What is it that a drive-in burger place is trying to accomplish by existing between the standard restaurant form and the drive-thru? Is it so much more comfortable to eat in one’s car than it is to eat in the privacy of one’s home or in a restaurant, a venue designed for eating in? I doubt it, but then, I’m eating on the seat of my motorcycle and the weather has turned chilly again.

An early fall for this part of the country.

‘The drive-in, known only as ‘Eats,’ floats in the distant, unnamed suburbs of Bay Minette. It claims to be open 24 hours a day but this has not been true for some time and the high school age employees do not appreciate being quizzed about the discrepancy. They seem to appreciate very little.

‘Eats’ claims to have pioneered the toy-with-your-meal model of children’s fast food long before larger, more successful chains perfected the approach with the accidental (and nearly fatal) inclusion of three marbles in a child’s burger patty in 1975. An ill-received campaign following the incident featured children coughing up other small toys after taking a bite of their ‘Mini-Eat,’ much to their, and their parent’s, delight. Several branches were forced to close but the flagship store remains a cult favorite.

Because popular IP’s and reliable manufacturing services are beyond the scope of ‘Eats’ budget, their toys are designed and introduced solely based on the whims of the owner. Age has made him cynical and he makes the toys in kind.’

Leaves scrape across the ground and pile up underneath the motorcycle’s wheels. Brown and gold and red, like the colors of a midwestern high school.

Two places to my right is a group of black-teed teens, listening to an old punk song I think I remember and eating their burgers. Two places to the left is a family in an SUV. One of the children hangs out of the window, bored and hungry. The older brother laughs and tries to pull the runaway back in by its pants. The child kicks and laughs and eventually disappears back into the vehicle, leaving a trail of dust and saliva on the door.

Their father taps absentmindedly on the dash. I realize, after several minutes, that he is tapping in sync with the punk song. It doesn’t seem like he should be able to hear it from all that way over there. An unrelated mystery.

I turn my attention back to the teens when he catches my eye. With their windows closed, they might as well be in a different world. I find myself tapping as well, tapping and searching for a comfortable way to sit on my parked bike while I wait for my food.

The nucleus of ‘Eats’ is a roundish building with no windows and just two doors, only one of which ever seems to open. The name of the restaurant is spelled out in faded shingles across the roof- a large, practical font that could likely be read from the highway before the neighborhood grew too high around it. The color scheme is dated: brown, gold, and red like the leaves. ‘Eats’ is not a place that is trying to be retro; it is a building that never left the era that bore it.

When I ordered a children’s meal they asked me whether it was for a boy or a girl; a question that is, no doubt, destined for retirement soon. With little to sway me one way or the other, I went with my gut choice: girl. Why not?

There is a squeal from the SUV as a young man approaches with a heavy tray. It’s made to hang from the door but the woman in the passenger seats waves it away- wouldn’t want to scratch the paint. The food disappears inside before I get much of a look at it, but a few minutes later I catch glimpses of some sort of toy solider, puppeted about the window in the hand of the youngest.

My food arrives shortly. The waiter looks briefly between my bike and the tray.

“I don’t think it attaches to motorcycles,” he says.

“I didn’t expect it would.”

“You had one girl’s Mini-Eat?” he asks.

“That’s right.”

He hands me a bag and turns to go as I open it. Inside is a broken soldier.

“The toy…” I begin.

“It’s supposed to be like that,” he answers before I can finish, “It’s a wounded soldier.”

“This is the girl’s toy?”

The young man turns back to face me, clearly uncomfortable but practiced in this sort of situation.

“The boys get a whole soldier to encourage patriotism. The owner wants…” he sighs, “The owner wants young women to be prepared for taking care of them once they’re back.”

A greasy slip of paper in my hand suggests that the soldier’s stump leg can be dipped in ketchup for added effect. I fold it thoughtfully between my fingers.

“That’s fucked up,” I tell him, “On a lot of levels that’s some fucked up shit.”

“It’s a summer job.”

“It’s autumn,” I remind him.

“They asked me to stay on a couple weeks into school. Just on the weekend.”

“How do people react to these things?” I ask.

“The locals know what to expect. Strangers tend to get upset. I can take it back if you want.”

“No,” I tell him, dropping the toy back into the bag, “That’s all right. I had an inkling of what to expect.”

“Is the food for you?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want more fries or something?”

“Do I look hungry?”

“No,” he says, “It’s just that we pack smaller portions in the girl’s meals. The owner says American women are getting too fat.”

“And he wants them to learn young…”

“Most people think he’s just an asshole.”

“He does sound like an asshole,” I sigh, “What’s the chances of me getting an interview with the man?”

-traveler

Panic is a funny thing, it pushes me further into the forest. It pushes me until I am out of breath, until I taste blood in the back of my throat. I am a runner when the circumstances call for it. Not your Sunday morning, bright apparel runner, perhaps, but given the choice between ‘fight’ and ‘flight’ I will always choose the latter. I am not a fighter, not like the stranger seems to be.

I wonder why he comes to mind now?

There is a great crashing in the woods behind me and I start running again. My backpack swings wildly and catches on every branch. I twist my arm back to check the hole that the radio wore through it, the hole I inexpertly patched once the radio was mounted on the bike. It’s holding, I think. That’s good.

Littering would probably make this worse.

