Holloway

On the road out of Avalon Falls, Mags and Amy follow the loose threads Dylan Holt left behind — threads that lead through shuttered bars, unfinished questions, and a university town everyone loves to hate. What begins as a search for context becomes something heavier, as grief gives way to pattern and memory refuses to stay buried.

In Holloway, the girls uncover fragments of an art movement that once threatened the county’s power structure -- and traces of a violence that history agreed to forget. As the past reasserts itself through symbols, stories, and things that were never meant to survive, a long-standing myth about Avalon Falls begins to fracture.

Transcript

Murder Girls is created, written and produced by Eternal Teenager. Content warning. This episode contains references to violence and mass harm, historical and implied murder, unsettling symbolic imagery, themes of grief and death, discussion of institutional power and abuse, non-graphic references to drug use, and strong language throughout. Listener discretion is advised.

Previously on Murder Girls.

Okay, so the Calhouns.

The Calhouns are our county's favorite ghost story. They were one of the older families in the county. Quite powerful actually, but they fell during the Great Depression.

There's also the story about the bootleggers, the massacre.

During Prohibition, the Calhouns supposedly ran afoul of bootleggers. The most common version, they threw a large party at Calhoun Manor. The bootleggers showed up and massacred the guests.

There are other versions?

Oh, of course. The versions are half the fun. But when you go looking for the boring parts, the names, the dates, the actual bodies, there's nothing solid.

Someone might say it was scrubbed?

Someone might.

What do you think happened?

I think time is as good at hiding things as it is at erasing them.

My eyes are drawn to the peeling wallpaper and that's when I see it. A mural painted directly onto the plaster. There's handwriting under the folds of the torn wallpaper. DS, look closer. It's a USB drive.

What's on it?

One file, video, here goes.

Holy fucking shit, that's Dylan.

If you want to know everything, then we can arrange to meet at the old ruined cabin.

The cabin is both exactly as I remember and completely wrong.

What is that?

There's a hatch, recently disturbed. Someone's been here.

Dylan.

Paint tubes, plastic brushes, metal palette, knives. This was an artist's studio. Someone created here and someone destroyed it. There, in the corner.

Sculptures, bronze, I think.

Two figures, a man and a woman.

Oh, hey, there's something carved underneath.

Says Dorothy Calhoun. Wait, there's something else. Initials, DS.

But who is DS?

Try DS?

Driftwood School. Have you heard of the Driftwood School?

Communal movement. It burned bright, and after that, the movement turns into more ghost stories.

Anyone still alive?

Believe it or not, yes. Clement Dryer. Lives in Holloway now, I believe.

And the pins.

God, the pins. The originals and their fucking pins.

What are the symbols again?

Virens have the falcon. Handlers get the anchor. Bergman's bear. Holt's are the stag. It's an American heraldry circle jerk.

With the fancy gothic initial.

Yeah. Laurel leaves. Gold everything. Peak. We've been here since the trees were baby trees. Hello? Kenzie?

You need to go to the Fern River Bridge, Amy. I don't know why. I don't want to know why.

There's lights in the water.

There's a vehicle. Down there. By the embankment.

Shit. Look.

There's a body. Amy, you recognize the truck.

It's Jake. Murder Girls, episode 18, Holloway. Avalon Falls doesn't believe in detours, not even when you're running on empty. So there's no way around the Fern River Bridge. We're still in our funeral clothes, heading back to loose ends. I guess it fits. Sounds like ours don't panic when something goes wrong. They wait. Waiting gives you time to choose the story. And once you do, everything else starts disappearing. That's it?

That's what it sounds like when nobody's in a hurry.

No sirens, no tape, just Friday.

If this was a crime scene, we wouldn't be able to stand here. If it's an accident, they can take their time.

And if nobody's in a rush, nobody's looking for anything specific.

You've got to be kidding me. What? Graffiti on the bridge. Fresh.

Jimmy wants blood. Jimmy's coming for you.

Seriously? Jimmy Rivers?

Already.

Is that for Jake?

No. It's for everyone else.

Someone dies in a crash, and the first thing they reach for is a fucking urban legend.

Saves time.

