Very few people genuinely believe the Gray Road Theory is plausible. The fact of the matter is that hoping really, really hard that something is true looks a lot like belief, and there is no shortage of hope among those who aspire to travel but do not have the means. This is what fills out the perceived population, an abundance of Gray Road Theory ‘hopers’ on the internet and, occasionally, traveling the wayside. Rumors of legitimate Gray Routes give them hope and the wayside takes that hope and consumes it. The less hope they have, the more evangelical they become. Until they have no hope at all.
(In which case they go home.)
The span of life between falling for Gray Road Theory and returning home is characterized by aimless wandering and occasional conventions. The conventions traditionally take place in one of the bizarre locales theorized to be connected to a Gray Route and are, therefore, very out of the way. They reek of disappointment by the second day as the attendees that remain, like old women at an assisted care facility, trade stories of dizzy spells and lost time.
The headline acts of these events are never the same year to year. The reputability of any one Gray Road Theorist is as laughable as the theory itself and dependent entirely on the whims of the year’s attendees. Sometimes the community demands that an aspect of Gray Road Theory is proven definitively, other times they want to see the old assumptions cast aside. They construct a shallow mockery of the jumps and starts of the existing scientific community, seemingly content with plateaus but giddy with the knowledge that soon there will be a staged discovery, a Gray Road Revolution that will turn everything they once thought upside down (and it’s been turned so often, reader, that even the most dedicated followers aren’t sure which way is up anymore).
The reason Gray Road Theory never goes anywhere, you see, is because they’re always having to start over. There is always a crack in the foundation and so the house never gets built. Would it be a nice house? Sure, but the foundation cracks because the ground is wrong. This world just won’t support the sort of thing they’re trying to build.
Many won’t deny any of this. They agree that the way we understand our laws won’t support their theory. They nod and smile and go on hoping, hoping to the brink of belief, but never quite reaching it.
If only there was some way to shorten the distance.
-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
I lean over the railings of the ‘The Ross River Ferry’ and see the reflection of a very sick man in the water below. He throws up, suddenly, and the reflection is muddled. I stand and wipe my mouth. Seasickness is not a demon with which I have yet contended. It is an unpleasant surprise.
‘‘The Ross River Ferry’ covers the short stretch of ‘Ross River’ between the twin towns of Chester and Greenville. Neither is much of a destination in and of itself but a ride on the ferry negates 200 roundabout miles of twisting mountain passes that make up a portion of the more typical route from the north.
‘The Ross River Ferry’ earns its place in this collection by the simple virtue of being haunted. Known only as the Rattler, the ferry’s ghost is often spotted in or near the off-limits engine room, making this a risky pilgrimage for paranormal investigators and their ilk. Those that brave the trespass will find the Rattler a dramatic, but harmless specter that does not yet understand he has passed.’
I throw up for a little while longer, until there is nothing left inside. A woman lends me a dramamine and the nausea eventually passes. I wash my face in the restroom.
‘The Ross River Ferry’ is not a pretty ship, its walls are thick, unpainted steel and its sitting areas mainly tarnished chrome. It was not designed to be anything more than a sea-worthy parking lot and there is a certain charm in the earnestness with which it fulfills that purpose. The wayside is a shifting, unsteady sort of place and I have been exploring it for too long. It’s imparted a fondness for the opposite, things that are solid in purpose and design. ‘The Ross River Ferry’ has a single job and it is fantastically tangible, a comfort to my shaking sea legs.
It is not difficult to find the engine room but, on the way, it is difficult to think of reasons I might give for being there. The ferry’s crew is sparse but their signage is to the point and no matter what I do people tend to realize that I… don’t belong.
It’s with a certain mixture of luck that I make it to the engine room door unseen only to find it locked tight. I have picked up many skills in this endeavor but lock-picking is not among them. Most places I visit don’t go out of their way to limit entry.
