Aurora Wolf

At the End of a Dusty Road

by

Jeffery Scott Sims

Deep in southern Arizona, traveling alone on holiday, I found myself in the quaint little town of Patagonia, in the vicinity of which I enjoyed the natural pleasures of scenic Sonoita Creek; but now time pressed, and I had to get going. My carefully wrought reservation scheme required that I reach my hotel in Deming by that evening, prior to driving on in the next day to Albuquerque and home. It sounded a simple plan, yet I was way south of the interstate, so the drive would require passage along two lengthy sides of a triangle, a time consuming journey, and while pondering my route over a late breakfast of chicken fried steak and potatoes at the Stage Stop Inn, with my Arizona atlas spread at my elbow, I wondered if there might not be a better way.

The old fellow across the aisle, eating ham and scrambled eggs with green chilies mixed into them, took an interest in my studies. Apparently a local, he offered a suggestion when I explained my plight.

“You might take the back road,” he wheezed. “The old road to Harshaw, that connects you to Washington Camp, and then heads down to Dusquene, and from there to Lochiel, and via the border road leads you all the way past the southern edge of the Huachucas Mountains, and if you got that far it’s just a skip and a jump to Sierra Vista, from where you roll in to Willcox and you’re on your way. It’s a straighter path than you intended, if you can make it.”

I asked him why I might have trouble making it.

“It’s a dirt road,” he replied, “and a dead one. The government men pass through once a year grading the surface, so you have to time your travel just right. Nobody lives out there anymore. From here to Sierra Vista it’s only ghost towns, nor much left of them. They were mining locales once, a long time ago. All the people are gone now, leaving only ruins and the ghosts. I’ve heard lots of stories about those, from folks who aren’t given to telling tales. Too much wild history, I reckon and not enough peace. If you’re going for it, don’t be caught out there after dark.”

I thanked him for his information.

In the truck, I studied my larger topographical map, which did bear a series of dashed lines running across that forsaken territory. Not so long a drive, apparently, would get me to pavement near Sierra Vista, and from there I would have it easy. But did I want to do it? Still debating, I drove up to the Harshaw turnoff, hesitated, turned in and preceded until the asphalt gave way to smooth, hard-packed dirt with a minimum of pesky gravel. It looked safe enough. I pushed on, telling myself I could back out with little loss of time if the road shortly deteriorated.

It did not, and within the hour, after a fine drive through pretty hills and forested valleys I reached the site of Harshaw, which dated to the 1880s or thereabouts. Not much remained of its former glory, if it ever boasted any. I found one toppling wooden dwelling, a forlorn adobe wall, and a fairly large cemetery stretching up a hillside. I did not run across any ghosts there. Maybe too little was left to hold them. I poked around there a few minutes, snapping pictures for posterity, and then went on.

One leg down, next stop Washington Camp; call it another hour, and I rolled past bleak foundations and scattered stone rubble. The road held good, and I made reasonable progress for the time spent.

The next item on the tour, Dusquene, came and flashed by, offering no more than the previous site. Okay, having gone that far I was in for it; I meant to go all the way. Backtracking from this point would mean enormous lost time and mileage.

Then, naturally, the road went to pieces. It grew rough and steep, climbing and dipping unexpectedly through scrubby gorges and washes. The powdery surface sprang ruts and big rocks, the kind with an affinity for oil pans. The road narrowed dramatically as well, limiting my half-hearted considerations for turning around. After all this time I really did not want to, yet it bugged me that I did not have the clear option. So morning gave way to afternoon, which seemed to wear on glacially, yet– according to my dashboard clock– actually with aggravating speed. Is not that always the way with shortcuts?

I mounted a rise in the ground which afforded something of a view, killed the engine and took stock: semi-arid hills roundabout with thorny bushes and infrequent cacti, while in the distance before me I could discern a featureless white plain. Once down there, I supposed, I would be all right.

