The Stranger trips over his own shadow and it scatters out from under him.

I realize two things, then:

-I would never be able to do to the Stranger what the Stranger did to me. I don’t know why I thought I could.

-This is a stranger, but it is not the Stranger.

This man is younger, he has darker hair and a full set of teeth. He is not as tall or as thickly muscled. He has all the mannerisms of the Stranger and the same substantial shadow, but this is a different man.

The air cracks and a bullet buries itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. I’m buffeted by shards of dead pine, sucked dry by the vampire fern overhead. I scurry to the safety of thicker trees and my ankle lights up in pain. Falling, I feel the tendrils of the fairy fern tear out of my calf. There is another shot- one that likely would have found its mark if I had been standing.

I stay low to the ground, out of sight of the stranger and that much further from the predatory ferns. The man lets out a frustrated yelp and the canopy shakes as he fends off prying tendrils. There are bones in the treetops- I see them now that the light has changed.

“Throw out you gun,” the man says, “And step out here.”

My heart stops for a moment- the man assumes I was smart enough to bring a gun, that I would know how to use one if I had it.

“No,” I yell, crouching behind a thick stump, “You… throw down your gun.”

The man yelps again and yells- “Fucking plants!”

“They, uh, won’t stop until I tell them to…” I say.

“Fuck you,” he says, “I’m not an idiot.”

“Why are you here?”

“Same reason as you,” he says, and I hear him edging closer, picking his way across the underbrush, “The book, right?”

“Who told you to burn this place down?”

This stops him.

“Somebody already tried that,” I tell him, “Look what happened.”

“You a park ranger?” the man asks, taking another step closer.

“What?”

“A park ranger. Now’s the time to tell me if you are.”

“I’m not a park ranger.”

“Didn’t think so,” he says.

I take a breath, preparing to run, and the pick falls from my mouth. As it hits the ground, a tangled mass of fern and bone swings down from the trees, shuddering past me to the ground. The man is not more than a few feet behind me, but he is distracted by the sudden appearance of this ghoul and with that moment, I make a terrible decision.

I make finger guns at the man and yell: “Stop!”

And, against the odds, it works.

The stranger doesn’t wait to see if I have a real gun. He reaches down and seems to pull his shadow over himself and, with that, he is gone. I am left alone with the fairy fern and the hanging skeleton of an unlucky hunter.

I search the ground for the pick, for what was little more than pine mash when it fell, but it has vanished. The fairy fern attempts a lazy pursuit as I hike back to the road, but falters at the edge of its infestation.

My mind is elsewhere, replaying the events of the last year and wondering how many strangers I have passed without realizing there could be more than one.

-traveler

Movement in the dark gray of our peripheries is universally fearful. No matter how awful, no matter how truly terrible the source of that movement is, there is some comfort when the veil is lifted and the thing moves again in plain sight. For a sneaking thing to slip it must exist in our world, in the world where strange agendas do not excuse a thing from mistakes.

For all the time I’ve spent staring at Autumn by the Wayside, it has not moved an inch.

But now… a slip.

‘If there is any magic left in tales of the pirate’s black spot, ‘The Fairy Forest’ may be the source. It is a standing massacre of trees, a plague that spirals outward from the char of some distant fire as though ritually summoned and left to sow chaos. The culprit is the ‘Fairy Fern,’ a lush parasite that masks the scene of its crime with bright green fronds. Even seasoned travelers may find themselves in the heart of the infestation before they realize it is not life that surrounds them, but death.’

This entry was different in the old copy of Autumn by the Wayside. It is familiar enough that I doubted myself but, looking back over my own writings, I see that things have changed. Has the book quietly changed between print runs or has it quietly changed in my pack, shifting itself like ‘Mazzy’s’ maze?

The way to ‘The Fairy Forest’ is familiar enough, a left where I once took an errant right, a confident press through shrubs that obscure the path. I clamber over a tree and feel a sharp prick in my shoulder, a second shortly after. I turn to find I am an ivy marionette, the twirling roots of the fairy fern having reached down from above grasp my jacket.

Despite the warning in Shitholes, I have stumbled into the infestation.

I leave my jacket hanging and press on, careful to swipe away the curious tendrils as I pass. Before long I find the site of the Stranger’s fire, a column of fairy fern that ascends into the trees and spreads across the canopy like an atom bomb.

This is where it started, where our paths first crossed.

There is a circle of sunlight near the column, a place where the fairy fern has accidentally fallen a tree and not yet had time to patch the hole in its cover.

I sit and I wait and I move as the sun does so that I am always facing in the direction of my should-be shadow. I imagine that the Stranger will arrive quietly, folding himself out from the dark of some tree or simply appearing in a place that was previously empty.

When he comes, he is walking. He wipes a thin trickle of blood from his neck with the back of his hand, the same hand that he uses to brandish his pistol at the creeping ferns. The Stranger walks in a line toward me, as though held to an invisible path, and he is only ten feet away when his eyes meet mine.

