Pickett’s home is deeply stale, his windows painted shut and taped up with plastic. Something moves between the floodlights outside: one of the dogs made indistinct by the cloudy film. The second follows the first- they are nervous and pacing. They realize they have been duped. One growls and the growl builds into a half-hearted bark. The other turns and they are quiet again. How would they describe this dilemma to their master? Better to let the evening’s events unfold as they will. Better to let the master sleep, to gamble on catching the intruder upon his retreat.

One dog stoops to smell the ass of the other.

I revise my narrative: the dogs are idiots. My getting across the yard seemed a lot like luck, and I’m not lucky. This makes more sense. The dogs are just bad at what they do.

A profound feeling of relief comes over me, the same dirty relief we’re taught to resist as a child. This is the relief in seeing that we are better than a situation, not because we’ve risen above it, but because the depths of the world are infinitely low and the odds will statistically fall in our favor some of the time. I do not become a better person for fooling the dogs, but I feel like one.

Pickett snores, which is wonderful for me. It provides a baseline for the success of this intrusion. I listen for Alice’s rattling in its lulls and pull a stretch of carpet from the living room floor, distracted by my reflection in the black glass of an old television. Beneath the carpet, a trapdoor, and beneath the door, a stairway that takes me deep into the earth. I emerge into a place (too big to be a room) that is occupied by statues as far as my feeble light will reveal. Pickett has taken the pieces in a semi-circle from the stairs, inadvertently recreating a theatre in the round. One stands out from the rest, centered as I am on this dark stage.

A statue of Pickett himself.

The statue of Pickett is strange- the form is undoubtedly his, but its details blur and self-censor under the cone of my flashlight. Nearer, I see the details are absent entirely, that they have been eroded. The stone is smooth where I touch it: along the face, over the brow, across the fingers. These places are smooth for having been touched many times before.

Alice’s missing pick peers out from a pile of dust several yards away. From it, I find an entrance to ‘The Maze of Secret Rooms,’ an unsuspecting fissure in the stone that gives way to cramped mildew and creaking wood. I slip into the stone like the Stranger once did in a cave very much like this one.

Thinking of him gives me no relief.

I leave my own statue in Pickett’s yard. I have shrugged off stranger things than that. Let him haul it back into the earth where it can be in peace with the others. Let Pickett be with his business- he isn’t the first man to find his fortune under the ground or to be so worn by it.

-traveler

‘There’s a place off the highway that sells statues, the proprietor of which is a man named Daniel Pickett. Pickett lived his life as a self-proclaimed sculptor with little fanfare up until the autumn of 2016 when a local news reporter latched onto his story in a way that was roundly considered ‘ugly.’ Denied a simple fluff-piece interview, the reporter combed through enough blueprints and building permits concerning Pickett’s properties to conclude that there was simply no space in the man’s house that could possibly serve as a studio for pieces his size. The reporter would go on to stake out the Pickett property for his money shots- pictures of some truck dropping off pre-made, non-local statues.

But the trucks never came.

And Pickett hauled up new statues every morning.

The situation came to a head when the reporter was arrested for trespassing in Pickett’s home. He has spoken to the public only once to confirm that there is no room in the house for creating the artwork- no clay, no kiln, no traditional sculpting tools of any sort. Daniel Pickett has not commented on the matter. His work, which consists entirely of life-size, clay portraits, sells sporadically but for exorbitant amounts, the hands of his customers shaking as they retrieve their wallets. Pickett lives his life with the air of a man that has his business well in order.’

The road has been so smooth these past months that I’ve gotten out of the habit of avoiding potholes. “Pickett’s” comes as a shock to the system, it being a place that will require a little trouble to access. There is, for instance, what the locals refer to as ‘The White Pickett Fence’- a 10’ tall chain-link perimeter, thick with menace and frosted with razors. Pickett’s current pieces stand behind it like stolid refugees, available for viewing during the store’s four open hours per day. Pickett himself is not hard to spot among them, smoking and petting two dogs that acknowledge me long before he does. They follow my approach with trained attention, mouths closed and ears high.

When Pickett does see me, he laughs.

He says: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” He says this to everyone. “Could’ve sworn I’ve seen you around here before.”

“First time on this side of the state,” I tell him- a lie. I’ve been to every side of every state. I’ve certainly not been here before, though.

“Well, now, let me buzz you in.”

Pickett reaches into the dirty pocket of his flannel shirt and the fence shudders open, sliding along rusted tracks for half a second before halting. I wait, assuming it’s stuck, until I realize he means for me to squeeze through the small allotted space. I do, and it creaks closed behind me.

“Take a look,” he calls from the porch, “Let me know if anything catches your eye.”

The statues, twenty or so, stand in the style of the terracotta army. They are at once amazing, for the workmanship, and dull, for the subjects. Standing among them is like standing on a subway car- their expressions are bored and lifeless for all the attention to detail.

