanted fugitive that I’ve probably already been connected to” Harlington replies, undoing the glove on his dominant hand as he nears, “if they find the body, I don’t think they’ll believe a ghost did it.”

“I’m being serious” Beth responds, only for her assertion to be doubled down upon by the approaching grave digger, his hands pressing the gloves together and dropping them. “So am I” Harlington replies, retrieving a half-consumed bottle of water from a tree stump. “Maybe I’d be able to get away with claiming self-defence, but I have my suspicions over whether that’d be allowed to fly” he confesses, tilting his head back to take down as much of a gulp as he can.

“What the fuck do we do now then?” Beth retorts, looking up to the man with her arms wrapped around her legs, holding them closely against her chest. “What do you mean?” Harlington quickly wonders back, gesturing toward his abducted victim’s free use of every limb, “you’re free. There’s no rope keeping you back anymore.”

“I can’t just go back to living my life!” Beth rejoinders, her comment prompting the man to shake his head in refusal, holding off on replying outright as he takes another drink. “Of course you can’t. Do you think anyone can just go back to being normal after seeing that?” Harlington quips, against displaying his refusal before returning the cap to his plastic bottle, tossing the transparent container aside.

“What the hell am I supposed to do then!?” Beth shouts, throwing herself back upon both feet as the discourse turns hostile, her resentment directed toward a man who brushes it off as if it were nothing. “How the hell do you think I would know that?” Harlington calmly restates, hands held out at his either side, “I don’t even know what I’m gonna do next. Besides, why choose now to go along with what I say? I practically had to offer an arm and a leg for you to hear me out.”

“You kidnapped me!” the woman rebuttals, a point that the man knows to be true, though it’s not the point he was trying to get at. “I sure did. And even though you’ve no longer got ropes tied around your wrists- you’re still here waiting for me to make a move” Harlington rebukes, slowly approaching the woman with his voice lowered slightly, “go ahead and ask yourself why the hell you’d still be waiting on me to tell you what to do next.”

“Because I don’t know what to do next” Beth responds, trying to calm herself down to the level her abductor seems to remain at, his tensions never escalating in spite of the challenge waged toward him. “There are still so many things you haven’t told me despite the fact that you’ve had me locked away for days” she proceeds, reaching for whatever straws can be found within a finger’s length, “you won’t even tell me why I’m important to any of this.”

“Because I don’t know” Harlington interjects, his admission being one that prevents the woman from continuing to speak, her lips remaining apart despite nothing further being added. “Most of the paranormal stuff that I told you about were just theories. They’re theories that I had reason to believe in- even if others would consider me crazy for it- but they were just theories” the man concedes, dejected in his demeanour as he comes clean about his sizable uncertainties.

“I do know that there’s something about you- just like me- that Remedy has a purpose for. But, again- just like me- I don’t know what that purpose is” he confesses, approaching the home to take the seat along the ground that his victim had recently occupied. “I was stalling whenever you were brought up in the conversation. Unlike the coffee or the town being alive, I don’t even know how to begin theorising over what the point of us is” Harlington concludes, “I’m as clueless as you are.”

Closing her lips, Beth stares into the distance as she places her hands upon her hips, taking in the serenity that the middle woodlands provides to her despite the deceased body that lies a mere few feet away. Sorrowful and apologetic, Harlington keeps his thoughts to himself and presses the back of his head against the cabin, eyes taking toward the cloudy sky that resides above the trees that surround the area.

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Beth questions aloud, her spoken wonderment prompting the man to lower his chin, taking his eyes toward her direction. “If the town is alive, if there’s something it wants... If there’s something it needs from me...” she reiterates, staring back toward her captor without much in the way of belief that any alternative is possible to the conclusion she comes to, “...I guess I don’t have a choice but to figure out what that is, do I?”

Without uttering a word, Harlington rests his forearms against the caps of his knees and twists his hands around in defeat, signalling a much similar resolution to have been taken toward by himself. Hanging her head, Beth sucks on her bottom lips for a second before nodding to herself, eyes travelling across the scenery once more before falling upon the covered corpse closeby, her sights again bouncing into the distance as she accepts the fate bestowed upon her.

