of the Range than like the other salesmen and that he would be easily turned. Three months after Bud lost communication with Karl we received a large brown package from the Range containing his battered briefcase. Bud opened the briefcase to find the man’s tie, which looked like it had been used for toilet paper, and a note written on one of the company’s glossy pamphlets which said, Don’t send anyone else. He’d obviously gone mad and had joined the locals. Why hadn’t Bud mentioned him? It couldn’t have slipped his mind.
A voice crept into my mind like a silent tree spider. I wanted an assignment, and for my sins, Bud gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice trip, and when it was over, I never wanted another.
I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet. Hours away and hundreds of miles up a highway that snaked near the Canadian border like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Karl Chevsky.
Up US Highway 169 about twelve miles outside of Coleraine, I saw a blinking red light on the shoulder of the road. I slowed down as I approached. The light was coming from a deer that had apparently been hit by a car. I needed to stretch anyway, so I got out of my Toyota and breathed in the frigid air before walking over to examine what was going on with the animal and the light. There were several bushes on the shoulder of the road that were heavy with berries and I hadn’t eaten in hours so I grabbed a couple handfuls and ate them. I crouched down and looked at the small red light that had been fixed to the deer’s nose. A wire ran down to a D size battery that was rigged to the underbelly of the dead beast. A suicide note accompanying the animal read: TOO MUCH FOG – TOO COLD – TOO MANY HOURS – TOO HARD – SORRY SANTA – JUST COULDN’T DO IT ANYMORE - ALL WHO READ THIS AND GO ON ARE DOOMED - TURN BACK – NO HOPE AHEAD – LOVE, RUDOLPH. As I now lay in a strange house on a stranger’s couch, that note suddenly seemed prophetic.
“His eyes are open,” The blond kid yelled to his mother.
I looked around at someone’s living room.
She entered the modest room, hands on her hips. “Tyler, take Meril with you into the kitchen and make sure you both eat something.” The two left and then she addressed me. “Are you able to stand?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not even really sure what happened. I remember passing out, but beyond that nothing’s clear.”
“I am. You got hit in the forehead with a framing hammer.” She wiped her hands on her apron.
“Did it fall from the roof?”
“No. I threw it at you, genius. If you’re able to stand and walk I’d like you to get out of my house and on your way again.”
I propped himself up on my elbow and my head swam like the woman had emptied it out while I was sleeping and replaced my brain with a dozen goldfish. I probed the bump just above my right eye with my fingers. I wasn’t nearly as anal as three quarters of the sales team about my pretty mug but after doing a Helen Keller on my melon, images of Quasimodo came to mind. I dropped back supine with a sigh and wrapped my hands around my broken skull.
“It feels like my brain fell out of my head. Can you please check and see if it rolled under your couch?”
“How do you talk if you don’t have a brain?” queried the voice inside my head.
“Thanks to your unconventional view of what hammers are for and your Nolan Ryan-like accuracy, ma’am, I’m not going anywhere. You need to call me an ambulance.”
“I’ll do no such thing. An ambulance shows up and that means doctors and doctors mean huge bills. Women who save money by shingling their own roofs don’t waste money on doctors – especially not for an intruder.”
“I just want to get out of here.”
“If you can document me calling you an ambulance from my house you’ll find yourself an ambulance chaser to try and steal everything I have. I know big city ways. You were the one that came to my house and hurt yourself.”
“Hurt myself? You threw a hammer into my forehead and knocked me off a ladder! How is that me hurting myself?”
“I’m not paying for a doctor and I’m not going to let you sue me, so you can just go to hell. That’s probably where you came from in the first place.”
“Minneapolis ain’t so bad.” I sighed. “If you’re not going to call me an ambulance, I’m going to call the police.”
“Are you now?” she said, sounding strangely amused.
I grabbed my cell phone and dialed information but all I got was a soulless voice that said there was no available service.
“What the hell is wrong with my phone?”
“You’re not in Minneapolis anymore,” she said and clicked the heels of her boots together smartly.
