u/CJKenneth

I don’t know how long I was out. I don’t know what time it was when I woke up. But it was dark outside and dark in the room. No more candles illuminated the space, just moonlight, shining in from the leaded glass windows. My legs were still folded, and I was still sitting upright with my palms on my knees, but my muscles were no longer tight and my vision no longer vibrating. When I moved, my body ached like I had just run a marathon and I was drenched in sweat. I  struggled to get up, so I resorted to crawling on hands and knees for a while, slipping all the way, until I got to the doorway into the kitchen. There, I managed to support myself on the wall and get to my feet. Shaky as a new born fawn, I slowly made my way forward.

>“Look who’s up!” Patty said before placing a blanket around me.

They were all just as they were when I had first met them, as though nothing had happened. I couldn’t even speak. Ellen was cooking something on the stove and Jessica was over by the sink washing dishes.

>“I bet you’re hungry. Would you like something to eat?” Ellen asked me.

Weakly, I nodded before I plopped down onto one of the chairs. Ellen removed a ceramic bowl from one of the cabinets and plated the food before removing the apron that until now had been protecting her sweater from the meal.

>“There you go - it’s one of my favorite recipes. I got it from ‘The Earth Mother’s Cookbook’. Fantastic publication.”

It took every ounce of focus I had to grip the spoon and place the food into my mouth. Sweet cumin and turmeric danced on my tongue as I chewed on the stewed tofu. Each subsequent mouthful made me feel slightly better until the entire bowl of curry and rice was gone.

>“Dear, you’ve had quite a night, would you like to go to bed?” Patty asked.

Again, I nodded in the affirmative. Patty helped me make my way down the decrepit hallway of the left side of the building and into one of the rooms. As soon as I hit the bed, I fell asleep.

The sun was high in the sky by the time I woke up. It shot through the window and onto the bed. The room wasn’t dirty like the hallway, but it was plain. A metal bed frame and a cheap uncovered mattress were the only furniture, and the small bathroom had nothing but a sink, toilet, and shower. My clothes had been neatly folded and placed on the foot of the bed. I pushed the blanket off of me and got up. Briefly, I considered showering, but decided against it, wanting to get home as quickly as possible. So, I put on my clothes and made my way into the hall. 

As I walked toward the entryway, Ellen greeted me:

>“Good morning! I take it you’re checking out? That will be $20 for the room and $10 for the meal. With tax, that comes to $32.70.”

I looked at her for a moment and she looked back at me, not a hint of yesterday’s events communicated in her face. Seemingly by instinct upon being presented with a bill, I reached for my back pocket and took out my wallet. I opened its leather folds and pulled out a $5, a $10, and a $20 then handed them to her.

>“Alright, so out of $35. I’ll go get your $2.30 change, just sign this.”

She presented me with a yellow slip on a clipboard with a pen. I couldn’t believe that she was acting so normal, that all of them were acting so normal.

>“What…what the hell was that last night? What happened? What did you do to me?” I asked, my mind still cloudy.

Ellen just smiled back at me and said:

>“The more I explain, the less you’ll understand.”

I knew I wouldn’t get any more answers, and at that moment I didn’t have the mental fortitude to try, so I signed my name on the receipt, she handed me my change, and I walked outside.

>“Thank you for staying with us! I’m sure we’ll see you again!”

Were the last words I heard before I got in my car and began to drive home.

I wish I could say that I just moved on. That I got back to Bellmore, wrote my paper, continued going to class, and left the strangest night of my life behind me. But I can’t. Of course, showing up the day after leaving a cryptic voicemail, completely out of it mentally, and reeking of old sweat didn’t make Amy amenable to listening to any of my explanations for where I’d been or what I’d been doing and she broke up with me right then and there. Truth be told, I couldn’t blame her. Why would she have believed any of my bizarre tale?

Now that I was single, I had more time on the weekends. I’d often find myself driving around absentmindedly, just listening to the radio. On a few occasions I’d wind up near Wolcott and I’d drive towards where The Peaceflower Inn was. I’d see the light on up ahead in the distance, but every time I got close, the light would be off and the building more decrepit than the last time I’d been there. Suffice to say, I couldn’t possibly write down this story and hand it in for my history class. I flunked it. I flunked all my classes that semester. Since I’d failed all my classes, I was no longer eligible for an academic scholarship. I was already barely making ends meet without tuition hanging over my head, and with that burden now added there was just no way to make it work, so I dropped out.

