Tales from the Universe
Everyone in Briar Glen knows the rule.
If you are driving after midnight and see a sign for Old Briar Road, keep going.
Do not turn.
There is no Old Briar Road.
There has not been one for sixty years.
This explanation satisfies most people.
It does not satisfy fifteen-year-old Caleb Moss.
Because roads that do not exist generally do not require rules.
Caleb first sees the sign while riding home with his older sister, Ava.
12:23 in the morning.
Rain taps against the windshield.
Ava is complaining about having to pick him up from a friend’s house.
Then the headlights catch something beside the highway.
OLD BRIAR ROAD
White letters.
Green sign.
Arrow pointing left.
Caleb sits forward.
“What’s that?”
Ava immediately stops talking.
They pass the turn.
Caleb looks backward.
There is definitely a road.
Narrow pavement disappearing between the trees.
“Ava.”
“No.”
“What?”
“We aren’t taking it.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
Caleb looks at her.
“How do you know?”
“Because everybody asks.”
Their mother knows the rule.
So does their father.
Their grandmother.
Their neighbors.
Caleb asks six people why nobody should use Old Briar Road.
He receives six answers.
“The bridge is out.”
“It goes onto private property.”
“Kids died there.”
“It floods.”
“There’s an old mine.”
“Drug dealers.”
Caleb writes them down.
At school, his friend Nia reads the list.
“Your town is terrible at lying.”
“Our town.”
“I moved here two years ago. I retain plausible deniability.”
Caleb circles the answers.
“Everybody knows the rule.”
“Yeah.”
“Nobody knows the reason.”
“Also yeah.”
“And nobody thinks that’s weird.”
Nia considers this.
“People are very talented.”
“At what?”
“Getting used to weird things.”
They look for Old Briar Road on maps.
Current map:
Nothing.
1990:
Nothing.
1970:
Nothing.
1955:
There.
A thin line leaving the highway and traveling north through the woods.
The road passes three farms.
Crosses Briar Creek.
Then rejoins the highway twelve miles later.
Nothing mysterious.
Then Caleb compares a 1948 map.
Old Briar Road follows a completely different route.
Same beginning.
Same ending.
But between them, the road bends west instead of east.
“That happens,” Nia says. “Roads get rerouted.”
“Without changing the old map?”
“Okay.”
Different again.
Different again.
Every historical map contains Old Briar Road.
Every version travels between the same two points.
None takes the same path.
Nia leans over the maps.
“So they kept rebuilding it?”
Caleb points.
“Through houses?”
One version of the road crosses directly through what was already a church.
Another passes through a lake.
Another crosses terrain steep enough that building a road there would be nearly impossible.
Nia sits back.
“Maybe the maps are wrong.”
Caleb nods.
That is possible.
So they stop studying maps.
And start studying people.
The oldest resident of Briar Glen is ninety-six-year-old Evelyn Harrow.
She lives in a yellow house with six bird feeders and does not seem surprised when they ask about Old Briar Road.
“You shouldn’t drive it.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know where you’re going.”
Caleb waits.
“That is usually why roads have signs.”
Mrs. Harrow laughs.
“You’re a Moss.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your grandfather was irritating too.”
Nia immediately likes her.
Mrs. Harrow pours lemonade.
Then she tells them something nobody else did.
The road was never closed.
“There was a ceremony,” she says. “Barriers. Newspaper photographs. Mayor gave a speech.”
“What happened to it?”
“Nothing.”
“They destroyed it?”
“No.”
“Then why isn’t it there?”
Mrs. Harrow looks toward the woods.
“It stopped staying where we put it.”
The first recorded disappearance happened in 1959.
A family drove onto Old Briar Road.
They returned nine hours later.
They insisted they had been gone twenty minutes.
They also insisted the road passed a red farmhouse.
No red farmhouse existed anywhere along the route.
Two weeks later another driver reported the farmhouse.
Then another.
The town investigated.
They found it.
Seven miles into the woods.
Abandoned.
The problem:
The farmhouse belonged to the Dyer family.
It had burned down in 1924.
The foundation remained.
The house did not.
But drivers on Old Briar Road kept seeing it.
Sometimes lights were on.
Sometimes people stood on the porch.
One driver claimed Mrs. Dyer waved at him.
Mrs. Dyer had been dead for thirty years.
Caleb asks:
“Ghost road?”
Mrs. Harrow gives him an offended look.
“I didn’t say that.”
“What would you call it?”
“A road.”
“That moves.”
“Yes.”
“At night.”
“Usually.”
“And goes past buildings that don’t exist.”
Mrs. Harrow drinks her lemonade.
“Roads go places. That’s their job.”
Naturally, Caleb and Nia decide to drive it.
This presents a practical difficulty.
Neither has a license.
Ava does.
Convincing her requires two days, twenty dollars, and a promise that Caleb will do her laundry for a month.
At 12:15 Saturday morning, they find the sign.
OLD BRIAR ROAD
Ava stops the car.
“Last chance to admit this is stupid.”
“It is stupid,” Nia says.
“Thank you.”
“We’re still doing it.”
Ava turns.
The road begins normally.
Cracked pavement.
Trees.
No lane markings.
Caleb tracks their position on his phone.
After three minutes, GPS loses signal.
After five, the road forks.
That is not on any map.
Two wooden signs stand at the intersection.
BRIAR GLEN — 4
Left.
BRIAR GLEN — 11
Right.
Ava stops.
“We came from Briar Glen.”
Caleb looks backward.
A third sign stands behind them.
He is certain it was not there before.
BRIAR GLEN — 27
Nia whispers:
“I vote left.”
“Why?”
“Smallest number.”
Ava turns left.
