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by Anna Blauveldt
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They were lost. Hopelessly lost.
Surrounded on every side by flat grasslands, Adam and Barb were stuck at a crossroads with no signposts and too many options. To the left, distant mist-blanketed hills. Miles away in the opposite direction, a dense wood. Of course, they had no map. Who used maps anymore? And modern technology had deserted them: dead car battery, no cell phone coverage, no GPS.
They might as well have been on Mars.
On the verge of a major meltdown, Barb sat in their vintage powder-blue Austin, fiercely gnawing her left pinky fingernail. She was always, always punctual and what was happening now was driving her crazy. This might make them late for check-in at the Rest E-Z Bed & Breakfast. It would totally be a disaster if their room were given to somebody else.
Barb was three months pregnant and high maintenance, even in the best of times. That day was no exception, and her fretting finally got to Adam. He climbed out of the car and started pacing back and forth on the dirt shoulder. Surely some friendly motorist would show up soon. Give them a jump-start, point them in the right direction, and they could be on their way. Was that too much to ask?
This fiasco was not the first in their eight months together. But, as creatures of the urban persuasion, they were out of their comfort zone in the countryside. And that made it ten times worse.
Barb had never so much as gone to summer camp as a kid. A recently failed barista trainee, she was fired because she couldn’t get the latte foam hearts right. The tall 23-year-old brunette was leaning towards modelling as her next career move. Barb had the looks, but impending motherhood put that plan on hold.
Adam’s only childhood experience in the great outdoors had been short and unhappy. After one rainy week in a leaky tent at a boy scout jamboree, he and the scouting movement parted ways forever. Now thirty-something, he was a marginally successful, if cliché-prone, ghost story writer. Everyone told him he looked like Chris Hemsworth in the Thor movies. Only shorter and without the wavy blonde hair. Or the biceps.
Ten more minutes passed. Finally, a vehicle approached from the direction of the forest. They heard it before they saw it. And when it got close, it was so filthy they couldn’t tell what make, or even what colour, it was. Just a rusted-out old jalopy, likely held together with spit and duct tape. Its engine made death-rattle sounds when it pulled over and stopped, and they wondered if it would ever start up again.
The driver, when he got out, matched the vehicle. Weather-beaten skin stretched over his spare frame. He had eyes in a permanent squint and a grizzled grey three-day-old beard. It was hard to peg his age. Maybe fifty. Maybe seventy. His clothes were threadbare and patched in places, but at least they looked clean. He greeted them, said his name was Sam, and offered to help.
They weren’t sure his dilapidated heap would survive the boost, but Adam pulled cables out of his trunk, hooked up the batteries, and it worked. They were about to drive off when Sam invited them for supper at his cottage nearby. Barb, visibly antsy about getting to the Rest E-Z, was reluctant to accept, but Adam gave her The Look. What’s with you? was the message. This man has done us a huge favour and wants our company for an hour. We can give him that. Adam packed a lot into The Look.
They followed Sam into the forest, then turned off the highway and onto a narrow dirt road that eventually led to a clearing. A fast-flowing stream was on the left and a woodpile was on the right, behind a chopping stump with an embedded axe.
In the centre was the cottage. It looked more like a hunting camp than a place to live. Small and boxy, the outside was greyed barn board with asymmetrical windows that seemed to be an afterthought. There was no front step up to the sagging porch; a large flat stone set just above ground level served that purpose instead. The roof shingles, years past their prime, were curled and likely leaked in a rainstorm.
Adam thought the scene looked just like the isolated shack trope he used in his second book.
They parked and Sam took them inside. He told them his wife Molly had almost finished her afternoon nap, and could they kindly whisper till she was awake?
As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they saw the whole cottage was one large room, with a small area in the back concealed by faded floral-print curtains. Near the front door was a woodstove with a pot simmering on top. Sam said it was rabbit stew. He’d made it fresh that morning and it was almost done.
Opposite the stove was a rough pine table with a gas lamp at its centre and four pressed-back chairs around it. What appeared to be an icebox sat beside another door at the back. Barb wasn’t exactly sure it was an icebox, but she’d seen something like it on the Antiques Roadshow.
