The usual dirt road shortcut to our favourite campground was coming into view. Not only did it shed off almost an hour off of our commute, but it was scenic nearly all year around. My brother Tate, and I hadn’t been able to do our annual camping trip for two years now. Life gets in the way sometimes, and since we had moved out of our parents and in with our significant others there was even less time to do these things as just brothers.
“Damn, I could use a drink and somewhere to piss,” Tate moaned as he made the turn with his bright, new truck. Its shine maybe lasted ten minutes before the truck was caked in mud.
“You can always go on the side of the road, you know,” I said. “Who’s gonna see it?”
“Yeah that’s true. I’ll go in a bit here,” he said.
Truthfully, you could go streaking and scream bloody murder and you wouldn’t bother a soul. The farmer’s fields that align with the normal highways didn’t merge with the dirt road for at least three miles. Instead, the dirt road had layers of thick trees and shrubs for pretty much the entire way, save for one of the lookout points that drops down a steep valley.
“I wouldn’t mind a convenience store though,” I chuckled. “Could use an extra four bottles of coke here.”
“And who’d run it, Cade?” Tate sneered. “The farmers in the middle of fucking nowhere?”
We both shared a laugh. Eventually Tate pulled over so he could answer his body’s call to pee. I hopped out of the truck to stretch my legs. I inspected all the camping gear in the box as he went to do his thing in the trees off of the road. Mud had flung itself all over the sides of the truck, but our camping goods were clean.
As I folded a tarp back down, I noticed something in the treeline opposite of where Tate was. Or two things rather. Two figures walking deeper in the trees. Hikers maybe? But what would hikers be doing on a dirt road with no mountains for at least an hour’s drive?
“Speed it along, bro,” I barked.
“There’s no rush, man,” I heard Tate call back. I kept my eyes on the two people in the trees. One of them glanced back at me and from what I could tell they both had face paint on. Black charcoal smeared into an interesting, tribal pattern. They pressed on.
Tate got back in the truck and we made our way forward, leaving those guys in the dust.
“Did you see those guys?” I asked him.
“Wait, you saw people out here?” he responded, sounding a bit concerned.
“Yeah…two of em, trekking through the trees on the opposite side of where you went.”
“Well, hunting season is on, but this isn’t crown land.”
“Poachers, you think?”
“It’s probably not worth getting in your head about, let’s keep moving and forget about it.”
About twenty minutes later, we arrived at a part of the road that the sun rained down on. It wasn’t there the last time we’d gone this way. Tate slowed the truck down and we got a better look around. The trees had been crudely cut down for at least a mile on each side. I thought about the two guys I had seen earlier. They weren’t poaching wood, right?
In the distance on our left, there looked to be a crudely made radio tower basking in the sun. The dirt road would be winding towards it, so I didn’t think much of it at the time. We proceeded on the road and eventually got back into more trees. It felt a bit relieving going back into the familiar, dense woods. It continued to be normal for about ten more minutes.
Then we saw it. A cluster of wooden houses in the distance.
“What the hell?” I heard Tate say.
These wooden houses were unevenly placed on the ground, none made it right up on the road. They stretched to the weird radio tower I saw in the distance. Figured folks would need electricity or whatnot. We both started spotting people in and around the houses. They dressed semi-normal. It wasn’t like going back in time or anything like that. These folks just had very worn clothes.
“Imagine raising your kids like this,” I mumbled.
“Could be better than raising them on Hollywood and Ipads,” Tate replied.
“You think there’s a convenience store in this strange, new town?” I jokingly asked. Tate didn’t answer, his eyes were on his surroundings. The place gave off a very unwelcoming vibe. I noticed a thousand judgmental eyeballs gazing at the truck as we drove through.
These houses stretched past the odd radio tower, too. As we drove past the imposing piece of steel and lumber I felt it was going to fall right on top of us. How did we not notice this two years ago? I figured this place would’ve taken a while to build, even through the winter.
We had our first interaction with a local when we stopped for some cows to cross the road. A man in worn out clothes approached my brother’s window. Tate rolled down the window, gulping nervously.
“Heya,” Tate spoke first. The man smiled warmly at him.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” He said. “We’re working on putting a welcome sign for this sanctuary.”
He took in a deep breath and moaned like he was in ecstasy. More cows began crossing the road. Shit. We’d be stuck in this creepy town for a bit longer.
“So uhh, what is this place?” I learned forward and asked.
“Newstone,” he said with enthusiasm. “For the new age that is to come.”
“Is that your slogan?” I asked, pretending to be interested.
“Made by our goddess herself,” he replied. “Did you get the chance to meet her on your way in?”