‘There is a long list of rules governing the ‘Yellow-Throated Songbird Reserve,’ a list that is not done justice by the weather-worn sign at its unattended entrance. ‘Be Respectful’ is where many likely go astray. ‘Respect’ is a broad word, a word that is better suited for guidelines or polite suggestions. Rules should be specific and carefully worded if they are to be enforced in a way that is meaningful, but the ‘Yellow-Throated Songbird Reserve’ posts general rules and enforces them with a terrifying authority.

The Yellow-Throated Songbird is protected, it says so very clearly on the sign. ‘Protected,’ in this instance, is like ‘Respect.’ It might be understood a few different ways. In visiting this reserve, it would be best to assume the worst of anything that appears under-defined. It is better to not have words defined for you.’

Yeah, so the author’s coy ‘find out for yourself’ shtick isn’t really doing it for me this time. I zig-zag through a few close-grown trees and up over and behind a few boulders and I break again to see how I’m faring as the hunted. The forest is quiet except for the cheerful twitter of the Yellow-Throated Songbirds in the branches above. One flutters to the ground nearby and I press myself against the stone behind me.

I give the little bird a slow, careful thumbs-up. It turns its head to the side and hops away, secure in the knowledge that it is ‘protected.’

When it has hopped out of sight I turn and quietly lower my bag to the forest floor. A strap has torn loose, the buckle pulled away and lost somewhere behind me. I undo the other straps and tuck the buckles into folds and pockets. I remove my belt and my pants sag.

I have been losing weight.

I pull an old ring off my finger and shove it into my jeans. I dirty the metal on my shoes, pull my shirt down over any obvious buttons.

I have 17 cents in assorted coins in my pocket. I pull them out and give them a quick, discrete polish.

‘The nest of the Yellow-Throated Songbird is often littered with small, shining objects. Why, I’ve probably collected enough change out of abandoned nests to buy myself a cup of coffee! Some watchers have even sighted wedding rings among their collection. Try explaining that one to the missus!’

An excerpt from an online bird encyclopedia I pulled up for a picture before I got here, not Autumn by the Wayside. It’s too informative to be Shitholes, too applicable to the task at hand. If I was writing a travel book I’d take a page from the bird encyclopedia. Make entries relevant and personal. Spell out what happens moment to moment so that the reader understands what it means to be in a place and doesn’t have to guess at the consequences.

A pebble skitters down the boulder in front of me. I look up and find a few of the songbirds there, perched and attentive to my work. Two are small and brightly colored. Another, duller bird keeps its distance. They eye the coins.

The bird encyclopedia again:

‘Reddish-brown feathers on the belly of a Yellow-Throater signify a female while the slightly smaller, but pure yellow birds are your fellas. The female Yellow-Throaters generally ‘rule the roost’ and males win her over with trinkets during the mating season. Don’t let my wife read this, don’t need her getting any ideas!’

A nickel, a dime, and two pennies- this is exactly what got me into trouble the first time. If there are three birds on a rock, and one demands more respect than the other two, it would make sense to offer the dime to the female and a penny each to the males (fair is fair).

Of course, that’s assuming the birds understand the value of money.

The nickel is the largest of the coins and it shines more brightly than the dime, which I found on the road several days ago. One of the pennies looks like it rolled out of the mint yesterday. The other is hardly recognizable as currency. Would the birds prefer the three shiniest, regardless of their value?

Something in the forest groans like an old house in the wind. I look around me and see nothing. Even the birds are quiet now.

If the birds understand the value of money and shininess as equal they might be upset if I offered them anything less than the three most valuable, most polished coins. Perhaps the males don’t mind different offerings; they’re all going to the female anyway. Maybe the birds have no conception of fairness, maybe they will be slighted if I keep even a single coin for myself.

It is safe to say the birds don’t understand the concept of biding one’s time. My phone, connected to its network with just a sliver of a bar, finally pulls up my location relative to the highway.

I throw a handful of change at the birds and I run again, this time in the right direction.

Whatever it is that protects these birds does not appreciate the turn of events. I am pelted with dirt and debris as something explodes into or from the ground behind me.

I run with rocks in my boots.

I hold up my pants with my hands.

-traveler

‘The Earth’s sandwiched layers of stone and sediment record the rise and ruin of eras past. We tread upon the history there long before we would ever think to read it, before we ever could. Civilizations and species speak to us from the dirt if we take the time to listen.

The internet is the Earth’s speeding dream; it grows and changes much more quickly than the world that created it. It is many layers deep already, our daily feed built on ruins of old code. Pieces blink in and out of existence and sometimes they speak like the Earth. Sometimes they won’t stop speaking.

‘Steve’s Radical Rave’ is one of these pieces. Created in 1996, the site is solely devoted to producing two pieces of information: a time on Saturday and a pair of GPS coordinates in a specific, 100 square mile area. There is much speculation surrounding the identity of ‘Steve’ and the cult-like draw of the rave itself, which happens like a force of nature, sometimes deep in the forest at 5:00am, other times on the side of a highway at noon. There is speculation surrounding the gaudy, flashing background of the site, about the disco-beat ringtone it plays on loop from your browser. There is speculation surrounding the random times and locations it insists upon and whether they are random at all.

There is always a rave.’

Today’s chosen acreage is well off any civilized road and the rave begins early: 2:33am. I was warned that this means Saturday morning, what most people consider Friday, late night. The weather in the daytime was pleasant but now, as Friday turns over, things become clammy and wet with dew. I wait in my tent, staring up at the gray fabric and find every minute is a battle between sleep and agitation.