I peer through a thick window on the door and into the rumbling dark beyond. There is a faint smell of exhaust, of oil and dust. I turn to the light on my phone and am startled, at first, by my reflection in the window and then, again, by the man staring back at me from behind it.
He squints at me suspiciously and I panic.
“I’m looking for the restroom!” I yell through the glass.
The door unlatches and the man steps halfway out.
“You on the tour?”
I look each way down the hall and suspect that he will answer his own question but he doesn’t seem to see anything but me.
“Does the tour include the engine room?”
The man opens the door wider and steps aside, far enough to let me through.
“Don’t know why everybody’s so interested in this old thing,” he says, leading me on a walk around the engine, “Same as what you’ll find in any other ferry. They replaced it 20 years ago, not even the original.”
The engine is massive and half-sunk in the floor. It’s not very interesting at all, nothing in the room is. The man points out a couple machines but the majority of what he says is lost in the noise. He doesn’t seem to mind that no tour group has followed me.
“Did I miss anything?” he yells and I shrug.
I didn’t come to see the engine.
The man gestures as though to communicate the room is at my disposal for further perusing and he retires to a small table and chair in the corner to roll a cigarette. I fake interest for a while longer and turn to wave goodbye.
The man is gone.
I allow myself a moment of quiet reflection before circling the engine once more. As I come around to the back I see the man has returned, leaning over to pick his smoke up off the floor. His hands shake and he makes a mess of tobacco on the table.
“Are you the Rattler?” I ask.
“What?”
The engine has increased its effort, making it nearly impossible to be heard. My vision briefly swims and then snaps back to focus.
“Are you the… uh… Rattler?” I yell, realizing, with repetition, how stupid it sounds.
“Godda… ghost… ler…!”
The man is clearly agitated but it’s difficult to make out why.
“What?” I shout, stepping closer and turning so my ear faces him.
“I said I ain’t a goddamn ghost, kid!”
“Do you know…”
I turn back and he’s gone again, which answers the question at least.
In the presence of a bonafide ghost, I find myself very unprepared. A part of me insists on leaving, another on circling the engine to see if that’s what triggers the haunting. I wonder, briefly, what would happen if I sat in his chair and, seeing it’s gone, I wonder about the ghostly tobacco and how inanimate objects factor into the afterlife.
Standing perfectly still, I stumble.
The engine is roaring now; the ferry is picking up speed. My stomach churns and I stagger to steady myself on a wall. I miss by several feet and fall to the floor where the force of the sudden acceleration pushes me between two machines. From my new vantage point I see the Rattler again, crouched under his table and staring intently at me. He points up and I see, above him, a comb case. My comb case.
Cold panic anchors me to the floor, even as the Rattler fishes about for the case from below, even as his clumsy, shaking fingers press it further and further out of his reach.
“Stop!” I yell.
The Rattler says nothing. He looks at me and his arm seems to stretch and bend in its pursuit.
“That’s mine!”
The ferry’s speed presses the words back in my face. The Rattler does not hear me and does not look away. I grasp at pipes and cords and panels but cannot find my feet.
And then the door creaks open and light spills into the room. It had been… dark. I look back at the table and see the Rattler has gone. The comb case rests on its surface. Sound, sound other than the engine, has returned to the room. I hear a voice.
“Some junkie going on about noise,” it says.
Two men move past the threshold and I recognize the Rattler is one of them. His cigarette is tucked neatly behind his ear. The other man flips a switch on the wall but the room remains dark.
“Light’s busted again,” the Rattler tells him. He turns back to the room and calls, “You in here, kid?”
I slip lower between the two machines and I keep my eye on the comb case. It will not be hard for them to spot.
“Got a flashlight?” the man asks the Rattler, “I ain’t hunting junkies in the dark.”
“Kid?” the Rattler calls again.
He takes another step into the room and stops, confining himself to the lit floor.
I say nothing.
“Looks like he’s cleared out,” the Rattler says.
