‘Nowhere in its advertising does ‘The Air Freshener that Smells Like Death’ suggest it smells like your specific death.

But it does.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The Mini Moon has been closed to the public for nearly five years while ownership of the moon itself has been under legal review. In that time I, like others, have stolen glimpses of it. The Moon. The big one. I’d guess that the illegality of viewing the moon resulted in a lot more looking all around which, according to fringe voices in the conversation, confirms that it’s all some sort of pro-moon guerilla movement, as though the moon might be wanting for publicity. 

The likeliest explanation, in my opinion, is that people are greedy and willing to try anything for a buck. ‘The Mini Moon’ is just the knot in a loophole somebody is trying to exploit. 

The guide says it better than I could:

‘Lunar artifacts are, for the most part, in the hands of government agencies and those private firms and individuals the agencies trust. Some have fallen from the sky in a process traders refer to as being ‘naturally transported.’ These specimens are largely considered duds as experts and collectors tend to agree that mystique burns off in the atmosphere. 

Some of the good ones have been stolen, though, and that’s where things get interesting.

Beginning in 1990, a commercial aired nationwide, offering cash for certifiable samples of the moon. Just like that, samples began disappearing and approximately a year later ‘The Mini Moon’ formed in New Jersey. No larger than a thumbnail at its outset, ‘The Mini Moon’ has a presence that viewers unanimously describe as ‘unearthly.’ Staged under cold lights and protected by no barrier, this ghostly luminescence was, for many years, all the proof Wayside travelers needed that it was constructed from the real stuff. 

And it grew. 

By the time the wronged agencies began to wonder if something funny was afoot, ‘The Mini Moon’ had grown to the size of an adult man’s head. It maintained a signature surface, matte white and uncomfortably crater-less, that made it difficult for would be prosecutors to identify. If the owners of ‘The Mini Moon’ were buying stolen specimens, they were going a step further: grinding the rocks into a powder that could be molded into the new sphere. 

The first headlines were inflammatory, calling ‘The Mini Moon’ a product of a brash and ongoing heist and indicating the near-pricelessness of moon rocks made it the most valuable take in human history. Still, ‘The Mini Moon’ remained unprotected in its display and this, for most, was an indication that the thing was a fake after all. Nothing worth so much would be left unattended while crowds shuffled by for picture opportunities. And the crowds were still coming- of course they were. On the Wayside, counterfeits, done well, can have just as much merit or more than their originals.

Then, in 2020, when the world faced the pandemic, the federal government took the opportunity to launch a formal investigation, all at once lending ‘The Mini Moon’ more credence than it had ever had. At the time, due to Covid lockdowns, ‘The Mini Moon’ could only be viewed via a public livestream sandwiched between ads. The livestream soon became viral and spawned several lofi-style offshoots that viewsers praised for providing simple peace in tumultuous times.

This same viewership criticized governing bodies for cracking down on a small business owner when the world seemed to be falling apart around them and, in response, the leading committee doubled down and, via complex legal shenanigans, made it temporarily illegal to look at the moon. The public lost its nerve and, like a slapped dog, buried its head in blankets.

Views of the livestream remained steady, however, which allowed the owners of ‘The Mini Moon’ to launch the expensive defense that has kept the issue in limbo up through the time of this guide’s publication.

‘The Mini Moon’ may be shuttered by the time you read this page, traveler. Do your research and keep your eyes down.’

‘The Mini Moon’s’ grand reopening was a week ago but, by the time I reach the warehouse that contains it, the crowds have largely dispersed. I wait in a 30-minute line before I’m ushered inside. The people ahead of me gasp as they enter and I’m still surprised by what I see: ‘The Mini Moon’ not so mini, now the size of a turn-of-the-century VW Bug and glowing grey-blue. It is difficult to describe why I know it is the moon, but I do. They’ve been collecting, all this time, more pieces of moon than should exist on earth.

No wonder the government has questions.

I welcome belligerence from the small business community in theory, but I also worry about exposure. The Wayside has been a haven for me in a country that is largely hostile. The less the government thinks about us off the shoulder of the highway, the better. 

-traveler

The restaurants of the Wayside are not known for the quality of their food but rather the qualities of the food. An important distinction. The food leans unique. It leans experimental, though the experiments are largely without intention. It leans inedible, sometimes, and in this case it leans so far it falls. 

