The sun beat down on me as I kicked up little pebbles with my sneakers and a light wind caressed my face. It was a nice walk.
I passed by a rustic-looking farm house that evoked memories of Little House on the Prairie, then walked past an old wooden bus stop that surely hadn't been used in years.
Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, I held the smudged directions that I'd printed back at home up to my face. They were barely legible, but I still was pretty sure that the smudge which looked like an octopus was the resort.
Funny thing about maps, they are so small when held in your hands, and it's easy to think about going from point A to point B, but when you actually start walking... there are an awful lot of streets you need to keep track of.
And the funny little feeling in the pit of my stomach was telling me that I'd gotten lost somewhere between Johnson and Main Street an hour ago. And I'd taken so many twists and turns since then, that I was somewhere well beyond being simply lost.
To put it more bluntly, your gal Nil had gone completely off the map and into the unknown. Here there be dragons. Or at least... weirdly-shaped mailboxes that looked like stage coaches.
I stopped and stared. The little trailhand carved into the driver's seat of the stage stared back at me. It was crudely carved, as he was basically just a blob with a single badly painted white eye, and the barest suggestion of a mouth. But all the same, I didn't like the look on his face. Not one bit.
"What are you lookin at?" I muttered sternly.
He didn't flinch. Just kept on staring. I was on the verge of picking a fight when a dog barked somewhere nearby, making me jump and forget all about the mailbox.
I didn't see the creature, but it kept barking. It was one of those loud, angry barks, as if from a beast that can't wait to break lose from its lease and eat you alive.
Rather against my will, my footsteps picked up of their own accord and I started walking again, not quite running, but definitely faster than before.
And forgetting all about my map, and worse, all about where I was supposed to be going. The houses around me, thinly spaced to begin with, started to grow further and further apart, and the area I was in became more and more what I still thought of as 'country'.
Wooden houses either unpainted, or badly painted. Wooden or sagging barbed wire fencing. And a two-lane asphalt road, filled with potholes, that occasionally turned into a dirt road for seemingly no reason at all.
With every step I took I grew further and further from civilization, and more and more distance from the vacation that I was supposed to take.
It took longer than it should have to occur to me that it was maybe an hour from sunset, and that I might be forced to sleep out here.
That was when I first saw 'The Smiling Man'. He was short, maybe five foot one at most, but still taller than me. Slim but not muscular slim, just weirdly skinny. And he wore jeans, a white t-shirt, and a Dodgers baseball cap, pulled so low that I couldn't see his eyes.
He was standing on the increasingly badly maintained sidewalk, leaning against the wooden fence that bordered it. More out of politeness than any wariness of him, I veered off into the road to walk around him, and then continued on my merry way.
But the Smiling Man fell into step behind me, matching my pace exactly. Neither faster, nor slower, picking up speed when I did and slowing when I did.
Part of me started to grow very, very nervous. But that little part of me that had survived so much, balled up into a red fury, ready to launch myself at him and attack if he tried to start anything.
He didn't. Just kept walking weirdly behind me, even stopping completely when I did. Worse, he didn't even bother to pretend he just happened to be walking on the same sidewalk as me. Nope, just stared flat out like a creep.
I nodded to him, as if just passing the time, then speeded up my pace and crossed the street. I hadn't seen a car in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, making me feel more and more worried at how alone I was.
Once I'd crossed, nearly tripping over a small pothole in my panic, I turned my head and stopped. He had stopped too and was now just looking towards me. At least, I assumed he was looking. I still couldn't see his eyes.
"Who are you?" I asked at last, voice low but carrying far in the silence around us.
He did a weird little head nod to the left, that seemed to mean it didn't matter.
"What do you want?" I asked, voice growing a little louder, as anger started to seep in.
I thought he wasn't going to respond for a moment, but he didn't. Just kept looking at me. A weird head nod seemed to be all I was going to get.
Walking backwards as quickly as I dared, since I didn't want him to get out of my sight, I left the sidewalk onto the dirt around it, feet kicking up dust.
There were a few rocks, but none I could use as weapons. I stopped again and started rummaging in my pockets, frantically looking for anything I could use to defend myself.
All I found were a few quarters, a baseball card, a piece of string, and a love letter. The love letter wasn't written for me. I'd found it on a park bench one day and thought it was really sweet. No idea who it belonged to or who it was for. It was just... nice.
But I didn't have time to reflect on that now. Summoning all the courage I could muster, I closed my fingers around the handful of quarters in my pocket.
The Smiling Man still hadn't moved. Taking the offensive, I dared to walk out into the street towards him, stopping halfway across. If there had been traffic I would have been in an excellent position to get hit. But there wasn't.
He still hadn't moved. Scowling, I drew back my hand, quarters clenched tightly, and threw the whole bundle like a baseball.
"Take your change and eat it!" I screamed. Looking back, even in the moment I had no idea what I menat by that, but it had sounded snappy so I went with it.
He just stood there and took it, letting the quarters bounce harmlessly against his skin. Once they'd all fallen, he calmly stooped down, plucked one off the ground, and seemed to eye it curiously for a moment. Then he ate it, licking his lips in a way that seemed vaguely reptilian.
I turned and ran. It was just my luck that a car finally decided to cross the road, a little bmw going way faster than it should have been.
It only just missed me, but at least put something between me and my stalker, if even for a brief few seconds. I took whatever advantage it could offer and just kept going, not even looking back.
The dirt turned into a steep embankment, which itself became a straight up hill, that my little legs pumped harder and harder to run up. But run up it I did, not stopping, not even slowing down despite the incline, just going even faster yet till I reached the top.
At last daring to stop, breathing hard, I turned and looked back. The Smiling Man was nowhere in sight. Feeling more unnerved than ever, I headed down the opposite side of the hill, no longer running, but definitely moving fast.
The ground soon evened out, and the one word that came to mind to describe my surroundings was 'prairie'. A vast plain of dirt, scrubby brush, and not much else, with what might have been a building in the distance, though it was too far away to tell.
I slowed my pace to a steady jog, careful not to step in a gopher hole or something and break my leg, and kept heading north towards what may or may not be a building. It might not have even been north for all that I knew, I just decided I wanted it to be north, so north it was.
Every once in a while I looked over my shoulder to see if I was still being followed, but there was nobody there except for once, when I saw some kind of animal moving low to the ground. It may have been a coyote, and may just as easily have been a gopher.
The house slowly came into view, and now I could tell that it was indeed a house, and a big one. A three story ranch style house, made of faded wood that must have once been painted a bright red, but was now a dull rusty color.
More than anything it just looked old. Old and in terrible repair, windows broken, some of the boards loose, and a huge crack right through it's entire eastern side.
A wooden fence surrounded it, forming a loose 'this is my property' kind of barrier, but the fence was in just as poor shape as everything else. Sagging in places, completely gone in others, and just generally a mess.
Outside the fence and all around it was a dusty-looking cornfield, stretching as far as I could see into the distance. A terrible memory of a Stephen King movie flittered through my mind, about a bunch of kids killing people in the corn or something. Or maybe it had been the corn killing a bunch of kids. I couldn't quite remember.
Nevertheless, that little part of me that was not very smart and always held onto some measure of hope, headed for the rickety stairs that led up to the front door, hoping that no matter how abandoned this house seemed, maybe there was a working phone inside.