Those who have been on the Wayside longer than I have tell me that the difficulty of obtaining information about any one place or phenomenon foretold the same difficulty we now face with internet research. There’s just too much information. And most of it is bad. A solid 70% consists of the ramblings of madmen and certain individuals can claim double-digit contributions. Another 20%, at least, is well-meaning folklore masquerading as fact. Of the 10% remaining, it’s difficult to say, but much of the information that might qualify as ‘good’ is inevitably contradicted by other ‘good’ information. Do I trust vintage wisdom over the sterility of modern science? Maybe when my life is on the line.

There’s something you don’t often say about the internet.

‘He’s called ‘Old Smokey’ and he’s a dragon, though it’s difficult to see. Partly due to size, partly due to weathering, and partly due to the incompetence of his creators, ‘Old Smokey’s’ form is rough and blocky, each part of him looking like a mildly-vandalized aspect of the Earth. Those lucky enough to fly over in good weather might recognize the dragon as a sort of constellation of forest-born cysts, bulging from the dirt and misdirecting the trees in a pattern that does seem reptilian. And those who visit his head will see it, though it’s a long a difficult hike and people say all sorts of things about the mouth and what sometimes emerges from inside.’

A tongue is the strangest and least likely, I’d say, but staring at the visage of ‘Old Smokey’ and seeing the dark of his cavernous gullet makes me cautious all the same. Much of the information I came across tells me this hill used to be a volcano and that the tales of smoke and gas emerging from ‘Old Smokey’s’ mouth are probably due to degrading tectonics deep below. Likelier, in my mind, is that idiots like me sometimes come up here too late and start fires, creating intermittent pockets of legend that keep the stories fresh.

I step carefully toward the mouth and the black inner seems to grow to encompass my vision. When I wake I see the too-close and worried faces of a young couple. My head is pounding to a beat I haven’t heard in a while: the rhythm of coming down from something. When I sit up the woman screams like she’s seen a man return from the dead. They tell me they’ve tried to call an ambulance but they don’t know if the call went through. I look for ‘Old Smokey’ and see he’s a ways away now. I’ve been dragged.

Drugged.

I stumble away from the couple at my first chance, claiming I’m off to piss and that I’ll definitely wait for medical attention. Not my first time running from good samaritans but it never feels great.

When I have my head again- when there are miles between me and ‘Old Smokey’s’ perch- I put my own thoughts out there. I try to tell people ‘Old Smokey’ is probably spouting some amount of natural gas, which explains the occasional combustion, the hallucinations. The disappearances.

My post is taken down for violating an obscure forum rule several hours after I post and I don’t know that I’ll ever get around to warning people again.

-traveler

‘There is no ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ pop-up shop. No booth. No storefront. Not even a man selling t-shirts out of the back of a pick-up truck. 

Not officially anyway. 

Unofficially speaking, there does seem to be something or someone out there because you’re hardly the first to ask. The answer, however disappointing, is ‘no.’ We don’t strive to make money off the Wayside and we’ve been successful in that endeavor and that endeavor alone.’

Of course I stop. Why wouldn’t I? Nearly a decade, now, I’ve followed the winding path this guide puts forth and I have nothing to show for it but wrinkles and scars and a budding nervousness that I worry may bloom into general anxiety or acute paranoia. I see the Stranger, still, though I hardly mention him anymore. It’s difficult for me to know whether he’s really there in those moments, always a face in a crowd or a swiveled head in a passing car or a snapshot reflection. I wonder if he thinks I’m following him. That’s a worry, too. 

When I see a booth in a dead mall at the very edge of northern Texas that claims to sell official Wayside merchandise, that is “Merchandise licensed by the hit guide, ‘Autumn by the Wayside,’ I stop. Of course I do. I loiter near the window and note that, by the collection of dust, this impermanent installation seems to have been here for quite some time.

The window boasts the usual suspects: an arrangement of hats and t-shirts with the Guide’s faded logo. There are koozies and coasters and a few engraved bottle openers. My eyes are drawn to a display just inside, boasting rare, out-of-circulation items. Artifacts from ‘The Immolated Kat Cirkus’ pre-immolation, for instance. Jars of cat hair that appear to be only moderately singed. And needles from ‘The Thirsty Cactus’ taken before it was downed by lightning.

