Craig had a cold shower when he woke on Saturday morning, and even though it was six forty five (well ahead of his usual weekend schedule), he didn't feel too bad when he stepped out and pulled a fresh pair of shorts and underwear, and changed out the bandage on his sore hand. The smell of coffee was emanating from the Hotel kitchen when he passed by, and he could hear Butters and Kenny having a lively debate over whether or not they could get away with not making a shopping run to the city over the weekend break.
"Besides," he heard Kenny complaining loudly, pots and pans clanging as he scrubbed them in the soapy industrial sink, "I don't know if the Isuzu will make the trip. I had to tow that Tweek guy's car back yesterday, and I doubt it'll make it to the city without a dusting out."
"Aww Geeze Ken, that's your solution to everything. If something ain't quite right around here it's the sand that's done it. Give it a dusting and that's that. Maybe your pickup won't be so inclined to get sand in it so often if you just hired a real mechanic to look at it!"
Craig smiled wryly and slunk past the kitchen door. It was kind of funny to hear Butters getting pissed off like that - he was usually so polite and soft spoken, and he would never, ever imply that Craig was no good at his post to his face. After all, that could possibly hurt Craig's feelings, and God forbid he ever did a thing like that.
He pretended he hadn't heard the exchange when, after depositing his towel and pyjamas back in his caravan, he returned to the kitchen back door and knocked lightly. Butters answered, and his cheeks were flushed in annoyance but otherwise he looked more or less the same as always. Craig craned his neck to see around past him, and spotted Kenny scouring pans and stacking them in shining silver piles on the drying rack.
"Hey," he greeted them both, and Butters must have been really angry because instead of his usual chipper "Morning, Craig!" he just huffed, and stepped aside to let him through. Kenny however looked up from his dishes and waved.
"Go through. Continental breakfast is in the dining room, hot breakfast will be another half an hour. I think your buddy might still be asleep."
"Oh yeah?" Craig grabbed a banana from the bowl of fruit on the windowsill and noticed that their fruit supply was a little low. Perhaps he should suggest to Kenny that Butters was right, and it would be wise of him to go to State City and pick some stuff up before Monday. "What room number was that?"
"Eleven."
"Can I go upstairs and wake him?”
"Sure."
Butters looked like he had something to say about that. He opened his mouth to scold Kenny, for such a flagrant disregard for their guest's privacy, but clearly he thought better of it in the end and turned away to the bench, where he was half way through peeling a five kilo sack of potatoes.
"We need to hire a cook already. I'm sick and tired of peeling fucking potatoes."
Kenny stared at his back in surprise, because in all the years the two had worked together he had obviously never been told that, and Craig realised that this was probably an argument he didn't want to get involved in. He made his way out of the kitchen as quickly as possible, and stopped only briefly at the bar to snag the spare key to room eleven. Just in case Tweek, like any reasonable person staying in a strange location, happened to have locked his bedroom door.
He ascended the stairs two at a time, his dad-loafers leaving dusty smudges in the faded red carpet. Upstairs, it was hot and dim, and the walls were lined with framed photographs and newspaper clippings that illustrated historical reports of alien activities in the area. Lots of pictures of circles in the sand in someone's back yard. Discussions on whether or not the cat which gave birth to a two headed kitten seven years ago was the victim of some bizarre alien-feline cross breeding program. Craig had heard most of these stories through his years in the town, but because the only time he had previously been up here was two years ago he had forgotten that actual ink print records of these incidents existed. Ghosts of the strange reality he belonged to lingered in silver gelatine in these halls.
He was careful to check the numbers on each of the doors, stopping when he reached eleven at the far end of the landing and noting that Tweek had hung a DO NOT DISTURB flyer on his handle.
Craig was going to go ahead and disturb him anyway. He slotted the key into the lock and twisted it, the mechanism released with ease and confidently he made his way inside.
"Hey hey!” He called to the occupant, closing the door in his wake. “Wake up dude, do we still have plans?"
The room was small but tidy, illuminated by a large window which (unlike the windows in the kitchen) actually opened, and let the early morning breeze eddy inside. Tweek's bags were thrown haphazardly on the ratty armchair in the corner, and a large manila folder full of papers and photographs, as well as a small pocket copy of the New Testament, sat on the aged writing desk opposite the door. The bed was made, as if unslept in, and if he hadn't been able to hear the sound of a tap running through the ensuite door he might have thought that the bedroom was deserted.
Craig edged closer to the ensuite, but rather than just marching in he had the restraint to rap lightly on the outside of the door.
He heard the tap shut off, and a small clatter, like someone had just knocked something over in surprise. The room was still for a moment, and from far away Craig could hear the sounds of the overnighter bus returning from Brass Ridge. Busses always made a terrible disturbance in the still of the local morning.
"... Who is it?"
Tweek sounded tentative, and Craig considered answering with an inhuman and terrifying scream, but he thought that was not only unkind but impractical. If he scared the boy to death in the morning, then he wouldn't have anyone to hang out with in the afternoon. Although he did take a moment to forcibly remind himself that he shouldn't become attached to this person, who (might) soon have a fixed car and (maybe) be able to fulfil his goals of disappearing into the Basin for good.
Continuing to pretend like he didn't care the fate of this unusual boy made him feel slightly less weird about the fact he did. And if he ended up leaving after all, then it wasn't like Craig dint have the rest of his life to miss the comfort that came from just talking to someone, anyone, rather than spending long days working on cars and elevating telescopes to very specific angles alone.
"It's Craig," he replied. "We still on to go sightseeing?"
Admittedly, Tweek had given him a lukewarm confirmation that they would hang out, at best. He seemed more interested in spending time with Kyle at the library, but Craig had chosen to ignore this and after sitting and watching the shadow of Phobos pass over Mars for a little while, he had returned to the subject of spending some time together. Getting to know each other. It was embarrassing, but now the socio-emotional floodgates that had kept him comfortable in isolation were cracking open, his urge to hang around someone and waste time chatting about stupid inconsequential things was threatening to gush out of him and render him as vulnerable as he had been back when he first arrived.
