Chapter 6

    I don't know the exact time that I noticed the sky starting to get dark, but it was after 2 pm.  I know that much because of my watch.  It had kept what I thought was the right time for the next two hours after I passed the Leviathan Estates building.  Then around 1:45 I glanced at it and saw that it was slowing down, marking off one tick every two seconds, then every three, until the second hand finally stopped dead between the 3 and 4 at five minutes past two.  Maybe the battery had gone dead, like on all those cable-TV specials about UFOs.  Everybody knew that the first sign that you were driving your SUV a little too close to an interstellar vehicle was when every electronic system in your car started to go simultaneously apeshit.

    I'd guess that it had been another two hours since then, so it was probably closer to 4:00.  That would mean -- assuming I'd kept going at about the same rate as when I'd started -- that I'd walked nearly twenty-five miles.  I couldn't tell the distance for sure, either; the "AC" markers had continued to deteriorate, sprouting all kinds of weird-colored creepiness growing from them, until they eventually stopped appearing at all.  Once or twice I had turned around, hoping to see something familiar that would tell me I hadn't completely left the known universe.  The first time I saw a tiny speck in the distance that might have been the lights of Atlantic City.  The second time, even that was gone.

    Whatever time it was, the darkness growing overhead shouldn't have been possible.  The sun was right in front of me as I continued the relentless trek westward.  Yet not only was the sky going unmistakably black, the sun somehow seemed to be changing colors with it, from bright yellow to a dreary red.

    Perhaps it wasn't my battery that had gone dead.  Perhaps it was time itself.

    The strange beach houses had continued to dot the right side of the boardwalk, as Leviathan Estates gave way to places with names like Azazel's Courtyard and Club Brimstone and one that might have read Damnation Village if there hadn't been letters missing from the sign.  The buildings themselves grew increasingly strange as they passed.  Sometimes the walls seemed to move.  Sometimes the hellish plant life growing from the buildings seemed to notice me and glare threateningly at me as I passed.  A few times I glimpsed what might have been faces inside the windows, and once I could have sworn I heard the beginning of a scream that was cut off.  Eventually I stopped looking at the houses altogether.  Seeing them hurt my mind.

    I didn't turn back.  That option had long since passed.  For better or worse, I was in this to the end, wherever it led.

    You must not surrender.  Stand and be true.

    Whatever the hell that meant.

    In an effort to stay calm, I focused on the ocean to the left.  With the sky darkening, I could only see a short distance off.  The water was still and quiet.  No waves broke against the shore, as they did back by the casinos, where kids played in the water and guys sat the beachfront bars chugging bottles of Bud and Corona while their girlfriends sipped martinis.  Needless to say, there were no boats, either.

    It was early evening now and I realized that not only was I scared 24-karat shitless, I was starving.  I imagined myself back at the buffet at the Taj, getting some turkey and roast beef from the carving station and filling up my plate with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and anything else within reach.

    On my left, the horizon continued to close in.

***

    After what might have been another few hours, if such concepts as hours and minutes still had any meaning out here in the great land of Wherever, it was nearly pitch black.  I had stopped looking at the ocean, because there was no ocean to look at anymore but only total darkness.  I could still see the railing along the left side of the boardwalk, but if I looked past it, I might as well have been staring off into outer space.  I could no longer see the houses, either, which was a relief.  There was only the boardwalk, and I keep my eyes focused straight down at it as I kept on walking, walking, thinking of slot machines and TGI Friday's cheeseburgers and "Velvet Sky" and Jeff, who played poker and rooted for Ohio State and ...

    There is darkness in this city ... it is not the normal darkness of this world.

    STOP IT!

    She needs you.

    LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

    Royal flush, I thought to myself, desperate to do anything to try to keep focused, to hold on.  The highest hand in poker is a royal flush ... then a straight flush ... four of a kind ... then ... full house ... then ...

    It is there, hiding in the shadows, in the places where no one ever goes.

    I couldn't stop myself.  I abandoned all pretense and broke into a dead run.

***

    I can't do this anymore.  I'm going to die out here.  Die or go insane.

    I ran until I couldn't run anymore.  I was out of breath and about to collapse from exhaustion and sheer terror.  I had no sense left of what time it was or how far I'd come.  I felt lucky that I still remembered my name.

    That other voice: Keep going.  You have to.

    Yeah, well, fuck you.

    I stopped and knelt down on the boardwalk to catch my breath -- and that was when I glanced left and noticed the sign posted on the boardwalk railing.  The light had started to return now, not enough to see far off across the water but enough to read what was printed:

                                        BOARDWALK ENDS 1 MILE

    This was it.  Whatever was going to happen, whatever the reason was for me being brought here, it was waiting for me a few minutes ahead.  For a moment I considered the possibility that there was no answer, that I was going to get to the end of that last half mile and find nothing more than a dead end, but I rejected that idea immediately.

