Agony's Lodestone by Laura Keating

Author:Laura Keating [Keating, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 979-8-9859923-7-3
Publisher: Tenebrous Press
Published: 2023-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

VI

Alex Takes a Dive

“YOU EVER HEAR about the stone tape theory?”

It was almost noon. They hadn’t stopped walking since they’d broken camp. Alex had taken the lead, followed by Aggie. Bailey had been slowing as the day wore on; his feet were hurting. While never truly stopping, they’d occasionally take the quick breaks for him to pad the side of his boots with dry leaves. They took the opportunity of those brief reprieves to look around, see how far they’d gone. Sometimes it was depressingly little; sometimes, it was nowhere at all.

“I heard about it when we were going to do a one-off episode down on this haunted farm in New Hampshire,” Bailey said as he took another step, wincing at the fresh blisters. “The idea is that certain types of rock can ‘record’ energy, thoughts, and emotions. Given the right conditions, it might replay. A ghost is just that recording, played again and again.”

“Fun,” intoned Alex. He smacked a mosquito on his arm; it popped like a tiny, bloody balloon.

They had given up on the cabin and were trying for the trailhead today, back the way Aggie and Alex had come. They were, at least, making a little progress. After passing their own campsite three times, they abruptly found themselves forty feet north of it. Alex had spotted the lean-to through the trees behind them as they stopped for a water break. They’d been so happy they’d danced.

“This whole area is geographically unique, you know?” Bailey went on. “Only geopark of its kind in North America. Here, in this little city, is the exact spot where three continents collided and then broke apart, the whole ocean spilling between them. You can paddle up the St. John River and see the spot where North America, South America, and Africa split. There are Precambrian fossils here—that’s a billion years old. Before the Cambrian explosion, before life as we know it. The sort of shit you can only measure in Deep Time. Right beneath us.”

“Super,” said Alex.

“When did you become an amateur geologist?” said Aggie. Her stomach felt like an empty rubber bag rubbing against itself; her tongue like a dead slug.

“I research my material.” Bailey sniffed. “I take pride in my work.”

Alex called for a full rest half an hour later. They each had another mouthful of water—not enough but also too much if they were to keep going like this.

“Highest tides in the world.”

Aggie looked around at Alex. He snapped a twig in his hands, found another, and broke it the same way. He seemed to be talking to himself. “That’s what we’ve got all around us. Highest, fastest tides in the world.”

You didn’t grow up in the Fundy Bay area and not know this fact. All the same, Aggie nodded along just as she had nodded along to Bailey’s little geography lesson.

“Magnetic Hill,” Aggie added. She was referring to the road near Moncton, created and discovered wholly accidentally when locals were laying a cart path back in the nineteenth century.

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