‘It is a complex geographical quirk that drives a number of the nation’s time capsules to ‘Time Field’ in Nebraska. Experts have explained it in terms that the layman cannot understand. ‘Tectonic currents.’ ‘Rolling sandstone decay.’ ‘Cataclysmic fracking vacuums.’ These are phrases that they use in their explanations. They mean so much that they hardly mean anything at all.

‘Time Field’ was established as a local phenomenon in the eighties. Old stuff just showed up there, dirty but in good condition. People exhibited a surprising amount of disinterest. Some even reacted with annoyance, as though antique stores had conspired to intermittently dump unsold goods in this one spot.

Before the internet- before the number of people talking about a thing could reach critical mass in seconds- we just took this sort of thing for granted. Things happened, sometimes. Strange things. This was one of them.

In 2003, for the complicated reasons hinted at above, ‘Time Field’ burst like a plump zit, releasing a cache of time capsules that had been building below the surface of the earth for some time. It drains to this day, visitors picking at the surface like a self-conscious teenager with dirty nails.’

Descriptions of ‘Time Field’ are rife with gross, bodily metaphors. Shrapnel being expelled through long-healed flesh. Teeth working their way out of a baby’s skull. The capsules are the foreign bodies and ‘Time Field’ is, somehow, the path of least resistance in regard to the Earth expelling them.

The place is a dump. The eggshell detritus of cracked time capsules lends a jaggedness to the ground. Paper and cloth mix to a pulp, wet with a recent rain. Hector sniffs for anything edible, occasionally stopping to dig up the wrapper of some long-defunct candy line. A man on the other end of the field side-eyes me as I stoop to grab a quarter, wondering if I’ve found something he missed, I imagine, or warning me away from his spot ahead. The quarter was minted last year- probably fell out of somebody’s pocket.

I don’t have the patience to dig.

Instead, and as is increasingly the tradition, Hector and I scout out a place to sit and eat and reflect upon ‘Time Field’ in case it has a message for me- some clue as to whether this is worth it or when it might conclude. Hector pulls the ring off a dead woman’s hand about 15 minutes later. Costume jewelry from a casket carried on the same dark tide that brings everything else here. I throw it back when Hector isn’t looking.

Ashes. Bones. I’d like to find a way to escape, myself, but, given enough time, just about anything will end up back on the Wayside.

-traveler

Much of the advertising for ‘Radical Horse Rides’ features a man standing on a horse surfboard-style while it gallops along a beach. Given that ‘Radical Horse Rides’ is firmly situated in the Midwest and is, therefore, landlocked, I assume that position of the man is as exaggerated as the scenery.

It is not.

There is a man doing exactly that when I arrive and, unlike the model, he looks terrified. The horse looks terrified as well. And uncomfortable. The man is screaming as he nears the edge of the edge of ‘Radical Horse Rides’’ property. He disappears into the forest and his screaming fades. A woman, also on a horse (but sitting), checks her watch and trots after him. She spots me in the parking lot just before she’s out of sight and whistles for the attention of a man near the stables, who looks up from his phone.

These people work here.

‘The people at ‘Radical Horse Rides’ will show you all manner of credentials, each proving that they are licensed to and more than capable of teaching people to ride horses. They will show you certificates that state ‘Radical Horse Rides’ has been deemed humane and hygienic. All of this flies in the face of what you will experience and the author leaves it to you to decide who to believe and where you choose to spend your money.’

“Your basic package consists of an hour of riding and two positions,” the man, Buck, explains. He hands me a menu. “These are the positions we’ve got available.”

The menu consists entirely of various configurations of human and horse silhouettes. Surfboard-style has a little icon indicating it’s a ‘Popular Choice.’ Another popular choice is standing but with each foot on a different horse, charging forward as if to war. Less popular choices seem to include riding backwards, lying down, leaning to the side with a bow and arrow, being dragged behind a horse (from various limbs), and one that seems like it might be a man carrying a horse. The menu is hundreds of pages long. The man ignores me for his phone, giving me the privacy to look over it in full.

“What about just normal riding?”

He steps over and flips through the booklet: forward, forward, back. He points to a picture of a man riding a horse in the normal, seated position.

“Can I bring my rabbit?” I ask.

The man flips back three times. Forward once. He points to a picture of a man riding a horse with a rabbit in his lap.

“That’s the one,” I tell him.

A hundred dollars later, Hector and I circle the clearing on a horse, each of us uncomfortable, but not so far from comfort as to be scared.

