“Meet you in the middle,” I say, and we nod at each other, then skulk in different directions.
I’ve seenpictures of this place in the 1960s, not long after it was built, during the brief moment of optimism that this part of the Blue Ridge could be the next Berkshires. Full of kitschy motels with heart-shaped hot tubs and neon signs that flashed long into the night.
That never came to fruition, but the Lost Mountain Motor Lodge stayed open for four decades. Even as the fake log siding crumbled off the outside, the wallpaper tore and yellowed from cigarette smoke, and the parking lot cracked and grew choked with weeds. It only closed a decade ago, glory days long over.
I think I find the sign at least twice, but both times when I get close to a dark, hulking rectangle, it turns out to be a twin mattress leaning against a wall. The wallpaper is lurid and unsettling in the red light, there’s not much furniture in these rooms, and what’s still there is broken. I walk carefully because I don’t trust the floor. There are mattresses everywhere but less trash than I expected.
I only see one needle, in a porcelain bathroom sink that’s got a chunk missing from one corner. The mirror’s gone, shattered out of its frame, but at least I don’t see any blood.
It would be a good place to stay, if you needed one. I know—used to know—people who’d sleep here in a heartbeat, and with good reason: the roof isn’t collapsing, the floor isn’t falling in, most of the doors still close. There’s no one around, so you wouldn’t get harassed too much.
I’m standing inside a room, by a boarded-over window, looking at where the curtains used to be when I hear Wyatt.
“Javi!” he’s whisper-hissing from somewhere outside.
I lean through the doorframe, wary of going too far out lest a car drive by, and see Wyatt doing the same, two doors down.
“I think I found it,” he says. “C’mere.”
Thirty seconds later, I’m standing in the bathroom of another motel room. This one doesn’t have a mirror, either, and the toilet tank is missing a lid but the sink is in one piece, and best of all, there’s a dark, looming rectangle in the bathtub.
“Ta-da,” Wyatt says, looking extremely pleased with himself. “One weird old motel sign.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper, reaching one gloved hand out to touch it. “This is amazing.”
I can feel Wyatt giving me one of hisif you say solooks, but I’m an expert at ignoring those. Instead, I run my gloved fingers over rusted metal and flaking paint—I think it’s forest green, but it’s hard to tell in the dark—and marvel that not only is this thing here, it’s intact. It’s on its side in the bathtub, withLOST MOUNTAINon the right side in big block letters andMotor Lodgebelow that, to the left, in script. Hand-painted mountains line the bottom. All the glass is long gone, but the anchors and sockets that held the neon tubes are still in place.
“How the hell is this still here?” I wonder aloud, tilting my head. “Look, you can see brushstrokes. This was hand-painted! Who took all the TVs and shitty chairs and leftthis?”
“Should I go get the hand truck and leave you two alone?”
“I’m not gonna fuck the sign,” I say, though it’s half-hearted because I’m poking at the anchors for the neon tubing.
“I didn’t say you were gonna fuck it. Maybe you just want a private, intimate moment with the brushstrokes.” Wyatt is already at the bathroom door. “I don’t judge.”
“Liar,” I call.
“Your preferences are none of my— Uh, shit. Javi.Javi.”
There’s the crunching sound of tires on old asphalt, and then white lights flash through the door and move along thewall, briefly picking out dark spots on faded wallpaper, and then they’re gone and I can’t see shit.
Without thinking I press against the bathroom wall, with a hand clapped over my headlamp, a towel rail in my back, and my pulse thudding through my veins. Suddenly I’m sweating. I breathe so loud I may as well have airhorns for lungs.
And then: nothing. I listen so hard my ears might start bleeding, but when I can’t hear anything but wind and trees, I finally whisper: “They see you?”
“I don’t think so.” I can hear Wyatt swallow, then the quietest creak of a floorboard. “It’s a car. They stopped.” He takes a slow, measured breath. “Turning around in the driveway, maybe?”
“Hopefully,” I add and close my eyes, resting my head against the wall behind me. It occurs to me, hours too late, that there are plenty of people out here in the wilds of Virginia with ashoot first, ask questions laterpolicy about trespassers. It’s not like this is someone’s home, though. It’s an abandoned commercial property that wound up being auctioned by the county a few months ago, and bought for cheap by?—
“I think they’re leaving,” Wyatt hisses.
I grit my teeth because I can’t see anything from this angle, just the ugly wall where the beds used to be. Maybe the way the light changes, a little.
“Did anyone get out?”
“I didn’t hear a car door.”
“Sorry for making you come.”
