It’s difficult to find a legitimate reflecting pool these days. I don’t pretend to know why, but ‘money’ is always a good guess. Budget hotels have mostly done away with pools. Upscale venues maintain them too well.

A reflecting pool has to exist in a hotel and it has to be indoors. It has to be at least somewhat enticing so decrepit is fine, but dirty isn’t. The fewer windows, the more stifling the air, the thicker the smell of chlorine, the better. Bonus points for pools that are unnecessarily deep. Bonus points for a slippery diving board. Bonus points for a mildewing sauna somewhere nearby.

But the only really important thing, besides the pool itself, is that it has to be available at all hours. It has to be available at 2:30am.

‘More a phenomenon than a destination, the Wayside ‘Reflecting Pool’ exists as a sort of litmus test for mental well-being- an indicator of the direction one is taking in terms of, say, self-actualization.

The magic moment is 2:30am. Faced with a hotel pool so late in the evening (so early in the morning) a traveler might determine whether they’ve acted on a leisurely impulse or if their life has devolved into a series of disjointed scenes acted out in liminal nowheres.’

Hector is asleep in the room as I walk barefoot down the stained carpet of a budget hotel, the name of which I’ve already forgotten. I check the room key and see it’s for a ‘Marriot,’ either purchased at some liquidation or else a self-deprecating joke.

I stand, barefoot, in the elevator- also carpeted. Hector and I have been given a room on the top floor, the fifth, with a view that, due to the plains, overlooks the interstate for miles in both directions. I meant to write, this evening, and spent it hypnotized instead.

I have a bad feeling about the reflecting pool. Worse than I expected, I mean.

The pool is situated in the center of a windowless room ,brightened only by light from the open door. My silhouette wavers in the water, though there is no reason for the pool to be disturbed. I switch on the lights- too bright- and confirm I am the only swimmer this late. The floor is pebbled cement, slick with moisture. Drops of condensation fall from the ceiling and soak into the shoulders of my t-shirt, which I wear, self-consciously, until I am at the very edge of the pool. The water is the same temperature as my body. Sliding into it feels intimate and violating and when I sigh, the sound of my disappointment echoes in the room like a ghost.

I’m lost, aren’t I?

-traveler

‘A small, sad place, ‘The Digital Pet Cemetery’ is not at all like the Stephen King novel. Well, it is the legacy of a recovered addict. And its location is something of a secret. And there are rumors that, when a human soul is somehow interred in the servers, they return as an insane digital spirit- a monkey’s paw torment for their grieving families.

But beyond those things, it isn’t like the novel at all.’

‘The Digital Pet Cemetery’ has been overhauled since my edition of the guide was published, now advertising itself as ‘The Insane Digital Spirit Adoption Shelter’ on several traditional billboards and as ‘HELPMEOGODTHYREKEEPIGUSLOC’ on a digital banner a few miles out.

“They do that sometimes,” the man at the counter says when I ask about the message, “These crazy digital spirits, you know. They get just about everywhere.”

The cash register opens of its own accord, pushing into the man’s gut. When he closes it, sparks fly from the nearby thermostat and the mildewy smell of disused air conditioning sweeps between us. The man shrugs.

“When did you, uh, rebrand?” I ask.

“Oh, the cemetery thing? Well, a cemetery’s got, like, one or two ghosts max. Otherwise it’s a pretty quiet place. What we have here is more of an infestation.” He scratches his nose. “How many do you want?”

“Insane spirits?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want any crazy spirits.”

“Oh, well you likely picked up a few already. Wi-fi. Bluetooth. We can perform an exorcism if you like.”

The internet suggested this was ‘The IDSAS’s’ main revenue source- inflicting these insane digital spirits and then offering on-the-spot solutions.

“I’m on airplane mode,” I tell him. “Across the board. Just a tour, if you’re still offering.”

The man grumbles and rings me up. The tour is short and disappointing- an overheated server screaming in an airless room. If anybody thinks trying to raise their loved one here is a good idea, they deserve the haunting.

That said, I notice one of the parking meters going haywire in the parking lot on my way out- ejecting coins and swearing in dim gray. I have the man at the counter corral it into an old digital keychain pet and pay a $50 adoption fee. It shifts about on the little screen, a ghastly avatar in lines, waving its arms and demanding food.

I don’t like the idea of keeping this thing against its will, but according to the Guide, I’ll need a ghost to get me through to the onion pages.

And coercion is an age-old American tradition.

-traveler

Hector and I return to the ruins of ‘The Sunburn Experience.’ The ashes have been swept away by the wind, but its charred half-walls still mark the perimeter of the building where Hector spent most of his life. The rabbit seems fine. I thought he would be nervous- that some core instinct would have pegged this place as dangerous. It’s only the human in me. I’m projecting my own concerns on the animal.

I’ve been worried for a while now, ever since I discovered the onion paper pages of ‘Autumn by the Wayside.’ I’ve said before that it seems to grow longer the longer I read it. I’ve said before that it has expanded and splayed against the curling paperback. I found a picture of myself with the book when this all started. It was slimmer, then. A compact little travel guide with thick stock pages. Now I know those pages come apart. There are entries within the entries. Sites within sites. I have been reading the sub-pages and, when I can get to them without tearing, the sub-sub-pages. Now that I know how to look, I can see more text in-between.

