Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
I walk over to the board and start reading things. Mostly it’s flyers for local bands, or whatever. Colorful pieces of half sheet paper printed up in sloppy black ink like it was done by hand.
All the other notes have the same nice touch. Boards like this are typically filled with business cards for local people. But aside from the flyers, most of the space on this one is taken up by handwritten notes.
The most prominent one is a piece of notebook paper with the words, For a good time call Sally, scrawled across it in black marker. There’s a phone number underneath with a five-five-five prefix.
Fake, obviously.
I scan the rest of the notes. There are no more sex offers, they are mostly for other businesses in Revenant. Though I do see one for a bowling alley in Disciple and a pub in Bishop, which are the other two towns in Trinity County.
Which has me pausing to reconsider the fakeness of it all.
That’s when I notice the map.
I reach out, give the piece of paper a tug, and pull it off the corkboard. What the hell is this?
It’s handwritten, like all the other notes on the board, and done up in black marker depicting a crudely drawn picture of a woman with big hair, and big eyes, and a speech bubble coming out of her mouth that reads, The Mule Pit Speakeasy is calling your name, soldier.
I scoff, then glance down at the map. It starts at the bar I’m in, leads out of town, down the highway towards Fayetteville, and then veers into a national forest. From there, it leads to a parking lot and a foot trail that takes you into the forest. The trail leads to what appears to be stairs, and the stairs lead to the bar.
“What the fuck?”
When I flip the page over, there’s a black and white photocopy of, presumably, the inside of the bar. But it’s a bad photocopy. Like it was run on a state-of-the-art Xerox machine circa nineteen-seventy-five.
And there’s a woman. This time, a real woman. She’s wearing a dress that gives off speakeasy vibes and is making a kissy face at the camera. Off to the side there’s another speech balloon that says, Come find me, soldier. I’m waiting here just for YOU.
The word ‘you’ is capitalized and underlined.
A creepy chill runs up my spine and makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
You.
Is that a sign? It this map for me? Like, specifically?
“For fuck’s sake, Shep. You’re insane.”
Which might be true. But that doesn’t cancel out the fact that I just found a map to some secret speakeasy in the woods.
I leave the bar and go back to my bike, feeling very much out of sorts. But when I get on, and grab the handle bars, ready to kick it over, I realize I’m still holding the map in my right hand. It’s clutched in my fist.
I look around, once again wondering if any of this is real.
Outside the diner, there’s a little crowd of people. Talking and holding coffee cups or takeout containers like this is just a normal day.
But it’s not a normal day.
Because ‘You’ is talking to me.
I shove the map into my pocket, kick the bike, and pull away.
Heading down the highway towards Fayetteville.
I find the turn-out into the national forest easy enough since it’s just outside of town on the Loop Highway, so I’m literally idling the bike in the parking lot, staring at the trail less than ten minutes after I left the bar.
It’s not that muddy, which means I don’t have to leave the bike here and walk in. If this map is correct, I can ride all the way to the stairs before I have to get off. After that, it’s just going down those stairs and the bar should be right at the bottom.
Once again, I pause. Because this is kinda crazy. A secret bar in the woods? A flyer with a map tacked up to a corkboard in a bathroom?
Hell, being in this part of the country again is a trip in and of itself. Looking back on my recent history, is this map really that out of place?
I rev the bike and ease forward. The trail is narrow and the trees along each side are old and tall, so the boughs sort of form a tunnel as I slowly ease the bike down the path. After about ten minutes of gently sloping descent, I come to the stairs. They are on the edge of a very deep gorge and when I lean over the side, there’s a river down below. Over the entrance to the stairs is a rusted beam with the words ‘Your Family Wants You To Work Safely’ painted along the length of it in neat, block letters.