This guardrail's barely bent.

Yeah. Doesn't look like somebody lost control and paid for it. There'd be skid marks, glass, something in the dirt.

This just feels placed.

Placed how?

Like placing a period where a question mark should be.

The river didn't do this on its own.

Look up there.

Roadside camera. We can pull footage back at loose ends.

Look, I get it, but Dylan and Jake, those feel like two different kinds of dead.

I know.

Dylan was deliberate. Jake feels messy.

Messy doesn't mean random. I just don't think we get to ignore this. All right. Once a town decides what happened, everything else becomes inconvenient. Questions, evidence, the people who just won't let it go. Avalon Falls doesn't believe in detours. It believes in straight lines, quiet endings, and getting where it needs to be.

We're back at loose ends, we're back in the basement, back using the machine, like this is where you go when you don't want to hear the town talking over itself. Ugh, finally out of funeral clothes, which is a sentence I did not expect to say out loud today.

I didn't bother changing out of mine. Bleak times, bleak OOTDs.

Valid.

Okay, okay, okay, bridge first.

Bridge first. Timestamp.

Thursday night. There, that's his truck.

Yeah, why is it so slow?

It's not swerving.

It's not breaking.

It just goes.

Yes.

Any movement, like inside?

No, it takes a second for the cab to go under and there's nothing. No lights, no scrambling, no-

No Jake.

No panic.

Could somebody have pushed the truck?

Camera angle doesn't show the shoulder, but at that speed, yeah, it feels possible, right?

So we have possible and weird and nothing we can actually prove.

Suspicious as hell, but not actionable.

Well, gotta put a pin in it then. God, I hate when you're right. No offense, babes.

Some offense.

All right, before we go, the payphone.

You're obsessed.

We're in a basement with a haunted computer. Don't judge me.

Okay, random dates. Let's sample. Okay, let's try this one.

Let's see. Okay, that's Randolph Warran of all people. Strange, weird, bizarre, but like just a phone call.

It's a camera set up to film a payphone when it's in use. Were you expecting something other than footage of people, you know, like actually using a payphone?

I mean, are you going to judge me if I say yes?

What do you think, Bestie?

Then no.

Another call. Whoa, is that Jance's Handler?

It is, yeah, okay.

Hmm, can't imagine her down at the docks for any reason really.

I mean, to use the payphone of eternal suffering, I guess that's her reason.

Another call. This one is from May 14th, 2019.

Whoa, whoa, wait, pause that one. That's Timothy Warran. I'd recognize that unibrow anywhere.

Okay, so another original.

Next.

That's a Bergman. Next.

Handler. Next.

I mean, I think this is the pattern, right?

Makes sense why Didi set up this camera. It's not a pay phone.

It's an original's phone.

An off-the-books phone.

A phone for doing things you don't want recorded.

So, what are they using it for?

Sketchy things, but not our sketchy things, not yet.

Keep going.

Don't do that. Don't pretend this is about conscience. You knew the rules when you took the money. You knew what would happen if you crossed us. Make this my problem again, and I will fucking burn everything you're standing on. Do you understand me?

Eleanor, what is she even?

Doesn't matter. Actually, you know what? I want to check something.

What do you want to check?

A hunch. Just give me a second.

When Amy gets like this, the air changes. Like she finds the seam in things and everything else stops mattering. What did you find?

The call.

The call to who?

Me.

Amy, I can't meet up tonight. I'm sorry. I just don't wait around, okay?

That showed up blank on my phone, unlisted. I always wondered where she was calling from.

You okay?

I don't know. I feel stupid about most of that time.

Amy.

No, I'm fine. I'm fine. Just keep it playing.

Oh, wait, pause. Go back. Yeah, yeah. Look right there. Eleanor. She's standing beside it.

Holy shit. We can see more of the background. Good catch.

Freeze it. There, behind her shoulder.

A pier marker, an old one.

The kind ports used so they can pretend they're organized.

Can we read it?

It's old. The video is grainy, half obscured, but it's a code. Pier something.

We can just look up a map of the docks online.

The numbering system changed. I doubt that pier is listed on those nice, updated Avalon Falls waterfront experience maps.

