Traversing the country by motorcycle has granted me an appreciation for having the wind at my back and it is steadily at my back for the latter miles of a long stretch of driving. This bears mentioning now only because the driving is not in a straight line or through a valley, where a person might expect steady wind. The path turns in several directions and the wind follows, rushing me along like the current of an invisible river. Its intent is so clear, near the end, that I recognize immediately when I take a wrong turn, the breeze suddenly and clearly at my right. I pull a U-turn and pause at a three-way stop just a mile or so back the way I came, a place where my cell service ends and my map relies mostly on guesswork.

A tree hovers over the intersection, barren except for a few brown leaves and a black baseball cap, tangled in the branches. I toss rocks at it and surprise myself by knocking it loose after just three tries. The hat does not fall straight- it hardly touches the ground before spinning down the road exactly opposite the way I came. I leap back onto the bike and follow.

‘At the terminus of the westward-facing jet stream lies ‘The End of Crowns,’ a romantic name for what is a natural dumping spot for the nation’s hats, umbrellas, kites, and whatever else humanity dares to place above its head. Certainly not all wind-blown ephemera lands at ‘The End of Crowns’ or that any conscious effort has been allocated to this arbitrary separation of garbage, but the westerlies are persistent and regular enough that a dune of sorts has formed at the foot of ‘Halo Hill,’ 50 miles south of LA. It is the dusty-corner-near-the-door of the continent, a collection point for anything that can be airborne on a draft for more than a few minutes.

The intrigue underlying the pseudo-patriotic name (‘The End of Crowns’ being an oft-used backdrop for the enthusiastic internet Libertarian) is that the sky above and around makes up an aerial Bermuda Triangle of sorts, downing drones and birds and even planes before the airspace was quietly forbidden, forming an obnoxious detour for flights into LAX. The accumulation of fowl and insect creates a year-long reek about the dune itself, turning away all but the most stubborn of researchers.

Biologists who brave the smell have discovered strange, flightless evolutions among aging maggots (who can call them flies?) in the dune. Historians have found hats dating back before the Revolutionary War. A recent core sample suggests even the dinosaurs were confounded by the place, the skeletons of several flat, ancient pterodactyl-types the only thing separating generations of old headwear from the earth’s crust.

‘The End of Crowns’ was quarantined for several years in the early 2000’s following reports of a virulent dandruff outbreak and restricted again in 2011 when a local entrepreneur claimed to have discovered a pocket of rare sports caps, creating a vicious gold rush of sorts. In 2017, ‘The End of Crowns’ became a protected environment and a tall fence was constructed to dissuade visitors. It works about as well one might suspect.’

The black cap strikes the ground and performs a final roll before vaulting upward. It strikes a wall of hats that towers above several nearby trees and moves over them in a jerking sort of spider-crawl before settling into place. I park the bike and consider the enormity of the undertaking, the sheer number of hats needed to create a wall that stretches 20’ into the air and indefinitely to either side, before I remove my helmet and identify, by the whistling, that what I’m looking at is the fence. The helmet tugs at my grip, suddenly, the underside momentarily exposed to the wind. I strap it to the handlebars and approach.

The wind is stronger nearer the wall, intent on working its way through the various folds and cracks between the hodge-podge fabric. I step to the left in order to examine an old cowboy hat and realize, too late, that the wind is stronger there. It pulls me off my feet and drags me up against the wall, where the smell of the thing becomes undeniable: wet rot, fabric and feathers. I press myself backward- resisting isn’t impossible, just difficult. The wind has stripped everything but loose dirt from the ground near the fence, though, so getting any further than a leg’s length away is futile. I recall a lesson in escaping riptides- the idea is to move sideways, not backwards. I put this strategy into practice and soon find myself performing an odd horizontal walk along the ground.

After a few yards I’m pulled back against the wall with such force that I see stars. When I open my eyes and press myself away from the hats I realize I’m no longer on the ground but held in place half a foot above it. I re-situate myself, with great effort, until I’m standing horizontally. I trace a circle in the dirt to my left with a healthy amount of disbelief.