    Something -- someone? -- was there, waiting.

    One last deep breath, and then I started running again, keeping my eyes trained down on the wooden slats of the boardwalk, nothing to worry about, easy does it, it'll all be over soon, and then there was another sign saying BOARDWALK ENDS 1/2 MILE and then 1/4 MILE, and then I dared to look up and I finally saw it: the spot up ahead where a chain-link fence stretched across the boardwalk and the path ended.  There was one more sign posted on the fence, but I couldn't read it from this distance.

    And then a few more minutes and I was there.

    The sky was brighter now, but it wasn't the perfect cloudless blue that it had been that morning.  It was some otherworldly shade of orange, and as I took one final glance at the ocean, it seemed to give off a weird luminescent glow, as if the water were somehow on fire.

    I looked back at the fence, and the sign posted on it.  There was only one word printed on the sign, along with an arrow.  I did a double-take as I read it.  It was a word that had no business existing out here in this place, even though just this morning I'd started out on this strange journey in Atlantic City.

                                        CASINO -->

    I turned right, in the direction of the arrow -- and what I saw blew away what was left of my mind.

    I've been to some pretty impressive buildings in my time.  I've climed the staircase to the top of the Statue of Liberty, ridden a roller-coaster on top of the 800-foot Stratosphere Tower in Vegas, and stared down at microscopic cars from the observation decks of every skyscraper in Manhattan.

    The building that I was now gaping at in stunned shock would have dwarfed any of them.  It was impossibly huge, stretching out past the end of the boardwalk for what could have been blocks or even miles and reaching up endlessly into that crazy orange-glowing sky, thousands of feet high until it stretched out of sight.  The tower and every feature of it was jet-black, from the ornate ledges to the windows that lined the building from one end to the other to the enormous flashing lights that somehow seemed to blink an even darker, more ominous black than everything else.

    This wasn't just a skyscraper.  It was a building that couldn't possibly exist in the known world.  And it was even more impossible that as gargantuan as the building was, I hadn't seen it until this moment.

    Of course, I had left the known world far behind.

    Here we go.  Whatever I've come all this way for, it's in here.  Dear Lord, please protect me.

    A revolving door in the front of the tower beckoned me inside.  Just before I entered, I had time to notice one last detail.  A word, presumably the name of this logic-defying place, was spelled out in three-story-tall capital letters by those death-black flashing lights:

                                        MEGIDDO

Chapter 5

    The first thing I did was look back at the street sign.  I halfway expected to see that my brain had been playing tricks on me and that the sign actually read Fryeburg or Frittenburg or something I could have mistaken for the name I'd been looking for.  But when I double-checked it, the name still matched the one I'd read on the sign by the ramp: Fredericksburg Avenue.  Upon further review, says the referee, the play stands.

    Okay, no big deal.  So that first sign back by the Econo Lodge was wrong.  No, not wrong -- outdated.  Maybe it had been posted there oh, say, twenty or thirty years ago.  Or even ten.  However long it had been, there had obviously been an extension added to the boardwalk since then, no doubt to allow the developers to build even more Ocean Houses and Boardwalk Clubs, whose residents would of course have easy access to the casinos to pour their dollars into the slots.  Simple.

    No reason to be nervous about it.  No reason for that chill running down my spine.

    No logical reason.

    And yet, after what had happened the day before --

    No, screw that.  That crazy shit was all in your head.  Come on, stop it already.

    I looked ahead, but there wasn't much to see, and what I did see looked perfectly normal.  Just more buildings off in the distance, along with a few more clusters of benches and what might have been water fountains.  Nothing sinister.  If anything, it looked boring.

    Deciding that a little boredom was just what I needed, that boredom would in fact be pretty damn relaxing right about now, I stepped over the threshold of Fredericksburg Avenue.

    And with that, the breeze stopped.

    The warm air that had been blowing that morning didn't change direction or fade out gradually over the course of a block or two.  It stopped all at once, as if someone with a magic remote control had pressed a MUTE button.

    Startled, I halted before I had taken even another step.  Then I took a hesitant step backward, crossing back into the Fredericksburg Avenue intersection.

    A gentle wind stirred, blowing a few leaves and a long-discarded Snickers wrapper across the boardwalk.

    I stepped forward again.

    No wind.  Just that chill again, now running not only down my spine but seemingly through my brain, my nerve cells, and various other parts of the human anatomy that I heretofore hadn't realized chills could even reach.

    We are definitely not in fucking Kansas anymore, Toto.