“Cleared out or never here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Captain says the place is haunted.”
“Captain’s an idiot,” the Rattler says, “Kid’s got a black jacket and junkie eyes. Keep an eye out.”
They close the door and leave me in the milky half-light leaking from the hall. My heartbeat slows and I flex my extremities. I prepare myself for standing, for retrieving the comb case, for keeping a low profile until we reach our destination.
“Let me help you up,” a voice says.
There is no one there.
-traveler
When I was walking everywhere, walking and hitchhiking, there was time to acclimate to a place, the weather, the people, the altitude. The bike gets me where I’m going before my body can catch up. I become lazy, almost immediately. I reacquaint myself with gas station junk food, with fountain drinks. I keep a rope of licorice in my mouth, like a cigarette. It droops out from under my helmet and it’s dusty by the time I get to the end.
The air becomes cold and subsequent licorice stiffens beyond my ability to consume it.
I stop trying.
‘Ski resorts are expensive and ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith’ hardly breaks the mold, proudly touting a review from its inaugural year describing it as: “Needlessly beautiful.” An interesting phrase, to say the least.
Whether it is needful or not, ‘The Lodge’ is quite beautiful indeed. It is a mansion built of cabins, a forest of dead trees, rounded and polished and carefully insulated. The owners have cultivated an awe-inspiring atmosphere, an atmosphere that continues to awe past a certain level of comfort, a beauty that leaves a person hushed. The hush hangs about ‘The Lodge’ like held breath, like breath held by hands on a throat. It is stifling.’
There is no dodging the bill with this one, I’m afraid. There is nowhere to stay near ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith’ except for in ‘The Lodge’ itself and it is cold, reader. It is very cold outside. I get as far as digging through the snow to the surface of the hard, frozen ground and there, bending my tent stakes, I realize it is ‘The Lodge’ or nothing.
And it can’t be nothing either.
A pretty man steps out of the door as I pull up to the front of ‘The Lodge.’ He steps out casually, as though greeting me is a coincidence, and his wave expresses a warmth that has not been wasted on me in a very long time.
“Good afternoon, sir.” he says, as though speaking to an old friend, “You can just leave your bike there and we’ll take it to the garage.”
“I can take it myself,” I tell him, “It’s… tricky.”
“She will be in good hands.”
The man pulls away gracefully and I wonder if the handlebars won’t stain his white gloves with rust.
I step into the lodge and am immediately a sore, my dirty self in dirty clothes, a vagrant in every sense of the word. This is a still place, and, yes, a beautiful one. Not the sterile beauty I had expected, either, but warm like the man’s wave. A fire cracks joyfully into the chimney on the wall opposite. It reminds me I am cold.
“Please, sit down.”
A man I didn’t see, a handsome, older man, speaks to me from a plush chair near the fire. He turns back to the flames as I cross the room and he rests his slippered feet on a table. Near them are two steaming mugs- as though somebody who was once here, has gone.
“Rest for a moment,” he says, “Was that your motorbike outside? A noisy thing.”
“Sorry,” I tell him.
“Where are you coming from?”
“From all over.”
“The hot chocolate is for you,” he says, but he stops me before I can reach out, “Too hot still. Another minute, maybe. Rest.”
I sit back in the chair and try to be annoyed by the rebuke. I find it difficult.
“How did you learn about ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith?’
“A travel book.”
“And how long do you intend to stay?”
The heat from the fire flirts with the edge of discomfort. A few inches closer and it would be unpleasant, but here…
“Only a night, I think.”
“Try the cocoa,” he says, “And then we’ll get you to your room.”
They ask me to pay up front, the only indication that a man that looks like me might be suspicious in a place like this. I do, and it is painful, but I am led down a hall by a beautiful woman to a small but equally beautiful room.
“Will you be skiing?” she asks.
“Not if it costs extra.”
“Well,” she smiles, “We have a small library that overlooks the slope. Perhaps we’ll see you down there.”