He stepped back from the door a bit when Tweek cracked it open and peeked out, and his companion held it open an inch for a moment to ensure Craig really was who he said he was before he dared to swing the door wide entirely. Craig observed that he was already fully clothed, in bland jeans and a long white t-shirt, and that he had clearly only just finished showering. His face was not as red as it had been, although it was shiny clean and peeling a little on his nose and cheekbones, and his wet hair was turning the shoulders and neck of his tee transparent. The tooth brush clutched in his left hand, and the foam around his mouth, suggested he had been disturbed half way through brushing his teeth.
"... You were serious?"
Craig tried not to be offended by his surprise, and nodded.
"Yeah I was."
Tweek looked thoughtful for a moment, and the two of them stood there staring, sizing each other up. After a while, he turned away and jammed his toothbrush back into his mouth.
"Give me a second to finish up."
He sounded undignified, talking around the toothbrush, and it was quite endearing. Craig felt his affection for the guy grow. He leaned on the bathroom doorframe, Tweek ducking back in to spit and rinse his mouth, before dropping his tooth brush into a paper coffee cup he had set on the soap holder beside the shower.
"How's my car coming?" He asked, glancing at Craig in the mirror and picking an old hairbrush up of the top of the toilet cistern. The bathroom was a small space, and he seemed comfortable making the most of every surface for toiletry storage.
"Its not," he told him honestly. "If you thought I got up at four am today to work on it, you were mistaken. It can wait."
Rather than earning what he thought would be an annoyed response or outburst, however, this made Tweek grin and shake his head, as though he was unsurprised to hear this news. As though this had fallen exactly in line with the kind of behaviour he had expected from someone like Craig. And this in itself was unsettling.
"You're using my car to hold me hostage here, aren't you?" He straightened up and brushed his wet hair back off his face. "Being hostage is something I've always been afraid of. But now it's happening I can't be mad about it. I guess... in a way, I'm kind of flattered?"
Craig, who found himself very insulted by this insinuation, would have liked to respond to that. But humiliatingly enough he could not think of an appropriate comeback.
Although he would never admit it, Craig was sulking as they ate their cold cereal and luke-warm coffee breakfast. Hot food hadn't materialised at the bar, possibly because the debate conducted earlier between Kenny and his employer had somehow degraded into a furious, full-scale argument, but Tweek seemed happy enough to concoct his own instant coffee and bran flakes, his mood fairly bright and his posture relatively relaxed - not at all like it had been the night he arrived.
As they left the pub, and Craig informed Tweek that they could go to the library first so he could check out the town history and Foundation archives as he had been invited to do, he tried to work out what it was about Tweek's flippant accusations concerning Craig's motives. Maybe it was as straightforward as Craig being angry, that a virtual stranger might suggest he knew him well enough to guess his intentions? He spent a decent amount of time trying to convince himself of this during breakfast, but regrettably met with little success. More likely (and oh, was he loathe to admit it) Craig was pissed off that somehow, Tweek had realised that Craig was enjoying being around him. Tweek seemed to be operating under the impression that Craig wanted him to stick around, and this was something which was becoming more and more true by the minute.
It was a vulnerable and unsettling feeling, like a soft breeze over the back of a hand that dangled off the edge of the mattress, or the sensation of an insect crawling down the neck of Craig's shirt when he was most relaxed, and least suspecting it. He recalled why it was he had worked so hard to remove himself from these kinds of friendships and ties.
"Do people live in those?" Tweek asked him, as they walked down streets lined with whitewashed little houses, and Craig said yes. Not everyone had the luxury of squatting in a caravan behind the Hotel.
The library was located at a three way intersection - the closest thing to a town square Barbelo could hope to have. On the opposite corner, the museum stood quietly, and on the other opposite corner, the information centre, which was open twenty-four hours just in case any alien seekers came by at four am. This arrangement around a single central point meant that no tourists really needed to venture beyond the intersection and into what the locals called ‘Suburbia', although of course they always did, ambling along the three or four paved roads in the whole area and taking photos of completely mundane small town details which were rendered completely fascinating by their isolated context. The bus stop, for example, or the dilapidated church which only ran services on Easter and Christmas. For some reason, church attendance had dropped significantly in the decades following the schism, which had first started between FTUC and the comparatively normal religious population of the town. Next to the library was the school, which also inexplicably received its fair share of tourist ogling on a regular basis. Tweek was unsurprisingly astonished to see the place, because although it was small and needed a paint job, there was no way the little timber building could be construed as anything else. He wanted to know what kind of a school it was, and why a place this with a population as small as this even necessitated a school in the first place, so Craig gave him the run down to clear it up.
"Bebe Stevens runs it. Three of the students there are her own children. There are maybe twenty or thirty students in total, between seven and sixteen years of age. Pretty much everyone here except me went there at one point because as you may have guessed, it's the only school in the area."
"Her children go to the school? Dude… why is everyone here so young?" Tweek paused by the white picket fence that distinguished the school yard from the sandy pavement. "Where are the retirees and pensioners or whatever?"
"They stay at home mostly? I dunno. There are some older people around. I mean the guy who runs the church is about two hundred, but most of the people who do jobs here inherited them from their parents so when they took their place in the workforce the parents went back to their houses and did nothing. Me and Butters are the only ones who weren't born here."
"Oh yeah?" Tweek cocked his head and looked at Craig from the corner of his eye. "Where you from?"
"Colorado."
He answered without even intending to, and regretted it immediately after. If there was one thing Craig absolutely hated it was remembering Colorado.
"... Seriously?" Tweek looked surprised, and Craig nodded. He got that a lot in Colorado too - people always seemed a little taken aback when he spoke, because he did not have any discernable accent.
“You look kind of like –“
"I was adopted," he clarified, "and now I've been adopted again. To here. Which is slightly less depressing I guess. We are here by the way." He jerked his head to the museum, the timber two story building next to the school, and Tweek's eyes widened in surprise. Which Craig supposed was a reasonable response.
The Basin Library, while tasteful in most other aspects, did have a rather ostentatious frontage. It was made of timber, and thankfully had avoided the trite 'old west' rendering that many dessert towns seemed to capitalise on, but a few decades earlier during the height of UFO related tourism in the area, the whole thing had been painted with large green spacemen wearing souvenir t-shirts, who for some reason occupied themselves reading alien themed books and comics. Craig had always overheard Kyle complaining to Kenny about it, that he planned to have it painted some day, that when he went out there some mornings it was like he was being stared at through insectoid black eyes. But he never had gotten around to it and so, there they were, faded but indisputably ridiculous. Craig dared Tweek to bet his ass that tourists loved taking photos of that shit as well.
