‘The Crawlway’ is mentioned only on the onion pages, existing as a subtext to the guide in the same way that ‘The Crawlway’ is both ubiquitous and hidden in the foundation of the country. I’ve walked by dozens of entrances in the last year alone, disguised as fuse boxes and storerooms. Concealed behind furnaces and furniture. Ways in aren’t hard to find at all. They’re hidden like keys under doormats rather than, say, bodies in the forest. Once you know where to look, it’s stranger to find the back of a closet, solid- the space under a loose plank, earth.

‘Call it ‘The Wormway,’ ‘The Dirt Path,’ ‘The Undertrail,’ or, if you’re feeling folksy, ‘The Devil’s Road,’ ‘The Great American Crawlway’ is an umbrella term for the cavern-like system formed of the country’s basements via earthquake and a compulsive tunnelling syndrome that seems to come upon certain men in their mid-forties.

‘The Crawlway’ serves no one purpose and serves many instead. Smuggling and hiding, of course. Waiting out perceived apocalypses. Most people choose not to consider it, but enough do that one might reasonably expect to run into traffic- to stumble upon scenes that weren’t meant to have witnesses. The strangeness of ‘The Crawlway’ is that nobody who enters separately ever meets.’

When ‘The Crawlway’ tightens such that I’m inching forward on my stomach, only just pressing my shoulders through, Hector wriggles from his harness and hops ahead. I call after him to wait up but he doesn’t listen of course. He returns to me off and on over the next ten minutes, sniffling at my hair or nipping my fingertips. Impatient for carrots I wouldn’t be able to reach even if I wanted to.

We emerge from behind an old entertainment system in a furnished basement. It’s snowing outside and the bass thudding of footprints above, the smell of cooking onions, suggests that a family is making dinner. A mug on the table is filled with warm tea. Welcome heat flows from the vents. Hector and I make camp.

Have you ever felt an irrational need to avoid a familiar place? Have you ever broken from engrained nighttime habits- fallen asleep with jeans on or forgotten to brush your teeth? I have, and I imagine it must be ‘The Crawlway.’ I was living in my parent’s basement before all of this and I wonder if someone is living there now.

-traveler

‘Oaken and ancient, swollen with old rainwater and mold, scarred by time and graffiti, the most distinct of which is the word ‘LOVE’ carved so deep that the wood is bound to crack along those letters, ‘The Revelation Post’ swings freely in the outskirts of Minneapolis: a dangerous muse. Previously a fence, ‘The Revelation Post’ was swallowed and raised by a tree that roiled up and began to consume the power cords above it, prompting the county to kill the thing and move the lines three feet back. The tangled fence and tree and cord were left to hang from the abandoned post, their removal falling between the jurisdictions of a number of disinterred departments. It brained a woman the following week, whipped up in a storm wind, and cured her of nagging writer’s block which meant, of course, that she spread the word.

The local government’s attempts to destroy or even just secure ‘The Revelation Post’ have been met with opposition, both from citizenry and from ‘The Post’ itself which seems to have a defensive knack for granting debilitating revelations when in danger, sending interlopers home to really think about their choices and to make amends as best they can.’

Hector and I arrive at ‘The Revelation Post’ on a windy day. A man lies unconscious nearby, bleeding from a fresh head wound. He comes to when I shake him and stands, refuses help, and walks away deep in thought. ‘The Post’ swings erratically, gentle and vicious in turns. I look back at the man, now a dot on the horizon. Still standing, at least. But wobbling.

I put Hector in the kennel and pin a note to my jacket with some relevant medical details. Namely: don’t call an ambulance. I don’t have insurance and I certainly don’t have money. I’ve written instructions for feeding Hector on the back.

The onion pages indicate that there is a perfect spot for being granted revelations here. That someone has marked it with an ‘X’ based on a revelation of their own. I crawl about and pull dirt up until I find it: a wooden ‘X’ buried and spray painted with the message ‘For Inspiration.’

