New Winslow S8E50
(Quick housekeeping note before the episode: New Winslow Season Eight will end on Saturday, August 24, with the final three episodes releasing two days earlier for Patreon patrons.)
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Noah wasn’t a particularly skilled lockpick, but he had certainly done it before. As much as hanging up with Andrew stung, he’d gotten off the phone as quickly as possible. There was going to be magic and bullshit involved here, so Noah knew he’d need a little more help on this one once he actually had the door open.
So now, forty minutes later, he was back in the general store basement with Iris. She had set a small coin at the top of the stairs, supposedly to compel people away from the cellar. In theory, it would work for as long as they needed it to. Iris swore it worked and Noah had certainly seen weirder, but that didn’t mean he wanted to take too long down here.
She’d given him a bobby pin and he was kneeling on the dusty dirt floor, trying to remember all the steps from when he was a bored teenager picking padlocks between classes. He’d been pretty good at it back then and for a second as he listened for the mechanisms in the cheap padlock, he was seventeen again, the thrill of getting away with something settling in somewhere among the tension. And after about ten agonizing minutes, the lock clicked out of place. Noah looked up at Iris, winked, then opened the door.
His triumph was short-lived. The unit was absolutely crammed full of storage and he could see his apprehension shared on Iris’s face as they took in the stacked boxes and covered furniture. This was going to take all day and they didn’t have that kind of time. Charm or no, someone would notice if he and Iris disappeared for a week and a half.
“What are you doing?”
Noah jumped and spun around to see Tara Stevenson standing on the stairs, seemingly immune to the charm Iris had set down. She didn’t look angry, but she did look serious as she turned from Noah to Iris, then back.
He was trying to think of an excuse when Iris said, “We’re looking for missing pages from an old town history that proves Charles Baxter’s family were the catalyst for the curse.”
Well, that was them done for. Two of the least reliable people in the town caught breaking and entering and there was no way she was going to believe that story. Mrs. Stevenson looked from Iris to Noah again, then shook her head with a sigh. “Just ask me for the key next time,” she said.
Then she walked back up the stairs, picking up the coin as she went. She examined it closely, flipping it over in her hands as she peered at the symbols. Then she glanced back at Iris and set the coin on the top of the bannister. Noah and Iris waited until the door closed behind her, then they got to work.
“They have to be in here,” Iris said as she searched through the box beside the one Noah had gone to first. “It makes so much sense. I was in the cellar of Town Hall a few months ago and it was weirdly clean, you know? One single cupboard and there really wasn’t anything in there. I was wondering where they kept all their old stuff.”
“Right in here, apparently,” Noah said, wiping grime off the top of a smaller box tucked inside the big box. “Several hundred years’ worth of old shit, tucked away neatly under the general store. Wait, what were you doing in the basement of Town Hall?”
“Exactly what we’re doing down here.”
She had him there. Then it hit him, all the details connecting, like wires linking and sparking throughout his brain. Noah stopped what he was doing, dropping the pile of bound papers he’d found in the smaller box. “Nancy.”
Iris frowned. “What about her?”
“It was Nancy.”
It all made sense. Her anger that he and Charlie had been down here, the way she’d disappeared right after Baxter left. The rest of the town council was still around, even if they were staying in the shadows for now. But Nancy, who had been here since before Noah was even born, was gone too. Immediately after the curse was lifted.
“Noah, are you alright?”
The hand on his bicep felt, if not forced, then like a strong attempt at being comforting. And he had to admit that it helped, even given how complex his relationship with Iris was. Being back in the cellar had been fine right up until that connection had been made, and now it was taking everything he had not to leave. “She told Baxter something,” he said. “I don’t know what, but the Limerick burned down right after and-”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Iris said, though she clearly wasn’t sure what to say. “I, um, I can finish this. If you want?”
Noah shook his head. “No,” he said. “I need to see this through.”
It was three hours of messy, frustrating work before Iris cried out in triumph. Noah was elbow deep in a box of moldy magazines from the year he was born. He dropped them in alarm, spinning toward her as the magazines scattered across the floor. Iris was holding a small pack of papers that had been messily folded together. “This is them!” she exclaimed.
In the beam of her flashlight, she carefully unfolded the crumbling pages, scanning the contents. “It’s Harbinger’s handwriting,” she said. “And yeah, it’s all here, look. Samuel’s death, the way Baxter’s grandfather was incinerated, everything. It’s everything we already knew, but here’s the proof!”
She threw her arms around Noah, who staggered slightly before catching her and hugging her tightly back. “It’s over,” she murmured. “It’s all over.”
——–
Iris was nervous as she approached the desk at the New Winslow Historical Society an hour later. Mari, the receptionist whose aunt was on the town council, looked at her curiously. “Hi,” Iris said. “Is Judith in today?”
“Yeah,” Mari said, “Hang on.”
She called Judith’s office, while Iris wandered over to the wall. That picture of the Alderidge house was still hanging there. It was a beautiful building, an ornate design that was aging gracefully, even in the oil painting. Iris didn’t know where Rosalind and Samuel were now, but she knew that wherever it was, they were at peace. Maybe even back in their beloved home, still standing and unharmed on another plane of existence. Harbinger had told Iris that her study was real, as real as it had been in life. So Iris could hope that they’d found their way home too.
“Iris.”
Judith looked wary and, once again, Iris could not blame her. She couldn’t fix all of her mistakes, but maybe, like Baxter, she could start.
“I need to speak to you,” Iris said, shifting the bag in her hand. “In private, if we can.”
Judith assessed her silently. “My office.”
She spun on her heel and started walking without another word. Iris followed her down the now-familiar hallway, back to the town archivist’s office. Once the door was closed, Judith looked at her suspiciously. “What now?” she demanded. “The curse is lifted, there better not be anything else coming for us.”
“No, nothing like that,” Iris said. “We found the pages.”
She put her bag on Judith’s desk and pulled out the manila folder containing the old pages. “I didn’t have anything else to put them in,” she explained as Judith gingerly opened it. “They were in the basement of the general store. That’s why they didn’t have much storage in the town hall cellar, they kept everything over there. And they were in a box way back in the corner underground and-”
Judith didn’t seem to be listening to her as she touched the papers, unfolding them carefully. “I’ll have to confirm it,” she said. “But this looks like them.”
“We already knew everything in there,” Iris said. “And the curse is gone, just like the Alderidges. Plus, it’s not like it links Baxter to the curse beyond proving his family is awful. But I just knew they should be here with the rest of Harbinger’s work.”
Judith swallowed and Iris knew she was thinking the exact same thing Iris was, visualizing thick Sharpie scribbles over Harbinger’s neat handwriting. Maybe she should apologize again, but maybe that would just make things worse. She was spared the agony of her indecision when Judith smiled. It wasn’t a particularly broad smile, but it wasn’t the anger of the past couple years.
“Thank you, Iris,” she said. “You’re right, it does all belong together. And the truth will be safe here. The stories are already getting out there, but we need to have the proof.”
“Harbinger said it should all be written down,” Iris said. “What happened now, I mean.”
“Are you going to do that?” Judith asked.
“I’m not a good writer,” Iris said with a self-conscious laugh. “But I’ll ask Andrew nicely if he’ll collaborate on it with me.”
“I think that would be a good record to have,” Judith said. “This town has hidden the truth for so long, it’ll be nice to have it all out in the open. Let me know when it’s done, I’ll have a space here for it.”
Iris hadn’t even had plans fully in her head before she’d opened her mouth, but now she wanted to leave here and get on the phone with Andrew to figure it out.
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