Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The gas station grew from the
mists as I pushed the lights blooming in the fog
as it materialize. The opening chords Queen Zambody Tolov floated
from the radio and I turned it off. I left
the nozzle in the tank and walked into the emornious
soap box that made up the main building. The clerk
was reading a magazine behind the desk. He didn't look
up at the ringing of the bell mounted in the door,
or even at my picking up two kick cats. It
wasn't until I laid them on the counter that is
dark lazy gaze swept up to me. Is that it?
He asked? Yeah, I paid for the gas at the pump.
He nodded, and won the bars up three point eighty nine.
I laid a five on the counter. Most of the
paint was gone for money. Sliding back and forth, the
man settled back on his jewel as he handed me
my change. Where you headed, fella? He asked it casually,
but I felt he probably knew the answer. New River.
He nodded, slowly. Not my mind that way any more
visiting some one, no undoing a study on the preacher house.
It wasn't a question, but I nodded. He looked at
the window, his jaw moving like he was cheering on
his words. The rain beat down gentle on the aluminum roof,
under cutting the pop music with a gentle tapping noise. Yeah,
what about it. I'd wait till the rain let up.
If I was you, I coughed my head. Why. His
jaw made the same movement again, and I wondered what
battle was going on in his head as he slid
his hands into his hoodly pocket. I just would He
looked me up and down. People up there won't be
happy to see you. Your type, I jested my glasses,
knowing the answer before I asked my type. He chewed
the words. You know what I mean. I do. I'm
doing a thesis project in the house. He shuffled his feet.
You are going to think I'm stupid, man, but take
some advice. Don't go up there. I've heard the stories,
I reassured him. He looked at me and his face
changed from apprehension to something resembling pity. I extended my
hand over the counter. My name's Josh. He shook it
with a hand much more calaws than mine. Wenawd, what
an interesting name. It's nice to me, you, Renaud, he nodded.
Everything about the man could be described as quiet. All
of his movements were small and slow. His t shirt
and jeans were earthy, sommer colors. Even his eyes were
a muted shade of green. If you really need to
tell them, you talk to me, but only if you really,
and I mean really, you need to, like if someone
starts giving you trouble or something, I'll have a whole
mess of trouble if people find out I'm talking to you,
I hesitated for a moment. Will they give me trouble?
I mean probably not. Nobody ever goes up there, especially
not in the rain down here? Though, well, why not
the rain? I asked. Instead of answering, he glanced at
the ring on my finger. I wondered if I was
going to have to go through this song and dance
yet again. She's dead, I said flatly. After a moment,
he answered, I expected as much. I cocked my head questioningly.
Have a nice day, he said, picking up his magazine again.
Back in the car, I've pulled my tape recorder from
my bag and flicked on the record switch. It wasn't
for serious notes, but more for general themes and feelings.
The professor had recommended it to help us keep track
of our feelings and ideas as we collected the materials
for our thesis. Met a man in the gas station
on the edge of I looked around, trying to figure
out what to call it the general area. He asked
where I was going and tried to dissuade me from it.
He gave me his name as Renaud and said to
use it if anyone gives me any trouble. He also
told me that they wouldn't be happy to see my type.
I flecked a recorder off, then, after a moment, back on.
It's hard to imagine this place ever being sunny since
it's October, said the professor. I decided we focus on
some of the darker aspects of folklore. I know you've
all been surely enjoying learning all about quolting, but we'll
take a break from that wonderful subject to do a little,
ah well, something a bit more spooky. He bounced on
the word spooky. Doctor Jane said the weight of lecturing
where he would often put his hands behind his back
and lean or bend in time with his lectures, occasionally
bouncing up a little to punctuate the end of sentences.
Here and there. He was in rare form that day.
