Movement in the dark gray of our peripheries is universally fearful. No matter how awful, no matter how truly terrible the source of that movement is, there is some comfort when the veil is lifted and the thing moves again in plain sight. For a sneaking thing to slip it must exist in our world, in the world where strange agendas do not excuse a thing from mistakes.

For all the time I’ve spent staring at Autumn by the Wayside, it has not moved an inch.

But now… a slip.

‘If there is any magic left in tales of the pirate’s black spot, ‘The Fairy Forest’ may be the source. It is a standing massacre of trees, a plague that spirals outward from the char of some distant fire as though ritually summoned and left to sow chaos. The culprit is the ‘Fairy Fern,’ a lush parasite that masks the scene of its crime with bright green fronds. Even seasoned travelers may find themselves in the heart of the infestation before they realize it is not life that surrounds them, but death.’

This entry was different in the old copy of Autumn by the Wayside. It is familiar enough that I doubted myself but, looking back over my own writings, I see that things have changed. Has the book quietly changed between print runs or has it quietly changed in my pack, shifting itself like ‘Mazzy’s’ maze?

The way to ‘The Fairy Forest’ is familiar enough, a left where I once took an errant right, a confident press through shrubs that obscure the path. I clamber over a tree and feel a sharp prick in my shoulder, a second shortly after. I turn to find I am an ivy marionette, the twirling roots of the fairy fern having reached down from above grasp my jacket.

Despite the warning in Shitholes, I have stumbled into the infestation.

I leave my jacket hanging and press on, careful to swipe away the curious tendrils as I pass. Before long I find the site of the Stranger’s fire, a column of fairy fern that ascends into the trees and spreads across the canopy like an atom bomb.

This is where it started, where our paths first crossed.

There is a circle of sunlight near the column, a place where the fairy fern has accidentally fallen a tree and not yet had time to patch the hole in its cover.

I sit and I wait and I move as the sun does so that I am always facing in the direction of my should-be shadow. I imagine that the Stranger will arrive quietly, folding himself out from the dark of some tree or simply appearing in a place that was previously empty.

When he comes, he is walking. He wipes a thin trickle of blood from his neck with the back of his hand, the same hand that he uses to brandish his pistol at the creeping ferns. The Stranger walks in a line toward me, as though held to an invisible path, and he is only ten feet away when his eyes meet mine.

He tries to run.

-traveler

There are long sabbaticals hidden between these posts, reader. I’m not sure you would notice if they weren’t made explicit. I work, or rest, or find myself stuck in one way or another.

I never go home.

Money has certainly been an issue more recently. Money for getting the bike out of impound (left at the ‘Edge of Disaster’ just a little too long). Money for a new pack. Money to fix an old truck radio. Money to eat.

Luckily, the unending autumn brings a long harvest and I am suited for mindless farm work, for pumpkins and apples and shuffling through the dirt. I work and make money and bide my time, devoting much of my thinking to the problem of the stranger and waiting for the weekend of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival.’

I am thinner and darker when it arrives.

‘There is something at the heart of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival’ that radiates a sickly-sweet feeling of unease, a feeling that hits well after one pays for entry. At ‘Mazzy’s,’ every beloved autumn tradition is taken to an extreme, exaggerated past seasonal cheer and into a clownish, careful-what-you-wish-for mockery. Pumpkins are heavier, hayrides are slower, and the cider is so thick with sugar that one can pour out a glass and count to three before it touches the ground.

‘Mazzy’s’ is syrupy as a place and people stick there like flies, determined to get their money’s worth and determined to re-experience festive autumnal memories that, upon careful recollection, are no more than a series of half-remembered commercials and cartoon specials. In a wasted sci-fi future, this will be where they find humans sealed up in amber- fat, and frozen in postures of mild disappointment.’

The ‘Carnival’ arranges itself late in the season, the result of hodgepodge chores assigned to myself and the others on the farm. There are others, yes, people like myself who prefer cash under the table and don’t mind bunking with strangers. We pick apples one day, assemble a tall, rickety slide the next. Signs are painted, hay is stacked. There is talk of the corn maze, of the tedious task of carving a path through the stiff husks and paper-sharp leaves.