I’m no closer to finishing this than when I started.

‘The discerning traveler will note a basement level displayed on the interior maps of ‘The Sunburn Experience,’ the only remaining clue that such a place exists. Other mentions of the basement have been edited out of brochures or taped over on signs: very deliberate attempts at erasing public knowledge of the place entirely. Some would attribute the unedited maps to conspiracy. The likelier explanations are incompetence or apathy or an understanding that, if someone has made it as far as the lobby, they will not be dissuaded by missing information.

Like everything made secret, the basement of ‘The Sunburn Experience’ holds a wonder: a source of daylight in miniature. Like every wonder on the Wayside, it has been wasted on dangerous and lucrative pursuits.’

The trouble with the ruins is that the trapdoor is less immediately clear than it would have been if the building was standing. If the guide is right, the door wasn’t meant to be easy to find to start. We wait for nightfall, hoping that the source of daylight will stream up through cracks in the floor. It does not and I assume, too early, that whatever was down there was lost with the rest of the building.

Hector disappears in the middle of the night, and he doesn’t come back. If it were anywhere else, I would let him be, but because he has a history, here, I shake off sleep and set out to find him. It isn’t hard. He’s nested on the bare floor in the northern corner of the once-lobby. I pick him up, finding his underside unnaturally warm, and there, beneath him, is the latch.

The ground radiates heat.

Beneath the floorboards of ‘The Sunburn Experience’ exists a miniature star. It spins in a room of broken mirrors, segmented by office dividers and shelves of dried-up suntan lotion. I find a pair of those little goggles and squint to keep them in place. Hector is nervous at last- I leave him on the surface for a quick look around but hardly make it more than a couple rungs down before the heat makes my skin tighten. I think of all the dangerous things the human body can do with too much sun and take a last glance. A man’s skeleton, bleached white, rests against the far wall. Several rabbit skeletons litter the floor. I don’t know what happened, here, or when it did, but it’s plenty of reason not to leave fingerprints.

I wipe the rungs of the ladder on my way back up and join Hector at camp, where he’s resettled in the sleeping bag. I peel the onionskin between ‘The Sunburn Experience’ and ‘The Terrestrial Star,’ and read about a quirk in the parking lot- a patch of asphalt that has split and cracked in the shape of man’s face- how it seems to discharge and arrange loose pebbles into neat rows of teeth no matter the number of times they’re pulled away. I split the pages again and read how every thousandth tooth contains a cursed gold filling. I tear the page trying to split it again, but I see more text. It will take finer tools than my fingers to delve deeper without doing damage.

-traveler

‘Nobody gloats quite like the owner and doorman of ‘The Roadside No-Mystery House,’ who takes it upon himself to follow visitors about the premises as they investigate, trying to find anything about the house that might be considered strange. The trap door leads to a wine cellar. The hollowed-out book is a victim of rats. The distant human moans are the sound of wind in the chimney. The rattling at odd hours can be attributed to old pipes. Pings on personal EMF detectors are false signals from an electronic hobbyist group that stores their equipment in the basement. Animal corpses that collect on the lawn can be attributed to a pack of feral cats that roams the area. Missing tourists disappear due to ‘the nature of the wandering soul.’

It would be convenient for the gloating man to be the mystery manifest, but he lays himself bare with the slightest provocation, telling his life story the way a nervous high school student cites an essay. Everything is backed up by evidence twice over. He narrates his worst moments, illustrates them with mugshots and bankruptcy declarations and divorce filings and criminal records. He has no secrets and he gloats, unceasingly, about the sheer mundanity of the present. He gloats like a man who understands that a good life is one without surprises.’

­-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Hector and I manage to take a road all the way to ‘The Heart of the Forest.’ It’s new asphalt- the smoothest ride we’ve had all year except for all the distractions. Things like gingerbread houses. Like lurking men in hooded cloaks. Like beckoning animals and women with backwards feet. Like spring-fed ponds with treasure sparkling in its bed. Like birds singing in such a way that they might be speaking words.

That sort of thing.

‘Say what you will about it being cheesy or overdone, ‘The Heart of the Forest’ served as the inspiration for all those weary tropes that seem a little too familiar- a little too on the nose- in this, the civilized 21^st century. One might as well say that the moon is cliché for hanging in the sky, given all those times we’ve seen it visited, colonized, and blown up in films. Nobody would suggest the moon needs to build upon what it already has going.’

We stop at the center- the heart of ‘The Heart’ I suppose. The Rangers have set up a safe-zone there, paved all over in cement and park benches. Heavy duty garbage cans form a perimeter, way more than would ever be necessary. A sign suggests they disrupt the narrative pull of ‘The Heart of the Forest’ just by being out of place. I’ve read, elsewhere, that they’ve got to change the perimeter out every once in a while, since ‘The Heart’ has a tendency to evolve and push out some fable about elves that lure children into dumpsters or what have you.

There’s a rattling in one of the cans as soon as I think about it. I try not to think about it and the sound dissipates.

The Rangers’ signs offer all sorts of warnings about ‘The Heart of the Forest,’ mostly harping on the Red Riding Hood “don’t leave the path” sentiment. That’s the trouble with the Rangers. I’m not sure they have ever understood what exactly they’re dealing with. As soon as they tell visitors not to leave the path, they sow danger on the peripheries. They create a new branch of the Wayside.

-traveler