PART 1: TWILIGHT
The sign read EYRIE.

I remember that night as we both stood there for way too long, just staring through the fog at that sign. We went back to the car and checked the road map, just to be sure. But there was no “Eyrie” to be found anywhere.

Mark whipped his flashlight back at the road sign.

“Maybe we made a wrong turn somewhere,” he suggested. But I could tell from the sound of his voice that he didn’t believe that any more than I did. He scanned the map himself in the dim glow of the overhead light. “Weird… There’s no Eyrie anywhere?”

“You can’t find it either?” I asked, not liking the feel of this. The swirling mist that obscured much of the surrounding desert just didn’t belong in this climate.

“Hmm… You know, I was reading a while ago that New Mexico decided to change the road maps. Maybe Eyrie didn’t make the cut. It sounds pretty small.”

“Yeah, that must be it.” That sounded like a plausible explanation, so I agreed with him. I wanted to agree; this fog, and now this sign, had started me thinking about the sorts of tales you could easily spook yourself with out in the middle of nowhere late at night like this.

We jumped back into Mark’s beat-up station wagon, a sixteenth-birthday present from his father. We jokingly called it the Woody, and a few of our friends’ parents were appalled by the name— which we, amazingly enough, hadn’t even thought of— until we pointed out the phony wood paneling on the sides. Like in one of those old Beach Boys songs.

The headlights were on the whole time, but neither of us cared; this road trip had been a disaster from the first stop. The Woody had managed to break down every 500 miles on the mile. The air conditioning refused to work once we reached the desert. We had run out of gas once, and had to push the car almost six miles to the nearest town.

And now we were lost.

Looking back, I knew there was something wrong with this whole scene, but I didn’t want to say anything because I was sure Mark would think I was nuts. Odd, given that we’ve been friends since grade school, and I was also equally certain that he could sense it, too. It felt strange at that moment to remember our graduation only days before.

We drove on in silence, keeping our growing disquiet to ourselves. I still remember the time we went camping last summer, telling spooky stories until we were both too scared to go out of the tent, even to take a leak.

I doubt either of us was sure if we should be embarrassed or afraid. I mean, we had been on a couple road trips before, but nothing quite this ambitious. Still, I know I at least thought we were accomplished enough to handle a three-day drive without too many problems. It bothered me that a simple wrong turn could steer us this far off course.

The sign said 86 miles to Eyrie, and 111 to Cove— yet another town that we couldn’t find on our map— and over much of that distance, I almost suggested several times that we go back to the last town and continue in the morning. To this day, I wish we had, though I’m not sure it would have made much difference. I think we were already in over our heads, but I didn’t think so then, and neither did my friend, since he drove on anyway.

Asleep at the wheel… that’s the best way I can come up with to explain it. We grabbed dinner in a town called Moriarty— which at least was actually on our map— and ate as we cruised down the highway, listening to our favorite mix tapes. Mark’s stereo had been our faithful companion on this journey, in spite of the rest of the Woody trying to fall apart under our asses. I have no clue when I first noticed the fog that had increasingly thickened after twilight, but now I felt lost, more so than the word itself can express. Now there was only the road, and we crept along with seemingly nothing beyond the headlights’ beams.

It really seemed that night that we could have driven right off the face of the earth, and I believe we did, in a way.

PART 2: Arrest
I don’t know how long we rode on in contemplative silence, the night seemed to go on forever.

Neither of us had bothered to restart the tape, so each of us was left to our own foreboding thoughts. I know I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t figure out what. Part of me wanted to tell spooky stories again— the only trouble was I was already as spooked as I had been that one night— but I also wanted to make light of the situation somehow. I was sure this was just another of those times when I had managed to give myself the hoodoos, and Mark and I would have a good laugh about it tomorrow.

Then again, at times like that I’ve always managed to convince myself that this time it was for real, that this time the everyday world I knew would start to unravel, and something vast and mysterious would unfold around me.

The main thing that struck me was that I couldn’t remember the last time a car had passed us in either direction, and that only served to add more to my growing sense of foreboding. I remembered telling myself, Well duh, who would be driving in this? Us. And to me, it felt like we were the last people on earth.

Mark made me jump when he finally spoke, saying, “Man, I don’t know if I can keep my eyes open much longer. What say we stop at this Eyrie place and see if they have a damn motel?”

I nodded my agreement. I knew what he meant; as eerie as it was out here, with everything drifting in out of the fog, it was also so quiet. At times I was almost certain this was a dream, and I was going to wake up to find that Mark had been driving all this time in silent boredom. Even when he turned the tape deck back on, it couldn’t quite drown out the underlying quiet.

A quiet that was finally shattered by the flashing lights that rushed out of the mists swallowing the highway behind us. Mark later told me he was so startled that he nearly hit the gas. That probably would have been a bad thing, but on top of what happened next, I don’t really see how it could have made things that much worse. I remember feeling an inexplicable need to be anywhere else but here at that moment.

Mark seemed to cruise for a moment or two in indecision, then he slowed down even more and pulled over.

I thought, Well, at least we can’t get busted for speeding. According to the speedometer, we had scarcely gone over 30 in this foggy weather. But as the Highway Patrol cruiser drifted by and halted right in front of us, I almost told Mark to punch it; all the alarms in the back of my mind were telling me this was bad news.

Mark was already fumbling for his registration papers as I watched the door open. When I saw the car visibly rise on its suspension, I expected a hulking brute of a state trooper, with a stern Southern sneer and dark glasses… but what I got had to be the very living stereotype of the fat police man.

The first thing he did after squeezing himself out of his car was hitch up his pants. Or at least he tried to. It was an admirable effort, and under other circumstances, I would have had to try harder to not laugh my ass off, but there was something about all this that just wasn’t funny.

I cracked my window as the stout cop leaned back into his car for something. In that moment, I wasn’t sure if I should lock my door, or be prepared to make a break for it, hell, Homer Simpson could outrun this pig! I had my window open all day— the only A/C we had— but it quickly cooled off after dark. That, and for some reason I just didn’t want that fog getting inside the car.