So it's in the shitty part.

It's in the part that still remembers what the docks were for.

Okay. Well, that's something.

It's a breadcrumb, not a location yet.

Put another fucking pin in it. Okay. So while we're here, Thomas Holt.

Let's go.

Public records and nothing.

Weak.

Yeah. Victor's everywhere. Richard's everywhere. Thomas' background.

By design.

He shows up in photos behind Richard like a shadow with a haircut.

Chief of staff vibes.

But the subtext is fixer for the corporation, for the family, for all of them.

Does he ever get in trouble? No.

That's the thing.

Absence of consequence.

He exists in the gap between everyone knows and nothing sticks.

Some people leave footprints. Thomas Holt leaves negative space.

Yo, what are you messing with, Park?

Oh, you know, just restlessly taking a look through Dylan's polaroids.

Oh yeah? Thomas Holt isn't keeping your attention?

So Dee Dee's in here.

Yeah, it seemed like he knew she was on to something. What did it say about her again?

She was already looking.

Right, right, right.

It's weird though. I'm looking through these Jake, Claire, Marion, Lula, so many others.

Okay, and?

You're not in here. Why didn't he take one of you?

Because I would have punched him in his smug face and then taken and broken the camera, probably over his head. Definitely on purpose.

That, yeah, that feels right.

He was scared of me.

Maybe he respected you.

Maybe he was annoying.

You know, all three can be true. Whoa, wait.

What is it?

This Polaroid. It's an older guy, like an old guy.

Dude, what's his name?

Clement Dreyer.

Holy shit, Driftwood School.

Yeah, the only known living member. Marion mentioned him at Pacific Northwestern U in Holloway.

What did Dylan write about him?

Follow up about her.

Her who?

I don't know.

Is there a photo date?

Yeah, Saturday.

Like this past Saturday?

Yes, that's Saturday.

So Dylan was in the middle of something with Dreyer.

On top of everything else he seemed to have on the go, and he didn't get to finish.

Which means we don't get to finish later.

Nope.

We go now.

We go now to Holloway.

Ugh, fucking Holloway.

Sometimes a dead kid leaves you a map. Sometimes he leaves you a sentence fragment, and you realize you've been living inside the part he didn't get to write.

We talked to Dreyer about Driftwood School, Dylan, whatever he didn't get to finish.

Okay, let's go.

On the way out of town, I want to check in on Kenzie.

And you know, if we're already there, the Otter isn't an active crime scene either.

That's true, isn't it?

If the town wasn't in a hurry, neither was the truth. As for us, we were done waiting.

The sloppy otter has always felt like a place that knows things. Not secrets, just wait. The kind of place that remembers who leaned where, who stayed late, who didn't make it home.

It's quiet.

Hello, Amy O'Connell. Hello, Maggie Mae.

Hey, Kenzie.

Hey, Kenz, how are you doing?

I keep thinking he's in the back, like he just stepped out to take a call or yell at someone for touching the taps. He was always yelling, always hollering, even when he was being nuss.

Yeah, that seems about right.

I yelled back once. He didn't talk to me for a full hour, just kept on a hand in me glasses like we were in a silent movie.

Did you apologize?

God, no, he did. Bought me dinner, complained about it the whole dang time. We had fun though. Great night.

This is the part no one tells you about grief, how it keeps trying to turn into a memory, and then remembering what it's supposed to be. We were headed out of town. We wanted to check on you.

Well, thank you kindly, bunnies. It feels like I'm trespassing, like I broke in and forgot why.

You didn't.

I know. I just keep expecting him to tell me I'm standing in the wrong place.

How are you holding up?

I mean, I don't know. I keep doing things like I always do, normal lack. And then I remember normals gone, and I get mad at myself for not noticing sooner.

That sounds about right.

And they already moved on, quickly too.

What do you mean?

Everyone, the town, the whispers, the color of folks' voices when they think you can't hear. Like this was just something of a trouble and a bother that done wrapped itself up with a Sunday school bow.

It hasn't even been half a day.

Yeah, well, Avalon Falls is efficient when it wants to be.

Dylan's funeral, it was a lot.