‘At the intersection of food and art there is ‘The Poisoned Plate,’ a restaurant that serves from a menu of natural, organic, farm-to-table, poisonous food. No, not like what you’re thinking. Not the puffer fish that has to be cut just so. Not the thistle, that loses its bite when cooked. This food is prepared such that the poison remains intact and, though it isn’t specified anywhere, the food is prepared so that the poison saturates every bite. There are those who might want to visit the restaurant as a challenge. There are those who might try to nibble the garnish and say they survived a meal at ‘The Poison Plate.’ They would likely die or suffer the chronic and life-long effects of nerve damage. 

Signage says as much. 

‘The Poisoned Plate’ has no license to serve food. It’s zoned as an art gallery, likely as a defense against lawsuits arising from patrons who choose to ignore the generous warnings of servers and the bold print on the menus and the waiver one must sign before sitting. The only thing that indicates one might consider eating the food is the absolute delicacy with which plates are prepared. The food looks good. It looks really good and it smells delicious. It is the enemy of the primal brain and that seems to be the thesis, if a thesis beyond profit can be said to exist.’

I order the cheapest item on the menu, which still sets me back $60. It is a side salad that consists entirely of poisonous greens, served with a vinaigrette of berries that can only be digested by a bird that shares its ecosystem. The bird is also on the menu, its flesh made poisonous by its diet of berries, but I can’t afford it and wouldn’t buy it even if I could. I roll my eyes and try to take a sip of my water but a server gasps and knocks the glass out of my hand. The water is laden with heavy metals. The broken glass, though not considered a food item, is mildly radioactive. The silverware is lead. 

I pay the bill and they bring me my salad in a to-go box. Where can I throw something like this away, knowing it might kill whatever scavenges it? The salad rots in the RV for a week before I burn it in a campfire, careful not to breathe the fumes. 

-traveler

‘While the novelties of the Wayside’s museums lie largely in the niche specificity, ‘The Air Museum’ stands out as a much more generalized concept brought to fruition. The reviews are negative and generally misleading, they attributing their penalties to the understandable misconception that the museum caters to flight enthusiasts. There are no airplanes at this museum, no pilot costumes to try on.

Which is not to say it lacks interaction.’

I wonder who, if anybody, enjoys the Pollution Rooms. In an ideal world, I suppose they might be a favorite field trip of local, eco-minded schools whose students, taking air from the lush forests of Vermont all of their lives, have little understanding for what polluted air might be outside of an occasional nearness to smokers (and, here, let’s consider that secondhand vaping is largely more pleasant, if not equally intrusive). I can’t believe a school would accept the liability, even if a limited exposure to the rooms would mean a fairly limited impact on health. I don’t believe the rooms can be navigated with no harm. Not having walked through them myself. 

The first is a room that is open to the outside air- a non-simulation of current conditions which, according to local records, are rarely polluted and, thus, an obvious starting place. The second room simulates the mild-but-persistent pollution of an inner-city, its windows sealed shut and tinted. There is no smell and the unease I feel upon entering is largely psychological. I imagine this is the air that circulates in the RV much of the time, sucked in from the highway and poorly filtered by an engine that wants for proper maintenance. 

The smell is subtle in the room after. Distinctly smokey in the next, though, it isn’t the pleasant smoke of a campfire. It’s chemical. Acrid. In the following rooms it burns my eyes. 

Eight rooms in I begin to wonder just how bad it will get. In the choking atmosphere of the tenth, I attempt to turn back and find the door has locked behind me. A burning in the back of my throat leaves me little time to consider my options. 

The only option is to press forward.

By room 15 the air, signs indicate, are more polluted than anywhere on earth. In this room, and in rooms following, I’m only able to find the doors because they are reliably straight ahead. I take each at a near-blind run, until I feel my hair grazing the ceiling and come to understand the rooms are getting smaller, too. Maybe air so polluted is difficult or expensive to maintain. Maybe they understand that patrons are already hunched, trying to escape, probably some instinctual understanding that smoke rises.

It doesn’t help, here. 