Sam gestured for them to sit. Then he tiptoed to the curtains, pulled one aside and slipped through. Adam and Barb caught a glimpse of an old brass bed covered by a crazy quilt. The curtain closed behind Sam again and they heard him call Molly’s name. Minutes later, he emerged carrying his wife in his arms.
Sam settled Molly carefully in a rocking chair facing the stove and adjusted her fringed shawl to cover her better. Then he turned around and introduced them all.
In contrast to the desperate circumstances, Molly had an air of refinement. There was dignity in the way she held her head. Her thick silver hair was smoothed back in a bun, revealing fine lines of sadness around her gentle blue-grey eyes. And even though a shapeless housedress overwhelmed her slight silhouette, it wasn’t hard to picture her in an elegant linen frock, sipping tea from a bone china cup and nibbling gracefully on crustless sandwiches.
Soon it was time to eat. Sam moved Molly to a chair at the table and served up his stew. Then the four started to get better acquainted. Barb explained that she and Adam planned to attend the county Harvest Festival that weekend.
Sam smiled when she said this, giving Molly a fond wink. He told them Molly and he had first met at the Harvest Festival decades ago. Exactly how many years he couldn’t recall. But things didn’t go well for them at first.
The trouble was Molly’s parents. She was the only daughter of a well-to-do country lawyer, raised with expectations that she would marry the scion of an equally prominent family in the neighbouring town. It had all been arranged. But when Molly met Sam at the festival, those arrangements fell apart. She was smitten and so was he. To her parents, Sam was simply not suitable. He came from a family of notorious bootleggers. As for his prospects, he’d likely wind up down in the mines. A future for her with him was just not on, as far as they were concerned.
So, of course, Molly and Sam had to elope. For a while, they were happy. And, yes, Sam worked in the mines, but that didn’t bother Molly. She was prepared to live a hardscrabble life for him. It was when he started to drink that she found it all too much. She gave him an ultimatum: it was either her or the bottle. After he trashed their home in yet another drunken rage, she moved back in with her parents.
A month later, Sam came knocking – at the service door, of course. He told Molly he was a changed man. He promised her no more drinking. She had her doubts but decided to give him one more chance. And he was true to his word. Sam never touched another drop.
I should be taking notes, Adam thought. This could go in my next book. Or maybe in a short story.
For years, the couple was content in the cozy cottage in the woods. Then one day Molly fell down. And she kept falling down, again and again, as the weeks passed. Something was terribly wrong with her legs. They went to the doctor, but he could do nothing to help. After that, Sam dedicated himself to taking care of her. Now he was starting to falter, too. How much longer could they go on like this?
Their story sounded familiar to Adam. He knew all about genre fiction conventions, and there could only be one ending for Sam and Molly. It wasn’t a happy one.
It was time to leave. While Barb thanked the couple for their hospitality, Adam discreetly slipped some bills under the gas lamp on the table. Outside, Sam gave them directions to the festival in the next town and waved goodbye as they departed.
It was almost six o’clock when they arrived at the Rest E-Z. They checked in and went straight up to their room.
Even though they retired early, Barb and Adam were late for breakfast the next day. The other guests had already left. On every table, blue cloth napkins were lying askew and white restaurant-stock dishes held remains of meals. Here, bits of scrambled egg and a half-eaten sausage drowned in ketchup. There, a bowl of fruit salad with only the underripe melon balls left. Barb’s stomach was having none of that. Instead, she settled for dry toast and English Breakfast tea. Adam dug in to the bacon-and-eggs special.
As they ate, they watched their hosts, Damien and Carrie, clearing the tables. Damien was completely unremarkable except for his eyes. Just like a reptile’s, Adam decided. Endlessly darting back and forth as if searching for a juicy bug. And Carrie would stand out in any crowd, floating around the room in a puce caftan, her hair pitch black with a shock of white standing straight up from her widow’s peak. The two looked more like caretakers of a run-down off-season hotel than proprietors of a quaint country inn. Barb, already suffering a particularly bad bout of morning sickness, was creeped out by them. But Adam took in every detail, filing their images away in his mind for use in some future manuscript.
Once the couple finished, they joined Adam and Barb. Carrie filled them in on the festival and Damien told them to be sure not to miss the homemade food stalls. Mrs. Bates’ famous berry preserves were a must.
Despite their appearance, they seemed to be the ideal B&B hosts: upbeat, helpful, and entertaining. But that changed when Adam and Barb mentioned their supper the previous day with Sam and Molly.