Within the next few minutes a funny feeling crept over me, as if I were taking sick. I felt hot and cold; and my vision seemed to obscure, with images appearing alternately too bright or too dim, like staring too long into a mirage on a hot, heat-shimmering day. For one moment, glancing into my rear-view mirror, I saw merely darkness. It was this that made me stop, and rub my eyes fouled by the grime kicked up by the truck’s tires. I assumed that I was concentrating too hard.

If the indications of the map meant anything, then Lochiel should not be far ahead. I sighed, cranked the engine, rumbled down into the latest declivity and onward through clouds of brown dust into the unknown lands far from human habitation. To my joy the rugged terrain soon receded, leaving me on that inviting plain, flat and grassy, with the road stretching before me straight and true, just as it was supposed to do. The surface improved somewhat, and I made pretty good time, until I came over a low mound and reached Lochiel.

Speaking of mirages, my first glimpse of the town from a modest distance presented me with a wholly impossible image, the pristine outlines and features of a beautifully alive Old West town, like something on a movie studio’s back lot. The illusion passed with one watery blink, reducing itself to a huddle of collapsing hovels grouped about a couple of forlorn dirt streets. I entered Lochiel.

Something survived there, far more so than in any other place I had seen. This was, more or less, what I thought of as a ghost town. I ground to a dusty halt at the intersection before the largest remaining building, a two-story structure with partially intact roof and solid walls, though the windows and large front door were long gone. It could have been a saloon in ye olde days, or perhaps a hotel, with comfortable rooms and a bath at the end of the hall.

I liked it, liked the whole place. I took a long swig from a can of soda, ice cold from my cooler, then scampered out to photograph the historical treasures. Timetable be damned! I could make up any lost time once back on the interstate.

It took no time at all to prowl the streets, clicking away, an area of four or five acres providing the bulk of what materially lingered there. Shortly I had circled back to the big building, the only one not locked up, and promising an interior of architectural complexity. So, I went inside. I intruded into a cavernous hall of bare, weathered boarding along the walls. A groaning wooden floor heaped with wind-blown grit, with a long counter on the left, a short one to the right.

Obviously this was a saloon, currently closed due to lack of clientele. Once upon a time the long counter had been crowded with hard-bitten men and whisky glasses, the sagging shelves behind bedecked with their burden of colored bottles hauled in by train from the east. I could picture all of that. There would have been laughter and cursing, murmuring and song. Now, that short counter– there was that upper story, reached now by a hideously creaky looking staircase– of course, this was the hotel as well.

Sure, that was probably typical then, a little something for everyone, all in one spot. I chuckled to myself, thinking they might have provided girls with those feather beds. Well, the whiskey and the cowboys and the girls were blown away with the years, replaced by dust and rot and furtive insects. A mournful wind whistled through a window’s gaping socket.

Just for fun I marched up to the little counter and demanded a room for the night. The frowzy, over-painted woman resting with her elbow on the counter top said, “That’ll be a dollar, two if ya want a bath,” and she reached back for a key hanging from a rack. Let me be plain (I had better be from this point on); she did and she did not.

All of a sudden it was as if I were viewing two related but different worlds, one through my left eye, and the other through my right. With the left, I beheld the corroded squalor of discarded years, the rough, chipped counter; the empty, dusty wall of featureless slats beyond. From the right, a lacquered surface, shiny with new polish, and the papered wall with its rack of many bright keys, and hand-lettered signage, and that woman, hand extended for my dollar.

I took out my billfold and removed a dollar, handed it to her. She was not there, but the dollar vanished and a key lay before me. I might have dropped the bill, searched idly, did not see it in the floor’s dirt, though in a manner of seeing there was no dirt, only well swept and waxed wood.

She said, “Upstairs, make a turn, second on your right.”

I mounted the stairs, ignoring the swelling, raucous sounds from the direction of the bar, eyeing dubiously each groaning, sagging step, but I need not have done so, for in a sense they did not groan or sag. The stairs, in fact, were lushly carpeted, an historical feature with which I was entirely unfamiliar. I made my turn and came to the requisite door, turned the key in the oiled brass lock, pushed and walked in. A scene of frightful decay met my gaze… and I found myself in a pleasantly furnished if– to my tastes– very small room, with a double bed, a spartan chair and a little table bearing a pitcher and glass, and a modest chest of drawers. Two quaint paintings of sylvan scenes adorned the walls.

