‘Perhaps best described as a novelty pod hotel, ‘The Backseat Bed and Breakfast’ has taken a motley fleet of vehicles otherwise destined for the junkyard and repurposed them as strange little rooms within rooms. Stripped of their engines, the cars and trucks sit in tight garages and on custom hydraulic frames. Though one might pay a premium for finer upholstery or wider cars, the core experience of ‘The BBB’ is that of hucking one’s belongings into the trunk and curling into the backseat while the proprietary hydraulics gently rock the car from below and a simple light show mimics the headlights of an occasional passing car or the overhead streetlights of a quiet suburban neighborhood. Engine noises can be toggled and custom ambience, based upon preferred locales, is available upon request. One is welcome to consider what other backseat experiences might be relived at ‘The BBB,’ though the owners insist it is strictly a family friendly establishment.

Breakfast includes burned coffee and copycat items from popular fast food menus that taste so alike their inspiring dishes one must assume ‘The BBB’ employs a fast driver rather than an ingenious chef.’

My family had a boxy old sedan of some sort- I’ve never been much for makes and models. Business is slow enough at ‘The BBB’ that I get a little tour of the available rooms and find something similar at the lowest price tier. It isn’t a nice car- I didn’t expect it to be.

Hector spends the night in the passenger seat, sniffing at all the cracks and crevices before settling into sleep. I do some reading and click the overhead light off around nine. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open. The backseat is as I remember- only just wide enough. The precipice threatens each time I shift against the belt buckle of the middle seat. The plastic door creaks each time I try to find the room to stretch. It isn’t comfortable but I sleep anyway, smelling cigarettes and coffee in the fabric under a rolled up hoodie ‘The BBB’ provided as a pillow.

The car lurches and tosses me to the floor at seven sharp: the wakeup call I asked for in the form of a simulated speedbump. Hector hops onto my body from the front and tries to settle in for sleep again before I push him off and extricate myself. We eat our egg sandwich and hit the road, feeling as though we never really stopped.

-traveler

The Imp of the Perverse resides in Manhattan, of all places. Its den or its hovel, whatever you want to call it, is the only thing of interest in an unnamed stretch of grass just south of Central Park. There may be other imps like it- there surely are- but ‘America’s Imp’ resides in Manhattan and it’s Halloween again, meaning that it’s time to learn whether we’ll have six more weeks of dread.

I don’t like New York City. It’s cramped and difficult to navigate. Hector likes it for the diversity of scents. I wonder if he would appreciate the rodent population as much as he seemed to enjoy ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City,’ or if he’d find himself an outsider, like I do. I am somehow both too polite and too rough around the edges for New York. I can’t quite blend, no matter which way I lean.

‘America’s Imp’ is historically late to its own shadow-seeing but I arrive on time anyway, storing the motorcycle in a grossly overpriced lot nearly a mile away. We wait for hours.

‘Every once in a while a new bout of satanic panic spurs the government to perform research on ‘America’s Imp:’ setting out traps, mobilizing units with penetrating radar, and digging up the little park it calls home. They never find anything. The burrow from which it emerges inevitably terminates just below the earth and the burrow returns no matter how many times it is cemented over, rising up through cracks like the roots of an absent tree. Satanists have no better luck. ‘America’s Imp’ is neither intimidated nor impressed by summons and rituals.

‘America’s Imp’ emerges on Halloween as a puff of smoke. Violet means six more weeks of trouble. Black means a modicum of peace. Skeptics point out the many ways ‘America’s Imp’ is always wrong, no matter what it chooses. Believers say that’s just ‘America’s Imp’ doing what comes naturally.’

Hector and I are joined in the park by only a handful of spectators. Most Americans have made up their own mind about what the next few months will look like. A photographer asks if he can take a picture of the two of us and I decline as politely as possible, thinking of all the people I’m trying to avoid. The man doesn’t seem to mind too much. He tells me he’s come every year for a decade and has snagged a picture of the imp’s decision each time.

“We’re in a blue slump.” He tells me. “Fingers crossed for something better this year.”

