No one expects to have a life-changing epiphany during breakfast in a greasy roadside diner. Maybe they should. Because when you wind up picking at congealing country gravy and tough biscuits while you stare off into the middle distance for the fourth time that week, you really should be asking yourself what the fuck you are doing with your life.
That was exactly what I as asking myself that morning. I had been in Black Oak, Oklahoma for 3 weeks, and I was no closer to understanding why someone here had sent me a package full of spiders and a snuff film starring yours truly. As far as I could tell, Black Oak was typical Midwestern small city. I hadn't found anything in this town except a wild goose chase. I was wasting my time.
I thought I should give up this craziness and drive back to Phoenix. That would be the sensible thing to do. I had spent the last three weeks in the cheapest motel I could find off the highway on the edge of Black Oak. It was a throwback to the heyday of Route 66, complete with cheesy fake flying saucer in the front and an old chrome facade. The rooms were as old and rundown as the outside and as filthy as I ever imagined. I touched the sheets as little as I could, and I had nightmares about the hordes of roaches and rats coming out at night and waging little wars.
I desperately hoped they were just nightmares.
But even as much of a pit as the motel was, it was still draining what little savings I had. I had never expected to be here this long. Next to the unappetizing plate of greasy biscuits and gravy was the classified section of the local newspaper. The paper had dozens of both jobs and apartments crossed out. There was one temp agency circled, but I needed a place to stay more desperately. The thought of actually staying here, setting down roots in this city made my skin crawl. On the other hand, I sometimes felt like I had come home when I was wandering around the city center. I looked back at the classifieds for apartments.
I was reading the listings for the fourth time, trying desperately to see something I had missed the first three times – like a magical apartment that met my budget of “destitute” and didn't need a lease – when the man slid into the booth across from me. My gaze slid up a cream-white suit to a face that made a small panicky chill blossom in my brain and slide down my spine. Nothing about him was overtly monstrous. In fact, he was one of the most non-descript people I had ever seen, except for the curls of his perfect, golden blond hair or his too-pale hazel eyes. What bothered me was something else that I couldn't pin down, something about the proportions of his face or the emptiness in his eyes. I got the distinct impression that I was looking at a mask stretched over . . . something else.
“You should leave this town, Jessica Byrne,” he said in a voice like warm tap water. It was soft, and gentle, comforting even. But there was no humanity there. The little panicky chill inside me crawled back up my spine and settled into my brain.
I would like to say I threw a witty retort into his face. That would just be a lie. I was being torn apart by indignation at this man imposing himself on my space, anger at this stranger telling me what to do, and raw, unbridled terror that this thing knew my name. While I tried to sort out whether I wanted to tell him to fuck off or run from the diner screaming, I just sort of sat there and stared at him dumbly. He stared back with absolutely no emotion. After a few seconds, the anger was decidedly winning the battle against the terror. I was just about to tell him where he could shove his advice, and it must have shown in my face. He closed his eyes and sighed resignedly.
“I guess it was too much to hope you would just walk away,” he said quietly. “Very well. If you're insistent on staying . . .” Without finishing his thought, he reached over and grabbed the classified section I had been reading.
“Hey!” I shouted. Heads turned to look at us. Great, I had made a spectacle with my amazing wit. The strange man didn't even seem to notice I had spoken. He pulled out a fancy gold pen, flipped to another page of the paper and wrote something on it.
“When you have lost all hope, call this number,” he said as he wrote. Then he pushed the paper back over to me. “Good look in your quest miss Byrne.” And with that, he rose, turned, and strode out of the diner.
I glanced down at the paper. A phone number with a strange area code was scrawled across it in gold ink. I picked it up, prepared to crumple it up and toss it in the trash, when I froze. Right above the phone number was an ad I had not seen because it was in the miscellaneous section.
Old widow looking for roommate
to help with chores a few hours
a week. Free room and board.
I couldn't believe it. Free room and board. Free. Nothing in life was free. I sat back in my seat and thought about what the catch must be. I thought about being all alone in old age, no one to talk to, no one to help with anything. It might be worth giving away room and board just to have someone help bring in groceries. It made sense. Maybe this was legitimate. Maybe this was the break I needed. Even if I had to spend a few hours keeping a batty old nut company every week, I didn't really mind. And it would free me up to try to figure out where that package had come from.
What did I have to lose?
