Roger stood there staring at the door for about thirty seconds.\u00a0 Everything about this talk had been confusing and troubling.\u00a0 The man\u2019s appearance and speech seemed like something from a century before.\u00a0 And the claim that there were no roads anywhere near seemed outlandish.\u00a0 And claiming never to have heard of Route 20 was ridiculous.\u00a0 \u201cCould he have been putting me on for spite?\u00a0 But what sense did that make?\u00a0 He\u2019s never met me before.\u00a0 Was it just because I trespassed on his property and bothered him?\u201d\u00a0 These were the thoughts that raced through Roger\u2019s mind standing in front of the closed door.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So, he turned around and headed back.\u00a0 And he saw how the road narrowed again and sank below the level of the surrounding land.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould I go back to the farmhouse?\u00a0 Should I leave the car and walk till I find a house here?\u201d\u00a0 Looking at his gas gage he saw that the answer had already been made for him.\u00a0 So, he got out of the car and decided to head up the incline toward where he thought the summit was.\u00a0 It was somewhat steep but even in the dark he could see the path by the light of the rising moon.\u00a0 And as he hiked, about every few minutes he thought he could hear stray noises like footfalls somewhere behind him.\u00a0 But when he looked around, he could never see anyone there.\u00a0 An hour later he reached the summit.\u00a0 But the environs didn\u2019t look like where he thought he was.\u00a0 There were low hills and fields and forested land but no major roads or the lights of suburban or even rural New England.\u00a0 The darkness was profound.\u00a0 As if electricity and automobiles didn\u2019t even exist here.\u00a0 And this realization cracked something in him.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t exactly panic.\u00a0 It was an icy hopelessness in the pit of his stomach.\u00a0 He knew he was impossibly far from home.\u00a0 And by home he meant a universe where everything he knew about the world existed.\u00a0 That world had disappeared without a trace.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 He was walking with a very stout walking stick, really a cudgel.\u00a0 And he was heading directly toward Roger.\u00a0 Roger braced himself and faced his pursuer.\u00a0 He looked around for a weapon and found nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, stranger, do you believe me now?\u00a0 Where\u2019s your \u201croute twenty\u201d now?\u00a0 It looks like you aren\u2019t going nowhere.\u00a0 You\u2019re here and you\u2019ll stay here with the rest of us.\u201d\u00a0 Then he tapped his stick on the ground and said, \u201cOr maybe you won\u2019t be nowhere at all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger stood there staring at the door for about thirty seconds.\u00a0 Everything about this talk had been confusing and troubling.\u00a0 The man\u2019s appearance and speech<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1289,1263,4],"tags":[3341,200,354,1290],"class_list":["post-37971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-dunwich","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-my-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n