Motel Reflections and Burned-In Questions
We checked into a roadside motel just outside Pendleton long after the State Hospital walkthrough. Everyone was wiped, but none of us hit the pillows right away. No one admitted it, but we were all still chewing on the same question: what actually happened in that hydrotherapy chamber?
The conversation started slow, over cups of instant coffee and old granola bars that Vernon hoards like a survivalist. Josh sat on the motel carpet cross-legged, sketching out the chamber’s dimensions from memory. Robin double-checked her compass again—it was still behaving. “It’s fine now,” she said, then added under her breath, “which is somehow worse.”
Jennifer proposed that the scorch marks on the inside of the chamber door weren’t from fire at all—maybe heat, but not combustion. She started sketching a few comparative marks from archival photos of old burn wards. Donna listened, nodded occasionally, but seemed distracted. I finally asked what she was thinking.
“It wasn’t drowning. It was stolen.” She quoted the etched words on the inner chamber wall. “That’s not just despair. That sounds like something being taken… life, consciousness, identity. The wording isn’t incidental.”
Santa-Pops, as I now insist on calling him—had mostly kept quiet through the evening. When he did chime in, he sounded more tired than I’ve heard him yet.
“Electromagnetic suppression. It’s not unheard of. But it doesn’t explain all of it. The hydrotherapy chamber was sealed from the inside, yes—but that external wall being blown out? No soot. No explosive residue. That’s compression and displacement. Energy was forced outward.”
We let that hang in the air a while.
Caleb thinks we need access to the hospital’s old patient logbooks or any records of unexplained injuries from that wing. He said he might be able to talk a former nurse into sharing copies; apparently, there’s a woman in La Grande who worked there through the ’70s and now runs a bookstore. We’re planning to detour there before heading south again.
Tomorrow will be mostly driving. The next confirmed investigation site is near Ashland—a location Caleb flagged weeks ago after spotting a classified report involving audible phenomena and dream-state bleedover. But if we can reach the nurse first, it may lend some context to Weston.
We’ll split car assignments in the morning. Some changes are overdue anyway. Egiel and Vernon can’t stop arguing about whose turn it is to control the music, and Donna’s taken to wearing earplugs regardless of the conversation.
If nothing else, a change in seats might mean we hear some new stories.
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Miles driven since last entry: 230