Rather than focus on the largest examples that you all
know and have surely heard about a thousand times, I
thought it would be interesting to give you some less
well known examples of spooky folklors. The Preacher House was
the third, after a haunted bridge somewhere in Ohio, when
a good man somewhere in Tennessee. The third was also
in Tennessee, and the PowerPoint showed a yellow photograph picturing
the brick foundation of a home with three walls still
partially standing and the chimney still jotting into the air. Now,
the Preacher House is a little known ruin set up
in the hills. It's not true south from here. Actually,
the problem is Wealthy smiled and swivel to face the class,
very pleased with himself. Well, we know very little about it.
The first mention of it was recorded from the folks
Studder's department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, but
there was no mention of how all the original building
was or what exactly it was supposed to be wrong
with the place. Tourists were worn away from it, but
as as close to Highway one hundred sixteen had been
differficult to keep people away from the place, he changed
a slide, and there was a general shuffling as every
person in a lecture hall shifted in their chair to
lean forward. The new slide pictured a large undergrand structure
with mules painted on the walls, but the photoss were
so grainy and yellow with age that it was hard
to see what exactly the murals were supposed to be depicting. Ah,
now you see the interesting part. When a group of
students from the university went to investigate it some twenty
years ago, they found the hatch leading beneath the old
house and a large cave cut into the hillside with
these murals painted on them. They had planned to do
more testing, but and this was when I myself was
still in middle school. Mind you. Supposedly they were contacted
by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and told that it
was some type of crime scene that needed to be
investigated and that they needed to stop all of that
naturally has combined together to leave us with a very
speaky He bounced on the word again. Mystery surrounding these
old ruins that, at least according to locals, no one
is supposed to evergo near. Cedar Creek didn't materialize out
of the mislike the gas station, but instead spread out below.
When I crested a hill like grooftops of folk in
a sea of las lazy mist. The preacher house was
on the other side of town, and as I drove
through the wet, quiet streets, I looked at the decaying town.
If broken, boarded up windows had been in vogue, then
seed A Creek would have been the pinnacle of fashion.
But as it were, a quiet, proud desperation slunk between
the buildings and crossed the crack streets, somehow more tangible
even than the mist of the rain. I stopped at
a red light beside a dinah, though probably it died
in a groud that was older than me, and tried
to ignore all the pale, sunken faces in the windows
watching the car. I still felt their eyes boring into me.
Long after I had left the town again and ascended
once more into the hills, the Preacher house sat alone
in a meadow half a mile down a dirt road,
back sharply by steep rise up to the mountains. Then
Wispeaker grass had grown waist high round the fragments of wall,
with only a single tree in what might be considered
the house's yard. When sent ripples through the grass, always
moving from the edges inwred toward the house, everything was
a little grayer than the pictures, but I hardly noticed
it at first, since my eye it was drawn to
something so out of place that it might have been
comical if it didn't give off such a threatening feeling.
In front of the house, some ten feet from the
closest fragment of wall, someone had sat an old sand payphone,
the kind painted blue on the sides. I walked toward
it slowly, with that familiar feeling of wondering if I
might be the butt of someone's strange shirk. Still, no
camera crews jumped out of the bushes or anything. As
I reached it, and I picked up the phone only
to hear silence. Of course, I'd expected silence, but I
felt strange sense of disappointment at it. I hung it
back up on the receiver. Then, as an experiment, pushed
the thing slightly. The thing was so top heavy that
with only the slight push, it toppled over into the
grass with a wet, metallic, cringing noise. I looked around,
still waiting for some kind of punch line, but all
that came was a cold gust of wind. I pulled
the recorder from my pocket and clicked the record button.
Someone seems to have put And I'm not joking here.
I hold damn payphone up here. It's not connected to anything,
and it doesn't work. But I can't imagine a reason
for it being here. Even as a prank. It seems weird.
I might ask a round town about it. Hold down payphone,
like why. I stepped over the phone and walked up
the small, we choked path to the remainder of the
brick house that had once stood there, now no more
than three pieces of wool and a chimney. I stepped
through what had once been the door and wandered to
the other side, where I knew the entrance lay to
the more interesting part of the place. The door was
like those that lead down to cellos, set at an
angle descending into the ground. The wood was warped with
large gaps between the boards, and seemed to be held
together entirely by the thick iron banded and circled each
of the doors, both and the door growing together as
I managed to hold a heavy thing up and past
its center of gravity, where its one back on its
rusted hinges, and after a single bance, lay still. Warm,
thick air animated from the open hole, smelling of wet
earth and stone. The stairs that led downward wentwood or
even metal, but shisel pieces of slate journed into the earth.