But in his haste to get his papers in order, Mark had neglected to stop the tape, and so as the highway cop talked on his CB, his words were drowned out by Zack de la Rocha’s fiery lyrical admonition to Know Your Enemy, and I couldn't make out a word he said. Though on the plus side, he didn’t haul out a shotgun, as I was half afraid he would. I still don’t get it— I’ve been pulled aside by officers before, but it had never felt this nerve-wracking.

He did pull out a flashlight, and the first thing he did with it was shine it right in our faces as he ambled over. His face became a growing scowl as he shifted the light down, and got a better view of the Woody and its host of opinionated bumper stickers with every step. He spent a long moment fish-eying what I suspect was Mark’s Bad Religion “cross-buster” sticker, among others.

Not even a “License and Registration” or a “Did You Know You Were…” speech from this guy.

“Turn that crap off, boy!” was the first thing he said to Mark, and I was glad it was him that jerk was talking to, because I was totally on edge by then. Though in the end I doubt it would have really mattered, Mark’s natural sense of diplomacy hadn’t failed him. He calmly reached over and killed the tape deck.

Now the silence was all too complete.

“Montana, eh?” the patrolman remarked as Mark offered him his driver’s license. “Seems like you’re a long way from home, boys.”

“We’re on vacation,” Mark told him. Though he kept a conversational tone, I could sense he too was getting nothing but bad vibes from this cop. “My uncle lives in Fort Sumner, and we’re coming down to stay for a couple weeks.”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” the cop said, “but I don’t think a couple kids like you should be out this late. ’Specially not in such bad weather.”

“Yeah,” said Mark, “actually, we were thinking about turning in for the night when we get to Eyrie. Do you know how much farther it is?”

The moment I heard him speak that name, I knew somehow it was a bad idea, but I had no time to warn him. Sure enough, no sooner had my friend finished speaking than an inexplicable look crossed the officer’s face, flickering too quickly through too many emotions for me to read, but underneath them all was fear. And I’m pretty sure I was the first to notice that he had put a strip of black tape over his badge number.

“Come again?” he asked, and this only made my memory of the signpost stand out even more sharply in my mind.

“Eyrie,” Mark repeated, and I winced, wishing there was some way to tell him not to do that. “That’s the next town, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what kind of stunt you’re trying to pull, kid, but you better knock it off now.”

He kept Mark’s license and shuffled back over to his car. Where he again got on the horn and started talking to someone.

I found a napkin from the burger joint we ate at in Moriarty, and fished a pen out of Mark’s glove compartment. Then I got out of the Woody, stepping out in front of it. If I couldn’t get a badge number, I was sure as hell going to take down his license and car numbers. I felt an overwhelming need for proof, I was sure whatever happened next was going to be hard for others to swallow.

Apparently, Mark also felt something was wrong, because he also got out.

“Hey, you two!” shouted the officer as he leaned back out of his vehicle. “Get back in your car! I didn’t say you could get out!”

“You didn’t say we couldn’t, either,” Mark calmly pointed out, and stretched his legs as I started scribbling down numbers.

I was also trying to commit them to memory because I was honestly afraid Officer Fatso was about to come over here and take my pen.

As I had feared, he started over in my direction, demanding, “Just what do you think you’re doing, boy?”

“Just taking notes, officer,” was all I could come up with, the old adage Know your enemy still echoing in my mind.

“There’ll be no need for that,” he told us, “because you’re comin’ back to Moriarty to spend the night.”

“But we’re trying to get to Uncle Larry’s by tomorrow,” Mark protested, for the first time starting to show just how much this guy was getting to him. Or maybe he had finally noticed the cop’s badge, as I had.

Somehow, over the course of that ill-fated argument, I had made my way over to Mark’s side, not wanting him to face this creepy cop alone.

“You’re gonna have to spend the night in Moriarty, boys,” he told us, and he stared hard at Mark, as if he was trying to stare him down somehow in some bizarre contest of wills, “then we’ll call your parents.”

I could tell my friend, as persuasive as he could ordinarily be, was having trouble holding out against the cop’s forceful gaze, and I tried to back him up, saying, “Officer, we haven’t done anything wrong. Just let us get to Eyrie, and we promise we’ll stop for—”

“Dammit, boy!” thundered the cop, who by now was turning positively livid, “There’s no such place as Eyrie!”

“But the sign back there said…”

To his day I don’t know why I brought it back up. I knew it seemed to mess with this guy on some level. My best guess is that if he had acted more rationally, we probably would have quietly gone along with him, to where and to what end I don’t know.

But pressing the issue could’ve been a mistake, for although it allowed us to see just how unstable he had somehow become, now the cop was also really pissed. He lunged at me, screaming, “I’ll teach you some respect, you little punk!”

Unfortunately, I had studied Karate for a couple years, and my training kicked in with as little warning as that fat highway cop’s attack. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen that ham-fisted haymaker coming from a mile away, things might have happened very differently. But I sidestepped him before I knew what I was doing. Even as I moved, I thought, oh shit! don’t hit him you’ll go to jail if you hit him!

I managed not to swing at him, but the damage was already done; everything was happening so fast. But the sound of breaking glass told me things had just gone from bad to worse. Before I even turned to face him, I knew he had just put his fist through the window, and I found a half-second in which to wonder at how old that model must be not to have tempered glass. I heard him scream a litany of his choicest words as he jerked his lacerated hand back.

I was trying to find the words to apologize to him— for dodging his unprovoked attack, of all things— when he turned and fixed me with a look of blazing hate, screaming incoherently.

And with that, he again telegraphed me long-distance with his other fist. And again I acted purely on instinct, shifting my center to avoid a second attack. This time, I had to pull a punch just a split second before I threw it.

I watched in horror as the cop’s fist smashed into the Woody’s doorframe with a wet crunch that sounded like breaking fried chicken bones.

