Formerly The Old Chapel Inn, formerly Christ’s Tears Church, Episcopal. Originally built by logging, mining, and trapping families in the early 1800’s as a congregationalist church, it’s now a local diner frequented by tourists and regulars, alike. The diner occupies the entire first floor. The attic area retains its design from the days of The Old Chapel Inn; this is where Becky and Bea, proprietors and restaurateurs, live, along with a student border, Suzan Kim. Suzie keeps to herself, mostly, barely interacting with the locals, including her hosts. She rarely eats in the diner, but does go down to the basement weekly to do laundry. Although her focus isn’t on The Old Chapel Diner, she can’t help but notice that the diner seems to be patronized all hours of the night, despite signage stating that “Open at the first crow of the coq. Closed around 2, or sometimes 3.” Then there’s the strange little door in the ceiling just outside her room that Becky assures her is just to help access electrical work and replace insulation. And the corner in the basement where a doorway was very clearly bricked up, yet the dirt in front of it is smooth and compact, almost as if someone had been opening the erstwhile door on a regular basis. She recently learned that the parking lot was paved over the graves of the old church yard. Local rumor has it that the headstones were moved, but the graves and their occupants remained behind. Suzie tries not to think about this whenever she has to walk on the asphalt on her way to and from her ‘87 Kia Pride. At night, sometimes, she thinks she hears voices and footsteps in the ceiling over her bed. Bea assures her it’s just the raccoons getting frisky, to not worry, and she gives Suzie a cup of chamomile tea and tells her drink it slowly, that it will help her sleep through the night.
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