And then, one day, the maze is there. The entrance appears with the sunrise and from the same rickety slide we see that the path has seemingly chewed its way out from the center.

“They must grow it that way,” I offer over a dinner of thick, pumpkin stew.

“No,” someone says, a woman who has been working the farm longer than me, “No way the corn grows that way.”

She doesn’t offer another explanation.

Sometimes I roll over in the mornings and feel the absence of the comb case in the breast pocket of my shirt- an absence so distinct that it seems, in the twilight of dreaming, to be as thick as the thing itself. One morning, to stop my teeth from chattering, I pull one of the ‘Arbor-Eat’ems’ picks from the vial and find, despite my weary skepticism, that I feel better. The pick (one for now, as there are only ten) becomes a part of my farming personality. On the night of the stew and of the self-made maze, I find the soggy splinter migrating to the corners of my mouth and tugging at my lips.

It pulls me to the cornfield.

The maze is not forbidden, but nobody admits to entering before I do. The leaves rustle and the pick twists in my teeth: ‘This way,’ ‘Turn,’ ‘Oops, dead end.’

“Alice?” I ask, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

If it’s Alice in the pick, she says nothing. We wander until the moon is overhead and stumble upon the center where a scarecrow slumps on its post. A bucket of candy rests at its feet, along with a sign that says, ‘Please Take One ONLY.”

“Do you know the difference between a maze and a labyrinth?” I ask, taking the pick from my mouth, “A labyrinth is just one, winding path from the outside to the center. A maze splits and dead-ends- has as many ways in and out as you like.”

This is a conversation for tomorrow’s dinner. I practice, with Alice and the scarecrow, as I used to practice in the mirrors of middle school bathrooms.

“You can’t really be lost in a labyrinth…”

(Noises in the corn interrupt me, but quiet as I take notice. I find out later that the maze is rearranging itself. That’s the nature of these places. It will be another long night.)

“You can’t be lost in a labyrinth, but, I suppose, if it’s very long, you can be stuck. You might forget which direction you’re heading-”

I drop the Alice-pick and spend a long time finding it again.

(The maze grows more complex in the meantime.)

“What does it say…” I continue, “What does it say about life that a labyrinth is supposed to be meditative? The beginning is the end, the way is set.”

(An angry ghost eyes me from the scarecrow. It has been the heart of the maze for a hundred years. For a hundred, hundred years. It curses me, but I have always been unlucky and don’t notice much of a difference.)

“There’s some comfort in having no choice.”

I shake the scarecrow’s hand (the ghost rages inside) and turn to leave.

“But if this were a labyrinth, there would be no distinguishing between directions. To catch its prey, a minotaur would only have to stand by and wait.”

-traveler

Diego was not wrong, as much as I assumed he would be. I left ‘The Oasis’ and walked along the road until I was sure I would be out of sight. I circled back into the storm, despite my careful timing, and re-traced my steps, ashamed to be seen.

I looked for the comb case but could not find it.

What I found, instead, was a me-shaped puddle in the earth, hardly the perfect cartoon-silhouette, but close. I must have lain there for some time.

Standing at the foot of that puddle was the closest I’ve come to casting a shadow since, and I have stepped out of the storm and into brighter places to no avail. I am a Peter Pan, past my prime and I don’t know whether I should be concerned.

I feel myself aging.

I cannot fly.

But I have been… okay, in the absence of my vice. And that feels, in many ways, like flying.

‘What came first, the zany name or the concept of a wood-based tasting venue? ‘Arbor-Eat’em’ would have you believe the latter, billing itself as a high-class sort of establishment but having to try a little too hard to pull it off. The core concept is an inversion of the traditional hors de ’oeuvre, a selection of bland fruits and cheese paired with toothpicks of exotic wood. Found yourself wondering about the mouth-feel of a California Redwood? Curious about the earthy notes of the Baobab? Wood tasting might be for you.

‘Arbor-Eat’em’ is not without controversy. In the Fall of 2015 it premiered and then quickly retracted a ‘historical flight,’ consisting of toothpicks carved from reclaimed sources- the bows of ships, the inner layers of casks, and from coffins. The owner played it off as a stunt and swept the incident under the rug, but rumors of old inventory remain.