And beside that a sign that says: We have the key to the room you’ll be locked in (prices vary). 

And beside that the Stranger, looking bored. 

I blink and he remains. Not a reflection or a memory, but the Stranger himself, looking older the way I look older. He doesn’t see me- looks over as soon as I think it.

I’m gone around the corner before he finishes the turn. The Stranger, his obsidian rabbit-thing in a bed on the counter. Both healthy in a way that neither Hector nor I have managed. And rooted? I risk another look and see he’s gone back to boredom. But it isn’t boredom. He’s reading. And maybe content.

Contentment seems so far off that I didn’t recognize it at first. 

The Stranger turns toward me again and I run. I don’t want to be seen, still searching. And I don’t want him looking for me if he isn’t already. 

-traveler

‘There was a culturally significant silence- an intake of breath- when ‘The Statue of a Human Man’ and ‘The Statue of a Human Woman’ appeared in the streets of Boston, bringing to end a year’s anticipation of the event. Early previews consisted entirely of interviews with the artist, well-known sculptor Steven Lock, who talked at length about the difficulties of distilling the universality of what it means to be human into two images. Guesses as to the final shape of these installations ran the gamut but most agreed they would be abstract, by default, and likely ironic. Two identical lumps of copper, maybe, or deeply intricate renderings of male and female reproductive systems. One popular theory suggested Lock would install mirrors, allowing viewers to recognize themselves as the platonic form of humanity under whichever title they choose. 

That, at least, would have been cheap. 

Contrary to expectations, the statues look like male and female representations out of a vintage science textbook, though critics have noted their proportions skirt the edge of pornography. Their sexual details have largely been rounded out and rounded up, the man’s groin and the woman’s bust highly exaggerated but lacking the detail that might warrant legitimate public complaint.

Though people have complained. 

When people complained that the statues were simplistic and, in their simplicity, were alienating, the city shrugged its shoulders and asked if the public could do a better job. When several members of the public demonstrated that they could, the city shrugged it shoulders and said there was no budget. When members of the public offered to do it pro-bono, the city pretended to not know what the word meant. 

Further complaints took the form of vandalism. 

‘The Statue of a Human Man’ and ‘The Statue of a Human Woman’ no longer look like anything humanity has produced through nature. They do not look human at all.

But the people are happy.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Among a gathering of low hills in southern Kansas, a traveler may begin to see signs for ‘The Mister-EE Spot,’ billed largely in the familiar shape of Wayside destinations that proclaim some inherent mystical property (pun intended). Notable about the signs is the sheer number of them and the state of their decay, which is not at all consistent but instead exists along a whole spectrum of general sunbleaching and woodrot. The signs age and fall apart without repair and new signs are posted in their place (or nearby). Photographic evidence suggests that new signs will sometimes give direction to ‘The Mister-EE Spot’ that are in direct opposition to those previously posted.

None of the signs tell the truth. 

‘The Mister-EE Spot’ does not exist on any online map. Not reliably. There have attempts to pinpoint it and so ‘The Mister-EE Spot’ does sometimes appear as a destination and sometimes even as multiple destinations in the same vicinity. These best-guesses are normally removed within a few weeks when a quorum of frustrated users have contacted the map service, having failed to locate ‘The Mister-EE Spot’ or anything that looks like it might have once been anything like it. ‘The Mister-EE Spot’ has been marked ‘permanently closed’ several times but the signs keep coming. 

Testomonials from those who claim to have found ‘The Mister-EE Spot’ offer some insight into what the place may be. Most describe it as a series of mundane but puzzling illusions, not unlike those cheezy attractions at the standard and more accessible mystery stop-off. A man appears shorter than his wife. Water runs up hill. A dog speaks. But there is no denouement at ‘The Mister-EE Spot.’ Visitors are given time to examine the exhibitions for tricks and have found none. It is a place of magic, they say- of mystery.

And they never find their way back.’

