Untamed ground beneath the wheels jostled the whole cab around as I crept my truck through glade and light woods. Fortunately it’d been relatively easy to follow Pete and Dale’s ‘driveway’. Finding it, however, had been a month of frustration and lots of questions... But at least now I’d have answers, and finally I could serve these divorce papers.
Not exactly the life I’d dreamt of when I signed up as a paralegal, tracking deadbeats down miles of dirt roads, through gravel pits and right off the edge of the map, deep into backwoods territory. I was really hoping I wouldn’t find some extremist militia camped out at the end of this trail.
When that run-down old shack came into view, I was so relieved I actually spoke to myself.
“Finally... maybe now I can get back to some nice desk work...” I opened the door on my rental, a Ford truck of some model number I don’t remember off hand, all painted the same faded brown that made it hard to distinguish just how much of the scuffing and discoloration was just that and how much was actual rust. The sparse, ragged holes around the body and in the bed didn’t leave much doubt as to their origin,
The shack was a simple affair. It probably started out as someone’s hunting lodge, one room with a bed and a firepit. It was clear the piecemeal upgrades and repairs far outstripped any remaining original structure there might have been. Knives, hatchets, axes and saws were embedded in a stump of a log next to a pair of logs stood up like stools. They’d had their bark stripped off and were well worn. This is what constituted a ‘finished product’ around here, I was sure of it.
I flipped my cell open. No bars. I’d been out of service in most of the town, let alone the outskirts. At least I knew it was about 12:30 now.
As I walked closer to the shed, my eye caught a tanning rig next to a clutch of rotting carcasses hanging off the far side of the building. I tried not to think much of it and knocked.
“Dale?” I called. The woods offered me a rustling of leaves as reply.
I raised my voice a bit. “Is Dale Rogers here?” Still no response.
I sighed loudly and tried the door. It opened with no resistance, not a handle or even a latch to hold it closed- Naught but a bar to hold it closed against wind from the inside. The place looked pretty abandoned too, dust everywhere, something large and furry scurried away from the firepit as I’d pushed through the door.
An overcooked roast set partially exposed from it’s foil wrapping from under the long dead coals, animals had been eating off of both it and the vegetables packed in.
On a wall hung a well used topographical map of the area. I stared at it a good 15 minutes before I started gaining some of that old scouting training back. I grabbed a pitted, ancient canister of a compass from the wall near the map and oriented myself to the map. I was pretty confident I’d located the cabin, there were lines and crosses all over the map, but one line stood out. A heavily drawn line with a slightly larger ‘x’ at the end, right near a steep cliffside a few miles northwest from here.
I’d been sent to serve this notice directly to him or another suitably entitled person. I guess I’m really earning my per diem today.
--3 Hours later--
I stared at an enormous bramble thicket backed by a huge cliffside as I drew my breaths slowly, calming my heart from the trek. I stare back the way I came, it’d been slow and laborious. My shoes and pants were full of thistle and burrs, thorns had drawn lines all over my exposed hands and face. Nothing bleeding, at least not that I knew, but my clothes... I guess I got a new set of painting clothes, that’s a good way to put it.
The way that map was marked up I’d have guessed there would be stand here, but there was none. Quite by chance I’d approached the thicket near an extremely worn trail, worn as though .things were routinely dragged through it.
It was far too worn for an animal trail. But this bramble clearly backed up to the mountain, what could possibly justify that much use? I glanced up at the sun, squinting as I considered my options. Come back tomorrow or go right now. It wasn’t much of a choice at all, so I pressed on. A quick trip through the bramble and I’d see what was worth so much work.
The bramble was thick, but quite well trimmed with well enough clearance to crawl, at least barely. It was even more clear there’d been a lot dragged through here. Loose soil turned up the whole way, making a little ditch the whole way. I was glad at least the bramble wasn’t doing any more to my clothes. I shuffled on across the hardpacked dirt trench, hands and knees running afoul of the occasional rock uncovered from unnatural erosion. The track turned and twisted, quickly concealing the entrance from any backward glance and so I pressed on. Shards of daylight pierced through at the call of stiff breezes I could hear but no longer feel, but ambient light told me it always remained. At best guess, I'd dragged on more than half an hour when the brush thinned enough to see the sun regularly again.
And then the exit was there. I was baffled by what I saw for there was no cliffside as I'd seen before. The sun remained on my left as it continued to descend, a clear mark I was facing the same direction, so I was sure I hadn't been turned back south again. I stretched my legs one by one and stood slowly from my crawl to take in my surroundings. A small camp, well sheltered by the bramble and a large tree housing one of the two 'beds' laid out before me. A firepit and a set of tin cooking gear graced the center, with olive green army surplus ammo boxes holding down each blanket. The firepit was long since cold, with numerous bones littering it, but I found no roast or food hidden in it this time... why the one at the house had been left like that was strange enough. But that, and other questions were just wasting my time.
They'd been here, I was fairly certain of it.
.There was plenty of daylight left, and I needed to get my bearings. I thought for a while about the map I'd seen, picturing the area around where I was and looking around while checking my compass. Lots of fairly young deciduous trees with fairly little underbrush, and what there was of it was blessedly thornless, save for the wall of bramble I'd exited.
I was fairly confident I had the lay of the land, so I headed out in search of any signs. A fool's waste of time to be sure, I had no indicators of where to go and nothing but faded memories of scouting to go by for orientation and tracking, but I soldiered on.
Stepping clear of the camp, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted- "Dale? Dale, can you hear me?"
Again, nature's response was impassive, and I walked.
The woods I walked in now looked so very similar, but so very dissimilar to the ones I'd been in that it got me deep in thought as I walked. Where before there was trees choked upon trees, undergrowth and dead growth going fallow below, each step had been a chore and I'd had to carefully place each one, now it was like a garden. Sure, there was undergrowth, but the dirt felt soft, unpopulated by burrs and thorns and stones... the grass like a carpet where it stood, and the numerous ferns, flowers and other plants were all smooth to the touch, Few plants had any hard, physical defenses at all; I'd been so lost in thought that I'd glanced right past a mauve pony staring at me slack-jawed.
Noticing her, I turned my head back to meet her gaze. This was like nothing I'd seen! Those colors, the enormous, expressive eyes, and the mouth, working rhythmically, almost like she were trying to speak...
I ventured a few words, maybe a soothing tone will prevent the beast from leaving, I wanted to look at her longer.
"Oh he-"
She reared back, whinnying, then snorted and ran out of view. I kept hearing her cries; and quite unlike any horse I've ever heard, she kept neighing and snorting and whinnying all the way..
Curious, I quickly walked toward where she'd gone, hoping to find her once again, mostly I was hoping I could get pictures, or at least prove to myself that I wasn't seeing things.
It wasn't 10 minutes later I happened on a farm right out of Gothic America. Bright red barn, charming farmhouse with a white picket fence, and again I'd lost myself in a stupor of thought just trying to process it. No one lived for dozens of miles from that wall of bramble, at least no one on any kind of census... I'd driven every road in the area, I'd have seen something like this!
And that's when it hit me like a kick to the head-
Because it *was* a kick to the head.