I pulled the small flashlight from my pocket and shined
it down into the awning tunnel, but there was only
darkness and nothing more. As I descended, the damp of
the rain gave way and the air became softer and drier. Then,
without any kind of forewarning, the stairs ended, leaving me
standing at the exit of the tunnel's bottom, staring into
darkness that seemed thicker somehow, and almost alive. I turned
the flat side up and into what people referred to
as a bunker, but the light just stretched off into
more darkness, and I had to tread some ways before
the being reached the far wall. I experienced then, one
of those feelings that happens when even though you're expecting something,
it still manages to surprise you. It's rather like seeing
the Grand Canyon. We've all seen pictures of it, and
yet seeing it in prison still leaves you a bit breathless.
The mural painted there was beautiful. That must be stated first.
It wasn't some crude drawing, but a product of a
hand that must have spent many, many years perfecting its craft.
The painting showed a woodland scene with a stream running
through the center, with squares and full lage ridiculously detailed
for the size. The scene covered the whole ten foot
high wall, leaving the squares in the foreground standing at
some two or three feet all. As my eyes adjusted, though,
I saw the real reason for the Preacher House's reputation,
the dark, shadowy figures hiding between the trees, devoid of
any kind of detail to humanize them. There were simply
outlined voids that were vaguely human shaped, painted gray and black,
like someone had blot them out to paint but just
never got around to finishing them. The ones in the
background were maybe two feet tall, while the ones closest
to the front of the painting would have stood at
some eight feet tall. I stared at one of them
for a moment. I knew there were two other murals
covering the walls to the left and right, and the
realization that those murals two were populated with these featureless
entities filled me with a sudden dread that left me
with the urge to be anywhere, and I mean anywhere else.
I took a deep breath and waited for the feeling
to pass before taking a cursory look at the other
two murals, an isl unseen in the left and a
small farm at the foot of a large forest at
the other. When I touched the wall, I found it
didn't have the plasticy, smooth feeling of a crux, but
still felt like plain rock, as if the rock itself
had been dye to create the murals rather than painted on.
I noted my first impressions on the tape recorder. Finally,
I added, walking back to the forest mural. One of
the most curious facts of the paintings is that between
a detail and size and the sheer darkness down here
is almost impossible to get a true measure on them.
When I look left, I see something to the right,
I didn't see either, And when I look right to
pay attention to that new thing, something in the left
catches my eye again. It's such a strange trick of
the eye. It creates feeling of things appearing in the painting,
as he'd simply taken such a large amount of detail
from so close up. The town's library was an old
two story building, sandwich between and shearing walls, with two
apartments the plack outs I told me that the building
had apparently at one time been home to the town's newspaper,
but didn't say much else. The librarian was an ancient
looking woman whose glasses were so thick they could have
doubled its binoculars, and more a perfume that smelt of
wilded lavender. The library itself had only front windows, and
the only light inside the place was the librarian's desk
lamb illuminating some old ledger that she looked up from
to glare at me. Can I help you, she asked, yes,
I I'm looking for well, anything you have on the
preacher House. I didn't know until that moment that an
anpty library could grow somehow more silent and yet it did.
The rain even seemed to slacken, like it decided it
would take a stroll down the street and come back
after all this unpleasantness was over. Well, which preacher Preacher
Hancock's place, Preacher Campbell, or we got Preacher Gamble's house
over on? No, No, I said, holding up a hand
and cutting her I mean a preacher house. She'd well
known what I meant the first time, and we both
knew that. Don't know the place, she said, turning her
attention back to the ledger. You have a nice day.
I'm just looking for any wreckers about when it was built,
for who its owners might have been, or anything like that.