Nothing says ‘underground’ like a secret menu.’

Wait, no.

I am falling.

This is not the flight of the bird, but the flight of a coward. I’ve been here many times before, briefly suspended in the eye of the storm.

“Sir? We’re starting a round of the cedar, cut just last week.”

“I… thanks.”

I chew nervously through toothpicks and tongue sawdust paste from the holes where my teeth used to be, spitting it into ornamental bowls and rinsing with mineral water between flights. I ignore much of what is said about the processes involved in harvesting this wood, in caring for saplings and leaving a responsible carbon footprint. I am preoccupied with my near future, with the realization that things will still get worse before they get better.

Eventually, though, I settle myself down.

The walking tour filters lazily into a mingling area, situated next to a store for those convinced by the tasting- a place to shop for distant in-laws and work acquaintances. I pick the gouda off of several thin pieces of maple and wait until the host has finished speaking with an enthusiastic Minnesotan family before I put into action the careful approach necessary for under-the-table affairs.

“So,” I begin, “You have any of those coffin toothpicks left?”

The host does not turn to meet me, but I see his eyes slowly narrow, as though the man is falling asleep where he stands. Just as I’m sure they are closed, when I start to wonder if he has chosen to simply blot me out of his reality rather than to acknowledge the question, he speaks.

“Coffins,” he says, “Crew-see-fixes. pretty-lady’s wash basins. We’ve got all sorts of things in the pick cellar.”

“I…”

“What does a man like yourself want with a taste of the dead?”

“Just curious.”

“You know what they say about curiosity?”

He waits for me to answer.

“It killed the cat?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” he repeats, “Company cat got into the nautical picks and they tore up its insides. Had to put it down.”

The host pulls another employee aside and whispers something in her ear before motioning me to follow. We step through a door marked ‘Employees Only’ and continue down a flight of steep, stone stairs. I break the silence after several quiet seconds.

“How did you get in to the toothpick business?”

“Grew up in the boonies,” he says, “Home-schooled. Parents struggled to put food on the table. You know what helps keep your mind off a hungry stomach?”

“Chewing toothpicks?”

“Exactly. We’d make our own- widdle’em down from branches. I got a taste for elm that way.”

“And what’s the deal with the historical picks? Who thought that was a good idea?”

“I did,” he says, and, ahead in the darkness, I cannot see his face.

The host unlocks a heavy door as we reach a landing and we move into a cavernous passage.

“Way I see it,” the host says, “If we soak whiskey in wine casks for a hint of old grapes, why not try something more direct? Why not see what we can glean from a thing that spent a hundred years on the ocean, or sixty below the earth?”

We come to another door, this one simply latched. It’s cold and still in the cellar a place made foreign by its comparative nearness to the heart of the Earth. There are shelves inside the room and, on the shelves, row after row of small, glass vials. In each vial, a bundle of toothpicks, tied with a string. Nothing is labeled, but the host leads me to a place in the center, where the pickings have slimmed.

“Plenty of folk like you,” he says, “Looking for the picks of dead folk. These three here are over a hundred years old. The row below that is at least two hundred. We do our best to source from the States, but the older these get the more likely they’ve been imported.”

I had not seriously planned on buying pieces of a coffin but now, in the grim basement of the ‘Arbor-Eat’em,’ I feel as if I have little choice.

“How much for one vial?”

It’s more than I have.

My palms begin to sweat.

“Do you have anything… cheaper?”

I feel the host’s judgement in the half-darkness. He sighs and slips his hand between the racks, pulling a vial of bright, white picks from the back.

“Last of the budget options,” he says, “Alice Cantrel- dead at 20, aged 5 years in pine.”

He hands me the vial without asking whether I can afford it. The sticks rattle lightly in the glass, the little taps sounding against my palm like static.

“You’re a man with bad habits,” the host comments as he turns back to the door.

“What makes you say that?”

“Strange tastes and no money.”

-traveler

In the thickest part of the storm, as I spit gray rain and wind-blown filth from the gaps in my teeth, a rainbow flicker cuts through the darkness: reading ‘The O sis” in neon, its ‘a’ broken and dark.

A wilting poster outside the door advertises Spring specials, though we are well into Fall. The windows are obscured by condensation, streaked with thick, greasy dust. Something cooks inside. As I hesitate at the entrance, that something begins to burn.

