Randy and Wendy had a nice time talking to Hank. They also had a chat with the bartender. Moose chimed in a few words as well. When they were finished with their nightcap, they bade Hank good evening and left the bar. "Enjoy your stay!" Hank said.
They crossed the road holding hands and made their way back to their room.
Randy tried to pay attention to the motel as they entered the grounds. Beside their car there were five other vehicles parked in the lot. Their car was the newest—the others looked like they were early nineties models. There was even a 1991 Chevrolet Camaro RS. It didn't make a lot of sense that they were the first people from out of state to stay overnight in years. How could the motel survive financially? He voiced this in quiet tones to Wendy, who said, "Let's just not dwell on it. We'll get some sleep and be out of here early tomorrow."
That was fine with Randy. He let themselves into their room, and in a few minutes they were dressed down in their underwear. They climbed into bed. Randy felt tired finally. He kissed Wendy. "Night, honey."
"Night."
"We'll get up early, be out of here and on the road by eight."
"Sounds good." Wendy said. She reached over and set the radio alarm clock for six-thirty.
They settled beneath the covers and fell asleep in no time.
AROUND THEM, NIGHT settled in around the town. The roads were barren, lonely. The diner was closed. The tavern closed up shop at midnight. Hank went to his dusty pickup truck and drove off. In the dozens of tiny clapboard houses that dotted the side streets of the town, people settled down in their beds to sleep, eager to begin the next day. Business slowed down to a crawl and completely stopped by midnight as the inhabitants of the town slept.
Randy and Wendy slept deeply.
Stillness.
And then, gradually, there was a stir of something alive in the atmosphere.
The wall that the head of the king-sized bed was against appeared to shimmer and melt. It drooped down the headboard slowly, like molasses. It rolled over the pillows and began to creep over the sleeping forms, slowly covering them. Likewise the floor seemed to elongate and ripple, tendrils reaching up to grasp the bedspread and crawl up. It enveloped Wendy and Randy from the side and foot of the bed. Neither of them stirred; they were in such a deep sleep from the wine and the general road-fatigue that they wouldn't have awoken even if the essence of the town hadn't intoxicated them with its images of easy living and the calm, peaceful feeling it injected into their conscience. This essence wrapped itself around them and drew out their memories and knowledge, feeding on them, and when Randy woke up the next morning before the alarm clock sounded, he felt even more drained than when he went to bed. He looked over at Wendy, noticed she was still sleeping. Then he got up and padded to the bathroom and got into the shower.
By the time he got out he felt a little better, but he was still tired. The shower had reinvigorated him somewhat. Wendy was up now and she had the TV on, turned to CNN, and she was watching the latest news on the Iraq situation. "Good morning," Randy said.
"Morning." She yawned. "I could use some coffee."
"Take a shower and we'll grab some breakfast," Randy said.
When she was finished with her shower and dressed, they walked over to the diner. Randy was more hungry than anything now, and he ordered a plate of eggs, bacon, pancakes and coffee. Wendy ordered an omelet. A truck driver came in and sat at the counter and ordered breakfast. He pulled out a cellular phone and talked to somebody for a long time. When the waitress brought their check, Randy asked, "Is there a real estate agent in town?"
"Hank Michaels over on Running Springs Way," she said.
“Does he drive a pickup truck?” Randy asked.
“Sure does.” The waitress motioned to a pick-up truck across the road at the Feed Store. “That one right there.”
Randy looked out the window. A shiny red Ford pickup truck was parked near the entrance.
Randy turned back to the waitress and smiled. “Great! Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” The waitress scampered off to wait on other customers.
Randy and Wendy quietly finished their breakfast.
After they finished, they paid their bill and exited the diner, which was filled and bursting with early-morning customers. They walked back to their room and started packing. Randy flipped through the TV—Sharon Osborne was interviewing Hilary Duff on her morning talk show and Bill O’Reilly was pontificating on Fox News. He flipped to a movie channel—Finding Nemo was on. He flipped to a music station and got a local station blasting Coldplay. That was more to his liking.
He helped Wendy pack the rest of their stuff, than they got in their car and drove to the feed store.
They approached Hank Michaels, who was just finishing his transaction. “We were told you’re the local real estate man,” Randy said.
Hank turned to them. The only difference in his look today was that he was wearing a clean pair of tan slacks, a white shirt, and brown oxfords. “ I sure am,” he said. “Follow me to my office.”
Once at his office, he led them through the rear to a small building behind a barn. He showed them to their seats and sat behind a large desk. There was a buzzing sound and Hank reached for the BlackBerry clipped to his belt and pulled it out. He looked at it. “Just a moment,” he said. He tapped a message in and hit a button, then replaced the device in its clip on his belt and sat down, his smile wide. “Now what can I do for you?”
“We’d like to see if there are any homes for sale in town,” Randy said.
“I have several,” Hank said. He looked at his laptop computer, tapped in a few keys, and a moment later a laser printer began to hum. He picked up the printout and handed it to them. “Take a look through these, tell me what you think.”