-traveler

‘‘Big Bed Private Sanctuary’ has taken a few forms in the years since its inception. Originally a roadside novelty like any other, ‘Biggest Bed Global’ was just that: the world’s biggest bed as certified by the usual Guinness-style record talliers. When a larger bed was constructed in New Zealand for the filming of 1997’s ‘Bedland Bedlam,’ the owners of ‘Big Bed Global’ honored the defeat by striking all claims to the title from their advertising (forgoing, even, ‘Big Bed USA) and sending a formal letter of congratulations to the filmmakers (who did not respond).

‘Big Bed USA’ rebranded, instead, as ‘Big Bed Park’- a sort of kitschy rest stop that featured a cozily-themed play area upon the once sparse, bed-like structure that no longer qualified as the biggest bed. It worked, for a while, establishing itself not only as a sustainable feature of the Wayside (financially speaking), but as a migration point for endangered songbirds and, eventually, for bees, which built nests along the wooden underside and rarely interacted with life on the top.

The birds and the bees were its undoing.

In 2005, ‘Big Bed Park’ was listed as ‘number four’ in the ‘top ten places to have a budget date in South Utah.’ It became a romantic spot, then a hook-up spot, and eventually a place for police to patrol. When, in 2009, a mutilated body was discovered off the ‘foot’ side of the bed, police called it a lover’s quarrel and, though its natural ecosystem continued to thrive, the resultant articles described ‘Big Bed’ in its worst terms. It was ordered to close and that’s when the killing started in earnest.

It turns out something else had found a home beneath the bed- an unseen, but monstrously violent species that previously nested under, and was therefore constrained by, the standard domestic bed. Having grown to size under ‘Big Bed Park,’ these creatures were more than capable of hunting those travelers unfortunate enough to stop near the fence- more than capable of dragging their bodies back to ‘Big Bed’ for reasons that are unclear to this day. A conservationist group stepped in to block the imminent demolition of ‘Big Bed Park,’ rightly pointing out that these creatures were unique to the area and therefore an endangered species. ‘Big Bed Park’ became ‘Big Bed State Sanctuary’ and is now open only to small, scheduled groups of cryptozoologists and very wealthy donors. The creatures seem content with the attention they receive and kill sparingly.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The owners of ‘America’s Moon: A Simulation,’ hinge a great deal of their advertising on the claim that a genuine moon rock exists somewhere on-site and that the rock makes it the nearest anybody is going to get to the moon with a beer in hand. The connected ‘Over the Moon’ love hotel once took the same tactic and ran with it in a different direction entirely, appealing to, and disappointing, a population of moon-based thrill seekers that were all too excited to shell out money for what was, at best, a roadside motel painstakingly arced over the rest of ‘America’s Moon.’

The colloquially named ‘Fuck Bridge’ initially attracted a number of customers who found humor in ‘mooning’ families that only wanted to drink their slush wines and eat their shaved ice in a vaguely moon-themed roadside park. With several lawsuits pending, ‘America’s Moon’ boarded up ‘Over the Moon’s’ windows, spinning the deep, claustrophobic dark of the motel as ‘intimacy lighting.’ The exhibitionists were driven away and a new customer base took their place: people who thrived in the darkness. The re-branded ‘Dark Side Motel’ casts a thick shadow over ‘America’s Moon,’ eclipsing it year after year- driving away legitimate customers and drawing enough money of its own as to be considered the central business.’

I call ahead to reserve a room at ‘Dark Side Hotel’ and the conversation I have with the woman is as normal as reservations go except for the constant rustling of paper and her apologies:

“Sorry,” she says, “It’s dark here at the moment.”

“Spell that again for me? Ah, wait- I dropped my pen… It’s got to be around here…”

“I’ll just put everything down on this envelope and file it proper when I’m in the light. Just, uh, remind me when you get here.”

I walk Hector through ‘America’s Moon’ before we check in, both because we arrive a little early and in case the ‘Dark Side Hotel’ is the sort of establishment one endures rather than enjoys. The park is in rough shape, its moon sculptures made more authentic by a coating of terrestrial dust. I am seemingly the only visitor, a man and his rabbit, surrounded by pigeons that circle my ten-dollar basket of fries. I tour a museum called ‘The History of the Moon,’ which rather explicitly states the moon belongs to America. A second museum, called ‘The History of America’s Moon,’ covers the theme park itself and, credit where credit’s due, is pretty forward about the recent decline, trailing off into an empty wing that terminates in a no-frills exit. The rides are charming and eerie for the relative abandonment. I find myself enjoying the place and realizing that I wouldn’t like it quite as much in its heyday.

All the more reason to dread my eventual turn to the ‘Dark Side Motel’ which looms over the park like a black cloud.