    I was getting a bad feeling that I wasn't quite in New Jersey anymore, either.  And there on the border between the real world and Whatever-land, that rational part of my mind, the part that wrote computer programs at work and made sure the right letters got written into the right crossword puzzle boxes at home, spoke up one more time: This is your last chance.  Go home.

    That sounded like the best idea I'd ever come up with.  Just get out of there, pronto.  Turn and run and don't look back.  Don't even think about any of it again, ever.  And if one day I heard a strange voice while I was driving, or woke up in a cold sweat at three in the morning from a nightmare I couldn't quite remember, just ignore it.

    Yeah, right.

    My last chance to go home.  Or maybe my last chance to find out what the hell was happening to me.  To find answers.

    Dear Lord, please help me.  I think I'm going to need it.

    I walked on, leaving behind Fredericksburg Avenue and perhaps a whole lot more.

***

    I'd been walking for a half hour since passing what was supposed to be the end of the boardwalk.  I hadn't passed anything else of interest, just a few more of those nondescript apartment buildings and more quarter-mile markers (at least they still have them in this part of the universe, I thought), but that creepy feeling hadn't left.  On the contrary, it seemed to grow with every step I took.  And now I finally put my finger on something else that had been bothering me.  I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary as I'd stood at Fredericksburg Avenue, looking out at the boardwalk ahead.  But it wasn't what I'd seen that was weird; it was what I hadn't seen: people.  The crowd had been thinning out ever since I'd passed the Hilton, but since the breeze stopped I hadn't met up with so much as one pedestrian.  Not only that, but from what I could see up ahead, the remainder of the boardwalk appeared to be completely deserted.  Not one person anywhere.

    Nor was that all, I realized.  The casino end of the boardwalk had been crowded not only with tourists but with scores of pigeons, some flying and others strolling along with the crowd, stopping occasionally to take a poop or to snack on a discarded bit of a hot dog or pretzel.  Over here, not a single bird marked the sky or the path ahead.

    The empty path disturbed me even more than the paranormally muted breeze had.  But I kept walking anyhow.  I was in all the way, and in some way that I didn't understand, any chance to turn back had passed.

***

    The first definitive sign that something was seriously wrong came at 10:45.

    Up until then, all I'd noticed had been the absence of things: tourists, pigeons -- and, as I now saw, cross streets.  A full hour was way too long to have been walking without encountering a single road that led off the boardwalk.  So, another checked-off item on the bizarro list.  But at least I still hadn't actually seen anything present that didn't belong.

    Until 10:45, when I saw the next quarter-mile marker posted on a fence along the right side of the boardwalk, opposite the beach.  If I'd kept track correctly, it marked three miles since Fredericksburg Avenue.  Something about the marker disquieted me as I glanced at it from a few paces away, and as I approached it for a closer look, I saw what it was.  The white "AC" lettering was still visible inside the green circle, but this marker featured a third color, courtesy of the strange purplish moss growing out of the center.  I was no PhD in botany, but there was no doubt in my mind that this stuff had no business existing on Planet Earth, let alone Atlantic City.

    I tentatively started to extend a finger, perhaps with the intention of touching it.  That brought me a sudden vision of a giant mossy tentacle exploding out of the marker, swallowing my arm up to the shoulder.  Stupid, perhaps ... but my mind refused to let go of it.  In this corner of reality, all bets were off.  Jerking my hand back, I turned away from the marker and walked on.

    Ten minutes later, I came to a rest area.  It slightly resembled the ones by the casinos, but the benches over here were rotting and had nasty wooden splinters sticking out of them.  I told myself to ignore the whole place and keep going straight ahead.  I told myself not to bother reading what was inscribed on the memorials, that they sure as hell wouldn't say "Mom and Dad, we miss you" or anything else that made sense.  I looked anyway.

    OOMIAQ FIZE! read the first one, and I couldn't make head or tail of that.  The second one bore an inscription that wasn't in English; in fact, it wasn't in any language or alphabet I recognized.  A third, sitting in front of an equally decrepit table, bore a simple message in smaller, almost timid lettering: GO ROT.

    Call it a hunch, but something told me not to stop and use the men's room.

    Things only got a lot worse from there.

    I hadn't seen any signs of life since a quarter to ten, but the buildings I was walking past still looked relatively normal, if a bit worse for wear.  Then, around 11:30, I saw what at first looked like just another beachfront condo complex, until I drew close.  The entire front wall of the building was riddled with more of that weird purple growth, but more than that, there was something wrong about the building itself.  About the way the walls seemed came together at strange angles that seemed to change as I looked at them.  Staring at it was making me disoriented.

    For a brief moment, I thought I saw one of the filthy, mold-encrusted curtains move.  I might have caught a glimpse of something behind it, some shadowy shape that may have been staring at me.  I didn't want to see more.