This is the closest I’ve gotten to ‘The Mister-EE Spot,’ I think. Four hours of missing time in Kansas. I emerge starving and half an inch shorter, wearing broken-in shoes I have never seen. A video clip on my phone appears to have been taken in the pocket of my jacket. I hear myself laughing, the way I do when I’m surprised. Somebody else nearby cheers and the video ends. My location at the time of the video was not logged. My phone is fully charged. 

Not sure how to count this one. 

-traveler

Sometimes I wonder if the bar for entry into the guide isn’t a little low. Take, for instance, ‘The Killing Cord’ of central Utah: a low hanging powerline with faulty jacketing in two hand-distant locations. According to my considerable research, there was nothing particularly interesting about it before its infamy as a place to and means by which to commit suicide. And the fact is, there’s no evidence of any actual suicide taking place there. Like so many satanic-panics and children-eating digital games, the hand-wringing around ‘The Killing Cord’ is likely over a rumor. 

A rumor that has been bolstered by a well-meaning local government. 

‘You’ll know it’s ‘The Killing Cord’ when you begin to see the warnings. The hotline numbers, yes. Those come first. Then the very concerned PSAs about the danger of electricity to the human body- detailed descriptions about the pain and charring that one might experience upon contacting a live wire. Then: gruesome images, and though the result of electrocution are naturally gruesome, these bear the telltale signs of AI generation: a real ‘what-if’ exaggeration on something already serious by default. And finally, the pièce de résistance: a wire-made human silhouette that, upon the press of a button, will fall forward on ‘The Killing Cord,’ gyrating and sparking and generally causing a scene. 

People love it. People love making the fake man do his macabre dance on the wire. It must happen 20 times a day, and crowds gather to cheer and record and generally find little social-media-clips of the ensuing firework show. The installation has been nationally panned. Petitions circulate to have the wire-man retired and replaced with something a bit more serious. The government intervention is widely considered to be a failure.

But.

But nobody has touched ‘The Killing Cord’ since the wire man has been in place. The solemnity of the venue has been stripped, not unlike the sheath of the cord, and there’s always someone around to pull a struggling body from the edge.’

I imagine an expert and a roll of quality electric tape could do what the wire man has accomplished at ‘The Killing Cord’ with a lot less trouble. The wire man’s performace is loud and violent and the air around him is acrid for half an hour after, but I’m won over, in the end, by the way the sparks fall on an unseasonable frost. There’s something to be said for replacing an ugly thing with something prettier.

-traveler

‘As is the habit in academia, it took researchers a great deal of time and money to come to understand what any novice in the field would recognize about Able Forest in Arkansas: it is a statuary for rats. The pieces in ‘The Rat Statuary’ look like rats. They look so much like rats that, prior to the area’s viral popularity, most people were under the impression that it was a place where rats came to die, their bodies stiffening on the ground and drying into mummies for lack of regular precipitation. But, no. The statues are made of twigs and barks and leaves and, yes, sometimes the fur and skin of the dead but never enough to make them bodies, per se. Just effigies. 

So, the academic question was never whether or not the statues looked like rats. And it took very little time and a few hunting cameras to confirm that the rats were, indeed, responsible for these creations, so the question was never who was responsible. No, the question that plagued researchers was why?’

Why indeed?

The floor of Able Forest is a mine field of these little rat statues, each one nearly exactly the same in size and pose, differentiated only in execution, really, and in weather-wear. The rats are posed on all fours, each with its head turned up and to the right as though they were made skittish by some sound above them. The effect is uncanny when a predatory bird flies over or when I position myself just right to be the cause of their concern. From that vantage point I can see the little beetle shells or river rocks the artists have installed in the eyes of their creations, mimicking the glossy wetness of a rat’s glance.

I’m not alone in ‘The Rat Statuary’ today. It’s a popular place, relative to other Wayside destinations, but there isn’t much appeal beyond the first few statues and the families have to drag their eldest children through the latter half of the displays, reiterating that not all journeys have social media potential and arguing that a ‘bad vibe’ isn’t reason enough to sit out an opportunity to learn. 