“Fucking hell, Remedy.”

= 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 =

“Oh my god, where were you!?” Penny exclaims, spilling into the home’s entry at the sound of an unlocked door opening, the figure of her husband making his way inside just as the sun takes over the horizon, shielded by an army of clouds that makes up heaven’s obstruction. “Doing something that I probably shouldn’t do anymore” Avon confesses, hanging his head with disappointment as he sheds the coat he’d worn out the prior night.

Taken aback by the comment, Penny’s approach toward the man comes to a halt before she can reach him, her quiet inquisition understood without her husband even needing to take notice of it. “I’ve spent the last few days chasing something that I’m only now starting to realise probably isn’t in our best interest” Avon continues, hanging up the cotton cape on a hook beside the door before carrying forward.

Without elaborating, the author steps past his concerned and confused spouse and makes his way toward the computer he so frequently spends his time behind. “I really hope you’re about to explain what you meant by that” Penny clarifies, a comment that her husband doesn’t react to at first, continuing his approach toward the laptop before breaking his silence as he pulls out the seat.

“When the bomb went off at the hospital, the people in the smiley face masks came back. Well, I thought the people in the smiley face masks came back” Avon corrects, letting free a relieved sigh as his bottom presses into the chair’s padding. “It turns out, there was only one guy that showed up that night. From what he says, he’s got nothing to do with the group. At least, not the one tormenting us” the writer proceeds, lifting the computer’s top as his wife draws closer.

“He sent me a clip he’d spliced together with one of the interviews Oprah had me do with her. It wasn’t long after I’d published the book about that woman who buried herself” he reveals. Reserving her grand fascinations, Penny watches as her husband curls his fingers toward her, gesturing for the spouse to approach his side of the makeshift desk that he’d set up and join him in gazing at the screen.

“A guy cut in at the end of the video and said that there was corruption in Remedy Hills. Something about the cops having solved the murder that made it famous and covering it up so the mystery could live on” Avon explains, removing a crumpled up piece of paper from his pocket. “He gave me this address. It belongs to a woman that the smileys ran out of town way before we came in” he remarks whilst the paper is unballed, “apparently, she wanted to write about more than the mystery.”

Opening one of his computer’s files, the author plays the video that was delivered to him in secrecy for his wife to watch on, her silence enduring its entire length until the clip reaches its end. “The guy who sent me this is someone named Devin. The woman he sent me to was named Leah, and she started coming to the conclusion that Dana Whitehead- the chief of police- knew something she shouldn’t have” Avon concludes, leaning back in his seat, “they ran her out of town.”

“Does that mean they’re trying to run us out of town too?” Penny quickly questions back, asking the most-noteworthy curiosity that comes over her mind instinctively, holding out hope that at least one worry can be settled in that moment. “I don’t know. I would think that’d be likely, but then again- the first thing they did was send me someone’s chopped off finger” Avon responds, shaking his head at a loss for certainty, “I don’t know what they want from me- if anything at all.”

“What the hell are we gonna do then?” Penny questions aloud, watching as her husband leans forward, pressing his hand against the side of his forehead, rubbing at his temple in order to relieve himself of the headache that’s beginning to set in. “I’m not sure. My first thought was to keep rolling with what I told my publisher about taking the story in a new direction if I’m being honest” Avon replies, putting his faith in whatever presents itself as even remotely reassuring.

“If I say it’s something like a psychological investigation using the people of Remedy Hills as a case study publicly, that may throw people off my scent” Avon explains, his eyes closed as the exhaustion from a night without sleep wears down on him. “The issue with that is the fact that I’m not sure we’ve even seen the worst that’s yet to come” a dejected writer communicates, his fears spoken aloud for his closest and most-trusted confidant to hear.

“We’ve gotten threats, severed fingers and unwanted visits from a group crazy enough to kill each other for stepping out line and leave them in our backyard” Avon assures, his discontent with the situation made clear in the exasperation behind his every breath, “if I look into this any further than I already have, it’ll put us at an even greater risk than we’re already at.”