Bad things have a way of catching up to a person at parties. Bad habits, I mean. Moderation becomes difficult. The one bows to the actions of the many. Etcetera.

It might be better to not go.

My mind works in circles. The tent becomes an unhealthy place, a flushing toilet of thoughts. It grows clammier, the moisture of my breath rising like a specter and filling the small space. I might as well be sitting outside, where the air is clearer, but I find myself pinned by stubborn lethargy to the sticky fabric of my sleeping bag.

Eventually I hear music and it is enough to break the spell.

I was careful to set up camp a short ways away from ‘Radical Steve’s’ coordinate-venue. I didn’t want to be the first there. I don’t really want to be a second. I pack up camp and listen to the noise grow louder until, eventually, it is the sound of a small crowd.

I wait, still.

At a quarter past three (just minutes before I planned on getting up, I tell myself) my vigil is interrupted by a neon skeleton. The woman underneath the costume, blinded by her glow stick aura, does not see me until I retract the leg she nearly steps on. She startles at the sudden movement, screams, and then quickly recovers.

“Sorry about that,” she says.

It’s a lot to take in all at once. Words fail me.

Actions fail me.

“Are you all right?”

“Fime,” I mumble, “Fine, I mean.”

“Are you here with someone?”

“Yeah.” I rub my head. “Friend’s taking a piss. He’ll get me up.”

She doesn’t seem convinced, but I don’t have much to convince her with.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she says, “I looked like you before I turned myself around.”

“You looked tired?”

“I looked like an idiot with rolled up sleeves and track marks.”

I pull down my sleeves and wave her away.

“You’ve clearly never tried to keep a Fairy Fern alive,” I tell her, and I groan and struggle to my feet, “I was just getting ready to see what this whole thing is about.”

The neon skeleton is not impressed. She pulls out her wallet and fiddles in the rainbow glow for a card, which she hands to me. It’s the number to some sort of rehab place. The card looks like it’s been in her wallet a long time.

“I appreciate you’re trying to do a good thing,” I tell her, “But I don’t need this.”

“Need what?” she asks.

“The card.”

“Where’s the card?” she asks me.

I try to give it back, but the card is no longer in my hand.

“That’s a very specific lead-up to a magic trick,” I tell her.

“It’s not a magic trick,” she says, “It’s loss of feeling in your fingers.”

The moonlit sky is just bright enough for me to make out the white card at my feet. The skeleton woman walks off toward the rave while I retrieve it. It slips easily into my shirt pocket and, eventually, out of my thoughts.

I arrive at ‘Steve’s’ to find I am the only person lugging along a backpack, the only person not in full rave attire. This is a strange landscape and, to blend in, one would need a strange sort of camouflage, something I have neglected as a strict observer. The skeleton from before has disappeared and I come very close to forgetting her.

But I do not forget her entirely.

-traveler

Very few people genuinely believe the Gray Road Theory is plausible. The fact of the matter is that hoping really, really hard that something is true looks a lot like belief, and there is no shortage of hope among those who aspire to travel but do not have the means. This is what fills out the perceived population, an abundance of Gray Road Theory ‘hopers’ on the internet and, occasionally, traveling the wayside. Rumors of legitimate Gray Routes give them hope and the wayside takes that hope and consumes it. The less hope they have, the more evangelical they become. Until they have no hope at all.

(In which case they go home.)

The span of life between falling for Gray Road Theory and returning home is characterized by aimless wandering and occasional conventions. The conventions traditionally take place in one of the bizarre locales theorized to be connected to a Gray Route and are, therefore, very out of the way. They reek of disappointment by the second day as the attendees that remain, like old women at an assisted care facility, trade stories of dizzy spells and lost time.

The headline acts of these events are never the same year to year. The reputability of any one Gray Road Theorist is as laughable as the theory itself and dependent entirely on the whims of the year’s attendees. Sometimes the community demands that an aspect of Gray Road Theory is proven definitively, other times they want to see the old assumptions cast aside. They construct a shallow mockery of the jumps and starts of the existing scientific community, seemingly content with plateaus but giddy with the knowledge that soon there will be a staged discovery, a Gray Road Revolution that will turn everything they once thought upside down (and it’s been turned so often, reader, that even the most dedicated followers aren’t sure which way is up anymore).

The reason Gray Road Theory never goes anywhere, you see, is because they’re always having to start over. There is always a crack in the foundation and so the house never gets built. Would it be a nice house? Sure, but the foundation cracks because the ground is wrong. This world just won’t support the sort of thing they’re trying to build.

Many won’t deny any of this. They agree that the way we understand our laws won’t support their theory. They nod and smile and go on hoping, hoping to the brink of belief, but never quite reaching it.

If only there was some way to shorten the distance.

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

I lean over the railings of the ‘The Ross River Ferry’ and see the reflection of a very sick man in the water below. He throws up, suddenly, and the reflection is muddled. I stand and wipe my mouth. Seasickness is not a demon with which I have yet contended. It is an unpleasant surprise.

‘‘The Ross River Ferry’ covers the short stretch of ‘Ross River’ between the twin towns of Chester and Greenville. Neither is much of a destination in and of itself but a ride on the ferry negates 200 roundabout miles of twisting mountain passes that make up a portion of the more typical route from the north.