For once, I’m with the teens. 

‘The Rat Statuary’ has the bad vibe of art made obsessively or as a ward against some intimate evil. Why should these rats feel the need to reproduce this fearful posture again and again? Is it a tribute? A warning? I’ve seen the videos of the rats building and they do not strike me as happy. They do not look like they are at ease. 

Some art grants its audience the sadness of its creator and it draws from an infinite supply. It frightens me to think that art could be a vessel- a means by which sickness can be transmitted. These rats seem sick and these statues are the symptom of what ails them. 

I decline the dead-eyed plushies at the gift shop, their heads all swerved to the right. I worry about my own art and what it has done to the people who have witnessed it. 

– traveler

‘It is a magazine museum. It is a liminal labyrinth. It is ‘The World’s Largest Lobby,’ a title it shares contentiously with a venue in Germany which claims to win by volume (stateside, we win by acreage). One could fill a book with trivia regarding the sheer excess of ‘The WLL.’ It utilizes an amount of electricity that could power a small town toward playing quiet jazz and running an A/C unit just below the level of comfort. It holds the record for the most copies of a single magazine issue in the world: a 1991 copy of ‘Highlights,’ of which at least a thousand have been found. It provides more free water and trashes more plastic cups than the restaurant industry of Wyoming. These facts and more are included in a coffee table book about ‘The WLL,’ several copies of which can be found inside ‘The WLL’ and are, strangely, pictured in images collected in the book though only one edition was ever published. 

People get lost in ‘The WLL,’ or, more accurately: people disappear in ‘The WLL.’ The intention of these people is not clear. Some say they run and some suggest it amounts to much the same thing. 

As of this writing, one wing of ‘The WLL’ is off limits due to a recent fire (arson). A single body was discovered among the wreckage, unidentifiable, which has driven a lot of people to worry about their personal missing. The body has since been lost. Or, more accurately, it has disappeared. The intention of the people handling the body is not clear. 

Some say it’s run, and that’s not the same thing at all.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Nowhere in its advertising does ‘The Air Freshener that Smells Like Death’ suggest it smells like your specific death.

But it does.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The Mini Moon has been closed to the public for nearly five years while ownership of the moon itself has been under legal review. In that time I, like others, have stolen glimpses of it. The Moon. The big one. I’d guess that the illegality of viewing the moon resulted in a lot more looking all around which, according to fringe voices in the conversation, confirms that it’s all some sort of pro-moon guerilla movement, as though the moon might be wanting for publicity. 

The likeliest explanation, in my opinion, is that people are greedy and willing to try anything for a buck. ‘The Mini Moon’ is just the knot in a loophole somebody is trying to exploit. 

The guide says it better than I could:

‘Lunar artifacts are, for the most part, in the hands of government agencies and those private firms and individuals the agencies trust. Some have fallen from the sky in a process traders refer to as being ‘naturally transported.’ These specimens are largely considered duds as experts and collectors tend to agree that mystique burns off in the atmosphere. 

Some of the good ones have been stolen, though, and that’s where things get interesting.

Beginning in 1990, a commercial aired nationwide, offering cash for certifiable samples of the moon. Just like that, samples began disappearing and approximately a year later ‘The Mini Moon’ formed in New Jersey. No larger than a thumbnail at its outset, ‘The Mini Moon’ has a presence that viewers unanimously describe as ‘unearthly.’ Staged under cold lights and protected by no barrier, this ghostly luminescence was, for many years, all the proof Wayside travelers needed that it was constructed from the real stuff. 

And it grew. 

By the time the wronged agencies began to wonder if something funny was afoot, ‘The Mini Moon’ had grown to the size of an adult man’s head. It maintained a signature surface, matte white and uncomfortably crater-less, that made it difficult for would be prosecutors to identify. If the owners of ‘The Mini Moon’ were buying stolen specimens, they were going a step further: grinding the rocks into a powder that could be molded into the new sphere. 