All I knew was that things were getting way out of hand, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop it. This had quickly turned into one of those places in life where one cannot wholly account for ones actions. I know part of it was simple self-preservation. And perhaps part of it was also simple self-respect that drove me in this twisted confrontation, that on some level I showed a little pride in my fighting skills. That dammit, I didn’t train with Master Al for three years just to get bitch-smacked by some old man who was so fat he could hardly waddle. For all I know, he may once have been a great athlete… about thirty years and a hundred pounds ago. In that second I pitied him, but also knew he was a serious threat, of an inexplicable nature, and that I had to do what I did.

Once he had made his move, I was left with no other choice.

I watched warily as the cop staggered back, cursing and screeching, and everything he was doing to himself was getting us in deeper and deeper trouble. I was afraid that next he was going to somehow manage to draw his sidearm, and I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to defend against that. But that was when he paused in mid rant, clutching his chest with one bloody hand.

All this time, Mark had jumped back and watched in unabashed horror, and now I joined him as the highway cop bellowed and howled. His jowls shook as he stumbled back to his cruiser. Only to stagger and collapse on the hood, bottoming out the suspension to the point that the bumper nearly touched the asphalt!

It was then, as the officer lay gasping on the hood of his own ride, that Mark finally regained his mobility and rushed to help him. For my part, I ran over to the cruiser and picked up the CB mic. While Mark tried to piece together what he remembered of CPR, I shouted, “Officer down! Officer down! Send an ambulance to Highway 40! Near Eyrie! I think he’s having a heart attack! We need help!”

I don’t remember how long I screamed into the mic, but no matter which way I tuned it, I was only answered with silence.

“Who the fuck was he talking to!?” I demanded, throwing down the mic in abject frustration.

“It’s too late, man,” Mark told me in the most somber voice I ever remember him using, as well as a term I’d never heard anyone use outside of really bad hospital dramas, “he’s dead. I’m pretty sure it was cardiac arrest.”

PART 3: ROAD SIGNS
We both stood in the piercing glow of headlights for several minutes before either of us did anything.

“Now what?” Mark demanded.

“We go to Eyrie,” I replied. It was all I could think of. “We… we get the police and try to explain…”

“Explain what? That we just killed a cop?”

“But it was an accident… I mean, he did it to himself… You saw…”

“Who’s going to believe us? Look, that car’s so damn old it doesn’t even have a video camera!… And we can’t just leave him here…”

“We can’t mess with the body.” I told him. I couldn't believe I was referring to him as the body. Dead not even five minutes, and as nameless to us as he had been in life… “It’s the only proof we have!… If we move him, they’ll think we have something to hide…”

The main thing I remember was being terrified that another car was going to pull up, especially another cop, and I was going to have to explain this. But a mocking voice in the back of my head kept telling me that no cars would be passing through here tonight. And somehow I knew even then that voice spoke truth.

Mark was as scared of doing time as I was, so he said, “Let’s hurry. At least try to get someone out here tonight…”

And he went back to the Woody, using the rest of the wet napkins to wipe off the blood on his hands while I picked up the mic and made one last attempt to radio for help.

In the end, it proved pointless. To this day, I doubt there was anything wrong with the radio, but all I got was faint static. By the time Mark had finished wiping off his hands— and probably glad he had somehow managed not to get any blood on his clothes— I had completely given up on the radio.

We drove on again in silence. I had inadvertently killed a man, and somehow it didn’t click emotionally. I thought I’d cry, or scream, or something, but all my mind was bent on was more foreboding. Make no mistake, I felt awful, but that awfulness just couldn’t figure out how to express itself.

Part of me didn’t even want to believe it had happened at all. Just some disturbing dream I was going to wake up from in some motel, because it just didn’t feel real. But all I had to do was look at the shards of glass littering the seat behind my friend to know that something had happened.

To steady my nerves, I finally broke the silence, asking, “Don’t you think that was really weird back there? I mean that guy was totally tweakin’ out.”

“Yeah…” Mark had clearly been thinking about it too. After all, he had just watched a man die before his eyes, and I suspect he was equally determined not to think about it right now. “He totally flipped whenever we mentioned Eyrie… like there was something about it that messed with his mind… He was too spooked for this ‘Eyrie’ business to be a prank.”

I didn’t know how to put it, and neither did he, but I think that officer was even more afraid of Eyrie and its so far unknown implications than we were. Looking back, I think we should have taken that deadly run-in— hell, the first road sign we encountered— as a warning. But for now we were sure we were closer to Eyrie than to Moriarty, so we pressed on.

That, and I think puzzling over these mysteries gave our minds an alternative to dwelling on that morbid traffic stop.

It turns out that we were indeed right, for the next sign we found told us that it was now 13 miles to Eyrie and 38 to Cove, and I wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of marking the 13th mile.

But it was the sign next to it that really did it for me. There was a t-junction here, where Highway 40 intersected with an old dirt road. A second sign pointed in that direction, toward “Scenic Naz-Nak Mesa” but I wasn’t really sure if I was reading it correctly because it had been slashed over with red spray-paint. It was what was written over that sign that both obscured the name of the mesa— probably yet another name we would never find on our map— and struck me with confusion and apprehension:

BEWARE PROJECT METRONOME

I finally looked over to see Mark clutching the steering wheel, his face as white as his knuckles. He returned my gaze slowly, saying in a voice that was way too dry and choked for my liking, “Let’s go back.”

“But it’s almost a hundred miles to Moriarty,” I remember saying. There was something about the words “Project Metronome” that frightened me, as if something out of a “B” sci-fi flick had somehow come to life, but Mark seemed even more afraid of it than I. I wanted to go back, but I also wanted to know. “What’s wrong, man?”

“I just figured out that cop’s last words,” Mark told me. “He was gasping for breath… I couldn’t figure out what he was saying anymore… At first he kept saying ‘no such place’… but then I couldn’t make it out anymore… But now I’m pretty sure he said ‘metronome’ right before he died… Why do all the signs say ‘Eyrie’ and ‘Cove’ but not Santa Rosa?”

