Jolene, the hardest thing for you has always been accepting that you cannot know everything, no matter how much you try. Moving to Avalon will put that to the test. You have to be willing to set aside the comfort of the familiar, take a risk, and embrace the unknown.

Standing just beyond the entrance to the lonely, abandoned park shelter, Jolene reviewed Lashawn's email again. Her body was screaming for attention, but she was too focused on the phone screen in her hand to pay it much mind. Her hyper-focus sometimes had its benefits. 

Set aside the comfort of the familiar? Well, she'd gone on this odyssey through the forest. That was more like abandoning the familiar than setting it aside. Was there more? Probably, she decided. 

Tucking her phone back into her pocket, Jolene peered into the dimness before her. There wasn't much to see except the brightly glowing shapes of the doorway opposite where she stood and the windows that looked off to either side. 

She considered the past few months, years even. What, exactly, am I leaving behind? A job that, instead of giving her the raise she asked for, cut her hours to part time. An apartment with an expiring lease she couldn't afford to renew. She didn't have friends, just a loose circle of acquaintances who wouldn't miss her unless they could exploit their sorrow for a few minutes on a true crime documentary. 

She didn't even have a pet fish to worry over. The thought made her laugh, and she stepped from the pebbly grass underfoot, through the wide, squarish opening. 

As she left the sharply slanted rays of the early-evening sun for the shadowy shade of the shelter's interior, she felt a strange tingling against her skin.

"The hell?!" The sensation startled her, though it had passed as quickly as she stepped through the doorway. Like the lingering prickles of warmth from a too-hot shower. The surprising tingle created a stark contrast to her expectation, amplifying the sensation. 

She discovered cool comfort in the shaded interior beyond the warm line. Her eyes soon adapted to the new light. It became apparent that the interior of the shelter space was empty. Just the remains of a brick floor, the two doors on the north and south walls, and three windows on the east and west walls.

Jolene realized her forehead was aching. Her face wore a tense, severe frown. She took in a deep breath and forced her muscles to relax, letting go of the expression of confused frustration she had been holding. 

When she started out on this journey, she had not known exactly what to expect. A long hike through the woods, certainly. However, she had never imagined it would be as difficult as it had been. Even with Lashawn's warnings. Her aching body was still trying to get her attention, and now that she had reached the shelter, her brain was more inclined to pay some attention. 

She reached up and rubbed at the back of her neck, rolling her head around, and continued to scope out the inside of the structure. The second floor, which formed a partial ceiling above her, was accessible through a hole in the middle. She had been expecting that. However, she had also anticipated a staircase for access. 

Pulling out her phone to double-check Lashawn's email, she found it dead. Whether the water resistant case had now failed or it was simply out of battery didn't matter. She was confident she had followed his directions, but anything was possible and she could have gotten lost. 

A slow chill crept up her back and lifted the hairs at the nape of her neck. Something in the world had changed, something subtle that her primitive brain was screaming for her to notice.

Jolene turned, gazing westward through the window. The forest's shadows deepened at the clearing's edge. A silence so still, it felt unreal — or perhaps, unnatural — blanketed the entire area. Just a moment ago, the surrounding forest had been a riot of birds calling from their nests as they settled in for the evening.

Now, nothing.

"Hello?" She said it out loud and heard her own voice. Good. She hadn't lost her hearing. 

From outside she heard a familiar and frightening thock-thock thock somewhere in the forest behind her. Turning to the opposite window, she heard it again, this time from the north. And then the west. And then the south.

Jolene's heart pounded in her anxiety-constricted chest. From the trees came the distinct sounds of something large moving through the brush. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to wake up from this obvious nightmare, warm and safe in her bed back home in the haunted jail, before the fire, before her parents died. 

Without warning, something whizzed through the air next to her head and hit the wall behind her with a sharp tak! She turned to look at the object, a rock, just as another projectile hit against her backpack. "What the actual fuck?!" she cried, ducking down and putting her arms up over hear head. The ballistic rock assault continued from all sides, and Jolene could hear large animals crashing through the forest, as though coming to join in the sport.

Drunken fools? Poachers? Or was it someone...something...else?

Keeping low to avoid the barrage, she turned toward the door she'd entered through, fully intending to run. There, silhouetted against the dark forest, was an enormous shape standing at the top of the stairs. Easily seven feet tall, its low-set head was identifiable by two large, glowing red eyes. 

Jolene's brain flooded with confusion. This wasn't what she expected to see! "You...why are you here?!" Her brain, still processing, wondered where the exclamation came from, even as the onslaught of flying rocks continued unabated.