It was a fine room, one redolent of lost charm, an abode in which I could relish a stay. That bed really looked inviting. I entertained a desire to throw off my clothes and toss myself under those silky sheets and carefully arranged hand-made quilt. Soon, perhaps, I would rest. I removed the camera from around my neck, set it on the table, made for the single good-sized window. The curtains were drawn, the pane opened to allow a refreshing breeze. I sat on the bed and looked out.

I stared down on a pretty town, quiet, relaxed, yet undeniably living. A man on horseback sauntered up one street, while a young couple strolled down the other. The woman was remarkably well dressed by any standard to which I was accustomed. I detected muted drifts of conversation, a sound of laughter farther away, still farther the occasional ring of metal on metal. Things were going on down there, lazily, easily. It was an attractive tableau. I could imagine it as being my kind of place. Something, I realized, actually did survive in these old towns: ghosts, I called them, ghosts of lives and life ways. I took up my camera and snapped a few shots.

Even as I endeavored to record the wonderful images, however, the scene shimmered, darkened. I thought that time passed, or a sea change occurred of a sudden; regardless, gloom now reigned. The gloom of darkest night, with an oppressive, starless sky, and only one isolated street lamp flickering to relieve the murk. Nothing stirred in the lanes below, no sound wafted up to me. I felt a radiating pressure of disquieting stillness beating against me.

Then I did hear something, the distinct clatter on hard earth of galloping hooves. It intensified curiously to a din, to a cacophonous pounding, flying anvils beating a recalcitrant surface. A shape came into view from the right, moving rapidly. I craned my head out the window to observe more closely, drew in hastily, for there was that in the vague form which did not appeal.

Closer it came, and clearer. I knew now; a man on a buckboard, furiously lashing a horse. The driver, with his tall hat and tight-fitting attire, seemed the archetypal cowboy. He shouted and bellowed harshly, only the words were gibberish, and as he began to pass in front of my vantage point I developed grave doubts about that horse.

For it was not a horse, you see. I suffer from difficulty in describing what I saw, for when the wagon raced across my line of sight the image receded weirdly, as if I viewed it through the wrong end of a telescope. What pulled the conveyance at such alarming speed was no horse, but rather a different sort of beast. I struggled to picture it as a giant rooster– there were feathers, and three-toed feet, and a semblance of tail– but then a blur, replaced with an over-abundance of flailing legs, a flash of jagged teeth, a repulsively large and reptilian eye, and a single black globe like the eye of a spider.

All at once the procession of the image shifted violently, appeared to lurch impossibly toward me, expanding like a photograph under extreme magnification. Frightened, I slammed shut the window, yanked closed the drapes.

I sat there on the bed, perturbed, bathed in the glow of an oil lamp which I had not lighted. I had gotten at the last a good look at the cowboy’s face, and the single glimpse sufficed to sate my curiosity. There was not much left of that visage, and what there was appalled me with its expression of loathsome evil.

Too much survives, I thought to myself, the bad with the good, and (so I deduced, then or later) while the good lingers complacently, the evil, perhaps, feeds and festers and takes root, breaking out in an insidious growth of cancerous forms. Not for that had I come to Lochiel.

Why had I come? A twinkling of normality illuminated my mind. I remembered, as from an old story read in childhood, my purpose, my plans. Surely I must be on my way.

I retrieved my camera, slipping its strap around my neck, departed from the room and made for the stairs. As I did so, the building shuddered, a slight sensation as of earthquake. Commencing the descent, I overheard a snatch of laughter and cracked song, which even as I listened gave way to an ominous growling murmur.