I had no answer to that. I nearly laughed, hysterically if I had, at how we must have made a wrong turn at Albuquerque… like a bad joke. But I knew how he felt, so I said, “Okay, we’ll go back to Moriarty.”

Though I honestly wondered if we could. Project Metronome had just added an ominous new dimension to this problem.

Mark looked down at the fuel gauge, then sat there for a long moment, as if resigning himself to the unknown, before telling me, “We can’t go back… We don’t have enough gas. We’ll be lucky to make it to Eyrie at this rate.”

The chill I felt then had nothing to do with the desert night. I pictured myself walking out in the fog, and I knew he was right. I told myself, maybe someone there could tell us what’s going on, maybe even knew something about that crazy cop.

“Okay,” I agreed, pausing a moment to get out the rest of it, “but just for gas. Then we go back.”

Mark nodded, and we drove on.

As we drew near our mysterious destination, I felt less and less concerned with clearing my name, and more afraid of what we were going to find in Eyrie, the town that cop was so afraid of.

PART 4: Eyrie
Even in the fog, we saw the lights of Eyrie from a couple miles away. I wasn’t sure just what to expect, my mind kept conjuring up every small town from every horror story I knew. The mist seemed to thin out as we drew nearer, and at least I was glad for the increased visibility.

As we rolled into town, I also counted our blessings in that we still had a little gas left. I didn’t want to set foot in this place, let alone be as vulnerable as we would have been walking.

Still, both of us were acting nonchalant about the whole thing, and the first thing Mark said upon looking at the dark, empty streets was, “Bet everything closed at five.”

“Yeah.” It was indeed a quiet little desert town, not much different than all the others we had driven through in the last day or so. Aside from the vibe. It was more than just the unnatural fog, there was something amiss about this place, and the more we tried to ignore it, the more it seemed to press in around us.

In small towns, gas stations are not hard to find; all we had to do was stay on Highway 40.

“Okay…” I remember saying, “we just fill up, and get directions to the nearest police station.” I think I knew then how a wanted man felt turning himself in, since this was effectively what I was about to do to myself.

“Alright,” Mark replied. I don’t think he had any other ideas.

So we both stepped out, Mark walking over to the gas pump, I to the vending machine near the entrance. Of course keeping one another in plain sight. I fished out several quarters, just to discover that I would only need one.

“Hey Mark!” I said, “Check this out! Glass bottles! And for a quarter!”

“What kind?” Mark asked me.

I paused and looked down at the labels. The machine was big, blocky, and red… but I had never heard of Cam’s Cola. “I don’t know. Sounds like some local brand.” Though in my mind, there was nothing “local” about the sound of that name. Like all of the others we had encountered, if just sounded like it didn’t belong. “Have you ever heard of something called Cam’s Cola?”

He actually left the gas pump plugged into our tank when he rushed over to see this.

Previously, we had been acting pretty cavalier about this place, but as he stood next to me then, I began to realize that it was entirely too silent here, even for a small town after midnight. There was the hum of the lights, and the little clinking noises of the Woody’s engine cooling off, but that was it. No traffic, no air conditioners or fans, not even a whistle of desert breeze.

I took a deep breath, then plunked a quarter in experimentally. I pushed the button for cola, and it dropped a bottle into the opening. I had to use my keys to pop the lid open, but it was good cola. Damn good cola.

“Holy crap!” I remarked, a testimonial no Cam’s Cola representative would ever hear: “This stuff tastes even better than the brand name pop!”

Mark took a sip, then put in a quarter and got a root beer.

While he filled up the tank, I pushed open the door of the gas station, keeping the front window in clear sight. I was both surprised at the door being unlocked, yet somehow also expecting it. I told myself that while this may be a one-horse town, they probably still gets a lot of late-night travelers at the service station.

“Excuse me,” I said, “can you tell me where the…”

I trailed off as I realized I was talking to no one; I was paying so much attention to not letting Mark out of my sights, I had failed to notice the room was empty. There was something about that that just didn’t satisfy my sense of reason, that made me like this place even less. I felt the distinct urge to go looking in the back, to prove that the station clerk was just out back taking a whiz or something…

But I decided that I wasn’t about to let us get separated that easily. That was always how it happened in horror movies, and I wasn’t about to play the part of The Guy Who Gets Killed First.

Instead I called out, “Hello! Anybody home?… We just bought some gas and need to pay for it…”

My voice trailed off at that point, and I wondered if I even should have opened my mouth at all. I remember feeling as if I had just summoned something, and didn’t want to stick around to see what. I tried to tell myself that it was just nerves, but I found myself walking back to the door more briskly than I meant to. Outside, Mark was just screwing the gas cap back on as I stepped out. He looked up and asked, “So, did they say where it is?”

At first I couldn’t answer him. I felt too lightheaded. I refused to pause, even outside, I just kept walking toward the Woody. Every second feeling certain that something big, ugly and evil was about to come snarling out of that gas station at any moment. I don’t know what came over me, I just felt this dread certainty that we should have taken the dead cop’s weapons. It was all I could do to not break out running then and there.

By the time I reached the Woody, it had passed. Somehow I knew that if something nasty was going to happen, it wasn’t going to let us escape that easily. Pulling myself together, I told him, “No, there’s no one in there.”

“Hmmm…” Mark thought for a moment, and I could tell from the way he kept looking around apprehensively that this place was getting to him, too. “Let’s call the operator and see what we can find out.”

He walked over to the phone booth, near the vending machine, and I kept close at hand.

Mark picked up the phone, then put it back down.

“What?” I asked, somehow already knowing the answer.

“Line’s dead,” Mark told me, all emotion draining from his voice. “I think we should go back. This is wrong… all wrong…”

I knew what he meant, but somehow I also knew that we couldn’t, that on this stretch of highway there was no Moriarty, no matter how far back we drove.

“We need to find out what Project Metronome is,” I told him.

We both stood there in silence, drinking pop under hazy street lights as we tried to figure out what to say to each other.