Her only answer was to continue staring pointedly at the ledger. Please,
I'm not looking to cause trouble or anything, I promise.
She still didn't look up. I sighed and turned to leave,
but I had only got a step before I remembered something.
It wasn't exactly an emergency or anything, and it seemed
a long shot, but I didn't really have much to
lose at this point. I turned back to the desk.
Lenard told me it was okay. She didn't move for
a moment, but her jewel worked fiercely as she grund
her teeth. Once she did look up, it was an
angry acceptance rather than any kind of helpfulness. She pushed
back from the table with alarming agility for someone so old,
and marched off into the gloom, muttering something that sounded angry.
The sound of it moved through the shelves and up
the old spiral staircase at the back of the place,
then over my head before making its way back. In
her hand she held a battered old folio with the
tight label that said Preacher Family Records. You stay right
here with it, she said, pointedly, you can sit at
that table over there. A part of me wanted to
joke that she wouldn't be able to stop me if
I wanted to take it with me, but something told
me not only would she not find it funny, but
it very well might be entirely wrong. I sat down
at one of the lawn tables closed to the windows
and flicked in the desk lamp, then opened the folio.
It took me some time to sow through the stack
of documents. Most were yellowed and thin with age and
carried a smell of dust and mold. Some were so
frail I was afraid to handle them with anything other
than my finger tips lest they crumble. The documents traced
the births and deaths of the Preacher clan for just
over a hundred years, but detailed little else besides. The
last record I found was a ded given to one
jed I Die Preacher, dated eighteen ninety in the general
area of the Preacher house. There was absolutely nothing regarding
what led to its current state. I took the folio
back up to the librarian and thanked her. She didn't
even look up. I rented a motel room at a
lawn one story hodel wrapped round upon fucking lot. This
one situated a small dark bend and the road leading
from town, surrounded by Old Grove's cedar trees. I walked
in and turned in the lamp, only to find a
television didn't work and the heat only had one setting.
I pulled my chair into the door and sat there,
moving it backward or forward when I got hot or cold.
I sat and listened to the rain powder off the
aluminum roof and the bed of crushed cedar needles. I
stared into the dark woods, spinning my wedding ring on
my finger and waiting after my usual two iOS of sleep,
I worked with no idea what I was going to
do next for my thesis, which is why I was
more excited than distowed when I found that someone had
slept a note under my door that reads simply Cedar
of Cedar Creek v. S elt In Bransbury. After coffee,
I made my way through the chili sprawling hallways at
the courthouse until I found the wreckers department and asked
for the case. The archivist, a small old man with
wire rimmed spectacles much too large for his face, frowned
heavily when I asked him, but nevertheless led me down
to the archouse reading room at the end of the
lawn yellowed hallway that smelled of ammonia and buzzed with
the sound of failing fluorescent lights. The room itself was
small and carpeted, with only an old steel table and
chair inside. He brought me the folio and left silently
the case. Concerned when Alton Bradsbury, a local shop clerk
who at least according to the records, burned a preacher
house to its current state in November nineteen twelve. From
their records, seemed that the trial was less to determine
whether or not Brownsbury was guilty or not, since he
been found standing beside the charred ruins with the kin
of gasoline and sindmarks on his clothes, but more to
determine whether he was mentally competent enough to actually be
tried by the court. The state doctor had examined Brownsbury
ultimately wrote in a letter to the court that while
Bradsbury doesn't carry the demeanor of a paranoike or have
many of the telltale signs of a nervous disorder, I
still must declare him mentally incompetent, due in large part
to his strange dellusions of shadow men and the disturbing
reason he gave for his actions. Those disturbing reasons were
recorded later in the judge's written opinion after the verdict,
due to mister Browdsbury's firm belief that the Preacher family
homestead was inhabited by some kind of evil spirits, and
must concur with the opinions of both the defendant's private
doctor and the one supplied by the court, with that
opinion being that mister Browsbury is not competent to stand
trial or face punishment for his actions at this time.