They have a funny definition of ‘small.’ The library is a communal sitting room and the only wall that is not comprised of books is the great glass window turned toward the mountain. The ceiling here is high and the room is large but cut, tastefully, into smaller sections by a discrete arrangement of furniture. Coffee brews somewhere out of sight and candles flicker despite the midday sun. I think, for a moment, that I hear soft music but, as I listen, it turns out to be nothing at all. This room, too, is beautiful.
But the people in it are ugly.
I can tell immediately that the people resting in the chairs or speaking quietly amongst themselves are not employees. Some are pale and others sickly-yellow. Their clothes fit awkwardly, fabrics and patterns clash like warring nations across their bodies. Many have drooping eyes or sagging fat or deep, gray frown lines. These people are outrageously ugly.
I sit in a chair away from the others, facing the window, and I wipe my hands on my pants and feel myself on the edge of sweating. ‘The Lodge’ is a warm place, the air is thick and pressing. There is a quiet rattle near my arm, the sound of a man setting a cool glass of water out for me. He is lean and smiling, his teeth as white as snow, and he steps away without saying a word.
I am left to my thoughts.
Another guest joins me, eventually, sitting across the way because there is nowhere else to sit. Neither of us brought something to distract our eyes and we stare in disgust when we don’t think the other is looking. What does she have to be disgusted by, this woman with a crooked half-smile and a wallpaper dress? I am no looker, but neither is…
I take a drink of water and spy my reflection in the glass table. It is crystal clear and hideous. I am reminded, suddenly, of the ice at ‘Black Lake’- a bad place. I look around at the ugly people in the room and realize this is a bad place, too, or a good place that makes things bad in relation.
All at once, the beauty of ‘The Lodge’ becomes stifling, just as the author said it would. I choke on my breath and become increasingly self-conscious, increasingly unable to ignore the reflection in my peripheries. I stand and excuse myself to no one in particular and I lock myself in the beautiful closet of a room and I stare, in horror, at the mirror.
This will not do.
I pack my things, taking only a moment, and I leave quietly on plush carpets and uncreaking wood. Nobody takes any note of my agitation.
I push open the door and take a deep breath, anticipating cold after so much thick heat. But it is more than cold. The air that fills my lungs is frigid and tissue thin. I gasp on it. I wheeze. The sun’s reflection off the snow is blinding and that sudden illumination rots the world around me. Every splintered tree and flaking bird, the crawling, molding, moist creatures of the melting snow wriggle in and out of sight.
The world is a bad place, relative to ‘The Lodge at Mt. Smith,’ and that knowledge is a poison.
I walk inside again, expecting relief, but what I find, there, is respite, tenuous and unpromising.
-traveler
I spend a week looking like an idiot- cutting the engine at stoplights, struggling to change gears on the highway, suffering breakdowns and walking like a saddle-sore cowboy into strange, suburban grocery stores. When things are going well, my tooth rattles about in the broken speedometer. Stalled, the broken molar settles, morose and inconspicuous to all but the closest observers.
I keep the radio wired into the dash, held up on a custom mount I bought with candy bars. It looks absurd and only works when the voice inside wills it to.
It crackles nervously now.
“Traveler?”
I pretend not to hear, that the helmet I’m wearing is too thick, that the wind is too strong. When I turn off the interstate it tries again, too loud to ignore.
“TRAVELER?”
“What?”
“Where are we going?”
“Any guesses?”
“Boone, North Carolina is not in your book. There is no reason to go there.”
“You can read now?”
“It’s unlikely to be…”
“Well, now you know what’s scary about this book.”
‘There is a humming in the air outside of Boone, a noise that is, to the ear, what shadows are to the eye. In the gray static there, it becomes difficult to concentrate, a visitor feels their mind slacken and droop. Muscles weaken and inhibitions loosen. Long exposure is, in many ways, like an opiate high.
