Note: All text in brackets denotes stage directions.

Ellis East Elementary School Walk through, May 18th, Classroom 1-C

This room mirrors Classroom 1-B with the axis of symmetry being the hallway. In the back northwestern corner of the room, there is a small patch of tiled floor that is the black and white pattern of a chessboard. The southern wall is a row of built in bookshelves from floor to ceiling and the north wall is the black chalkboard. The western wall has the customary row of windows, and the eastern wall has an empty frame where a bulletin board used to be, painted white like the rest of the room. 

Audio-diary of Dr. Anna Georgina Plume, Assistant Professor of Architectural History, Hollingsworth University, June 15th, 5:00 am.

It’s a few minutes past nautical dawn, so the sun has not yet risen, but I am taking a walk in the soft purple-y light. The dogs and Billy are still asleep, but I woke up a half an hour ago needed to get out and get some fresh air. 

Yesterday was grey and uneventful. It smelled strongly of rain in the aftermath of the storm, it drizzled on and off, so the grass is a hyper-saturated green. The grey sky made a sharp contrast. 

This morning it is damp, and it’s supposed to rain later. I don’t think it will storm again. However, it is an airy summer morning before the day warms up. I have on a light sweatshirt to cut the chill.

I’ve spent the past day thinking about everything that has happened since I’ve moved in. I’ve made a list of everything so far:

1. The carousel starting on its own

2. The piano noises I’ve heard

3. The woman at the gate.

4. Samantha the barista? Does that count? It’s weird, though it’s not in the school, so I don’t know...

5. The fact that we were the only building with power the other night.

6. The fact that both Billy and I have dreamed about a third floor to the building, and that while our dreams are different, the description of the third floor is identical

All of this to say, it feels like there is something happening here that is worth investigating. It could line up with my investigation into the building’s history, particularly the story of the removed third floor of the building.

I am skeptical about the idea of weird occurrences in general. I consider myself to be a highly analytical person, and believe there is a rational explanation for everything that happens. But the signs point to something happening at the school, and even if there is a rational explanation, I need to uncover more of the story to understand it.

I decided to take this walk because I wanted to gather my thoughts without risking waking up Billy. He knows I’m concerned, but I wanted to work this out without having to worry how all of this sounds. I do think I need to connect all of the dots for him so we can both be kept apprised of the whole situation.

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, June 15th, 8:10 am. 

Actual titles of books left in the library in a box labeled “donations from the community”: 

Spiders are our Friends!

Learning to Love Math

Mommy, Why does my Nose Smell?

Otto and the Magic Potatoes

A Children’s Guide to Dostoevsky 

Rocks! [pronounce exclamation point] Note: It’s literally just Rocks exclamation point, with a picture of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on the cover

Poisonous Plant Recognition Guide

Access Your Inner Truth When Your Brain Isn't Solid Yet

What Does Glue Taste Like

Why Can't Daddy Kiss Santa Claus and other legal questions

The One Pig with Horns

Book 1: Giraffes? Giraffes! [say with inflection].

Book 2: Giraffes.

 Note: That is Giraffes question mark, giraffes exclamation point, and then giraffes full stop

The Children’s Big Book of Opossum Husbandry

The Solar Express

The Alchemist, Children’s edition

Children are No Match for Fire

Please Don’t be Afraid of Steve Buscemi 

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume. June 15th, 10:30 am.

I just received a call from Mr. Zaffre.

Mr. Zaffre is  the recently retired elementary school librarian of the Ellis Unified School District. He was the librarian here after Nana retired. She selected him for the job personally, and they remain good friends to this day, with him visiting her weekly for tea. A lot of people visit her weekly for tea. In fact, he called because she told him that I had moved into the school and might need to talk to someone who knows the building.

But more than that, I think she wanted to make sure that I got out of the building from time to time, because he invited Billy and I to join him for open mic night at the Vinewood Café. The Vinewood is the local dive bar that, while ostensibly NOT a gay bar, has numerous events that call that into question, such as pride events and screenings of Grey Gardens and Paris is Burning. My friends and I used to sneak in there in high school to watch the drag shows during the summer. Of course, it’s a small enough town that the staff knew we were underage, so they wouldn’t serve us anything but water-not that we tried to drink- but they also didn’t make us leave.

I’ve always wondered why no one ever really objected to the Vinewood in a place like Ellis Field, but it seems to be the only business in town that hasn’t changed hands half a dozen times.