The lobby is on the ground floor and it’s not dark, as I expected it to be. It isn’t lit, either, at least not traditionally. The walls and some of the supplies glow a pale, radioactive green once the door has closed behind me. It’s enough that I can maneuver to the desk, where a woman hunches over the paper in front of her, trying to read in the dim light.

“I’m the check-in on the envelope,” I tell her and she smiles, gratefully, with mildly luminescent teeth.

“That makes this a lot easier.”

While the woman shuffles through a pile of scrap paper, scrawled over in heavy marker, I glance back at the only other obvious door- one that must lead to a staircase given the shape of the ‘Dark Side Motel.’ There are no sounds from behind that door. No other guests.

“Busy today?” I ask, and the woman laughs.

“No vacancies,” she says, “Now that you’re here.”

“The other guests…”

“You won’t see them. A lot of regulars, come for the dark. We’ve got…” She squints at her watch, “Another hour or so before near black. Another few before pitch black. You’ve stayed here before?”

“No.”

“Ah, so none of this makes sense to you. Hold on.” She takes a pamphlet from the desk and runs it through something that looks like a laminator. “Reactive ink,” she explains. “There’s a light in there.”

The paper is the brightest thing in the room when it comes out the other end. I find myself having to look away from it while my eyes adjust. The woman goes back to checking me in.

When I can read it properly, I see that the pamphlet covers what it calls ‘phases’ of the ‘Dark Side Motel.’ Much of the motel is detailed with glowing paint and the luminescence is activated once daily between twelve and two: white out. Then, all the lights are turned off and the luminescence fades to absolute dark over the course of the day.

“That’s it?” I ask, as the woman hands me a key. “The reviews made it sound like this was, like, a hub for crime. For, uh, dark dealings.”

“Even mafiosos need to see,” she tells me. “They’ve got their own motels.”

I step across the lobby, already finding it easier to navigate in the near dark without the light from the pamphlet distracting me. The woman stops me at the door:

“Don’t underestimate it,” she says. “The dark, I mean. It can be hard for first-timers. And the regulars don’t make it easier.”

The stairs ahead of me, the hallway beyond, stretch in the indeterminate light, appearing short one moment and impossibly long the next.

“Is it safe?” I ask.

“Just don’t shine any lights in the hallway. People come for the dark.”

The rooms are four to a floor, two to the left and right before and staggered by stairs. Mine is room 17, which puts me just below the crest of the arch. On my way I see some of the other patrons, all of them slumped against the walls, wide-eyed and gulping in the darkness. They pay no attention to my passing and I leave them be.

That sort of catatonia takes me a few hours later. The imperceptible fading of the glowing paint lends itself to a trance-like calm. Shapes form and reform in the darkness. Hector’s quiet chewing, his eventual snoring, are the only sounds. I watch from the peephole of my door as shadows seem to hover past in the hallway- the other guests spinning in the darkness as though adrift in space. Each time I think I have seen the ultimate dark, the light fades a little more and the room seems to widen- to extend all around me until I find myself floating in the hallway as well, daring my body to touch something solid and feeling nothing for miles. For eons.

Then, noon rolls around and the lights come on and all of us, scattered and slumped, grasp at our heads and stumble blindly back to our rooms to pack up for check-out, greeting the world with raw, red eyes and having to file through a gift store to reach the parking lot.

-traveler

‘Strewn across the Bentonite Hills like the remains of a dead god, ‘The Slumberjack’ eats dirt and crawls with artists, poets, and recreational drug users. Its hinged jaw is jammed open, gobbling up a stripe of red dirt on one side of the Sleepy Valley. The tips of its boots have sunk into the earth on the side opposite. Its axe has broken, the head lying in the sand nearly a mile south. Nobody knows what felled ‘The Slumberjack.’ Nobody knows why ‘The Slumberjack’ once stood where it stood. Nobody knows who made it. There are no businesses for miles around. There are no trees.’

“Maybe he just got tired,” I say. The woman behind me shrugs. “From, uh, cutting down all the trees.”

“There aren’t any trees here.”

“Exactly.”

The woman shrugs again.

With all of the hitchhiking I’ve been doing, I saw this woman, Eliza, hitching to ‘The Slumberjack’ and thought I’d pay into the pot a little. I’m not sure which of us regrets it more. I’ve fallen out of the habit of making good conversation and have been trying too hard. She smells like sweat and is sweating onto me, shoved up against my back by Hector’s kennel. Given the choice between a few hours walking and the ride, I wonder if she’d ask for a do-over.