‘The Boone County Music Festival’ is hardly a leap considering the circumstances. Scheduled annually for two days, the festival tends to drag on for nearly a week before the hosting venue has the whole lot of people removed. Sets are plagued with technical issues and silence is increasingly common as the days wear on and attendees lose motivation to move or speak beyond what is absolutely essential. Music is replaced with bizarre art installations and performances that represent the very fringes of interpretive dance. Radios in the area will pick up quiet laughter and a voice that thinks it knows more than it does.’
“Sound familiar?” I ask, pulling off onto a dirt road. The radio does not immediately respond.
I arrive at a small campground, closed for the season. I have missed ‘The Boone County Music Festival’ by a month or so, meaning even the most stubborn attendees have long abandoned the site. I pull a sun-bleached poster from the trunk of a tree, the only obvious relic. It rustles impatiently in the wind.
My fingers buzz with numbness, with thick, lazy blood.
“Is that you up there?” I ask, pointing to a radio tower up on top of a hill.
“If it was?”
“If it was, would you want me there?”
My bones rattle, suddenly, as though witness to some deep, unheard bass. After a few seconds, it raises into the realm of audible sound:
“Hmm….” the radio wonders out loud, “No, I would rather you stay.”
“Do you know the stranger? The author of Autumn by the Wayside?”
“I do not.”
“Has he been through here already?”
“He has.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“You did not ask about the stranger. He seems like a skittish man.”
I shake feeling into my hands and blink, slowly. I struggle to open the clasps on my bag. Wrapped in cloth, there, is a mason jar. The fairy fern is crushing itself against the glass, its tendrils sneaking out from below the rim, raw where I’ve snipped them away.
“I’m going to plant this here,” I tell the radio, “I’m tired of carrying it around. I wonder if it wouldn’t keep people away.”
“That would be a welcome change.”
“Should I plant it near the tower?”
The voice on the radio is silent as it considers the possibilities. I feel a brushing on my hand, where the fairy fern is trying to find a hold, and I realize the numbness has passed. The thrumming in the air has lessened some.
“Yes,” the voice says.
I take the bike up a dirt road toward the radio tower. It’s slow going and I turn over, once, on a thick patch of gravel. I dust myself off and keep at it. The radio occasionally screeches with feedback. Eventually I park and duck under an old barbwire fence, carrying my pack but leaving the radio on its mount. It says something, but I pretend not to hear.
There’s not much to the tower- it’s an old thing, paint coming off in great peels. Rust beneath that. The fairy fern is squirming in the jar, reacting to the sudden dose of sunlight. It will be happy, here, and maybe safe.
I’ve been thinking, reader, about the stranger and the author and me. I’ve been thinking about the path and about circles and eyes. The author is publicizing the path, the stranger seems to be walking it in circles. I am tailing them both, thus far just a witness.
Maybe there are others.
-traveler
Deer die in the woods, alone, and their bodies rot. They leave skeletons behind, their antlered heads distinctive in certain forests. People do strange things with these skulls, mounting on walls chief among them.
That’s beside the point.
I keep the antlered deer head in mind as I look for a skull in an acre of bones, the first of many pieces I’ll need.
‘A wasteland of rust, ‘Trish’s Ride Away’ is nothing more than a monetized junkyard. For an entry fee of $100, Trish will allow you to peruse the acres of wasted automotive parts she buys in bulk and to stay as long as you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. A book in the small shack at the front gate has pictures of the twenty or so odd people that have ridden out of the ‘Ride Away’ on vehicles they have salvaged, cleaned, and assembled. This is the best option.
Trish’s liberal time allowance has inadvertently led to the ‘Ride Away’ becoming a tent city, too far from any concerned municipality to warrant shutting down. The ‘Ride Away’ denizens can be both cagey and helpful, long cut-off from outside society by the metallic disruption of cellular signals and their borderline-superstitious fear of having to re-pay the entry fee. Goods from the nearby gas station will garner favors and ease a visitor’s passage.
