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

Something is molding in this bookstore. Maybe everything is. I pull a book from the wall and flip to the middle. I smell the book, a deep huff.

Mildew.

No book is safe.

And nothing is in order.

There are people who like this sort of place. This is the sort of store we imagine when somebody tells us they once stumbled upon a first edition copy of their favorite book, tucked between two dictionaries under a stack of magazines. It’s the sort of store where you imagine two people falling in love- a cute book-nerd strikes up a cautious conversation with the wry, hipster cashier. Actually, when I imagine it, I’m the cashier. A life of retail work will do that to you.

Now, is there a travel section?

‘‘Book Ends’ is literature’s graveyard, a cemetery for words. Just as you do not seek your warm, living relatives among the headstones, you should not waste time trying to find a specific book here. It cannot be found. Ask, and you will invariably learn that the last copy has been sold, that the back-order is processing, that there is a copy, yes, but where… hmm. Must be a mistake in the inventory.

‘The inventory’ the man claims, while clearly pulling up an empty computer file. ‘Hmm…’ he says again, as though giving special care to your piece. He will shuffle books around behind the desk and you will notice these books have shifted many times, as though this is a daily charade. He will, eventually, offer a small, exasperated shrug and a small, meaningless apology. This man owns the store and his name is Alfred and he is the source of this business’ shitholery.’

In matching black sweats and thin, crooked glasses, the man behind the counter is no hipster. He looks at me with watery eyes and scratches his dark, ill-shaven goatee.

“No proper travel section, I’m afraid,” he says, after a moment, “Where’ya headed? Maybe I can find you something here.”

He boots up the computer, which whirs and wheezes with the sudden exertion, and he taps idly on the mouse as if to communicate a mild impatience with the machine.

“I’m actually looking for a specific book,” I tell him, “Autumn by the Wayside: A Guide to…”

“Oh,” he says, “Got a rack of’em over there.”

The man seems bored, suddenly. He holds the power button down with the soft determination reserved for one lover strangling another. The PC’s chittering work ends abruptly.

I turn and see he’s right- there, on a spinning wire shelf near the entrance to the store, is a literal rack of Shitholes. I remember that the cover was once glossy and colored, smooth as a placid lake. My heart, which, until now, had been quietly mumbling to itself in my chest, pushes out one, giddy pump, pauses, and then pushes out another.

I nod, calmly, to Alfred.

The copies on the rack look thin, their pages compact and un-creased, my name clear. I pull the book from my back pocket and wave it at Alfred.

“I brought this in,” I tell him and his eyebrows raise. He wonders why I would think he might mistake the garbage in my hand for something he would try to sell.

“That,” he says with his eyes, “Is below even me.”

I wonder if he’s realized these books immortalize him?

I pull a copy from the rack and feel its weight, the stiffness of the spine. I set my book on a shelf and Alfred coughs politely as it flares out the crinkled pages. Is he afraid of some contagion?

I hold my breath and open the back cover to the author’s bio. The picture has been vandalized with a markered moustache and glasses. Somebody has scribbled something underneath, something unreadable. I pull another from the shelf and find the same thing- this one has buck teeth and a top hat. I squint past the additions and try to see my face there. It does look similar.

Doesn’t it?

“Somebody wrote in all these books,” I call over my shoulder to Alfred.

“The author wrote in all those books,” he says back, “That’s why they’re marked up.”

“The author…?”

“Real asshole,” Alfred says, “Came through a month ago and asked if I wanted to host a signing. Showed up late, drank all my coffee, and didn’t sell a single book. You should see what he wrote about me in there. If I had realized…”

By now I’m several books deep and there’s not a single picture of the author that hasn’t been modified beyond sure recognition. My hands shake nervously.

“This is my name,” I tell Alfred, my voice shaking too, “I was trying to find a clear picture… did he… did the author look like me?”

Alfred glances up from the book he’s been reading. He looks me over.

“Passing resemblance,” he sniffs, “I think he was taller.”

“Look,” I tell him, jotting down my name in one of the copies, “It’s the same signature.”

He looks between them for a few seconds.

“It’s basically the same, I mean,” I tell him, “He, I… He was using a marker and this is just a pen.”

“You’re going to buy that, I suppose.”

“Yeah, sure. Look, do you have any unsigned copies? Anything that hasn’t been drawn over?”