Goddess? Great, it’s a cult town. Tate and I both knew we needed to get the hell out of this place.
“No, sir,” Tate said. “We’re just passing through.”
A man in priest robes approached the truck, standing right beside the guy talking to us. He stared at us with a deadpan look before turning to the local.
“Boone,” the priest spoke with a calm and authoritative tone. “It is your turn to have your family blessed by Fir. Do you have what you need?”
“Of course, father,” Boone replied. “I was just about to spread the-”
“No need,” the priest interrupted. “Newstone does not need the outside plague.”
“Yes father,” Boone mumbled.
The priest turned to us.
“You are not welcome to live amongst Newstone, but it would be in…good taste for you to witness Fir,” he explained. Didn’t want to live here, let alone pass through this place that shouldn’t even be here.
“Who is Fir?” I nervously asked.
“Our Goddess, she is pure, and knows we must restart from the stone ages to live in eternity with the earth.”
“Then why the radio tower?” I spat.
The radio tower let out a noise that I could only describe as parade music with incredibly warped tones. It filled the two of us up with dread, but the priest’s eyes evaded us. He looked forward and a large grin engulfed his face.
“Praise be to Fir!” he chanted repeatedly. Tate rolled up the window and sped forward.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Tate demanded. We saw behind us the people of Newstone sprinting towards us, men, women and children. It was disturbing, they were after us weren’t they?
“I don’t think we’re clear just yet!” I yelled, pointing ahead.
Built right into the middle of the road ahead was a shrine. Villagers of this Newstone place lined up along the road, cheering in revelry. They were lined all the way up to the shrine, so we had no choice but to drive around them.
Tate pulled right, and before we were in the clear, villagers started throwing themselves against the hood of the truck. Tate slammed on the horn, but they didn’t let up.
“Witness the blessing!” they chanted. Tate slowly drove forward, crushing the foot of one of these manic cultists under his tire. I rolled down my window and started swatting them away, they were weak. Their numbers made it hard to keep them at bay.
With the crowd surrounding the front of the vehicle we got a better look at the shrine to our left. Men with similar face paint from earlier had a man chained up with a burlap sack on his head. The captive was thrashing around, but with a shovel to the back of the head he stopped. I noticed his clothing looked much more like someone you’d see wearing in the city. Did they pull this guy off the highway? A lone hitchhiker maybe? Tate noticed it too.
Sitting on top of the shrine was Fir. She was a graceful girl, maybe late teens. She had pasty skin and blond hair. Her eyes were dark, and her clothes also dark. Fir hopped down from the top of the shrine and landed on the ground like a cat. The cultists that threw themselves on the truck’s hood had their attention diverted from us to their “goddess” which gave Tate time to slam into reverse to knock the people off of us.
“Now!” I barked.
“I can’t just run over these guys!” Tate reasoned.
“They’re fucked up, who cares?” I argued. “They’ll be trapping us from behind soon enough!”
Our eyes both met the shrine site. One of the kidnappers gave Fir the shovel. She looked down at the captive, forlorn.
“Any last word, o’ that plagues the land?”
All the captive could say was muffled screams. Fir began swatting at the bag on his head. It wasn’t long before blood and brains began flying everywhere. Fir crouched to the ground, and began to drink from the corpse.
“Holy shit, did you see that!?” I screamed. “Let’s get out NOW!”
“I’m with you!” Tate floored it, knocking a few cultists to the side with his truck. Nobody was fully run over, if you want to call that miraculous.
The radio tower blared the terrible noise again, and after its haunting notes a voice came over the PA shouting the same thing over and over again:
“Praise be to Fir, she devours the plague!”
We left that place behind, but on the sides of the roads behind the shrine we saw more of those wooden houses. This place was expanding.
“Just how big IS this place!?” I hissed. Tate kept his eyes on the road but he was hyperventilating. I reached for a bag for him to breathe into. He needed to keep driving.
I don’t think much of the outside world knows about this place, this evil place that performs sacrifices in the middle of the day.
The radio tower’s noises began to quiet down after maybe five minutes or so of speeding through the dirt road. We both sighed with relief when we stopped seeing random clearings and filthy wooden houses lining the road.
Our camping trip itself was rocky on the first day, I mean who wouldn’t be shaken up by witnessing what we had seen. Tate began to come to his senses and loosen up on day two, and we managed to have a decent time for the five days we were out of there. We did NOT go that way home, an extra hour or so of driving is worth our lives.
If you hear of Newstone, don’t go there. This is a warning. It could’ve been us they killed if we stuck around. The outside world is the plague to them, and the cult of Newstone is a plague to us.
We still planned on doing our annual camping trip next year but we are never going through that shortcut again. Not until Newstone is wiped off the map.