There was no phone number to call, jut an address, which turned out to be miles outside the city limit. The outskirts of town were not the endless miles of housing developments popping up all over the desert, like I had known in Phoenix. It was corn fields. Tall, dried out corn grew right up to the edge of the tiny 2-lane country road.
It creeped me right out.
Then it got worse. After only a few miles north, I found my turn. The faded road sign was obscured by the corn, and I almost skidded out of control trying to stop in time to turn. No one else was on the road, so I was saved from some embarrassment. I hurried down the side road with my heart still pounding.
The road I had turned onto was even narrower than one I had been on. Then it turned into a one-lane road. Then the pavement ended, and I crunched along on a gravel road. The plants were so close, they blocked out the rays of late afternoon sunlight. I had to turn on my headlights, causing sharp shadows to seem to skitter and dance in the rows of corn. Emaciated leaves scraped against the sides of my car, making a sound almost exactly like hissing cats while the crunch-crunch-crunch of my tires on the gravel began to sound like growling.
After what was probably five minutes of this, but felt like two hours, a driveway opened in the corn to my left. An antique mailbox sat at the end of the driveway on a rotting post. Rusted iron numbers on its side told me I had found the address. I turned down the lane and immediately let out a sigh of relief to be free from the claustrophobic corn. Then I saw the house.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words came out before I had a chance to remember I was alone in the car, and no one could hear me. The house turned out to be a huge, old mansion, maybe some antebellum plantation. It had seen better days.
Many of the windows were boarded up. A garden along the South side of the house was just weeds, and more weeds grew between the warped boards of the wrap-around porch. A forest of lightning rods along its peaked roofs had been reduced to crumbling rust. It even had an actual fountain out front that was filled with green stagnant water. The corn fields came up to within a dozen feet of the house, and tall weeds took over from there. I imagined the plants were trying to take over, to reclaim the land used by this monstrosity.
I wondered if it had ever been used as a haunted house prop in a movie. It would probably be turned down by any self-respecting producer as too cliché.
I suddenly felt very foolish. I wondered if the ad in the classifieds had been a joke, a hoax to get people to come out to this creepy old house. I thought there were probably a bunch of high school boys waiting in the corn field to jump out and try to scare any idiot who would actually walk up and knock on that door. I looked out at that corn swaying in the wind, casting shifting shadows in the dying light of the day. Why had I delayed coming out here until so late? Was I just being a coward, spooked by a creepy old house and some corn fields? The thought made me feel even more foolish.
I sat there in my car, listening to the breeze making the corn rustle against itself, paralyzed by embarrassment and nervousness. What was I doing here? Everything about this situation was silly, something a crazy person would do. The weight of my decision to leave Phoenix settled down on my shoulders in a small knot of tension. Now here I was, alone in the middle of nowhere sitting in front of some horror movie prop. The thought that I was alone brought up a new wave of fear. The classified might have meant to lure a fool out here for something more sinister than a hoax. That thought was enough to push me into action. It was time to give up this foolish game and go back home to Phoenix.
I started my car again and turned around in the house’s yard to leave, only to see my escaped blocked by a pair of headlights turning into the driveway. An older silver pick-up truck pulled up right in front of me, blinding me with its headlights.
“Shit . . . shit . . . shit” I said to myself over and over, my heart pounding, trying to figure out how I could smoothly get around this truck. The stupid fountain was on my left, and the house’s porch on my right. Could I back out fast enough? I imagined myself trying to back away into the corn fields like some insane stunt diver while some redneck serial killer shot at me with the hunting rifle from his truck’s gun rack.
The truck’s driver turned the lights off and shut the truck down. I tensed. The truck’s door opened . . . and a small old lady jumped spryly down from the truck’s cabin. She had leathery tan skin with lots of laugh lines and snow white hair cropped very short, and she could not have been more than five feet tall. She was wearing faded jeans that were too baggy, a floral top, and comfortable sneakers.
She squinted at me for a few seconds before her face broke into a broad sunny smile. Then she waved. “Hello, there dear!” she beamed, “Help me carry my groceries in, would you?”
Then she turned, grabbed a brown paper grocery bag from the bed of her truck, and walked towards the house. She moved easily for an old lady, but a slight limp betrayed her discomfort. Instantly my nervousness vanished. Maybe I was a fool, but I wasn’t about to refuse a request for help from a sweet old lady. I turned my car off, grabbed the other two grocery bags from the truck, and followed her up to the house.
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