The difference between ‘hidden’ and ‘lost’ is subtle, reader, and many lose themselves in Trish’s maze. Remember the worth of a hundred dollars and do not stay longer than necessary.’
I haven’t said much about my past, have I? I’ve kept my eye on the future and I describe the present only in the ways it hinders me. Well, I was a mechanic for a while, or, I should say, I was the stupid kid that works in a mechanic’s shop. I learned the basics there.
And I am tired of walking, of hitchhiking, and of waking up in strange diners with deep, rumbling headaches.
“Oh, look,” a voice says, “A window shopper.”
It’s not immediately clear who is speaking.
“What are you looking for?”
“A bike frame,” I tell her, speaking in the direction of the voice, “Something usable.”
“And then?”
“And then the rest of the bike.”
“Got a place to stay?”
“I’m getting tired of talking to myself,” I tell her, “What do you want?”
A woman’s body rises from the backseat of a truck. Her eyes narrow.
“What do you got?”
Ruby is 20 and she tells me she has been living in ‘Trish’s’ for some five years. She tells me she runs an inn for short-term visitors like myself but when I ask to see a room she says there aren’t any vacancies.
“Checkout’s at two,” she says, “Ask again after that.”
For a pack of gum she lets me store my backpack in the trunk of a car. She keeps the key and many others on a chain around her neck. We haggle absurdly for a while until she agrees to show me a few frames for the cheese-and-meat jerky packs I pulled off the clearance shelf.
“Cheese,” she says, “Is like gold here. A can of spray stuff will set you up for a while.”
I shrug and rub my sore jaw. My face is swollen, still, but Ruby doesn’t mention it. She leads me toward the center of the property, where she says she has contacts.
“Don’t know shit about cars myself,” she mutters.
Had I known that…
We speak to several people, each living in a carved-out hovel of old car parts and each with wildly different answers. Many ask for payment but Ruby shuts them up. If anybody is getting what I brought in, it will be her. Ruby, despite my misgivings, takes the average of our motley advice and draws me a map.
“You’re not coming?” I ask.
“I’ve got a business to run,” she says, “Should I hold a room for you?”
I consider the author’s warning and prod the empty place where my molar once was.
“Sure.”
I have a frame by nightfall, its handlebar head twisting loosely in the gray light. I, and a man I bribe with chips, haul it back to Ruby’s and set it near my room: the deeply buried carcass of a VW bus.
“The yard out front is yours as long as you’re renting,” Ruby says, handing me another key from her chain, “Folks around here respect that but keep an eye out for tourists. I gave you the ‘Bug Suite,’ no extra charge. Water-proofed it myself.”
“Thanks…” I tell her.
“I’m holed up just down the way if you need anything,” she says.
Ruby is buying time for something, her gangly silhouette hesitating at my door.
“Do you need me to pay now?”
“You seem good for it,” she says, “Think you’ll stay long?”
“As long as it takes to get this thing going.”
“It’s not great here,” she warns me.
“Oh?”
“I’m kicking guys like you out of my place all the time. You find a project, burn out, run out of things to barter. You end up sleeping under some random hood and asking for handouts. People adjust to this kind of living and then get stuck here.”
“I know,” I tell her, “I read it in a book before I came.”
“A book?”
I show her Shitholes, the nice, newer copy. I flip to the entry and see her smile, curiously, in the flickering overhead light. She sits softly on my ‘bed.’
“Well I’ll be…” she says, pointing at the accompanying photo of a non-descript pile of junk, “That’s my place. You know this guy?”
“Maybe.”
Ruby’s body odor has filled the hollow bus. I shift uncomfortably and roll down a window. I grate my teeth as she squirms around on my blankets, browsing the glossy pages of my book. I cough and yawn and side-eye her in turns.
“Seems like a bit of an asshole.”
The bus’ radio clicks with quiet, staticky laughter.
Heh, heh, heh…
-traveler