‘The Revelation Post’ whistles above my head.

It’s only when I have everything in order that I come to terms with the fact that I won’t be able to bring myself to stand on the ‘X.’ I’ve never been into self-harm, even when it’s good for me. I feed Hector a carrot through the bars of the kennel and move to re-bury the ‘X’ and I squat just a little too high. I feel the blow on the back of my head and the world blinks.

When I regain my senses, I have the distinct feeling that I should give this up before it kills me.

But that’s something I’ve known for a while.

-traveler

‘The ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ in southern Alabama is an unmissable attraction, not because it is pleasant in any sense of the word, but because it is huge and neon and it smells as though a shit-laden truck crashed into a lake of formaldehyde. Society assures us that chemical toilets break waste down but we all know it’s still there, that it’s not something else, and there’s no greater evidence than the ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ which may as well hold an ocean of excrement in its thin chemical disguise.

Satellite images indicate that the field is 159 potties long and 98 potties wide, evenly spaced and growing all the time. The man that owns the field is a mystery. He answers no calls. Speaks only to the companies that will sell or rent him more potties for the field. He pays off politicians who might raise a stink, as it were, and he lives far away. Somewhere cleaner and fresher and duller.

The ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ is open to the public but it is not welcoming. No signs indicate that a traveler should use these toilets- they would be lying if they did. The outer potties are filthy beyond saving. The inners are hit and miss but reaching them means spending longer in that stinking invisible cloud. In those staticky plastic corridors.

People have died in the ‘Perm-a-Potty Field.’ That’s not true, but eventually it will be. It would be a shame to be the first, wouldn’t it?’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘One frequently neglected aspect of the North American Continental Divide is that it’s nearly 10’ across in some places, meaning that there exists a strip of land that drains neither toward the Pacific nor toward the Atlantic Coast. Along this strip on a windless day, a traveler might collect a bottle of ‘Scaredy Water,’ named for its unwillingness to choose a side. ‘Scaredy Water Ponds’ are ephemeral even within their seasons, but the safest bet is New Mexico’s ‘Shiver Pool,’ named for the trembling motion of the windswept water and its deep cold.’

Scaredy water is supposed to be good for making decisions. That’s what the internet witches say. Drink it. Shower in it. Spill it on the ground and scry for omens. They don’t agree on how to use it. Just the purpose.

Autumn is actually the worst time to visit ‘Shiver Pool.’ There’s supposed to be a spring feeding it from somewhere underground but it’s supplemented by rain and snow to such an extent that by the time fall comes around, it’s more like a ‘Shiver Marsh.’ Still, the water collected there shows the tell-tale signs of ‘scardiness.’ It moves like loose jello and it shrinks from touch and it does both so slightly that it makes me doubt it’s doing either.

I fill a bottle with my hands safely tucked into rubber gloves from the first aid kit. I don’t want the stuff on me or in me but it’s bound to be something I can bargain with down the road. Once it’s sealed up and patted dry, I reconnoiter the area and, finding myself alone, pull the handgun from my bag.

It’s in pieces now, black and silver. It took me hours to get it apart, both because I was referencing videos on an amateurishly encrypted connection and because I was afraid it would go off at any moment, even after I had pulled out the bullets and the firing pin and a few other integral things. I’ve read that guns are heavier than they look but I don’t think that’s the case. Considering what they can do put together, the gathered pieces seem incredibly light.

With a new set of gloves, I plop the handgun into the ‘Shiver Pool’ and set up camp for the evening. I’ll let them soak there overnight and after they’ve dried a couple days and I after I’ve watched a few more videos about cleaning the pieces and putting them back together, I’ll have an untraceable gun and five untraceable bullets. If there comes a time to use it, I hope that the scaredy water treatment will work to grant me the resolve to pull the trigger or else that it will grant me the hesitation I need to overcome an obstacle more peaceably.

One or the other.

