The Impossible Barn

By all outward appearances, it is a barn like any other: a pitched gable roof draped over plankwood frames with double-wide sliding doors--uniformly brown and brushed with time. The barn and its accompanying two-story farmhouse sit unassuming and slated far back from the main interstate road, where in the distance a dusty-blue and bygone Ford Bronco comes rolling into view.

In the car are Garrett and Gavin--twin brothers of thirty-five--and their younger brother of ten years, Max, who is riding in the backseat and is the first to notice the barn creep into frame through the windshield.

“Is that the place?”

Gavin looks over at Garrett with a grin. They have all of the twin-type idiosyncrasies that Max had grown to resent over the years, such as the incessant need to conversationally one-up each other as if in some sort of verbal tennis match that they seemed to enjoy putting people in the middle of.

“Yeah, that’s the place.”

“Yeah, ready to have your mind blown?”

“Like straight off your head blown?”

Garrett mimes a head explosion complete with sound effects and fumbled sunflower seeds.

“I’m still not sure I buy it.”

The twins laugh.

"That's the whole thing though. You don’t actually buy anything.”

“Yeah, the guy just has it, and he just gives it away.”

“And he has everything.”

Gavin turns to Max, now appearing serious.

“Everything.”

Max rolls his eyes. Gavin does a little hand flourish to reveal the watch on his wrist.

“See this watch? This is a Grönefeld.”

“Look out, he likes his watches.”

“I do like my watches, thank you. Grönefeld is a Dutch watchmaker. They are very prestigious, and their products are very rare.”

“More like groan-feld.”

“Grönefelds aren’t just sold in local stores, alright? You don’t just hop down the I-9 to Bloomington and pick one of these puppies up at Wal-Mart. I had to go to Europe to get this watch. And it’s the Parallax Tourbillon Platinum Edition, by the way.”

“Groaaaaan-feld.”

Max continues to sit dubious and quiet.

“The point being, is that when I broke this little clasp on the back here, I was very upset."

"It's true, I was there."

"See how this clasp is made? With the engraving of the company on it and all?"

"He was drunk and tripped on some steps, it was hilarious."

"They don't just make replacements for this stuff, not even the company that makes these watches."

"So many people saw, too."

"But one day we're out here hauling some stuff away for the old man--one of those smaller jobs between the larger jobs type thing."

"Watch money."

"And I get to mentioning my watch, and my broken clasp here."

The Bronco slows as the smooth roll of interstate gives way to the sound of gravel crunching under tire.

"So the old man says shoot, you should check the barn out back, got all manner of junk collecting dust in there. So I looked--not because I expected to find another piece like this one, I knew that was impossible--I just thought I’d poke around, y’know, out of curiosity."

Garrett appears to run out of quips and falls silent.

"Max, this barn--its huge inside. And it's so dense with crap that you don't even know where to start. So I just... started.”

Gavin unhooks his watch to offer Max a better view of the clasp and pauses for increased dramatic effect.

"It was in the first box I looked in. The first box, Max. All I did was open the box closest to me and there it was, sitting neatly on top of a whole mess of junk and random trinkets. I swear to god it felt like it was winking at me, just sitting there like that. I honestly felt kind of sick at first. This shouldn’t have been possible. This is a Grönefeld, Max."

The Bronco comes to a stop at the end of the lane, with the barn now looming directly in front of them. Garrett finally speaks up.

"Lost my ring at the jobsite up in Rockford. Spent hours looking for this thing. Terry would have killed me, I mean like straight up murdered me."

He turns to Max, holding up his hand and displaying the ring.

"Second box. The first box had a bunch of flags, like, tiny desk flags of every country imaginable. Seriously, like thousands of them. I went through it all.”

“We can’t all be one-box-wonders, bud.”

“Why don’t you just tell me the time there, bud.”

“Guys--”

The twins turn to see what Max is pointing at. Out past the barn an older man is chopping firewood. The man stops and turns to face the car as if responding to being pointed at. Garrett turns back to finish his story.

"But right there in the second box, under some old VHS workout tapes, there it is. Just waiting to be found. An exact copy of my ring. Or the same ring--hell if I know. Don’t really care--not getting murdered. Thank you magic barn."

Max remains stoic in his skepticism.

“You guys can’t expect me to believe any of this.”

“Oh, I think you’ll see.”

“Yeah, what are you going to ask the magic barn for?”

Max sneers.

“A Boeing 747. 200-series.”

“Don’t be a dick Max.”

“Come on, be reasonable Max.”

“Sure guys, because this is all completely reasonable.”

“Just be cool in front of Dale, alright?”

“Yeah, don’t be a dick to Dale.”

They exit the Bronco with twinly accord. Max hesitates, then follows.

Waiting patiently outside like some sort of midwestern deity, Dale is suited in faded denim overalls against a long-sleeve blue plaid shirt and topped with a camouflage baseball cap soliciting his favorite hunting supply store. He looks to be somewhere in his late sixties, and appears to have spent the majority of that time under direct sunlight.