Alfred presses the button on his computer and I go back to the rack to look myself. Several of the books have been altered the same way, the more I go through the more prevalent the pattern: nested circles, white and black, over the author’s face.

The all-seeing eye.

“What’s this?” I ask Alfred, “The guy did this a lot.”

“Looks like googly eyes.”

“But they’re both looking ahead.”

Alfred sighs and I see I’m walking the precarious line between zealous customer and dangerous weirdo.

“I’ll buy the copy I wrote in,” I tell him, “And if you can find an unsigned copy I’ll buy that. Can I take a picture of the googly eyes?”

He looks at me suspiciously.

“The author’s a recluse,” I tell him, “But I’ve been trying to follow his work and…”

“Got one,” Alfred says, shuffling a few books around behind the counter.

Eventually he pulls another copy up and, maddeningly, flips to the back page himself. He looks between the book and myself and I try to remember the picture. I try to remember how the author looked.

“Smile,” Alfred says, “Big smile.”

I smile.

“Nope,” he says, handing me the book, “You’ve still got all your teeth.”

My smile fades.

-traveler

‘The Turning Table’ is the most recent in a number of businesses that have moved into the bizarre single-story revolving space off US-51. Prior tenants include ‘Dinner with a Twist,’ ‘The Revolving Roti,’ and ‘Pizza in the Round.’ Reviews of each are low to moderate. It goes without saying that the quality ‘spinning’ is not enough to make a successful restaurant.

I arrive in the parking lot and am signaled, by wait-staff inside, that the entrance is currently around back.

‘Yes, whoever commissioned the structure that houses ‘The Revolving Roti’ was an idiot. Unlike traditional revolving restaurants, in which only the interior floor turns, the whole outside of ‘The Revolving Roti’ spins around the core, kitchen area. Even on a good day, this contributes to a number of technical problems including a building-wide shudder every 17 minutes, near constant breakdowns, and intermittent wheelchair access. A brightly painted protective barrier has been installed at the base following a crushing fatality some years ago. The pre-entry waiver does not exactly whet the appetite.

The food is what you would expect from a moderately priced Indian restaurant though the garlic naan stands out above the other options as exceptional.’

Diners watch as I push between the building and the close-growing shrubs on its side, waiting, perhaps, for another fatality. It isn’t a graceful passage but I’ve been walking a long time and would like to sit down. Inches away, ‘The Turning Table’ groans and squeaks, its gears complain in the darkness below. It stops for just a second as something deep within grinds painfully. I press myself into the bush and grimace. I look for support from a couple who have stopped mid-meal to look worriedly back at me. A high-pitched whine indicates a growing pressure from inside.

The machine below breaks from the jam suddenly and the restaurant lurches forward. The couple turns their attention to the woman’s soup, which has sloshed over onto the table.

I press forward.

The entrance is already trying to sneak around the other side by the time I reach the back end of the property. I squeeze my backpack through first and jump in after, just as the bushes overtake the door. A man turns from paying and sees the way is blocked and he rolls his eyes.

He sits in the waiting area while I take a table for one.

The fare is no longer Indian and the naan has gone the way of the previous owners. I order a grilled cheese and lean back in the booth, happy to be rid of the weight of my pack. An untrimmed branch scratches across the window outside, annoying several people around me. I tap the glass and close my eyes.

“Your coffee, sir.”

I shudder awake and see the waitress standing over me with a mug. She hesitates.

“Sorry,” I say, rubbing my eyes, “It’s been a long trip.”

She smiles and nods.

“You can just set the coffee on the table,” I say.

“Just a moment.”

She looks at her watch.

The restaurant grinds to a halt and she expertly counters the motion with her arm so that the coffee doesn’t spill. The sound is worse from the inside- a few customers look worried, others, exasperated and knowing.

The noise continues.

“Looks like we’re stuck, Emily!” someone calls from the kitchen and the waitress, Emily, huffs.

“Careful with this,” she says, handing me the coffee.

Emily and a few other waitstaff gather at a spot ten feet away and stomp a couple times. Eventually, as the noise grows more severe, they resort to little half-jumps. The restaurant starts without warning and, despite Emily’s, I spill my coffee on the table.

She brings me napkins.

The back of the menu has a little rundown of the building’s features and a diagram of the building itself. One arrow points out the ‘jolly rotator,’ another the ‘protect-o-wall.’ Somebody thought these labels were a good idea.