‘The Slumberjack’ comes into view again. It’s stripped white like a Greek statue, almost blinding in the sun. A haphazard rope and pulley system towers above it, anchored at the heels. Anchors have been placed along ‘The Slumberjack’s’ back- one faction’s attempt at restoring it to standing. The chains hang loosely, now, rattling in the wind. The neck is split from the weight of the body. A dark spiderweb fracture crawls down the spine. Something moves in that darkness- an arm. It reaches out of the back and tosses a can out into the desert.

“Cool commune,” I tell her.

Eliza sniffs. “People used to care more.”

“There are a lot of cans below that one.”

“Used to as in a long time ago,” she says and then, like I wouldn’t here her, she mumbles: “That’s about to change.”

I pull over.

“What’s going on?” She asks.

“Why’d you just sound like a revolutionary or, like, a disgraced king?”

Eliza blushes beneath the grime. “I just said that was a long time ago.”

Hector shifts uneasily in his kennel.

“Sure you didn’t say anything else?”

Eliza touches the handgun in her jacket. I’d noticed it after I stopped and after it seemed like a good idea to change my mind about picking her up. She thinks better of it. Doesn’t know that I know. Not that it helps me. Killing people is just messy, no matter how you go about it.

“I’ve got a job to finish,” she says, as though the weighty tone makes up for the vague nonsense she’s spouting.

I try to find a reason to get closer to her, in case my survival depends on knocking the gun out of her hands. She backs up as casually as I step forward- not as oblivious as I thought. I circle back to the bike, instead, thinking that at least it will make for a quick getaway. I dig for my travel mug as though running were the last thing on my mind. “You’re one of the ones trying to lift him?”

“I’m the one,” she says. “I was there at the fall.”

‘No, ‘the fall’ rarely refers to whatever happened to ‘The Slumberjack’ that took it from its presumed original position to the face-first dirt nap it holds now. The fall occurred in 2017 when ‘Slumberjack’ residents banded together to right the statue with the enthusiasm and engineering knowledge one might expect from such a group. It rose just far enough from the ground that the eventual buckling of the spine and collapse of the crane caused a great deal of structural damage, leaving ‘The Slumberjack’ in far worse shape than it ever had been and making the idea of raising it even more farfetched. Infighting followed, needless to say, and ‘The Slumberjack’ community slipped neatly from peace and love to the tense, cult-like militarism of late-stage communes. The early expulsion of their leader, a nineteen year-old woman from-’

“Oh, you’re her.” I grimace, remembering the passage now.

Eliza touches her jacket, again, reassuring herself with the presence of the gun. She’s turned halfway to ‘The Slumberjack,’ surveying it like she’s already won it back.

My own gun, the one I took from ‘The Dakota Obelisk,’ the one I soaked in ‘The Shiver Pool,’ sits heavy at the very bottom of my bag. It’s loaded, only because I’m afraid I’d lose the bullets if they weren’t with the gun. It’s clean, because I keep wrapped in plastic, away from all the crumbs that accumulate in my bag. I peel that plastic back, now, making sure to keep it out of sight. Eliza looks over and then turns fully away, her attention on activity around ‘The Slumberjack.’ The sound of the crinkling plastic is reassuring to her. She thinks I’m digging out a sandwich. A granola bar.

The metal is cold. The gun is heavy. I have it in my hands, have it pointed at her back, long enough that my arms get tired. I try to think of a way to get her attention. I wonder if I couldn’t have just driven away but the sound of the engine, the kick into gear- it would have given her plenty of time to draw on me. Too much of a risk.

“Hey.” I say, and she kicks the dirt. Turns. It still hasn’t dawned on her. She thinks I’m ready to go. She freezes when she sees the gun. “Just put your hands in the air and-”

Eliza doesn’t seem to hear me. She ducks into the dirt and covers her head. She begins begging for her life- tells me I can take anything I want. It’s ugly. When I do finally get words through to her she pulls the pistol from her jacket and tosses it away like I ask, dripping snot into the red dust off the side of the highway. I kick it a little ways down the incline and keep my aim on her long enough to get back to the bike.

“I didn’t plan on doing this,” I tell her and she nods. She’s beyond conversation. Bowled over by fear. She agrees to everything I say, unthinkingly, even when I try to apologize. To contextualize. To accuse her of starting this by having a gun as well.

It doesn’t feel good. It makes me feel so bad, in fact, that I stupidly offer to drive her the rest of the way, which starts her weeping, again. Like I might be kidnapping her. It’s hard to say ‘no’ to anything when you’re held at gunpoint. I take the implied ‘no’ and tell her to stay on the ground at least until I’m out of sight.

To her credit, she does.

-traveler