I lose track of the rooms. The light largely disappears. I wonder, sometimes, if I’ve blacked out and my ineffective scrabbling is a pre-death delusion. Then, I hit the exit and tumble onto the grass outside and the sun is so bright that I nearly crawl back into the smoking hatch that I’ve emerged from. Even the half/half air in at the border tastes fresh. 

No, they probably shouldn’t let kids inside. 

The gift shop, which I visit out of morbid curiosity, is better stocked than I assumed. Branded breathing masks are available, but the curiosities include tough plastic sacks, each handheld and inflated like a balloon. They contain air from the rooms: experiential souvenirs for family that couldn’t make the trip. There are others: air from other places and times. Breathe the air from New Delhi. Sample the air from Hong Kong.  

In a glass case at the front, there are sacks of celebrity breaths. Some of the contributors are long dead and the prices are quite high. I wonder if they’re sold as memorabilia or if they’re samplers like the others. 

I look for some air from my hometown, but it’s too small to warrant inclusion. I wonder when I’ll breathe it again. 

-traveler

I would say approximately 40% of the Wayside’s museums are really just warehouses full of highly specific junk. I suppose that’s probably true of museums in general, but your Smithsonians and your state museums put some effort into proper displays. I can be fooled into caring about half a ceramic bowl with a bronze placard and careful lighting. ‘The Museum of Retired Mascots’ is clearly uninterested in such frivolities. It’s dimly lit and dirty and something moves in my peripheries every time I lean in to read a sign. 

‘Earlier editions of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ neglected to include details regarding ‘The Museum of Retired Mascots’’ haunting. This is a regretful error. ‘The Museum of Retired Mascots,’ by its natural attributes, already very much met and exceeded the qualities necessary for inclusion in a guide such as this- it being a little known and highly niche collection of unique ephemera located off the interstate (so close, in fact, that the sound of semis on pavement is a constant inside). For this reason, it was the author’s decision to champion the spirit of ‘The Museum’ (and not the spirit, if you’ll pardon the humor). 

But, the haunting of ‘The Museum of Retired Mascots,’ though incidental, is no less a part of the experience. And it has recently come to the attention of the author that there is no clear evidence that anybody has perished inside ‘The Museum’ (or on the surrounding property), suggesting that the ghost is not haunting ‘The Museum’ so much as it is haunting one of the costumes (inside of which, many deaths have occurred). It is with these considerations in mind, that the author, again, extends a heartfelt apology to those owners of previous editions who may have been, ah, taken by surprise.’

People like to speculate about which of the old mascot costumes is haunted. There are seven confirmed deaths within the costumes, all before they arrived at ‘The Museum’ (and nearly all of these deaths were the specific reason for mascot retirement). Four of the deaths occurred from heat stroke. One was an accident in a parade. One a shooting and one a stroke. That’s not to say there haven’t been others- the mascot costumes have been pulled from just about everywhere: high school and college football, local restaurant chains, failed children’s television shows.

It doesn’t help that ‘The Museum’ is not a pleasant place to be, even on a base level. There’s no climate control and it becomes an oven under even light sun. It smells like the sweat of the people who wore the costumes. Moths flutter out of eyeholes, ignoring sticky traps that are already furry with their dead. 

And when, inevitably, one of the costumes shudders in the corner and begins to stalk toward me, I’ve already located the nearest exits and determined optimal escape routes- optimal, here, meaning those that won’t be pushing through more creepy costumes that may come alive at a moment’s notice. The ghost has chosen to mobilize some sort of mermaid thing with an unwieldy clam where its head should be and the stuttering movement makes the clam’s jaw clack open and closed. It hisses and whines and the air feels cooler moving around it which is, frankly, a relief from the heat. 

With all the forewarning, I find myself in an awkward position: neither scared enough to run or confident enough to hold my ground. I consider that I might try to reason with the ghost- to convince it to cross over or at least become less hostile, but then I’ve always tried to take a ‘leave no trace’ philosophy into my work, and the ghost is a part of the ecosystem now, invasive or not. 

When I do run, it feels a little like I’m putting on a show and the costume collapses behind me before I even reach the door. I worry that it knew my heart wasn’t really in it and immediately make it worse by faking a scream. 

Outside, I breathe dust from the interstate and wonder if there’s any salvaging the situation. When I decide there isn’t, I get another call from the pit.

“How much longer do you have to keep doing this?”

-traveler