Spotted Traveler, again.

All the Stranger ever wrote about me in his book, granted, he wrote it more than once. I study my shadow, draped in the carpet of a grim hotel. It stares back through a single glowing eye- the red-orange switch of a surge protector. I shift and the shadow’s head is forced under a shelf.

Better.

I didn’t recognize my expectations regarding the Stranger’s written accounts of our meetings until they were abruptly unmet. Hurried, sometimes, and regularly discreet, I thought my own recollections of the man were brief.

There’s more than length to a dick-measuring contest.

A joke he would make.

I crawl onto the bed- crawl out again to retrieve the small pouch of nickels on the table. A truck rumbles past the window and my shadow looms, suddenly, to peer over my shoulder. I shake the bag of change- noise wards off evil spirits and intrusive thoughts alike. The traffic passes and the room returns to the predictable sort of dark I prefer.

I slip between the sheets again, toss my clothes to the floor, and press a nickel into a slot on the headboard. The world goes quiet- dreadfully so. It’s the quiet of a power outage in the middle of the night, the sudden non-ticking of the fridge or the silence of a bedside fan. It’s the sound of an absence and, after a moment, I trace the absence to myself. My own body is silent, as though the blood has stopped in my veins. There is quiet, even within me. It’s frightening, at first, and then the world returns and the noise of it is so disturbing that I run coins into the headboard until the pouch is emptied.

Already I am afraid to hear that sound return. I’m just as afraid of the blessed silence, that it has so quickly become a balm. I breathe (silently) and remind myself why I limited the nickels to a handful- the same reason I prefer twine to chalk on the occasion that Shitholes leads me into a cave. The twine is a logical limit and the chalk, well, one piece has the potential for so many arrows.

Re-adjusted to the silence (and resigned to its inevitable end), I pick up the Stranger’s book and endeavor to understand the path to his strange demise.

‘For those seeking respite from the myriad stimuli of everyday life, one might call ahead to the local motel-by-the-hour and inquire about the make and model of their beds. The long-defunct ‘Tectonics’ line of vibrating mattress frame wears in such a way that, after a few years of heavy use, the motor maintains a frequency quite opposite the music of the spheres, creating a state of absolute stillness.

As with much of what happens in motels with vibrating beds, addiction is common and side-effects are the norm. Dizziness follows long use of the ‘Tectonics’ line, as do migraines. Random internal ruptures have been reported, though witnesses of such events are unreliable, hiding either deep inebriation or motive for murder.’

-traveler

‘A troubling things occurs when men find themselves reflected in the symbol of the ambiguous walking man that shines white at American crosswalks to signal the way forward. They seek anonymity. They shave their heads. They become enchanted with dichotomy, sure that life is a crossroads at every turn. They become strange.

Thusly changed, the strangers understand liberty only when faced with barriers. They unbind without knowing whether chains hold inmate or anchor. They topple walls without consideration for structure or cold. They understand the forest as both freedom and hindrance, so that the paths they carve there wind deeply and without purpose.

They see the revelation at the crosswalk as a new manifest destiny and they evangelize, in a way, sure that the uninitiated resist crossing only for having forgotten to press the button.’

–excerpt, Unattributed Writings on the Origins of Strangers

I recognize the passing of two state borders before the strangers think to press an empty case of beer over my head, twisting it so that the position of the handle roughly corresponds to my mouth. Night falls and the bed of the pick-up grows dreadfully cold. I squirm forward until my body is pressed up against the back of the cab. Inside, the voices of the strangers are loud, jovial. They laugh often. I can’t make out any words.

I sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. Light creeps in through the crude mask. The mouth gap has softened under the constant barrage of my breathing. I chew at it, thinking I might tear a strip upward. In the end, I only manage to make the orifice jagged.

It’s warm again when the truck finally stops. The strangers announce themselves with their fingers, prodding me here and there until the knots loosen. I hear the tailgate screech open- am dragged into a sitting position, pulled to standing. The ground beneath me is gravel. It’s hot, now. I would happily trade my life’s temperature extremes for an unending 65 degrees. Someone speaks ahead of me, asking a question they should have considered earlier:

“You’re the guy from a while back, right?”

I spit a wad of cardboard and the sound of its impact is close and satisfying. The improvised hood is torn away and the world becomes painfully bright. My eyes adjust in time to see the stranger prepare a world-ending sucker punch.

The world ends for a second or two. Its return is nauseating.

We’re in the parking lot of a stadium.

I’m dragged inside.

The stadium is open air but it reeks of exhaust. Strangers populate the bleachers, maybe a hundred total are scattered about in sparse groups. A few throw popcorn at me as we pass but my entrance is otherwise unremarkable. At the crest of the stairs I make out the entertainment- a sort of demolition derby is in motion below, all of it confined to a shallow pit in the shape of a man. I shudder as the pit seems to shift, its walls colliding with a van. The vehicle lifts and spins, finally rolling to a stop on its side. A stranger crawls from the wreckage, limping on a broken leg. The pit shifts again and the earth seems to consume him. I trace its shape back to the bleachers and spy a silhouetted form at the top.

The game is played in the shadow of the King of Strangers. He looks in my direction and shatters an old sedan below. The crowd cheers.

I’m led up through the gathered men. A few more people throw food. Most look, now, having traced the attention of the man above them. They release me as we near the King of Strangers, their encouragement rough, silent, and clear: approach. Given no other choice, I do, and I see my shadow join his in the vast circle below.

“You’ve returned my man,” he says.

“There was something wrong with him.”

“Yes.”