Standing out from his seat, the low-spirited author steps through the patio door and powers on the storm lights, staring out into a sea of grass that leads- undisturbed- up to an equally empty line of trees. “I was told that they don’t kill unless they absolutely have to. They take care of loose threads or whatever is necessary” Avon carries on, joined by his spouse as she follows his lead beyond the home’s interior.

“Devin calls them ‘the Cleaners’. He says they are Rico’s men and they do the bidding of the local government and whatever’s affiliated with them” he continues to explain, every word uttered being fully taken down by the woman that shares the deck with him as if they were notes. “From what it sounds like, they stay away from jail time in exchange for this” Avon concludes, shrugging his shoulders as he stares into the distance, “I don’t know who they are specifically or why they’re after us.”

“So let’s take that information to the cops. Jake and Beau have been trying to pin Rico with these dudes in the masks already, so maybe they’ll-” Penny suggests, looking her husband in the eyes as he interrupts her, his face turning in her direction. “Part of the people that are supposedly in on the cover up are the police” Avon corrects, his head hanging in dejection as the corner that he feels he’s been backed into becomes more apparent the longer he spends in it.

“I’m not implying Jake and Beau are involved in the corruption. It doesn’t sound like everyone is from what Devin’s telling me. It could merely be a select few- in addition to Dana” the man clarifies, not wanting to be mistaken, “but even if they wanted to do something about it, they can’t. Dana Whitehead is their superior, and any in-roads they might be able to establish would be snuffed out before they could even capitalise on it.”

“So you’re just gonna shovel this all away and let it rot while you write some think piece about why people kill for the eightieth time!?” Penny chirps back, her eagerness in speaking out against the conclusions her husband had come to surprising the man greatly. “You’ve got people telling you that there’s a massive cover up in one of the greatest American mysteries on this side of the century, and you just...” she proceeds, struggling to wrap her mind around such a case, “...ignore it?”

“What else would you have me do, Penny? I’m so far out of my depth! I’m not some investigative journalist, I’m a writer who pens a book every year or two for a decade’s worth of cheques” Avon retorts, speaking ill of the task he’s apparently placed at the helm of. “The people who have any business looking into this stuff are people that I’m not sure I can trust” the man continues, “besides, if I did tell the cops, what happens when the cleaners find out what I know?”

“Then we’ll tell Jake and Beau to look into the stuff in secret” Penny replies, quickly having come onto the side in favour of delving deeper. “If there’s some fucked up shit going on in this town, the only choice we should be thinking of other than telling someone about this would be to leave” she doubles down, watching as her husband’s frown places itself in her direction, not a verbal reply to accompany it.

Reading the man’s face, Penny inspects her husband’s eyes before her head pulls back, a reprieve taken from the conversation itself as she tries to process what his demeanour implies. “You want to leave, don’t you?” she questions aloud, the shamed expression that carries itself back toward the town’s distance lending her conclusion credence, “why?”

“Because none of this is worth the trouble that comes with it!” Avon proclaims, his voice not loud enough to come across like a yell, but not low enough to be construed as civilised. “We’ve got some freakshow group of criminals trying to shut us up while- at the same time- they commit acts of domestic terrorism by blowing up an entire fucking hospital” the author continues, allowed to continue speaking freely as his wife goes quiet.

“People are being killed, Beth is off god knows where, and I’m finding it impossible to trust our own damn police department to tell us the fucking truth” Avon declares, slamming the palm of his hand against the patio’s bannister. “If that’s not bad enough, it’s not just me that gets put in danger if all of this cover-up bullshit turns out to be true and someone finds out that I know about it...” the man proceeds, turning to look his wife in the eyes that take toward him, “...it’s you too.”

With a frown, Penny stares away without a reply at first, allowing the valid point that her husband makes to settle itself within her mind. “Don’t get me wrong, if a cover-up did happen- it’s entirely fucked up” Avon explains, licking the insides of his mouth as he, too, turns his full attention to the entrance of the woodlands at the opposite end of their spacious backyard, “but trying to play the heroes in solving the Remedy Hills mystery isn’t a role that we belong in.”