My vision blurs with another pulse of sleep. The slow, whirring movement of ‘The Turning Table’ is doing me in. I take a sip of what remains of my coffee- not bad- and I notice, for the first time, the familiar shape of the restaurant. Two circles, one inside the other, and arrows like rays.

The all-seeing eye.

I chuckle, sleepily, and the restaurant moans.

Halfway through a blink, I fall asleep again.

The quiet clatter of my sandwich on the table wakes me. Emily has already filled my mug and moved on to another customer.

My view is still blocked by shrubs, seemingly infinite amidst my off-and-on napping. Eating helps me stay awake, I was hungrier than I realized.

The restaurant halts again, much to the dismay of a man who had just been served a shake. It starts on its own after a few seconds.

I tap my phone and wonder about the stranger. I tap the menu and wonder about that man, Tom, and his description of the eye. I tap my copy of Shitholes and wonder how I might close the growing gap between myself and the book. ‘The Revolving Roti’ has been out of business for a year. The author’s path is growing cold.

The parking lot slowly rotates into view and a mother desperately tries to get kids out of an SUV before the entrance disappears again. They gesture angrily to the TV screens embedded in the seats ahead of them and she gestures angrily to the door. ‘The Turning Table’ seems to move a little faster suddenly, though it’s likely my imagination.

Assuming the author and I are moving in the same direction, we will only meet if he slows down or if I speed up. I stretch my legs under the table and I wonder just how much faster I have it in me to go.

I wonder about the legitimacy of shortcuts.

-traveler

I imagine the person who coined ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ thought they were being clever. Like most things that seem clever in writing but are normally unsaid, ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’s name is obnoxious and not really all that clever at all. Going forward I will call it: ‘Brick-Point,’ with the understanding that we are talking about this, specific, point and no other, differently-coordinated, point.

A point of bricks.

The ‘Badlands’ are not an easy place to visit for the carless traveler and this carless traveler does not wish to improve or challenge himself- motivations that might make the difficulty more palatable to a certain type of person. What it means, for me, is the social discomfort of hitchhiking followed by the physical discomfort of sleeping on the ground. A ground peppered with rocks and bones.

Night, in the ‘Badlands,’ is quiet, but in that quiet, relative to it, quiet things become loud. The sand readjusts itself. The wind readjusts the sand. Things contract in the cold. Other things crawl or roll or fly overhead. I learn, early, to turn off my light. It serves only to attract what passes for life in the dry, cracked earth. There is nothing much to see anyway.

I sleep fitfully and wake with a start to a brightly lit morning.

The ‘Brick-Point’ is still several miles away.

‘‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ is, nearly always, a massive pile of bricks. Like other pilgrimage pieces, it grows as people visit and add their own bricks to the pile- bricks they’ve purchased, bricks they’ve found, but more often than not, bricks that were once a part of something they loved.

It is a resting place for bricks and a memorial to the structures they were once a part of, though it may not always seem that way.

Some corner of the internet has adopted ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W’ as an art piece so, when it is not a pile of bricks, it is sometimes a house or several small houses. Other times it is a massive brick word, barely legible from the tallest nearby dune. Once, with careful use of forced perspective, it was made to look as though no bricks existed there at all.

The pile has taken several forms over several decades but, like the phoenix, an avatar of entropy, its destiny is to crumble again and again, no matter the energy it wastes in cohesion.’

A bold statement by the author of Shitholes. I wonder if they’re his words or if he lifted them off the artist’s forum, the one that associates itself with this place. I had a look at it back when my phone had service and, suffice to say, the ‘avatar of entropy’ bit would be right up their alley. Maybe he’s just trying to sell books.

‘Brick-Point’ is pain to get to but it’s not hard to find. With the coordinates plugged in and a general heading, it’s only a matter of following the path of least resistance. I pack up and start to walk, picking my way over and around the barren landscape.

An hour later I spot a line in the distant sand and I groan. It is, undoubtedly, the work of artists- it reeks of art school, burning man, and sweat. Worse, it looks fresh- a uniform black line across the red-brown wastes of the ‘Badlands.’ Paint? Paper? Reclaimed garbage bags?

No.

Shadow.

I arrive at the line and see it is not ‘in the sand’ at all. It is a long, uniform, shadow stretched impossibly far. I check my coordinates and follow it because it is, almost certainly, leading to ‘Brick-Point 43.8554° N, 102.3397° W.’