The creature before her lifted one long, winged arm toward her. It emitted a growling, squeaking, chittering noise, as though a train car of chipmunks was slowly derailing before her. Jolene, panicking now, stumbled back and quickly found herself caught against something hard and irregular behind her. 

She screamed, and turned, to find a wrought-iron stairway winding up to the second floor! She glanced back to check if the creature had come closer. Instead of moving closer, it screeched once more, then bent its knees and took off into the sky, its winglike arms outstretched.

More confused than ever, Jolene turned away and scrambled up the first few steps, feeling her feet drag against the metal grating. As she continued, each step got harder and harder, as though someone were fastening increasing weights around her ankles.

Terror-heightened survival instincts forced her pain-wracked muscles to strain against whatever was trying to hold her back. She lowered her body and began using her hands to help leverage herself up each step, crawling and clawing her way to the top of the steps.

Just as she was about to climb through the opening into the second floor, she felt something large — or at least heavy — slam into the bottom of the stairs, shaking them violently under her. Her stomach rolled and chunky bile rose in the back of her throat as the acrid, nose-searing stench of something foul hit her full force in the face from below. It reeked like the diseased and rotting carcass of a skunk in the summer sun, and it was all she could do not to pass out.

With the last reserve of her adrenaline-spiked strength, she pulled herself up through the opening and straight into a patch of bright sunlight and brilliant birdsong. 

In its own way, the suddenness of the change was the most frightening experience of her journey. Dizzy and disoriented, she used her arm to block the sun from her eyes as she tried to gather her thoughts and memories.

After several slow, deep breaths, she checked her watch, then pulled out her phone to confirm. It was just after eight in the morning...the following day. Her fuzzy brain had already processed this information before she remembered that her phone had been dead the last time she checked it. Rubbing her face with both hands, she reached up to feel the cut on her head.

It was no longer there.

Jolene's brain was collecting these little details without focusing on them. They would come back to haunt her later, she knew. Most likely, every time she closed her eyes. For at least the next few years.

She moved slowly, testing out her nature-battered body. The aches and pains and bruises she'd suffered on her hike were gone. Her clothes were dry, her hair was dry, her leather boots were dry. She investigated her backpack and found it, and all of her clothes, her blanket, and everything else inside were all dry.

Looking out the windows, Jolene saw a small village in the distance beneath the bright northern sky. A town that didn't exist when she entered the shelter. 

Ma-maw always told Jolene that she was leading a life of high strangeness. The older she got, the more she understood what Ma-maw meant, even if she didn't understand how or why. Her visions of the dead, her skill with the cards, bouts of sleep paralysis and dreamy déjà vu, the way she seemed to attract the unusual and the unexplained. 

Was it all guiding her toward this?

In the near distance, closer to the shelter, she saw a sign similar to the other park signs and the one that had marked the head of the trail. She couldn't read everything it said, only the largest, boldest word burned into the middle of the planks.

Avalon.

For several long minutes, Jolene just stood and stared. A soft breeze carried sweet birdsongs and stirred up scents of old wood, decaying leaves, and fresh air. Her fingers rubbed in a slow, idle sort of stimming along the weather-smoothed grain of the window's wooden frame. 

She closed her eyes and took in a slow, deep breath. She pulled with her whole diaphragm and filled her lungs to their fullest capacity. Then, she released the breath just as slowly, and opened her eyes. The village remained. The sign remained. It still read Avalon.

She lifted her hands and looked at the backs of them. Next, she flipped them over and examined her palms. It served as a self-test to confirm reality. She didn't have cat paws or purple skin or a million sparkling rings and bracelets. Just her usual hands with their usual short nails and the usual knuckles and tendons.

When she checked the landscape for a third time, Avalon remained.

Jolene's eyes traced the wide line of a gravel path that ran from the sign to the village. Someone had neatly mowed the meadow on either side of the path, clearing back the waist-high fronds of grass, heal-all, and butterfly weed. 

At the edge of the village, moving along the path, she saw a figure. Despite the distance, she knew it was Lashawn. It could have been the figure's movement, or perhaps it was what Ma-maw would have called 'that deeper sense of knowing.' Whatever it was, it was enough.

She peered down through the opening to the ground floor. The stairs were gone. In their place was a sturdy wooden ladder.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she said, quoting one of her favorite weird heroines of literary fiction. "I give myself such very good advice." She left the rest of the quote — 'but I seldom ever follow it' — unsaid as she took to the ladder and climbed down. She figured either the monsters were there and would get her, or they were not, and she could meet Lashawn on the path to Avalon. Either way, she couldn't just live the rest of her short few days in this park shelter.

