The Rambler
by Justin Carlos Alcalá
Cotton-candy clouds hoisted a cherry sun over blueberry mountains. The splendor bothered a sleep-deprived, dramamine-inebriated Adam Montanez. His first vacation was already an hour off schedule, and he couldn’t spare a minute admiring skylines.
Complications with Adam’s discount flight and rental car had delayed him an hour and, even though his cabin reservation was self-check-in, Adam, an Audits Manager, fizzed like a shaken soda bottle as he dashed his 1.2-liter engine compact car along the evergreen road. He had to hurry if he wanted to unravel.
Adam’s Mexican parents had migrated to the U.S., desperate for work. From the time of his birth, they yearned for his success. It was difficult for Adam to watch his parents suffer through four jobs in order to pay for his education; that’s why, when a corporate firm hired him as an audits accountant, he swore to climb the ladder.
For the next decade, Adam’s efforts drew raises and titles with a side of anxiety, migraines, and insomnia. Through the fires of profit, Adam forged into a fastidious model employee with more stowed potential than the rest of his department put together. Had his director not instructed him otherwise, Adam would be in his office now.
Adam’s romantic getaway retreat was situated outside of a tiny mountain town that showcased its bohemian charm. The village’s sign read: “Where Hippy and Hillbilly Are One.” Adam sneered at the pottery store, karma shop, and tie-dye shed with a misspelled sign that read: “We Die Here.”
Adam rode through the village’s main street, his rental tires trading pavement for gravel as he cut into the red maple woods. Fifteen minutes after snaking through roads and passing over a suspect river bridge, Adam parked before a timber frame cabin pinned on a hill. Adam glanced at his rental printout picture, followed by the shrunken lodge in front of him.
“I smell a one-star review,” Adam said to no one in particular, fetching his luggage and self-check-in keycard from the passenger seat. “Time to get back on schedule.”
On the inside, the cabin resembled a forgotten history exhibit with a scorched stone fireplace, a low timber ceiling, and floorboards powdered in ash. Cast-iron pans adorned the walls like artwork, and secondhand furniture clung to splitting walls. A perfume of baked wood and mothballs stung Adam’s nostrils, and a steady draft purred through the house. Adam realized that his signal bars were likewise on vacation when he snapped a picture with his phone.
Adam unpacked in the cabin’s sole bedroom. The California King, smothered with lacy heart pillows, stole most of the resting quarters except for a lone dresser where Adam transferred his pressed flannels from his carry-on. Having finished, Adam returned to the living room loveseat, sat, and breathed his first paid time-off breath.
The cabin’s draft breathed back. Adam studied the ceiling, walls, and floors for secret treasures and, when he came up empty, he bit his cuticles clean. He avoided work thoughts by humming a tune that sprang into his head while pacing through the living room, porch, and bedroom. He tested the bathroom’s faucets, searched for the draft points of entry, then confirmed he’d locked the car.
Adventure’s zenith arrived when Adam fetched logs from the garden’s mammoth, endless woodpile and lit the fireplace to cook marked-down hotdogs he’d bought at a shady gas station. Depleted from the excitement, Adam retired to bed at the crack of eight o’clock.
That night, as Adam settled in a bed that stank of sex, he peered into blackness unearthed by a lack of light pollution. Every branch crack, fallen acorn, and owl call was amplified in the silence. Adam was unaware of how long this purgatory lasted until the leaves spoke.
At first, it was a distant shuffling of fallen brush that Adam attributed to a night animal but, as the rustling dragged closer, a song accompanied it. It was a raspy, gravelly baritone voice like the creak from a back door. Adam was fixed in terror, listening as lyrics and leaves cut through the front yard, forming words as the stranger crossed the bedroom window.
Wanna see the moon’s real color?
Wanna hear a secret song?
The finest things are always free.
You’ll see, if you dance along.
Words fell apart as the vocalist wandered to the rear of the house, into woods. Adam’s fingers stung from clutching his comforter. When the lands offered back its old tune, Adam’s stone bones dissolved. He vaulted from his bed and scurried to the window, noticing an old condom stuck to the curtains as he drew them back. Moonlight washed the front row of trees with a silver glow. No phantom wanderer stirred.
“Nope, not doing this,” Adam said, whirling to the dresser. He donned his pre-set hiking clothes, snatched his car keys, then whisked outside to his rental car. When he clicked the key alarm, nothing happened. Adam tested the door. A muddy handprint was pasted on the driver seat and another along the open fuse box.
Adam used his cellphone light to investigate. Somebody had cut the wires, like in a cheap spy movie. Adam reached to test the ignition, but a titanic crack from a healthy branch behind the backyard sent him into retreat. He darted to the cabin, locked the doors, then pushed furniture against every point of entry.
“Okay, Adam,” he said aloud, pressed against the door. “Let’s get some rest, then report the nightmare fuel in the morning. Maybe the police know someone who lives nearby... in the secluded wilds... who wanders the dark forest alone and tampers with cars.”