While one could be forgiven from mis seeking, mister Brunsbury's
capacity for lacidity, from his easy manner and good speech,
his accounts of what led him to ultimately set the
fatal fire that killed the Preacher family point unquestionably toward
an adult mind. Those account's reference in shadowy figures standing
outside his house that spoke to him with the voice
of his recently deceased Tom. When he followed these figures,
he ended up at the home of the Preachers. This happened,
according to him, for some months, and led him to
his ultimate pronouncement that this place was, in his words, cursed,
whether his condition as a result of the death of
his son, some deficiency brought on by age, or a
weak constitution, or some other cause. I truly believe that
it would be a mistake to condemn a man so
clearly divorced from the reality of his actions. There remains
but the possibility of a post cure trial, but I
imagine he will remain award of the state for the
rest of his days. Signed Honorable Judge John Oppenheimer. While
mister Bransboro's own statement was also included in the fullow
of elected to not included. It hid due towards shall
we say, opate nature. The handwritting changes multiple times throughout
the document, becoming nigh unreadable at times, and there are
breaks between paragraphs that leave one with the feeling of
having skipped several pages in a book that also changed
languages while you went looking. And there, in that small
little reading room at the back of a cold clammy
court house, was the first time I saw it. Perhaps
it was a niche on the back of my neck,
or something just barely caught through the corner of my eye,
but I got this sense that something was bright. I
looked up to see a dark figure standing just through
the window set in the door. It didn't disappear, but
stood there. As I watched. I knew, as I still know,
that even though the figure had no features and no
eyes to speak of, that it was none the less
watching me. I knew that it could see me just
as well as I could see it. And we sat
like that, me at the little desk in the little room,
is standing in the doorway, watching each other in a
silence so thick it might have been water and drowned
us both. Strangely, that first time I was necessarily scared. No,
it was more like my body was waiting for me
to give it some cue. After some moments, the figure
turned slowly and walked back down the long hallway before
entering the shadows by the stairs and disappearing from sight.
When it was gone, I took a deep breath and
flicked on the recorder. Unsure of what to do next,
I drove back to the gas station I'd encountered when
I first drove in. Though the fog wasn't quite so
bad as the day before, at the station still seemed
to materialize from it. The second before I passed a
turn off, not a soul was there, but the clerk,
the same one as before, reading a withered old paper
pack while Hank Williams played on the speakers. He looked
up when I walked in. I doing all right, Renaud,
I asked. He shrugged and looked at me flatly better
than you, by the looks of it, the frankness of
a roop. I caught me like a slap. I looked
that bad. Ha, you don't look good, I frowned at him.
There was something about the clerk that looked intensely well,
maybe not old war might be a better word for it.
It was something in the eyes that gave them the
impression of light shining out from a deep cave. I
I wanted to ask you some questions, if that's okay,
I asked, why me? Well, if I'm honest, nobody else
here really seems to want anything to do with me.
I told you they wouldn't I know? But why? I
found out some about the house. I read the court
breckers about that Brand's Burg guy burning it down. I
haven't found anything about the bunker underneath, or even any
mention of it so far. I was wondering if he
could tell me what the locals say about it. He
didn't seem at all surprised by the fact he'd read
the court case, and I had suspicion that it was
him who had slipped the piece of paper beneath my
hotel door. We don't go up there, he said, That's
what we say about it. We tell other people not
to go out there. But why has anything happened to
people that go up there? I mean, someone has to
go up there. Someone hold a whole damn pyphone up there.
We nod sat his book on the counter and smoothed
out the cover. He looked up at me, and the
expression of sheer hopelessness that covered his face almost caused
me to recoil. What's the point. You're not gonna listen,
and if you listen, you won't believe it, and if
you believe it, you'll think it. What'd happened to you?
Same thing all of you do when you come here.
He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers,
pressing so hard it left Red's blotches on the skin.
Just go home for once, just, he sighed, Just listen.