They find the red farmhouse.
Exactly as Mrs. Harrow described.
Lights glowing.
Someone on the porch.
Caleb expects an old woman.
Instead, a teenage girl stands there.
She watches the car pass.
Ava slows.
The girl raises one hand.
Nia says:
“Don’t stop.”
Ava doesn’t.
Caleb looks backward.
The girl is gone.
The farmhouse remains.
Then the radio turns on by itself.
Music.
Old.
A man’s voice announces:
“Briar Glen High School will remain closed Monday following damage from Sunday’s storm.”
Ava turns the radio off.
It turns back on.
Different voice.
“Search efforts continue for three local teenagers missing since Saturday night—”
Ava rips the knob off.
Silence.
Nobody speaks for almost a minute.
Then Nia says:
“That better not be us.”
The road changes again.
Pavement becomes gravel.
Then pavement.
They pass Briar Glen High School.
Except the school is in town.
And this one has burned.
The gym roof is gone.
Windows black.
Caleb looks at the sign.
BRIAR GLEN HIGH SCHOOL
Ava accelerates.
They pass another version.
New building.
Three stories.
Solar panels.
Students walking outside despite it being nearly one in the morning.
Another.
Empty field.
Another.
A cemetery.
Same place.
Different outcomes.
Nia says:
“The road isn’t moving.”
Caleb understands.
“We are.”
Every turn takes them through another Briar Glen.
Small differences.
Large ones.
In one, the highway was never built.
In another, the town became a city.
In another, almost everyone left.
Then they reach an intersection.
Three signs.
BRIAR GLEN
All three.
No distances.
Ava grips the steering wheel.
“Which one?”
Caleb looks at the roads.
Left is freshly paved.
Middle is narrow and dark.
Right is gravel.
“We need to know which one is ours.”
“How?”
Nobody answers.
Then headlights appear behind them.
A truck.
Old Ford.
It stops.
An elderly man gets out.
Caleb recognizes him from photographs.
His grandfather.
Dead eleven years.
The man walks toward their car.
Caleb reaches for the door.
Ava locks it.
“Don’t.”
“That’s Grandpa.”
“No. It looks like Grandpa.”
“He might know the way.”
“Or he might belong to whichever place this is.”
The old man stops beside Caleb’s window.
He looks exactly right.
Older work jacket.
Grey beard.
Small scar beside his eye.
He smiles.
Caleb lowers the window slightly.
His grandfather says:
“You got yourself lost.”
Caleb’s throat tightens.
“Which road goes home?”
Grandpa Moss looks at the three roads.
“Depends what you mean.”
Caleb becomes angry.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No.”
“We need our Briar Glen.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where we live.”
His grandfather nods.
“That tells you where you came from.”
Caleb points at the roads.
“Which one?”
Grandpa Moss shrugs.
“Can’t tell you.”
“You don’t know?”
“I know which one I’d take.”
“Then tell us.”
“That would be my road.”
Caleb stares at him.
His grandfather looks through the window at Ava.
Then Nia.
Then back to Caleb.
“You’re looking for a sign that says which future belongs to you.”
Caleb says nothing.
“There isn’t one.”
“We aren’t looking for the future. We’re trying to get back.”
Grandpa smiles sadly.
“Same problem.”
Then he walks back toward his truck.
Caleb calls:
“Wait.”
The truck is already gone.
They choose the middle road.
Not because of a sign.
Not because they know.
Ava chooses it because she recognizes a broken fence.
Nia recognizes a water tower.
Caleb remembers a strange bent tree near the highway.
Tiny things.
Nothing individually conclusive.
Together, enough.
At 1:43, they emerge onto the highway.
Their highway.
Probably.
The station is where it belongs.
The school is intact.
Ava’s phone reconnects.
Thirty-eight missed calls.
Their mother is furious.
Extremely familiar.
Caleb has never been happier to hear her yell.
The next afternoon they visit Mrs. Harrow.
“We drove it.”
“I assumed you would.”
“You could have warned us.”
“I did.”
“You said not to drive it.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“It apparently wasn’t.”
Caleb tells her about the different towns.
The intersection.
His grandfather.
Mrs. Harrow listens.
Then Nia asks:
“How do we know this is actually our Briar Glen?”
Mrs. Harrow smiles.
“You don’t.”
The three teenagers stare at her.
She points toward the window.
“What would you check?”
Caleb begins listing things.
His house.
School.
Family.
Old photographs.
Memories.
Nia interrupts.
“All of those could change.”
“Yes.”
“So there’s no way to prove it.”
Mrs. Harrow nods.
Caleb expects this to frighten him.
Instead, strangely, it doesn’t.
He looks outside.
Ava is arguing with someone on the phone.
Nia is stealing cookies from Mrs. Harrow’s plate.
The same crooked mailbox stands beside the road.
Maybe everything is exactly as it was.
Maybe not.
Eventually evidence becomes enough to live by.
That night Caleb checks the historical maps again.
Old Briar Road is gone.
Every map.
Even the 1911 one.
He calls Nia.
“It’s disappeared.”
“Good.”
“No. Listen.”
He opens the newest county map.
There is another road he has never noticed before.
South of town.
Thin grey line.
No highway number.
No destination.
Just a name.
Harrow Road.
Caleb remembers Mrs. Harrow’s yellow house.
Her six bird feeders.
Her complete lack of surprise.
He zooms in.
Harrow Road begins behind her property.
It crosses the woods.
Changes direction three times.
Then ends somewhere that should be empty.
At the very end of the road is a small black square.
A building.
The map gives it a name.
BRIAR GLEN STATION.
Caleb stares at the words.
There is no train station in Briar Glen.
At least—
not in this one.
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