Living Ghost Town

                                      Living Ghost Town

               After two hours of driving dirt roads, David suddenly stopped the car in the woods. He had been so sure this was the right route to his grandparents’ old farm.  Of course he had only been ten on his last visit to Iowa. Out of the blue a thick gray fog enveloped the Pathfinder. At the same time the idling engine shut off.

               “Finally turning around?” his husband, Ito, commented, looking up from his laptop. He was spending the trip reading submissions for a spring haiku contest. Because Ito was of Japanese descent, the narrow-minded poetry manager asked him to choose a winner.  Ito personally hated haiku, but he liked his junior editing job at Cornfield Quarterly, so he complied.  

               David’s heavy blond brows puckered as he turned the key trying to restart the car. The engine emitted a scraping sound but refused to turn over. “What the hell? This trip is turning into a fiasco!” A former art history professor at Purdue, David had since authored several handbooks on American artifacts. This jaunt to his family’s old property was to research barn architecture.

               Ito whipped out his cell phone. “Let’s just call for help.” But he soon realized there was no phone service.  He got out and walked a few yards through the mist to try to catch a cell tower. Just over the fog line, he could make out what looked like a church spire.  

               “Looks like a town just down the way. Maybe there’s a service station,” Ito said, opening the car door for David who was still fussing.

               The two trudged over a path carpeted with pine needles keeping their eyes on the steeple. Suddenly they came upon a wooden footbridge that arched over a stream. Once they stepped off the bridge, the sun peeked through the clouds and displayed what looked like a 1950’s movie set.  The downtown was set on a quadrangle with the white church on the northern end and all the other buildings on the east and west sides.  Quaint light posts lined the sidewalks. In the middle of town was an idyllic grassy park with benches situated under shade trees.  

               “What is this place?” David muttered.

               “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Ito quipped. He indicated a metal sign that read: EXP10IA instead of the town’s name.

                The buildings all looked new despite being constructed in a variety of traditional styles such as Georgian, Tudor, and Colonial. Heading north, David and Ito passed a library, a couple cafes, and various shops including a record store, a drug store with a sign advertising S & H green stamps, a toy store with a Radio Flyer wagon in the window, and a boutique with mannequins dressed like Marilyn Monroe. David and Ito looked at each other with confused and somewhat fearful expressions. What made them more uneasy was that, despite it being a sunny spring Saturday, not one person was outside.

               Ito pointed down the street to a service station near the church, and they kept walking. Cars, all 1950’s or earlier vintage, were parked along the curbs, but no one was out driving. The station was a Sinclair with a green sauropod depicted on all the pumps and signs.  As they neared the business, the men saw an open service bay with a classic Chevrolet on lifts but no mechanics.  The place smelled of gas, oil, and solvents even though no one was working. The men entered the garage shop through a jingling glass door.  A deeply wrinkled man in a green uniform and sporting black-rimmed glasses stood behind the counter smoking a Pall Mall. He didn’t greet David and Ito, but they went up to him and explained that they were stranded. “Do you have someone who can check out my car?” David asked him. He spied a mechanic through the window who appeared to be hiding behind an exceptionally loud air compressor. 

               The attendant ground his cigarette butt into a plastic ashtray.  “You’re sure you tried getting it to start?” he asked, glancing up at the men but not looking directly at them.

               “Yes,” David said, his tone impatient, “Repeatedly. The car is only a year old. I can’t imagine what in hell is wrong with it.” The man looked at David briefly when he heard him swear.

               “Look,” Ito said, “We can pay you extra for the trouble of having to go to it.”

               “You say it broke down near the bridge?”

               They both nodded. 

               “Go on back and wait. I’ll send someone soon,” the man said, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.

               “Thank you so much!” Ito said, grabbing David’s arm and leading him out of the shop.

               “Hell’s gonna freeze before that ole’ geezer , . . . ” David started.

               “Speaking of hell, let’s check out the church while we’re waiting,” Ito suggested. He had just spotted a man dressed all in black strolling through the graveyard. Opening the wrought iron gate, Ito called out to the man who had paused under a buckeye. “Hello there! Hello! Are you the pastor?”

