So, my mom was cleaning out her inbox (a Herculean task no doubt) and kept finding interesting little e-mails with links to articles on strange phenomena or snippets of dialogue or nascent story ideas that she would pass on to me in hopes they would manifest into something like a good Strange State post. One that caught my eye was about a disappearing town. I was intrigued, but as I began reading it I got the sense that I was reading fiction. But it was really good fiction. She thought perhaps I had written it, but it's not mine. She has no clue where it came from or who wrote it. Who knows? Maybe she wrote it and forgot all about it. I'm going to share it with you now because, though rough in spots, it's got an eerie Lovecraftian style and a cool premise.....
One recalls the town of Urkhammer, Iowa, during the
1920s and early '30s. For years people passed by the
bustling burg of Urkhammer without giving it a
second thought. Many people even drove through it,
and there are rumors that transactions took place
between tourists and the pale, mute Urkhammerovians.
In 1928 the first ontological doubts about the town
began when aerial photographs showed only empty
fields where there should have been homes and
streets and stores surrounded by farms and waving
fields of grain. A week or so later a lost tourist
had his Marmot Speedster topped off with gasoline at
the Urkhammer Esso station, then, two miles beyond
the town's borders, discovered that his tank was
empty. He walked back to demand a refund from the
conniving general store and gas pump emporium, only
to discover that, regardless of how far he walked,
the town remained the same distance ahead of him.
Fortunately another motorist picked him up after an
hour or two and replenished his car's fuel supply,
but the man had been shaken to the core and required
a prolonged sojourn in an alpine sanitarium.
In 1929 the Davenport Clarion-Sun-Telegraph
newspaper published both stories. Doubtlessly there
would have been a strong public reaction had not the
story appeared in the same issue of the paper as the
Wall Street stock market crash. In the following
week's edition (the last before the
Clarion-Sun-Telegraph itself failed) was a strong
protest from an apparent resident of Urkhammer, a
certain Fatima Morgana (Miss), disputing the
apparent nonexistence of the town and relating her
life story there as a schoolteacher and Anti-Saloon
League activist. But her letter to the editor was
lost in the brouhaha of plant closings, stockbroker
suicides and the sudden popularity of apple sellers
on streetcorners. Urkhammer's own newspaper, the
weekly Bugle-Picayune Advertiser, ran the
now-classic headline, "Rumors of Our Nonexistence
Have Been Greatly Exaggerated," for which they were
sued by the estate of the late Samuel Clemens.
Urkhammer remained undisturbed throughout 1930 and
1931. Passersby stilled waved at children playing in
back yards as they passed on Route #41, although
there was little traffic now, and much of it was by
horse-drawn wagon as farmers attempted to save their
old homesteads by traveling to larger cities to vend
their wares. But disaster struck in 1932 when a
convoy of Illinois farm families, fleeing the ruins
of their Dust Bowl farms for California, decided to
spend the night on the outskirts of Urkhammer. Two
of these wandering souls pooled the camp's meager
store of pennies and nickels and went into the town
to purchase necessary supplies.
There was always a risk in entering towns, since
"Illies," like "Okies," were rumored to be thieves
as well as vagabonds, and were not welcomed by
townspeople. The men, Paducah Bankforth and
"Tribulation" Estonices, plodded to the general
store, pausing for a moment to check the gasoline
prices on the pumps outside before entering. Imagine
their surprise when they were unable to mount the
steps leading to the store, their feet each time
passing through the lowermost step as through a
cloud. Convinced that this was some sort of plot to
prevent outsiders from shopping at the store, they
attempted to scale the steps using an old board
found nearby. Imagine their surprise when their feet
passed through both board and steps as easily as a
potato passes through the smoke of a campfire!
Terrified, the men ran back to their nomadic camp
and reported what they had seen, only to be accused
of spending the group's hard-gotten money on illegal
hooch rather than on beans and bacon. But they
displayed the money and challenged others in the
camp to try the same experiment. A group of a dozen
men, some armed, went back to the general store, and
lo! and behold! had the same eerie experience. The
caravan covered its fires and decamped with all
deliberate speed, but the story quickly circulated,
and soon a group of State Police were ordered to
investigate the phenomenon. They went to the
Urkhammer Sheriff's office to confer, converse and
otherwise hobnob with their brother law enforcement
officials. The group's leader approached the office
of this guardian of the peace and attempted to knock
on the door, only to see his had pass through the
thick oak as though it were merely painted steam.
Their report began the gradual decline of Urkhammer.
It became less substantial with every passing day,
and passersby noted the absence of children playing
and the growing seediness of the houses and barns.
Then, on May 7, 1932, Phineas Bumf, a Huguenot
immigrant farmer, passed by at dawn with his cargo
of produce, and what to his wondering eyes did
appear but- nothing! Where the town had stood were
only abandoned fields and long-rotted fences. A
cast-iron bathtub, used long ago as a watering
trough for livestock, sat alone in a field of weeds,
the sole relic of human presence. Urkhammer was no
more.
Many years later a gypsy caravan camped on the site
but left abruptly. The Ataman of the group,
"Baxtalo," told a Roma-friendly neighboring city
councilman that the place was "saturated with the
tears of the dispossessed, and with the despair of
those who had never borne names."
5 comments:
Damn good story
Why are all the comments removed? Hmm
Because blogger is terrible. They only recently fixed some major bugs.
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