I watched part of it online. It's online. Do you know that?

Uh, no, that's not surprising, but, like, surprising. Is there a word for that?

All that space. All those people. I don't even know who's supposed to claim Jake. I keep waiting for someone official to call. No one has.

Did he have family?

Somewheres. Not here. Not the kind that shows up anyhow.

Have you heard anything about what people think happened?

Oh, yeah. Everyone's very comfortable with the story.

What are they saying?

Jake partied too hard. Jake spiraled. Jake finally ran out of luck.

Or it was Jimmy Rivers from the fucking Undead Realms.

Funny thing is, Jake was careful. Paranoid even. Especially lately.

Why, because of Amber?

Yeah, because of Amber. She was taking risks, playing a whole new game. Meant Jake had to play it too. He just never knew the rules.

Do you know where she is?

No. Don't think she's missing though. Not in the murdered kind of way anyway.

What do you mean?

I mean, she don't feel gone. Not in that way. But she is gone. Came by Wednesday afternoon. Didn't stay long. Didn't sit. Just stood right there and asked if Jake was being smart.

Was he?

Course not. Poor, pretty Jake. Dumb as a coal bucket, that boy. Sure did think he was being smart though. Which is a whole shade different, ain't it?

They say anything else you heard?

She seen he was keeping those files under the bar. The ones y'all were peeping through the other day, like bad little bunnies.

Really? What did she think of that?

Didn't seem to trouble her none.

Huh, okay.

Those boxes still around?

Haven't really looked around yet. Didn't feel right doing it all alone.

We can help.

I'd like that. Only if you want to. I don't know. He wouldn't mind none. Jake didn't believe in sacred spaces.

We take a look under the bar, where Jake kept the boxes of files, six of them, cardboard, over stuffed, tucked back where the lights don't quite reach, where he figured no one would bother looking. Now there's just space, a clean rectangular absence where something heavy used to live.

Didn't even leave a mess.

Someone knew where to go and exactly what they were taking.

So they're gone.

I mean, it's weird, right?

What is?

Amber.

Yeah, she did yell at Jake for hiding the boxes under the bar, told him to move them, somewhere safer.

But when she came back, didn't seem to trouble her nun. What changed?

If the files weren't safe under the bar and they weren't safe anywhere else, then maybe safety wasn't the point anymore.

This don't sit right with me. I don't think Jake did this to himself.

Because?

Because whatever happened to him didn't finish where it started. That's all. I don't have anything more useful than that. I just feel the shape of it the wrong way is all.

That's usually enough. What about the office? Yeah, you know, maybe there's something in there?

Let's check it out. Jake's office is wedged behind the bar. Half storage, half crash space. The kind of room you only use when you don't plan on staying long.

Huh, door's open.

Was this usually locked?

Listen, all of us in the Lord Above know who Jake was, darlin. Jake was dealing out of the bar, so yeah, always locked.

Door's clean, no forced entry, no picking either.

Someone knew how to get in or was let in. The room is tidy in a way that feels intentional. Not clean, just arranged. There's a desk and a filing cabinet, a computer, a phone, even an office calendar. Garfield of all things. In a happier time, I would pay anything to find out what was in those filing cabinets because I bet it's fucking hilarious. It's not a happier time. There's also a sofa, a reclining chair and a low coffee table that's at least 30 years old if it's a day. Then there's the evidence. There's a bag on the coffee table, a spoon, a rig set out like it's waiting to be photographed. Overdose pantomime.

This doesn't sit right.

Agreed. What are you seeing?

It's too neat for a bender, too neat for a heartbreak binge, no mess, no panic. When people lose control, it looks like losing control.

And this?

Doesn't. This looks like someone wanted it to look like something else.

Jake had his own place, right? He wasn't crashing here?

Not on the regular. He has a place on Sounder Street. Had a place.

Right. If you're going to spiral, you'd probably start that at home.

The office doesn't tell us how Jake died. It tells us how someone wanted it explained, which means the rest of the bar is still talking.

There's one more place we haven't looked.