               In response, the man looked over, but instead of heading toward them, he moved farther away. “What’s his freakin’ problem?” David said. He and Ito scuttled around headstones in pursuit of the man. Before they caught up, though, he disappeared into a side door of some kind of chapel or mausoleum. David grabbed the handle and shook it. “Locked of course.”

               Ito knocked on the door. “Hello, sir! Pastor? Reverend?” He got no reply.

               “Maybe he was a freakin’ ghost,” David commented, scanning the graveyard. “Geeze, look how far back it goes, like a mile. Row after row after row of the dead. It’s gotta be haunted.”

               A chill charged up Ito’s spine. Why would such a small town have such a large cemetery? Heading back, they observed that all the headstones looked newly hewn. Yet the ground showed no signs of having been dug up recently. All the markers were blank; none displayed the name of the deceased or birth and death dates. “What is going on?” Ito muttered.

               They passed the service station in silence. The huge garage door was now shut. They could see through the windows, though, that the attendant remained at the counter smoking.

               “Come on, Dave. I’ll buy you a vintage Coke. Real sugar, glass bottle, the works,” Ito said, pointing to a sandwich shop they had passed earlier.

               When they opened the door, a waitress in a long-sleeved pink uniform and white apron called out that they were closed. As if on cue, the two gray-haired customers, a man and a woman, stood up with their canes. “It’s just noon now,” David shouted back, “You know, lunch time!” Instead of answering, the woman disappeared into the back.

               “What the hell?” David said. Ito held the door open so the couple could exit, staring at their thick-lensed glasses and clothes that covered every inch of skin. They did not look at him or say thank you.

                Just outside the toy store, Ito checked his cell phone again, but with no luck. He pressed his face against the glass and peered inside. A couple hunch-backed women in long-sleeved dresses with scarves around their heads were standing at the cash register. One had a girl, maybe her granddaughter, with her. The girl looked about eight and was leaning on crutches.  After a few seconds, Ito spotted a little boy in a wheelchair with one arm in a cast. He was sitting near a toy railroad eagerly waiting for the train to come back around the track. Both children wore glasses. When the boy saw Ito looking in, he moved his wheelchair out of sight even though Ito smiled and waved.

               “I wonder why everyone in town wears glasses and is either old or injured?” Ito said as they resumed walking down the vacant sidewalk. 

               “Why do they all wear winter clothes when it’s hot? Why are they all unfriendly? This place should be called Freaksville.”

               “No, seriously, David. Something is wrong about this place.”

               David rolled his eyes. “You think? Maybe we’ve entered hell.”

               They tried another restaurant, but a white-haired man sporting a “Manager” button came outside before they entered. “The cook ran out of food,” he said mechanically, gazing past them through his thick lenses.

               “But we’re hungry,” David whined in a mocking tone, “And thirsty. We’re gonna die without sustenance!”

               “Stop it,” Ito whispered in his ear. The manager limped back up the steps and vanished into the darkened diner without another word. Passing the library, Ito saw that the police station was situated just behind it on First Street. “Let’s see if the police know what’s going on.”

               “What the hell, Ito? The cops’ll arrest us for breathing their town’s air,” David objected. He stood outside while Ito went in. He only had to wait a couple minutes.

               “So they let you off with a warning this time?” David said smartly, “Next time you’ll get cited for exhaling carbon dioxide.”

               Ito ignored David’s sarcasm. “Man, that station is spooky! Nobody was doing any work, just sitting around eating donuts and smoking cigars. And all the officers look seriously old, but I don’t think they are.”     

               “Fighting obesity and lung cancer takes its toll.”

               “Oh my God, David.  Maybe everyone here is sick. Like this is a hidden sanctuary, quarantined from the rest of the world.”

               “A leper colony, so to speak? Did anyone talk to you in there?”

               “The officer at the desk called the police chief to come out and hear my concerns. All he said was that this town is a retirement community.”

               David spread out his arms in mock celebration, “There you have it, folks! Mystery solved!”