For the rest of the night, Adam huddled motionless with his back to a windowless wall, fireplace poker and plastic fast food knife clutched in his hands. The somniferous orchestra of early birds, the wind’s keening, and his own humming massaged Adam’s thoughts into a dull drone until he conceded to slumber.
Dreams of fluorescent-lit offices, corporate meetings, and an endless stack of marked reports stole Adam’s repose. When his body jolted awake, Adam peered at his smartwatch and realized it was one o’clock in the afternoon. His plotted trek to the police was four hours overdue.
“No,” he bounced up, pushing away the loveseat barricade and drawing open the front door and leaving it open. “I can’t be late.”
Adam dashed outside, still armed with his arsenal, and followed the gravel road, polluted with dead leaves because of a breezy autumn night. He made it thirty minutes before the russet and pewter landscape spun him in circles. He thought he’d heard an office phone ringing by a pile of dead evergreens as he trudged on, but wrote it off as exhaustion.
By the time the cold and hungry Audits Manager reached the river, it was verging on three o’clock in the afternoon. Adam’s gasping open mouth sealed into a grimace as he took in the overpass. Overnight, the suspect bridge had turned into the broken bridge when a shore maple split the platform in two.
“No way,” he rubbed at his dark mane of pomade greased hair until he looked like a rooster. “This is not a coincidence.”
Across the river, a distant slap like an axe to wood echoed between the trees. Adam didn’t spare a moment hurrying back towards the cabin, wood poker at the ready. He raced the sun’s descent, making it to the cabin’s locked door in time for shadows to trade places with trees. He fumbled with the keycard, then barricaded himself inside.
The backyard woodpile was empty, so Adam used printed expense reports from his carryon to make a roaring fire. He peered at his wristwatch. Night stretched ahead, and Adam wondered if he could handle another double shift.
He ate stale cereal, drank complimentary cabin chamomile tea, then retired to his windowless corner. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, returning to H.R. trainings, equity statements, and profit ledgers. The melody he couldn’t stop humming looped in his dream’s background. At three-fifteen a.m., Adam roused, overheated. The cabin stood still.
“A drunk,” Adam said. “An isolated incident.”
Adam moved to the bedroom, settling in the dark and listening to the earth’s murmur. Wind, evening creatures, and plummeting foliage took the night off. His body melted into the cool mattress as repose took him. Visions of standstill traffic, break rooms, and copy machines formed before an electric chirp of the front door’s lock pulled Adam from his shaping nightmare. A desert wanderer’s voice crooned through the living room.
We’ll Cha Cha on the Lord’s green hair,
Play blackjack by the stream’s floor,
Put some spiders in our pockets,
Take our skin off near the shore.
Adam locked in place. He listened as wet feet walked to the kitchen and dug through the cupboards. Adam recognized the crunch of chewed cereal, then the visitor proceeded past Adam’s locked bedroom door and into the washroom. Bath knobs squealed as the shower was turned on. Adam heard his visitor draw the shower curtain back, step inside, then clear his throat before singing again.
You ain’t lost if you are happy,
I use fireflies for light.
We’re serving mouse veal and blood wine,
A wolf’s feast is quite a sight.
Adam broke through his spell and rocketed up. In a protean race, he struggled to shove on a boot before changing his mind, snatching his flannel, and then hurrying out of the bedroom. Light under the bathroom door shifted as the visitor trilled along.
Adam wasted no time bounding out the open exit. A hazy, soft shower oiled the earth, causing Adam to slip through the yard. Adam plied his rental car as a handrail, but vaulted onto the narrow gravel road when alarm lights and honking vociferated for attention. The shock to his system overloaded Adam’s perception. Computer typing, fluorescent lights and burnt coffee flashed through Adam’s senses.
His mind returned to the woods, prompting Adam to sprint like an elk, his lungs ablaze in the brisk autumn cold. Adrenaline blunted the bottom of his naked feet, unscrewed the tension in his neck, and galvanized his muscles. Adam’s instincts rushed over reason, ordering him to keep flying. Payroll, month-end emails, and other Sisyphean tasks were an afterthought. By the time Adam returned to the river, he wasn’t afraid anymore. Adam was thirsty.
He crawled on all fours to the edge of the river, cupped his filthy hands in the water, and drank. When he had his fill, Adam closed his eyes and breathed. Once his raw wheezing eased, Adam inspected his firm flush hands as the river’s whir soothed him.
Muddy, shoeless, and rooster-haired, Adam sat on the cold ground until the rain subsided and light bit darkness’s crust. He lingered and hummed his tune while the sunrise’s apricot rays offered the gray province a second chance. Robins chirped, fish splashed, and the foliage beneath him thawed. The living portrait’s splendor roused up words from the melody rooting through Adam’s head. Adam sang throaty lyrics, his voice sounding like a buzzsaw.
So, come along, little baby,
Forever we’ll gaily roam.
The thicket wants your company,
Don’t you ever go back home.
Copyright © 2024 by Justin Carlos Alcalá