"Are you kidding?" Tweek pushed his hair off his face, to make sure he was seeing the place clearly. "That's horrifying."
"If you're afraid of little green men, this is not the place to be. Come on."
He ushered Tweek inside just as the first tour bus of the morning appeared on the horizon, gleaming silver in the baking sun.
The library was open, but it was always open early in the mornings. Kyle kept strange hours, breaking between one and three pm most days. Inside, it was cool and dim, and the smell of newsprint and books hung on the air. The reception was empty - a stack of folders on the desk and an outdated flag (only 13 stars) on the wall facing the door made the place seem like it had been empty like this for a long, long time. Craig tisked and banged his palm down flat on the silver bell on the countertop.
"Anyone here?" He called, and his voice echoed just a little, bouncing of the bare wooden walls.
"Hey?"
Kyle, a skinny and pale young man whose most notable feature was his rich crop of bright red hair, appeared from the door to the left of reception, a pencil behind his ear and a copy of the Basin Bugle tucked under his arm. When he saw Craig, an expression of distaste passed over his features. He sighed, pushing a few stray ringlets of hair off his brow.
"Oh. It's you. How's the hand?"
"It's acceptable. But don't sound too excited to see me. I'm just here with him today." Craig poked his thumb over his shoulder, towards Tweek, and Kyle seemed to brighten a little. The librarian pulled himself to his full height (which was respectable) and stepped aside to invite the two of them through the doorway.
"Oh right! Yeah! We met yesterday."
Tweek nodded, giving Kyle a polite smile and twitching his arm just a little, as if he was unsure if he should offer Kyle his hand. It seemed they had already done the shaking thing the day before, and it seemed that Tweek had been unaccustomed to it, so in the end, he did nothing.
The two of them followed Kyle through the side door.
The library was small - there wasn't much point in having a huge library of books in a town where the population was comfortably less than 500. That said, it did contain a lot of information about particular topics. If a person was looking for books about abductions, conspiracies, crop circles or new religious movements, Barbelo's own dimly lit book depository was the best place to go. Certainly in the region, and maybe even in the entire state as a whole. Kyle was not an expert on these issues himself - he was trained as a lawyer, but also had a technical diploma in library and archive studies. His interest in the actual events he catalogued was mild, at best.
Helpfully enough, Kyle kept the books in order by alphabetical subject matter. The lack of broad categories in the place rendered decimal cataloguing irrelevant. Short shelves that rose to the height of Craig's shoulder lined each side of the large back room, and at the rear an old wooden staircase lead to a much brighter and less musty reading room. Kyle had made an effort to have a few more windows installed on the top storey a few years before Craig had arrived, but Craig though that was wasted because in the entire downstairs area, only two conservatively sized windows threw shafts of light in to the gloom. Downstairs, in the basement, Craig knew he kept census records and other statistical data - death certificates, marriage records, and all that variety of dry and unexciting thing which would most likely be irrelevant to Tweek's research. Craig took a seat in the only chair in the entire downstairs space, a well-worn and squashy armchair close to the door they had entered by, and turned his attention to the extraordinarily outdated map of Mars on the wall.
Kyle and Tweek busied themselves with muted discussion, and partway through he saw Tweek conjure a folded page from his back pocket. It looked like something ripped from a book - possibly the small copy of the New Testament Craig had spotted on his desk that morning. He felt a distinct sense of envy, that Tweek was turning to Kyle for answers to whatever weird questions he might have about the Foundation. Because while Kyle might have all the textbook solutions, and the capacity to find information if he didn't have it immediately on hand, Craig was the one who actually had feelings on the matter. Opinions and insights that Tweek would probably do well to ask about.
He picked at the bandage on his sore hand moodily, and after a while he lost interest in that too, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the wall behind him.
After about twenty minutes of sitting there, listening to soft voices and rustling papers, he fell asleep.
Tweek nudged him awake a little after ten, and all of the comfortable feelings he had had when he woke earlier that day quite suddenly and without warning disappeared. He felt like death down to his bones, and it took him a moment to remember where he was and what he was doing there. He could probably have done well to have another shower.
"You've been snoring for forty minutes." Kyle told him coolly, standing over his chair and looking down at him from behind his generously sized nose. Craig rubbed his face and groaned in misery. He had never felt so badly the sting of salt and dust in his eyes.
"Why did you let me go to sleep?" He asked, and Tweek looked a little guilty but also a little bit amused.
"Man, you went ahead and did it without asking," was the reply, "but the three of us have decided to go grab some coffee now. I suggested we wake you and see if you wanted to come."
Craig jerked his head up, having only just realised there were no longer just the three of them in the library, and stared at the stranger in blue jeans and a loose fitting t-shirt a few feet to the left of Kyle.
"... Who's that?" He asked rudely, and the stranger smiled.
"Stan Marsh," he held out his hand to him, and Craig stared at it like he had never seen a palm before. He couldn't put his finger on why, whether it was related to his freshly woken moodiness or the strange aura of confidence this stranger was radiating, but good God did he dislike this person. Even more than he usually disliked people he had only just met.
"Stan Marsh who?"
"Uhh..." Stan realised Craig wasn't shaking his hand, and awkwardly retracted it. "Well, I'm Randy's son. Randy Marsh?"
Craig had a vague idea who Randy Marsh was - a local geologist who had moved out here in the eighties to study Brass Ridge and other geological points of interest, and descended into an uncontrollable spiral of alcoholism a few years ago. Craig had met him twice, both times at the hotel. Both times, he had been very nearly unconscious.
"... I've never heard of you."
Stan raised his eyebrows, and Kyle looked properly fucked off with his ignorance.
"He's new," he informed Stan shortly, as though Craig wasn't even in the vicinity. "He's only been here a few months."
"I've been here two years, Kyle. But whatever." Craig stood, and adjusted his shorts and t-shirt. He thought he would probably rather not go to coffee with these strangers. In fact, he was rather warming to the idea that he go down to the garage and lie down in the dark under someone's car until he died. "Good to meet you, Stan. Welcome to the Basin I guess."
Stan looked a little sheepish, as though he didn't really want to tell Craig he was born here. Educated here. Had lived here for nineteen years.
