After a bit of static, music came on. Or at least, an avant garde artist might've regarded it as such. Simon winced as Ramone gave a sneer coupled with a side glance towards the radio listing on the display. There were instruments, no doubt. But for a hard rock station, there was a distinctive lack of guitars, drums, singing... and really anything resembling a melody or flow. There were many horns and what sounded like the irregular plucking of a metal strand echoing from the inside of a chemical drum. "The flying fuck is this?" Ramone finally uttered in abject disgust. "Sounds like an orchestra falling down a staircase in a hurricane."
Simon shook his head and quickly changed the station for him. This one was a classic rock station. Except now it was 'the murky sound of bubbles underwater'. Ramone stared ambivalently ahead and lightened his foot from the gas. Simon tried another station known for ninetie's hip hop. There were voices this time, but backwards and tinny sounding. The car began to coast. Next, a country station revealed syllabic chanting and what might have been maracas or rattlesnakes against a droning synthesizer. And the vehicle finally was put into a full stop when they tried local news radio, only to get the sound of knuckles rapping on something wooden intermixed with some distorted child crying.
Ramone calmly turned the radio off and just sat there in the middle of the dirt road with the car still running in park. Simon stared into his hands, fidgeting with them as he appeared somewhat troubled. "This... this isn't how this is supposed to sound. Is it, Simon?"
"No."
"And this roadside... shouldn't look quite like this. Right?"
Simon was initially less certain on that note. He hadn't really been focusing outside the car. Turning his head to the side, he spied unusual ferns and western style cacti intermixed in the normal scrub brush and pine strewn off road. Now, it wasn't out of the question to have small cacti in the sandy sections of New Jersey, but those were typically flat and squat. The specimens outside the Challenger were tall, more akin to something from Arizona. And the ferns were sizable and curled, with a curious dull green tint. They were more akin to mutant houseplants than the leafy forest ferns native to this state.
"Erm... well, I don't believe so." There was a moment of silence between the two as the situation soaked in.
"So..." Ramone began hesitantly. "Something did happen last night. Your fat man and that pale woman I met- something happened to us, didn't it? This isn't one of those things we're going to be able to explain otherwise... right?"
Simon wasn't sure what to say. Not at first. This was a level of weirdness he wished Jessie was around for. Maybe he could shoot some mental holes into the situation. The strange things they'd find rarely had a way of following them elsewhere; men-in-black aside.
"Okay. Maybe, just maybe- we should forget the coffee. Let's go check on Jessie. This isn't normal at all," offered Simon. "I want to say… maybe we're missing something obvious?"
"Suits me. I'm sure as heck not groggy anymore." Ramone tightened his lower lip and put the car into gear, heading for downtown Dresden Port to find their friend. If something happened, maybe he would know.
CHAPTER 9
All along the way, the two continued to see a feature out of place here and there. A signpost where there was none before. Houses where none existed. And others were conspicuously absent from the surroundings. The area otherwise looked about the same, but the subtle change in details began to weigh on them. Neither spoke, either out of anxiety, wonderment, or confusion.
Dresden Port proper was no better. The statue of Captain Dresden in the crux of town was in a completely different pose. Shuck's 24-Hour Convenience was a postal office. And many streets did not match how either of the boys remembered them to sync up. It was as though someone took Dresden Port as it should look, cut it up into a jigsaw puzzle, shook the pieces together in a bag and then reassembled it, only to use fitting pieces from another puzzle to replace random patches of Dresden Port's greater area.
Fortunately, Mr. Chang's Fix-It Shop was still there and the lights were on. Jessie would probably be running the show at this hour of the day, so they parked and hurriedly went on inside. Neither seemed comfortable to just stand around outside.
The old door rang with a pleasant bell above it to herald the arrival of customers. The inside was a mess of toasters, microwaves, and analog television sets on shelves. There was nothing strange about it so far, which was a promising sign. Alone within the store, in the back corner of the front counter, was a stumpy brown haired young man working on the small motor to a nearby blender. "Jessie!" Ramone called out and dashed on over. Simon quickly followed.
"Hey man! Did something happen to town...? We were just driving-" Ramone said, before quickly stopping short. Jessie turned around and looked at his friend. But his friend could only go pale.
Jessie's eyes were bulging and dilated, as if something grabbed them from an oversized fish and shoved into Jessie's normally sunken squinty gaze. What's more, the black iris was surrounded by pure red instead of white, almost to the point of cartoonish-ness. He wore such a strange grin as he looked at Simon and Ramone. And he said nothing, only staring upon them as he stood motionless in front of his work.
Sweat ran down Ramone's temple and he put his hands in front of himself in caution. "Hey... hey, are you okay? What the hell happened to you??"
"Geegh..." Jessie gurgled incoherently, never breaking his leering stare or moving from behind the counter. Simon felt a wave of nausea just looking at his insane expression. The three stood locked in maddening gaze with each other for several moments. The air conditioner came on suddenly.