“Howdy Dale.”

“Boys.”

“Say Dale, my younger brother here, he lost his, uh--”

Gavin turns to Max, inviting him to wish upon the giving barn. Max refuses to play the game.

“Nothing. I haven’t lost anything.”

“No, no--what was it again?”

Seeming not to care, Dale begins to walk toward the barn door.

“You boys know you’re free to check the barn, ain't got use for much in there.”

“How’d you get to having all this stuff anyway, Dale?”

“Suppose it just builds over time. Haven’t been in here for what, ten years or so.”

Dale gives a farmerly heave, sliding one of the massive barn doors open. The twins jump into action and open the other door, leaving Max standing alone in witness to the beastial maw of the barn expanding before him. The doors protest with long wooden yawns as daylight spills through their frame. Having no apparent desire to interact with the barn further, Dale returns to the pastorally codified task of chopping wood.

“You boys let me know if you need anything else.”

“Sure will, Dale, thank you.”

Max is surprised to discover there was no exaggeration on the twins' part concerning the internal state of the barn. He sees metal storage racks haphazardly organized into various heights and configurations that seem to continue with no end. It is implausibly dense and maze-like, with lanes of shelving housing a range of items so vast and nebulous that the only accurate word for describing it would be “stuff”. Max turns to his brothers, who eagerly await his reaction.

“So it’s a bunch of junk, who cares? I don’t see anything magical about a hoarding obsession.”

“Blasphemer!”

“Heretic!”

“Unbeliever!”

“Apologize to the magic barn!”

With a sigh Max turns to the barn, hands outstretched in mock reverence.

“Oh magic barn, please show me the way! Show me what is lost, sweet magical barn! I am yours to guide!”

Max walks into the barn, determined to use his new caustic strategy as a means to ending his brothers’ antics.

After no more than ten paces, he finds himself completely enveloped by the steely thicket. The atmosphere is thick and claustrophobic, but Max discovers there is ample walking room between the motley rows. No longer in view of the door, he shouts one last gibe.

“I’m going to the back! I can feel the magic calling me to the back!”

Pressing on, Max finds himself filled with an oddly genuine resolve to reach the end of the barn, perhaps if only to put some distance between him and his brothers for a while. He trudges deeper through twists and turns of overstuffed shelving, with the light now receding into the dim offering of a murky window far overhead. The labyrinth continues with no clear end as Max’s skepticism is slowly replaced by a growing sense of bewilderment. This truly is a massive barn, he thinks to himself. It is impossibly huge in fact, and Max knew he should have reached the end by now, but around every corner he finds yet another path leading further into the barn. Even the ceiling seems higher now, he notices. Max pushes forward, taking each fork in the path with a new slight desperation to his speed. He eventually comes to a larger clearing in the tangle, and turning to face what he estimates to be the direction of the door, he calls out.

“Can you guys hear me? This place is huge. Can you turn the lights on or something?”

His voice seems to die on his breath, as if fully absorbed by the colossal amount of matter beating down on him. Looking up, he realizes the ceiling has drifted out of view.

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

He feels a swell of anxiety as he scans across the impenetrable skyline of boxes and racks. Now completely uncertain of his bearings, he picks a direction and breaks into a light jog.

He moves past sloping walls of magazines and towering stacks of books; mountainous heaps of polaroids mixed among all manner of keys and wallets and lockets and shoes; unrelenting vectors of stuffage that blur into a nearly undecipherable and entirely disorienting array of infinite miscellanea lit by disembodied glow. There has to be a wall, he thinks to himself through mounting panic. If I just keep going in the same direction, there has to be a wall. Max is running faster now, and the labyrinth seems to respond in kind, expanding its aisles of debris outward as if inviting him to play. He rounds a corner and breaks into a sprint down a vast corridor of unaccounted space, flanked by used kitchen appliances and defunct pinball machines that stretch high up out of view. Seeing nothing in his path but a mammoth wall of plasma screen TVs and feeling his terror propelling him terminally forward, he cries out.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry magic barn! Let me out! I’m a believer! I believe!”

The corridor erupts with a cacophonous roar as the nose of a Boeing 747 200-series airplane forces its way through the plasmic palisade in front of him.

“Holy sh--”

His feet lose their muster and he falls forward, tumbling several times before coming to a crashing halt amidst a rain of glass and techno-rubble. With the nose of the 747 nearly upon him, he scrambles to regain his footing and attempts to flee the oncoming mayhem. Numb in body and mind, Max is pushed forward against the backdrop of thunderous collapse by the sheer autonomical will to survive, and counter to everything he previously considered sane, finds himself laughing a loud, hearty, almost maniacal laugh. Max feels as though he’s been unshackled from some vague neural miasma that he was unaware of having. He sees the barn.

Besieged by metallic discord and a twin-engine scream, Max bounds forward in a near transcendental float, and looking up he spots the soft red glow of “EXIT” resolve into view above the faint outline of a door. Declaring the acceptance of his concussive fate with a booming war-cry, Max lowers his shoulder and braces for impact.