But he went ahead and told him anyway.
Craig scoffed and shrugged it off.
"Well like I said. I've never heard of you. Come on Tweek, we still have places to go."
He turned his face to his company, and uncomfortable Tweek nibbled at his thumbnail. He was clearly itching to argue, but at the sometime, he didn't want to hurt Craig's feelings.
"... I could really use a coffee, Craig."
"Well why don't we go get it ourselves?"
Craig realised as he said it that he was sounding incredibly petulant, and probably not giving Tweek any good reasons not to ditch him in the middle of town. Kyle continued to look at him in distaste, and the stranger Stan just stood there looking awkward. How long had the three of them been chatting while he was asleep? How well acquainted were they all by now? A suddenly unfounded fear that Kyle might have said something to turn Tweek against him occurred to him – he barely had time to notice the negative thought before it was right in there, under his skin like a splinter, and it would linger at the back of his head giving him hell for the rest of his life.
God damn it all.
"... Fine," he relented eventually, outnumbered three against one. "Okay. Whatever. I don't care."
Kyle told everyone they would be best to go to the diner on the other side of the town - the pub would be far too busy to handle four extras by now. Craig followed dutifully as the three others filed out, and it made him sick with jealously when he realised that Tweek and Kyle were still walking and chatting amiably.
He fucking hated it.
Chefs diner was only open between 9 and 5pm, but it had the convenience of being located not on the edge of the township, where tour busses skirted by on their way into the emptiness of the salt plains, but close to the only real suburb in the region. As such, most of the clientele were locals, and Craig had to smile politely at everyone he passed when he walked in there. Even Kevin Stoley, who came up to him and asked if he could spare a few hours to check out his washer again.
"You wouldn't believe it. The Television and internet is on the blink as well."
Craig showed him his injured hand and said that thanks to Kyle and his fridge, that wouldn't be possible. Kyle told him that if he wasn't such a useless repairman, he wouldn't have dropped the fridge on his own fucking hand, and Craig had to remind him somewhat forcibly.
"I'm an astronomer!"
Stan observed that the two of them argued like they were married, something which made Kyle glower at him, and Tweek laughed.
Craig thought his relationship with Kyle was about average. He certainly had closer friends and closer enemies in the Basin.
They ordered some coffee and scones and sat by the window. The seats might have been more impressive if the only view wasn't the low houses opposite the diner, and then beyond them the dusty red land that seemed to stretch on into eternity. Tussock grass and Joshua trees adorned the back yards of the homes on this side of town. Only a few metres down the road the pavement turned back to sand and dust, compacted by the vehicles that had, over the years, followed this dirt road home.
Craig sat in silence for much of the conversation, listening to Tweek and Kyle talk about the profiles of people who often wandered off to join the Foundation, the fundamental tenants of its followers, and similar. Conversation then turned to Stan, and Craig found out he was engaged to the local museum operator Wendy Testaburger (a fact which Kyle seemed to have some misgivings about) but had been living out of the Basin in Los Angeles for four years now. Wendy did not know he was currently in town, and he asked everyone present at the table not to tell her he was around - he had only intended to come in for a day yesterday to see Kyle, but weirdly enough his motorbike had broken down partway to the centre of town.
"The Harley in the workshop."
Craig recalled the mysterious motorbike, belonging to the stranger Kenny had named yesterday.
"Yeah. Kenny told me the mechanic would fix it. But I haven't seen him anywhere so far," he turned to Kyle in puzzlement, and a look of discomfort passed over Kyle's face instantaneously. For what was possibly the first time in history, Craig sympathised with him. In fact he was pretty much certain he felt the same.
"Craig is the mechanic now." Kyle told him crisply. "Clyde left eighteen months ago."
Stan looked surprised to hear this.
"... Where did he go?"
"The compound." Craig answered tersely. And that was the end of that conversation.
The rest of the coffee passed more comfortably. Tweek didn't talk much - he was too busy making the most of the bottomless filter refills to comment, although Craig did notice he became decidedly more twitchy as their talk went on. Kyle caught Stan up with discussions about the town, and Stan in return discussed the details of his thoroughly boring life in the big city. Every now and then, Craig felt a little bit as though the two of them were receding into their own private world of nostalgia and inside jokes, and he was uncomfortably aware that these to persons for whom he felt no particular care had something he himself hadn't had forever. Something he couldn't even remember how it felt to have - a meaningful emotional relationship with another person.
He interjected at any point in the conversation where he felt too uncomfortable.
"So why did you move to the city?" Craig asked eventually, having run out of questions to ask him about his bike, and where he had stayed the night (Room ten at the hotel - who would have known), and how it had been growing up in the town with Kyle. This question, unlike the others, did not garner a short and easy answer - Stan paused his conversation with his friend and frowned, and Craig noted he had the particular blue eyes of high school football captains Craig had known when he was younger. The exact kind of people Craig hated, and at the same time wanted to become.
"Well... isn't it obvious?" he asked, a shallow crease appearing between his eyebrows. Tweek even ceased guzzling his coffee for a moment to listen in.
"Huh? What are we talking about?"
Stan ignored him, and scratched the side of his chin thoughtfully.
"I mean, I left because I started feeling kind of... miserable here. Even when I was with Kyle and Wendy and my other friends. I don't think a place like this is good for people, because it just doesn't have... oh, I dunno. I guess I just wanted to go to a fast food place at four am on a Friday, and be enrolled in a real college instead of studying via correspondence, and to buy my alcohol from a bottle shop instead of a petrol station or hotel bar."
He shrugged, as though he was unsure if he was expressing himself correctly, and Kyle looked on with a sadness that seemed almost sickening to the passive bystander.
"What's so great about any of those things though? Aren't they so... meaningless? Stressful? I mean all your friends are here. Your family."
Stan looked suitably shamefaced, and Craig realised that this was probably an old argument between the two of them. Why would Stan send himself spiralling into the chaos of the outside world, when he could have just stayed right here?
And it was probably a world record day for annoying coincidences of opinion, because Craig felt himself agreeing with Kyle for the second time that morning. He nodded and reached past Tweek for the coffee jug. His mug was low, and he wanted to look as casual as possible when he told him that he thought Kyle was right.