Walking along the wall is difficult. My feet sink where the debris is thickest and my clothes rage against me where the barrier is thin, desperately trying to join the collection on the fence. I’m 10’ off the ground when I feel the suction wane and I tumble back to earth, rolling along the vertical plane. I land with my face in the dirt, much of the initial whimsy lost in the fall.

“Are you all right?”

A woman crawls down the wall nearby, carefully planting her feet in the place where the earth meets the fence.

“Fine,” I groan- not at my most convincing.

She begins to strip off her clothes. I scrabble backward, avert my eyes, look back because I don’t understand what she’s doing, and, seeing she sees me watching, look away again, embarrassed.

“It’s the easiest way to escape the fence,” she explains, “Just got to ball everything up.”

When I open my eyes again she’s already 30’ away, standing from a crawl. The woman disappears between the trees before I think to ask what she had been doing.

I spend some time trying to dig a hole in the debris, just for a quick look at ‘The End of Crowns’ beyond. It’s useless- more flies in to fill the gap, striking the back of my head in the meantime. I give up after half an hour, secretly relieved. A part of me worries about the strength of the vacuum. I wonder if it would pull my eye straight from its socket.

The coast seems clear enough as I take off my own clothes, recreating the tight bundle I glimpsed in the woman’s arms. Tucking it beneath my armpit, I drag myself from ‘The End of Crowns’ and back onto the road.

-traveler

‘‘The Dread Body of Westing Hills’ may well be gone by the time these words reach publication, but the attraction (if the word can be said to apply) is included for its present effect upon the Wayside and the tension that has risen between those who dwell there.

Unlike much of the Wayside, ‘The Body’ is relatively easy to spot by those who seek it. In the historical Westing Hills neighborhood, on the corner of Madison and 5^th, it looks as though a man is napping in the grass, head resting upon arm and torso well into the drainage ditch behind. In reality, the man is quite dead and has been so for some time- long enough that one feels no compulsion to check vitals for confirmation. That the man rots is not a debatable point but that the body was once a man is fiercely contested by those who wander near.

For all ‘The Body’ is theoretically visible and for all it should provoke fear or repulsion in those who pass it in the course of their daily lives, one feels a sense of justice in sighting the corpse’s sad state. Most ignore it- a thing that exists only in the peripheries, that warrants no attention. Having seen ‘The Body,’ a witness finds it difficult to muster the initiative to call the police and the police, when called, do nothing. One struggles to name it any other thing but an object.

‘The Dread Body of Westing Hills’ is to rot on the street, it seems, protected by magic or destiny or compelled indifference. It does not resist covering, but those who hide it face backlash from those who believe the Wayside should be left in its natural state. For every hand that draws tarp across ‘The Body’ there is another that peels it from the rot. For every attempt to push ‘The Body’ further into the ditch, there is another to drag it onto the sidewalk. In response to a video of an unknown visitor closing the man’s eyes, ‘The Body’s’ eyelids have gone missing, confirming, for many, that something remains nearby (further in the peripheries, perhaps) to mete out the punishment in its own, patient way.’

‘The Body’ is still rotting when I find it. Its skin is largely unbroken but it roils with insects. It hardly smells until I stand over it, at which point the stench becomes unbearable. Whatever maintains the man’s sight must preserve its whole, drawing out the long decomposition. I slop gasoline at ‘The Body’ from a careful distance, eyeing the street, the trees, the windows of nearby houses. Nobody moves to stop me.

The Stranger earmarked ‘The Body’ for burning and his reasoning was sound. Having studied the margins of his book, I realize the Stranger’s reasoning was well-considered and, when I arrived at the corner of Madison and 5^th, I never doubted that this was a thing that should be finished.

The corpse goes up in flames, hissing and cracking and curling in upon itself. It warms a cool autumn evening and casts my dancing shadow into the street. When it’s near embers, passersby finally begin to see it.

Sirens in the distance.

-Traveler

Spotted Traveler, again.

All the Stranger ever wrote about me in his book, granted, he wrote it more than once. I study my shadow, draped in the carpet of a grim hotel. It stares back through a single glowing eye- the red-orange switch of a surge protector. I shift and the shadow’s head is forced under a shelf.

Better.