Washroom. Let's go. The Otter only feels like a bar if you stay where the light is. Behind it, past the taps, past the familiar noise, it starts folding in on itself. I've walked to the washroom here countless times. Straight shot, no thinking, but this time I'm actually looking. There are more doors than I remember. Not storage doors, not exits, just doors. Don't know how else to describe them.

Amy.

Some of them are too narrow. Some are too wide. A couple look like they were built for a different building entirely and just accepted.

Keep moving.

Mags is not looking around. She's looking through. And then, the washroom. The air changes. It's colder here. Not drafty cold. A sense of intent. Like the room decided to stop pretending it was part of the bar. The washroom door is exactly where it's supposed to be, which somehow makes everything before it worse. The washroom smells like old cleaner and something metallic underneath it. Like the room learned how to disinfect, but never learned how to forget. The lights buzz. One of them flickers, but not enough to fully fail. Just enough to keep reminding you it could.

Over here.

The walls are covered in wallpaper. Layers of it. Cheap patterns. Boats. Stripes. Something floral that gave up halfway through a decade.

I forgot how much wallpaper there is in here.

And then I see it. Written in red near the wallpaper's fraying edge, half hidden by paste and age. Dylan's handwriting. DS, look closer. An arrow, sloppy but certain, pointing beyond the wallpaper's withered meridian. The mural.

He didn't just find this. He wanted someone else to.

Mags drew the corner back with two fingers. Red shows first. Not paint red. Not brick red. The kind that doesn't belong in a room meant for washing your hands. We peel more paper, a sheet larger and larger, tearing off a swath. Beneath is the mural, or what's left of it. Faces. Abstract, though unmistakable. Caught halfway between screaming and knowing that won't help.

Oh my god.

Holy shit. Those figures.

Dorothy and Nathan Calhoun.

The bronze maquettes. The bronze statues we found in the cabin. The ones frozen right before the end. They were studies for this. And they weren't imagined. They were people. Real ones. The kind that get remembered as local legend when the truth is too sharp to keep saying out loud. And above them, animal heads. Stags. Bears. Falcons. Their eyes empty. Their mouths open like masks.

Oh my god.

The masked figures are holding weapons that don't belong to any one time. Guns that look wrong. Blades that look improvised. Anchors used like hooks. Like something meant to pull people back in. Distorted weapons firing flames of sickly white and green into the dozens of figures. Dorothy and Nathan among them.

This is done by the artists from the cabin.

The mural is an abstract. It's a record. The Calhouns being erased. And the ones doing it, they aren't hiding their faces. They're wearing them. Not costumes, not symbols, family crests pulled down over bone and breath.

Look at the masks.

Stags, bears, falcons.

And the anchors.

Handlers.

This isn't metaphor, is it?

No, it's a massacre.

And a message. Bootleggers didn't take care of the Calhouns.

The originals took care of their competition.

And erased all mention of it over time. So the town lied.

No, the town agreed. When you see something like that, you don't get to unsee it. You just learn how to carry it back into the light. When we step back into the bar, the noise doesn't come with us. It's still quiet, still waiting. Like the room knows we saw something it's been holding on to longer than us. Kenzie's at the bar, not behind it, in front of it. She's lined up three glasses like she didn't want to make a decision about who deserved one.

He would have wanted you to drink the good stuff. Reckon I feel the same.

She pours without asking. Not careful, not messy, just honest.

Dang. Jake would have had a little something to say about that pour.

Oh man, for sure.

Kenzie, what the fucking fuck?

Whoa, yeah, that's a great impression of him.

Jake do be swearing.

He do. Dang. To Jake.

To Jake.

To Jake.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. Stay, leave. Haven't seen that part yet.

You don't have to decide today.

Good, because I reckon today is right next door to the worst. And if it ain't that, it'll do till that one comes round and pinches me hello.

Grief doesn't fix anything, but sometimes it keeps you from breaking what's left.

Hey, Kenzie, take care, okay?

We'll check back with you later, okay, sis?

Thanks. Thank you. Watch yourselves out there, bunnies. You here?

Jake didn't die quietly. The town just made it quiet for him. And somewhere between the empty space and the missing files, I realized something else had disappeared, too. The idea that this was ever going to be simple.

