We had just passed a sun-faded billboard that read WELCOME TO STARKE, POP. 502.
Beyond it was a handmade sign that read SNAKES 4 SALE—PETS OR MEAT.
The car’s rattle grew steadily louder. I really did not want to stop in the town of Starke, pop. 502, but it seemed we had little choice. So I pulled into a truck wash with a mostly deserted parking lot and we all got out to watch Enoch poke around under the hood.
“It’s the strangest thing,” he said, emerging after a brief investigation. “I see which part failed, but I can’t understand what happened to it. It should last a hundred thousand miles.”
“Do you think someone tampered with it?” I said.
Enoch scratched his chin, transferring a smear of engine oil to his face. “I don’t see how that’s possible, but I’m not sure how else to explain it.”
“We don’t care how it broke,” Emma said. “Only whether you can fix it.”
“And how fast,” Bronwyn said, glancing at the darkening sky.
It was getting toward evening, and thunderclouds were gathering in the distance. It was shaping up to be a nasty night.
“Of course I can do it,” Enoch said, puffing his chest, “though I might need a bit of help from the human blowtorch here.” He cocked his head toward Emma. “How long depends on a few things.”
“Evening,” said a new voice, and we turned to see a boy standing a little ways away, on a rise where the parking lot met a field of wild grass.
He looked about thirteen. He had brown skin and wore an old-style shirt and a flat cap. He spoke softly and walked more softly still—so much that none of us had heard him approach.
“Where’d you come from?” Bronwyn said. “You scared me!”
“Over yonder,” the boy said. He pointed to the field behind him. “My name’s Paul. You need some help?”
“Not unless you have a twin-choke downdraft carburetor for a 1979 Aston Martin Vantage,” said Enoch.
“Nope,” said Paul. “But we’ve got a place you can hide that thing while you tinker with it.”
That got our attention. Enoch drew his head out from under the hood.
“And who are we supposed to be hiding from?”
Paul studied us for a moment. He was engulfed in shadow, silhouetted against the sky’s last light, and I couldn’t read his expression. He cut a strangely authoritative figure for a boy his age.
“Y’all ain’t from here, are you?”
“We’re from England,” said Emma.
“Well,” he said. “Around here, folks like us don’t want to be out after dark unless they’ve got a damn good reason to be.”
“What do you mean, like us?” said Emma.
“You’re not the first out-of-town peculiars to have an automobile breakdown along this particular stretch of road.”
“What did he—” said Millard, daring to speak for the first time. “Did you just say peculiar?”
The boy didn’t seem at all surprised to hear words emanating from the empty air. “I know what you are. I’m one, too.” He turned and began to walk into the field. “Come on. You don’t want to be here when the people who sprung this trap come to see what they caught. And bring that car, too,” he called over his shoulder. “I reckon the strong one can just push it.”
We watched him go, amazed, but unsure of what to do. Our interactions with peculiars in this part of the world had left us wary. Then Emma leaned into me and said, “We should ask him about the—”
And at the very moment she said the words they flashed into view in the distance, beyond the field Paul was crossing, written in neon.
FLAMING MAN
It was a sign. A literal and actual one made of neon. It had once read FLAMINGO MANOR, but a few letters had burned out. The manor itself—or whatever it was—was mostly obscured by a stand of pine trees.
Emma and I looked at each other, thunderstruck and smiling.
“Well,” she said. “You heard the young man.”
“Peculiars have to stick together,” I said.
And we all started after him.
We followed the boy through the field, down a dirt path that was grassed over and hidden from the road. Bronwyn was at the rear, grunting as she pushed the hobbled Aston over uneven terrain. Aside from the occasional car passing along the main road or the hiss of air brakes at the truck wash behind us, the evening was quiet.
We passed the old motel sign and cleared the trees, and there was the motel—or what was left of it. It had probably been the height of cool in about 1955, with its flying-V roof, kidney-shaped pool, and detached bungalows, but now it did a passable impression of an abandoned building. The roof was patched with tarps. The courtyard was a jungle of overgrown trees. Junk cars were rusting in the pitted parking lot. The pool was empty save a few inches of green water and a long, loaf-shaped thing that might have been—though it was hard to tell in the near-dark—an alligator.
“Don’t mind the look of the place,” said Paul. “It’s nicer on the inside.”
“There’s no way I’m going in there,” said Bronwyn.
“It’s got to be a loop, dear,” said Millard. “In which case, I’m certain it’s nicer on the inside.”
Loops were often downright frightening at their entrance points—it helped keep normal people away—and the Peculiar Planet guide had mentioned “looped accommodations” near Mermaid Fantasyland. The Flaming Man must’ve been it. And if that weren’t a good enough reason to follow the boy, we also couldn’t leave until Enoch fixed the car.
“Look,” Bronwyn hissed, and we turned toward the truck wash. The old police car was back, driving slowly past it, its searchlight panning from side to side.
“I’m going in,” said Paul, his voice edged with a new urgency. “I advise that you follow.”
We took no convincing.