‘The Ross River Ferry’ earns its place in this collection by the simple virtue of being haunted. Known only as the Rattler, the ferry’s ghost is often spotted in or near the off-limits engine room, making this a risky pilgrimage for paranormal investigators and their ilk. Those that brave the trespass will find the Rattler a dramatic, but harmless specter that does not yet understand he has passed.’

I throw up for a little while longer, until there is nothing left inside. A woman lends me a dramamine and the nausea eventually passes. I wash my face in the restroom.

‘The Ross River Ferry’ is not a pretty ship, its walls are thick, unpainted steel and its sitting areas mainly tarnished chrome. It was not designed to be anything more than a sea-worthy parking lot and there is a certain charm in the earnestness with which it fulfills that purpose. The wayside is a shifting, unsteady sort of place and I have been exploring it for too long. It’s imparted a fondness for the opposite, things that are solid in purpose and design. ‘The Ross River Ferry’ has a single job and it is fantastically tangible, a comfort to my shaking sea legs.

It is not difficult to find the engine room but, on the way, it is difficult to think of reasons I might give for being there. The ferry’s crew is sparse but their signage is to the point and no matter what I do people tend to realize that I… don’t belong.

It’s with a certain mixture of luck that I make it to the engine room door unseen only to find it locked tight. I have picked up many skills in this endeavor but lock-picking is not among them. Most places I visit don’t go out of their way to limit entry.

I peer through a thick window on the door and into the rumbling dark beyond. There is a faint smell of exhaust, of oil and dust. I turn to the light on my phone and am startled, at first, by my reflection in the window and then, again, by the man staring back at me from behind it.

He squints at me suspiciously and I panic.

“I’m looking for the restroom!” I yell through the glass.

The door unlatches and the man steps halfway out.

“You on the tour?”

I look each way down the hall and suspect that he will answer his own question but he doesn’t seem to see anything but me.

“Does the tour include the engine room?”

The man opens the door wider and steps aside, far enough to let me through.

“Don’t know why everybody’s so interested in this old thing,” he says, leading me on a walk around the engine, “Same as what you’ll find in any other ferry. They replaced it 20 years ago, not even the original.”

The engine is massive and half-sunk in the floor. It’s not very interesting at all, nothing in the room is. The man points out a couple machines but the majority of what he says is lost in the noise. He doesn’t seem to mind that no tour group has followed me.

“Did I miss anything?” he yells and I shrug.

I didn’t come to see the engine.

The man gestures as though to communicate the room is at my disposal for further perusing and he retires to a small table and chair in the corner to roll a cigarette. I fake interest for a while longer and turn to wave goodbye.

The man is gone.

I allow myself a moment of quiet reflection before circling the engine once more. As I come around to the back I see the man has returned, leaning over to pick his smoke up off the floor. His hands shake and he makes a mess of tobacco on the table.

“Are you the Rattler?” I ask.

“What?”

The engine has increased its effort, making it nearly impossible to be heard. My vision briefly swims and then snaps back to focus.

“Are you the… uh… Rattler?” I yell, realizing, with repetition, how stupid it sounds.

“Godda… ghost… ler…!”

The man is clearly agitated but it’s difficult to make out why.

“What?” I shout, stepping closer and turning so my ear faces him.

“I said I ain’t a goddamn ghost, kid!”

“Do you know…”

I turn back and he’s gone again, which answers the question at least.

In the presence of a bonafide ghost, I find myself very unprepared. A part of me insists on leaving, another on circling the engine to see if that’s what triggers the haunting. I wonder, briefly, what would happen if I sat in his chair and, seeing it’s gone, I wonder about the ghostly tobacco and how inanimate objects factor into the afterlife.

Standing perfectly still, I stumble.

The engine is roaring now; the ferry is picking up speed. My stomach churns and I stagger to steady myself on a wall. I miss by several feet and fall to the floor where the force of the sudden acceleration pushes me between two machines. From my new vantage point I see the Rattler again, crouched under his table and staring intently at me. He points up and I see, above him, a comb case. My comb case.

Cold panic anchors me to the floor, even as the Rattler fishes about for the case from below, even as his clumsy, shaking fingers press it further and further out of his reach.

“Stop!” I yell.

The Rattler says nothing. He looks at me and his arm seems to stretch and bend in its pursuit.

“That’s mine!”

The ferry’s speed presses the words back in my face. The Rattler does not hear me and does not look away. I grasp at pipes and cords and panels but cannot find my feet.

And then the door creaks open and light spills into the room. It had been… dark. I look back at the table and see the Rattler has gone. The comb case rests on its surface. Sound, sound other than the engine, has returned to the room. I hear a voice.

“Some junkie going on about noise,” it says.

Two men move past the threshold and I recognize the Rattler is one of them. His cigarette is tucked neatly behind his ear. The other man flips a switch on the wall but the room remains dark.

“Light’s busted again,” the Rattler tells him. He turns back to the room and calls, “You in here, kid?”

I slip lower between the two machines and I keep my eye on the comb case. It will not be hard for them to spot.

“Got a flashlight?” the man asks the Rattler, “I ain’t hunting junkies in the dark.”

“Kid?” the Rattler calls again.

He takes another step into the room and stops, confining himself to the lit floor.

I say nothing.

