S2, E8 | Keep This Quiet

“But still, the people fail to sleep when their heads hit the pillow” Avon types, his eyes following the blinking line that speeds across his current page, spewing out letters at whatever pace the writer’s mind is willing to work at. “Whether it be from the memories of what happened- or the fear that it’ll someday happen again-” the words appear, stretching their black lines across the white backdrop they are virtually pressed upon, “-the sleepy town has been left without its namesake.”

Empty in all directions around him, the dining room in which the author writes from sits in complete darkness anywhere the monitor’s intense lighting doesn’t touch. “Swaying in rocking chairs along their porches, seated along picnic benches with eyes in the back of their heads, or tucking their hands into pockets that tools of defence sit within, the town’s residents refuse to let themselves be the newest victim” the text remarks, bouncing off the glasses that their illustrator wears.

“There is a paranoia over the Remedy-less Hills. There is a collective, understood, and palpable dread that is shared amongst those who return to it for the shelter of a home” he writes, losing track of the time that passes whilst his wonderment is paid to the cybernetic paper. “Some believe the phantom was already caught” the paragraph rolls on, revealing itself through the void of emptiness in real time like an ancient scroll unfolds.

“Though the figure has been publicly ruled out as a suspect, those people appear to believe a now-incarcerated man was behind the slayings all along” Avon notes, reaching the end of one page before starting upon a new one, “to them, it’s the closest thing to an answer they can trust.” Correcting a misspelling, the man’s finger presses down on the backspace key before moving to the appropriate ones, ending the line of thought with a period.

“For others, comfort is simply not found in coming up with their own answers. Nothing is taken as canonical in their mind until verified through the channels they trust” he follows through, brushing off the mis-type as nothing of importance. “Their faith is stored in the hands of a legal system who has as many answers now as they had back then” the sheet reads, embarking upon a journey that the prior line of text had read, “for those unlucky few, it seems sleep will never be theirs to have.”

Briefly pulling his hands away from the machine’s flat base, Avon lifts the readers from over his eyes and drags the base of his palms down the length of his flesh, expunging the grogginess that leaves him wanting to yawn. “On the other hand, on the other hand, on the other hand-” he repeats to himself, bouncing his head along with each syllable uttered whilst his pause commences, snapping his fingers as he leans to the side, “I’ve got it.”

“On the other hand, you have those that refuse to buy into one solution or the other. The people that belong to their own, distinctive minority opinions” he jots down, the bounce that his head had taken now displayed in the tapping of his right foot under the table. “Perhaps the most vocal of those lesser groups are those who believe that there is more to Remedy Hills than just what seems ordinary” the words coming together to form, left with a similar pause to what their controller takes.

Hovering over a select few keys, Avon’s eyes stare into the light that bathes his face in an unflattering colour before looking beyond the laptop’s cover, staring off toward the front door directly across the room from himself. Softly pressing his bottom lip between his teeth whilst the closest of his digits remains hanging above the ‘S’ key. Contemplating his newest discovery of thought to write down just as he had all others, the writer hesitates to follow through unlike before.

“Something so profound and otherworldly that it exists as boldly loud as a-” the most recent line reads, again coming to a stop as the page’s point returns to blinking. For seconds, the black line bounces out of existence before popping back up, disappearing just as soon as it has re-arrived until the cycle continues to repeat. As time passes, the constantly reappearing bar finishes its flashing, holding firm within the block of writing that it had birthed before finishing off the man’s thought.

“-howl from deep in the forest.”

= 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 =

While his left hand rests against the side of his chair and squeezes a pressure ball, Beau’s right elbow presses against the edge of his desk to steady his head, allowing his face an unobstructed sight of the bulletin board he’d erected closeby. Every breath and exhale both long and subtle, the man’s composure speaks to an officer deep within hours of simply looking at what’s in front of him with hopes of finding something he has yet to stumble across.

“Is the precinct always this empty?” a woman’s voice calls out from across the room, prompting the man to snap out of the trance that his attention had been forcibly taken into. Spinning in his chair, Beau discovers one of the town’s least favourite residents calmly approaching, her hands hung by her sides as she draws nearer.

“Being a cop in Remedy Hills isn’t the most desirable line of work, Penny” the officer replies, looking toward the empty surface of his desk with a sigh, all that had once sat atop the worktable having been pinned to the board, “the pay also isn’t worth writing home about.”