It started when Adam first gave the older couple’s names. Carrie and Damien still had their Give-Us-Five-Stars-On-Expedia smiles, but they exchanged puzzled glances. As Barb went on to describe the grim cottage and its dated furnishings, their hosts grew visibly skeptical. ‘You can’t be serious!’ their body language said.
Then Adam recounted what they’d heard about Sam and Molly’s difficult life together. Damien raised his hand, palm out, to stop Adam speaking. He, himself, carried on.
“We know all about Sam and Molly,” Damien told them. “So does everybody else around here. The two of them shunned because they weren’t supposed to be together. Shame how they wound up . . .”
Damien, his left eye on Adam and his right on Barb, explained.
“One Harvest Festival weekend, after Sam hadn’t been seen for a while, some of the townspeople went out to their place to check on Molly and him. They found the couple passed away in each other’s arms. That was eighty years ago. Since then, their story has become a legend in these parts.”
It was Adam and Barb’s turn to look suspicious. Carrie added more.
“When the cottage was cleared out later, a hundred dollars was found under the gas lamp on the dining table. The bills looked peculiar, all funny colours, likely made by amateur counterfeiters. There was plenty of phony cash floating around back then. Still, it was surprising that Sam and Molly had anything to do with money like that.”
Adam and Barb were dumbfounded. Adam told their hosts the money wasn’t counterfeit at all. In fact, he’d placed it under the gas lamp just the day before. It was simply impossible that those bills were discovered there eight decades ago.
They knew then what they had to do, even before going to the Harvest Festival. Returning to their room, they collected their bags, went down to the front desk and checked out. After leaving the Rest E-Z, they took the road out of town and back through the forest.
Ten minutes later, they found the turnoff. The dirt road seemed more overgrown with weeds than the day before, but it was passable. Adam drove on until they reached the spot where the cottage had been the previous day. The stream was there, but it was the only thing that looked familiar. The rest was just a meadow.
The cottage was gone. There was no jalopy, no woodpile, and no chopping stump. Had they stopped in the right place? They decided to park and walk around a bit. Hand in hand, Adam and Barb went over to where the cottage should have been. Even up close, there was no evidence it was ever there.
The couple moved on towards the stream. Pushing through a stand of goldenrod, Adam stumbled and almost fell. With Barb’s help, he righted himself and looked down to see what had tripped him. It was a large flat stone. They both recognized it from the day before. It was the step to the cottage porch.
They looked at each other, speechless. This was crazy! How could everything else they’d seen there the previous day vanish overnight? Adam was deeply shaken as they returned to the car and started the drive back to town. And Barb was consumed by only one thought. They had to get to the Harvest Festival before Mrs. Bates’ berry preserves sold out.
After parking near the fairground, they rushed through the festival entrance. Once inside, they saw all the amusement rides, games, and souvenir booths any self-respecting third-rate travelling carnival could offer. But they weren’t interested in any of that and pushed on.
Adam and Barb passed a family with kids sucking on cotton candy balls bigger than they were. Then came a tattooed couple sporting green buzzcuts and multiple nose rings. A swarm of giggling teenage girls followed, trailing shiny helium balloons behind them.
To Adam, they all resembled stock characters in a fictional midway scene.
The smell of deep-fried something wafted over them as they approached the tent where local produce and homemade goods were on display. Inside, they reached their destination: Mrs. Bates’ booth. Carrie and Damien were there, too. They’d just bought the remaining jars of berry preserves. They needed all they could get for their Rest E-Z guests, they explained. Such a shame Adam and Barb showed up late.
For the second time that day, Adam and Barb had no words. When they recovered, they told their hosts what they’d discovered in the forest clearing: the stone that had been in front of the cottage the day before. The smug look on Carrie’s and Damien’s faces said it all: ‘There they go again...those Big City folks are still hallucinating.’
Loot secured and fake smiles restored, they backed away. ‘Have A Good Day’ was their parting shot. Still cadging those five Expedia stars, Adam observed.
Later, as they drove back home through the countryside, Barb and Adam reflected on their Harvest Festival adventure. The eerie encounter with Sam and Molly. The backstabbing B&B hosts, who would only be getting one star.
And Adam knew he had more than enough material to write his next ghost story.