The Vestals
North. South. East. West.
26
Eleven Ten PM
There is a disturbance in the Palatine tonight.
The Vestals look out from behind their stone veils at the four corners of the world, and the world is silent under their blind gaze, silent as their sister guardian, the living Vestal, was supposed to be but failed to be that day.
A name was spoken. A name that disturbs sleep.
The night is clear, perfect, at peace. The ocean neither rushes in to claim the shore nor out to abandon it. It waves in place, contented under a September moon.
The Pacific Ocean is pacific tonight, but the Vestal of the West can not settle as she gazes out into black infinity. The nymphs that carry the broken garland in their broken hands are agitated to the very grain.
Something deep in the Palatine has been stirred, something dwelling in dark recesses, around corners where no corners should be, in the fabric of the rose rug that breathes forth flowery decay.
A name disturbs the subterranean slumbers. A name that is no more than a whisper from the shadows.
Annie.
Let us leave this haunted melancholy, this grand palace at the top of Pineapple Street wrapped in gods and tears. Let us fly up into the night, follow the veiled gaze of the Vestal of the North, who looks, somewhat sideways, toward Westwood.
Tom is entering a darkened hall of the university, a short walk from his home on this fine night, carrying the offending items in his satchel. The night guard does not recognize him but lets him pass once his faculty ID is produced.
Tom rarely comes to his office, a cramped room for the temporary adjunct professor. It is here he picks up paychecks and could, if there was ever a need, meet privately with a student. There is no such need. This is a course in movies, not theoretical physics. But he does have a desk, and into this desk, he places the offending items:
“Fog by the Numbers” and Fog, the Blu-ray Remaster.
They frighten Eden. She has no desire to study them further, and if she had, Tom would prevent it. For at the end of Fog, there is a twist, a revelation that would destroy Eden here, as much as it does in the film. Eden must be protected. Preserved. To ensure this, the book and DVD are removed from the house once Eden is asleep. Now they are being locked in the desk of an office where no one ever goes.
We fly up into the night again, leave the campus, turn back to the darkened theater. This time we follow the gaze of the Vestal of the South who looks down the coast to the beachfront homes, the California mansions, the landscaped lawns on cliffs above private beaches.
There’s an empty bedroom here, and a woman who walks along a private shoreline. The docile waters lap now and then at her sandals. The September moon silvers her auburn hair. A name has disturbed her sleep. A name that is no more than a whisper from the shadows.
Annie Hammerstein.
Miriam remembers it well.
Annie Hammerstein wasn’t the only one to disappear that December night in 1964.
Preview: She knows… She has always known.
Really enjoying thank you 😊