Then there was no more time for debate. Both of us heard the howl from out in the desert, and it was a sound the likes of which neither of us had ever heard before. We had heard plenty of coyotes the night before, but while this had a similar ring, it was distorted, and reverberated in a way that made the hair stand on both of our necks.

I think we both bolted for the Woody at the same time. I remember jumping in, and feeling a selfish sense of relief that Mark had to go all the way around to the driver’s side to get in, basically that he couldn’t leave me behind even if he tried. But once he got behind the wheel, I couldn’t wait for him to put the pedal to the metal.

Unfortunately, the car wouldn’t start. This of course is the scene in any horror flick when the monster (or monsters) would come out and attack. I kept looking around frantically while he tried to start the engine.

“Start!” Mark pounded his fist on the dashboard. “Dammit! Start!… Not now…”

I was afraid the Woody was going to be the death of us, but then it finally started.

And so we pealed out, flooring it as we raced out of town. We slowed down a couple miles out of Eyrie, as the fog thickened again. Now neither of us was quite sure why we had panicked, and so we were both feeling rather sheepish.

Mostly I just felt like I had made it to the end of the horror story. We had both come out of Eyrie alive, and our ordeal was finally over.

Little did I realize just how wrong I was.

PART 5: COVE
We rode on again without conversation; it seemed that silence was the watchword on this dark journey. It was so awkward, and totally different from our typical ongoing dialogue about anything and everything. Especially when one might think we had more to talk about then than we had ever had in our lives.

I still don’t know what made that unholy sound, and I hope I never have to meet it. There was something about the way that howl sounded, and even more in the freaky way it echoed, that otherworldly and unnatural don’t even begin to describe. I’m not even sure how much of it was the source of the sound, and how much was caused by whatever was happening there that night, but both of us watched the road warily as we went, expecting some monstrosity to leap out of the fog at any moment. Mark suggested later that perhaps a coyote was all it really was, and maybe the distortion we heard had something to do with Project Metronome, which we both agreed, even at that point, must be the source of all this trouble.

It was only when another sign drifted out of the mist that I realized we had spent too much time brooding over that noise when we should have been paying attention to which way we were going. My fragile sense of relief evaporated when I read this new message of ill omen:

COVE 22
HIGHWAY 42 JCT 39

All this time, we had been driving in the wrong direction.

I could feel panic threatening to trample my senses, everything sliding out of control. I looked over at Mark and saw that he was still coming to grips with the situation. The idling of the engine was the only sound as we both sat there wishing that hateful sign didn’t exist.

“This is not happening,” he muttered.

And I, quite frankly, wished I could just agree with him, as I usually did when he said things like that. The idea to do what I did next had popped into my head several times since our fateful meeting with the mad highway patrolman, but until then I just didn’t have the nerve to try it. (Hell, it had even occurred to me to try it once before the cop, just on a whim.) I think I was afraid of what I already knew would happen.

Without a word, I reached over and flicked on the radio.

Not the tape deck, mind you, the radio. The censored, commercial-drenched pop-fruitopia wasteland of the airwaves. Mark knew I couldn’t stand it— it was like Chinese water torture to me— and he just turned and stared at me, first in confusion, then in alarm. I know the same idea must have occurred to him at some point; I just beat him to the punch.

He didn’t utter a sound as I scanned up and down the dial. First AM, then FM. White noise was all the rage that night, for it dominated all frequencies. Not that I was terribly surprised— as I said, this was the sort of thing I was dreading. The irony, that I would actually want to hear the radio.

I flicked it off just as quickly, for in that moment I feared some creepy voice was going to start speaking, telling us the sorts of things we really didn’t need to hear right now. We control the horizontal and the vertical, perhaps. Or maybe an advisory of foggy weather— oh, and listeners, remember to be on the lookout for otherworldly predators roaming the desert. Or the call letters of some station no on earth has ever heard of. Though what really spooked me was the thought of some voice getting on the air and addressing us, right here in our car.

“Never liked radio anyway,” I muttered, but it didn’t come off as smartass as it should have. “We went too far, Mark. We should have turned back before we met that cop…”

“I know,” he replied. I could tell that the simple act of driving had steadied his nerves somewhat. At first I was afraid he was going to try to argue that somehow this Project Metronome had merely disrupted communications, that perhaps the town had been evacuated… Perhaps he considered such possibilities, for he muttered, “…Something like that, there’d be army guys everywhere… roadblocks… something…” Then he said, “I don’t think it’s the radio, either. Something about all this scared that cop… I think he was completely out of his mind by the time we ran into him.”

“I killed him…” I said. “I killed him, and I don’t even know his name…” To this day, I wish I had thought to dig around and try to find out who he was.

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” Mark told me, his voice firmer than I had heard it all night. “He was going to turn on us sooner or later, you saw how out of control he was… You did what you had to. You… you tried to do right, and it all went wrong… I know you didn’t try to kill him… Let’s talk about something else.”

I again tried to picture myself explaining this to a judge. To my mom. To my own best friend, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. I appreciate what he said, and maybe he was even right, but it just didn’t feel that way. Though I fear I may be called upon to fight in the future at this rate, I hope I never have to cause anyone else’s death. His face will haunt me for the rest of my days, no matter who absolves me of it.

And again I forced it from my mind. Mark was ready to talk about the situation, and I suggested that if we were going to have a chance in hell of surviving this, we were going to have to get our act together by the time we reached Cove.

I think the conversation did us both a world of good. Much had happened in the last couple hours, and we needed to clear our heads and come up with as much of a plan as we could. Over the dark, hazy miles between Eyrie and Cove, we compared notes, discussed ideas, and tried to prepare for the unforeseen. For that half an hour or so, it felt more like old times, Mark and I hitting the old drawing board.

By the time we reached the outskirts of town, it felt like we were ready for anything short of space invaders.