Amy drives like she's out running a thought, hands steady, eyes forward, no music. I've learned not to interrupt that kind of silence unless I mean it. We're headed for Holloway, which means we're pretending this is still a normal day. We should probably eat at some point.

We've had grief.

That's not a food group.

It is this week.

So today, two wakes, a funeral, a crime scene, a massacre mural, and now Holloway.

Fucking Holloway.

It's not even one o'clock.

I-I didn't even ask.

Ask what?

If you were okay going, you know, to see Dreier.

You never ask.

And you never not follow.

Somebody has to watch your blind spots.

Yeah.

You-you okay?

Mostly.

Hey now, talk to almost Dr. Park.

Okay. Well, Eleanor, when she talked on that phone...

She sounded like a holt.

She sounded like someone who knew she'd win.

Because she always does. That's the system working as designed.

I-I don't miss her.

Okay.

I miss who I thought she was when it was just...

us. People are simpler in parking lots.

People are simpler when you can trust them to be who they say they are.

People say there are a lot of things. Trust doesn't always enter into that.

I don't think it's asking for much.

What? Trust? It isn't. It's not.

The thing that keeps bugging me...

About Eleanor?

No, about Dylan. Eleanor knew exactly who she could call. Exactly what would happen if she did. So did Dylan.

Yeah, us.

He was moving sideways. Not up, not to the cops, not to family. It's not like we could protect him. Only listen.

That's not nothing. He was close enough to know something was wrong.

Close enough to be scared.

Close enough to play a wild card.

Yeah, he played it too late.

Playing it at all means something in itself.

It means that he didn't think there was a version of this where he stayed safe long enough to explain it.

If dryer warrants a second look, then the Driftwood school matters.

Sure, but how?

Guess we're gonna find out. Amy stares straight ahead when things get bad. Like if she keeps moving, the world will eventually make room for her. I learned a long time ago that if I stop, she won't. So I don't stop. The road keeps going. So do we.

Holloway is the kind of place people talk about, like it personally wronged them. No one can ever explain how, it's just Holloway. Fucking Holloway, it's the worst. Which is funny, because the first thing Holloway does when you arrive is smile at you.

Okay, parking situation is aggressively reasonable.

Yeah, and that's how it starts. That's how they get you.

Amy.

I'm just saying, free parking is how cults get you. You'll see. Holloway is a college town, the only one in the county, which means it thinks it's better than you. But like, politely.

You know what? I've never been to Holloway. It's, uh...

Sucks, right?

The worst.

Just trash.

I was gonna say beautiful, like, look at the mountain. My god. Breathtaking.

Breathtaking? Wow. Didn't take long for you, huh?

What?

Indoctrination, Kool-Aid time, you know, cult stuff.

Okay, give it a rest, Jerky.

Ugh, what's this now?

Hey, come on in.

Why?

Uh, because we're welcoming you?

Suspicious.

Uh, thank you. We'll just, you know, we'll just go on in. Yes. Yeah. You're being weird.

This is Holloway. I'm being correct. Every surface is covered in paper. Lost cats, open mics, office hours, protests scheduled three weeks in advance. Nothing here happens by accident. It just looks like it does.

Okay, I checked. Nora Chen has an office here.

Nice. Okay, we can do a swing by after we talk with Dreier.

Yeah, she shares the space, so maybe we can speak with her office mates and see if they noticed anything before all of this or since.

Why does every campus map look like it was designed by someone who hates people?

It's an abstract representation of hierarchy.

It's a lie with a legend.

Hi, welcome to Pacific Northwestern U. Are you visiting today?

Define visiting.

We are. Thank you. We're meeting a professor. Oh, no way.

Who? One that exists. Not that it's any of your business or whatever. Rude. Okay. Well, if you need help finding anything.

Yeah. Okay, we won't. Thank you. Girl, why you got to be like this?

This place runs on laminated optimism. Fuck that noise.

Ah, got it. Totally reasonable.

No one here looks worried. No one here looks rushed, which means whatever's wrong hasn't reached the quad yet.

Dreyer's building is that one.

All right, let's do this. Holloway doesn't feel dangerous. It feels managed, like a place where bad things get redirected into committees, then footnoted, then quietly forgotten, which only works if everyone agrees to forget.