“Looks like he’s cleared out,” the Rattler says.

“Cleared out or never here?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Captain says the place is haunted.”

“Captain’s an idiot,” the Rattler says, “Kid’s got a black jacket and junkie eyes. Keep an eye out.”

They close the door and leave me in the milky half-light leaking from the hall. My heartbeat slows and I flex my extremities. I prepare myself for standing, for retrieving the comb case, for keeping a low profile until we reach our destination.

“Let me help you up,” a voice says.

There is no one there.

-traveler

When I was walking everywhere, walking and hitchhiking, there was time to acclimate to a place, the weather, the people, the altitude. The bike gets me where I’m going before my body can catch up. I become lazy, almost immediately. I reacquaint myself with gas station junk food, with fountain drinks. I keep a rope of licorice in my mouth, like a cigarette. It droops out from under my helmet and it’s dusty by the time I get to the end.

The air becomes cold and subsequent licorice stiffens beyond my ability to consume it.

I stop trying.

‘Ski resorts are expensive and ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith’ hardly breaks the mold, proudly touting a review from its inaugural year describing it as: “Needlessly beautiful.” An interesting phrase, to say the least.

Whether it is needful or not, ‘The Lodge’ is quite beautiful indeed. It is a mansion built of cabins, a forest of dead trees, rounded and polished and carefully insulated. The owners have cultivated an awe-inspiring atmosphere, an atmosphere that continues to awe past a certain level of comfort, a beauty that leaves a person hushed. The hush hangs about ‘The Lodge’ like held breath, like breath held by hands on a throat. It is stifling.’

There is no dodging the bill with this one, I’m afraid. There is nowhere to stay near ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith’ except for in ‘The Lodge’ itself and it is cold, reader. It is very cold outside. I get as far as digging through the snow to the surface of the hard, frozen ground and there, bending my tent stakes, I realize it is ‘The Lodge’ or nothing.

And it can’t be nothing either.

A pretty man steps out of the door as I pull up to the front of ‘The Lodge.’ He steps out casually, as though greeting me is a coincidence, and his wave expresses a warmth that has not been wasted on me in a very long time.

“Good afternoon, sir.” he says, as though speaking to an old friend, “You can just leave your bike there and we’ll take it to the garage.”

“I can take it myself,” I tell him, “It’s… tricky.”

“She will be in good hands.”

The man pulls away gracefully and I wonder if the handlebars won’t stain his white gloves with rust.

I step into the lodge and am immediately a sore, my dirty self in dirty clothes, a vagrant in every sense of the word. This is a still place, and, yes, a beautiful one. Not the sterile beauty I had expected, either, but warm like the man’s wave. A fire cracks joyfully into the chimney on the wall opposite. It reminds me I am cold.

“Please, sit down.”

A man I didn’t see, a handsome, older man, speaks to me from a plush chair near the fire. He turns back to the flames as I cross the room and he rests his slippered feet on a table. Near them are two steaming mugs- as though somebody who was once here, has gone.

“Rest for a moment,” he says, “Was that your motorbike outside? A noisy thing.”

“Sorry,” I tell him.

“Where are you coming from?”

“From all over.”

“The hot chocolate is for you,” he says, but he stops me before I can reach out, “Too hot still. Another minute, maybe. Rest.”

I sit back in the chair and try to be annoyed by the rebuke. I find it difficult.

“How did you learn about ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith?’

“A travel book.”

“And how long do you intend to stay?”

The heat from the fire flirts with the edge of discomfort. A few inches closer and it would be unpleasant, but here…

“Only a night, I think.”

“Try the cocoa,” he says, “And then we’ll get you to your room.”

They ask me to pay up front, the only indication that a man that looks like me might be suspicious in a place like this. I do, and it is painful, but I am led down a hall by a beautiful woman to a small but equally beautiful room.

“Will you be skiing?” she asks.

“Not if it costs extra.”

“Well,” she smiles, “We have a small library that overlooks the slope. Perhaps we’ll see you down there.”

They have a funny definition of ‘small.’ The library is a communal sitting room and the only wall that is not comprised of books is the great glass window turned toward the mountain. The ceiling here is high and the room is large but cut, tastefully, into smaller sections by a discrete arrangement of furniture. Coffee brews somewhere out of sight and candles flicker despite the midday sun. I think, for a moment, that I hear soft music but, as I listen, it turns out to be nothing at all. This room, too, is beautiful.

But the people in it are ugly.

I can tell immediately that the people resting in the chairs or speaking quietly amongst themselves are not employees. Some are pale and others sickly-yellow. Their clothes fit awkwardly, fabrics and patterns clash like warring nations across their bodies. Many have drooping eyes or sagging fat or deep, gray frown lines. These people are outrageously ugly.

I sit in a chair away from the others, facing the window, and I wipe my hands on my pants and feel myself on the edge of sweating. ‘The Lodge’ is a warm place, the air is thick and pressing. There is a quiet rattle near my arm, the sound of a man setting a cool glass of water out for me. He is lean and smiling, his teeth as white as snow, and he steps away without saying a word.

I am left to my thoughts.

Another guest joins me, eventually, sitting across the way because there is nowhere else to sit. Neither of us brought something to distract our eyes and we stare in disgust when we don’t think the other is looking. What does she have to be disgusted by, this woman with a crooked half-smile and a wallpaper dress? I am no looker, but neither is…

I take a drink of water and spy my reflection in the glass table. It is crystal clear and hideous. I am reminded, suddenly, of the ice at ‘Black Lake’- a bad place. I look around at the ugly people in the room and realize this is a bad place, too, or a good place that makes things bad in relation.