I traveled around for awhile, doing odd jobs, before I finally settled near Chicago working overnights, stocking shelves at K-Mart. It’s not a bad job overall. I enjoy the repetition as I listen to my music. The night shift will play tricks on you though. Every now and then, I’ll think I see something only to find it’s not really there. A brunette in the reflection of a TV at the back of the store, a young redhead in my rearview mirror as I’m leaving work at dawn. Funny how your mind plays tricks on you.

I was always pretty careful with what I put into my body. I tried to eat right, only party on the weekends, etc. But after Bellmore I just didn’t care anymore. I’d stop by a McDonalds or 7-11 when I feel like eating, have a half pint of Skol when I got home from work, a pack or two of Salems over the course of the day. They make things feel better, at least for a while. I guess it catches up to you fast though. The doctor says I’m deteriorating at a rate he’s never seen before. That it’s like every organ in my body is being eaten away. So, now I’m in the hospital, but the medical bills won’t be my problem soon. It’s not like I have the money to pay them even if they were. What’s really crazy is that I actually ran into Ramona recently. She’s in this same hospital. Based on how Ellen talked, I thought she was dead, but evidently not. Her parents might have been poor migrants when they got here, but clearly they came into some money. How else do you keep someone on life support that long?

I probably only have a few more days, a week or two if I’m “lucky”. So, I guess the important takeaway from all this is that if you’re ever in northern Vermont and you see a sign for The Peaceflower Inn, don’t stop. Just keep driving.

As soon as I’d left the message, I made a beeline for the student parking lot. My gas tank was only half full, but I’d fill up on the way, I had to get to Wolcott. Driving in Vermont is nice for the most part. There’s a lot of greenery and quiet towns that you pass through. You get the impression that this is a small, peaceful corner of the world. That everything here is right and as it should be. 

The drive took a bit longer than I thought, mainly at the end, but I didn’t mind. It was a nice day for a drive, one of those rare days in the new england spring when the cool air and rain ceded to sunshine and temperatures as high as the low sixties. As long as there were no cops in sight, I could speed along as fast as my beater would take me, but by the time I got close to Wolcott I had to slow down. I wasn’t familiar with this part of the state, and I didn’t know the exact address of the hotel, just that it was near the town. I spent about an hour cruising along random country roads looking for Steinbaum’s business until I finally saw it out in the distance. A few hundred yards down the road sat a building flanked by about a football field’s worth of tall grasses that separated it from the woods. The sign out front read “The Peaceflower Inn”, and the vacancy light was on.

I pulled into the dirt and gravel parking lot and parked my car out front. Aside from an old VW bus, mine was the only vehicle there. The structure was made of two sections, one was a simple, single story steel box, and the other was elaborate and made of timber. The paint on the sides of the metal building was faded and peeling so badly that at some spots rust showed through the siding. In comparison to the wooden structure, it seemed like this part had been thrown on as an afterthought. Business had clearly not been good, although, how could it be all the way out in the middle of nowhere? In stark contrast, the wooden house had bright yellow paint that adorned its outside, and was far more well maintained. Unlike the rectangular half, this part of the building was a two story cottage which expanded into a large polygonal section at the rear. The bracings were gently curved and leaded windows adorned the walls. A welcome sign hung above the entrance which separated the two halves. I got out of my car and went inside.

Upon entering, it was immediately clear that the location wasn’t the only factor which led to the inn’s lack of funds for upkeep. Plastic bins full of miscellaneous junk filled the entryway and trash continued down the rectangular building’s dimly lit corridor to the left. To my surprise, to the right, a partition wall and an open entrace lead into a neatly kept, rustic kitchen. There was a small table in the center, a sink and countertops to the front of the building. To the rear stood a fridge along an entryway to what I assumed was the polygon I had seen outside, and a small vintage stove was nestled in between more countertops. To the right of the building, after the kitchen, there was a mud room with a screen door to the outside and stairs leading up. The kitchen’s floor had large square yellow tiles with black diamonds separating the corners. The finish on all the wood cabinets gleamed in the warm afternoon sun as it shone in through the front facing window above the sink. There was no art on the walls except for one large black and white photo of a woman with dark hair held back by an intricately patterned headband. I didn’t see anyone either in the kitchen or down the hallway. A small bell sat atop the partition, with a hand written sign on a chalkboard that said “ring for service”. I tapped the bell.