“That doesn’t stop you from putting in the overtime from the looks of it” Penny retorts, glancing at the evidence-covered pin board before leaving her purse to rest atop the man’s work area. “I don’t do this for the pay. If I did, I wouldn’t have been in Remedy for this long” Beau replies, scratching an itch behind his ear whilst the woman settles into a seat opposite him, occupying the empty chair of his partner.

“And here I thought you were only here because no one else wanted a hotshot with a bad temper” Penny calmly rebukes, the humour-less tone that she speaks with allowing her comment to only bring an amused grin over the face of the man opposite her. Allowing his second arm to fall upon the rest at the side of his seat, the young officer nods to himself before looking across.

“What can I help you with, Penny?” Beau wonders, allowing the woman’s quip to settle without a rebuttal, wearing the comment with pride and taking the semi-insult held beneath it on the chin like a champion. Before answering, the visitor’s head turns to face an office near the back of the room, looking over her shoulder to find a closed door with blinds drawn over the window that faces into it.

“Is your boss gone for the night?” Penny questions aloud, yet to pull her stare away from the room in question, the quandary proving to be one the gendarme takes interest in. “She left about an hour ago. Maybe two at this point” Beau responds, waiting to ask for the reasoning until his face can reconnect with the civilian, “why do you ask?”

With an uncertain expression worn, the medical worker hesitates to speak before confirming her own assumptions, wishing to offer the cop a chance to clear himself of any suspicion. “What do you know about the people in the smiley face masks so far?” Penny questions aloud, extending an olive branch that she can only hope the officer will take, “I know you didn’t get a lot off of Tago before what happened. Still, you must know something by now.”

Disappointed in the conclusion that he draws, Beau allows his eyes to fall as he takes the question in, shaking his head as he comes up relatively empty. “We have our suspicions that Rico Martinez is behind it somehow. Aside from that, we just can’t seem to make any headway into them” the man confesses, frowning as his stare ventures into the building’s depths, his mind reaching for whatever details he can pick out of importance.

“Every lead we get ends up being killed before we can get to them. To make matters worse, they’ve stayed quiet since Rico broke out of jail” he continues, taking his eyes back toward the woman, “I just hope that’s not so they can hide away and regroup for something even bigger.” Looking down, Penny nods at the man’s conclusion before switching the conversation onto other tracks, dictating the journey in which this thought train is meant to head for.

“And what do you know about the phantom case?” she questions aloud, overhearing the man’s immediate reaction of a brief chuckle. “Isn’t it your husband that’s writing the book? I figured he’d be the one to asking me that” Beau responds, the humour that he takes from the discourse noticeably not shared by the man’s wife.

“Can you just answer the question?” she asks with seriousness, watching the man pause for a second as he tries to discourage himself from taking any further entertainment in the conversation. “Uh, I know it happened a long time ago. I know it’s a cold case. I know it’s why you and your husband are here...” Beau responds, coming up short of anything worth writing home about himself, “...that’s pretty much it.”

“What do you know about the phantom case?” Penny repeats, her slightly-widened eyes remaining firm in their focus on the officer, his head pulling back just slightly at the question’s second projection. “I just told you what I know” Beau responds, still somewhat amused by the line of questioning, though he’s more hesitant to show it, “that’s it. I wasn’t in the force when it happened.”

“You don’t have to know nothing just ‘cause you weren’t a cop back then” Penny corrects, a conclusion that the officer doesn’t care about improperly correcting her on. “I suppose that’s true, but the only cops I care for around here are Pat and Jake” Beau replies, returning the stress ball to a space beside his cup of pencils and pens, “Jake was in some detective’s program in Des Moines and Pat was just finishing his training in Schenectady.”

“That doesn’t mean you haven’t heard stuff through the grapevine” Penny rebuttals, again reaching a point that the officer doesn’t care to dissuade her from taking, though his retort refuses to entertain the line of communication any further. “I’ve told you all that I know about the phantom case, Penny. We don’t bring it up and- between us- cops don’t really work on cold cases after a certain amount of time. At least not here” Beau concludes, “I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear.”

Staying quiet, the visitor reserves her thoughts before the continued voice in front of her carries on with the conversation. “Are you helping with your husband’s book or something?” the hot-headed gendarme queries, wanting to know the point behind his guest’s unannounced drop-in.