I gave him a moment before I asked again what
happens to people at the preacher house? His fingers still
pressed into his forehead, his face was entirely covered from
view when he answered, they just don't come back, so
they just vanish. He nodded for a bit. There was
only the sound of Hank William's floating above us and
the hum of the soda refrigerator. When he finally spoke,
it was in a low voice, like he was afraid
to let the words out into the world. When I
was little, they they told us stories. Wherever someone died.
We were always told to ignore the voices in the woods.
They gather all the kids up and tell us. Then
they'd tell us again. Then they'd make us repeat it
to them, then repeated again. And it happened every time
someone died, the same message. Don't talk to them, don't
do what they say. What did they say? I asked him.
Did you ever hear them? He looked out the gas
station's windows towards the thick woods across the road, barely
more than a dog's blotch through the mist. I don't
hear them. Sometimes they're out there, though, he pointed toward
the road. I thought of the black figure I had
seen standing inside the court house. They attract people, he said,
his voice growing even quite so I had to lean
in to make out the words. I don't know how
people find out about the place, though, always when they're
at their worst and they come looking. He looked down,
and I followed his gaze to my wedding ring. He
looked back up, and the silent implication was clear. A
large truck pulled into the station, belching black smoke from
its tailpipe. You need to leave. People can't think I'm
talking to you, but you told me to tell people.
I talked to you, I said, only if you really
really needed to. I'd rather the knot of my ties slashed.
If I can help it, Vans, please go. The pannick
in his face told me that he was being serious,
so I quickly laid it all around the counter and
walked out with a bag of chips and a coke.
Two men in the truck watched me solemnly. I waved
at them, and one of them spit out the window.
Later that night, I finally they called my mom. Since
the phones inside the rooms also didn't work, I used
the papron beside the office. She was glad to hear
from me, and if I'm onness, I felt guilty for
not calling her sooner. I could almost hear her nose
wrinkling through the faun as she went, What on earth
are you doing all the way down there? I'm right
in my thesis on a house down here. It's a
neat little place. All wouldn't put it past them to
shoot you, you know how people are you know down there? Yeah, mam,
have you decided what you're going to do with this
master's degree? Now that you're about to have it? And
just like that, the conversation traveled down a path worn
smooth by so many comings and goings. I looked out
into the rainy parking lot. The single street lamp in
the middle barely stretched to the woods all around us,
turning everything a slight shade of orange. Not yet, ma'am,
she sighed. I know, mam, I'm not going to start.
I know better you'll do what you'll do, and I've
already made my feelings about this very clear. I waited
for the beat of silence that always followed before she continued,
But I do wish you'd just come home. And she
kept on, but her voice trailed off for me as
I continued to look out at the parking lot and
started to notice the dark shape standing at the edges
of the light, like outlines of tall people that hadn't
been filled in. None of them moved, and I wasn't
sure if they'd been standing there the whole time. All
had simply materialized from the dark mislike the gas station.
Are you even listening to me? She snapped, sorrowery. Mom,
someone was telling me they needed to use the phone.
There was an impatient hulff. There's not even more than
one phone at the hotel. What kind of Horriday in
are you at I gotta go, ma'am, he needs to
use the phone. Well, just call me tomorrow if you can.