Randy and Wendy looked through the listing. They were all nice houses at prices nowhere near what they were used to in Los Angeles. “There’s several I like,” Randy said, looking over the listings. “Can we look at them today?”
Hank smiled. “You figuring on staying now, aren’t you?”
Randy and Wendy looked at Hank and returned his smile. “We feel we’d like to stay,” Randy said. “We like the atmosphere, the slow pace. Plus, we feel we have a lot more to give.”
“The town thinks so, too,” Hank said, smiling wider. He held out his hand. “Welcome to Diamond, Colorado, folks!”
Randy and Wendy Neff spent the rest of the day house hunting and eventually bought a three-bedroom house in town. They didn’t even quit their jobs in Los Angeles and go back to gather their things. They simply stayed and moved right in.
And the town thrived once again.
Story Notes
If you take a driving trip anywhere in the southwestern part of the United States, you will come across small towns as described in this story—many of them nothing but a main street or two with a few little housing developments scattered along the outskirts. These towns can be found in the middle of nowhere. I mean that, literally. You can be driving for hours and then all of a sudden there’s this little town in the middle of the desert.
I’ve always wondered how people in such small desert communities lived. What do they do for fun and leisure? Where do they work? Do the people who live in these towns feel cut off from what goes on in larger cities? Those were the thoughts on my mind when I wrote this. I wish I could point to an exact moment of inspiration that fueled the fire for this one, but I can tell you it was written sometime in the summer of 2005 and I sold it immediately to Dred, an online magazine.
Holes
Editor’s note: The following is a transcription from a tape-recorded message. It has been transcribed here with voice-recognition software for easy reading.
It’s cold outside. Winter is here and, according to the newscasters, this is already proving to be the harshest winter in this part of the state.
(A heavy sigh on the tape. The sound of a chair squeaking)
I guess I better get started.
/> Just a moment ago I heard a heavy booming. It sounded like something very large and heavy tramping through the forest behind my house. I took a peak outside, of course, but didn’t see anything.
The booming was so heavy I could feel the ground vibrate.
I sat listening for ten minutes as the sound receded in the distance. I kept waiting for police sirens, or maybe the sound of somebody heading outside to investigate, but I saw and heard nothing else. Just those heavy, tramping footsteps.
Because it sounded like they’d started near the Sallee home, I put my heavy winter coat on, headed outside, got into dad’s car, and drove over there real quick. The Sallee place is only half a mile from where I live.
The Sallee house looked empty when I got there. Looked like Billy’s parents were gone.
Billy, of course, was probably home for winter break, like I was.
There was no way I was going to go knock on the door to find out.
Instead, I parked the car on the side of the road and trudged through the ankle-deep snow to the woods that bordered the Sallee house in the back. I kept well out of the perimeter of their property—old man Sallee is one of those gun nuts and has those No Trespassing signs nailed up around his property. I made my way through the back and into the woods and started looking around; wondering if what I’d heard just ten minutes earlier had been a figment of my imagination.
It wasn’t. I saw it about fifty yards away from the Sallee back yard.
There was a large path through the woods made by dozens of circular impressions. The impressions sank well into the snow, making firm prints about six inches into the frozen soil beneath.
Whatever it was, it was heavy.
(Pause on the tape).
And as I stood there, shivering in the cold night, my breath misting in front of me, I swear I could still hear it. It’s footsteps moving farther and farther away from me. Judging from the distance, it had to be in town by now.
But nobody saw it. I heard no screams, no crashing cars.
Just those footsteps growing fainter.
I don’t even want to begin to think of what it might be.
(At this point the narrator must have turned the tape recorder off and then resumed again due to the audible clicking noise)
I’m back in my house. God, I never want to see something like that again.
Okay, I’m going to start everything over from the beginning.
My name’s Josh Collins. I’m twenty-one years old. I will turn twenty-two on January 21st, 2013, which is a little under a month away. I live in a dorm room on the Penn State campus in State College, Pennsylvania, but I spend my winter and summer break at my folk’s house in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I’m at my parent’s house now, in my old bedroom, narrating this all into a little voice recorder. My parents are at some Christmas party tonight for my dad’s company. He’s a Purchasing Director at a manufacturing firm in Lancaster, so it’s pretty much mandatory he attends a company Christmas party, you know?
I’m an only child. And like I said, I grew up here. Went to Warwick High School, graduated top of my class in 2009. Got a scholarship to Penn State and am majoring in Engineering.
Anyway, I don’t want to tell you about myself, although I think I need to give you some of my background so you know where I come from. Who I really need to tell you about is Billy Sallee.
I grew up with Billy. He’s an only child, too. Only he and I are light years apart in so many ways.
I don’t mean to brag, but...I was a very popular guy in high school. I was on the track team, on the debate team, held various student body positions, and maintained a 4.0 grade average. I also managed to hold down a part-time job throughout my senior year at Stauffer’s, the local grocery store. I did volunteer work in the community, all to raise my profile for the college recruiters, but also because I liked it. Yeah, I admit it...I like helping people. I know that’s kinda strange in this day and age, especially with people my age, but it’s true. I helped out at the local senior center, the local rec center. I did all kinds of things for the community.