“Fuck.” I tell him. “Fingers fucking crossed.”

-traveler

‘It goes without saying that one should do their best to ignore signs about ‘The Ramp.’ It isn’t easy, though. The signs are frequent and large and sometimes illuminated. Sometimes they move, a goading cowboy’s arm pointing the way or waggling his finger, warning you not to try the ramp and somehow daring you to try it in the process.

‘It wouldn’t be smart to try THE RAMP,’ the signs say, ‘No matter how cool it seems like it would be.’

‘Nobody has survived taking THE RAMP. Maybe you could- but probably not. Maybe, though. Nothing is impossible.’

‘Warning! THE RAMP’s gate is under repair. The entrance is open and free. This does not mean you should attempt to take THE RAMP, but nothing would stop you if you tried…’

‘THE RAMP is not for cowards. Are you a coward? Then do not take THE RAMP.’

‘The Ramp’ exists on a southern stretch of highway in Michigan. This will not be the book that tells you exactly where. It’s easy enough to find without invoking that sort of liability. ‘The Ramp’ appears well-made and seasonally maintained, constructed of rebar and concrete and silky smooth asphalt. The entrance slopes gently, at first, and ends with a steep little flourish. There is that deadly gap before the downward ramp rises from the other side to catch the would-be driver. It all seems reasonable from the road, as though any vehicle could cover the distance. As though any competent driver could leave ‘The Ramp’ with a rattled suspension and a story to tell their grandchildren.

No driver has yet claimed that story. Maybe you could- but probably not.

Maybe, though.

Nothing is impossible.

(entry sponsored by THE RAMP)

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Hanging like some dread spider in the sky above Bartlett Forest is New Hampshire’s ‘Mitten Tree,’ a long dead elm that has been the subject of local yarn bombing for nearly a decade now. Once a cozy-seeming installation, its brittle branches have begun to bend and crack under the weight of decaying wool. Scarves and mittens unravel until their entrails, caught up in the wind, go looping back into the vast moldering network or slap wetly at distracted visitors. It smells of a drowned dog and that alone has been enough to dissuade the once fanatic crochet vandals. It is an abandoned place and, as of publication, is likely to slough off the Wayside within a year.’

It’s late evening by the time Hector and I make it out to the ‘Mitten Tree’ but the hiking isn’t so unpleasant. The trail is wide enough that the moon, just waning from full, provides plenty of light to walk by. Hector busies himself in piles of dry leaves, hopping between them, thrashing about, seeming to search for the perfect specimen. I’ve done a lot of research on rabbit nutrition since acquiring him from ‘The Sunburn Experience.’ The forums would disapprove of his eating wild grasses and leaves, but it seems cruel to stop him. Isn’t this what a wild rabbit would do?

The ‘Mitten Tree’ does stink and it has certainly taken on something of a sinister shape in decline. Only a few of its titular garments have maintained any semblance to the human hand and those that have wave eerily in the wind, silhouetted by moonlight. I sit and let Hector roll about in the leaves a little while longer. I wonder whether I have it in me to knit him a rabbit-sized sweater- whether instructions for that sort of thing exist on the internet somewhere. Surely I’m not the first person to worry about the temperature of a hairless rabbit.

Hector and I both leap when, apropos of nothing, the ‘Mitten Tree’ suddenly illuminates. Somebody has laced it with string lights and connected them all to a small solar battery and a timer. The lights play off several ornaments in delicate glass. In technicolor, the ‘Mitten Tree’ almost looks almost merry, again.

Hector is enraptured by the sight. I have to hold him back, afraid he’ll chew through a wire somewhere and electrocute himself. I’m impressed too and a little baffled. Haven’t we been on the edge of the winter for months now? I can’t remember the last time I noticed the holidays. It must have been Halloween five times since the last Christmas.

How long has it been autumn?