"The real world sucks." Craig informed him shortly. "I would have given anything to get out of there. And I did."
Stan's brow creased even further, until it was scrunched like a rumpled bed sheet, and he looked an awful lot like he wanted to ask why Craig happened to hold this opinion.
But he didn't say anything.
The group parted ways on the doorstep of the diner, and Craig was glad of it because frankly, he found the presence of Stan and Kyle depressing. When he checked his watch, he saw it was 12.30pm, and that the pair of them had already wasted half of his day. By this time, a few more tourists were milling about the dusty streets, taking pictures and looking out of place in sunglasses and backpacks and large straw hats. Tweek seemed quite excited about the idea of going down the left fork of the intersection, the little road locals unofficially called Main Street, and checking out the kitschy little shops down there.
Craig suspected it was either residual excitement from having learned new information about the Foundation and the town that birthed it, or the unholy amount of filter coffee he had just accepted into his system.
The Main Street shops consisted primarily of souvenir paraphernalia outlets and bookstores, the most interesting of which was by far Henrietta Biggle's Foramen Vermiis - a creepy looking occult store with blinded windows and a facade which would probably would have been quite impressive, had the sun not baked the black paint to greyish strips peeling off the salty old wood. Standing between the Alien areal photography store (which sold large framed prints of the Basin from above) and the closed down magazine distributors, it seemed to both draw customers and repel them simultaneously. People walked in and out all the time, if only to have a look and then leave again, and Henrietta probably did pretty well running the place. Well enough to drive an old but very well maintained Celica, anyway.
"What's that place?" Was the first thing Tweek asked when they turned down Main Street, and unsurprised Craig informed him it was the go-to shop for incense, crystals, and books about paranormal stuff that seemed to capture the interest of tourists. The kind who already thought the basin was full of weirdos, brainwashed cult-members, or Satanists anyway.
"You sound kinda annoyed by that," Tweek observed, and Craig shrugged like he didn't care. Which he did not. If anyone asked his opinion on the matter (and no-one did) running shops like that only helped to make the perception of the Basin community a self-fulfilling prophecy. People came by, they walked inside Henrietta's store for three minutes, and they left with the conviction that the only thing that happens in Barbelo is human sacrifice and alien worship - the exact conviction which had brought them out to these parts in the first place. Craig found it personally insulting.
"Well, call me fussy, but as a local resident I don't really enjoy being ogled at by strangers because they think I belong to a weird religious sect or something. The way outsiders act towards people out here... it's like we are animals in a zoo sometimes."
Tweek looked guilty momentarily, and Craig wondered if he was remembering whatever thoughts he had thought when the pair of them had first met.
"Well I think it's cool," he said eventually, as the pair strolled past a public notice board covered in advertisements for 'abduction insurance'. "People come out here to learn about the place, and what other people believe about it. I think we should go in."
"What? Aren't you afraid of being hexed or something?" Craig gave him an incredulous look. Tweek made a point of pretending he didn't see it.
"Hexes don't exist," he said, his voice suggesting that actually, he was afraid of that, but he was pretending not to be for the sake of being nosey. "Come on."
And so dutifully, Craig followed him, rolling his eyes and wondering what delightfully horrendous 'mystery' Henrietta would have for them today. A photo of The Mothman? Perhaps a neck tie belonging to a former Man In Black? Craig let Tweek do the honours and swing open the shop door - the silver pentagram hanging in the door window clinked against the glass when it swung closed, and Craig almost passed out when he walked inside because God, if it was hot out there in the desert then within the walls of Foramen Verniis, it was a furnace. The air was thick with incense, and from backroom Craig could hear a low dirge album playing. The blinds let in only skinny slivers of light, and almost every surface in the entire store was black. Black carpet, black wallpaper, black feather boa lopped around the black chandelier. The proprietor of the store, a voluminous figure with dyebox black hair and chalk-white Foundation, looked up from her magazine when they entered. By the looks of the ash tray in front of her, she had already smoked a whole packet of cigarettes today. Tweek gave her a meek half-smile, and in an effort to avoid conversation with such an intimidating woman he made his way to the back of the shop, where all the books on Lucifer and La Vey and Alistair Crowley were kept.
"Oh, it's you." Henrietta gave Craig a once-over, obviously displeased by his appearance, and laid the holder mounted with what may have been her fortieth smoke into the already overflowing ash tray. "Have you managed to fix my car yet? Not that I care. It's not like I have to go anywhere or anything."
Craig shook his head and fingered a velvety purse, hanging from a black serpentine coat rack standing next to the counter.
"Can't find what's wrong," he said honestly. "But I'd suggest getting rid of the rock on the rear-view. That's my professional opinion."
Henrietta's eyes, which were a transparent and not particularly gothic blue, narrowed. She stared at Craig for a moment, assessing whether or not it was worth the effort top retort. In the end, she decided not. She scoffed, gave him a short and dismissive "Whatever," and went back to reading her magazine. The magazine, incidentally, was an out-dated copy of Cosmopolitan, probably full of the exact kind of posers and conformists Henrietta had always been so vehemently been opposed to. He wondered briefly if she had picked the magazine because it was convenient, or because she actually cared about ‘The ten things he doesn't want you to know, (but we are going to tell you anyway)”.
Craig didn't actually give a shit. He turned away from her and her counter, which was made of glass and full to brimming with glittering jewellery and a few gilded and bejeweled knives, and sought Tweek amongst the shelves. Although the store was small, it was so crammed full of stuff that it became disconcertingly easy to become lost amongst corsetted mannequins and shelves full of skulls and herbs and mysterious objects that seemed sinister in the context Craig was seeing them. He found Tweek at the very back, skim reading a book pulled from the meagre shelf dedicated to white magic, Wicca, and Christianity.
"Whatcha got there?" Craig snuck up behind him, just to see if it would give him a fright. It did, and he almost knocked over a rack full of postcards, which seemed out of place in the rest of the store environment.
"Jesus Craig!" He slammed the book shut and raised it, as though he meant to give Craig a beating with the thing. "Jesus Christ!"
"You're too tense," Craig insisted, prying the book from his hands and flipping it, to read the blurb. The book was an uninteresting volume called ‘The Gnostic Religion'. He did not know what that was, and nor did he care - he put it back on the shelf between History of the Cathars in medieval Europe' and 'Who was Yahweh - the history of the lesser God', and with a hand on Tweek's arm to still his balance he stood on his tip toes, peering at the books on the uppermost shelf.