And again...not to brag or anything, but I had a social life. I had friends. I had dates. I had a steady girlfriend in my senior year. Her name was Heather Watkins. She was a cheerleader, and unlike a lot of cheerleaders I knew, Heather actually had some smarts. She’s a junior at Millersville University now, majoring in Biology.
Billy Sallee was smart, too. Like me, he maintained a 4.0 grade average.
Unlike me, Billy Sallee had always been a social outcast.
Billy’s parents were middle-class, like my folks. And while I think they loved him, I don’t think they really paid attention to him. I also think they coddled him too much. I remember when we were in kindergarten, his mother always sent him to school with notes to the teacher; she didn’t want Billy to play on the monkey bars because he was clumsy and she was afraid he’d hurt himself; she didn’t want him to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because peanut butter made him break out in a rash. It got to the point that the other kids immediately sensed Billy was not like everybody else, that he was Special. Therefore, he became a target.
You know how kids are. Kids can be cruel.
Billy became the butt of everybody’s joke. He was teased. Harassed. Humiliated. Laughed at.
Oh, the teachers tried to put a stop to it, of course. Kids got in trouble. But the teasing never stopped. Not really.
Despite that, Billy did great in school academically. Like I said, he was smart. He was a whiz at math and science.
Because of the teasing he got through elementary school, he was painfully shy. It also didn’t help that his mother dressed him in the morning. His parent’s fashion sense wasn’t very becoming to him. If the word ‘geek’ had a picture in the dictionary, Billy’s face would be featured prominently. When adolescence set in, Billy’s eyesight went south and he was fitted with glasses that magnified his eyeballs. His teeth were crooked (for some reason his parents never got him braces), he had bad acne, his hair was cut in a really awful haircut that suggested the barber (or his mother) had stuck a cereal bowl on his head and simply cut around the rim. Yeah, Billy was an outcast all right. And it might not sound like such a big deal, but you weren’t there. Billy Sallee wasn’t just teased...he was tormented.
The examples are too numerous to mention. I can’t count how many times Billy was sent home from school crying. And not just little whimpering crying either, but outright bawling. The kids just picked and picked at him, finding all his vulnerable spots, and Billy never once fought back. I don’t know why he never fought back, although I have my suspicions. That probably had to do with his parents admonishing him to never make a fuss about things, to never call attention to himself, to not do anything that would embarrass them.
You know...things like fighting back, maybe getting suspended from school for the trouble. God forbid some school administrator thought badly about Billy’s parents because he’d gotten into one schoolyard fight.
So instead, he suffered and not once spoke out.
He was called every name in the book. He was called four eyes. When we were thirteen, he was called Chipmunk, for his teeth and his high-pitched squeaky voice. Pizza face was another common nickname when he got zits. Fishy was another nickname. I don’t know why the kids called him Fishy. He was skinny, for one thing. Skeletor would have been a more appropriate name. One time I asked James Chapman why that particular nickname was given to Billy. “Because when he starts crying he breathes like a fish,” James said. “His mouth kind of goes like this.” He demonstrated, his lips turning into an ‘O’ as he mock gasped for breath and mock sobbed at the same time, his eyes wide and bugged-out, giving the appearance of a fish looking out at you from an aquarium or something. The other kids that were gathered around us at lunchtime laughed at this demonstration. I didn’t laugh. I thought it was pathetic.
But I never once told James this to his face.
I realize I should have. R
ealized it shortly after it happened. But I never did anything about it.
To top it off, Billy didn’t have any kind of support system. He had no friends. And all I knew about his home life was that his parents were over-protective, and either didn’t have a clue their only child was the pariah of the school, or they didn’t care.
Despite Billy and I being on the same level academically, I didn’t know him very well. We were in the same class in a lot of subjects. We consistently fought for the top five in the entire school as far as grades. And even though Warwick High School is fairly small, and Lititz itself is a small town, Billy and I never so much as passed half a dozen words between us in the twelve years we went through public school together.
Pathetic, I know.
I never teased him. Never once made fun of him.
But then I never did anything to stop it, either.
(The recording resumes at this point, broken off by a clicking noise signifying the tape recorder had been turned off).
Okay, it’s been about an hour since I started taping this. CNN is reporting that there’s a riot in Lancaster City. Lancaster is about ten miles from where I live. CNN is also saying that similar riots are occurring in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Here, I’m going to tape some of what’s going on.
(At this point another voice cuts in. We get the impression that the narrator has turned the microphone toward the television. We hear the voice of a female television newscaster)
“...it’s really a mystery, Bob. The reports we’re getting are saying that windows are being broken, buildings are being demolished—it’s the only word I can describe. Buildings are being broken as if something is crashing into them.”
“Something is crashing into them? (This second voice is male and is obviously the co-anchor).
Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned Page 4