    I pulled my eyes away from the building and noticed the sign just beyond the far wall, proclaiming the name of the property in some kind of Old English text to be not Ocean or Beach anything but Leviathan Estates.  Below the name, where you would expect to find some kind of contact or price information (or at least "Free HBO", if you were in front of a cheap motel), there was instead this ominous caption: NO MORE ROOMS HERE.  EVER.

    I started to walk faster.

Chapter 4

Okay, so I cheated a little bit.  I went back and made a couple of minor changes to parts 2 and 3.  Just two things, really.  I decided that I really didn't want the narrator to know the name of the mysterious girl (in fact, I don't think her name is even going to be Amanda after all).  And I added a reference to a tourist sign that will be significant in part 4.  Which I began writing last night...

Chapter 3

    Back in my ninth grade history class, they taught us about India and its old social caste system. People who lived there years ago were divided into classes according to what kind of families they were born into. You were either born to be a nobleman, or a farmer, or a merchant, or whatever. And at the bottom of the ladder were the untouchables: the people who didn't belong anywhere, the ones who only Gandhi gave a shit about.

    It's the same thing in Atlantic City or any other gambling town. First, you've got your high rollers. These are the people who can drop tens of thousands of dollars at the tables in one night and not even think about it. They get the full red carpet treatment -- free limo service to their free luxury suites at Harrah's or the Marina, guaranteed reservations at the swankiest restaurants, ringside seats for Mike Tyson fights back when Tyson was in his prime. Hell, the Vegas hotels might even arrange to have a stripper sent to your room.

    Then there's the middle class, the regulars who aren't rich but who find the time to visit more than the average person does. Maybe they're seniors who come down a couple of times a month on the bus, playing the slots with the casino club cards they signed up for at the promotion desk. They might rack up enough freebie points to get comped for a night or two at the Claridge and dinner at the buffet.

    And finally there are the common slobs like me, plain old once or twice-a-year tourists. If you're one of us, you hand your Visa to Louie behind the counter at the Econo Lodge and be thankful that your $60-a-night room comes with free HBO and a continental breakfast.

     "Room 211," Louie said, handing me the key. "It's upstairs. Check-out time is noon tomorrow."

***

    Nothing out of the ordinary had happened once I found my way to the Garden State Parkway, except that I had started losing money before I even got within sight of a casino. I managed this feat by driving through a toll in the wrong lane. It had been a while since I'd made the trip to Atlantic City, and in the interim some work had been done on the parkway to create express lanes for cars fitted with an automated toll device called EZ-Pass. I mistakenly went on the wrong side of the divider, and by the time I realized my error it was too late. There was nothing I could do except drive through, knowing that the overhead scanning device was probably taking a picture of my car's license plate and in a few weeks I'd be getting a violation notice in the mail.

    Shortly after that little mishap I came to a rest station, where I bought a Whopper and fries and settled in with a bunch of other commuters watching a television tuned to CNN. I don't know why they always keep CNN on in those places, unless they think that nothing is more relaxing to a bunch of gift-shopping tourists than hearing about the latest terror threat. But at least I felt better with some food in my system and I was able to put the morning's weirdness out of my mind for a while.

    Now, lying on my bed in room 211 and watching SportsCenter on ESPN (now there's my kind of news show), my thoughts turned back to how I'd magically navigated my way out of northern New Jersey. There was nothing paranormal about it, I decided. I'd always had a good sense of direction, so maybe what I'd interpreted as a voice was just my own instinct telling me where to look. It was a big shopping mall, after all; there was bound to be a sign for a major highway somewhere on the grounds. And the girl? Who knew. Just a random thought that could have been about anybody. Only this and nothing more, quoth the Raven.

    Anyway, it was after two o'clock now -- six hours until the concert. Time for me to stop scaring myself with all that X-Files crap and go hit the casinos.

***

    The Econo Lodge is directly behind the Holiday Inn, at the west end of the boardwalk's busy stretch. The first thing you see when you climb up the ramp from the Holiday Inn parking lot onto the boardwalk is a big ol' sign:

   The marker in question was a large green circle with a white "AC" inside. It made me think of the logo on the bottles of that no-frills America's Choice cola they sold in Waldbaum's for 59 cents. Under the marker were a few more paragraphs about the history of the city: the Miss America pageant, Monopoly, Quartermania jackpots, blah, blah, blah.