He tries to run.

-traveler

There are long sabbaticals hidden between these posts, reader. I’m not sure you would notice if they weren’t made explicit. I work, or rest, or find myself stuck in one way or another.

I never go home.

Money has certainly been an issue more recently. Money for getting the bike out of impound (left at the ‘Edge of Disaster’ just a little too long). Money for a new pack. Money to fix an old truck radio. Money to eat.

Luckily, the unending autumn brings a long harvest and I am suited for mindless farm work, for pumpkins and apples and shuffling through the dirt. I work and make money and bide my time, devoting much of my thinking to the problem of the stranger and waiting for the weekend of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival.’

I am thinner and darker when it arrives.

‘There is something at the heart of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival’ that radiates a sickly-sweet feeling of unease, a feeling that hits well after one pays for entry. At ‘Mazzy’s,’ every beloved autumn tradition is taken to an extreme, exaggerated past seasonal cheer and into a clownish, careful-what-you-wish-for mockery. Pumpkins are heavier, hayrides are slower, and the cider is so thick with sugar that one can pour out a glass and count to three before it touches the ground.

‘Mazzy’s’ is syrupy as a place and people stick there like flies, determined to get their money’s worth and determined to re-experience festive autumnal memories that, upon careful recollection, are no more than a series of half-remembered commercials and cartoon specials. In a wasted sci-fi future, this will be where they find humans sealed up in amber- fat, and frozen in postures of mild disappointment.’

The ‘Carnival’ arranges itself late in the season, the result of hodgepodge chores assigned to myself and the others on the farm. There are others, yes, people like myself who prefer cash under the table and don’t mind bunking with strangers. We pick apples one day, assemble a tall, rickety slide the next. Signs are painted, hay is stacked. There is talk of the corn maze, of the tedious task of carving a path through the stiff husks and paper-sharp leaves.

And then, one day, the maze is there. The entrance appears with the sunrise and from the same rickety slide we see that the path has seemingly chewed its way out from the center.

“They must grow it that way,” I offer over a dinner of thick, pumpkin stew.

“No,” someone says, a woman who has been working the farm longer than me, “No way the corn grows that way.”

She doesn’t offer another explanation.

Sometimes I roll over in the mornings and feel the absence of the comb case in the breast pocket of my shirt- an absence so distinct that it seems, in the twilight of dreaming, to be as thick as the thing itself. One morning, to stop my teeth from chattering, I pull one of the ‘Arbor-Eat’ems’ picks from the vial and find, despite my weary skepticism, that I feel better. The pick (one for now, as there are only ten) becomes a part of my farming personality. On the night of the stew and of the self-made maze, I find the soggy splinter migrating to the corners of my mouth and tugging at my lips.

It pulls me to the cornfield.

The maze is not forbidden, but nobody admits to entering before I do. The leaves rustle and the pick twists in my teeth: ‘This way,’ ‘Turn,’ ‘Oops, dead end.’

“Alice?” I ask, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

If it’s Alice in the pick, she says nothing. We wander until the moon is overhead and stumble upon the center where a scarecrow slumps on its post. A bucket of candy rests at its feet, along with a sign that says, ‘Please Take One ONLY.”

“Do you know the difference between a maze and a labyrinth?” I ask, taking the pick from my mouth, “A labyrinth is just one, winding path from the outside to the center. A maze splits and dead-ends- has as many ways in and out as you like.”

This is a conversation for tomorrow’s dinner. I practice, with Alice and the scarecrow, as I used to practice in the mirrors of middle school bathrooms.

“You can’t really be lost in a labyrinth…”

(Noises in the corn interrupt me, but quiet as I take notice. I find out later that the maze is rearranging itself. That’s the nature of these places. It will be another long night.)

“You can’t be lost in a labyrinth, but, I suppose, if it’s very long, you can be stuck. You might forget which direction you’re heading-”

I drop the Alice-pick and spend a long time finding it again.

(The maze grows more complex in the meantime.)

“What does it say…” I continue, “What does it say about life that a labyrinth is supposed to be meditative? The beginning is the end, the way is set.”

(An angry ghost eyes me from the scarecrow. It has been the heart of the maze for a hundred years. For a hundred, hundred years. It curses me, but I have always been unlucky and don’t notice much of a difference.)

“There’s some comfort in having no choice.”

I shake the scarecrow’s hand (the ghost rages inside) and turn to leave.

“But if this were a labyrinth, there would be no distinguishing between directions. To catch its prey, a minotaur would only have to stand by and wait.”

-traveler

Diego was not wrong, as much as I assumed he would be. I left ‘The Oasis’ and walked along the road until I was sure I would be out of sight. I circled back into the storm, despite my careful timing, and re-traced my steps, ashamed to be seen.

I looked for the comb case but could not find it.

What I found, instead, was a me-shaped puddle in the earth, hardly the perfect cartoon-silhouette, but close. I must have lain there for some time.