All at once, the beauty of ‘The Lodge’ becomes stifling, just as the author said it would. I choke on my breath and become increasingly self-conscious, increasingly unable to ignore the reflection in my peripheries. I stand and excuse myself to no one in particular and I lock myself in the beautiful closet of a room and I stare, in horror, at the mirror.

This will not do.

I pack my things, taking only a moment, and I leave quietly on plush carpets and uncreaking wood. Nobody takes any note of my agitation.

I push open the door and take a deep breath, anticipating cold after so much thick heat. But it is more than cold. The air that fills my lungs is frigid and tissue thin. I gasp on it. I wheeze. The sun’s reflection off the snow is blinding and that sudden illumination rots the world around me. Every splintered tree and flaking bird, the crawling, molding, moist creatures of the melting snow wriggle in and out of sight.

The world is a bad place, relative to ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith,’ and that knowledge is a poison.

I walk inside again, expecting relief, but what I find, there, is respite, tenuous and unpromising.

-traveler

I spend a week looking like an idiot- cutting the engine at stoplights, struggling to change gears on the highway, suffering breakdowns and walking like a saddle-sore cowboy into strange, suburban grocery stores. When things are going well, my tooth rattles about in the broken speedometer. Stalled, the broken molar settles, morose and inconspicuous to all but the closest observers.

I keep the radio wired into the dash, held up on a custom mount I bought with candy bars. It looks absurd and only works when the voice inside wills it to.

It crackles nervously now.

“Traveler?”

I pretend not to hear, that the helmet I’m wearing is too thick, that the wind is too strong. When I turn off the interstate it tries again, too loud to ignore.

“TRAVELER?”

“What?”

“Where are we going?”

“Any guesses?”

“Boone, North Carolina is not in your book. There is no reason to go there.”

“You can read now?”

“It’s unlikely to be…”

“Well, now you know what’s scary about this book.”

‘There is a humming in the air outside of Boone, a noise that is, to the ear, what shadows are to the eye. In the gray static there, it becomes difficult to concentrate, a visitor feels their mind slacken and droop. Muscles weaken and inhibitions loosen. Long exposure is, in many ways, like an opiate high.

‘The Boone County Music Festival’ is hardly a leap considering the circumstances. Scheduled annually for two days, the festival tends to drag on for nearly a week before the hosting venue has the whole lot of people removed. Sets are plagued with technical issues and silence is increasingly common as the days wear on and attendees lose motivation to move or speak beyond what is absolutely essential. Music is replaced with bizarre art installations and performances that represent the very fringes of interpretive dance. Radios in the area will pick up quiet laughter and a voice that thinks it knows more than it does.’

“Sound familiar?” I ask, pulling off onto a dirt road. The radio does not immediately respond.

I arrive at a small campground, closed for the season. I have missed ‘The Boone County Music Festival’ by a month or so, meaning even the most stubborn attendees have long abandoned the site. I pull a sun-bleached poster from the trunk of a tree, the only obvious relic. It rustles impatiently in the wind.

My fingers buzz with numbness, with thick, lazy blood.

“Is that you up there?” I ask, pointing to a radio tower up on top of a hill.

“If it was?”

“If it was, would you want me there?”

My bones rattle, suddenly, as though witness to some deep, unheard bass. After a few seconds, it raises into the realm of audible sound:

“Hmm….” the radio wonders out loud, “No, I would rather you stay.”

“Do you know the stranger? The author of Autumn by the Wayside?”

“I do not.”

“Has he been through here already?”

“He has.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“You did not ask about the stranger. He seems like a skittish man.”

I shake feeling into my hands and blink, slowly. I struggle to open the clasps on my bag. Wrapped in cloth, there, is a mason jar. The fairy fern is crushing itself against the glass, its tendrils sneaking out from below the rim, raw where I’ve snipped them away.

“I’m going to plant this here,” I tell the radio, “I’m tired of carrying it around. I wonder if it wouldn’t keep people away.”

“That would be a welcome change.”

“Should I plant it near the tower?”

The voice on the radio is silent as it considers the possibilities. I feel a brushing on my hand, where the fairy fern is trying to find a hold, and I realize the numbness has passed. The thrumming in the air has lessened some.

“Yes,” the voice says.

I take the bike up a dirt road toward the radio tower. It’s slow going and I turn over, once, on a thick patch of gravel. I dust myself off and keep at it. The radio occasionally screeches with feedback. Eventually I park and duck under an old barbwire fence, carrying my pack but leaving the radio on its mount. It says something, but I pretend not to hear.

There’s not much to the tower- it’s an old thing, paint coming off in great peels. Rust beneath that. The fairy fern is squirming in the jar, reacting to the sudden dose of sunlight. It will be happy, here, and maybe safe.

I’ve been thinking, reader, about the stranger and the author and me. I’ve been thinking about the path and about circles and eyes. The author is publicizing the path, the stranger seems to be walking it in circles. I am tailing them both, thus far just a witness.

Maybe there are others.

-traveler

Deer die in the woods, alone, and their bodies rot. They leave skeletons behind, their antlered heads distinctive in certain forests. People do strange things with these skulls, mounting on walls chief among them.