   The Trump Taj Mahal is near the other end of the boardwalk, a couple of miles (or, if you prefer, maybe eight markers) away. It was a nice long walk, just what I needed to clear my head after that morning's drive. I took my time strolling down the boardwalk, stopping three or four times in the gift shops to browse through aisles of T-shirts, playing cards, and books on Texas Hold 'Em. I grabbed a sundae at a Ben & Jerry's. I checked out a couple of the other hotels, but only for a few minutes (Resorts and Caesar's were okay, Bally's Wild West was at least kind of original). I passed a construction site for something called The Pier, where until a few years ago there had been a boat-shaped shopping mall called Ocean One.

    The Taj is a few blocks past the construction site. Or rather, I should say: the Taj begins a few blocks past the site, and goes on for what seems like ten miles. And unlike the real Taj Mahal, I've always considered the Atlantic City version to be -- at least on the outside -- the ugliest building I've ever seen. It's huge, white, and gaudy without being remotely attractive, full of ridiculous-looking spires and bridges and staircases no one ever seems to use. I call it the hotel that ate the boardwalk. But I've always enjoyed the casino there, maybe even because of its size. More space means more tables, and more tables means you don't have to wait as long to find a seat and join a game of roulette or craps. It also means more slot machines, but I don't bother with those anymore. For the amount of times I spin bar-bar-bar, I might as well be flushing my quarters straight down the shitter. At least at the table games, you have a decent chance of winning something back.

    I took in the scenery for ten minutes or so. Then I settled in with three other players at a Caribbean stud table. Caribbean stud is a poker game that's simple to learn, which is why I play it. It's also a game at which I have an annoying habit of getting my ass kicked. The dealer, an Asian man of maybe thirty-five whose nameplate proclaimed him to be Kenzo, smiled at me, probably looking forward to the chance to administer said punishment but trying not to be too obvious about it.

    The player next to me, a heavyset guy in his twenties wearing an Ohio State T-shirt, was more forthcoming about his opinion of my chances. "Uh-oh, here comes fresh meat!" he said to the older couple on my left, who laughed. I smiled a little myself as I tossed five twenty-dollar bills onto the table and Kenzo handed me ten blue chips. I slid one into the ANTE circle in front of me, being a true tourist and betting the minimum. Mr. Ohio State also anted up one chip, but his was green instead of blue: a fifty.

    Kenzo went around the table, dealing each of us five cards and then five face-down to himself. The last of these he turned up, showing a nine of hearts as we all picked up our own hands.

    The basic strategy is this: if your hand is crap, you fold and sacrifice the ante. If you have something worthwhile (meaning any pair, or sometimes just an ace-king combo), you stay in, but to do that you have to triple your bet. On my first hand at the table, I found myself holding king-10-6-4-3 of different suits: zilch. I stacked the cards face-down on the table. Kenzo swept up the blue chips from me, and from the Buckeyes fan and the older gentleman, who had folded as well. Only his wife chose to remain in the hand and lay down the additional chips. "Come on, let me have this one," she said.

    Kenzo showed the rest of his cards. There were no more nines, which was the good news; the bad news was the pair of queens. The woman muttered something in what might have been Italian as Kenzo turned over her now-beaten pair of tens and confiscated her chips.

    "You'll get him next hand, Lily," said the husband. Lily looked at him and responded with something else in Italian, presumably not "mangia".

    I put my next blue chip in the circle, and this time I did much better: three aces. I stacked my cards on the table again, but this time I shoved another two blue chips into the BET circle, signaling that I was staying in. Now three things could happen: Kenzo could turn over less than an ace-king, in which case he wouldn't open and I'd have to settle for a ten-dollar win on my ante. Or -- what I was hoping for -- he could open but with a hand less than mine, giving me even money on the ante and 3-to-1 on my $20 raise: a $70 win for my three-of-a-kind. Or he could beat my three aces and leave me with egg on my face.

    This time Lily and her husband dropped out, leaving me and Buckeye, who now had a hundred and fifty dollars riding on the hand and was enthusiastically happy about whatever he was holding. "Yeah, bro!" he said to me. "He ain't stopping us this time, right, fresh meat?"

    "I sure hope not," I answered.

    "Hell no he ain't! Come on! Positive energy!"

    Kenzo revealed his hand. He hadn't quite stopped us, but we got screwed anyway: he had no pairs and his highest card was a queen. My dream hand netted me all of ten bucks.

    "Dealer doesn't open," Kenzo said in his thick accent.

    "Ah, crap," said Buckeye.

    A waitress came around to our table. In keeping with the hotel's theme, she was dressed in some kind of exotic multi-colored Indian outfit that looked a bit odd on a blonde. We ordered our drinks -- a Jack and Coke for me, a Coors Light for Buckeye, a couple of ginger ales for the seniors -- and anted our chips as the game went on.

***

    After half an hour at the table, it was obvious that my foot-to-the-behind streak wasn't about to end. I was down to my last three chips from my original ten. Lily and her husband had broken about even and walked away. Buckeye, a/k/a Jeff, was down more than five hundred dollars, not that he seemed to mind. The Coors Light he ordered clearly hadn't been his first, or second, or third.