“You’re sure I haven’t seen you around?”

Pickett has snuck up among the statues, breathing sour air over the shoulder of an old woman.

“I’ve got a face everyone recognizes.”

He nods and rubs his nose.

“I’m curious about your technique,” I say and he folds his arms over his chest.

“Hard work,” he says, “Good tools. You an artist?”

“No.”

“Then I doubt you’d understand.” Pickett turns to face the sun and sighs: “We close up in five in case you’re still looking to buy. You dropped something.”

He points to one of Alice’s picks which, in turn, points to Pickett’s house.

“Thanks,” I tell him, and I squeeze back out the fence.

He hauls my statue into the yard early the next day, grunting under its weight. It wears an old jacket of mine, something I lost on the road a few years back (tucked into the booth of a smoke-stained diner). It has more teeth than I do now and it stands awfully still, pointed in my direction despite my being quite some distance away and peering out from behind a cactus with a shitty pair of thrift-store binoculars. I shift, uneasy with the sand beneath my feet, feeling as though I may not be the first to churn a useless divot there.

-traveler

‘‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ is just one room, really, but it is connected to all other secret rooms in a pattern that could be interpreted as maze-like. A bonafide supernatural marvel, ‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ remains relatively unknown for two reasons:

1. It is necessarily secret.

2. It is icky.

The archetypal secret room sits on the backburner of the American sub-conscious like a half-remembered nightmare, occasionally reminding us that any mirror on the inside wall of our motel room may be moonlighting as a window. Theoretically, every built-in bookcase or shallow closet holds the potential for an unvetted passage between the walls, every portrait a googly-eyed peephole for imagined ne’er-do-wells. The occasional news report of a cramped pervert and his unconventional use of a ventilation duct fuels the backburner: the exceptional making monsters of the mundane.

‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ may well be a manifestation of the same archetype, it being a grim, dusty place that sits behind every existing secret room and makes a small effort at ironic justice. Most visitors stumble upon the room accidentally and most assume it is vestigial space of their own home, sealed away for the renter’s benefit (and most are happy to seal it again). Those who dig deeper find a strange jigsaw of trapdoors, crawlspaces, and gaps between floorboards that look into unfamiliar, faraway spaces. ‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ presents an uncomfortable lens through which to view the lives of Americans, one that allows its discoverers to become the very person they always assumed might be watching.’

A man sits on his heels, his left eye pressed to the inside of a wall. His breath emerges in deep, billowing clouds.

A group of people in a cramped space speak in angry whispers.

A child lays flat in a narrow crawlspace, its eyes following footsteps above.

Through a keyhole I see an army of statues, men and women standing with rigid backs. It’s dark in the room, but I see myself in stone, clear as day. At Alice’s tapped suggestion, I slip one of her picks through the aperture and leave ‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ and then the secret room inside ‘The House of Wallpaper and Carpet,’ now exposed. The sun has set and I take my chances sleeping on the plush floor of an empty bedroom. By morning time, ‘The Maze of Secret Rooms’ has vanished.

Alice swings about the speedometer, sure of the path to reunion.

-traveler

‘‘The House of Wallpaper and Carpet’ is probably best described as a private museum, though the eccentricities of its content and means of interaction stretch the criteria of any traditional enterprise. The outside of ‘The House’ displays the rictus idealism of mid-fifties suburban construction- a style that has been tired since the dawn of the new millennium but has determined to push through anyway (a style that has conceded so many carcinogenic organs that it is new in the fashion of Theseus but old in every other conceivable way).

Payment for entry is made off-site at the front door of a home that is considerably less tired. The woman who lives there vehemently denies ownership of ‘The House of Wallpaper and Carpet” but is set up to swipe credit cards and print receipts with a code that unlocks the front door. Entering ‘The House,’ one feels compelled to call into the darkness or risk being confused for a burglar. There is an implication of wrongdoing that deepens with every moment of the brief self-tour.

The impressive layering of carpet in the house (preserved in its original state, they say) has been cut through to the wooden floor in a path that takes one through each room and out into the backyard, though the pamphlet makes it clear that no area in particular is off-limits to the curious. The path also allows for an examination of ‘The House’s’ fabric strata in the style of an archeological core sample- a visual romp through the decades that codes itself by color and thickness (pay particular attention to the hedonism of the seventies, its outrageous shag sandwiched between the threads of more conservative eras, thin and pale with embarrassment).

Though the carpet is nearly three feet deep in places (scrunched together like great dunes), the thick walls are ultimately the cause of many tourists’ reported claustrophobia. Wallpaper hangs from them like a gaudy fungus, shifting with the whisper-rattle of dry skin. Lovers who write their names between the pages break out in a rash that persists for weeks (but learn nothing from their mistake).’