We had debated the best approach, and realized early on that there was no hope of stealth in a station wagon, to just roll into town as if unaware that anything was happening. Though we expected Cove to be as empty as Eyrie, we decided that our greatest (and most likely) threat would be military police, in which case we might be turned back if we were lucky. (But sneaking around would ruin any chance of that.) Next in line was locals, whom we feared might be as crazed as the highway patrolman we met. (Since we had no real weapons, we decided to play dumb and try to avoid any hostilities.) As for anyone (or anything) else that may have taken up residence there lately, Mark kept the tire iron under the seat. We knew we would probably have to get out of the car sooner or later, but we hoped not to have to reveal our only weapon unless it was absolutely necessary.

I think we both held our breath as we rolled into town. It was even worse than Eyrie; that damn road sign changed everything. A possible murder rap, bizarre howling in the night, unexplained phenomena, an empty ghost town, and now it all had a name: Project Metronome. Of course, it may have had a name, but it was still without a face. In spite of our preparations, we really had no idea what to expect.

When we encountered no one and saw not a hint of activity, it did nothing to ease our fear that we were walking into a trap. Under the glare of streetlights, a stillness that betrayed no sign of human presence. One place after another, just abandoned to the desert without explanation. It gave me the creeps, somehow just knowing that every house and building we passed was empty.

We had both agreed to find a gas station first. Fill up. Act normal. On some level, I think we both still believed that we could still just turn around and drive away from all this.

As I suspect that poor cop thought he could. After all, he did come up on us from behind. I really think he did try to drive back… Who knows what the name of the town was that he found back there? I doubt it was called Moriarty.

Of course, while we’re on the subject of cops, we didn’t make it directly to the gas station. For, sitting on the curb at the next intersection was a police car with its lights off. But we both still immediately recognized it for what it was. Mark hit the brakes, and I feared in that moment that our game was over before it had even begun.

But there was no response from the car; it was as empty as the rest of the town. I don’t know what possessed us, but we parked nearby, and Mark and I got out. Mark looked around to make sure we were alone, then he took out the tire iron. We may never meet the source of that ungodly sound, but that night we were more afraid of it than we were of any reaction the locals might have to us.

Mark stood back, covering me, as we agreed. I don’t know how he always talks me into things like this. Then again, he is stronger than me, and would be able to do more damage if push came to shove, so I guess it made some sense. The cop car’s window was wide open, so I could see it was unoccupied. I opened the door and took in the scene before me.

It was just like something out of those old “Bermuda Triangle” stories, only this boat was as landlocked as could be. Yet what I saw made me fear the true nature of Project Metronome still more. The driver’s seat may have been empty, but in the passenger’s seat there rested a box of stale donuts, opened but uneaten, and a mug of cold coffee sat on the dashboard, undrunk. And to top it all off, the keys were still in the ignition. The first ghost ship ever issued by… the Cove PD…

I stared at that insignia on the side of the car even longer than I had at the interior. Seeing the word “Cove” on that logo made it more real, more plausible than the signs had. And discomfortingly less dreamlike. After all, anyone could just put up phony road signs, but this…

“I don’t think we’re in New Mexico anymore, Toto,” Mark said from behind me.

And I was already agreeing with him, as if on some level I wouldn’t have before. I took it as confirmation that we were indeed alone in this ghost town, and on some ungiven signal, we both dropped all pretense of acting casual.

I reached in and unlatched the shotgun mounted on the passenger’s side of the dashboard. There was also a flashlight that looked like a Mag, but was marked as a Cam Light. Since the keys were still in the ignition, I pulled them out and unlocked the glove compartment, finding spare shells and a powerful-looking revolver— a spare sidearm was my guess— and a small box of ammo and a holster for it as well. We popped open the trunk and found more ammo, a second flashlight, as well as a first aid kit, a megaphone, two walkie-talkies, and a crowbar. There was some other junk, but we didn’t see any use for it.

We spent a couple minutes arming ourselves, taking turns watching the streets for any sign of activity, then prepared to explore the derelict town of Cove.

PART 6: THE BORDERLANDS
Mark carried the shotgun, I had the pistol. He kept his armed, I kept mine holstered for the time being. In my hand I held the crowbar, and slung over my shoulders, my backpack, now stocked with a combination of equipment from the cop car and the Woody. We each had a flashlight and a walkie-talkie— just in case.

“Groovy,” Mark said in his best Bruce Campbell imitation, and we both shared a nervous laugh.

Then I said, “Let’s try to stick together. With any luck, we won’t have to use these things.” We had checked to make sure the walkie-talkies actually worked, but we were unsure of their range, not to mention their battery power, or what effects the night’s mysterious phenomena might have on our signal. “Sorry. I just really don’t want to get separated out here.”

“Not even to use the john?” Mark asked, a crooked grin creeping up on his face.

I rolled my eyes.

“Hey,” he laughed, “I’m just trying to lighten things up.”

“You know,” I told him, “in horror flicks, it’s always the smartass who gets killed first.” Then I wished I hadn’t said that, as if I had somehow just jinxed him. “Sorry. You know what I mean. I just don’t want us to end up shooting each other or something. This place… it’s like it’s haunted…”

“Yeah, I know.”

Mark jumped back inside the Woody, and I rode shotgun— literally. While we were arming ourselves, we had concluded that the first thing to do before exploring was to set up our escape, so we set right out to find a gas station. It turned out to be as vacant as the one in Eyrie— the lights were still on and everything— leaving us free to top off the tank. We also filled several gas cans from the store shelf and stowed them in the back of the Woody.

We were now ready to explore Cove. For real. But where to start?

That was the question both of us pondered, scanning up and down the dark, foggy streets. They set the sort of scene out of which anything could materialize without warning. When Mark tapped me on the shoulder, I started and almost screamed.

“Shit!” I muttered. “Don’t do that!”

He pointed down the street, and it only took me a moment to figure out what had caught his eye: a small house with a single light on. All of the other homes were dark, so I immediately became curious about who had left the light on for us. It struck me that we might not be as alone as we had originally thought, and I was glad for our weapons.

We pulled it together and headed for the house. About half way there, the mist parted in a swirl of breeze, and for a moment we saw skidmarks on the road, as if someone had peeled out in a major hurry. I took a step in that direction, and nearly tripped over a wide-brim hat. I picked it up and saw that it was marked as New Mexico Highway Patrol.

