Chapter Text
Kestrel Mountain + 15 mi > community > local news
something in the water?
i fill my chickens water trough with water from laurel creek and just today noticed that the chickens had five toes on each foot. and teeth!! one bit me! at hospital rn but need to get the word out in case someone else’s livestock is affected.
The first chill wind of autumn whistled through the desolate streets of Kestrel Mountain, blowing old fliers into water-filled potholes, causing patched jackets to zipper and flannels to button as neighbors started making excuses to go inside.
The wind swept through the manicured lawn that surrounded O’Castel Estate. Estate being a strong, relative word. A cast iron fence surrounded the Victorian house, which stood out like a separate species among the simple rowhouses and apartment complexes. Not a mansion by any means, but a step above the rest of the town.
With a groan, Irma O’Castel shut her window with a little more force than necessary.
“Don’t slam things!” her mother shouted from down the hall.
Damn. How did she hear that?
Irma went back to meticulously brushing her long brown hair before pulling it back in a half-ponytail. Her father’s mysterious business partner was due to stop by today, which meant she had to look her best - more so than usual.
She straightened the collar of her blouse and smoothed out her skirt, frowning as she thought about how it would tangle if she tried to run or climb.
She studied her reflection in the mirror, squared her shoulders, and marched out into the hallway and down the stairs to the dining room, keeping her posture poised and her expression carefully neutral. She’d rather do triple her normal homework than sit through this dinner.
She took her seat at the table. Her mother sat across from her, her father to her left. To her right sat the investor, who wore an immaculate suit, a fabric face mask, and wide-brimmed cap like he was trying to be the Midnight Slasher that the elementary school kids whispered about.
Irma ate her steak robotically, careful not to scrape her plate or drop juices on the white tablecloth. Medium well, as usual. How her mother managed to cook it the exact same way every time was beyond her. She slipped a few pieces into a plastic baggie in the pocket of her skirt for the guard dog later. Feeling eyes on her, she froze. The investor’s head was angled toward her, red eyes glinting. She studied her plate and began meticulously cutting her steak into smaller pieces.
“Per your last email,” her father stated, “I understand your skepticism about the continued survival of the coal industry. Your offer to ‘take this off my hands’ is generous, as is the number of shares you bought.”
The investor inclined his head. “So you have considered my offer?”
“I have. And as it stands, I cannot accept it.”
Silence fell over the table. Irma froze again, the slight rasp of her knife through the meat suddenly too loud.
“Noted,” the investor said coldly. “In that case, allow me to sweeten the pot.” He reached for the thin sauce and poured a generous helping over his steak. Rare enough to be bloody, she noted, an effect amplified by the red sauce that oozed onto the plate.
She cut her steak into even smaller pieces, suddenly not hungry. She didn’t care about Father’s business, would be happy to see it fail, to see that particular weight lifted off her shoulders. The weight her older brother left to her the second he turned eighteen.
But something about this man got under her skin. She knew her father, knew how to navigate his tempers and expectations. The investor was a shadow, a pair of glowing eyes in the woods; a sign to turn back while you still could. There was a glint in his eyes that shouldn’t have been possible, not with the way the brim of his hat shadowed his face.
“Irma!” Her father’s sharp voice snapped her back to attention. She instinctively straightened, her muscles tensing painfully.
“S-sorry, what was th- I apologize for my inattention. Did you ask me a question?”
“Apologies mean nothing. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it,” Mr. O’Castel said with the air of a wise sage. “We will discuss your recent distractedness later. I asked your opinion about O’Castel Logistics workers unionizing. How do you predict it will affect our stocks?”
“Th-they will fall drastically.” Irma scrambled to remember the correct answer, to ignore the sour feeling in her stomach. “Our entire supply chain will become exponentially more expensive as wages increase, meaning less shareholder profits.”
The investor chuckled indulgently. “Clever girl. She learns fast.”
Irma busied herself with hiding her broccoli under her mashed potatoes. The smell of it was adding to her misery.
“And you say you have a way to stop this union from forming?” Mr. O’Castel said.
“I do. But it is not something I can accomplish long-distance. Would you permit me to work more closely with you for a short time? An extended stay in the mountains might be just what my old bones need. I hear it can be very rejuvenating.”
Her father chuckled. “That’s one word for it. Alright, I’ll consider your offer.” He rose to his feet and stalked around the table, resting a heavy hand on Irma’s shoulder as he passed by her. His touch lingered like a brand as he walked away, standing in front of the investor, who rose to meet him. They shook hands briefly, in a grip that reminded Irma of two rams locking horns. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning,” Mr. O’Castel said in a clipped tone, signalling the end of the meeting.
Smoke burned her throat as the wind shifted. Ava coughed, blinking hard to clear her vision.
She blinked hard to clear her vision, edging slightly away from the beehive as the sudden motion startled them. They were cute, individually. She had pet them, let them crawl on her arm, not even flinching when they tickled her with their tiny, fuzzy legs.
But thousands filling the air… that was a little much. Even with the smoke rendering them docile and sleepy, even with the beekeeping suit, she couldn’t help but glance at Uncle Rowan for reassurance. He looked up from where he was scraping raw honeycomb into a bucket.
“Step a little closer, carrot,” he said, his voice muffled slightly by his own suit. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
She knew that. Of course she did. She’d helped him with the bees before. But she’d never been entrusted with the smoker.
From the shade of the lone pine in their yard, Uncle Simon chuckled. “That smoke is for the bees, not you, Ava.”
Ava silently raised her middle finger, earning a laugh from both of them.
From the garage, Aunt Kat looked up from where she was tinkering with her motorcycle, wiping a grease-stained hand across her brow. “Guess it runs in the family, huh? Your mom could never sit around a campfire because she’d always get smoke in her face.”