    I wasn't getting bad cards, but somehow I kept finding ways to lose. If I had a pair of kings, the dealer had aces. If I had a straight, he'd show a flush, or he'd have nothing at all and I'd be stuck collecting the ten-dollar consolation prize.

    With only the two of us left at the table, the hands went fast. I watched Jeff glance briefly at his latest set of cards and muck it onto the table in disgust. "Kenny my man, what kinda crap you dealin' me here?" he muttered.

    I picked up my own hand: two pairs, fours over twos. Kenzo's up card was an ace of diamonds, which gave him a good chance to be forced to open. I pushed my last two chips into the BET circle. Here's where my luck will start to turn around, I thought. Two pairs would give me a fifty-dollar win, enough to get me at least close to even. Come on. Give him a pair or an ace-king or a bunch of crap. Something that'll let me get back in this game.

    Kenzo showed the rest of his hand: a queen, a deuce, a three, and a seven.

    All diamonds.

    "Flush," Kenzo said, and I was never more certain that on the inside, behind that neutral good-luck-at-the-tables expression, Kenzo was wearing one great big shit-eating grin. I don't know if it was his face, or the way his accent turned flush into frush, or just imagination brought on by bad luck and a couple of Jack and Cokes, but there was something about Kenzo that seemed not just mean but somehow positively evil.

    "Well, I guess that about does it for me," I said, getting up from the table. "Good luck there, Buckeye."

    "You too, bro," Jeff replied. Then, spotting another tourist sitting down at the spot next to where I had been, Jeff turned to him and shouted: "Hey, fresh meat!"

***

    I was halfway back to the Econo Lodge, where I planned on spending the next couple of hours watching TV and sulking over my horrible luck before I had to leave for the concert, when I saw the homeless man. He looked to be about sixty, but it was hard to tell since the wild hair, sagging face, and long, ragged beard could have given that look to someone even twenty years younger. His torn jeans had been patched more than a few times and his scuffed, wrinkled shirt was two or three sizes too big. He was sitting on one of the benches scattered along the boardwalk ("Dedicated in memory of Susan Smalley 9/15/04 Always In Our Hearts", read the small memorial inscription on the bench), playing blues melodies on a badly out-of-tune harmonica, or at least making the attempt. LOST MY JOB PLEAZE HELP was written on a sign that the man had propped up against the bench.

    So far, not many people were. Take a walk along the boardwalk on any given day and you're likely to encounter half a dozen people with signs. See enough of them over the course of your life, not just in Atlantic City but in Manhattan and Queens and even out in the suburbs, and you become trained to tune them out. Sad but true.

    People came and went. Occasionally, a passing tourist dropped a dollar bill or some change into the small box that the man had set down next to him on the bench. "Thank you, sir", he said a few times, before going back to rambling on his harmonica. As I approached him, I thought I recognized a few strains of "Tears In Heaven", by Eric Clapton.

    I started to walk past him, as (yes, I admit) I've done plenty of times before, and then I abruptly changed my mind and turned back. What the hell, right? I'd just blown a hundred dollars at a poker table, money that would end up in the bank account of a casino business that already had God alone knew how many billions in assets. So what was another few bucks?

    I reached into my wallet, pulled a five out of the few random bills that still remained after the drubbing at I'd taken at the hands of Kenzo the evil Caribbean stud dealer, and dropped it into the homeless man's box.

    "Thank you, s--" he started to say. And then he looked at me, right in my face, and he froze in the middle of his last word. The expression he was wearing was one of total shock.

    I don't make it a habit to start conversations with random homeless people, but this guy struck me as odd.

    "Are you okay?" I asked.

    He kept staring at me. It wasn't just shock on his face now; strangely, there seemed to be an element of recognition in it. As if I were someone he knew -- someone that he never expected to see on the boardwalk in a thousand years. It was starting to make me nervous.

    I turned to walk away when the homeless man suddenly grabbed my arm.

    "Hey, let go of me!" I yelled. "What the hell is your pr--"

    "Listen to me ... I'm not going to hurt you, but you are in danger here."

    A few heads were turning to look. Maybe the old man was just some harmless space-aliens-and-anal-probes nutcase, but I sure as hell wasn't taking any chances. I was going to pull away, hurry my ass down the boardwalk, and find a cop. Maybe stop and grab my five dollars back out of that fucking box, too.

    But before I could do anything of the sort, he said something that stopped me cold:

    "I know who you are.  You're here for the girl."

    Now it was my turn to be shocked. And scared.

    "What are you talking about? What girl? Who are you?"