I left the question of the invitation up to Billy, who was open to checking out the Vinewood, so we’re meeting Mr. Zaffre there at 7. We will walk up there, because everything in this town is walkable, and if they have a piano, Billy might perform.

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, June 15th, 12 pm recorded in my home office, formerly classroom 1-A

An update on the home improvement projects I’ve outlined. I’ve ordered all of the paint and wallpaper, and they have arrived. Billy and I are going to start painting tomorrow, and I’ve got someone coming to hang the wallpaper next week, starting Monday. She said it would take 2 or 3 days, but I’m not certain given the size of the school, so I’m planning for at least a week. 

I’ve settled on the slate grey paint with a peony pattern in my room. Funny enough, I woke up in the middle of the night yesterday and opened my eyes to see the room decorated in that fashion. Clearly I was still asleep and imagining it, as it changed back once I was more fully awake, but I liked the way it looked, so I decided to go that route.

We’re going to start in my room tomorrow, so I’ll sleep in the other guest room while it dries.

The work on the bathroom in the old girl’s restroom has begun. All of the supplies have been delivered, and they are in the back hallway while the work continues.  They’ve temporarily installed a dumpster behind the back door of the building. I’ve been throwing my garbage in there as well for the time being--they said it was okay--and the food seems to have attracted an opossum, which I have named JD.

So far, in the bathroom they have removed the stall doors and have started removing the old toilets and sinks. They’re going to put in the new toilet and sink on Monday, before they get started on the new plumbing needed for the shower and bathtub installation. I haven’t gone in there much, but it is very open now and the tile pattern looks even more prominent.

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, June 15th, 2 pm, 

Recorded in my formal living room, formerly classroom 1-C

Random memory and feeling: Waking up from surgery

Waking up from surgery is a bit like what I imagine struggling not to drown is like. You are fighting to keep your consciousness against the heavy anesthetic, and as much as the nurse tells you that you don’t have to fight it, you can sleep it off, there is some intrinsic drive inside of you to stay conscious.

Waking up from surgery is not like waking up from sleep. With the latter, you know time has passed, but with the former, one minute, you’re in the operating theatre counting backwards and the next the nurse is telling you that you’ve made it through the surgery and that everything went well. They will usually remark on whether the surgery came in over or under the expected amount of time.

Sometimes--maybe always, but I’m not sure--the surgeon will talk to you after the procedure. They’ll preface the talk with “you probably won’t remember this,” and then you don’t, for awhile, until it’s years later and you’re thinking about your time in the hospital and you realize that this memory has been there waiting for you to find it, and you can only find it now because you have the 10,000 foot view of things. 

When you wake up, you are acutely aware of the pain. It is sharp, and it feels like how you conceptually understand the procedure. By that I mean, it is as if something inside of you knows exactly what they did and you feel it. I cannot speak for every case, but every procedure I’ve had, they did not give me anything for the pain until I was fully awake, which further incentivizes the fight to wake up. 

You wouldn’t expect it, but you’re typically hungry after surgery as well. At least at first--hunger is pain, and once they give you something for the pain you’re experiencing due to the surgery, your hunger might also go away, but you’re hungry at first because you have to fast in advance of the surgery, so you have not eaten for over twelve hours. When I had my surgeries, I would always have Lorna Doone shortbread after I awoke. It’s funny that I would have that. I don’t particularly like shortbread when it’s not homemade, and shortbread is, in practical terms, not a great thing to have when you haven’t had anything to drink in over twelve hours because it is dry, but the first time I had surgery, it was the most appealing food option available, and I guess I just kept with it for sake of tradition. 

Unless you are having a procedure that requires dietary restrictions post-surgery, you can eat pretty much anything. I mean, I’m not that kind of a doctor, so I can’t say that with certainty, but I could eat anything. After my hyst- my big surgery, Mom got Chinese takeout on the way home. It was weird that I went home that day, but there was a big snow storm and they didn’t want me to be snowed in at the hospital when the insurance wouldn’t cover more than a single night. 

[In the following segment, there are pauses and footsteps and tape measure noises as Anna-Georgina measures]

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume. Jun 15th, 3:17 pm. Recorded in the hallway outside the library and the archives, formerly classroom 3-B.

After looking over the plans Melinda Basil sent over from the library, something does not add up. 

I’ve got a tape measure here… Looking at the plans, it seems as if the walls between each room are about 2 feet, allowing some space for insulation, wiring, etc. Except there appears to be more space drawn in between the library and the classroom beside it. But there is no real explanation or notation on that space. It’s not labeled, it just looks like there is more space between these two walls.