Pacific Northwestern University is the kind of school you don't brag about, but you also don't apologize for. It's a solid C+, a local place, a practical place, a place where you can still reinvent yourself without anyone asking what you're running from. And for the record, I'm not snobby about it, I went to college, for long enough to know how much it costs to leave. But PNWU has one thing people will cross county lines for, the art program, which is why Clement Dreyer is here, in an office that smells like money and slow time.

Come in, come in! Don't hover in the doorway like you're about to confess something.

We're not.

Yet.

Well, you're welcome either way.

Professor Clement Dreyer is in his seventies. Tenure, nice haircut, expensive voice, the kind of man who has never once had to apologize for taking up space.

So, Amy O'Connell, Marguerite. I have to say, I didn't expect visitors.

We didn't expect to be here.

No one ever does. That's the magic of universities. You arrive by accident and leave with debt and opinions.

We're here because Dylan Holt came to see you.

Dylan, yes. Of course. Terrible, tragic, shocking.

He says the right words in the right order, like he's read them off a card before. But the first thing that happened in his voice wasn't grief. It was calculation.

We're not the police. I mean, obviously.

No, you're not. I can tell. You look awake.

Is that your way of saying we're too young?

It's my way of saying you're too unburdened.

Unburdened is a fun word for not taken seriously.

Now, now. I take young women very seriously.

That sentence is doing a lot of work, Clem.

Right. Fair. So, if you're not law enforcement, what are you?

Friends.

Loose ends.

Friends of Dylan Holt. Okay.

He came to you last week.

He did.

And then he died.

Yes. And the whole county is performing shock.

We're not here to perform anything. We just want to know why he came.

Because he was curious.

There it is again. That tiny slip. Like, he almost said the quiet part out loud and then swallowed it.

What did he ask you about?

The Driftwood School. My association with them. My misspent youth.

That's it?

That's plenty, if you know what you're looking at.

We don't. That's why we're here.

Of course. Of course. Come, sit. You'll be more comfortable. Oh, I'm intolerable when people stand.

He guides us over to a seating area that feels like a staged interview set. Soft chairs, a low table. The kind of arrangement that makes you forget you're being managed.

Would you like tea? Water? Something that tells you I'm hospitable?

Just talk is fine.

Ah. A direct woman. I admire that. Yes. Dylan asked about Driftwood. Who was who. Where it began. Where it ended. He wanted background.

Why?

That's what was strange. I assumed with his family, he'd want to talk about a legacy project. A donation. A wing. The Holt name loves a plaque.

But he didn't.

No. He wanted the past.

The way he says past makes it sound like a room he's locked from the outside.

So give it to us. The past.

All right. You've come to the right man.

That's the trick with men like Dreier. You don't have to force anything. You just have to offer them an audience.

It started in Cedarbrook, late 60s. Two art students drop out of PNWU because they decide grades are fascist, and they already know more than all their profs could ever teach them, Bobby Joe Thurman and Doug Whitlock. They meet the lovely Jane Urquell at a bar, and with her is Wyatt Alder.

Wyatt Alder.

Nisika. Brilliant. Quiet until he wasn't. Alder could make a room listen without raising his voice. He brought indigenous themes into contemporary work in a way that didn't ask permission, and that scared the right people.

Who would that be?

Everyone. The county, the institutions, the polite kind of fear.

So they start a commune?

A live work space. Cheap commercial rental. Cedarbrook. They were young and angry, and convinced the forest was listening. And then word spreads. People show up from everywhere. Other Tlacwa locals. But as far as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, mostly runaways with talent.

Names.

Samuel Beck, Bella Harper, Georgia Wilkes. All very important for about 11 minutes. Thurman and Urquell had momentum. Alder had gravity. Harper, she had talent. The rest, well...

And you?

I arrived later, in the middle of the story, like any good myth. Seattle kid, hitchhiked down the coast. California, Mexico. Back up. I was... romantic. I thought I was carowack.

Were you?

God, no. Carowack could write. But I had hunger. And Driftwood liked hunger.

When you got there, what was it?