"Simon," Ramone whispered to his adjacent friend. He looked far more tense than Simon could recall in a good long time. Even more than he did on the night of the run-in with the men-in-black.
"Y-yeah?"
"Walk backwards SLOWLY. Make your way to the door... don't make any sudden movements unless he does. That's not Jessie."
"Right... right, sure." Simon trembled, badly shaken by Jessie's unnerving visage.
"Yeughuhg."
Heedless, the two both bolted as fast as possible, with Ramone practically tearing the door off his Challenger. "Get in! GET IN!" He already began speeding off with Simon shutting the passenger side while the car was in motion. Fish eyed Jessie watched the steaming tire tracks placidly from the store's side window a moment later.
Back in the car, Ramone was driving quickly and without direction. His face was covered with sweat. Simon looked like he’d run a sudden marathon. "What the hell was that??" Ramone shouted in obvious panic. "Holy shit- I almost lost it when he looked at me!"
"I don't know- I don't understand! What's going on here? Why is everything so fucked up looking? That was like a demon Jessie or something," Simon blurted out, with one of his rather infrequent needs to swear.
"I don't know either. None of this makes sense," Ramone replied, while trying to lower both his pulse and the car's speed. Generally, he tried not to be the one to get startled easy. He wasn't proud of himself, but today was now pushing him.
"So, where are we going? You just ran another stoplight-" Simon began.
"Simon-! I don't know! Okay? I don't know. We might have done something really bad here and I don't understand how point A connects to point B at the moment. And I mean that by location and how any of this is happening. Let me... let me just find a quiet spot to pull over somewhere. I need to think."
Simon swallowed hard and looked out the window. Still Dresden Port, but different. Different enough to feel alien to anyone as local as those two were. It was now that he noticed some of the other Dresden natives... they too, were similarly red eyed. And glaringly so. "You see them, Ramone? My god... what is this place?"
"I'm more concerned about how do we leave it," Ramone muttered, visibly uncomfortable. "The idea of running out of gas right now doesn't appeal to me."
They drove down a confusing series of streets for several minutes before Ramone managed to find a main road he fully rec
ognized. Tullerton Street would take them down the south bend of town by the old steel and tobacco mills that closed down in the nineteen eighties, as well as a semi-active quarry. Seemed like a good place to avoid some pedestrians.
Some twelve minutes of aggressive driving through a red, fish eyed Dresden Port led him to the gravel quarry and mills. The land was primarily clay, small stones, and weeds against a backdrop of trees and corrugated tin wall buildings. Dust settled into the air as Ramone pulled the Challenger off the road. Simon idly viewed the one third full gas tank. Still seemed like plenty.
Ramone grabbed a clove cigarette from his leather jacket and struck a match. "You don't mind, right?" Simon shook his head. Ramone wasn't much of a smoker but every so often he could be seen with the pungent herbal sticks. He cracked a window and let his friend de-stress.
"So... now what?" he asked after a puff.
Simon assumed a thinker's pose in the passenger side. "I have absolutely no frame of reference to make heads or tails of this. Let's go over some details, okay? We know this much... Obese, possibly less than real psychic plus gothy pale girl at a traveling sideshow... we lose track of time and wind up waking up at the same 4 H grounds sans the carnival... then Dresden Port and everything inside it, but wrong. Yeah buddy, I've got nothing."
He continued, trying to work it out. "I can only assume at this time that maybe those two people we met were in league with each other, but I don't know what the point would be. Do they get something by sending us here? Maybe we don't truly know what they were up to, but we weren't dragged here kicking and screaming. I could have simply chosen to have ignored the door. You could have dismissed her. I mean, they both worked off of temptation in what happened... I guess."
"You're saying they were devils or something?" Ramone asked with a perked brow.
"Mmnn." Simon shook his head. "I'm leaning towards no on that one. We weren't asked to do anything sinister for a reward and while this place is strange and unsettling, it doesn't necessarily scream he, at least, not for me. Hmm. Actually, I'm starting to think maybe connecting them is a red herring."
Ramone gave him a dull look. "Red herring? Are you making a pun from all of this already?"
"I made a pun...? Oh... OH. No. Geez, man? Give me some credit," Simon said with a shake of his head. "ANYWAY. I'm not so sure they had anything in common. They were almost complete opposites from what you've told me. You didn't get any impression she was psychic or anything like that, did you?"
Ramone pursed his lips thoughtfully and took another hit of his clove. "Mrm, no, not really. She was maybe a little unusual; I won't say I'd know that. She had a really woodsy perfume scent on her, though. I've never smelled anything like it before. And, for the most part, I got the impression she was a college student somewhere."
"Well... maybe we just saw what we wanted to see," Simon suggested. "I spoke to someone who implied my life might change as a result of that door. You met a pretty girl. I don't know what that would make them, but I think we can conclude neither of them were necessarily run-of-the-mill types. And this can't be anything related to the military base from the other week- evil Jessie is on this side."