Vague shadows move across the glass, diluted by the grime and by my own, burning eyes.

I enter and, though it was truly dark outside, ‘The Oasis’ appears dark for so few functioning lights. Illumination inside is haphazard and yellow, an atmosphere that makes skin appear splotchy and highlights the raised veins of hands. I approach the counter, dripping across the linoleum entryway, and a woman there coughs and looks me over.

“Are you here for the take-out order?” she asks.

The sky outside cracks with thunder.

“No,” I say.

“Wait time’s fifteen minutes.”

I am wary of the door, of the bell that hangs on the handle, but neither move in the twenty minutes or so I wait. The tenuous lighting hides my shadow and fellow patrons chew their burgers without sparing me a glance, without so much as turning their heads. In the quiet there, a pattern of sound emerges- the clinking of silverware on plates, the rustling of anxious feet, and several quiet coughs.

A mouse peers out from under the chair across from me. It makes a swift circle around one of the legs, daring itself to retrieve the bread crumb at my feet and losing its nerve at the last second. It loses this game of chicken several times before I kick the crumb toward it.

Or try to.

I kick the crumb and it does not budge. I feel its sharp edge drag across the tread of my boot. Bending over, I see it is glued down, that it is a brown piece of plastic in the likeness of a crumb. The mouse circles again. I see, now, that it is on a track.

I approach the counter again with a simple question: “What the hell?”

“Are you here for the take-out order?” she asks.

From the waist down the woman is nothing more than a thick pole and a bundle of dusty wires.

“Wait time’s fifteen minutes,” she says.

I wait for the crack of thunder but it does not come, or, it does come eventually, but not on cue. The storm outside is, unfortunately, very real.

It can’t have been anybody’s dream, to design an animatronic ‘customer looking over menu,’ but the scene is carefully prepared and vividly imagined. If I am to assume the creaking fans and the semi-circle coffee stains are a product of design rather than happenstance (and it does seem more reasonable than a place like this receiving the traffic necessary to warrant such wear) there is a deep insanity at the core of ‘The Mirage.’

There is comfort in its status as a franchise; I am comfortable knowing anybody involved with the design would be miles away.

There is a bell on the counter and a small sign that says ‘Ring for service.’ I consider the likelihood of it being another solid prop is about 70%, but try anyway and am rewarded by a sharp ding that startles a body to life in a booth to my right. The man rises and utters a string of apologies the way another person might curse. He dusts off his uniform and wipes a sheen of saliva from his cheek before maneuvering himself behind the counter.

“Are you here for the take-out order?” the false host asks.

“Come around the corner or she’ll keep on with that,’ the living man says.

“Wait time’s fifteen minutes.”

“Shut up,” he tells her, with more feeling, I think, than he means to show.

I wonder if a man in his situation names the things. It seems almost necessary.

“Welcome to ‘The Oasis,’” he says, “The best and only burger joint in this… 12.4 mile radius. Table for one?”

“Yes,” I say, glancing behind me, at the door again, “I’m not expecting anyone.”

As the man, Diego, wakes more fully, he proves to be more well-adjusted than I would expect of a person with his job. He gives me a tour of the menu and tells me that everything is in stock, that it’s all frozen in the back.

“Some of it’s frozen on the plates we serve ya with,” he says, “Microwave dinners for fourteen bucks.”

He recommends a pasta that freezes well, and he offers to let me dry the clothes in my pack with the machine normally reserved for aprons and floor mats.

“Least I could fricken’ do, man,” he says, heading toward the kitchen.

The animatronic fancy of ‘The Mirage’ extends, horrifically, into the bathroom where a detailed mannequin pisses eternally into the middle urinal and side-eyes when I pull up next to him. Two legs shift under one of the stalls and a man’s voice hums from inside every thirty seconds or so. I wave my hands uselessly under the taps before realizing these, of all things, are not motion controlled.

Back in my booth I begin to inventory what remains of my belongings. Most of what I lost was notes- things I scribbled on napkins and scraps of paper. The radio is intact but something rattles inside as I shake it. Pebbles, maybe, or something come lose. Could be nothing, too, I don’t make a habit of shaking my things.