Knowing her husband’s point to be true, Penny remains silent, her own hands resting over the wooden railing that the pair stand at, her sights falling to the ground. Sharing in the quietude, Avon sits with the discouraging sensation of sickness that comes along with his refusal to present justice for the lives lost as a result of the mystery’s prolonging, the feeling making no effort to sit well within him- though it’s one that he forces himself to endure in the name of his family’s interest.

|

“It’s really just the idea that the town- or the ghost if you’d prefer to think of it that way- doesn’t want the people in the town sleeping longer than needed to function” Harlington confesses, ceasing his explanation as he aids the woman who shares his company in relocating the corpse.

“Maybe it has something to do with the coffee itself or maybe the coffee is just how the town deals with it- but sleep isn’t something that Remedy has the luxury of” Harlington doubles down, “if New York were the city that never sleeps, Remedy Hills would be its distant cousin.”

“You can stop speaking in riddles any day now and just... be direct” Beth assures, groaning as she steps into the shallow grave, leading Rico’s body by the feet whilst her abductor carries the rest of the criminal’s weight. “Fine. I think that the town either does something to the coffee that keeps people up for most of the night, or keeps people up for the night themselves” Harlington replies, cutting his theory short at her behest, “if it’s the latter, then coffee might be how they cope.”

“And what do you think it wants with us?” Beth carries forward, dropping the body’s legs into the hole just as Harlington relinquishes his grip of its top-half, leaving the criminal to the place in which his final rest will be taken. “To figure out what actually happened that night the boy was killed” Harlington responds, wiping off his dirt-covered hands whilst his newly-minted acquaintance releases her fingers from the gloves she’d talked him into giving her.

“I already helped the cops solve who murdered the girl we saw this morning. I doubt it’s her murder that we’re supposed to solve” Harlington confesses, leaning over as he catches his breath. “The only other thing that comes to mind is the Remedy Phantom case” he concludes, a natural route that the woman across from him also comes to, “if the town is run by people corrupt enough to let Rico get away with his shit, I wouldn’t put it past them to do the same in the Phantom case.”

Wrapping her fingers around the wooden handle that protrudes from the shovel that Harlington had buried into the earth, Beth begins the process of covering the tracks for a living town, the murder it had committed now falling on her hands to pretend never happened. “Why did you start following me?” she questions aloud, digging the tool’s head into the dirt once more whilst gaining the man’s attention.

“You followed me out of Remedy after I left, right? It was after the people in those masks attacked me. I tried covering my tracks and getting as far away as I could” Beth clarifies, yet to pry the metal head out from the soft pile as she locks eyes with her captor, “why did you follow me?”

Hanging his head, Harlington declines to speak at first, instead looking to the ground as the woman begins the process of covering their tracks. “Don’t go silent on me now” the woman stoically remarks, a slight grin carried in the corners of her mouth as she takes notice of the lack of hurry in the man’s attempt to reply, “you’ve already convinced me that the town is alive. If you’re afraid that I won’t believe whatever explanation you come up with- you haven’t been paying attention.”

“It’s not that you won’t be convinced by my answer- it’s that you’re not going to like the answer” Harlington corrects, hanging back whilst the woman continues filling the grave with its natural covering of soil. “I don’t like the fact that the town is haunted, but I’m gonna have to learn to live with that, aren’t I?” Beth questions back, again making a proclamation that the man disregards.

“It’s not that kind of dislike that I’m talking about” Harlington again counters, his persistent refusal to answer the question only drawing greater intrigue from the woman who asks it. “For the love of Remedy, just tell me before I decide to bash your brains in with this shovel” Beth declares, earning an amused chuckle from the man she threatens.

“You can try, but Remedy won’t let me die any sooner than it’ll let you die” the man jokes, looking up to the woman before finding a complete vacancy of humour in her stare, eyes darting in his direction with adamancy. “Just answer the fucking question, asshole” Beth again prompts, the energy in her voice having faded entirely as her patience reaches its end, leaving her partner of unbelievable circumstance little choice but to provide her with clarity.

Wiping a bead of sweat from his glistening forehead, Harlington pulls in a deep breath before letting it free as he speaks, his face finding the woman’s from across the grave. “Because the people under those masks weren’t the ones that attacked you that night...” he confesses, watching the visage of a patience-expended victim revolt into something of disapproval and disdain, “...I was.”