    He turned his head and looked around for a few seconds, as if making sure the coast was clear. What or who he might have been looking for, I had no idea. Then he turned back to me and the words began to pour out of him in a low, urgent voice: "There is darkness in this city. You can't see it but it is there, hiding in the shadows, in the places where no one ever goes. It is not the normal darkness of this world but one of decay and corruption and rot. It has her and it means to have you."

    I wanted to yank my arm out of the man's grip and take off as fast as I could. But I couldn't move. I could barely draw a breath.

    "If you want to save yourselves," the man continued, "then above all you must remember this: when the darkness confronts you, you must not surrender. You must be brave and not give up, however much you desire to. You must stand. Stand and be true."

    With the mysterious message imparted, he let go of my arm. A few seconds later, he picked up his harmonica and went right back to "Tears In Heaven", picking up where he left off.

    I turned and ran as fast as I could the rest of the way back to the Econo Lodge, not stopping until I was safely inside room 211 with the door double-locked.

Chapter 2

    Atlantic City is a 160-mile drive from my apartment in the middle of Long Island. On a good day, with no traffic, you can make it in a little over three hours. That's how long it would have taken me if I hadn't gotten lost. My grandparents lived in New Jersey, and I'd gone to visit them so many times with my folks that I knew the way with my eyes closed, which just made what I did that morning even more ridiculous.

    I was making good time until I reached Staten Island. Once you get that far, you've got a choice: you can cross the Goethals Bridge into New Jersey and get on the turnpike, which adds a few miles to the trip but keeps you on the more reliable highways. Or you can take your chances on the Staten Island roads, taking Route 440 to Outerbridge Crossing. As a little added bonus, Outerbridge lets you avoid the tolls on the turnpike. Not that a buck fifty means a lot when you're on your way to a city where people play hundred-dollar slot machines, but what the hell. Besides, the morning rush hour was over and any road was bound to be clear.

    I'd just come off Outerbridge into New Jersey when the Creed CD I'd been playing reached the end. I popped it out of the Discman connected to my car stereo and glanced at the other discs I'd brought along for the ride: Bon Jovi, Train, U2. I also had a Los Lonely Boys disc -- when I used to go to concerts with my friends we'd always bring along a CD of the band we were seeing as sort of a pre-show warmup, and I still did it even though I was now living on my own. Saving that one for later, I threw in U2 and punched play on the Discman. The Edge's opening guitar riff on "Beautiful Day" started blaring from the speakers of my Chevy.

    Okay, I thought, now I just have to watch for the exit to get on the Gar--

    "Oh, shit!" I said aloud.

    The one thing you had to be careful with when you took Outerbridge was that tricky turnoff from the New Jersey side of 440 onto the Garden State Parkway.  It was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention (if you were taking a couple of seconds to pick out a CD, for instance), and by the time I realized it was coming up on me fast, it was too late.  I was in the left lane and there was no way I could zoom across three lanes of traffic in time.

    I'd have to keep going until I reached the next exit, then get off 440 and turn around.  It wouldn't take more than a couple of minutes.  And I had barely finished thinking that happy thought when I crested a hill and saw that the traffic down the highway was backed up for as far as I could see, maybe for miles.

***

    After 45 minutes, and nearly the entire U2 album, I'd gone all of one mile when I came to an exit for Route 4.  I had no idea where Route 4 might go, but in my state of mind I didn't care if it went to southwestern Jupiter as long as I got off the expressway.

    The good news was that Route 4 was clear.  The bad news was that it was still a highway and didn't offer lots of places to turn around.  A couple of miles later I turned off onto a side road, which I realized too late was a one-way.  And so I kept going, turning onto any random road that caught my attention ("where the streets have no name", ha-ha), until somehow I found myself in the parking lot of the Menlo Park Mall, officially lost.

    I pulled into a space.  It was after 12 by now, so I'd just go into the mall, grab some lunch, and maybe buy myself a map so I could figure out how the hell to get back to the parkway.  No big deal.  I had just turned off the car and started to open the door when:

    >> Look to your left.

    For a moment I thought somebody had spoken to me, but there was no one nearby.  It must have been only a thought I'd had, but I felt sure I'd heard something.  Besides, there was no reason for me to think of looking to my left or in any particular direction.  I'd never been here before in my life.

    >> See it?

    I had the crazy idea that these weren't my thoughts at all, that they were coming from somewhere outside.  As if some strange voice had been speaking inside my brain.

    Obeying the thought or hunch or whatever it was, I turned to my left and peered into the distance.  At first I didn't know what I was looking for -- and then I saw it.  Way down the road near the other end of the parking lot: a round green sign with the outline of New Jersey and the words GARDEN STATE PARKWAY SOUTH above an arrow.