“What did you do to it?”
“Nothing. Those doodads don’t work here,” she said, smiling.
“Why not?” I was already remembering what Bud had said about the strange effect all the iron deposits had on anything sophisticated before the woman answered.
“It’s all the iron in the ground. Interferes with the towers and satellites. Compasses barely work here. Needles pop right off the suckers. Electronics in general go haywire all the time. That’s why they reroute planes so they don’t fly over this area: they all fly around us. You can get them phones to work but you gotta be real choosey about where you stand around these parts. Tinman’s Milk Mart – if you stand in the parking lot with your hand just under the edge of the giant milk maiden’s skirt – you can get reception there. And the ladies restroom at the Amoco – the one near the highway – sometimes you can get reception in there - if you sit on the middle toilet and hold on to the paper dispenser. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t care for electro-gadgets. A couple of folks around here have had them gadgets blow up right in their ear. Hell of a thing to try and wear reading glasses after a thing like that.” She tilted her head to clearly emphasize the problem.
“Let me use your landline then.”
“I wouldn’t let you even if I had one.”
“You can’t do this. I demand that you go get the police and bring them back here immediately!”
“If you want to talk to the police, you’re going to have to get off my couch and get in that little Japanese toy you drove here and go find ‘em yourself.”
I started to get up but my inner balance was a mess and I crashed back into the couch with a surge of pain.
“Tyler!” she shouted to her son in the other room.
“What?” he answered as he entered.
“Tyler, go get the man a blanket. I don’t care to have him here but he ain’t callin the police over so it looks like we may have us a guest for a couple of days.”
I kept trying my phone but it was no use. The three hundred dollar piece of technology was rendered completely useless by this strange, unnatural place. I looked at my watch and the minute hand was circling helter skelter at the same speed as the second hand. It either broke when I fell off the ladder, I figured, or it was an odd reaction to a magnetic field produced by all of the surrounding iron, as the woman had said. Not even time played by the rules here. Suddenly Owens’ words came back to me, nothing played by the rules there. Captive to the hostiles, incapacitated on the woman’s couch, Owen’s odd statement was sinking into my skin like venom.
I fell asleep and suffered bizarre nightmares.
I got off the couch in the middle of the night and found that, even though my back hurt twice as much as my head did, I could finally walk. I stumbled outside to find my car, moonlight my only aid to see where I was going. Fumbling about like a mummy with my hands working as feelers I found the door handle and pulled it open, spilling light from the interior dome into the blackest of starless country nights, like black velvet pulled right to your eyes. I got in, just wanting to drive until I was as far away from this place as I could get, but before leaving town I caught a glimpse of a bar that was still open and being a little jittery from the events of the day, I reasoned that one little drink could only help with my nerves.
It was a r
ustic little country bar. When I entered the dimly lit establishment, there was only one man at the rail and the bartender was absent. The man was hunched forward with his face pointed down. There was a picture that someone had framed of Richard Nixon, his face red and visibly distressed, struggling to hold up a trophy-size fish. Along with the ex-president in the photograph, with his arm wrapped firmly around Nixon’s neck, the tendons of his forearms pronounced with strain, and a grin that failed to match the expression in his eyes, was Hunter S Thompson.
I introduced myself, but the man, face down, with half a bottle of whiskey cradled in his arm, and two shot glasses on the bar in front of him failed to acknowledge my presence. He slid a shot glass in front of me though and poured both of the shots never looking up. I sat and downed the drink.
“Thanks. You have no idea how badly I needed that.”
“I maybe do,” the stranger mumbled, and poured another drink that I drank eagerly.
“I can’t stay much longer. I’m running much later than I care to be - just trying to get out of this town,” I said, looking down at my watch that was still running wild.
“No wonder you’re late. Why, this watch is exactly two days slow,” offered the voice inside my head.
“I didn’t really want to come to this place at all.”
“Neither did I.” The stranger poured me a third drink without looking up. His blind aim was uncanny.
“I just wanted to