I miss you and your dad, missus Josh Gina's parents
ask about ye I will. I hung up the phone
before the conversation could reach the point where she started
with the aphorisms. I walked to the edge of the
cuffer dawning that ran the length of the little motel
and looked at the dark figures standing there. I took
my front from my pocket and slowly waved. They didn't
wave back. I walked back to my room. Inside. I
took my tape recorder from my pocket and clicked reco
but instead of speaking into it, I laid it on
the little table beside the bed and did my best
to sleep. I spent the next day with the cerbic
old woman poring over the library's collections, which consisted almost
entirely of all journals, diaries, and Handritton's store ledgers. While
the ledges were of little interest, even in a single day,
I found perhaps a dozen references recorded in various diaries,
all following the patent were now described a death, followed
by the voices One woman recorded how glad she was
that she didn't have kids after her husband's death, because
his voice outside her bedroom windows was almost too much
for her, an adult, to bear, and she couldn't imagine
a child being able to sit all night through such
a thing. Another account from one missus Lansbury recorded that
after the death of her newborn, she and her husband
would covered her heads with pillows and blankets each night
for weeks to smother the sound of crying coming from
the woods. Perhaps a most chilling account I read occurred
from a man whose wife and two children perished in
a fire that consumed his farm house. While he stayed
with his neighbors. The man and his host would hear
the voices of his wife and children not outside the house,
but above them in the house's attic. I recorded as
many of them as I could in that day, under
the disapproving glances of that ancient crone, until my back
and neck hurt from bending over and my fingers cramped
from writing. I stayed until she tapped me on the
shoulder with a slyy smile pushed on her face like
a bat. I'm afraid you'll have to leave, she said,
with all the sorrow of a lottery winner. Don't you
know the library closes at seven? I blinked at her,
If only there were some one that worked here who
could have informed me. The vat that made up his
smile ruffled its wings a bit as her eyes fell
on my engagement ring. I'm sure your wife must have
the patience of a saint to tolerate your charming conversation
every night. Everyone's patient when they're dead. There's a sick
joy in seeing people back little when they realize they've
just spoken ill of the dead. It's a distinct kind
of shame that cows even the pricklest personality and sends
most people into a stammering fit. I could see, even
as I said it, that the old woman was most people, though,
And I got the distinct impression as she stood this,
smiling at me, that she had lost the capacity for
shame long before I was even born. Whether she had
lost it amidst the cut foot business, a small town
gossip and intrigue, or it had simply been slowly pressed
from her by the weight of the years, I couldn't say.
But she didn't waver a second before she replied, lucky
her for dinner. I stopped at Small Rains or Dyne
and close to the edge of town, with those old
fashioned red steels at the bar. The place smelled of
must and old fat and was unbearably warm. Spite the
old windows. It was tinged slightly yellow from mews of
soaking up nicotine. The cocaled an unlet cigar in his
mouth that he swoveled from one side to the other
like a pendulum. He didn't glare at me a scall,
but simply watched me out of the corner of his eye,
turning between me and the old television in the corner,
like he couldn't figure out which might be more entertaining.
I plucked headphones into my tape recorder to listen to
the recording of the night before, but the only noise
was my own snoring. The longer I listened, the more
of that feeling I felt. It was the same that
I had felt when I picked up the phone outside
the preacher house, a sort of nervous apprehension mixed with
something like cope. Again, though there was nothing, and the
old cook gently sat the bugger down at my table
with a sound no louder than the rain. Pattering down outside.
I dipped a frying catship and looked out the window,
knowing already what I'd see. The parking lot was a
cracked old thing with potholes that could swallow child. The
only light was a floodlike bolted to the front of
the building, and at the edge of its reach, I
saw them there again. Come on, I thought, say something,
let me hear it. I turned to find the co
a quatching me intently, with the same blank expression on
his face, and I realized I'd been muttering the words
I was thinking. I looked at him, looked pointedly at
the figure standing in the rain, and then back at him.
He raised a thick callow's finger in front of his lips,
then slowly shook his head. That night, I gain sat
the tape a cord beside my bed. The rain had
slow to a thin misting, but the air was so
heavy and wet that the cold knight soaked into my bones,
and I couldn't get warm, even in the heat of
the room. I laid in the dark, shivering until I
heard the gentle knocks. There were three of them at
a time, not faster or slow, not hard or gentle.
They were just there. I threw the covers from my
shivering legs and patted across to the door. I had
the dead bolt engaged and the chain locked in its place.
I placed my ear to the cold wood gina. I asked.