Her efforts of putting Rico’s body away for a permanent slumber having come to an unintended halt, Beth stares blankly at the man opposite her, his voice yet to provide context behind the admission of guilt. “Before you left Remedy Hills- before I’d even attacked you- I was starting to have these weird dreams whenever I’d try to get an hour or two of sleep” Harlington continues, having waited long enough for a rebuttal from the woman that never arrived, giving him the greenlight to carry on.

“Every time I’d have these dreams, I’d wake up and the whole town would be covered in fog. After asking around, I’d find out that most of the things I’d been dreaming of had actually happened” he proceeds, adjusting his posture as his balance begins to grow less steady, threatening to drop him into the hole that Remedy’s victim lies in.

“The guy that got killed a few weeks before I started following you- I dreamed that happening before it did. I don’t even know what it meant now, but I know that I envisioned it” Harlington continues, still speaking to the woman who looks at him in silence, “other little things that I still can’t piece together- I saw those. And then, I want to say it was about three days before I- y’know... I saw you.”

With its tip firmly left within the ground, Beth releases her grasp of the tool as the tension in her body heightens, interested in hearing out the man that spill his guts to her, but struggling to keep herself from lashing out in a physical way that the shovel would only make worse. “I saw you being dragged away by a group of people in those masks. I saw you being ripped into a van and taken away” Harlington further explains, his spirits lowering to a similarly-defeated level as his victim’s.

“All I remember is you walking out of a house, the air being foggy, and you getting snatched up” he assures, shaking his head and dispelling any alternative solutions that could be reached. “I didn’t see who was under the masks, I didn’t see what happened before, I didn’t see what led up to it, I only saw what happened” Harlington pleads, still able to make out the shaken and hurt demeanour that Beth pays to him.

“Unlike the other times that I had those dreams, there wasn’t any fog when I woke up that night. I ran over to the library and I saw you talking to Avon King over coffee” Harlington persists, shrugging his shoulders as the lieu of any more comforting explanation to make dawns upon him, “I realised that there was a point to seeing you in my dreams and figured that I might be able to stop whatever it was that was supposed to happen to you from actually happening.”

“So you attacked me?” Beth responds, watching as her assailant’s head shakes, a gesture of correction being made before the assumption can fester any further resentment. “I didn’t know what else to do. I recognised the scene that night from my dream and knew I had to step in before the van got there” Harlington explains, at a loss for a better conclusion even after the fact, “I didn’t have much time to work with after you stepped out of the house. I looked around, saw a rock, and-”

“And you hit me over the head with it” Beth replies, finishing the man’s story on his behalf, already aware of where it was meant to be leading. “That was the only dream I had that didn’t come true yet. In my defence- it still never came true” Harlington retorts, a rebuke that would otherwise infuriate the woman, but is now just another horrible memory on top of a mountain of others that have come to plague her mind in the last twelve hours.

“I’m not trying to come off like I saved your life or anything, but I know that there had to be some reason why I saw that happening before it actually happened” Harlington proceeds, stepping around the grave’s edge in hopes of displaying his apology for the action. “I’d followed you from that point on and figured that I needed to appear somewhat-” the man continues, only to stop in his tracks as the woman backs away, putting her hands out to prevent him from nearing any closer.

No longer met with an explanation, Beth tries fighting through the clutter in her mind whilst the town-haunted man just beside her voices his apology once more. Letting free a heavy breath, the woman points at the shovel and walks off, returning to the cabin in an effort of creating space for herself. “You can take over from here-” she mutters, looking from one side to the other in quick succession as she tries to gather herself enough to depart, “-I need, I- to- I- uh.”

Stammering over her words, Beth refuses to finish her thought before heading off, closing in on the cabin’s entrance before disappearing behind it under Harlington’s watchful eye. Looking at the heavens before punching the air in aggravation, the assailant accepts the chore left behind for him as he growls beneath his breath, angered by the circumstances that surround the two of them as he reclaims the shovel, taking over for his victim in finishing off Rico’s final resting place.

== Remedy Hills ==