A moment later, I heard a gentle voice come from down the stairs. 

>“Just a moment! I’ll be with you in just a moment! Just have to get down the stairs! Just a moment!” 

The stairs creaked as she walked down them and an elderly woman appeared in the mud room. She had on a light yellow sweater over khakis and wavy, bright, silver hair. 

>“Hello there! I’m Ellen. How long will you be staying with us?” 

>“Hi” I said, stopping her from trying to sell me a room “My name’s David, I’m a student at Bellmore. I’m writing a paper about Prudence Peaceflower, and I wanted to see if I could speak with her.” 

The woman half smiled as she cocked her head to the side. 

>“Unfortunately, Prudence isn’t able to speak with you right now.” 

>“Oh, if she’s busy I can wait a bit or maybe come back another time…” 

>“No, it’s not that. Prudence’s physical form left this plane several years ago.”

Immediately, I felt a sense of unease. A former roommate of mine grew up in LA and told me a story once about the time his high school friends had dared him to go into the Church of Scientology’s building and take their recruitment test. Based on how he described it, I was feeling the same way that he had when they hooked him up to a meter to evaluate his alien brainwaves or whatever. But, I had driven over two hours, so I pushed that sensation aside. 

>“I’m sorry to hear that. Did you know her well?” 

>“Oh my, yes! Prudence was our teacher back before those small minded fools kicked her to the curb.” 

>“Our? Are there other former students that you’re still in contact with?” 

>“We run this inn together - surely you didn’t think I worked here all alone? Patty! Jessica! Come down here, we have a guest!” 

I heard more creaking on the stairs and two more women entered into the kitchen. The first was a short, stout woman whose shoulders curled up along into a hunch. This was Patty. The next was a taller woman who seemed to be a bit younger than the others based on the bits of brown still visible in her pulled back hair. This was Jessica. Prudence’s death must have taken a toll on them. If they were her former students, then surely they were in their late forties or early fifties, but they looked like they were in their mid-sixties.

>“Ladies, this young man is a student down at Bellmore and he’s writing a paper on Prudence.”

>“What, are you people trying to smear her some more?” inquired Jessica

Patty quickly snapped:

>“Hush now! I’m sure the boy just wants to learn, isn’t that right…what’s your name…?”

>“Eh, David. And I assure you, I’m not trying to smear anyone. I have to write a paper about a topic from the history of Bellmore and the name Peaceflower came up. I did some research, which led me here. I just want to know some more.”

Jessica crossed her arms and stared into me silently, but a smile crept onto Patty’s face as she gestured for me to enter into the kitchen. Once I’d crossed the threshold from the dark and trash-filled entryway, Ellen pulled out a chair for me and I sat down.

There was a silence that probably only lasted for a few seconds, but felt like ages. Finally, Ellen spoke up.

>“Jessica, why don’t you prepare some of our tea while we tell David about Prudence?”

Jessica reluctantly uncrossed her arms and moved towards the sink to fill a copper kettle as she removed a heavy glass jar of herbs from one of the upper cabinets. As she began to make the tea, Patty and Ellen began to tell me about their former teacher.

>“Prudence was a bit older than us. Old enough to be teaching, but not so old that her mind had been closed off. You see, Ellen and I were sophomores the first year that Prudence was teaching.”

>“That’s right, and we took her classes every semester and every year.”

>“We absolutely did. She wasn’t a slacker you see. She spent every waking hour studying and honing her craft.”

>“Her teaching process was evolutionary, like nature. You didn’t just learn more details, or more complicated information as you went on through her classes. The further along you went under her tutelage, the more…involved…the lessons became.”

That phrase put me off. What did “involved” mean here? I assumed that was what Professor Woods had been referring to when he said that the school wasn’t willing to put up with her.

>“So, what exactly did she teach? I heard it was something about ‘the divine form’ but I don’t really know what that means. I’m an econ major so it’s a bit outside of my wheelhouse.”

Patty and Ellen shared a knowing glance between each other as they chuckled for a moment before Ellen returned to speaking.

>“The courses were called ‘Divine Forms, Mysticism, and Occultism’ but that didn’t truly encapsulate all that Prudence taught.”

>“She had a wealth of knowledge to share, not just tidbits on esoteric spiritual practices.”