The knocking ceased in the middle of a sequence. Again,
that strange feeling of a dreadful kind of hope flooded
my mind, and again there was no reply. The only
noise at all, besides the splot of rain dripping from
the awning, was a kind of static noise that swelled
and pulls like a television in a power surge. I
unlocked the dead bol, thinking I might peek through the
crack in the door alowed by the chain lock. I
turned the knob, ready to crack the door open, when
something stayed my hand. It was old fea like the
seed your trees were old growth. It was the feeling
of facing something beyond my ken in every way, shape
and form, like a caveman watching an eclipse. It made
my heart start to raise, even as it made each
be painful. Instead of opening the door, I placed my
palms against the wood and held it fast, bracing against
a push that never came. The knocking never resumed, and
when I finally gathered the courage to peek through the window,
there was once again nothing. I walked outside, but there
was no voice or ghostly laughter. There was nothing but
the rain and the hum of the street lamp. There
were no marks on the ground and no people about.
Even the figures that the edge of the woods were gone.
That was when I felt something wet on my cheek
and found that, to my surprise, I was crying. The
next morning, I awoke to find another note, this one
taped to my hotel door. It read, mister Hollins, we're
afraid that, due to complaints from other guests, we are
unable to accommodate you any longer. Please fake it by
the usual check out time. We're sorry for any inconvenience
this may cause. In other words, since you can't leave
it alone, get out. I was already planning on leaving
the day, but it never feels good to be kicked
out of somewhere. The lady at the front desk wouldn't
even look at me while she checked me out. Hell,
she didn't even speak. She just meekly reached for my
key and gave me a receipt. Then again, maybe I'm
being paranoid. Maybe she just had some really interesting shoes.
While I loaded my bags back into the car, I
noticed something that sent a different kind of shiver down
my spine. I just slammed the trunk and turned around
to stretch my back when I noticed that out of
about eleven rooms in the hotel, six of them had
people in the windows, actual people with actual human features,
all watching me. They didn't look particularly angry or scared,
but they had to back the way you came. Look,
it wasn't exactly angry, but it's the look you get
when you get lost on a country road and have
to stop and ask for directions, whereas in just say ten,
back the way you came. Where can I find a payphone?
Back the way you came. I drove away from the
old hotel. The clouds were finally beginning to break, and
the morning sky was peeking out blue from between them.
It was only late morning, but was already warm enough
from me to roll the windows down one of the
last warm days of autumn. It amazed me how different
the place looked in the sunshine. The houses were still old,
with peeling, pained and dark windows, but in the sun
they did have a lazy, comfortable kind of chron to them.
That charm pervaded the whole town. As I drove through.
Old brick always looks warm in the sunlight, and despite
boarded up windows and the uneven streets, I found myself
driving slow to save the trip through the town. As
I ascended into the mountains, once again, I was unsure
whether everything I'd experienced might have been some dream or
maybe some weird mental break. Then again, though, monsters are
always easy to laugh at the sunshine. When I emerged
from the little cops of trees that separated the preacher
house from the road, I saw that some one or
something had stood the payphone upright once again. There was
still much coating one side of it where I pushed
it over, in the birds and the crisp bossing of
dying leaves. I stood in front of it for a
long moment, trying to decide just how much to indulge
in a fantasy that I knew deep in my heart
wouldn't help me. Then I picked up the phone geina nothing.
I hung it back up and walked over to the
stairs leading down to the so called bunker. The door
was still resting open on its hinges. The light didn't
reach far down the steep stairs, but it reached far
enough to just barely eliminate the dark figures standing inside.
They watched me, and I watched them, and as silent
invitation was exchanged. They knew what I wanted, and I
knew what they wanted. They were smart enough to know
that for others the voice was the bait. They were
smart enough to know that for me it was the prize.
I didn't take my eyes off them as I pulled
the door close, dropping it into place with a sound
of rusted hinges and a loud bag. I walked back
to the car, the birdsen still filling the quiet little clearing,
and sat in my car for a lawn long time,
just crying. The final drive through town was slow, and
I stopped for coffee at a little shop. The girl
behind the counter asked if I was okay, and I
told HERRAS gas station didn't materialize this time, but rolled up.
As I crested the hill, I waved out the window
as I passed. I don't know if Nard saw. He
was probably reading his book. He probably didn't even look up.
I like to think he did, and he saw I
listened to him, but then again, I've always been prone
to flights fancy and that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.