"Hmm. You think that Jessie in Chang's shop was some evil doppelganger?"
"Eh? No, not technically. That was a term of a speech. Maybe not the best choice, either. The guy was red eyed as a demon and muttering incoherently. I mean, this town looks more or less normal here; differences aside. I can get behind the idea of a doppelganger, though. I'm thinking, somehow, we've wound up in another world that resembles our own."
"From a carnival?"
"Apparently. Did the name of that carnival strike you as a little odd? Doesn't have a real happy name, nor was it someone's obvious namesake."
"The Setting Sun Carnival," stated Ramone. "Hm. Sounds almost eastern."
"Perhaps. But I was thinking it sounded transitional. Such as, from day to night."
Ramone stared at him for a moment. Slowly, his eyes widened with apparent realization. "So, in other words, everything would be more or less the same, but things would look differently. Because day and the night are opposites, but still similar. Maybe there's different people and animals out at different hours."
Simon shrugged his head into a nod. "Something like that. I'm just guessing, but it seems rather specific to the situation. I mean, we went, and we're here. Jessie didn't show up because he didn't go."
"Well, wait. What about the other random people who went? Are they here, too?"
"It's possible. But I'm thinking those people who we met at the carnival probably mattered more than simply showing up. And we got free tickets, didn't we? The lady at the booth initially tried to charge us. Theoretically speaking, that tells me there might have been some kind of winnowing out process going on. And we were VIP ticket holders. Think about it- what's more mysterious? A couple of friends vanishing or large groups of people?"
"Let's say all of this is true... why? Why us? Just dumb luck? Did we do something wrong?"
Simon chewed his bottom lip for a moment, thinking it over. "I can't say for certain, one way or another. But Norbert seemed to expect me. What about that Aveirasen girl?"
"Not sure. She was just sort of there. I'm not going to claim she appeared out of nowhere- it was dark and she wasn't brightly dressed." Ramone sighed and finished his clove. "Okay. Let's get down to business here. There was a way over here. How can we get back?"
Simon frowned and slowly leaned back in his leather passenger's seat. "I don't know. The carnival isn't in Dresden Port. At least, not here. Maybe it's as simple as sleeping again. Or, there really isn't a way back. We don't know that this isn't some punishment for something. It's certainly not a reward. I don't think either of us wants to be here."
"Hmm, fair enough. Then how about this? Let's see if we can find the Setting Sun Carnival. If this place is similar enough to where we're from, there must be internet. Let me try my phone. I should have connection out here."
A few moments passed, but slowly, a sour expression came over Ramone's face. "The hell? It just makes gibberish on my phone." He turned the phone to face Simon. The screen was covered in strange computer language characters, none of which made any particular sense to either of the boys. "Okay then. I'll try calling Information."
Ramone dialed. Upon completion of the number, he quickly withdrew the phone from his head. Simon could hear it making some odd noise that resembled TV static, an old dial-up modem, and the buzzing of bees. "Ugh. It's not working. Guess our electronics aren't exactly compatible here. We should've figured it out since the radio is playing all sorts of weird crap."
"We could try going to a public library and using one of their connections-" Simon suggested before Ramone shot a dull look his way. "Erm..."
"Simon, do you really want to deal with all of that? And these red eyed people? The Jessie over here just makes gurgling noises. The radio functions but it just plays random noises. And my phone doesn't work. There might be a lot of rules here that we don't get. We could get in a lot of trouble if we don't magically know what they are and follow them. This place looks like our own, but it isn't. And I sure as hell don't want to end up in red eyed jail because I'm not wearing the right shade of orange on a Tuesday or something."
Simon rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. Ramone's advice might have been cautious, but he felt inclined to agree. There could've beeen a lot of things that would cause the two of them to stick out like a sore thumb. And questions being asked by a syllabic gurgling local presence would not make it any easier. They needed to lay low. For all he knew, these people might recognize something was clearly alien about Simon and his friend as much as they could about the residents. "Where do we go?" he asked.
"I'm thinking," Ramone muttered, scratching the stubble of his chin. "The problem being, what is safe here? Where can we go and not draw attention to ourselves?"
It was a good question. Simon was about to say something non-committal when they heard a kno
ck on the metal of Ramone's door. Both jumped in their seats. Simon actually managed to bash his head on the inner roof in the process, causing him to mutter some curse under his breath. Startled, they looked out the driver's window and found a man in sunglasses leaning over. He knocked again, a churlish smile appearing on his face.
He was standing in front of an old towing truck with the diesel engine running, despite neither having heard him pull up adjacent. His skin was well tanned, like shoe leather. He was wearing a casual red flannel shirt over well used dirty denim jeans. A simple straw cowboy style hat sat on his head, covered with tawny long black hair. He looked perhaps a bit older than either of them, but not significantly. By their guess, he was Native American in origin. Most importantly, his eyes were not red under those black shades.
"Hey," the man began with a common greeting. "You boys broke down?"
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