-traveler

It’s autumn at ‘The Fresh Air-boretum.’ A miniature forest of gold and brown air fresheners is situated over model terrain, sprawled over a massive wooden platform and roped off at an appropriate distance. The smell fills the silo that houses them. It’s sharp and chemical, foremost, with hints of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, and coffee, maybe. It’s impossible to smell anything else- not even the small preview of winter tucked away in a corner, supposedly pine and spearmint.

Hector wants nothing to do with it. He wants nothing to do with the masks we’re offered at the front to protect our sinuses. The woman there offers to watch him in his kennel.

‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ doubles as an air freshener museum so I leave a bag of carrots and try to hold my breath long enough to take in a little history.

‘Ignore what ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ says about itself. It’s all likely true but it’s all ‘financial hardships’ and ‘one man’s dream’ and ‘a journey to restore a sense of smell.’ These cliché origin factoids conveniently skip the fact that, until 2011, ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ concealed the legs of its exhibits with curtains and in March of that same year a janitor followed a trail of ants and discovered that a serial killer (or many serial killers) had been depositing the bodies of their victims underneath said tables. For years. Police pulled 23 bodies from the silo that day and no arrests were ever made.

The dead make for fertile earth, reader. No forest grows without the dead.’

I get most of the way through the ‘The Fresh Air-boretum’ before I give in to the urge to look under the platform. There is a body right there, right at my feet, and I scrabble backward, slam my head on the opposite wall. The air freshener forest sways gently as I realize the body is only a cut-out- a black silhouette with three words painted in white: ‘Thanks for coming!’

-traveler

Hector takes to ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ with uncharacteristic delight. He’s lived a fairly sheltered life, away from other creatures his size. He’s caught glimpses of natural habitats before this but ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the New York of small mammal ecosystems- according to some sources, anyway.

‘‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the New York of small mammal ecosystems. It has everything a street-savvy prairie dog might desire: reliable infrastructure, relative security, diverse work opportunities, and a growing underground music scene. At least, that’s what on-site researchers maintain. Researchers at ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ have a tendency to assert facts about the site that don’t quite reflect prairie dog behavior elsewhere- that don’t quite reflect reality as the average person might otherwise experience it.

Alleged prairie dog music, for instance, sounds a lot like the fearful chittering one might expect when as a human looms over a tunnel entrance and attempts to feed a microphone into a chamber below. Prairie dog socialites look a lot like specimens that have been dressed up in crudely-made costumes and therefore rejected from the general population (as opposed to being ‘a little snooty’). The infamous prairie dog crime syndicate that operated from 2009 to 2015 appears to have been orchestrated entirely by researchers. The heists, the betrayals, the outright murders- they are all projections of schisms that occurred among the research team at the time.

The only honest thing that seems to have happened in ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City’ is the 2019 ousting of a puppet mayor that had been installed by the researchers a year prior. Mayor Squeak, trained in captivity, was eviscerated soon after his arrival in the city. A day later, prairie dogs at the border became aggressive with researchers who attempted to recover the body. These patrols tested negative for rabies- for any serious diseases- but the procedure involved killed the specimens and seemed to fuel the sudden isolationist movement within ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City.’ The entire colony went dark for nine months.

In 2020, the prairie dogs established an open border and a small tourist-friendly area that looks much like any old prairie dog town. It isn’t a particularly popular destination, but the denizens don’t seem to mind so much.’

I don’t think too much about letting Hector off the leash in the prairie dog/human demilitarized area. He’s never shown much interest in escape. Today, however, he dashes out into ‘The Capital City’ proper and when I try to chase him I find a dozen angry prairie dogs leaping out of tunnels around me to bare their teeth and hiss. By the time I’ve made it back over the border, Hector is gone.

I wait two days for the old rabbit to return, wondering whether he’s been killed or abducted or tried in a prairie dog court of some kind or whether he’s just started a new life for himself- one that doesn’t involve long days on the motorcycle and cool autumn nights in a tent.

On the third day, a retired prairie dog researcher sets up camp nearby and presses sample tracks of his prairie dog classical jazz on me: a sure sign that it’s time to move on.