So it would make the most sense to measure the space between the doors in the hallway and then from the doors to the shared wall to determine how much space is between the walls.

Okay, so I’m at the door of the library, and we’re measuring the wall space… there is a long bank of lockers here. We’re at 6 feet. [tape measure sound] 12 feet [tape measure sound] 18 feet [tape measure] 24 feet. Okay, now I’m stepping into the archive, formerly classroom 3-B. And there is 6 feet from the door to the wall. Now we’ll step next door into the library. Six feet [tape measure], 12 feet. So it appears that there is six feet between the walls here. The bookshelves appear to be built in, though I could probably get a better look if I remove the books. I’ll explore that at a later date.

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume. June 15th, 4:30pm Recorded from one of the chariots on the carousel.

[As if shouting to someone] Okay Billy, Give it a go! 

Billy: [off in the distance] Got it! 

[switch, whirr of the carousel starting up, carousel music as Anna-Georgina talks]

I thought it would be fun to ride this and think. A new perspective on things. Should I add the space between the walls to the list of strange things? 

Maybe when the contractor comes by on Monday, I could ask if they know anything about what to do. I don’t want to damage the bookshelves or the wall if I can manage it. They will have to know what to do.

And now, for other matters: There is the question of what to wear to the open mic night. I don’t know that I have attended a social function since graduate school, apart from events at Hollingsworth, though that hardly counts. 

Options:

1. Tea length black dress with long lace sleeves. Pros: gives wealthy widow vibes. Cons: Probably too formal for the event.

2. A yellow sundress with blue flowers. Pros: Appropriately summer-y. Cons: a little too close to the local school colors for my comfort.

3. Dark wash jeans, a green silk top and a dark plum velvet blazer. Pros: Right balance of my aesthetic with the informal nature of the event. Cons: pants.

Well I think I’ve given myself enough to think about for a while. I’ll stop recording and just enjoy the ride.

[Carousel music continues for a few seconds]

[P.A. Static, A-G’s voice has a tinny quality as if she’s speaking over the PA]

I was

He wasn’t

I was 

I noticed

He introduced himself 

I looked scared

He wasn’t 

he had something to show me 

We walked 

He took me 

and showed

I had expected

We reached 

he showed 

he had hidden

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, June 16th, 1:30 am,

Recorded in my formal living room, formerly classroom 1-C. Billy is here with me, too.

Billy: Hi recorder!

 We felt it necessary for me to make notes on the evening, for reasons that will soon be apparent. We just arrived home from the open mic night, or more accurately, from talking with Mr. Zaffre after the open mic night. 

The open mic event itself was pretty much what you would expect it would be. An assortment of amateur musicians, poets, and one very enthusiastic interpretive dancer, with a sarcastic drag queen serving as emcee. No one knows Twila Light’s non-drag identity, but she seems very familiar with the Ellis Field surrounding area, so we assume she lives locally. After the event wrapped up, we walked next door to Pizza Depot to order a slice and then sat at the gazebo in Gazebo Park to talk about how things are going with the school. Before he left, he gave me the following letter, which upon reading, we decided was worth making a recording.

Am I forgetting anything, Billy?

Billy: Nope

The letter is typewritten and is about 6 pages long, double spaced.

[Anna-Georgina reading the letter, the sound alternates between sounding very close and somewhat further away]

Anna-Georgina!

Helen said that you'd moved into the schoolhouse. Her exact words were, [A-G says this in a regal, Katharine Hepburn-esque tone] "She would move into her job" and then we were slightly glared at by a nurse for laughing. What world do we live in where two retired Midwest librarians are shushed by a nurse? We're the most respected shushers in the hierarchy.

It took me a few weeks after you left to not be aware of your absence at your favourite study desk after you sat there your entire life. More students rushed in to fill the space left behind, and altered it by degrees until it was theirs. Spending your career watching people develop dreams makes you very aware of the moment that we inhabit in someone's personal history. 

You left during a crisis, and as someone who moved here during a crisis, I understand how hard it is to settle into spaces after. Each new place felt freeing for as long as I've escaped definition in it, and so I hope that the new place being the old doesn't trap you into your past. You moved to a city in order to build lives and selves that didn't have to use tradition as solution. So much of your old self was left behind in the surgery, and Helen and I are so proud of what has grown in those emptied spaces. 