“Not unless his book turns into something more than that” Penny replies, not taking long to return with that answer. “Your husband’s been writing psychological thrillers since before he left high school, Penny” Beau rejoinders, more outward with his humour as the discussion persists, “what about Remedy would have him straying from the norm all these years later?”

Drifting into the corners of her eyes, the medical practitioner looks back toward the direction of the man’s employer before she can have the chance to speak, her newest bout of concerns having rooted themselves deep within. “Why are you here, Penny?” Beau inquires, having followed the woman’s line of sight back toward the locked office at the back of the building, “as you can see by the board behind me, if there isn’t anything I can help you with- I have work to do.”

Looking back to the officer, Penny nods in agreement before reclaiming her leather bag, throwing it over her shoulder and walking away without another word to offer. Finding the interaction odd, Beau chooses to keep his feelings for the encounter quiet as he watches the woman wander off, unable to prevent his mind from asking himself questions as to the nature of their conversation.

Only spending a few seconds within his own line of thought, Beau’s attention returns to the task that has kept him in the office beyond the point in which he was meant to leave it. With his desk light aimed at the standing board, the cop gently pushes his chair an inch or two away from the desk whilst reaching for the stress ball, taking his eyes toward it as the station’s entrance closes shut.

Wrapping his fingers around the spherical, red object, the young cop finds his mostly-empty desk now occupied by something he knows for certain had not been there when he was curating evidence. “Who are you supposed to be?” Beau wonders aloud to himself as his palm takes away from the toy, reaching beyond it and to the blue case that had been left in the place where Penny’s bag had rested.

“Keep this quiet” a note reads, its adhesive back having been attached to the outside of the thin, semi-transparent shell that houses an unmarked, unbranded disc. Looking back toward the direction in which the wife had departed, Beau turns his fascination toward the markings that had been left for him to read, unsure if the object concealed within pertains to a can of worms he’s best left leaving closed for the meantime.

|

Housed within a brick inglenook, a roaring fire warms the cabin that holds host to a pair of equally quiet, kept-to-themselves civilians doing their best to hide away from the frosty air that awaits them outside. Locking her arms together around the legs that she presses against her chest, Beth presses her lips together without any intention of parting them to speak, not having an address to make to the figure that sits a fair distance away from her.

Taking his eyes to the fire before letting them fall upon the woman seated beside it, Harlington’s vision directs itself back and forth between the two objects of interest, struggling to keep himself as silent as he knows the woman wishes for him to be. Holding them back, the flurry of thoughts that the abducting assailant wishes to speak are forced to remain locked away, refused an opportunity to be spoken aloud in the name of keeping peace between himself and the person they could only hurt.

Instead left to the sounds of the crackling logs of wood that burn across the woodland home, the rocking chair-seated man entertains himself with the closure of his eyelids, using the darkness as a screen to play memories back with. Taking much the opposite approach, Beth’s lids only part further than they would in their resting state, allowing the glossy reflection in the stare that she holds to host the fire that dances around the material that it slowly devours like a gazelle to a lion.

Beginning to succumb to the silence that surrounds her, Beth’s lips finally do part to alleviate the tension that had built within her jaw, allowing herself to yawn as she fights away the countless hours she’d already gone without even trying to sleep. His senses heightened minimally, Harlington catches the sound of the woman’s exhaled breath before opening his eyes, watching as his partner in haunting wipes the tears that have formed around her lids.

“You should try to get some sleep” Harlington remarks, finally allowing himself to intrude on the lack of noise that had come over the cabin, watching as the woman’s figure remains steady as if he’d not spoken whatsoever. “I’m alright, thanks” Beth rejoinders, returning her arms to their place around her shins, keeping her seated upright and within the reach of the fireplace’s warmth.

“You’re clearly not” Harlington counters, aware that his presence doesn’t do much to provide the woman with comfort, but he refuses to allow her to disregard the natural course her body urges her to take. “I’ll grab you a blanket from the closet and you can get as many hours as Remedy will let-” he attempts to offer, leaning forward in his seat with the intent to stand upright and follow through before being directed otherwise.

“I saw I’m alright” Beth doubles down, glancing over her shoulder as the declaration prompts the man to return to his seat, disappointment carried in his face as the eagerness to voice what he’d wanted to earlier meets its match. “I understand if you’re mad at me for it, but would you really be able to tell me that you’d rather the people in those masks have snatched you up instead of what happened?” Harlington questions aloud, challenging the woman to validate her reservations of him.