Or wherever she was.

At the bottom of the ladder, strewn here and there along the old brick floor and gathered in the corners of the shelter, were scores and scores of sharp rocks. Whatever was happening was actually happening. Jolene didn't know if she was eager or frightened. Or both.

Jolene struggled to see in the bright spring sun until she neared the sign and recognized Lashawn's earthy-brown face, sparkling eyes, and broad smile. He looked healthy and happy in a relaxed lean against the side of the sign's upright support. "You look good," she said as soon as she was close enough to speak without yelling.

"All this fresh air and sunshine," he said, stepping forward and embracing her, lifting her off her feet. 

Holding onto him, she felt the warmth of family and security. "I thought I'd never make it," she confided on a shaking breath as he set her down. Her brain finally recognized the thought, allowed it in.

"But you did," Lashawn said, looking directly into her eyes. "You did make it. You're here now." 

Jolene nodded. "I did make it. I'm here now." She said it aloud, repeating his words so that they would weigh more in her memory.

"The journey's always tough. I mean, that's just life, right?" His bright, cheerful smile washed away his concerned look.

She gave him a look of her own, one that they had shared many times. It was The Look, their private signal to 'put on the tinfoil caps,' as they used to say in high school. "Spiders and sasquatch?"

He shook his head. "Pukwudgies and will-o-wisps."

She paused. "Mothman?"

Again, he shook his head. "No, a squonk."

She was shocked. "What the actual fuck, Lashawn? Like...what the actual fuck?! This isn't the Bridgewater Triangle, or even an episode of the podcast. This is Brown County, Indiana. The most boring county in the most boring state in the US."

Lashawn's rich laughter filled the air, and he pulled her in tight for another hug. "It's so good to see you," he said, letting her go and fixing her with his rich brown eyes. "I am so glad you decided to come."

"There was nothing to keep me away." She paused, a smirk twisting her lips. "Well, I mean, I did walk through spider webs."

He laughed. "And you didn't set yourself on fire to be rid of them?"

She joined in his merriment with a small chuckle of her own. 

"Alright, look," he said, draping his arm loosely around her shoulders and turning her so that they were both facing the sign. "Welcome to Avalon, established 1717, population 665. There's no reason to leave." He dropped his arm from around her shoulders and stared at her face until she looked at him and met his gaze.

"Jolene, I need to know that you are listening to me, paying attention to me."

She nodded, a little taken aback by his serious tone. "Full attention," she confirmed.

"This is your last chance to say no. You don't have to come to Avalon, but if you do, then there's no going back. There's only going on."

She thought about his words for a moment, again wondering if the ominous tone was coming from her, or from him. "All of existence can be summed up by saying there is no going back, only going on."

A smile pulled at Lashawn's mouth, and he nodded. "Right, yes, I see your point, Dr. Cox."

She flashed him a sassy smirk.

Lashawn popped a fingertip onto her nose. "In all seriousness, sis, I need you to truly understand. Once you step past that sign, you will be within the boundaries of Avalon. You will become a resident of Avalon, with all the rights and entitlements that entails. And you will become a citizen of Avalon, with all the responsibilities and civic duties of that citizenship. The town will take care of you, but in return, you must provide due service to the town and its citizens."

Jolene thought about this and nodded. "So...government, laws, taxes."

Lashawn's head bobbled side-to-side in a 'sort of' gesture. "It's a common-sense structure model of democratic socialism on a small scale."

"It sounds like you're trying to dress up fascism. Are you sure this isn't a cult?"

Again, he laughed and nodded his head. "Yes! I'm positive!" He took her hands in his, warm and real.

She looked down at the contrast between them, his earthy brown against her pale, freckled pink. He had never lied to her, had never given her bad advice. In fact, he had always stood up for her, always protected her against the bullies who called her weird and made awful, hateful rhymes out of her name.

"Jolie, you can't always know everything. But I promise, you will learn everything you need to know. The best way to absorb a new culture is to immerse yourself in it. I promise that before you know it, you'll be inviting someone to make their own opportunities in Avalon."

Looking into his face once more, she let her eyes trace his familiar features as she checked in with her own feelings. Her gut was still on board, and her trek through the forest had not produced a trove of hidden treasure to solve the problems she'd so casually abandoned.

"No going back, only going on."

"Yes!" His excitement was palpable, and he squeezed her hands, bent down, and kissed her forehead. "Gurl. You are going to love it here."

"Yeah. Sure. Said every cult recruiter to every new recruit, ever."

Together, they walked the path to Avalon. Behind them, on the boundary sign, the population ticked up one to 666.