"There's a book about the Branch Davidians here," he observed, wondering why Henrietta would have the cult books, the books on the subject which brought most of her clientele to her doorstep, stored on the highest shelf at the very back. Next to the books about dead Christian movements and white witchery. "Weren't those the ones who committed suicide?"
"You're thinking of Jonestown." Tweek told him. "Or Heaven's Gate. Or actually, there are lots. But the Branch Davidians didn't commit suicide. The ATF opened fire on them. “
“Well, did they die?”
“A few did, yeah.”
Craig hummed and stood down off his points.
“Are you some kind of expert on cults then? Is that why you came out here looking for the Foundation?”
Tweek's lips quirked as reached up and slid a book about scientology off the top shelf. He shook his head, and dropped his eyees to the small summary centred on the back.
“No. I'm actually an architect.”
“An architect?”
Craig was certain there had never been one of those in the Basin before. But Tweek did not expound, and nor did Craig feel inclined to press for answers. For some reason, the idea of Tweek sitting in an office surrounded by drawing tools made him uneasy. It reminded him of the real world, the truth of Tweek's origins in a family and in a home. Of the complexity of his life. His experiences. His worldview. It reminded Craig that he was not just a mirage who walked out of the desert and suddenly became substance, and as such Craig could not keep him here indefinitely, wasting moments in local shops because Craig was miserable and he was lonely.
He sighed, and began perusing books on the 2016 zodiac. Utter bullshit, from an astronomical point of view. He looked up his monthly horoscope all the same, and was subject to that fleeting sense of wonder and unease which came from reading a horoscope that very nearly could have been accurate. It said
Your lust for independence sometimes leaves you feeling alienated from the world. Your urge to resist the suggestions of others are not always in your best interests. Observe the intentions of those who care for you less critically, and endeavour to engage with people and yourself on a more emotional level.
He reminded himself that he would probably feel the precise same feelings if he had reading any other horoscope for today's date, and dismissively closed the book, replacing it in the wrong spot on the shelf.
“Are you done looking then?” He asked his company, who had tucked the book about the Gnostic Religion under his arm and seemed to be considering doing the same with a book called 101 uses for classical philosophy in modernity.
“Yup. Okay. I might grab these though,” he clutched both of the books against his chest and gave Craig a sheepish smile. “I mean, I may not get to read them, but I guess there's no harm in trying?”
“Why would you buy them if you won't read them?” Craig asked, but Tweek was already slipping past and loping down the shelves in the particular way he did – like he was not entirely sure yet how to pilot his legs.
Craig slunk after him, and hovered over his shoulder while he made payment at the counter. Henrietta seemed thoroughly unimpressed by both his appearance and his book choices, but she did not voice this aloud. Instead, she wrote down the title and price of each item, then told him the total aloud. He paid mostly in coins and dollar bills from his jeans pockets (and Henrietta really seemed to hate that) and scooped his purchases up into his arms.
“I don't suppose you want any books on aliens of anything?” Craig asked as they made their way out of the shop, and the black door with its peeling paint closed behind them. The alien information shoppe, specialising on UFO related figurines, magnets, books and information DVDs, was only a few metres further down the road. Tweek assured him he had plenty of those kinds of books already.
“You could borrow a few if you wanted?” He offered, and while it was nice of him to do so Craig thought that he had had just about enough of aliens to last him the rest of his life.
“If I change my mind,” he assured him, steering them back down the street in the general direction of the hotel, “You will definitely be the first guy to know.”
They were passing by the museum, with its glass cased community notice board and slightly rusted litter bin just outside, when in the distance, a small cloud of dust began to form on the road. As they walked forward, and the cloud of dust began to grow larger, Craig started to notice that other people milling about the centre had noticed the dust cloud too. It was too large for a tourists corolla, and it was too middle-of-the-afternoon for it to be a tour bus, and so with a distinct sense of curiosity that coloured his gestures he silenced Tweek's polite musings about the local economy, and craned his neck to get a better glimpse of what it was.
As the shape drew closer, it became obvious.
The jeep came to a stop outside of the local Post Shop, parking between a small Corolla Craig knew belonged to Wendy Testaburger, and Jimmy Valmer's white Basin Bugle delivery van which, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays also served as a postal service vehicle. The people who got out were very similar to the other persons standing around in the street staring in the sense that they were not locals, by any stretch of Craig's imagination, but they were very unlike the other persons standing around in the street in the sense that all of them, five in total, were dressed in what looked like ordinary white polo shirts and pressed white trousers, their heads shaved as bare and smooth as the reflective glass on their vehicle window. Craig knew instinctively who they were, before he could make the symbolic connections necessary to recognise them. The party had a strange demeanour, a strange sensation about the way they filed out of the car and walked in a tidy line down the road toward the intersection. Tourists stood and stared, and a couple took the time to snap a few photos. When Tweek inhaled and Craig thought he would ask what that was about, Craig interjected, and told him.
“They are from the Foundation.” He watched as they walked past the museum on the corner, and the tourists standing on the footpath jumped out of their way as they passed. “Sometimes they come in to town to use the post office or to buy supplies. But usually it's only one or two of them.”
“Do you recognise any?” Tweek asked. Craig shook his head.
“Never seen any of them before.”
The person at the back of the line, and Craig had no way to tell if they were a male or female or some spiritually dictated category in between, swayed a little out of the perfect row they made and Craig felt an unusual sense of foreboding rise like the flavour of metal in the back of his throat. The person lagged a little, and turned back, and when they craned their neck around t look backwards Craig almost stepped back in offence because whoever it was, they were looking right at him.
Or perhaps right at Tweek, who was much more startled by the look, and immediately drew closer against Craig's side.
“… What are they here for?” He asked, and a thin waiver of fear was audible in the tone of his voice.
“No idea.”
The person who was looking right at them paused for a moment, and Craig wondered if he would have to send an unpleasant hand gesture their way, but after that moment had passed the cult members turned away, and made haste to catch up with the rest of the entourage. Tweek relaxed, and Craig muttered something disrespectful in an effort to shake the sensation of being violated off his skin.