>“The department head, Professor Hopkins, just wasn’t willing to see that she had so much to offer.”

>“That man saw a young professor and thought he could restrict what she taught to just some history courses.”

>“Such narrow instruction wouldn’t have showcased all her talents, she wasn’t some one trick pony.”

>“Certainly not.”

The rapid back and forth between them as Jessica’s kettle began to boil was only increasing my anxiety about this whole situation. I couldn’t wait for the tea to be ready.

>“As I said, Ellen and I were sophomores when we started to study under Prudence, and it took us years to enter into her more advanced courses, but Jessica was different.”

>“She took the intro course her freshman year, and Prudence immediately recognized that there was something different, something special about her. The next semester, she invited Jessica to join Patty and me in the most advanced course she taught.”

My gut kept telling me to run. But I’d invested so much time, effort, and money into what was supposed to just be a five page paper that I needed to know what the hell Prudence was teaching them.

>“So, was this advanced course what led to Prudence getting fired?”

>“Technically she was ‘advised to resign’.”

Patty formed sarcastic air quotes as she spoke the euphemism.

>“The college just couldn’t accept such a groundbreaking style of education. All five of us knew what we were signing up for when we joined Prudence’s course.”

That part caused me to sit up. I knew who three of them were. Ellen, Patty, and Jessica were all in whatever class they were talking about. But who were the other two? Just as I was wondering, Jessica handed me my tea.

>“Oh, uh, thank you.”

>“Make sure to drink it while it’s hot. It won’t do any good if you don’t drink it while it’s hot.”

Jessica said bluntly. I could tell that this was not simply a recommendation on how to best enjoy the beverage, but rather an instruction. As Jessica towered over me, I drank the tea.

Looking back seven years later, it’s obvious that I should never have taken a sip from that mug. But, in the moment, it seemed harmless enough. Patty and Ellen had stopped talking as I drank. Noticing the silence, I decided to break it by asking about the other classmates.

>“So, Ellen, you mentioned that there were five of you. Who were the other students? Why aren’t they running this inn with you three?”

>“Ramona and Jacqueline - a senior and a masters student respectively. Bright women, both of them.”

>“So bright.” Patty agreed.

>“You know, Ramona’s parents walked for two days through the desert to make it to America.”

>“So brave.”

>“They worked hard to give their daughter a chance at an education, at enlightenment, and that college snatched it away.”

>“Shameful.”

I thought to remember those names and write them down as soon as I got back in the car, more information to dig into when I got back to Bellmore. The tea had really calmed me down. I no longer felt any fear or apprehension. Patty and Ellen’s racquetballing of sentences no longer made my head spin.

>“How did the college take away Ramona’s chance at an education? Did she get expelled or something?”

>“No, she just wasn’t able to attend anymore after our last study session. But we’ve refined our methods since then.”

I paused for a moment. Ellen’s vague answer about Ramona made me think I should switch to asking about Jacqueline.

>“And the other girl, Jacqueline, was she also not able to attend anymore? Is that why she didn’t join you guys here?”

>“Oh she is here.” Ellen said with a smile. “Her physical form left this plane, but she’s still very much here.”

The saccharine tone in Ellen’s voice as she said that was the final push to get me to listen to my earlier instincts and was my cue to leave. I could see the sun beginning to set in the distance. I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been there.

>“Well, thank you for your hospitality and for telling me so much about your teacher. It’s getting late and I have a long drive back.”

I got up from the chair and my movements felt unusually smooth. It was like someone had emptied a can of WD40 into my joints and muscles. My mind slowed and I felt myself pulled into a state that I can only describe as what it’s like to lay on a waterbed. As I stepped into the trash filled entry way, I stopped. 

To this day, I still don’t know why I stopped. I could see the orange glow of the sun getting lower through the open doorway to the parking lot, but I just stood and stared. I don’t know for how long. When I finally thought to move again, I turned my body to face towards the kitchen as though I was a marionette being spun by some unseen operator. Jessica was standing at an angle to the mudroom’s screen door. Patty was by the fridge looking to the window above the sink and Ellen was staring at the fridge. None of them were moving.

So, we all just stood there as the sun continued to creep downward until Patty began to raise her arms up towards her collar. Slowly, she began to unbutton her flannel shirt. Soon, the other women joined her in removing their clothes as well. Ellen looked over toward me as she did, a toothy grin sat on her face. Their bodies appeared far older than even their faces did. They were in their fifties, but their skin was excessively wrinkled and hung loosely on jutting bones in a grotesque display.