People said that I was retiring with the library, and I didn't understand the scale until I finally locked the library door good night for the final time. My intent ran the space until the first wave of small shifts; a stack of boxes, scattered packing tape rolls on tables you don't need to clean now, seeing the back of a shelf I had only peeked at between reference books.

 I had never felt the air change so acutely in the library before. With the hallway around me, I stumbled a little as a small hand behind me tugged on the bottom of my shirt. They yanked as I turned, and the motion tore something small from my awareness of the world. I wasn't made lesser, I just had a little patch of my old landscape pulled out as new grass grew, and that part of me that didn't need to exist anymore did not. It was a fitting end to that relationship with myself as the librarian; after all, the process of inhabiting a space with a new intent begins when you both cede control and the other's ideas become equal forces.

That's how you'll learn to live within your first home, instead of living in comfortable corners that you control within the whole structure. I first started to feel at home in the library by letting the library choose me, one day at a time. Trust me, with a building that big and designed to carry sound, most people need to adjust to the sense of scale. I remember you enjoying an introductory structure when studying new lines of thought, so here is an exercise H and I used in the library to adjust to working alone with those echoes:

Sit in one spot with a tea, listening to the types of silence until you can differentiate between them. You'll be able to feel the weight of the silence and the shape of it as it presses around you. Shift that awareness to the distribution of active and passive energy in your posture. Widen your focus over time to feel both your body and the air, and start to move your body against and with the air. Track the trail of your movement and feel what fills the air in each room. Do this in the entire school and you'll feel connected to the legacy in each room. There's been generations of dancing, conscious behaviour, unconscious reactions in this building. It has to thrive on life and joy as a catalyst for the strength needed to raise so many dreams. You've made your life studying that translated into the theory of the school building, and now you get to build and experience it from your own base. I'm so proud of you and of what you'll build. 

If you start to lose track of the size of the world during the introductory exercise, drink that tea as a grounding point. 

Also don't prioritize the basement. It's a death trap down there, and those patches of original dirt floor are so uneven that anything near there falls out hard enough to break older boxes and go everywhere. After too many falls, we made it a library policy not to store supplies in the basement. And there were so many generations of supplies stacked together.

The worst ones were the ones that fell after dark. The first time H and I stayed late to have a drink and catch up on backlogged work, it was the day before the first county book fair was coming to our library (for which you are welcome). There are two types of late night work for me: muddled by pressure, or running on electric edges. We were young enough to still be able to experience the second, so we celebrated our first late night shift as a chance to transform from joyful new team effort to a steely backboned team in the face of the book fair the next day. It was after midnight as we were finishing up the coffee and whiskey that we heard a loose thud and a sharply edged crash. 

Normally I'd assume we heard a natural event, but we had a cash box sale happening the next day and the town knew that, so someone in a spot of need might have come looking for it. After pushing so hard for this to happen, we were not getting ruined by someone else's issue on the day before, so we picked up the whiskey bottle, two pairs of scissors, and a metre stick, and we went to look at every room. Every room was clear of broken anything, every room was as clean as it would be left, and there's no one, there's nothing. 

But the basement door is a bit open with a bit of light and the air is denser around it. I'm becoming a little clammy with sweat, and H is almost ready to swing that bottle at someone's torso. Even the light around us was saturated like it was hitting the surfaces at a slightly off window. We both went to the door because I am not capable of kissing the amount of social political ass needed in order to recover from causing a break in at a public institution, rolled our shoulders, raised her whiskey bottle and my ruler, and went down those bent wooden steps. 

The shape of the stairs looked like the wood went at itself, a bit too gnarled to be fully under your feet. The bare bulbs made spots of light that swung slightly under our shadows as we went past them. They stopped around one of the dirt patches. By then Helen had decided that we were being invaded by either Satan or an opossum, and neither was good for our professional standing, so here we were. Trying to look ready for either, we nodded and stepped into the darkness between our patch of light and the patch of light that had a fallen and torn pile of boxes scattered across it. 

It wasn't our files in the boxes that had broken, and there was nothing hard to make that crash. The cracks went down the fallen tower of boxes and bulging out of them were navy blue fabric veins of school sweaters and sweatshirts from every era. They were in bad shape, gnawed and ripped where they protruded most, but maybe the other items would be in good enough shape to display tomorrow as a gesture of political goodwill. We started to gently pull them out, but they wouldn't come out one at a time. Their sleeves knotted together, every sweater came out a little shredded and clinging to another one a little deeper in the box. By then we'd split into one person pulling and one person untying, and were dropping them into piles based on era. H has the same "hmmm" as you, and it was aimed fully at those sweaters. 

