The Road Less Travelled – Part 3

Roger stood there staring at the door for about thirty seconds.  Everything about this talk had been confusing and troubling.  The man’s appearance and speech seemed like something from a century before.  And the claim that there were no roads anywhere near seemed outlandish.  And claiming never to have heard of Route 20 was ridiculous.  “Could he have been putting me on for spite?  But what sense did that make?  He’s never met me before.  Was it just because I trespassed on his property and bothered him?”  These were the thoughts that raced through Roger’s mind standing in front of the closed door.  Then walking back to his car, he decided the only sane thing to do was to ride back down the path till he got to Becket.  So, he turned around and headed back.  And he saw how the road narrowed again and sank below the level of the surrounding land.  But after less than twenty minutes he could see the sky ahead darken and eventually the path reached the promised mountain and ended in a boggy stream bed.

“Should I go back to the farmhouse?  Should I leave the car and walk till I find a house here?”  Looking at his gas gage he saw that the answer had already been made for him.  So, he got out of the car and decided to head up the incline toward where he thought the summit was.  It was somewhat steep but even in the dark he could see the path by the light of the rising moon.  And as he hiked, about every few minutes he thought he could hear stray noises like footfalls somewhere behind him.  But when he looked around, he could never see anyone there.  An hour later he reached the summit.  But the environs didn’t look like where he thought he was.  There were low hills and fields and forested land but no major roads or the lights of suburban or even rural New England.  The darkness was profound.  As if electricity and automobiles didn’t even exist here.  And this realization cracked something in him.  It wasn’t exactly panic.  It was an icy hopelessness in the pit of his stomach.  He knew he was impossibly far from home.  And by home he meant a universe where everything he knew about the world existed.  That world had disappeared without a trace.

And now he could hear the footsteps behind him clearly and looking down the path he could clearly see the man from the farmhouse walking toward him.  He was walking with a very stout walking stick, really a cudgel.  And he was heading directly toward Roger.  Roger braced himself and faced his pursuer.  He looked around for a weapon and found nothing.

“Well, stranger, do you believe me now?  Where’s your “route twenty” now?  It looks like you aren’t going nowhere.  You’re here and you’ll stay here with the rest of us.”  Then he tapped his stick on the ground and said, “Or maybe you won’t be nowhere at all.”