An hour on and I am able to make out the source of the shadow; another line, this one also impossibly long but stretching from the horizon into the sky. I squint against the sun but cannot make out its terminus.

An hour later I arrive at ‘Brick-Point’ and find it abandoned. The bricks have been stacked, one on top of the other over and over again. They disappear into the sky. I examine the tower closely but cannot make out the use of adhesive. There may be an internal structure but even a metal bar would sway and bend eventually. I look around, expecting to see someone, wishing someone was there to share in the wonder and terror the impossible brick structure invokes within me. I try, again, to make out the top and experience a sympathetic vertigo.

I fall over and am glad to be alone.

There is a small slip of paper wedged under the bottom-most brick, folded there very carefully. Something is written on the inside, I see, but I cannot make out what without disturbing it.

I hem and haw for a while. I approach the tower and step away again. As the sun rises in the sky the long shadow draws back to its caster. I look again at the paper. It is only folded once. It is not thick, not a wedge for balancing out some rickety chair. It is, most certainly, a note.

I kneel and pull the note out from under the brick. It slips easily into my hand. There is a noise like a heavy footstep some distance away as I unfold the paper. It says:

‘RUN’

A brick falls into the sand nearby.

-traveler

‘The Lathe’s Court’ is unattended and difficult to find. Some suggest it has been abandoned and, by all accounts, it seems to be, though the governing rules of roadside art are historically vague and the degradation may be part and parcel of the show. It shares the traits of its kin (car-henges and cement dinosaurs alike) in that it professes no statement of purpose and bears no clear signature. ‘The Lathe’s Court,’ like the others, simply exists to be witnessed and will continue to draw the occasional pilgrimage until the trees shake off their tending.’

The Lathe’s Court is easy enough to find at sunset.

I’ve taken to editorial scribbling in Shitholes since the stranger’s phone has been disconnected. It may be convenient to have notes if a second edition ever rolls out, or, if I happen to find a second edition already existing somewhere, it may be convenient to have something to compare. I still have a lot of questions about all of this, even though I don’t ask them as often as I once did.

‘The Lathe’s Court’ (where a ‘lathe’ is a woodworking machine) is easier to find at sunset because the artist’s statues, which have been carved into the still-living trunks of trees, continue to grow. The ‘Lathe Dancers’ (where ‘dancer’ is one of the many carved human figures in the ‘court’) have risen well above the ground and hover sparsely in the branches. The setting sun, for a few moments each evening, reveals them by their shadows.

Easy enough, but eerie.

Eerie if, like me, you don’t know what you’re looking for and if you assume, like many would, that the court remains unwarped and at ground level. Eerie if, like me, you rest underneath them to pour, frustrated, over a hand-drawn map. Eerie if, like me, you look up to see the shadows there, suddenly. Eerie if, like me, you are alone.

Time, but not decay, has taken its toll on ‘The Lathe’s Court,’ stretching the limbs and features of the figures there into uncomfortable silhouettes. Their skin has become rough with bark, their mouths sealed shut or awkwardly gaping. Arms and legs have grown new joints, collarbones collect the canopy’s rotting detritus. Some have become host to animals, others to birds, but, in the sun, they are what they were, they remain human-enough.

I climb a tree to look at one and hang, for a moment, my arms around a woman’s waist.

“This is new,” I joke to her.

She creaks under my weight.

There is a man ahead of us, a ‘Lathe Man.’ The tree’s life has emphasized the man’s posture; he was carved to be proclaiming something, his arms spread out, grown far beyond any possible model.

The court is vast and layered, its ‘dancers’ spanning elevations and poses. They disappear in the twilight, dissolving back into the chaos of twigs and branches. Darkness obscures everything but the odd limb.

I take a different way out- I’ve lost the path but I know which direction the road is. These days I don’t mind being a little lost. I come upon a fallen tree, a fallen ‘dancer.’ A lightning strike has severed her connection to the earth. In the air, as she was carved, the ‘dancer’ may have been reaching for an embrace. I scour the treetops above us with my light but find no partner there. On the ground, having fallen forward, she seems to crawl. Her mossy arms bend awkwardly, failing, over the years, to hold the weight of her trunk.

She faces the road but the road, I know, is several miles ahead.

-traveler