Standing at the foot of that puddle was the closest I’ve come to casting a shadow since, and I have stepped out of the storm and into brighter places to no avail. I am a Peter Pan, past my prime and I don’t know whether I should be concerned.

I feel myself aging.

I cannot fly.

But I have been… okay, in the absence of my vice. And that feels, in many ways, like flying.

‘What came first, the zany name or the concept of a wood-based tasting venue? ‘Arbor-Eat’em’ would have you believe the latter, billing itself as a high-class sort of establishment but having to try a little too hard to pull it off. The core concept is an inversion of the traditional hors de ’oeuvre, a selection of bland fruits and cheese paired with toothpicks of exotic wood. Found yourself wondering about the mouth-feel of a California Redwood? Curious about the earthy notes of the Baobab? Wood tasting might be for you.

‘Arbor-Eat’em’ is not without controversy. In the Fall of 2015 it premiered and then quickly retracted a ‘historical flight,’ consisting of toothpicks carved from reclaimed sources- the bows of ships, the inner layers of casks, and from coffins. The owner played it off as a stunt and swept the incident under the rug, but rumors of old inventory remain.

Nothing says ‘underground’ like a secret menu.’

Wait, no.

I am falling.

This is not the flight of the bird, but the flight of a coward. I’ve been here many times before, briefly suspended in the eye of the storm.

“Sir? We’re starting a round of the cedar, cut just last week.”

“I… thanks.”

I chew nervously through toothpicks and tongue sawdust paste from the holes where my teeth used to be, spitting it into ornamental bowls and rinsing with mineral water between flights. I ignore much of what is said about the processes involved in harvesting this wood, in caring for saplings and leaving a responsible carbon footprint. I am preoccupied with my near future, with the realization that things will still get worse before they get better.

Eventually, though, I settle myself down.

The walking tour filters lazily into a mingling area, situated next to a store for those convinced by the tasting- a place to shop for distant in-laws and work acquaintances. I pick the gouda off of several thin pieces of maple and wait until the host has finished speaking with an enthusiastic Minnesotan family before I put into action the careful approach necessary for under-the-table affairs.

“So,” I begin, “You have any of those coffin toothpicks left?”

The host does not turn to meet me, but I see his eyes slowly narrow, as though the man is falling asleep where he stands. Just as I’m sure they are closed, when I start to wonder if he has chosen to simply blot me out of his reality rather than to acknowledge the question, he speaks.

“Coffins,” he says, “Crew-see-fixes. pretty-lady’s wash basins. We’ve got all sorts of things in the pick cellar.”

“I…”

“What does a man like yourself want with a taste of the dead?”

“Just curious.”

“You know what they say about curiosity?”

He waits for me to answer.

“It killed the cat?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” he repeats, “Company cat got into the nautical picks and they tore up its insides. Had to put it down.”

The host pulls another employee aside and whispers something in her ear before motioning me to follow. We step through a door marked ‘Employees Only’ and continue down a flight of steep, stone stairs. I break the silence after several quiet seconds.

“How did you get in to the toothpick business?”

“Grew up in the boonies,” he says, “Home-schooled. Parents struggled to put food on the table. You know what helps keep your mind off a hungry stomach?”

“Chewing toothpicks?”

“Exactly. We’d make our own- widdle’em down from branches. I got a taste for elm that way.”

“And what’s the deal with the historical picks? Who thought that was a good idea?”

“I did,” he says, and, ahead in the darkness, I cannot see his face.

The host unlocks a heavy door as we reach a landing and we move into a cavernous passage.

“Way I see it,” the host says, “If we soak whiskey in wine casks for a hint of old grapes, why not try something more direct? Why not see what we can glean from a thing that spent a hundred years on the ocean, or sixty below the earth?”

We come to another door, this one simply latched. It’s cold and still in the cellar a place made foreign by its comparative nearness to the heart of the Earth. There are shelves inside the room and, on the shelves, row after row of small, glass vials. In each vial, a bundle of toothpicks, tied with a string. Nothing is labeled, but the host leads me to a place in the center, where the pickings have slimmed.

“Plenty of folk like you,” he says, “Looking for the picks of dead folk. These three here are over a hundred years old. The row below that is at least two hundred. We do our best to source from the States, but the older these get the more likely they’ve been imported.”

I had not seriously planned on buying pieces of a coffin but now, in the grim basement of the ‘Arbor-Eat’em,’ I feel as if I have little choice.

“How much for one vial?”

It’s more than I have.

My palms begin to sweat.

“Do you have anything… cheaper?”

I feel the host’s judgement in the half-darkness. He sighs and slips his hand between the racks, pulling a vial of bright, white picks from the back.

“Last of the budget options,” he says, “Alice Cantrel- dead at 20, aged 5 years in pine.”

He hands me the vial without asking whether I can afford it. The sticks rattle lightly in the glass, the little taps sounding against my palm like static.

“You’re a man with bad habits,” the host comments as he turns back to the door.

“What makes you say that?”

“Strange tastes and no money.”

-traveler