That’s beside the point.

I keep the antlered deer head in mind as I look for a skull in an acre of bones, the first of many pieces I’ll need.

‘A wasteland of rust, ‘Trish’s Ride Away’ is nothing more than a monetized junkyard. For an entry fee of $100, Trish will allow you to peruse the acres of wasted automotive parts she buys in bulk and to stay as long as you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. A book in the small shack at the front gate has pictures of the twenty or so odd people that have ridden out of the ‘Ride Away’ on vehicles they have salvaged, cleaned, and assembled. This is the best option.

Trish’s liberal time allowance has inadvertently led to the ‘Ride Away’ becoming a tent city, too far from any concerned municipality to warrant shutting down. The ‘Ride Away’ denizens can be both cagey and helpful, long cut-off from outside society by the metallic disruption of cellular signals and their borderline-superstitious fear of having to re-pay the entry fee. Goods from the nearby gas station will garner favors and ease a visitor’s passage.

The difference between ‘hidden’ and ‘lost’ is subtle, reader, and many lose themselves in Trish’s maze. Remember the worth of a hundred dollars and do not stay longer than necessary.’

I haven’t said much about my past, have I? I’ve kept my eye on the future and I describe the present only in the ways it hinders me. Well, I was a mechanic for a while, or, I should say, I was the stupid kid that works in a mechanic’s shop. I learned the basics there.

And I am tired of walking, of hitchhiking, and of waking up in strange diners with deep, rumbling headaches.

“Oh, look,” a voice says, “A window shopper.”

It’s not immediately clear who is speaking.

“What are you looking for?”

“A bike frame,” I tell her, speaking in the direction of the voice, “Something usable.”

“And then?”

“And then the rest of the bike.”

“Got a place to stay?”

“I’m getting tired of talking to myself,” I tell her, “What do you want?”

A woman’s body rises from the backseat of a truck. Her eyes narrow.

“What do you got?”

Ruby is 20 and she tells me she has been living in ‘Trish’s’ for some five years. She tells me she runs an inn for short-term visitors like myself but when I ask to see a room she says there aren’t any vacancies.

“Checkout’s at two,” she says, “Ask again after that.”

For a pack of gum she lets me store my backpack in the trunk of a car. She keeps the key and many others on a chain around her neck. We haggle absurdly for a while until she agrees to show me a few frames for the cheese-and-meat jerky packs I pulled off the clearance shelf.

“Cheese,” she says, “Is like gold here. A can of spray stuff will set you up for a while.”

I shrug and rub my sore jaw. My face is swollen, still, but Ruby doesn’t mention it. She leads me toward the center of the property, where she says she has contacts.

“Don’t know shit about cars myself,” she mutters.

Had I known that…

We speak to several people, each living in a carved-out hovel of old car parts and each with wildly different answers. Many ask for payment but Ruby shuts them up. If anybody is getting what I brought in, it will be her. Ruby, despite my misgivings, takes the average of our motley advice and draws me a map.

“You’re not coming?” I ask.

“I’ve got a business to run,” she says, “Should I hold a room for you?”

I consider the author’s warning and prod the empty place where my molar once was.

“Sure.”

I have a frame by nightfall, its handlebar head twisting loosely in the gray light. I, and a man I bribe with chips, haul it back to Ruby’s and set it near my room: the deeply buried carcass of a VW bus.

“The yard out front is yours as long as you’re renting,” Ruby says, handing me another key from her chain, “Folks around here respect that but keep an eye out for tourists. I gave you the ‘Bug Suite,’ no extra charge. Water-proofed it myself.”

“Thanks…” I tell her.

“I’m holed up just down the way if you need anything,” she says.

Ruby is buying time for something, her gangly silhouette hesitating at my door.

“Do you need me to pay now?”

“You seem good for it,” she says, “Think you’ll stay long?”

“As long as it takes to get this thing going.”

“It’s not great here,” she warns me.

“Oh?”

“I’m kicking guys like you out of my place all the time. You find a project, burn out, run out of things to barter. You end up sleeping under some random hood and asking for handouts. People adjust to this kind of living and then get stuck here.”

“I know,” I tell her, “I read it in a book before I came.”

“A book?”

I show her Shitholes, the nice, newer copy. I flip to the entry and see her smile, curiously, in the flickering overhead light. She sits softly on my ‘bed.’

“Well I’ll be…” she says, pointing at the accompanying photo of a non-descript pile of junk, “That’s my place. You know this guy?”

“Maybe.”

Ruby’s body odor has filled the hollow bus. I shift uncomfortably and roll down a window. I grate my teeth as she squirms around on my blankets, browsing the glossy pages of my book. I cough and yawn and side-eye her in turns.

“Seems like a bit of an asshole.”

The bus’ radio clicks with quiet, staticky laughter.

Heh, heh, heh…

-traveler

‘Between the months of December and February, ‘Black Lake,’ famous for its many drownings, becomes a seasonal ice skating hub. Families and couples come together at the lake with the assurance that it would be truly unlikely for anyone to drown while it is frozen solid and that the year’s unrecovered bodies have probably washed downstream, that they are not simply preserved underneath the skates.