They made fair time back to the hotel, and like much of the time they spent together thus far, they did not do much talking. But Craig suspected that for once, this was not on account of his reluctance to socialise. Rather, he suspected when he glanced at his companion and saw ghosts of worry in his gnawed lips and sunburn reddened cheeks, that Tweek was too busy trying to process his own thoughts.
He resisted the urge to ask him what those thoughts might be.
It was evening, and Craig was eating a microwave meal in his caravan, thinking about whether or not it would be weird for him to go and see if Tweek was doing anything of interest at that exact moment in time. He had tried already, to remind himself that if he was, it was none of Craig's business, and when that had failed he had tried too remind himself that he shouldn't care. The problem with this, however, was that he did care, and so in the end he had simply relented, and allowed himself to entertain ponderings about the nature of Tweek's activities right now, this exact location in time and space.
He pushed a lump of something partially meaty around his bowl with his plastic fork, decided he didn't actually like microwave curry, and tossed the remainder of his dinner in the black garbage bag he kept under his skink. When he bent down to peer through the small window over his kitchenette, he saw that the sun was just starting to lower itself over the horizon. The dusty ridge of mountains separating the earth from the sky seemed vague and undefined through the salty haze of the Basin air. Craig sighed and twisted his blinds shut. He grabbed a thin cardigan from the skinny chair at the end of his bed and tugged it on. Something in his bones told him it was going to be colder tonight than usual.
He made his way out of the caravan and into the hotel through the back door. The kitchen was empty, but judging by the kettle coming to a boil on the stovetop it had been occupied until a few minutes previous. Something appeared to be wrong with the refrigerator – the door was open and a large puddle spilling out onto the floor. Craig groaned, hoped he wouldn't be asked to fix it, and moved onwards.
The bar was busy as usual when he passed through – Bebe and her children were sharing a meal by the window, and Stan and Wendy (she must have found out he was in town after all) were sitting together at the table he and Tweek had shared two nights before. Stan gave him a polite smile and he passed, which Craig returned with as much cool indifference as he could muster, and although he scanned the space for Kenny or Butters he couldn't see them. So he had no one to ask if they had seen Tweek, since the two of them had parted ways a few hours previously.
“I might just go and check these out.” He had said. “Do you know anywhere that might be good for sitting down and being alone?”
Craig knew plenty. He suggested one of his favourites, and then told Tweek that really, he should go to the workshop and try and fix some peoples cars. Although he would have been happy to show him the location if he needed guidance.
“Uhm, no. I think its okay. I don't want to inconvenience you or anything.”
Craig wondered briefly if he might still be there, but then thought no, probably not. That had been at least seven hours ago, and nobody (least of all a listless character like Tweek) could have stayed sitting on one place reading about religious peculiarities for all that time.
He lingered for a moment in the entrance hall, close to the foot of the stairs, only to become suddenly and acutely aware of how pointless this whole endeavour was. How pointless his life was. He wasn't sure exactly, what about the dusty carpet and the silent foyer that made him so suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin. Nor did he understand what it was that made him suddenly feel out of place here, like he wanted to get in a car and drive away and never look back. Whatever it was, the feeling started in his tailbone and slunk up his spine – he wondered if Tweek would even want to see him, and so what if he did? The guy would probably be leaving the town soon anyway and he would never, ever look back. He would forget Craig, and Craig was powerless to make himself memorable, and ultimately it won't matter if he catches Tweek tonight or not. In a week, everything would go back to the way it was before. And it would probably carry on that way indefinitely until he died. And then (as was the tradition in the Basin) he would be interred in the old graveyard behind the disused church, without a coffin so his body might quickly turn back to the salt and dust from which it originated.
Some day, he would be nothing more than cracked and sun bleached bones, and it wouldn't even matter because in death there was no autonomy to care.
He swallowed the silent terror rising in his throat like bile, and thought he might be best to check Tweek's room first. He did intend to ascend the staircase, and knock tentatively on his hotel room door, and if he received no reply he intended to give up and go for a reflective evening wander instead. There was nothing like a stroll toward the deserted centre city after seven pm to make one aware of their own mortality.
Despite all these plans, however, Craig did not find himself heading upstairs at all. Instead, he found himself walking straight through the foyer into the parlour room where Kenny often held his movie screenings, and then down the far end next to the fireplace, where he knew there was access to the glass room, in the form of a rickety white painted door.
The glass room was a conservatory, where many hotel guests sometimes took breakfast on the small wicker table and chairs. The old fashioned radio under the window was never turned on, but it made a charming conversation piece. The plants in hanging baskets were not native to the region, Butters tended for them with kindly green fingers, and spider plants and birds of paradise and overflowing buckets of pansies reminded the travellers and the tourists who dropped by of their lush urban homes. Craig used to come here often, in the evenings, but he had slowly lost the habit over time. All the same, he rather liked the space and the greenness off it. It was, in the horticultural sense, utterly unique in the entire surrounding region. And there were always days in the transitional months of a new locals life where he missed the smell of loamy soil and green leaves, and the damp coolness in the air that plants exhaled.
And he was astonished to find that despite having been directed here many hours previously, Tweek was still sitting in the darkening shadow of the far corner, pouring over books, with the single minded concentration of someone who had just emptied the several dirty coffee mugs from the bar, sitting in sticky rings on the tabletop.
“… You still here?” Craig switched the light on, and the true extent of Tweek's research sprawl became evident. He had at least four books on the table next o his mugs, a holy bible and a large stack of newspapers taken from the hotel kitchen. A manila folder of files and papers, clippings and printouts from the internet, was opened on top of the booky tablescape, and Tweek, dressed in track pants and a tank top, was sitting hunched over his hoard of information like a toad squatting on a log. He jumped visibly when the light flickered into all the corners of the room, and the purple red of the evening through the windows became black like the print on the book pages. Craig could see his reflection from every angle in the inky panes of glass, and he thought he looked a lot more tired than he had thus far. A little more slouched and weary.
“Oh shit, it's you.”
“Of course, why wouldn't it be?” Craig folded his arms and tried his best to appear nonchalant. Like he had just wandered through here as he passed on an errand, rather than coming with the express purpose of stopping by.
Tweek looked a little peevish, and closed the book he was pouring over with finality.
