“We don’t have much gas,” a man called out, sucking his teeth. “Trucks won’t be coming up for another two weeks.”
“We’ll take what you’ve got,” I said. “Is this the exit for Argentum?”
The man leaned on a post. “Never heard of it. I’m not from around here.”
I once more brought out the old map and approached him. He took a close look and nodded. “Well, how about that.”
“Any idea where it is?”
He shook his head.
“Can you direct me to the next closest town? They might have heard of it.”
“Only unincorporated towns around here. Little pockets of people. Old mining towns scattered here and there. Impossible to know all the names.”
“I’m guessing if there’s a gas station here, there must be a town nearby. I didn’t pass any on the way from the interstate. I’m assuming they’re farther up the road?”
He nodded and again sucked his teeth.
“All I can get is five dollars out of this,” Roxy said.
“I told you we were low.”
“Thanks for your help,” I gave him a small wave.
“Do you want some chicken for the road?”
I waved Roxy into the Suburban, knowing if the man made the noise again, there might be a brawl.
“Better hurry,” he called out. “Feels like a storm’s coming.”
After sixty-five miles of nothing, Roxy started driving at a crawl, looking for any sign of life. We passed no towns, not even a side street. It became abundantly clear why the gas station was low on fuel; there couldn’t be enough people to justify frequent deliveries.
“Hon, I don’t even want to think about what we’d do if this SUV broke down.”
“Someone has to be out here. Just a bit more.”
We both pointed at the same time when the barn and a side road appeared. Hoping a house would be nearby, we turned onto the road, potholes and other precarious dips causing us to bounce in our seats. The closer we got to the barn, the more our hopes teetered. As we pulled up in front, it was clear the wood slats were beyond dilapidated. The doors had long since fallen away, revealing an empty interior.
I began to suggest we get back on the road when I caught a glimpse of a large letter A painted in faded white on the edge of the barn’s eastern side.
“Can you drive around there?”
“Please keep an eye out for sinkholes.”
Next to the painted A there was an empty space, and following it were a faded G and an E.
“Pull back a bit,” I said.
Roxy looped around and then stopped. “Well, shut my mouth.”
From that view, we could see that a long time ago, someone had painted a single word with a stream flowing underneath. Time had erased two of the letters; now it only read “A GEN UM.”
“Argentum,” I said softly. The painted stream ended in the tip of an arrow, pointing down the crumbling road.
Roxy applied the gas. “Well, here we go.”
We drove down the road, navigating more potholes, a fallen limb, and a perilous rise, finally stopping on a ridge.
“Well, this is…” Roxy said.
“Quaint.”
“I was going more for bleak. Does this town only have one street?”
“I bet it was a silver-mining town.”
“It looks like a ghost town.”
It would have been easy to dismiss the town as abandoned. The road leading into Argentum was ruined from endless cycles of snow and ice eating away at the aging infrastructure. The pine trees cleared enough to reveal a town that had taken on the colors of winter; the wood of the weary buildings was the same shade as the dirt-caked snow that clung like moss on a fallen tree.
Roxy pulled up to the first structure, a whitewashed building with two strong wooden posts holding up a front porch. A sign read, “The Argentum Inn,” and smoke drifted from the chimney.
“At least someone is alive in there,” Roxy observed.
Wincing in the icy wind, we scurried up the front steps and opened the door. The front room was cozy, with overstuffed chairs and a crackling fire. I suddenly felt very tired.
“Well, hello there,” said a young woman with deep red hair, who came from a back room to sit behind the counter. “I thought I knew everybody in town. I’m Sarah.”
“Just visiting for the day,” Roxy said.
“Visiting? I’m not sure we’ve ever had an actual visitor! But you know about the storm, right? Once it hits, we may be shut off from the hard road for a while. I don’t mean to be crass, but are you lost?”
Roxy shook her head. “We’re two old spinsters who like to visit all the mountain towns. Do you have any vacancies?”
“When exactly is the storm supposed to hit?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, the radio says,” she answered, and then blinked. “Oh, we’re not an inn, despite what the sign reads outside. We’re more of a boarding house for the locals who like having their beds made and not having to shovel steps.”
“Do you have rooms we can rent for just the night?”
“Come to think of it, we do. Just one, though. Mr. Peterson died over the summer and no one has claimed the room yet.”
“Charming. We’ll take it,” Roxy said. “Tell me it has two beds, though.”
“Sorry. One queen.”
“That’s fine. So tell me, what do we need to see? And more importantly, where do we eat? Are you a local?”
“I’ve lived here and there. It won’t take you long to see the town. You may be ready to go home in an hour.”
“All right,” Roxy said as we slid back into the Suburban. “Even if we knocked on every door in this town, we’ll probably be done in twenty minutes.”
“Sarah said that off Main Street, there are a few more streets.”
“What’s your plan, Lynnie?” Roxy wiped off her sunglasses with her scarf. “I mean, we are, absolutely, in the middle of nowhere. There are probably two hundred people in this town, tops. I know we’ve talked about this, but why in the world would Dr. Richards tell you this is where William was taken?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at the empty storefronts in the street that made up the entire downtown.
“And Lynn, who exactly took him? The government? Homegrown terrorists who hate Tom? Maybe some even more wacked-out version of the Researchers from Illinois? There’s never been a ransom note. No one has ever asked for money in exchange for returning William. Nothing legit has come from the reward. Do you think maybe Steven knew he was about to be arrested and needed to come up with something to try to make you believe he’s not guilty?”
“All I know is that when I worked for Steven, the word ‘Argentum’ came up more than once. He didn’t even know anything about it—he called it an urban legend about aliens. So for him now to direct me here…”
“OK. So all you know is that people—who believe in alien abductions—mentioned a theory about something called Argentum, but Dr. Richards had no idea what it was?”
“I remember his frustration about it. That it was an unproven theory. I took it to be almost like a code word for something. He even mentioned once that it was a theory about other dimensions or something. He said several times that he and his fellow Researchers were told to outright dismiss it. So imagine my surprise when he whispered it to me in the hotel room. That and… other revelations.”
“For Christ sake, Lynn, you hadn’t kept a secret from me in sixty years, I thought. Now you keep popping them out, one after another.”
“I’m sorry. Everything has been a blur since Barbara waited for me outside the shop two nights ago.”