Hector emerges from a tunnel as soon as I start the bike, as though it were the cue he’d been waiting for all along. He seems well-fed and healthy and maybe a little tired too. He settles calmly into his kennel and is asleep before I’ve got my helmet on. I hope this means he’s choosing to be along for the ride, but that’s exactly the sort of sentiment I would project.

-traveler

Shit- really? That’s what a toilet sounds like on an airplane?

I try the flush again to confirm and the roar of it digs under my fingers, works its way between the skin of my palms and my head. It fills my ears- makes my heart beat faster. It almost makes me angry, some sort of defensive animal instinct that flares up as though I’m faced with an unknown predator. The last little bit of the process is the worst: a shrieking intake of air, like a child desperately sucking ice from the bottom of a slushy. It bears no resemblance to the relatively cheerful glugging of a terrestrial toilet. It’s monstrous.  

I’ve never traveled by air before and now I’m not sure I ever will.

‘Indiana is home to ‘Jill Landstrom’s Center for Exposure to Frightening Childhood Noises,’ an establishment that billed itself as a medical institution but quickly devolved into a nostalgic sideshow. Visitors shuffle between dark rooms and are met at the center of each with some grim-seeming noisemaker and a flashing red button. Pressing the button brings the exhibit to life, usually leading with a brief, animatronic explanation of what exactly creates the sound and climaxing with the sound itself.

‘Landstrom’s Center’ deserves an amount of praise for its determined adherence to authenticity. Where possible, all of its exhibits replicate the sounds with practical effects rather than pre-recorded samples. Landstrom’s staff consists of retired engineers, special-effects artists, and magicians. The admission cost is high, the appeal is limited, but there is nothing else like it except the frightening chaos of childhood itself.

Its sister site, ‘Jill Landstrom’s Center for Exposure to Stressful Adult Noises,’ is skippable unless one feels compelled to listen to the audio of looping DVD menus and the indistinct sounds of a car engine that will fail within a month and cost a great deal to repair.’

Hector and I make it as far as the ‘High Pitched Tone at the End of a VHS Tape’ room before the cumulative stress of the exhibits is too much. Aside from the motorcycle- aside from the occasional noisy disaster- I’ve settled into a fairly quiet life. Maybe I’ll return to ‘Landstrom’s Center’ when it’s time to reintegrate- prepare myself for the predictable scares of stationary life. Until then, I’ll content myself with crickets and the raucous snoring of an old rabbit.

-traveler

‘Nobody knows exactly what New Jersey’s ‘Cedar Family’ is up to. They are a group, a town, a commune that seems perpetually on the verge of dissolving into a cult. They achieved fame for their seeming utopia following a documentary in 2015 and their neighbors have been holding their breath ever since, waiting for a mass death, a militia, or (fingers crossed) a preemptive FBI raid. The fearful anticipation has taken a toll on nearby counties. Residents within 50 miles of ‘Cedar Family’ are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed with a stress-related mental health condition. People living in ‘Cedar Family,’ on the other hand, are of sounder mind and body than the average American citizen by far. They willingly submit to examinations. They advertise their medical records as part of their tourism campaign. These are the sorts of behaviors that worry people.

The average traveler won’t find much of interest in ‘Cedar Family.’ Visiting the town is much like being a newcomer to any sort of religious congregation. The residents are friendly and effusive. Their friendliness makes one feel embarrassed and out of place but it isn’t occult or even backhanded.

The average traveler may recognize some of the residents, though. This is because they systematically insinuate pictures of the people of ‘Cedar Family’ into thrift shops across the nation. They have sets and costumes for this purpose. They have a collection of antique cameras and old-fashioned dark rooms. They mix and match to keep things fresh. Platonic residents sometimes pose as couples. Families trade out kids and houses.

They offer no explanation for this.

Those in the know assume there is some religious significance to having members of the ‘Cedar Family’ in the homes of others. It may be some sort of self-worship. It may be some sort of spiritual surveillance.