The King of Strangers wears a cardboard crown, lifted from some nearby fast food chain. It fits painfully tight, cutting into the skin of his bald head. From a distance I would have said the man wore robes but, in reality, his clothes drape, in tatters, from his body.

“Something for you,” he says, and when he kneels to retrieve a book at his feet there are explosions below. The western wall of the stadium collapses when he hands it to me.

Cheers turn to screams.

“The man was a writer,” he says, “He was working on this when he… succumbed.”

The book he hands me is a copy of Shitholes.

“He was working on a published book?”

“He wrote in the margins.” I flip through the pages and see another book’s worth of text in the blank spaces. The letters are clean and straight, written in pen. The King of Strangers sees my admiration and adds: “The man believed he was above mistakes, which was not exactly true. He thrived in broken places, where small mistakes remained unnoticed. The book is yours now. You may go.”

‘May’ turns out to be an exaggeration. I’m grabbed by the waiting strangers and tossed out into the parking lot where my bag sits atop the bike. I intend to toss the gifted book at the next gas station but see that my captors have topped me up. By the time I stop, I’ve convinced myself to read it.

-traveler

‘‘The Specter at Balesford Bluff’ (formerly ‘The Hermit at Balesford Bluff’) is generally considered a bad omen, not because it’s a particularly willful wraith but because the hermit delighted in misfortune as a mortal and seems to maintain this delight in the afterlife. If anything, the hermit’s demise appears to have granted him a preternatural ability to sense the unfolding of a dire situation with enough time to manifest and leer.

The silver-lining of the situation as a whole lies in ‘The Specter’s’ nearness to ‘The Balesford Witching Well.’ ‘The Bluff’ overlooks the highway as one exits to the north and an appearance of ‘The Specter’ following a deposit at ‘The Well’ has, on occasion, alerted a perceptive traveler to a monkey’s-paw type situation, allowing them to return and re-word their ill-formed wish, much to the disappointment, one might suspect, of the former hermit. That the ‘The Specter’ has not yet reacted to the pattern is cause for much chatter among those who discuss the oft-crystalline rigidity of hauntings. It is, to many, proof that the terrestrially-inclined deceased are unable to break their immortal routines, though several people who knew the hermit in life claim that this particular man exhibited about as much self-awareness then as he does now.’

I wake in the back of a pick-up truck, the world roaring past on either side of me. The strangers have wrapped in me in rope so tightly that I can feel my pulse throbbing against the cord, as though my entire body has been squeezed into the blood-pressure machine at the back of the grocery store. The motorcycle hovers over me, chained carelessly to the side. The handlebars would land squarely on my face in the event of it slipping when we, say, hit even the mildest of bumps. Someone taps on the glass from the cabin and I strain to look backward. One of the Strangers nods to me. He lifts my bag as if to say ‘Don’t worry, we didn’t forget this.’

I can’t see anything over the walls of the cargo bed, though a cliffside lingers distantly behind us. There, at the top, I think I see the silhouette of a man.

He waves.

-traveler

‘One will rarely find themselves alone at ‘The Balesford Witching Well’ and the company helps the impoverished traveler to remember their morals as they spy the rather large pile of money that spills from the mouth of the congested stones. These represent wishes, after all. Shoving aside some of the coins (no doubt stoking the ire of the crowd) one can find the reason for all this trouble. Unlike most wishing wells, which are regularly dredged for charity or upkeep, a plaque at the base of ‘The Balesford’ declares that wishes made in good faith there will come true, but only so long as the money remains.

A vagabond may grab a handful of the well’s change and quash the luck of a few dozen people scattered across the globe. A crow could steal a shining dime and sow discontent into the marriage of soulmates. A careless wisher might toss a coin to the top of the pile, only to have it roll into the bushes during a storm. Those who live about ‘The Balesford Witching Well’ will say they’ve seen all of this occur.

The people camping near the well are there to protect it, or, to protect their wishes. They watch visitors with clear disdain, their eyes storm clouds- gray and volatile. They will gasp when you approach and shriek if you so much as reposition a penny that looks as though it might slide from the pile. They are happy to recite the rules of the place, but only after you have broken them.’

Strangers have surrounded ‘The Balesford Wishing Well’ when I arrive. I recognize them in time to hang back in the forest and watch from behind a tree. The group, all buzz-cuts and jeans, are heaving fistfuls of coins into the bushes and sky while a group of dirty looking people, presumably the well’s keepers, scream.

“You’re free now!” one of the strangers shouts, “Your wish might be in here, your wish might be out there! No point in sticking around!”

The keepers don’t appear particularly calmed by the stranger’s take on the well. Some are collecting the coins and trying to throw them back to the well, presumably for the benefit of those not there. Others seem to be trying to remake their own wishes on the discarded coins. None are willing to confront the strangers.

I don’t blame them. One of the men has a long hunting knife at his side. Another carries an axe. The last holds a half bottle of cheap whiskey.

Change clatters against my tree and I thin myself until the strangers have circled around again, their backs to me. One of the keepers crawls over to dig through the grass for coins. He must see me standing there but says nothing. There wouldn’t be much benefit to calling attention to either of us. The strangers continue to shout from behind.

When the keeper scurries back to the well I straighten to leave and spy a nickel under my shoe. The strangers are still facing away when I retrieve it and, in the chaos, I lob it back toward ‘The Balesford Witching Well,’ silently wishing for a swift end to this nonsense. It clears the rim and becomes lost among the coins there.

A voice behind me calls to the strangers, then. It says:

“Hey! Isn’t this that guy!”

They stop what they’re doing and, before I can run, I feel something strike my head.

The world goes dark.

-traveler