Again, they stood still for a moment. First, Jessica silently walked over to the table and laid her folded clothes down on it before making her way into the area at the back of the house. Then Patty followed suit, and finally Ellen. Before Ellen could pass the fridge, she looked over to me.

>“We’re going to start our practice. You can join us. Just like this. No judgments.”

Her boney finger pointed towards me as she made that last statement, wagging up and down to emphasize each word.

I’ve never been able to figure out what compelled me to acquiesce to Ellen’s invitation. Maybe I never will. I took off my t-shirt and let it drop amidst the trash bins to the squalid floor. Then I undid my belt and let my jeans fall to the ground as I stepped out of my sneakers and pulled off my socks. Finally, I pulled down my boxers and felt the cool breeze from the entryway blow across my damp skin. I walked forward, then left, and entered the polygonal room.

Inside, it was dark with a warm glow emitted from dozens of candles which had been lit along the perimeter. Patty, Jessica, and Ellen sat equidistant from each other, facing the center of the room. At the rear of the building there was some sort of display. Vines, thick like tree trunks jutted from a large clay pot, accented with ruby red and bright gold ornamentation. Intertwined within the long stems, as though the woody tendrils had grown around them, were bones. They looked old, like you might see on a deer carcass that had spent decades decaying in the woods. I didn’t need to be told what to do. I felt drawn to take my spot and walked to the back of the room, my feet sticking ever so slightly to the polished hardwood floor. Once I’d reached the back, to Jessica’s right and Patty’s left, directly across from Ellen, I stopped. I wasn’t able to make it out from the entryway, but now that I was closer I could see the bones more clearly. Some were large, some small and thin, and at least one looked like a human jaw.

>“Turn around and sit.”

Ellen commanded, her voice echoing around the room. Without thinking, as though my body was being moved by something outside myself, I complied.

As I sat, I folded my legs. Criss cross applesauce as my kindergarten teacher had called it. I placed the palms of my hands on my knees and as soon as I had, my body tensed. I was completely unable to move. Every muscle, ligament, and tendon in my body tightened like I was trying to flex them all at once. My vision began to vibrate. As the shaking in my eyes sped up and the room became blurry, I could have sworn that I saw Ellen become younger, her skin smooth, and her silver hair turn a vibrant red. Everything went black.

After my talk with the professor, I knew I had to get a look at those newspapers Ms. Warner had mentioned. I had two names and I had a date range. Eventually I was bound to find something. I marched back to the circulation desk and asked Ms. Warner if I could look at the student newspapers and magazines from 1969-1974. She got out from behind the desk and led me down a hallway to the right of the entrance, then down a hallway to the left, then down two flights of stairs into the sub basement. After checking labels on the end caps of shelving, we stopped. 

>“This shelf is 1968-1970, this shelf is 1970-1972 and this shelf is 1972-1974. Quite a lot to go through, I’m afraid. In those days everyone on campus wanted to have their own magazine, newspaper, or periodical, so there was a lot of output. I’ll leave you to it, but do come back upstairs if you need help finding something else.” 

I stood in shock at the monumental task in front of me as I heard Ms. Warner’s heels clack away back to the stairwell. 

After a moment, I placed my bag down at the desk in the corner and grabbed the first box. Even just skimming for any mention of Rebecca Steinbaum or Prudence Peaceflower took ages. My eyes strained looking over the yellowed paper under the blinding desk light. My jaw clenched as my mouth dried out in between sips of the rapidly cooling coffee I poured from my thermos. By 11:30 that night, I was exhausted, starving, and had found nothing of interest. There were articles about everything from campus parties, politics, poetry, and the latest developments in the cold war, but nothing about Steinbaum or Peaceflower. It was like sorting through trash from a hoarder’s house, flipping through acrid pages with the occasional article that had been clipped out, surely to end up on someone’s dorm room wall decades ago. I decided to check one last box before heading home, and that’s when I found my next lead. In a quarterly publication about regional economic news, two pages had been stuck together. Gingerly peeling them apart revealed a small blurb at the bottom of the page:

AFTER RESIGNING HER POSITION LAST SEMESTER, EX-PROFESSOR PRUDENCE PEACEFLOWER (FORMERLY REBECCA STEINBAUM) HAS ANNOUNCED THAT SHE WILL BE OPENING A HOTEL NEAR WOLCOTT

Finally, actual proof! I had begun to suspect that I was trying to chase down an urban legend, but this was real evidence that she had existed, that Woods was right about her names, and that there was something more to find.