True locals, those living in close proximity to ‘Black Lake,’ will be conspicuously absent from the cheerful winter scene. Found nearby in restaurants and taverns, they will tell you ‘Black Lake’ is not a good place any time of the year, that winter does not end the site’s uncanny maliciousness, only limits it to maiming instead.’

I rise to my hands and knees, a pool of blood beneath my face. A child screams and skates away. My weak arm collapses under me and splays out again, leaving a red streak across the ice. The world jolts and spins.

A man skates over. His abrupt stop peppers me with ice shavings. He says something, says it again when I don’t respond.

“You okay, man?”

I cough.

“You okay?”

“I… will be.”

He helps me to my feet, catches me before I slip again. He and a friend guide me to the edge. I hear them talking about calling an ambulance. I tell them I’ll be fine. They continue talking, quieter now so that I won’t interrupt.

I’ll have to return the skates before I go.

I look up at ‘Black Lake’ again. They are using snow to wipe away my blood. The sign, encouraging swimmers to beware, is frosted over.

‘Black Lake’ is a bad place.

I spit a gob of blood between my legs. Something rattles and comes loose.

I spit again, feeling little.

Speakers crackle: “The rink is open for free-skating once again, folks. Careful out there, it’s slippery!”

The gathered skaters hesitate, but slowly the rink fills. Their skates carve circles into the ice.

I sift through the snow for my tooth.

My tongue mercilessly prods its absence.

-traveler

‘‘The Orville Reenactment Society’ has been in residence at ‘Fort Elmer’ for as long as anybody in Orville can remember. They are local celebrities and the driving force behind tourism to the area. They perform every Friday and Saturday, rain or shine, and have a special matinee on Sundays (after church). Though popular, tickets will not sell out.

‘The Miracle of Orville’ is not a show to be missed. It draws heavily from the writings of the town founder, a very strange man named Fellowship Orville who claims a great hand came from the ground as he approached the site of the future fort. It pointed to the sky, and then to him, and then it retreated into the earth. Orville has embraced this origin with terrifyingly open arms.’

Thus far, in my stay, nobody in Orville has mentioned the bizarre folktale. They seem to let the town speak for itself, through murals, through massive, many-fingered statues, and through their high school football team ‘The Orville Hands.’ Knowing the town’s history, a smart person might think they are being purposeful in their silence, that their seeming normalcy is more sinister façade than genuine passivity.

And I am a smart person.

Though I was once more sure of that.

The… author… of Autumn by the Wayside sort of sets up this kind of thinking, doesn’t he? By entering a place into the book, a self-described collection of ‘shitholes,’ the author primes the reader for negativity. If I had come to Orville on my own and been asked to describe the… historically-informed culture there I think (no, I’m sure) I would have leaned toward harmlessly eccentric and not at all toward sinister.

Now, in buying gum, I notice an attendant grinning behind me. Before, a knowing nod from an old man. Previous even to that, as I entered town, the wide-eyed stare of short-haired child. It did not smile or frown but it did seem… bad.

Vaguely bad.

With a ticket I bought at the grocery store, I enter Fort Elmer and am greeted, immediately, by in-character ushers.

“Clarence!” a woman cries, seeing me step through the turnstile (which didn’t see widespread use until the early 1900s) “We’ve got our first visitor of the evening!”

“A visitor!”  a man shouts from another room, “At this hour? Who is it?”

“A stranger!” the woman says, coming close now in order to make a show of eyeing me over, “By the looks of it… a vagabond!”

“By god, be rid of him!”

I speak before the woman can continue.

“I’m supposed to rent a locker for this,” I say, heaving my bag, “Which way…”

“The armory is just down that hall,” the woman replies, whispering now so as not to disturb the fictionally grumpy Clarence elsewhere in the building, “And don’t mind my husband, you’re welcome to join the others in the courtyard for tonight’s gathering.”

I breathe an inward sigh of relief when I see that the kid running the locker rental is plain-clothes- no banter about ‘funny money’ or theatrical biting of coins. Relieved of some weight, I step past another group of visitors (delighted by the host’s bafflement at their jacket zippers) and into the restroom. It has been some time since I really, closely looked at myself and, if I’m beginning to look like a vagabond, it’s probably past due.

I stare into the mirror and shudder.

She was not wrong.

I’m washing my face in the sink when I hear the too-friendly jingle of a belt from the stall behind. In the reflection, I spot two feet in dirty socks and loose, tarry sandals. Worn jeans pile up around scabby, white ankles and a pale, hanging gut is just visible beneath the door.

And, between the door, a weepy eye.

One circle nested in another.

My hand reaches, reflexively, for the pocket over my heart, for the comb case and for the comb.

The thing in the stall wheezes with some unseen effort. Its foot twists in vulgar clenches.

I turn off the water, stare up at myself again.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Spit into the sink.

I reach for the comb and-

A toilet flushes and a man walks out of the stall at the other end of the room. He’s still buttoning his replica trousers as he makes eye contact with me in the mirror. He hesitates, clears his throat.

“My, what a strange facility this is!”

I leave without saying anything and find my seat on the bleachers in the center of the fort. I sit next to the quietest looking family and the parents nod cheerfully. I sweat, silently, beneath my clothes.

The reenactment begins.

It is quiet until a man staggers into the field, his clothes dirty and torn. A dim spotlight follows his progress. Fellowship Orville stumbles, falls to his knees, and collapses. It is quiet, again, for a time.

The ground trembles but I hardly notice.

-traveler