Alice guides me to ‘The House of Wallpaper and Carpet’ and I enter, positive that she’s leading me to the resting place of some other forgotten body now fossilized in its domestic folds. I take a few cautious sniffs and, sensing nothing more offensive than powdered carpet cleaner, let the door close behind me. The miniature labyrinth of the entryway bears no semblance to a human habitation. The leafy curls of torn wallpaper and plush carpets evoke the jungle in miniature and I am careful to keep my feet within the bounds of the path. It winds into the living room and through to the kitchen where I take a chance on several steps of layered linoleum, leaning in close to a spot where visitors have torn away hundreds of layers of wallpaper, finding no wall underneath. I sit in the rusted footprint of an old fridge (the linoleum there sagging and melted) and wonder what wisdom a place like this has to offer.

There, I notice a new curl forming in the center of the mess- the paper underneath a pure, matte black. I tear it away and find there is no paper, only the darkness of a forgotten room. Alice quakes in her vial, giddy with discovery.

-traveler

I am no more able to see constellations than the future. This was a revelation to a younger me who, on a weekend’s stay on the lake (the last hurrah of elementary school), realized that pretending to see something was easier than explaining I couldn’t.

I want to believe there are pictures in the sky, reader.

But I can’t see them.

I’ve read the books and I understand what should be there. In a splinter of galaxy set to paper, I can sometimes connect the dots myself. But not in the sky. I can hardly pinpoint the pole star.

Here’s a crazy thought:

Maybe that’s why I’m lost, why the road has been so long and inconclusive. Maybe the path is obvious to everyone but me.

‘Lifted halfway from the horizon, ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ rises menacingly from the highway- the west coast’s own bleak sun. The facility is prematurely aged by its proximity to the ocean, rusting at the creases in its frame and home to various seabirds. There is a gate at the parking entrance, though admission is free. The man that raises the gate looks as much a part of the environment as the booth he resides in.

‘The Public-Use Observatory‘ is open all hours, otherwise unmanned, and is, accordingly, built in the style of a public restroom- fortified in every aspect. The inside of the building is largely made up of cement and cheap, brutalist flourishes. Its walls recount a secret conflict between graffiti artists and a scouring brush, these hieroglyphic scars occasionally interrupted by the charcoal scorches of amateur arsons. The facility remains unfazed by these surface blemishes, it being a monolith and we being ants that occasionally explore its fissures. This is a temple of aluminum mirrors and flushless toilets.

The telescope level of this millennial ziggurat employs pure structural intimidation in the place of normal safety barriers. Massive exposed gears, operated by cranks on the floor, shift the lens about its hemisphere and crush the short-sighted vermin that have nested in the works. These represent ‘The Public-Use Observatory’s’ only confirmed casualties in its many years of operation.

For all its bluntness, nothing like ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ exists elsewhere in the world. Its accuracy and sheer invincibility make it the subject of papers in circles both cosmological and architectural. It is a private property and the little necessary maintenance is arranged by an anonymous patron. The only acknowledgement or dedication to be found is inscribed on the ground near the entryway. It says: ‘THIS IS IT.’’

A confession, reader:

‘I’ve been writing the entries as far back as August.”

Not much difference.

Alice guides me now, Shitholes re-writing itself or falling apart in the bottom of my pack. Her pick in the speedometer takes me to ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ and I follow, feeling freer for putting myself in her command. She, in turn, has become a gracious navigator, no longer pointing generally but signaling turns and off-ramps and reminding me to stop when my eyes are blurring with the length of the road.

There is a moment’s hesitation in the hand of the boothman when we turn into ‘The Observatory’ and I wonder if he reads my constellation blindness and pities me for trying. Absurd, yes. I can see the stars as well as anyone. For all the man knows I could be in the game for any celestial body. The gates raises, eventually, and I park. I stretch my fingers and examine my palms.

On the right, Orion in blue pen.

On the left, the Big Dipper in red.

“Foolproof,” said a friendly woman in a café, “These two are the easiest to see.”

That was months ago and I’ve gone over the little dots each night to preserve them, to memorize them, and, on a superstitious level, to encourage them to seep into my skin. People have recognized the patterns since and that’s only served to bolster me. I, a vampire of self-regard, steal into the night with their encouragements.

‘The Public-Use Observatory’ is a cold, echoing place, largely windowless and seemingly devoid of life. The caged lights in the mezzanine make the various informational signs difficult to read, but I learn from them the necessary crank rotations for aiming at and focusing on the foolproof constellations. Armed with this knowledge (having literally penned the coordinates on my wrists), I climb the stairs to the telescope and fail for an hour to see anything but the familiar pin-prick chaos of our universe.

A dab of hand-sanitizer does away with the scribbles on my palms, making a purple mess of my fingers. I pull a sheet of paper from the ground to wipe my hands- a tattered sign that lost its grip on the door.

‘Out of Order,’ it says, ‘(the stars).’

-traveler