Those who don’t know any better might find a box of abandoned photos in a thrift shop on the side of the road, available to purchase for pennies on the dollar. Maybe they take a few as a cheap souvenir. Those people are no worse for having the pictures wilting in their closet or framed ironically on their wall, but they’ve been tricked into placing them there- tricked into exchanging money for them. That makes is different, somehow. Exchanging money is the nearest thing to olde occultist binding that exists in 21^st century America.

Residents of ‘Cedar Family’ always stare into the camera- even in seemingly candid shots. That makes it different too.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Signs for ‘THE Rock Shop’ loom large over I-15 where it passes through Montana. It’s not on my radar, initially, but the more signs I see the more I become convinced that I’ll find it in the book. When Hector and I pull over to load up on gas and beef jerky, I confirm it. Sometimes the Wayside just comes to you.

‘It’s reasonable to misinterpret the peculiar formatting style of ‘THE Rock Shop’s’ name as an example of Wayside hyperbole. Claiming to be the best, cheapest, largest, anything seems to be fair game in regards to highway advertising.

The truth is that the capital ‘THE’ is there only to describe the ‘Rock’ and not the ‘Shop.’ ‘THE Rock Shop’ has just the one rock to sell and as long as the signs remain up, it’s safe to assume that the business model is about as effective as it’s been since 1987, when ‘THE Rock Shop’ was founded by two men who felt it was something special.’

It’s immediately clear which rock is for sale. It’s a boulder, really, fenced off as though someone might dig the lower half from the ground and steal it. I hope to circle the thing once and check it off the list but the screen door of the nearby house squeaks open as I step off the bike. One man appears first, dressed in a sagging robe and slippers. He waves a paper and pen and shouts:

“Just a dollar, sir! Just a dollar and it’s yours!”

Another man follows shortly, dressed in sweats against the chill wind. “Over here! We’ll give you the tour!”

The man in the robe is on me before I can respond meaningfully to either. I nearly topple backward over the bike as he waves the paper in my face- a deed or agreement of purchase or something to do with buying the rock. I put my hand out in front of me and he shoves a pen into my palm, tries to curl my fingers around it.

“Sign here, sir! Just a dollar for THE rock. Just a dollar!”

The man in sweats rattles off qualities of the rock in the background. I can hardly make any of them out over the robed man’s fervent sales strategy. I’ve lost the key to the bike in the dirt somewhere. I drop to my knees to find it and the man drops with me, plastering the contract over the visor of my helmet. I’m dimly aware of Hector panicking in his kennel on the bike.

There’s a high pitched whistle, suddenly, and the man ahead of us is screaming. The robed man is gone in an instant, running over to help. I snag the key from the ground and pull the paper from the helmet and see the man in sweats is laid out on the ground, bleeding from a head wound. The robed man curses the rock and begins to drag his companion inside.

I’ve frozen, trying to discern the threat- trying to understand whether I have better odds in the house with them or on the bike or whether there’s anything immediately dangerous about what’s happening. The robed man makes the decision for me. He slams the door and in a matter of seconds his face is pressed against the nearest window. I can hear him through the glass and through the helmet- he’s shouting for me to sign the paper and leave a dollar at the door. Then THE rock will be mine.

It’s a quiet autumn day and cars glide past us on the highway. I consider the tour I’d planned on taking and see a little impact crater where the man had been bleeding. Probably not worth the risk.

I’d like to be the person I was when the idea of a stationary boulder inflicting blunt force trauma at a distance for no discernable reason seemed unlikely. I’d settle for being the sort of person that would stick around long enough to help these men or to at least understand what sort of dread force binds them to THE rock. I’m the sort of person that drives a mile down the road and calls an ambulance, instead. The kind of guy that feels a little bad for the EMTs that will have to put up with that peculiar sales technique.

-traveler

Of Autumn by the Wayside’s many appendices, one is entirely devoted to branches of something called ‘The Museum of the American Diet,’ for which there is no official entry. Appendix F is nearly thirty pages long and it consists only of addresses, listed first by state, and then seemingly at random.

I’ve visited nearly twenty and I think it’s safe, now, to say that they are all buffets.

-traveler