The second copy of ‘Autumn by the Wayside,’ the one with the vandalized author, is heavy with water but readable. I open it on the table, to let it dry. The pack itself is a total loss. I unzip a pocket to retrieve my keys, my wallet, another to-

The comb case is gone.

“You okay, man?” Diego asks, stopping short of handing me my alfredo, “Lose something out there?”

“A comb case.”

“Your hair looks fine,” he jokes, “Considering.”

When I don’t respond he tries again.

“This thing important to you? Family heirloom or something?”

I am quiet, still, as I consider that the case itself was not passed to me, but that my family, just about every member, has almost certainly carried something like it: a bottle of ‘ibuprofen,’ an old looking box of ‘cigarettes,’ an unobtrusive flask. I was kidding myself with the idea of diners as my familiar. There is nothing more familiar to my family than these items. There is nothing more familiar to me than the comb case.

Was nothing.

“No big deal,” I say, though an amount of dread must creep into my voice, “Those, uh, those bathroom dudes are pretty creepy.”

“Fuck yes, they are,” Diego says, setting the pasta in front of me.

“Is the woman’s the same way?”

He leans in close and asks, “You a perv, man?”

It’s difficult to judge, by the tone of his voice, which answer he’s expecting.

“No…”

“Neither am I,” he says, slumping into the booth across from me, “But sometimes the wi-fi goes out. Desperate times n’ all that.”

The alfredo is about a degree cooler than the temperature of the room. I chew slowly, torn between thoughts of the comb case and the conversation with Diego.

“You see the urinal guy’s dick?”

I cough and look around at the other diners, forgetting, for an instant, that I am alone.

“From the corner of my eye,” I say, “Yes.”

Diego leans back against the booth and stretches: “Fucking hard to miss, that thing is.”

“Hmm.”

“Points due, fricken,’ North too.”

The thick of the storm is over us again. It rattles the windows and shakes Diego from his thoughts.

“I’ll go do up those dishes, man,” he says, standing, “You holler if you need a refill or something.”

I finish my alfredo and eat a slice of pie of the same consistency. The storm comes and goes in 45-minute intervals, it seems, circling the area like the door-mouse. I plan for an outward escape, along a service road that Diego says feeds ‘The Mirage’ at the end of every month. I am too late to catch a ride, but early enough that the truck’s recent passing will have made the road easier to follow in the rain. He lends me several garbage bags. I dress in one, stuff my things in the others.

“A proper hobo,” he remarks, idly dusting a dummy that pretends to stir a cup of coffee.

“Thanks,” I say, as joke at first but, then, sincerely, “Really, thanks for everything.”

“Ain’t a thing,” he says, “Every fuckin’ person comes through that door looking like yourself. ‘Cept for Ralph who brings in the food. And everybody but Ralph has a strangeness about’em that makes me think they could use a hand. If I can send you off with a few garbage bags, it’s my pleasure.”

“What’s my strangeness, then?” I ask of a man that ogles robo-dick.

“You ain’t got a shadow.”

-traveler

Imagine a place with a single published online review. Imagine it reads only: ‘Too good to be true.’

Imagine it is a one-star review.

That place is ‘The Oasis,’ or, in some regions, ‘The Mirage,’ one of a series of franchise restaurants that exist only in the least likely conditions. One might stumble upon ‘The Oasis’ operating in a ghost town, its neon and chrome casting ghoulish shadows across the walls of abandoned buildings. It might be the only establishment left open in an otherwise dead mall, the better-days ambience creeping through the halls of the empty complex. A smaller franchise might stand, inexplicably, at the peak of a mountain. The corporation’s location finder lists at least one in the open sea, where no known island exists.

Ecologically speaking, ‘The Oasis’ is whatever the opposite of a parasite might be: it can exist only when nothing else is around. It thrives for lack of competition because it is universally expensive, poorly run, and drab. When there is any other option, ‘The Oasis’ loses out, but when there is no choice, ‘The Oasis’ is unbeatable.

It would be easy to be critical of the franchise owners and of the overall business model at play but, if you find yourself at the doors of ‘The Oasis,’ you might reflect on your own choices and on the path that brought you there.

–excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside