Creepy didn’t begin to describe it.
And the storefronts she had passed, all the little Main Street-type businesses lined up—barbershops, cafés, drugstores, offices—looked like a Hollywood director’s idea of small-town America, something envisioned by Frank Capra.
Ramona had grown up in a small town; she had lived in several, passed through dozens and dozens in her life getting from point A to point B. Some were quaint, some were ugly, some were pretty, some run-down, but they all had personality.
Stokes had none.
It was sterile and synthetic, like it had been kept in a box. Small towns came together in bits and pieces through the years, but Stokes looked like it had been built according to a very specific plan and that was to emphasize its small town-ness, if that made any sense.
This place was an imitation.
But there had to be a point to it all.
Just as there had to be a reason why they were drawn into it in the first place.
Funny, too, how there had been a near-torrential rainfall when they’d entered the valley and now not a drop of rain. Even the streets were dry as if it hadn’t rained in weeks. Interesting.
She stepped out into the street and listened. Nothing. No approaching sirens. Not so much as a car passing in the distance. No cars, no people, no life. Stokes was like a fucking doll house.
She walked calmly as possible up the sidewalk.
She would go in the direction the others had run. She would check out two or three more streets looking for a sign of them, then she was fucking getting out.
If she could get out at all.
11
“I suppose we should go over there and have a look,” Lex said. “I rather doubt those lights came on purely by accident.”
But Creep didn’t like the idea. “Fuck that. It’s a trap. I know it’s a trap. It’s like… like… like…”
“Bait?” Soo-Lee said.
“Yeah! That’s it, Lex. It’s bait to draw us in. When we get there, something’s going to happen and I know it. Those things’ll be in there, waiting for us.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why we should go over there.”
“Are you nuts?”
Lex shrugged. “Something’s going on here and I got a real nasty feeling that we’re not leaving until we figure out what. In fact, if we don’t figure it out, we may never get out.”
“I’m all for walking right out of here.”
“It’s not going to be that easy.”
“How do you know?”
The thing was, Lex wasn’t sure. He just had a very bad feeling that all of this was not by accident. That it was on purpose. That this town existed for a specific reason and they were drawn into it for a purpose. “Listen,” he said, “here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go check it out. You wait here. You went to look for Chazz and Ramona, now it’s my turn.”
Creep shrugged. It was obvious he still didn’t like it, but the idea of there being no personal danger involved bolstered him some. “All right.”
“I’m going, too,” Soo-Lee said.
Creep sighed. “And I babysit the psycho.”
Lex ignored that and led Soo-Lee across the street.
Creep was right, of course. Maybe it wasn’t a trap exactly—or maybe it was—but there was something very weird about it just like there was something very weird about this town, which, presumably, did not exist in the first place. There were no lights on anywhere and now one just happened to come on. Now wasn’t that interesting?
But, honestly, he didn’t think it was interesting at all.
He thought it was downright disturbing.
With Soo-Lee right behind him, he moved cautiously up the sidewalk until he got to the diner. Looking through the plate glass windows, he could see tables and booths, a counter with round stools.
But no people.
Somebody must have turned the lights on.
“This is creepy,” Soo-Lee whispered.
Yes, it was at that.
What was also creepy was that the word DINER was lettered in each window. No name other than that, just DINER. Not the DOWNTOWN DINER or the DO-DROP-IN DINER or JIMMY’S HASH HOUSE or BOBBIE’S BURGER BARN. It was all very generic just like the town itself, which made him realize that every shop and store he had seen were like that—GROCERIES and INSURANCE, BARBERSHOP and DENTIST, but none of them with any more specific titles.
It reminded him of the elaborate train set he had put together with his dad when he was in grade school. There had been depots and mountains, trees and roundhouses, and a little town where every storefront had a very generic title just like in Stokes.
This is everytown, he thought. It’s bits and pieces of every town everyone has ever seen from every old movie, every old TV show, every fucking Norman Rockwell calendar. There’s a reason for that and you better figure out what it is.
“I’m going in,” he told her. “Maybe you should wait out here.”
“No thanks.”
He pulled open the door and it jingled. He stepped inside. And what was weird in the first place only got that much weirder. His first impression on coming through the door was that the place smelled old, empty, and musty… but that changed when he was three feet inside. It was like the diner suddenly came to life. He could smell hot coffee and burgers, pie and french fries. It all smelled exactly the way he thought a diner should smell, as if his own memories and expectations had been hijacked.
There was food set out everywhere.
Lex blinked and then blinked again because he was certain it was a hallucination of some sort. It had to be a hallucination. Nothing else could possibly explain it. On the counter, he saw cups of coffee that were still steaming. A cheeseburger on a plate with a bite out of it, a fry dipped in ketchup. A slice of blueberry pie with ice cream that was not even melted yet. It was the same at the booths and tables: bowls of hot soup, malteds in icy metal cups, BLTs and grilled cheese sandwiches. The soups were barely touched, malteds barely sipped, the sandwiches all with the requisite one or two bites from them as if to emphasize the fact that the diners had all just left… perhaps seconds ago.
“What the heck is all this?” Soo-Lee asked.
But he didn’t know.
Together, they stepped behind the counter, moving very slowly and carefully as if they expected to find a tripwire. There were no booby traps, just pots of hot coffee and a large, freshly poured Coke in a cup. A chalkboard announced the day’s specials: HAMBURGER PLATE .79¢ CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP .50¢, CHICKEN FRIED STEAK $1.00.
“Can’t beat the prices,” Soo-Lee said.
No, you can’t, Lex thought. And when was the last time you could get food that cheap? The 1960s? The 1950s?
Everything was fucked-up and out of whack.
They peered through the archway into the kitchen. Burgers and bacon were frying on a big, greasy range.
Lex went back out into the dining area. He picked up a fry and examined it closely.
“You’re not going to eat that?” Soo-Lee said.
But that’s exactly what he was going to do. He doubted the physical reality of what he was seeing so he was putting it to the test. It felt like a fry. The weight and texture were perfect… but it had no odor and he was willing to bet it had no taste.
He looked around. Incredible. This place was like the Mary Celeste of diners. All the patrons had been mysteriously snatched away into thin air. Oooo-weee-oooo. Except that it was all bullshit, a carefully constructed ruse. There had never been people here.