“That’s amongst the last things on my mind right now, Harlington” Beth tiredly rebukes, disregarding the man’s comments in a way that brings him into a concession. Not sure what else could be used to support a disinterest in him aside from the mountain of things he’d inflicted upon the runaway librarian, Harlington hangs his head and leans in his seat once more, pressing the soles of his shoes against the floorboards to remain that way.

Being met without resistance, Beth is left in silence once more, its continued presence not needing to take long before provoking another yawn out of the woman. “If not trusting me isn’t the issue, then the least you could do is try to sleep off some of this” Harlington interjects, unable to see the eye roll that his fellow woodland resident reacts with, her ire drawn toward him once more.

“I never said I trusted you” Beth corrects, wishing to not leave the man in the belief of a misunderstanding such as the one he’d seemingly drawn, “all I said was, I’m alright.” Looking away while pressing his tongue into the corner of his mouth, Harlington shakes his head out of a refusal that he’s yet to voice aloud, trying to convince himself to leave the conversation there and not proceed forward before failing rather quickly.

“You’re obviously not alright” he remarks, turning back to face the woman just in time for her hands to pull away from her legs, each palm slamming against the floor as she turns back. “No, of course I’m not alright!” Beth shouts, having grown too irritated with the man’s voice to prevent herself from lashing out, “this is fucked!”

“I’m well aware of that” Harlington retorts, the claim that he makes immediately drawing just as much doubt as the one that his acquaintance had made to earn a similar refusal of belief. “Are you? Are you really?” Beth questions back, standing from the floor before walking toward the window across the room, “there is a dead murderer buried fifty fucking feet from us while we hide in a shanty somewhere in the forest!”

“Again, I’m well aware of that. I was there when we buried him” Harlington corrects, watching as the woman angrily smiles, turning away with her hands on her hips as the comment draws her further aggravation. “If you know all of this, can you please act like you are?” Beth questions back, daring the man to match the insight that he’s undoubtedly privy to, “maybe if you’d act like this is batshit insane, I’d stop feeling like I’m the only one going crazy in this shithole house.”

Feeling it slip like grains of sand through open fingers, Beth forces herself to regain control of her composure as she takes a seat on the chesterfield, allowing her only company to reply. “Prancing around like this is the end of the world and we’re chickens with our heads cut off isn’t going to do anyone any good” Harlington responds, coming to the conclusion that inaction is the most-preferable course of taking action, “what’s happened has happened. There’s no changing that.”

“Then let’s do something about it” Beth suggests, crossing her arms as she lowers them to the tops of her knees, using them for support as she leans forward, “instead of sitting around waiting for a ghost to show up again or cops to find the body that we hid in the ground- let’s actually figure something out.”

“How do you suggest that we do that, Beth?” Harlington retorts, begging the question to the woman who’s raised this proposal, “since we know for a fact that the cops haven’t found him, I’ve got no reason to believe I’m not a suspect by now.”

“That doesn’t mean that I am” Beth corrects, establishing the line that separates her from the man who’d drawn her down this travelled path with the swing of a stone. “The only thing keeping me from going back to the people in Remedy- aside from the masked-up nutcases giving Avon a terror and a half- is me” the woman carries on, convincing herself that there’s nothing preventing her from doing as she desires.

“Alright then, think about it this way-” Harlington carries on, playing into the woman’s line of thought before pausing, his shoulders shrugging as his acquaintance looks toward him, “-what are you gonna do when you go back?” Though it’s naturally discouraging when paired with the certainties that she knows to be true, Beth finds the man’s question to be a reasonably valid one, the inquiry being something she doesn’t have much in the way of a good answer to.

“If you want to jump into action, be my guest. Take the initiative- good for you” Harlington reiterates, watching as the woman’s eyes fall back upon him, “but, if you’re gonna go running into battle, the least you can do for yourself is figure out what weapon you’ve got and who you’re aiming for.”

Lowering her stare toward the ground, Beth considers the man’s point before making her best attempt to figure out where she’d even begin, struggling to start with what’s asked of her. “Also, take into account of the fact that there are going to be people- such as Avon and the same cops who probably have interest in finding you- who are gonna want to know what happened” Harlington proceeds, pointing out the flaws in her desired route, “you could just tell them the truth on that one though.”