“I'm glad you came,” he told Craig tiredly, changing the subject neatly as he did so. “I hate reading, really. I'm slow and it hurts my head to concentrate so hard. But if you didn't come I probably would have sat here all night.”
“What's wrong with that?” Craig asked him. Uneasy, Tweek craned his neck to glance over his shoulder, staring for a moment in silence at his own face reflected on the darkened window glass.
“I swear I can feel someone watching me,” he said. “And I was scared that whoever it was, or whatever it was, they would try and intercept me if I tried to leave this spot.”
This of course sounded like the mad ramblings of someone with paranoia. Once again bemused by the nature of this unusual person, Craig scoffed, pushed himself up from his spot leaning in the doorframe, and wandered close enough to read the titles of his books. Two of them were the history books he had picked up from Henrietta's earlier. The others were, unsurprisingly, about UFOs. One of them was apparently about both, titled UFO CULTS OF THE AMERICAN WEST, and Craig was briefly surprised that such a title on such a niche topic existed.
“I think everyone on this entire town had better things to do than watch you. No offence.”
He sat down in the chair next to Tweek and laced his fingers on the table in front of him.
“Found out anything new or exciting yet?”
Tweek forced a curt smile, and nodded.
“Yes. I think so. Although I am a little confused about everything. I think I might need a few more days to process it. Which is stressful because, well…” he trailed off, brow furrowing so a shallow crease appeared between his eyebrows, and Craig wished with a sudden and intense ferocity that he would just spit it out already, whatever it was. All the unsaid ends to the sentences and conversations he shouldn't have started if he had no intention to finish them aloud.
“Well what?” He encouraged. And he wasn't really expecting Tweek to reply.
“Well, I'm supposed to be at the Foundation by tomorrow evening. But now I've found out all this new stuff,” he nodded to the books in font of him, “I'm not entirely convinced I want to go any more.”
Admitting this out loud seemed to give him trouble. A shadow of anxiety passed over his features, and his posture hunched over the table suggested an exasperation Craig could only guess at. He watched with a confused sympathy as Tweek twisted a lock of hair around his thumb, and wondered if he should tell him that he was glad his investigations had changed his mind. Really glad.
Although that might come across as unnecessary interference.
He chewed the inside of his cheek, and glanced at the newspaper stack right next to Tweek's elbow. The date was 1957, the headline read OVERHEAD LIGHTS WARN NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON IS IMMINENT.
Even back then, rumours of the apocalypse were on the front of the Basin Bugle. It was a tradition as old as calcium in the water.
“Tweek," Craig knew he had to press his point with as much delicacy as he could muster. Although he doubted his capacity to muster all that much. "I think if you are doubting your decision to go to the compound, you should probably spend another few days thinking about it. If you are supposed to be there tomorrow, for whatever reason, I'm sure you will be welcomed the day after. Or the day after that. I mean… haven't you already waited this long for enlightenment? What's a few more days of your life to a God?”
Tweek considered this for a moment, his eyes fixed on the spread bible in front of him but not focusing, and Craig could feel the silent hum of his mind working like an unseen electric current in the air.
“… I guess.”
He didn't look completely convinced. Craig spared a glance at the bible he stared at, and saw that the rice paper pages were opened to Genesis. Craig didn't know enough about the bible to know what relation that had to his research.
“Seriously. If I was God, I wouldn't give a fuck about you or what you did with your life," he cocked his head, trying to get Tweek to meet his eye. "If I wanted you to spend it getting to the Foundation as soon as possible, I probably would have put you in the area in the first place.”
Finally, this seemed to reassure him a little bit. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped, and he turned his eyes up to Craig as though he was hunting in his face for the answers his books couldn't provide.
“Okay. You got me. I guess you're right.”
“Right,” Craig gave him a little smile, and leaned back in his chair so it creaked. He felt the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle in discomfort, and he wondered if it was from the slight chill that was stealing through the glass room, or if it was the uneasy sensation of being watched that was the culprit. Tweek had mentioned a sense of being watched before, hadn't he? The bright lights in the glass room buzzed quietly, and Craig rubbed the back of his neck, dismissing his discomfort as having origin in his own head.
He checked their reflections in the window, to make sure the room was empty, and sure enough they were well and truly alone.
How bizarre, to be alone with a stranger in an empty, dusty corner of the world.
"If I do stay, how long do stay for? If I decide not to go, where do I go next? I can't stay here forever, can I?"
Craig shrugged.
"It's not so bad. Better than out there," he jerked his head back, to indicate the wider world and everyone and everything that had previously failed him. "It's a good place to think about stuff and look at the stars. And nothing ever happens except for tourists so it's good for people who don't like stress in their lives."
"Maybe…" Tweek sighed and closed the bible in front of him wearily. "I guess I need to think about it more? Maybe I will stay another night or two. Or maybe I will change my mind and decide to go tomorrow afternoon. As long as I get there before the eclipse it should be okay... ugh. I am so bad at making decisions. I just suck at them so much."
"Eclipse?" Craig was puzzled for a moment. "What does that have to do with anything?"
And then an idea occurred to him.
"Oh hey! When I need to think something over and make a decision, do you want to know what I do?”
Tweek's eyebrow arched, and he looked a little like he may have been able to guess, but might just err on the safe side and refrain for now.
“What?”
“I check out the stars. People have looked at the sky for answers for millennia. I don't think there's any answers to be found out there, but I do think that giant empty vacuums like space are really good mirrors for your headspace. They kind of… remind you of the things that are most important to you in this world.”
This made Tweek smile, and he hooked a tendril of blond behind his ear.
“You think that will work?”
“Sure. There's a really great ridge out by the Basin Rim. Tourists go camp there to try spot UFOs. I was thinking about borrowing Kenny's car tomorrow and going out to watch the Blood Moon." He was sure to add a quick lie to disguise his enthusiasm for his own spark of brilliance. "It's in the exact opposite direction of the Foundation. If you want, you can come with me and we can camp for the evening. That way, you'll have space to think without being swayed by any of this stupid shit.” He patted the books on the table, and Tweek turned unsure green eyes onto Craig's brown ones.
“You think it will help?”
“I know it will.”
If Craig could take Tweek to the Ridge, to the very, very edge of the infinite universe, then maybe he would be able to convince him he didn't need to find God to see it.
And there was evening and there was morning--the third day.