Nailed to a tree in front of the main house, was another cardboard sign.
WELCOME
He parked, turned off the engine, and got out. It was very quiet. It usually is in those mountains, when you’re away from the road. Sometimes you’ll hear the faint roar of an airplane, way up above, but apart from that it’s just the occasional tweet of some winged creature or an indistinct rustle as something small and furry or scaly makes its way through the bushes.
He stood for a few minutes, flapping his hand to discourage a noisy fly which appeared from nowhere, bothered his face, and then zipped chaotically off.
Eventually he called out. “Hello?”
You’d think that — on what was evidently a very slow day for this attraction, whatever it was — the sound of an arriving vehicle would have someone bustling into sight, eager to make a few bucks, to pitch their wares. He stood a few minutes more, however, without seeing or hearing any sign of life. It figured. Aimless people find aimless things, and it didn’t seem like much was going to happen here. You find what you’re looking for, and he hadn’t been looking for anything at all.
He turned back toward the car, aware that he wasn’t even feeling disappointment. He hadn’t expected much, and that’s exactly what he’d got.
As he held up his hand to press the button to unlock the doors, however, he heard a creaking sound.
He turned back to see there was now a man on the tilting porch that ran along half of the front of the wooden house. He was dressed in canvas jeans and a vest that had probably once been white. The man had probably once been clean, too, though he looked now like he’d spent most of the morning trying to fix the underside of a car. Perhaps he had.
“What you want?”
His voice was flat and unwelcoming. He looked to be in his mid — late fifties. Hair once black was now half grey, and also none too clean. He did not look like he’d been either expecting or desirous of company.
“What have you got?”
The man on the porch leant on the rail and kept looking at him, but said nothing.
“It says ‘Tourists Welcome’,” Miller said, when it became clear the local had nothing to offer. “I’m not feeling especially welcome, to be honest.”
The man on the porch looked weary. “Christ. The boy was supposed to take down those damned signs. They still up?”
“Yes.”
“Even the one out on the road, says ‘Stop’?”
“Yes,” Miller said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have stopped.”
The other man swore and shook his head. “Told the boy weeks ago. Told him I don’t know how many times.”
Miller frowned. “You don’t notice, when you drive in and out? That the signs are still there?”
“Haven’t been to town in a while.”
“Well, look. I turned down your road because it looked like there was something to see.”
“Nope. Doesn’t say anything like that.”
“It’s implied, though, wouldn’t you say?”
The man lifted his chin a little. “You a lawyer?”
“No. I’m a businessman. With time on my hands. Is there something to see here, or not?”
After a moment the man on the porch straightened, and came walking down the steps.
“One dollar,” he said. “As you’re here.”
“For what? The parking?”
The man stared at him as if he was crazy. “No. To see.”
“One dollar?” It seemed inconceivable that in this day and age there would be anything under the sun for a dollar, especially if it was trying to present as something worth experiencing. “Really?”
“That’s cheap,” the man said, misunderstanding.
“It is what it is,” Miller said, getting his wallet out and pulling a dollar bill from it.
The other man laughed, a short, sour sound. “You got that right.”
After he’d taken the dollar and stuffed it into one of the pockets of his jeans, the man walked away. Miller took this to mean that he should follow, and so he did. It looked for a moment as if they were headed toward the house, but then the path — such as it was — took an abrupt right onto a course that led them between the house and the tilting barn. The house was large and gabled, and must once have been quite something. Lord knows what it was doing out here, lost by itself in a patch of forest that had never been near a major road or town or anyplace else that people with money might wish to be. Its glory days were long behind it, anyway. Looking up at it, you’d give it about another five years standing, unless someone got onto rebuilding or at least shoring it right away.
The man led the way through slender trunks into an area around the back of the barn. Though the land in front of the house and around the side had barely been what you’d think of as tamed, here the forest abruptly came into its own. Trees of significant size shot up all around, looking — as redwoods do — like they’d been there since the dawn of time. A sharp, rocky incline led down toward a stream about thirty yards away. The stream was perhaps eight feet across, with steep sides. A rickety bridge of old, grey wood lay across it. The man led him to the near side of this, and then stopped.
“What?”
“This is it.”
Miller looked again at the bridge. “A dollar, to look at a bridge some guy threw up fifty years ago?” Suddenly it wasn’t seeming so dumb a pricing system after all.
The man handed him a small, tarnished key, and raised his other arm to point. Between the trees on the other side of the creek was a small hut.
“It’s in there.”
“What is?”
The man shrugged. “A sad, dark thing.”
The water which trickled below the bridge smelt fresh and clean. Miller got a better look at the hut, shed, whatever, when he reached the other side. It was about half the size of a log cabin, but made of grey, battered planks instead of logs. The patterns of lichen over the sides and the moss-covered roof said it had been here, and in this form, for a good long time — far longer than the house, most likely. Could be an original settler’s cabin, the home of whichever long-ago pioneer had first arrived here, driven west by hope or desperation. It looked about contemporary with the rickety bridge, certainly.
There was a small padlock on the door.
He looked back.
The other man was still standing at the far end of the bridge, looking up at the canopy of leaves above. It wasn’t clear what he’d be looking at, but it didn’t seem like he was waiting for the right moment to rush over, bang the other guy on the head, and steal his wallet. If he’d wanted to do that he could have done it back up at the house. There was no sign of anyone else around — this boy he’d mentioned, for example — and he looked like he was waiting patiently for the conclusion of whatever needed to happen for him to have earned his dollar.
Miller turned back and fitted the key in the lock. It was stiff, but it turned. He opened the door. Inside was total dark. He hesitated, looked back across the bridge, but the man had gone.
He opened the door further, and stepped inside.
The interior of the cabin was cooler than it had been outside, but also stuffy. There was a faint smell. Not a bad smell, particularly. It was like old, damp leaves. It was like the back of a closet where you store things you do not need. It was like a corner of the attic of a house not much loved, in the night, after rain.
The only light was that which managed to get past him from the door behind. The cabin had no windows, or if it had, they had been covered over. The door he’d entered by was right at one end of the building, which meant the rest of the interior led ahead. It could only have been ten, twelve feet. It seemed longer, because it was so dark. The man stood there, not sure what happened next.
The door slowly swung closed behind him, not all the way, but leaving a gap of a couple of inches. No one came and shut it on him or turned the lock or started hollering about he’d have to pay a thousand bucks to get back