Ava focused her attention back on the battered tin smoker, slowly sweeping it over the hive, letting her eyes drift over the controlled chaos of the swarm as Rowan slotted the mesh frame back into place and closed the lid ever so gently. She nudged one particularly sleepy bee out of the way, then set down the smoker and shook out her hands. “Yeah, I remember,” she said, and it took effort to pitch her voice high enough for the other Catamounts to hear. “She always faced away from the fire. I forgot how funny it looked until Soph came over that one Fourth of July.”
Simon smiled. “She said, ‘That’s an option?’ and sat right down next to her.” He let out a long sigh, looking up through the trees, the sun glinting off his silver-framed glasses. “Little weirdo. Like the rest of us.”
Ava followed Rowan to the shed and they stepped out of the beekeeping suits in sync. Ava ran her fingers through her long red hair, trying in vain to wrestle some order into the tangles, only for Rowan to muss it with a broad hand scrubbed against her scalp. She shoved him playfully, but he didn’t budge, except for his thick black mutton chops which lifted with his mischievous smile.
As he lowered his hand, Ava caught a glimpse of the cardinal tattoo on his arm, the newest addition to his chaotic sleeve. It was a few years old, but it stood out starkly against his older ink. And for some reason, today, it made her heart sink, the colors around her grow ever so slightly dimmer.
She forced on a smile as she stepped back out into the sunlight, just in time for Uncle Joe to call everyone in for dinner.
“Hamburger Helper tonight,” he said with a sheepish smile, pushing his mousy brown hair out of his face.
Kat rolled her eyes and got up with a groan that sent a pang of worry through Ava’s chest. Surely Kat wasn’t old enough to groan, was she? She was only a little younger than Mom, or would be if Mom had-
Kat grinned. “Your hamburger needs all the help it can get, mophead.” She ambushed Ava in a tight hug. “Looks like someone worked up an appetite helping out with the bees.”
Ava’s lips curled in a mischievous smirk as she saw an opportunity. With a sharp “Zzt!” she dug her pointer finger into Kat’s side. It didn’t do much against Kat’s black and yellow leather jacket, but she yelped in surprise anyway, swatting Ava upside the head.
The Catamounts all settled in for dinner at the round table. Simon playfully sat on Rowan’s lap. Rowan’s face contorted in an exaggerated wince and he simply picked up his wiry husband and set him on the seat next to him. “Bony ass,” he muttered under his breath.
“Hairy ass,” Simon shot back, pecking him on the cheek.
Joe slid two plates of food in front of them. “Pains in the ass, both of you.”
Kat chuckled, her light brown ponytail bouncing as her shoulders shook. “Can we not talk about ass at the dinner table?”
Joe set plates down in front of Kat and Ava before finally serving himself and sitting next to Kat.
On Kat’s other side, Ava felt her smile soften into something more genuine, if not as radiant as before. As the laughter faded, replaced by the clatter of silverware against plates, her eyes couldn’t help drifting to the one spot at the table that was conspicuously bare. There was no seat to fill it, but nobody dared take up the space that was once filled by Thea Foster.
The pungent smell of chemicals made Sophia’s nose twitch as she raised the tongs, pulling the photo paper out of the fixer bath. With nimble, gloved fingers, she affixed it to two clothespins, letting it hang from the spiderweb of string that crisscrossed the ceiling. The damp paper shone in the dim red glow of the safelights. Everything in the room was awash in monochrome, her dirty-blonde hair rendered the same light gray as her NASA shirt, the logo of which was now as black as her jeans and worn Converse.
All she had to do now was wait for the photo to dry. It would take a while. She could, and maybe should, leave the darkroom and get something to eat. It was past her usual dinnertime and her stomach twinged with a faint hunger pang.
Instead, pulled by a curiosity stronger than hunger, she sat on a worn barstool, resting an elbow on the cluttered counter. She drew one knee to her chest, resting her heel on the stool, and closed her eyes. She found herself humming along as the melancholy notes of Paranoid Android filled the peaceful silence. Having grown up with Radiohead’s discography leaking from her father’s darkroom, she knew OK Computer by heart.
Being the only one in her family without a job, she enjoyed having the house to herself for most of the day in the summers. Sometimes being the baby of the family had perks, even if being treated like a baby was grating. Even moreso after her autism diagnosis last year. Still, at least it gave her a valid reason to say no to grocery trips, even before her… more recent changes.
Her long white tail curled around the leg of the stool as if it could stop her from drifting away.
As the song faded out, the faint whir of the CD could be heard before the first notes of Subterranean Homesick Alien began. Sophia opened her eyes and studied the photograph.
As she had seen on the negative, the deer tracks stood out in sharp relief on the muddy trail.
Sharp, glowing relief.
She wished she had access to color film to confirm her theory, to cross-reference the glow with the green lights she saw in the woods. Unlike the lights in the sky, this glow was invisible to the naked eye.
Normally, deer tracks would only be worth a passing glance, but her dad’s trail cam had only recorded one deer passing through in the past few hours. The number of tracks in the mud were enough to come from two or three, just as a rough estimate.
Ducking into the currently-empty developing room - normally pitch dark as film was more sensitive than photo paper - she double checked the trail cam photo on her phone. There was no film in here now, so the light from the phone wouldn’t cause any harm here as it would in the darkroom.
It could have been a glitch. A double exposure. But the trail cam’s photo showed a deer with six legs, its eyes a shocking white in the infrared view.
And now that she was looking closer, she saw the faint glow around the creature’s hooves.
Sophia ran a hand along the soft white fur of her feline ear. If she took a photo of herself, would she appear normal - or as normal as a human/animal hybrid like her could be? Or would the camera pick up on something even she couldn’t see?