Influx. Some of them wanted art. Real art. Some of them wanted a movement. Politics. Change. Environmental fights. Treaty stuff. Local power struggles dressed up as philosophy.

Treaties.

Yes. Several Nausicaa artists were part of Driftwood. They weren't interested in being anyone's aesthetic. They had stakes.

He says stakes like it's a concept, not like it was someone's life.

And Dylan, he asked about all this?

Indeed. He asked about the origin stories, the fights, the mythology. He asked me who hated who.

And who did?

Everyone. Lovingly.

Too fast. He answers too fast for a man who claims to love telling stories. And then there's the photo. I spot it during one of his carefully curated reminiscences. Not framed like an award, not tucked away either. Just placed on the edge of his desk, turned slightly inward, where he'd see it without meaning to. Dryer and Elizabeth Venering, Dylan's mother. At some kind of function, maybe? It's hard to tell from where we're sitting. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. Younger, sharp-eyed, not smiling, not a family photo, not a colleague snapshot. Something else. Important enough to keep, casual enough to pretend it isn't. Amy's clocked it as well, but we'll have to let it wait, at least for now.

Dylan did ask about what was left, what survived.

And what did you tell him?

That there isn't much. Most of the work is gone. Lost, destroyed, bought, buried in private collections. And the rest, too expensive to sit around in a county that resents beauty.

So what is left?

Ah, that is my little role in all of this.

Your role?

I prefer custodian. Somebody has to remember them as people, not just a spooky rumor. I keep certain artifacts.

He says artifacts the way some people say relics. Like history is something he owns because he touched it once.

Dylan looked through the box, too. And I suppose if you're trying to finish his little project, you should as well.

Convenient.

Life is full of conveniences. We just call them fate when we're bored.

Or when we're hiding something.

You're a sharp little thing, aren't you?

Okay, let's see the box.

Of course.

He brings it over like he's presenting Communion. A plain but well-made wooden box. Large but not ridiculously so.

Careful. Not with the box. It's replaceable. The history isn't.

Sure.

First, a poster.

For what?

One of the earliest showings. Cedarbrook at the bowling alley.

You're kidding.

They loved it. They wanted the everyman. They didn't want galleries. They wanted cigarette smoke and fluorescent lights and people who didn't know how to say aesthetic.

Keep going.

Ah, this. A carving. Wyatt made it while waiting for a bus to Avalon Falls. He found a stick, had a pocket knife, bored, restless, brilliant. It's a swan. But if you look closely, the lines, the patterning, Nausicaa iconography just folded into it, effortless.

So he couldn't stop being himself.

Exactly. And then there are smaller things, letters, sketches, bits of a movement that never trusted permanence.

Did Dylan find anything of interest?

I wouldn't know.

Well, actually, out of anyone, you would.

You're both very intense. Bad week?

Not as bad as Dylan's.

No, I suppose not.

His voice tightens like he's trying not to step on glass.

Oh, hey, what's that? Ooh, shiny, shiny.

Amy's a magnet for the wrong details. She lifts it out like she's done this before. Like the world has taught her that shiny things are never innocent.

Whoa, this is an original's pin.

That's right. Many people in the county collect memorabilia. The originals love their pageantry. Pins, crests, dinners that pretend they aren't meetings. Very old county.

This isn't memorabilia, but it's definitely old.

Amy, that's not any crest I've seen before.

What's the letter?

And the animal is a salmon. A salmon, not a stag, not a bear, not a falcon, not an anchor. A salmon, mouth open like it's trying to breathe in the wrong world. And in my head, I see the mural again. Bodies on the floor with salmon heads, painted like a joke that failed its way into something worse. Not funny enough to forgive, not abstract enough to forget.

C for Calhoun.

Holy shit.

The Calhouns weren't just some rich family that got wiped out.

They were one of them.

One of the originals.

The room doesn't change, the mountain doesn't crumble into the earth. But something in the story shifts, like a weight moved under the floorboards. Like we just touched the part of Avalon Falls that everyone has been walking around for a hundred years. A salmon. A sea and the sudden sick clarity that the Calhouns weren't erased by strangers. They were erased by family.