               Ito narrowed his dark eyes. “I hate it when you act stupid, David. What about the children? They don’t let children live in retirement communities.” Just then he spotted a phone booth and hoped they could call for help. But as soon as he spoke to the operator, she hung up. After that, the line went dead. “This is so frustrating!” Ito exclaimed.

               At the edge of the town park, the men were surprised to find a working water fountain. Hot from the midday sun, they took long drinks.  All of a sudden, Ito announced they needed to find a doctor.

               David looked at him with concern. “What’s wrong, Ito? You feeling sick? Was the water poisoned?”

               “I’m fine. I want to talk to a doctor about what is wrong with everyone.”

               “Sorry, guy, but I didn’t see any Freaksville General here.”

               “Just a doctor’s office. There must be one,“ Ito insisted. He rushed back to the phone booth and flipped through the yellow pages of the directory. Only one medical practice was listed, on Second Street. The police station had been on First, so they hastened to the next intersection. A medical sign with snakes wrapped around a pole pointed to the right.

               “It’s Saturday, they won’t be open,” David said stopping at the building with a red cross painted on it.   

               Ito knocked hard on the oak door of the windowless, brick edifice. When no one answered, he began banging and calling for someone to open up.  After a minute, the door creaked open. A nurse in a white dress, white stockings, and a white cap peered out. She said nothing.

               “We have an emergency,” Ito lied, his voice purposely shrill, “Please, we need to see the doctor!” The woman, whose white hair and equally white pallor matched her outfit, asked him what was wrong.

               “It’s too gruesome to describe. Please, nurse! Let me in!”

               Sizing him up through horn-rimmed glasses, she finally moved aside to let Ito pass through. She shut the door in David’s face. The inside of the clinic was a dimly lit warehouse as cold as a meat locker. The nurse led Ito down a ludicrously long corridor past dozens of closed metal doors. He pinched his nose to stem the stench of chlorine, urine, blood, burned flesh, and general decay that polluted the air. He heard the buzzing of machinery and an occasional groan or cry as they hurried down the hall. Finally, the nurse had him sit on a bench outside a door labeled “Office.” She went in, shutting the door firmly behind her.  

               Curious, Ito lost no time in opening the door closest to the office. Someone was lying in a hospital bed covered head to toe in blood-stained bandages.  He saw no treatment equipment at all: no i.v. bag, no monitors, no blood pressure machine, not even a water pitcher. Ito walked to the bed and whispered, “Hello!” to the mummified head.  He thought he heard a grunt. “Hello!” he said, louder. This elicited a groan. “Can you tell me why you’re here?” Ito said, “What happened to you?”

               The groan became more desperate. Ito reached over and stroked the wrapped arm. “I am so sorry you are suffering,” he said in a soothing voice. Just then the door burst open. Without a word, the nurse pointed a bony finger toward the hallway. Ito patted the person’s shoulder and went back to the hall.

               She led him to a door at the very end of the corridor and shoved him through it. Just like that, Ito found himself outside again. He stood across the street from a schoolyard empty of play equipment but surrounded by lilac bushes. Feeling like he might vomit, Ito breathed in the sweetness of the fragrant blooms. When the nausea passed, he ran back to get David. The two wasted no time booking out of town and over the footbridge.

               Immediately they were met by the fog, which seemed to have grown thicker. Ito clung to David’s hand as they made their way back to David’s car. It wasn’t where they had left it. David’s limbs grew numb while Ito struggled to breathe. Then Ito got an idea. He grabbed David’s keys out of his pocket and clicked the remote button. The car’s horn began beeping.  They found the vehicle glinting in the afternoon sunlight, parked just a few feet from the road they’d turned off.  Inside the car, David shoved the key into the ignition. The engine turned over.  “Get in!” David screamed.  Ito was still outside. He was straining to see something through the haze. David blasted the horn.

               Undeterred, Ito took a few steps forward, groping the air until his fingers touched a chain-link fence. He squinted through the holes and saw that the footbridge had vanished. He looked up. Razor wire topped the fence.  A red and white sign screwed to the enclosure read: Restricted Area. NO TRESSPASSING. U.S. Government Testing Facility.