Although my Thursday schedule was non-existent, on Friday I did have classes in the morning. I could barely focus on the lectures as I thought about what I was doing next. That afternoon I would be driving up to Wolcott. I was supposed to go to a party with my girlfriend that evening, but something inside me just had to find out more about the professor’s hotel. I needed to go there, and I needed to see it myself. As soon as my last class ended, I headed for a payphone and called Amy’s apartment since she was saving up for a cell phone at the time, but still couldn’t afford one. She must have left for campus early for her 3PM chemistry lab, so I left a message on her answering machine:

>“Hey babe, it’s Dave. I know we’re supposed to go to Mikey’s party tonight, but I’m not going to be able to make it. I’m digging into something for a paper, and I have to make a trip upstate. It’s not too bad a drive, maybe one and a half to two hours. I should be able to get back late tonight. I know this is last minute, but trust me it’s worth it. I’ll tell you more when I get back.”

It would have been better if I’d called her earlier. It would have been better if she’d guilted me into going to that party. It would have been better if I hadn’t made the drive. It would have been better if I never went to Wolcott.

I was at a yard sale last weekend - some nurse at the local hospital was trying to offload stuff before she moved down south for retirement, and I found an old laptop for sale. Apparently, if a patient dies and no one picks up their stuff for a couple months then the staff get to take what they want. She said that she picked it up to use as a spare or to sell but just never got around to doing anything with it. I decided that I could probably fix it up and make a couple bucks reselling it on eBay, so I took it home.

The computer booted right up after being plugged in, and there was no password. I figured I’d look around before doing a factory reset - just to see if there was anything interesting. No games, no photos, no nothing. Just a single untitled Word document from 2007. I read through it and something about it seems real. Googling didn’t return much, so I’m posting it here:

My name is David and I’m going to die soon.

I don’t have much to leave anyone. The $325 in my checking account, the TV in my apartment, and my 1987 Buick Regal are about the only assets to my name, and collectively they’re probably worth less than $1,500. About all I have of value is my story and a warning: never stay at The Peaceflower Inn.

I was 20 in the spring of 2000, a junior at Bellmore College, a small liberal arts school in western Vermont that you’ve probably never heard of. I wouldn’t blame you either, only around 1,200 students attended the school when I was there. It wasn’t a bad school, just not particularly remarkable in terms of its prestige. The kind of place filled with artistic types who wanted a small school experience or those who didn’t have the means to attend larger universities. Even so, they had a generous alumni base that helped to support a wide range of academic scholarships, which was the only reason I was able to attend. Solid Bs with an occasional A kept me from having to pay for tuition, and I could afford a sparsely furnished studio apartment with part time work. 

That semester, I had signed up for the “History of Bellmore College” class. Just about everyone took it at some point since it was an easy-A. Once a week you sat through a lecture on some aspect of the college’s history - how the founder made his fortune, a notable dean, etc. - and at the end you wrote a paper on any topic about the college’s history. In return for this minimal work, you got a history credit. Well, it was mid April and the semester was about a month and a half away from ending when Professor Jacobs announced that we’d have to pick topics for our papers by the end of the month, stipulating that no one could write about the same subject since Bellmore had “such a rich and diverse history to choose from”. I guess I was late to submit my choices the next week since the TA told me that they had all already been taken, but that I had another week to find something else to write about.

What was supposed to be an easy-A was turning into more effort than I wanted. I got some of my best work done at the local diner, so I went down to grab an early dinner and look over the syllabus for other topics. While I was sitting at the counter, Mike - another regular patron - asked what I was working on this time. I explained the assignment and my dilemma when he suggested:

>“Why don’t you write about the Peaceflower thing?” 

I had no idea what he was talking about, but before I could ask a followup question the owner interrupted:

>“Hey! I don’t want to hear any talk about that woman in here. Mention her name again and I’ll kick you out.” 

Despite seemingly working 100 hours a week to run his restaurant, Stavros had always been friendly to customers. However, at the mention of “the Peaceflower thing” his usual happy demeanor had flipped to one of pure disgust. Mike shut up and stared down at his coffee.

