An Invitation from the Unseen

Sometimes you just need to get away, a road trip perhaps.

Not because the world has become unbearable, nor because some dreadful misfortune has come knocking at your door, but because the familiar has begun to feel strangely unfamiliar. The walls remain where they have always stood, the clocks continue their solemn procession, and yet something beyond the ordinary has begun to whisper your name.

There are places upon this earth that seem to exist outside the dominion of time. Places where the mountains keep their secrets beneath blankets of mist, where ancient trees bend toward forgotten roads, and where the dead, if one is inclined to believe such things, have never entirely surrendered their claim upon the living.

Somewhere else in the middle of somewhere.

Even the thought carries the sentiment of enchantment, as though spoken from the pages of a book discovered in the locked drawer of a long-abandoned house.

And so, with a modest collection of belongings, a restless imagination, and no particular desire to explain the journey to anyone, the traveler departs.

The highway stretches before her like a dark ribbon unspooling from the hand of some unseen puppeteer. Miles dissolve into miles. Familiar landscapes surrender to unfamiliar hills, and the ordinary world gradually retreats into the rearview mirror.

There is something deliciously unsettling about a road that winds toward a place one has never been, particularly when that place has a reputation for keeping company with ghosts.

Perhaps the ghosts are merely stories.

Perhaps stories are merely ghosts that have learned to speak.

The distinction hardly matters.

Beyond the winding roads of the Ozarks, Victorian houses cling to the hillsides like aging aristocrats unwilling to relinquish their grandeur. Their windows gaze upon narrow streets, their balconies hold the weight of countless vanished conversations, and their staircases have undoubtedly heard footsteps belonging to those whose names have long since disappeared from the lips of the living.

High above the town stands a grand old hotel, its silhouette watching over the valley with the patient dignity of something that has witnessed far too much to be impressed by the passing of another century.

One wonders what might be heard in its corridors after midnight.

The faint rustle of silk?

A door closing in an empty room?

Or perhaps the soft laughter of someone who has been dead for a hundred years and finds the living terribly amusing.

Such possibilities are not altogether unpleasant.

Indeed, there is a certain romance in visiting a town where the past has apparently neglected to depart.

And yet, beneath the anticipation of candlelit dinners, curious little shops, crooked streets, and moonlit wanderings, there exists another sensation. Something less easily named.

That feeling that the destination was chosen long before the journey was conceived.

For who can say what draws a person toward one particular place among the thousands scattered across the earth? Why should a town hidden among the Arkansas hills exert such a curious influence upon a soul that has never walked its streets?

Coincidence, the reasonable mind insists.

But reason has always been a rather tiresome traveling companion.

Perhaps there is nothing waiting in there beyond the beauty of autumn, the charm of old architecture, and a few entertaining tales told by lantern light.

Perhaps the traveler will return with nothing more extraordinary than photographs, a souvenir or two, and the pleasant memory of having wandered somewhere unfamiliar.

Or perhaps, while standing beneath an ancient tree as the evening mist gathers along the cobblestones, she will experience that most unusual of human sensations.

The certainty of having been somewhere before.

A street she recognizes without remembering.

A doorway that seems to have been expecting her.

A fleeting shadow that vanishes just as she turns to look.

And somewhere, from a window high above the sleeping town, a curtain will stir though no breeze has passed.

But these are matters for another evening.

For now, the bags are packed, the road awaits, and the morning sun has begun its slow ascent over a world that has not yet revealed all its mysteries.

There is no need to hurry.

After all, some journeys are undertaken to discover a place.

Others, quite inexplicably, begin with the unsettling suspicion that the place has already discovered you.

And somewhere in the Ozark Mountains, an old town waits.

How very curious that it should know she is coming.