I wished there were another way out. I wished more fervently when I reached the bottom and beheld the changes that had occurred, just then or since my previous passage. The lobby, as I styled it, had gone to seed, along with its denizens. It was not yet a century’s worth or more of falling down, but a creeping disintegration, as if a disused stage set was being left to rot. The varnish on the walls had clouded and oozed, the paintings hung askew and mildewed, the furniture crawled with lice. I meant to give the hag woman my key, but she looked half dead– quite a bit more than half, I am afraid– and her strangely disjointed, jerky motions at me fostered a delirious terror in my benumbed brain.

I stepped away in avoidance, stumbling against an empty table, drawing the attention of the men at the bar. They rose to a man, turned to face me. I screamed. Those guys were long gone, every one of them, far past hope, nothing but bones tied together by desiccated sinews. Such shades should not move or react; only they did, staggering forward with sudden, spasmodic motions.

They came right for me, knocking aside chairs in their path, and with a shriek I scrambled through the narrowing avenue leading to the door. I crashed into the swinging panels, ripping one with a squeak from a rusted hinge, stumbling into the street. It was black as midnight out there, a midnight in hell, like the view from the upper window. The world as I knew it had vanished.

I ran down the dusty lane seeking something, anything that could recall me to the land of the living. Desolate storefronts loomed darkly to both sides, crouching in attitudes of menace. A sound of approaching galloping assailed, urged me on. Was it that terrible rider, hunting for me? Black figures began swaying into the street, dreadfully thin, shambling approximations of human form. Each and every turned at my appearance, halted, came toward me. I yelled again and fled.

Once I dashed onto the bouncy, vibrating porch of a shop and, at that moment, a husk of humanity lunged from the doorway. Its skinny, fleshless hand touched me, grazing my cheek, and the feeling– and the accompanying moldy stench– made me want to vomit. I backed away, whirled, charged on into darkness.

And I ran into my truck! How can it be that I found it? Had I not run for miles and years through that nightmare ghost of a town? There it was the only modern item within that grim, monstrously dark vision of the past.

I circled to the driver’s door, yanked savagely and fruitlessly, realized I had, according to habit, locked it. I fumbled with my keys. At the corner of vision nasty shapes inched closer. The single key in my hand did not work– the wrong one, what was I doing?– ah, there my key chain, there the familiar feel of the proper one, and the door opened, I toppled inside, fired the engine, and in a roaring gust of exhaust and tires digging into gravel, barreled away into the unholy night.

Scarcely had I passed the last building than I drove into a pale dawning. The terrain before me lightened, brightened, the long line of dirt road and the scrub and cacti of the forgotten land. Presently, I attained a rise where I parked in the road, gasping, surrounded by broad daylight. According to the vehicle clock the time was mid-afternoon, very little later than when I had last checked it. In my rearview mirror, I could see the dead pile of Lochiel behind me, and knew this for the point at which I had first seen it. I was heading back the way I had come.

That was good enough. I drove, eventually returning to civilization. Of course my precious schedule was shot to pieces. I never made it to Deming, having to spend the night in Benson, and naturally gave up the pre-paid reservation. I took that snafu with, for me, remarkably good grace.

I have in my files photographs taken from my initial wanderings in Lochiel. They show that which is to be expected. I ended up with a series, also, of blank black shots, all that could be derived, I must assume, from the pictures taken at the second story window.

I retain an unusual, un-place able key, the one with which I first tried to open the door to my truck, the sole key not on the ring. I am convinced that it is the key to my room in the Lochiel hotel. I will rest satisfied with the assumption, for I have no plans to return in order to test that theory.

Jeffery Scott Sims is a degreed anthropologist making his home in Arizona, which forms the backdrop for many of his tales. As writer and reader he prefers the spooky and the weird, his favorite genre authors being Lovecraft, Howard, Smith, and Eddison. His mostly recently published stories include “The Return of Vanek”, “The Revenge of the Past”, “The Report FromHansen’s Planet”, “Morstenburg”, “The Spirit of Lenny Gilk”, and “My War Against the Invisibles”.

Full information on his writings and publications may be found at the author’s literary site:  http://jefferyscottsims.webs.com/index.html