I didn’t recognize my expectations regarding the Stranger’s written accounts of our meetings until they were abruptly unmet. Hurried, sometimes, and regularly discreet, I thought my own recollections of the man were brief.

There’s more than length to a dick-measuring contest.

A joke he would make.

I crawl onto the bed- crawl out again to retrieve the small pouch of nickels on the table. A truck rumbles past the window and my shadow looms, suddenly, to peer over my shoulder. I shake the bag of change- noise wards off evil spirits and intrusive thoughts alike. The traffic passes and the room returns to the predictable sort of dark I prefer.

I slip between the sheets again, toss my clothes to the floor, and press a nickel into a slot on the headboard. The world goes quiet- dreadfully so. It’s the quiet of a power outage in the middle of the night, the sudden non-ticking of the fridge or the silence of a bedside fan. It’s the sound of an absence and, after a moment, I trace the absence to myself. My own body is silent, as though the blood has stopped in my veins. There is quiet, even within me. It’s frightening, at first, and then the world returns and the noise of it is so disturbing that I run coins into the headboard until the pouch is emptied.

Already I am afraid to hear that sound return. I’m just as afraid of the blessed silence, that it has so quickly become a balm. I breathe (silently) and remind myself why I limited the nickels to a handful- the same reason I prefer twine to chalk on the occasion that Shitholes leads me into a cave. The twine is a logical limit and the chalk, well, one piece has the potential for so many arrows.

Re-adjusted to the silence (and resigned to its inevitable end), I pick up the Stranger’s book and endeavor to understand the path to his strange demise.

‘For those seeking respite from the myriad stimuli of everyday life, one might call ahead to the local motel-by-the-hour and inquire about the make and model of their beds. The long-defunct ‘Tectonics’ line of vibrating mattress frame wears in such a way that, after a few years of heavy use, the motor maintains a frequency quite opposite the music of the spheres, creating a state of absolute stillness.

As with much of what happens in motels with vibrating beds, addiction is common and side-effects are the norm. Dizziness follows long use of the ‘Tectonics’ line, as do migraines. Random internal ruptures have been reported, though witnesses of such events are unreliable, hiding either deep inebriation or motive for murder.’

-traveler

‘A troubling things occurs when men find themselves reflected in the symbol of the ambiguous walking man that shines white at American crosswalks to signal the way forward. They seek anonymity. They shave their heads. They become enchanted with dichotomy, sure that life is a crossroads at every turn. They become strange.

Thusly changed, the strangers understand liberty only when faced with barriers. They unbind without knowing whether chains hold inmate or anchor. They topple walls without consideration for structure or cold. They understand the forest as both freedom and hindrance, so that the paths they carve there wind deeply and without purpose.

They see the revelation at the crosswalk as a new manifest destiny and they evangelize, in a way, sure that the uninitiated resist crossing only for having forgotten to press the button.’

–excerpt, Unattributed Writings on the Origins of Strangers

I recognize the passing of two state borders before the strangers think to press an empty case of beer over my head, twisting it so that the position of the handle roughly corresponds to my mouth. Night falls and the bed of the pick-up grows dreadfully cold. I squirm forward until my body is pressed up against the back of the cab. Inside, the voices of the strangers are loud, jovial. They laugh often. I can’t make out any words.

I sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. Light creeps in through the crude mask. The mouth gap has softened under the constant barrage of my breathing. I chew at it, thinking I might tear a strip upward. In the end, I only manage to make the orifice jagged.

It’s warm again when the truck finally stops. The strangers announce themselves with their fingers, prodding me here and there until the knots loosen. I hear the tailgate screech open- am dragged into a sitting position, pulled to standing. The ground beneath me is gravel. It’s hot, now. I would happily trade my life’s temperature extremes for an unending 65 degrees. Someone speaks ahead of me, asking a question they should have considered earlier:

“You’re the guy from a while back, right?”

I spit a wad of cardboard and the sound of its impact is close and satisfying. The improvised hood is torn away and the world becomes painfully bright. My eyes adjust in time to see the stranger prepare a world-ending sucker punch.

The world ends for a second or two. Its return is nauseating.

