Oliver comes to meet us after we put away the dishes and l clean the kitchen off the efforts for breakfast. He’s pleased to know that we’ve taken up cooking.“The town is pretty far away from here, as you say earlier when you drove back,” he says, “so going out to eat is considered a special occasion for the folks living this deep in the mountains. There’s a Mess Hall in the construction zone, of course, and you’re welcome to join us anytime. If you want, we can even ask our chef to deliver food for you specifically?”“Oh,” Coraline and I comment. We did not know that was an option“No need to bother the chef,” I assure him, “we plan to cook or eat out during our stay here, and maybe visit the Mess, now that you’ve mentioned it. We don’t want any special treatments.”“Are you sure? Because Mr. Greyson senior ordered me to do whatever it takes to make you both feel comfortable during the stay here.” Oliver replies, looking a little green around the gills at the mention of my father. I
The next few days are a blast.The thing is the work I do here is more enjoyable than I thought. It’s challenging, and it’s energetic. I feel like I’m always in motion, and even though I spend most of the time in the office building, I feel like I’m really a part of the crew. The workers are friendly, and the senior staff of engineers and architects are brilliant. It could never be said that my father employed less than-brilliant individuals for his projects, but these guys are so damn clever. Whenever there is a problem thrown at them, whether it be the wet and mountainous nature of the construction site posing various unprecedented obstacles, the weather becoming shit, or even the supply chain issues, they come up with new and creative ways to solve them, and I love witnessing it. Most of the time during these, I’m a wallflower. There’s nothing a former COO could do about most of these obstacles as they are very technical. But that is alright, but I could do listening just fine. And
I know my luck is dismal.It had not been this way when I was smaller, no, back then I thought I was a pretty lucky kid all things considered. I healed fast, I had my mom who loved me with everything she had, I had a home and food, I went to school and had friends, I had everything a little kid could ask for. I would’ve preferred to have a father as well, someone to fill that one void that always seemed to be unfilled in my life no matter what, but that was wishing for too much. In the general sense, however, I considered myself a pretty lucky kid.And then I began to grow up and found myself in many, many abysmal situations that guaranteed trouble and almost always humiliation for me.So, in the hindsight, I should’ve known that something would go wrong the minute I decided at that cabin that ‘hey, I should stroll down to town and see what’s going on with the rest of the humanity!’But had I done that and tried to come up with various scenarios that could ruin my day, I don’t think I
Never in my life had I been in jail.I will not lie, there was a pretty stupid phase in my life when I wanted to be a bad boy. I might have been about twelve at the time, and thought being a thug while riding motorbikes and smoking cigarettes was just so cool. It might have been because of my daddy issues meeting up with my looming puberty, it might have been because I was simply bored of how my life was going and wanted something to shake it up, and like most twelve-year-old boys I was utterly stupid and thought everything dangerous was cool.I was also under the impression that bad boys got all the girls. My mom got wound of this fantasy of mine because I was gullible enough to write it in my journal and keep it lying open on the kitchen table. While my mother swore that she deliberately did not read it and was just intrigued by my trying to draw skulls all over the page. After that, she made me watch documentaries over and over again about the downsides of crime, which was mostly
“Hello, who is this?”“Hey, Coraline,” I sigh, “this is Jace.”“Oh, my god!” Coraline screeches in my ear, so loud that I have to pull the telephone handle away from my ear a bit to keep my eardrums from rupturing, “Oh, my god, Jace, where the hell have you been?! We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours! I tried to call you myself, but you didn’t answer so I got Oliver to try as well! Do you have any idea how worried we were? What’s wrong with you, why aren’t you taking your goddamn calls?”I sigh again. This is going to take a lot of explaining, “Okay, I see that you’re sufficiently freaked out, and I don’t blame you. Just…don’t get worked up more, alright? I’m at the police station.”Maybe I’m the idiot. Who the hell tells someone not to freak out and then tells them you’re in a police station?“What? Jace, what happened? Are you alright? Are you hurt? Did someone jump you in town? Did you get mugged?”“No, Coraline, I didn’t get mugged or jumped. It’s just…it’s really stup
Both Coraline and Oliver are utterly mad throughout the trip home.I sit in the backseat, listening to them rag on the police station like two angry parents ragging on their kid’s school for suspending him unfairly. It would be amusing if I weren’t feeling so guilty about the whole thing.“Guys, guys,” I tell them when they stop the ranting to take a breath, “What happened, happened, alright. At least I got out without being sent to county jail or making it a court case. Also, I’m really sorry for dragging you into this.”“Nonsense, Jace, none of it was your fault. They were the ones who saw you walking and minding your own business and decided that you were some low-lives criminal.”“An eco-terrorist actually,” I correct them, “come to think of it, Oliver, have you had any problems with vandalism? The cops mentioned that a few other businesses were being affected as well, and some of them were hotel projects. Are there other hotel construction going on?”“There are a few. Apparently,
Although I was ready to forgive and forget the whole thing, Oliver was not.“Oliver, what do you mean you’re dropping them as our primary timber suppliers?” I ask him after he declares his decision at the office a day after the strange meeting in the morning, “I thought we all agreed it was a misunderstanding and are putting it behind us for good.”The past day had gone pleasantly enough, after the strange incident. Coraline had been stunned to learn what had happened while she hid in the bathroom, and Oliver was miffed to learn about the lukewarm nature of their apologies.“So, they just came around to pat themselves on their backs for being good boys,” he’d grouched, “typical. How very typical of them.”“Well, at least they did that. I know plenty of people who would rather go and air out their dirty laundry in national media rather than apologize,” I told him, remembering how Stone and his father acted after the expelling incident.“Dirty laundry? That sounds like something that ha
“What on earth…?” I utter as I take in the sight in front of me.I stand in front of the hunting lodge construction zone, right in front of the structure that is to be the main building of the hotel. The morning air is crisp, and the sun is already shining, brilliant rays filtering through the leaves of the canopies in the sorest surrounding us and hitting the ground, warming up the air particles in between. About twenty or so workers and senior staff stand around me, while Oliver and Coraline flank me. And all of us are staring.“Fallhill does not belong to you. Leave!” Coraline reads what is written on a wall of the structure aloud. These words are written in black oil and red paint, alternating between them, in a bold, large font that takes over the wall. Surrounding it, there are skulls, knives, guns, trees, and animals drawn, all in surprising detail as if the perpetrators of the deed had plenty of time in their pockets. Whenever winds blow through the forest, the strings of toil