The first headlines were inflammatory, calling ‘The Mini Moon’ a product of a brash and ongoing heist and indicating the near-pricelessness of moon rocks made it the most valuable take in human history. Still, ‘The Mini Moon’ remained unprotected in its display and this, for most, was an indication that the thing was a fake after all. Nothing worth so much would be left unattended while crowds shuffled by for picture opportunities. And the crowds were still coming- of course they were. On the Wayside, counterfeits, done well, can have just as much merit or more than their originals.

Then, in 2020, when the world faced the pandemic, the federal government took the opportunity to launch a formal investigation, all at once lending ‘The Mini Moon’ more credence than it had ever had. At the time, due to Covid lockdowns, ‘The Mini Moon’ could only be viewed via a public livestream sandwiched between ads. The livestream soon became viral and spawned several lofi-style offshoots that viewsers praised for providing simple peace in tumultuous times.

This same viewership criticized governing bodies for cracking down on a small business owner when the world seemed to be falling apart around them and, in response, the leading committee doubled down and, via complex legal shenanigans, made it temporarily illegal to look at the moon. The public lost its nerve and, like a slapped dog, buried its head in blankets.

Views of the livestream remained steady, however, which allowed the owners of ‘The Mini Moon’ to launch the expensive defense that has kept the issue in limbo up through the time of this guide’s publication.

‘The Mini Moon’ may be shuttered by the time you read this page, traveler. Do your research and keep your eyes down.’

‘The Mini Moon’s’ grand reopening was a week ago but, by the time I reach the warehouse that contains it, the crowds have largely dispersed. I wait in a 30-minute line before I’m ushered inside. The people ahead of me gasp as they enter and I’m still surprised by what I see: ‘The Mini Moon’ not so mini, now the size of a turn-of-the-century VW Bug and glowing grey-blue. It is difficult to describe why I know it is the moon, but I do. They’ve been collecting, all this time, more pieces of moon than should exist on earth.

No wonder the government has questions.

I welcome belligerence from the small business community in theory, but I also worry about exposure. The Wayside has been a haven for me in a country that is largely hostile. The less the government thinks about us off the shoulder of the highway, the better. 

-traveler

The restaurants of the Wayside are not known for the quality of their food but rather the qualities of the food. An important distinction. The food leans unique. It leans experimental, though the experiments are largely without intention. It leans inedible, sometimes, and in this case it leans so far it falls. 

‘At the intersection of food and art there is ‘The Poisoned Plate,’ a restaurant that serves from a menu of natural, organic, farm-to-table, poisonous food. No, not like what you’re thinking. Not the puffer fish that has to be cut just so. Not the thistle, that loses its bite when cooked. This food is prepared such that the poison remains intact and, though it isn’t specified anywhere, the food is prepared so that the poison saturates every bite. There are those who might want to visit the restaurant as a challenge. There are those who might try to nibble the garnish and say they survived a meal at ‘The Poison Plate.’ They would likely die or suffer the chronic and life-long effects of nerve damage. 

Signage says as much. 

‘The Poisoned Plate’ has no license to serve food. It’s zoned as an art gallery, likely as a defense against lawsuits arising from patrons who choose to ignore the generous warnings of servers and the bold print on the menus and the waiver one must sign before sitting. The only thing that indicates one might consider eating the food is the absolute delicacy with which plates are prepared. The food looks good. It looks really good and it smells delicious. It is the enemy of the primal brain and that seems to be the thesis, if a thesis beyond profit can be said to exist.’

I order the cheapest item on the menu, which still sets me back $60. It is a side salad that consists entirely of poisonous greens, served with a vinaigrette of berries that can only be digested by a bird that shares its ecosystem. The bird is also on the menu, its flesh made poisonous by its diet of berries, but I can’t afford it and wouldn’t buy it even if I could. I roll my eyes and try to take a sip of my water but a server gasps and knocks the glass out of my hand. The water is laden with heavy metals. The broken glass, though not considered a food item, is mildly radioactive. The silverware is lead. 

I pay the bill and they bring me my salad in a to-go box. Where can I throw something like this away, knowing it might kill whatever scavenges it? The salad rots in the RV for a week before I burn it in a campfire, careful not to breathe the fumes. 

-traveler