-traveler

‘Out in the cold-scraped plains of North Dakota and not at all far from the ‘Nekoma Pyramid,’ a silver obelisk pierces the sky and lights up red when ferromagnetic materials are brought near. That is ‘The Dakota Obelisk’s’ sole purpose as far as anyone knows, to gauge whether something is, in its own words, ‘magnetic.’ ‘Magnetic’ is the word that is cut out of ‘The Obelisk’s’ silver shell, that glows red via hidden lights when such material is in range. In the tradition of the motel vacancy signs, a single green ‘No’ can also be seen at the right angle, dim enough to be confused for a reflection or for a spot of glow-in-the-dark paint and lit as long as ‘The Obelisk’ is left alone.

And left alone it often is.

Shoulder-height chain-link suggests, but does not enforce, a boundary. Signs near ‘The Obelisk’ warn against proximity. They bear markings that resemble but are not, a skull with cross bones, radioactive triangles, and a human figure strangulating on a rope. They sometimes bear no marking at all, worn by the persistent prairie winds. They are wooden and held together with glue so as not to prompt ‘The Dakota Obelisk’s’ red response, which can be seen for miles around.’

“What?” I look around, as though there were anyone in the vicinity to talk to. “This can’t be right.”

I press Hector up against ‘The Obelisk’ and it lights up red in a way that makes my skeleton vibrate and my eyes blur. Hector scrabbles at the surface and I set him down again. ‘The Obelisk’ goes dark.

I check and re-check my pockets. No metal. I make sure I’m not wearing pants with rivets- that my shoes have no metal rings for the laces. I press my face up against ‘The Obelisk,’ thinking it might be the fillings in my mouth. It’s cold and unreactive against my cheek. Hector brushes the nub of his tail against ‘The Obelisk’ and my vision fills with red static. The word ‘magnetic’ burns in my peripheries as I feel about on the ground, otherwise blind, trying to find and coax the rabbit away from the metal surface.

Hector hops away on his own, toward a tuft of dry grass, and I collapse. My skin is tight and dry. My teeth feel unfamiliar in my mouth.

I had planned on climbing the utility rung ladder of ‘The Dakota Obelisk’ to the top, where it’s said that everything tested against the tower and left behind has been absorbed and deposited. Instead, I throw rocks at the top until a handful of nails and a handgun fall to the ground.

I wish it had been anything but a gun, so useful and terrible.

-traveler

‘There is an inconspicuous turn-off past the long right curve of I-75 in the southern-most portion of Florida which acts as a de-facto parking lot for viewing, taunting, or getting shot by ‘The Last American Cowboy.’ Signposts indicate the safe distances one might do any of these things, though these signs are also de-facto in that if ‘The Last American Cowboy’ ever chose to run down from the crest of the hill and shoot a distant heckler, there would be nothing standing in his way.

‘The Last American Cowboy’ looks like a man- like a cowboy straight from a spaghetti western. He’s been arrested many times and tried in court, sentenced to various lengths of time in jail. He’s been shot and seemingly killed. He bounces back from jailtime and death in the way only rich white men seem to do. Within a week he’s back up on the hill, shouting yee-hahs and shooting at anyone that comes too close. In this regard, he is more like a ghost or a spirit, but that calls into question the validity of his claim- that he is the last American cowboy. Does it count if you are already dead? If you were never, in the human sense, alive?

It matters less because it is his claim- the only answer he’ll give when asked to identify himself and the easiest way to get under his skin. He doesn’t like to be questioned along these lines. He doesn’t like being reminded that other cowboys do still exist. Given his effective immortality, he could simply answer that he will be the last cowboy eventually, even if it requires the extinction of man. Instead, he shoots those questioners in range, shoots at the sky, twirls his revolvers, spits in the dust.

Ignore signs that claim there is a safe ‘lasso zone.’ They are placed by the cowboy or someone associated with him, just far enough in to be covered by Castle Doctrine. In the long tradition of American cowboys, this one is out for blood.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

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