There was something seriously not right about that, and after a moment I figured out what it was. As that crazed highway cop lay dying, and Mark made his desperate attempt to save him, I had been trying to radio help… and the officer’s hat had been sitting right in the passenger’s seat of the cruiser. But if this wasn’t his hat, then whose… The idea came to me in a flash of insight that wasn’t quite deduction.

“His… partner?” I mumbled, wondering what could have happened here to so thoroughly unhinge a veteran lawman.

“What?” Mark asked me, understandably.

“I think he had a partner,” I told him. “The dead cop. And I think something really bad happened here. See, it says New Mexico, which means it came from…”

I was about to say our world, and my entire train of thought derailed. My rational mind resisted it fiercely, but the rest of me was starting to see that resistance as foolish, and I had an increasing amount of reality to back it up. I could see a similar conflict playing itself out on Mark’s face, and I couldn’t help noticing the irony. I, who had always professed to believe in other dimensions, had always insisted such things were possible, now found myself face-to-face with the real thing. And my mind was trying to reject it.

Dammit, boy! There’s no such place as Eyrie…

I remembered the doomed cop’s words, and knew somehow that he had been here in the last few hours. I also took stark comfort in the fact that so far our sanity was holding up a lot better than his had. Then again, we also had no idea what happened here, or if it still posed any danger to us.

The fog parted again, and for a moment I could see how close we had come to trampling important evidence. In the dust, near where I found the hat, were two sets of footprints. The only thing that had saved them from being erased was the angle from which we had approached them. One went forward, then shuffled back toward the beginning of the skidmarks. The other, though, simply stopped just beyond where the other set halted and turned back. As if the other person had wandered off into thin air. Every time I picture those footprints, the image always raises the hairs on my neck a little.

Having no more clues to mull over here, we decided to move on to the house. We knocked several times, but there was no answer. The door was locked, but Mark loved to tinker, and had figured out how to pick locks years ago. Though we kept our guard up, just in case someone was here.

I turned on a light in the front room, illuminating a most habitual degree of clutter. We moved cautiously through the house to the room with the light on. It turned out to be a bedroom with a desk near its lone window. The light we saw from the street was coming from a small desk lamp. On the desk were haphazard piles of papers.

There was one page in the center of the desktop, with a pen sitting next to it. Purely on impulse, I picked it up and read:

To Whomever Finds This:
If you are reading this, then that means I was able to get out of Cove before they found me out. I dare not mention my name because the Company has people everywhere on 42. They started there, and now I’m sure they’re paying off the authorities here with their so-called “development” money. Ever since Camcron Industries built that “research facility” up in Dusty Heights, there have been strange lights and sounds from out in the desert. I wrote a letter to the paper about it, but they never printed it. I fear they’re playing with things that should not be tampered with. I fear something awful is going to happen. Now I see a police car outside. I guess they’ve come for me. Now I doubt anyone is ever going to read this, but still I hope someone out there will find the tru

And at the bottom of the page was scrawled two words:

PROJECT METRONOME

The note was written in a very hasty hand, increasingly so near the end, and to this day I wish whoever had written it had taken the time to be more coherent, or at least give more details. If he was so afraid of getting caught, why had he bothered to write the damn thing at all? The image I had in my head was of some paranoid old man, trying to be melodramatic, and feel more important than he thought he was, and instead just ended up making this conundrum even more of a pain in the ass. Then again, like the officer, he may have simply been out of his mind by the time he wrote it.

But at least now we knew where to start looking.

I let my eyes drift across the table, searching for further clues, and I found only one, a road map. I stuck the note in my pocket, and we unfolded the map on the table. As we expected, it contained the names of places we had never heard of. And a couple we had.

“Highway 42?” Mark remarked.

Then again, according to our map, we weren’t on Highway 40 anymore. At some point past Moriarty, New Mexico, we had ended up on The Old Mesa Road, which intersected with Highway 42 (marked as a triangle, rather than the familiar “shield” symbol). There was a way station near the junction, and a scattered string of smallish-sounding towns dotting Highway 42. Dusty Heights, Coyote Downs, and Ashton being the nearest. Someone had drawn an “X” in between a place called Dusty Heights and scribbled the words RESEARCH FACILITY in the same hand as the note.

I also looked down Old Mesa Road to see that the last town before Eyrie was called Stark, not Moriarty.

“Come on. Let’s go,” I said. If this note was to be believed, then there wouldn’t be much else to find here in Cove. “It’s time we got to the bottom of this.”

“To Dusty Heights?” Mark asked, but I could tell from his tone that there was no need to answer. His voice reflected the same determination and cautious optimism as my own. I think the same idea had occurred to him, for after a moment he said, “Let’s go. We might still have a chance.”

Though my mind still hung on to the pretense of denial, I was more than convinced by then that we had somehow wandered into another world.

And if this Project Metronome was the cause, then perhaps we could find a way to use it to get back to our world. Perhaps there was still time to reverse whatever “Camcron” had done here. The Company… that phrase just sounded really ominous to me.

I folded up the map, and we made our way back to the gas station. We stocked up on food, and more Cam’s Cola now that we could get it inside for free, as well as some other gear. While Mark cleaned up the broken glass from the back seat, muttering “Dad’s gonna kill me…” and such, I started packing for our journey to Dusty Heights. Once all was in readiness, Mark started the engine.

And nothing happened.

Try as we might, neither of us could get the Woody to start this time. For a moment there was a return of the panic that had plagued us in Eyrie, but this time cooler heads prevailed. Mark’s father had insisted he learn as much about cars as he could before allowing him to have one, so I covered him while he popped the hood and made a brief examination of the rest of the car.

“On the bright side,” he told me, “I’m sure no one’s messed with it. It was probably just time for the Woody to break down again.” He yawned, then added, “And I’m so damn tired I’m gonna fall asleep standing. What time is it anyway?”

I looked at my watch. According to it, it was now past 7 AM. And I said, “Almost seven-thirty… Shouldn’t it be dawn by now?”