The next morning I headed to the library. I had no classes on Thursdays, so if I was lucky the librarian could point me toward a few books or articles and I could put together a passing paper that day, freeing up time to focus on my other courses. I walked in the doors and headed straight for the circulation desk. 

>“Hi, I’m working on a paper and was hoping you could help me find some sources.” 
Ms. Warner, the head librarian, turned toward me. 

>“Of course, dearie! What’s the paper about?” 

>“Well, I’m taking the class on the history of Bellmore, and I wasn’t able to get one of the usual topics. I heard that some lady called ‘Peaceflower’ would be good to write on, but I really don’t know anything about it.” 

Ms. Warner furrowed her brow and pursed her lips for a moment. 

>“The name sounds somewhat familiar. We’re archiving some student newspapers, maybe I saw it there, yes. I’ll go take a look through what we’ve cataloged so far.” 

She went into the back room behind the desk and flipped through reference cards for about 10 minutes before returning. 

>“It seems that we don’t have that name in our records yet - it’s still an ongoing process getting all these student publications sorted out. You know, Professor Woods could know something. He was a student here back in the day and might be able to give you somewhere to start looking.”

Disappointed, I made my way over to Villeneau Hall. Professor Woods was part of the art faculty. He’d had some commercial success in the mid 80s with his metal sculptures, but got bored of the medium and decided to return to college to get a graduate degree and eventually to teach. When I got to his classroom, it was empty except for the professor working away in the corner on some mountain of brightly colored blobs layered together. 

>“Excuse me professor, I was just at the library and Ms. Warner said you might be able to tell me something about a woman I’m writing a paper on.” 

Woods spun around, his gray ponytail swinging as he did. 

>“Is it a contemporary artist? If you’re looking at someone from before the turn of the century I might know some stuff, but you’ll probably want to ask one of the art history professors.” 

>“Actually I’m writing about someone from here, I think they were a student or something? Are you familiar with the name ‘Peaceflower’?”

Professor Woods started laughing as he stood up and walked over to the sink to wash whatever he was working with off his hands. 

>“That’s not a name I’ve heard in awhile, no one seems to talk about it anymore. So, you’re writing a paper on her?” 

It wasn’t the response I was expecting, but I was certainly intrigued. 

>“If I can find out enough to write five pages. The library didn’t seem to have anything on hand, but she thought you might be able to point me in the right direction. So, was she like a student or…?” 

>“She was indeed. She also taught, at least for a little while. Although, when she was a student she wasn’t going by ‘Peaceflower’. Rebecca Steinbaum was her birth name, that’s what she went by in undergrad and grad school. Our paths crossed for a brief period - it’s a small school after all - but I had already graduated when she started teaching and the whole thing was over by the time I came back.” 

>“What whole thing?” I asked. 

Woods took a sip from his mug and cleared his throat. 

>“Like I said, she was a student here - majored in anthro or sociology if I remember correctly. Right after that she got her masters and then her PhD. In ‘71 she became an associate professor and changed her name to ‘Prudence Peaceflower’. Taught some class on ‘the divine form’ or something like that and I guess it got a bit out of hand.” 

>“How does a class get out of hand? What, was she sacrificing students to demons or something?” 

>“I don’t really know the specifics, but people told me bits and pieces over the years and there were a few articles written about it at the time. Like I said, this all happened before I came back and at that point no one wanted to talk about it too much. All I know is that her intro courses were pretty typical, but I guess her higher level classes had a more experimental teaching style that the college didn’t jive with and by 1973 she was given the boot. Apparently even the grant money wasn’t enough to make the college put up with her.” 

>“She was bringing in grant money?” 

>“Oh yeah, tons of it. From what I heard, one summer she had done some work with a researcher out in San Francisco…”

He stroked his goatee for a moment. 

>“...Dr….something…West…I guess he helped her secure a bunch of funding from the federal government. Didn’t matter in the end though. That’s about all I know, hope it’s helpful.”

After I thanked the professor, I went back to the library. I no longer just wanted to get my five pages written as quickly as possible, now I wanted to know more. Looking back, I wish I’d never let my curiosity make me look deeper. I wish I’d never talked to Professor Woods. I wish I’d never listened to Mike when I was at the diner. I wish I’d submitted my list of topics earlier.