We’re in the parking lot of a stadium.

I’m dragged inside.

The stadium is open air but it reeks of exhaust. Strangers populate the bleachers, maybe a hundred total are scattered about in sparse groups. A few throw popcorn at me as we pass but my entrance is otherwise unremarkable. At the crest of the stairs I make out the entertainment- a sort of demolition derby is in motion below, all of it confined to a shallow pit in the shape of a man. I shudder as the pit seems to shift, its walls colliding with a van. The vehicle lifts and spins, finally rolling to a stop on its side. A stranger crawls from the wreckage, limping on a broken leg. The pit shifts again and the earth seems to consume him. I trace its shape back to the bleachers and spy a silhouetted form at the top.

The game is played in the shadow of the King of Strangers. He looks in my direction and shatters an old sedan below. The crowd cheers.

I’m led up through the gathered men. A few more people throw food. Most look, now, having traced the attention of the man above them. They release me as we near the King of Strangers, their encouragement rough, silent, and clear: approach. Given no other choice, I do, and I see my shadow join his in the vast circle below.

“You’ve returned my man,” he says.

“There was something wrong with him.”

“Yes.”

The King of Strangers wears a cardboard crown, lifted from some nearby fast food chain. It fits painfully tight, cutting into the skin of his bald head. From a distance I would have said the man wore robes but, in reality, his clothes drape, in tatters, from his body.

“Something for you,” he says, and when he kneels to retrieve a book at his feet there are explosions below. The western wall of the stadium collapses when he hands it to me.

Cheers turn to screams.

“The man was a writer,” he says, “He was working on this when he… succumbed.”

The book he hands me is a copy of Shitholes.

“He was working on a published book?”

“He wrote in the margins.” I flip through the pages and see another book’s worth of text in the blank spaces. The letters are clean and straight, written in pen. The King of Strangers sees my admiration and adds: “The man believed he was above mistakes, which was not exactly true. He thrived in broken places, where small mistakes remained unnoticed. The book is yours now. You may go.”

‘May’ turns out to be an exaggeration. I’m grabbed by the waiting strangers and tossed out into the parking lot where my bag sits atop the bike. I intend to toss the gifted book at the next gas station but see that my captors have topped me up. By the time I stop, I’ve convinced myself to read it.

-traveler

‘‘The Specter at Balesford Bluff’ (formerly ‘The Hermit at Balesford Bluff’) is generally considered a bad omen, not because it’s a particularly willful wraith but because the hermit delighted in misfortune as a mortal and seems to maintain this delight in the afterlife. If anything, the hermit’s demise appears to have granted him a preternatural ability to sense the unfolding of a dire situation with enough time to manifest and leer.

The silver-lining of the situation as a whole lies in ‘The Specter’s’ nearness to ‘The Balesford Witching Well.’ ‘The Bluff’ overlooks the highway as one exits to the north and an appearance of ‘The Specter’ following a deposit at ‘The Well’ has, on occasion, alerted a perceptive traveler to a monkey’s-paw type situation, allowing them to return and re-word their ill-formed wish, much to the disappointment, one might suspect, of the former hermit. That the ‘The Specter’ has not yet reacted to the pattern is cause for much chatter among those who discuss the oft-crystalline rigidity of hauntings. It is, to many, proof that the terrestrially-inclined deceased are unable to break their immortal routines, though several people who knew the hermit in life claim that this particular man exhibited about as much self-awareness then as he does now.’

I wake in the back of a pick-up truck, the world roaring past on either side of me. The strangers have wrapped in me in rope so tightly that I can feel my pulse throbbing against the cord, as though my entire body has been squeezed into the blood-pressure machine at the back of the grocery store. The motorcycle hovers over me, chained carelessly to the side. The handlebars would land squarely on my face in the event of it slipping when we, say, hit even the mildest of bumps. Someone taps on the glass from the cabin and I strain to look backward. One of the Strangers nods to me. He lifts my bag as if to say ‘Don’t worry, we didn’t forget this.’

I can’t see anything over the walls of the cargo bed, though a cliffside lingers distantly behind us. There, at the top, I think I see the silhouette of a man.

He waves.

-traveler