They were landing wrong though. When we looked at each pile, we saw a dozen to a couple of dozen sweaters huddled as if in crumpled piles of poses around each other.  Some looked to be cowering with the hems of their sleeves tucked into the sleeves of other sweaters. Some were in front with shoulders slightly rolled back. One was wrapped around the sleeve and body of another sweater and looked to be pulling them back. The light was still landing wrong, I think that I heard the air buzzing in my head, the ground felt like it was pitched differently, and we grabbed hands and hauled out of that vile basement with scared sweaters and terrible storage and swore not to keep anything of the library in there. 

If anything else comes out of the boxes on you, can I please refer you to Sarah Samson? Sarah was two grades behind you, and is in Canada studying art conservation but comes home every quarter. She's been looking for any opportunity for professional development and the field is so competitive. Before you ask, she's a few hours from Toronto.

I wasn't allowed to say until the end of the letter, but the movement advice was from Helen. She encouraged me to write to you at this point of moving in, saying that you were likely being driven up the wall by your mom's aggressive compliance. Apparently H has snared herself a pack of cards, and a few pairs of sunglasses. I would gently suggest that you visit her on your own soon, bring poker chips, and prepare for her to launch a family poker night as a response to every decision in her life lately being extremely rational and medically sustainable. Since I was going to suggest this when I next saw you, I would love to see what you do with the library. Why don't you invite me around in a month? I'll bring photos of the library over the years and high end treats for the dogs.

Love, 

Your Godlibrarian,

Charles Zaffre

P.S. H always wanted the library office door hidden behind a bookshelf of murder mysteries, and you've always excelled at developing and building the best iterations of ideas. Don't tell your peers I said that about you and not them.

[Letter ends]

Billy: That’s unsettling right? 

A-G: Why does the basement seem to keep coming up? 

Billy: Let’s look in the morning

A-G (Overlapping morning slightly): Let’s go down there now

[New recording, echoing]

Billy: A-G, I don’t think this is a good idea. Could this wait until the morning? When it’s more light?

A-G: We could, but I need to stop procrastinating. I’ve got a lantern. (Light click)

[To the recording] Okay, it’s about 2:30 in the morning, we are in the basement. I’m standing at the edge of the basement. I’m shining the light around. [pause]

Okay, I’m not one hundred percent certain, but when I went into the basement the other day, I could have sworn these things were in different places… 

Billy: There’s a file sitting out on top of the file cabinet over there. It also looks like someone has wiped away the dust around it… Was it like this last time you were down here?

A-G: No, that’s new… I think I can get to it, just need to get around [loud crash, recording ends]

Ellis East Elementary Walk through, May 18th

In the bookshelf, there are a few boxes of educational toys and a handful of teachers editions of math, social studies, and science textbooks grades 1 through 5. There is a manilla envelope labeled “lesson plans.” There is a large floor globe in the southwest corner of the classroom by the bookshelves. On the chalkboard is a drawing of two diamonds, side by side, linked at the corner. Now that I have finished examining the front portion of the first floor, I will walk to the back portion of the building to investigate the Principal’s Office.

End Credits

Lavender Evening Fog is a fiction podcast. This episode was written by Victoria Dickman-Burnett and Ben Baird, directed by Ben Baird, and produced, mixed, and edited by Nick Federinko. Executive Producers are Ben Baird and Victoria Dickman-Burnett. The voice of Anna-Georgina Plume is Victoria Dickman-Burnett and the voice of Billy is Nick Federinko. The Lavender Evening Fog logo was designed by Alicyn Dickman.  This episode is brought to you by a new friend of mysterious origin. This episode pairs well with mint kombucha, which I guess counts as a type of tea. This concludes Lavender Evening Fog Season 1.  Season 2 will begin on Halloween 2021.

Post-Credits

[Aggressive folk guitar plays and Nick, the voice actor who plays Billy, sings]
This room mirrors Classroom 1-B with the axis of symmetry being the hallway. In the back northwestern corner of the room, there is a small patch of tiled floor that is the black and white pattern of a chessboard. The southern wall is a row of built in bookshelves from floor to ceiling and the north wall is the black chalkboard. The western wall has the customary row of windows, and the eastern wall has an empty frame where a bulletin board used to be, painted white like the rest of the room.