“I only ran away from Remedy because I was attacked” Beth corrects, watching as the man shrugs off her reply, paying it little mind. “That might work out for you even less than running away did” Harlington rejoinders, drawing a similar conclusion to the one that had influenced his act against the town’s officials, “in their eyes, the attack was perpetrated by the people in the same masks that I’m confident are still doing their dirty work for them. I doubt they’d care what happened to you.”

“My point is that concern is taken care of” Beth responds, setting her mind back toward the initial implication that had been wagered when she’d sat down. “In that case, let’s also take into account the fact that you’d be trying to dig into stuff there’s a lot of value in keeping hidden” Harlington replies, accepting the conclusion that his cohort has reached before taking on the role of her mind’s lesser-present analytical side.

“I’m personally surprised that the police are looking for Rico at all. I can only assume that there are fewer people attached to the cover-up in there now than there used to be” Harlington concludes, drawing the woman’s fascination. “Why do you say that?” Beth wonders back, looking into her acquaintance’s eyes as he reiterates the stance that’s taken.

“Well, there had to be more to Rico’s escape than just the attack on the hospital” Harlington replies, speaking as if the conclusion were one of the more obvious bits of information they could take into account. “He was locked away in a jail overseen by the same people that he’d colluded with. They didn’t even arrest him willingly the first time around- the public outcry forced their hand” he doubles down, confident in the claim that he makes, “Rico still had to bust out of jail to start.”

“You think he had people on the inside helping him?” Beth queries, only to see a smile stretch from one side of her assailant’s face to the other. “I’m not sure if you’ve seen a movie with a prison break before, but even Hollywood films make it look harder than I’m sure Rico had it” Harlington replies, taking genuine humour in any such opposition to that claim, “you wouldn’t be able to surprise me if you said there was a guard waiting on the outside to hand him a pair of car keys and a snack.”

Even further discouraged than she’d initially become, Beth lets her eyes fall as the odds she stacks up against only worsen for her with each passing comment, leaving her with a discomfort that isn’t easy to miss. The only other person to take notice of those such feelings building within his fellow hideout, Harlington changes his tune to prevent the woman he’d initially forced into his presence with knotted rope from convincing herself that her wings are too short to fly free.

“Alright, no one’s saying this would be easy. But let’s also not pretend like we’ve got a reason to fear for our lives here” the man interrupts, regaining the woman’s focus as he leans forward, sharing the same track of thought that she wishes to take. “We want the same thing Remedy wants, and as long as we’re working toward that- the town will protect us” Harlington reassures, holding the sides of his hands toward the ground while he speaks, “the question at hand is- what are we looking for?”

Allowed to hold firm on her stance at the man’s behest, Beth is provided with the freedom that she’d initially set out for with bases covered more thoroughly than they otherwise would have. Cleared to search through her exhausted mind, the woman sits with the flurry of questions she wishes to ask and considers the benefit to each other, running around the limited information that she and her literal partner in crime share before pointing out something far more personal than she’d expected.

“What?” Harlington questions aloud, watching as the woman’s eyes widen whilst turning toward the window behind her, the stare held in the direction of the fresh grave they’d recently put the finishing touches on, “what is it?” Sitting with her thoughts, Beth pushes down the dread that fills her core as the branches that stretch from the initial root of her greatest wonder begin to threaten her confidence in the desire to carry on with the need for clarity.

“I want to know how that thug knows my father” Beth declares, looking up with eyes of newfound purpose as her stare is guided toward the man who’d brought her here in the first place, his eyebrows lifting as the glare holds firm. “Are you sure?” Harlington questions back, not wanting to convince her to set sights elsewhere, but informed enough to know that the answer to such a question may not be as fulfilling as desired.

“Rico and his dudes aren’t good dudes. I didn’t like the fact that he knew your dad by a first name any more than you did” Harlington explains, a slight amount of concern worn on his face just as it’s planted upon his cohort. “Whatever the reason is- I need to know how he knew my dad” Beth doubles down, assuring the man that the inquiry is one too great for her to just store away and stay as far as she can from.

Recognising this passion in the woman’s delivery and demeanour, Harlington bites the tongue he wishes to use to reiterate the potential consequences, forcing himself to stand in the corner of the conclusion that’s been brought to the surface. “Alright then” the person of interest decides, letting out a deep breath as he nods to himself, biting his bottom lip as he looks toward Beth for guidance, “how’re we gonna do this?”

== Remedy Hills ==