And the heavens answered with mocking silence.

Though I knew what he meant. I was also having trouble keeping my eyes open in spite of the night’s excitement. Yet it was still dark out, and I wondered how so much time had slipped through our fingers. I wondered if we might just have to get used to the darkness and fog here.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he said as we got back in, “and I’ll see what I can do when I’m awake.”

As I locked the door and leaned back in my seat, I thought about suggesting watch shifts, but in the last couple minutes I had come to realize that I was as worn out as he was. So I closed my eyes, trying not to think about the fog that dimmed the world outside, and I thought to myself, We crossed the border… We’re in the Borderlands… This is what happens to places that get lost and forgotten… This is what becomes of all those places people stop in that no one else has heard of… Places between places… Real ghost towns… We’re in the Borderlands…

This is the last tired thought I remember thinking before I drifted off.

PART 7: THE LONG ROAD
I woke up because I was too hot, and I had to take a piss.

I blinked my eyes against the glare to find myself sitting in the passenger’s seat of the Woody. It took me a moment to realize that the reason I was so hot was because it was now broad daylight out, and in another hour or so, Mark’s car was going to become a bake oven. The sky was now a blank blue desert sky, without a single cloud, nor a hint of last night’s fog.

I wondered in that waking moment if it hadn’t all been a dream.

Then I looked at the bottle of Cam’s Cola. Then at the shotgun lying across Mark’s lap. The broken window behind him. I glanced out the window to see that we were still parked out in front of the gas station in Cove on the Old Mesa Road.

And I remembered that I did have a dream that night. One that I would never forget. Then again, that’s what I suppose I get for sleeping in a haunted place. In the Borderlands.

I dreamt that that dead highway cop and his partner were cruising around Cove near dark. The two cops get out of the car in front of the house where we found the note and the map. They both look around again, clearly confused and more than a little alarmed, not only by how deserted this place was, but at how they had driven up and down Highway 40 for years and had never been here before.

I stand on the street nearby, telling them to turn back, to leave while they still can, but they don’t hear me.

All I can do is stand there and watch as the two officers walk toward the house with the light on. The sun is slanting, now casting everything in an eerie golden twilight, a storm color, though there’s not a cloud in sight. I’m thinking about how I don’t trust that light, when one of the officers takes one step too far and walks into nothingness.

I see him try to stop in mid step, but it’s too little, too late. I see the fat cop stop in his tracks, eyes bugging out. I hear what I know is the vanished cop’s voice, crying out for help, every word distorted and echoing weirdly, much like that howl that scared us out of Eyrie. After a moment of this, his partner finally finds his voice, and he cries out in surprise and horror, then backpedals toward the car. At which point he promptly hits the gas and tears out of Cove in squeal of burnt rubber.

As I sat in the ever heating car, I found I still got goosebumps thinking about that dream. This place was haunted, even by day. And somehow I knew that was what had actually happened last evening.

Mark awoke with a start, but at least he didn’t pull the trigger. In fact, he seemed quite surprised to see a shotgun in his lap. He looked around, then at me. Seeing the Cam’s Cola bottle in my hand, he cocked his head and said, “That was no dream, was it?”

“Nope,” I told him as I opened the door and got out. “I’m gonna go take a whiz.”

“Don’t have too much fun,” said Mark.

“Don’t I always?” I replied. But once I stepped out onto this haunted ground, I discovered that it held the power to instill fear even at high noon. The whole way behind the gas station, I kept picturing myself vanishing like that cop’s partner did. What I finally had to accept was that from now on, that might be a risk either of us would have to take in the desert, though the more I thought about it, the more I began to suspect that whatever happened to make people disappear was over right now.

Even so, I was still relieved to see that Mark hadn’t gone anywhere in my absence, and was now working on the Woody while sipping a Cam’s Old Fashioned Root Beer.

Cam’s Cola and candy bars: it’s a hell of a way to start your day! After our nutritious breakfast, Mark and I finally got the Woody running again and we were on our way. We left Cove and traveled to Highway 42 without incident.

And without meeting a soul.

Now I sit at a way station at the junction, staring out at empty railroad tracks running parallel to an equally lonely Highway 42 as I finish this account. We had to stop here a few hours to fix the Woody again. Again. So I took the opportunity to write down everything that has happened to us so far. Later, while searching through his stuff before we set out, Mark realized that the highway cop had left his driver’s license lying on the blacktop somewhere on the forgotten miles of Old Mesa Road. But I could tell he wasn’t about to go back for it.

Not like a Montana license was going to do him any good in this dimension anyway.

I wrote earlier that Project Metronome was without a face, but now I realize that it does have one, at least for me. I will always associate those words with the face of that dying highway patrolman, and the existential horror that gripped him in his final hours.

Now Mark and I prepare to face the horror head-on. As soon as we’re ready to leave, we will drive to Dusty Heights and try to find this research facility mentioned on both the note and the map. I don’t know what we’ll find, or if we have any chance of finding our way back, so I’ve left this account of our road trip in the hopes that anyone else unfortunate enough to pass this way will find it.

Out in front of the way station is a sign, and I found some paint and wrote “INFORMATION” in big red letters, and an arrow pointing to this building.

I remember when we were in middle school, Mark and I vowed to make a road trip to New Mexico after graduation and explore the desert. I never would have imagined it would turn out like this. I remember one of Master Al’s other students quipping once that his aunt always insisted that everything that gets lost ends up in the Twilight Zone, and I think that sums up our road trip in a nutshell. I can just hear Rod Serling now: …I present to you two friends, two young men traveling together in search of adventure. They are about to get more than they bargained for. For one foggy night, they crossed the border and drove into the Twilight Zone… or something like that.

Now it’s a long road ahead of us, and no idea where it will lead.

This production paid for by Camcron Industries and its subsidiary, the Cam’s Cola Bottling Company of Dusty Heights, Mesa District: proud sponsor of Dusty Heights Schools, Public Library, Coyotes Batball, and the Birkin Institute Research Facility.