The Car at the Inn

Penobscot Ledges Inn, the weatherbeaten sign declared. A wooden plank hung below the sign, carved with the word "VACANCY." Jeremy pedaled his bicycle up the narrow gravel road that led from the highway to the inn.

The inn was a clapboard structure with two stories and peeling paint. It was separated from Route 1 on the west side by about fifty yards of closely-grown trees. Adirondack chairs stood here and there in the overgrown lawn, some lying on their sides; Jeremy wondered if the inn were even in business. No cars were in sight except one. Above the tops of some tallish bushes near the end of the inn, Jeremy could see the bulging gray roof of a car, the rest of its outline barely visible through the plants. Probably up on blocks, like the rest of this place, Jeremy thought.

Jeremy had magazine subscriptions to sell. Standing around the dooryard wouldn't accomplish anything. He leaned his bike against the porch skirting and hopped up the steps to the front door.

Nobody was in the lobby, but a bell sat on the front desk next to a guest book. A little card read, Ring for Service / Sign our Book / While You Wait. So Jeremy did.

The opened page of the guest book was about two-thirds full. Most of the entries had dates. The last one was a few weeks ago. Maybe not closed after all.

After waiting what seemed like ten minutes (but was really only five) Jeremy shrugged and headed out the door. As he mounted his bike and pedaled back out to the highway, he thought he heard a rustle behind him but didn't bother to look around. Supper was waiting.

Later that evening, Jeremy decided to look over his subscription sales for the day. His school did this magazine sale every year to raise funds, and every year Jeremy's sales numbers were bigger. Last year he had earned a skateboard from the prize catalog. This year he was going all in on sales and hoped he could sign up enough subscribers to win a new mountain bike.

Jeremy looked through his backpack, but could not find his subscription booklet. It had been in the front pocket of the backpack most of the day. Which he now found unzipped. But hadn't he dumped the book in the main section with his school books after signing Mr. Fujimori? That had been his last stop and his last sale.

Not counting the old inn, of course. Jeremy remembered the rustling sound he had heard on his way out of there. Maybe the booklet had fallen from his bag. There was a week's worth of sales in that booklet. Jeremy dumped out his schoolbooks, threw a flashlight in the bag and headed quietly out the back door. In a few minutes he was back on Route 1.

Night had already fallen, but his bike had bright head and tail lights. The shoulder along Route 1 was soft and sloped uncomfortably away from the road, but no way was he going to ride up on the pavement with the tractor trailers and texting teens.

Drawing near the Penobscot Ledges Inn, Jeremy had to slow down and scan the trees along the road with his flashlight to find the sign. He turned up the narrow driveway again and pedaled through the woods, trying to ignore the moving shadows his headlight cast all around.

He emerged from the drive into the gravel parking lot of the inn and searched the ground. No sign of the booklet. He laid the bike down and started hunting up and down the lot, trying to retrace his steps from earlier that evening.

There was no moon. No lights shone in the parking lot except Jeremy's flashlight, and the inn was dark as well.

As his flashlight swept the face of the building, it passed the spot where that old car had been parked earlier. Nothing now. Somebody must have been here after all, Jeremy thought.

He went up the steps and searched the porch. No booklet. He crossed the porch and tried the door. Still unlocked as before. He stepped inside.

As Jeremy looked around the lobby floor, under the dusty coffee tables and into the cobwebbed corners, he heard a noise from the parking lot. It was the grinding sound of tires on gravel, and in a moment he could also hear the whir of a car engine. Bright lights played across the wall behind him as somebody steered their car into the parking lot and stopped the engine.

This could get awkward, Jeremy thought. He opted for the common-sense solution: hide. Switching off his flashlight, he crept down the nearest hallway and crouched behind the door of a guest room.

Footfalls came up the front step, and voices. "It's totally black in there, do you still think they're open?"

"It says so in the guidebook. Just try the door, maybe they have a night clerk."

More footsteps, then a blaze of light shone under the crack at the bottom of Jeremy's door. Someone had found a lightswitch. Jeremy heard the service bell ring three times in rapid succession.

"Look, hon, there's a guest book. Should we sign now?"

"They can't be closed, there's an entry in here from today."

That would be me, Jeremy thought. A sudden tickle on his neck caused him to swipe at whatever was crawling there. He hadn't had time to check the room for bugs.

"I'll get the luggage," sighed one of the voices. Footsteps crossed the porch and crunched out into the parking lot.

Ring, ring ring, sounded the bell again. "Really, I'm not sure this place is open after all," the other voice called, and its feet followed the example of its companion. There was some less audible conversation from the parking lot, the closing of car doors, and finally the re-ignition of the engine and driving away.

Jeremy was relieved to be able to turn his flashlight back on and to step out of his hiding place, but as he did so he was disappointed to hear once again the sound of gravel. This time, however, the noise did not come from the highway but from the direction of the woods. It moved across the parking lot and stopped.

He flipped his flashlight back off and waited for more sounds: engine sounds, door sounds, anything, but nothing happened. He waited some more. It felt like he waited there in the dark of the inn for an hour, before he finally shrugged to himself and strode through the lobby. If somebody found him now, he would just have to act as if he were doing nothing wrong. And he wasn't doing anything wrong, he reminded himself.

Down the steps, across the parking lot to his bicycle. Don't run, you are not doing anything wrong, he kept repeating.

As he reached his bicycle, Jeremy felt his stomach tense and the hairs on his neck stand out. He couldn't say why. He pulled the bike upright and faced it toward the road. There it was again: the sound of gravel being disturbed.

He looked back. In the red glow of his tail light he couldn't see anything but the inn and the woods behind. And that old car. It had come back after all; but it was not parked.

It was creeping slowly across the parking lot. It swayed a little from side to side as it moved.

As it rustled closer to where Jeremy stood with his neck craned around, it looked less and less like a car. No lights, no wheels, just a long gray mound swaying in his direction.

Jeremy started pedaling toward the highway.

The thing started to move faster as Jeremy started down the road through the trees. As it moved it made a scratching noise on the gravel that grew louder and softer in waves, not really like the sound of tires at all. There was now also an odor, a woody, pungent odor like you get when you kick an old stump.

Jeremy stood up on the pedals and pumped as hard as he could, but he could not seem to gain any distance. He heard the scritch of a hundred tiny limbs as they stirred the ground behind him and echoed off the surrounding trees. He also heard a new sound, a rhythmic whoosh like something breathing from a dozen throats at once.

Before he realized he had reached it, Jeremy was barrelling onto Route 1. He squeezed the brakes as his wheels jarred the asphalt but he couldn't keep out of the road. Headlights blinded him from his left side and a horn blared; he gave up on the brakes and drove the pedals down.

He heard a squeal of brakes and a wet crunching sound, but found himself still alive and racing toward home on the far side of the highway.

Jeremy's heart did not slow down until he reached his own street, and neither did his legs. He skidded to a stop in his front yard, flung open the door and locked it behind him, pounded up the stairs to his room and locked that door too for good measure. He flung himself on his bed and lay there with his eyes crunched shut for several minutes until he finally stopped panting.

There was an uncomfortable spot in his ribs.

He rolled over and sat up, and reached into his jacket pocket.

The subscription booklet had been there all along. And looking at the pages of signatures and addresses, Jeremy realized that as of today he had signed enough customers to earn a brand new baseball glove. Maybe he would try for the mountain bike next year.