    There was no way I could have known that sign was there.

    Hesitantly, I got back in the car.  I pulled out of the parking lot and turned left, heading in the direction of the sign but still unsure of exactly what was happening.

    The sign didn't lead me to the parkway right away.  Instead, I spent the next half hour riding through a bunch of towns -- Menlo Park, Edison, Perth Amboy, Sayreville -- seeing more identical round green signs in each one.  That's one of the annoying things about New Jersey.  You'll see a sign directing you to a road, but the sign won't tell you that you're not going to meet up with the road for 20 miles.

    Now I was really getting hungry.  To hell with this, I decided; I was going to pull into the next fast food place, then stop at a gas station for directions, and hopefully --

    >> You're going to miss it again.

    I slammed the brakes, startled.  The Chevy came to a rest directly in front of the large sign that read GARDEN STATE PARWAY SOUTH ENTRANCE.  I'd almost driven right past it.

    I sat staring at the sign, my heart starting to pound, wondering what was happening to me.

    >> Don't worry, you're fine.  Now go.  She needs you.

    Now where the hell had that come from?  It didn't make any sense.  Who needed me?  I thought of my girlfriend, but she was on the other side of the country.  And it wasn't as if I was heading to Atlantic City to start picking up strippers.

    Yet the thought had come in as clearly as if I'd heard it broadcast over my car radio: She needs you.

    I waited for any further messages, some kind of clarification, but none came.  For the time being, the voice had fallen silent.

    More baffled than ever, I put the car back in gear and drove onto the parkway.

"Where The Boardwalk Ends"

a convoluted horror story, some of which is kind of true, except for the horror stuff of course

by me

Chapter 1

    I didn't plan on being in Atlantic City that week in September. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. A hey, let's look on the Internet and see what's around thing.  I only decided to go because of a concert.  By sheer coincidence, the final round of the World Poker Tour championship was also there at the same time, but I didn't try getting a ticket for it.  Poker is more fun to watch at home on ESPN.

    There wasn't much else to do.  Melissa, my girlfriend of six months, was on vacation with one of her friends in that other big casino town in Nevada.  They'd be spending three days there, catching some shows and maybe dumping a few rolls of quarters at the slots, and then heading on to San Diego.  Since I still had some vacation time left at my job, I'd taken off the same week, intending to get away for a few days myself.  I'd been looking at a few options -- there was a 10-day bus tour of the Northeast with a group called Contiki ("VACATIONS for 18-35 year olds!" said the brochure), and in the travel section of Newsday I found an interesting article about Boston.

    Thing was, I'd just been on a lengthy trip to Ireland with my parents in July, and I'd barely gotten home and unpacked when my company shipped me out to California for a week-long training course, so I was in no hurry to be living out of a suitcase again.  In the end, I didn't do too much.  I started off my vacation week by going to a party on Friday night at the local K of C hall, where I'm one of the few members under yearly-prostate-exam age.  The following morning I drove to Queens for a Scrabble tournament, a favorite hobby of mine.  I played seven games and won five.  Then I spent a few days just relaxing, cleaning my apartment and watching old episodes of "Stargate SG-1" on DVD in between trips to the mall, the local bars, the local coffeehouses, and wherever.

    Yep ... pretty fucking exciting, wouldn't you say?

    So, shockingly enough, I started to get restless after a couple of days, and on Tuesday night I went online and started searching for something to do in the area.  In the middle of the week, there wasn't much happening on Long Island.  I'm a big-time Mets fan, but by mid-September '05 they'd long since been eliminated, so going to a game was just about pointless.  The clubs in Manhattan didn't hold much interest for me, either.  I've never been a Webster Hall kind of person.  I hate house music, the crowds are annoying, and as far as drinking goes, a Coors Light tastes the same to me in The City as it does at the Nutty Irishman a mile from my apartment.  Then I got the idea to try Atlantic City.  I looked up a few web sites and checked out the event listings at the hotels.  If all I turned up was the usual riffraff -- Hilary Duff, Ruben Studdard, David Spade, blah, blah, blah -- I'd forget about it.  I'd turn off my PC, go to sleep, and be content with spending the rest of the week vegging out and looking through Melissa's pictures when she got back.

    But this time I got lucky: there was a Tex-Mex rock band called Los Lonely Boys playing a show on Wednesday night at the Borgata.  Not my #1 favorite band in the world, but they had a couple of hit songs that I knew.  They were pretty cool, I thought.

    Plus, I'd never been to the Borgata.

    I thought about it for a couple of minutes.  Then I logged on to Ticketmaster, and when I'd finished placing my order, I threw some clothes into a sports bag.  By ten the next morning I was on the road.

Testing ... testing ... testing ...