"Sunset in a Ghost Town"

The mountains had for John Marquis, always been his own personal escape his own private open cathedral. The sun had just started to come over the horizon when he had arrived at Dennis's home that morning. Dennis was his oldest friend and John was looking forward to this ride. He walked around to the trailer that was attached to the back of his truck on which his ATV had been secured about the back tires with industrial straps. He began to break the locks on the straps that secured his ATV he let his hands and body perform these tasks with which he was so familiar that he didn't even let it filter into his mind. No, his mind was also on something else all together, something he hoped would turn out to be of significance, and it had been this that had really contributed to this get together today. John Marquis was a reporter for the Valley Forge Tribune. It was the biggest newspaper in the whole of southeastern Kentucky. He had taken the job four years ago with the idea that he would work for the paper for a short time while he completed the novel that he had started in his freshman year at college. He had been with the paper for a year when he discovered that he LIKED being a reporter. He liked chasing down leads and being able to get into official scenes by flashing his press card. That was just one of the many ways that life ends up surprising you. He still finished the novel, however he had put the flash drive into his home office's filing cabinet and there it stayed. He had not attempted to publish it yet. Working for the newspaper kept him on the run. After only working there about six months his editor had taken him aside after a group meeting and asked him if he would like to write a new column that had been playing around in the back of the editor's mind. John was very pleased that the editor had liked his style of reporting and writing so well that he would ask him to head up his own column in the paper. The idea for the column had been for all intents and purposes the unexplained, occult, and paranormal stories that happened here in Kentucky with a frequency that was sort of frightening when one thought about it.
Kentucky was a state that could and did boast a lot of unexplained phenomenon, John had to admit. He had seen and felt quite a few crazy things in the course of his Journalistic career. The material of the column allowed him to be on the road and travel to some town he had never heard of or to chase down archaic urban legends. He had to admit to himself that both he and his stories about the occult and the unexplained had really boosted the paper's sales by a factor of twenty! That was the catalyst for the excursion he and his old friends where preparing to undertake right now.

2.
He had been at his desk a week ago sifting through different reports that the newspaper received from the public in relation to the unexplained and the paranormal, when he had come across an old newspaper clipping from the year 1919. It was the front page story and the headline was:" WHAT HAPPENED TO EVERYONE IN THE TOWN OF GATEWAY"??? The picture was a tintype of an empty main-street that for all the world looked precisely like any other small town located in the mountains in Kentucky. The only curious element that was missing was stark and very unsettling. There where no people in this photo. No one walking down the main street stopping at windows and thinking about purchasing something. No one going into the old cafe and ordering coffee with cream. NO ONE ANYWHERE! This was what had snagged John Marquis's attention. His eyes fell to the single envelop that had come with the ancient news clipping with renewed interest. He turned back to the news paper and as always his eyes flicked up to the right hand corner of the newspaper. The date that glared back up at him was so astonishing he couldn't get his breathing to settle down, the date read: 10/19/1919! It had been the third week of September when that packet had arrived, today the day he had picked for the ATV ride was 10/19/2019. He had made the choice of dates for a couple of reasons, the very day that the town had become a ghost town being the most obvious and apparent. It would give the story a sort of coming full circle feel to visit the town on the one hundredth anniversary of the mass disappearance.
He read the story that had made front page news it was so important and after he had finished the story within, he picked up the envelop to find out who had sent this to him. He wondered if within this letter he would find someone who knew the story about the town so long ago in a very remote section of the state of Kentucky, where everyone had disappeared over night! He couldn't believe it, how come he hadn't heard anything about this incident in either the public educational system or college? But he had never heard a thing about some town where no one lived and had been deserted in his life. He unfolded the stationary and began to read through the five page letter.

3. Dear John Marquis,
I am sorry if this doesn't' pique your interest enough to run this story within your very excellent column which is entitled: Supernatural Kentucky. My name is Professor David Monroe of South Central University, I am a professor of History and Philosophy . I also teach comparative Religion. I would ask but one indulgence if you would be so kind to grant my request: do not give the name of your source for this material! I know that sound's cowardly and I FEEL cowardly just by making that request, however I'm sure that you understand my career and livelihood is on the line. So please respect my wishes in this matter. You can of course contact me I will send my contact info along within the envelop and the material concerning the lost town of Gateway. Now let me move on and tell you my tale of the paranormal and the unexplained.
I was raised within the state of Kentucky just as you yourself, I am from the small southeastern town named Ole' Town. It is the furthest most far flung town and settlement out side of the county seat of Lancaster, Ole' Town is thirty eight miles to the northeast of Lancaster. The town of Gateway is located directly to the south of Ole' Town and it is just a stone's throw from my little home township. If one where to look this location up on the internet the coordinates would be: 37', 16', 6.00 N Latitude: -83' 38' 34.19" W. That places the lost or deserted or abandoned township of Gateway dead in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Woodlands. But i digress from my point, I had never even heard of this town before, Mr. Marquis! Think of where you yourself were raised, and think of an abandoned empty town directly within walking distance of your town!! You probably can see by now where I am pointing to with this. If the circumstances surrounding that dark and emptied town where elsewhere in the world it would be populated again and very SOON! Children couldn't resist going to the deserted town and breaking windows and in the case of teens it would quickly become an overnight free motel room!
This is not the case with Gateway, I keep in touch with my family and I am certain that the children of Gateway never venture into it. In fact NO ONE does. There are always exceptions to the rules but I dare say not this one! I'm going to tell you of my first discovery of this darkened town within the next sentences, I hope you will then see why I need to tell someone who is not from Ole' Town about this. I'm not sure I am doing the world a favor by getting this story out there, but I have read your column religiously and I believe that you will inform the public not to make any destination plans in or around this town. I have some very good reasons for that assumption as you will soon read.
I was eleven years old and out riding my bike on the day that I stumbled upon this dark and mysterious legend. It was getting late and I had been riding my bike out toward the south side of Ole' Town the side that the national forest boarders. I had been with two other companions of mine however as the day went on and no excitement presented itself to us. The others had split off for town. My home is located on the slightly raised south end and the road that I was on was a disused one but it still WAS a road, so I decided to take that route to go home. The sun was fading from bright orange to crimson as I biked down the old dirt covered road. I came around the last bend before the road would have turned to the west and the rapidly setting of the sun, and home. I had been looking at the sunset when all of a sudden a very strange feeling slowed my limbs and calmed my will. It was a feeling that came so suddenly and was so alien to a child that all I could do was come to a stop and just stand there astride of my bike. I remember thinking: what is wrong with me why do I feel so strange. That was when I heard the the whistling! I can hear it in my mind as I write you this letter and after all these years it still makes my body break out in gooseflesh!
I could not for a moment locate the direction from which this whistling was coming from but after scanning around in a complete circle, I locked in on it. It was coming from the sharp bend in the road that would take one toward the west and the setting sun. Now I had rode that particular stretch of road hundreds of times and I know the topography and landmarks like the back of my hand, but what I saw as I honed in on the whistling I saw something astonishing! In the very right angle of the road there was another road breaking from the main road and continuing onward to the south as strait as a string. It flowed toward the south for about half a mile then it took its own bend and from that point one could not see.
The real shock was at the beginning of the road that i had never seen before erected there was a crisscrossed set of ash two by four planks. Their ends had been buried in both sides of the road and the overlapped boards made a giant X. In the inverted V created by the crossed boards a sign had been erected and it sung from two chains that looked to my child's eyes like Silver pure silver. I came closer to the sign that had been engraved in wood and read what was printed there. THIS WAY IS BARRED! IF YOU SEE THIS TRAVEL ON! DO NOT CROSS THE BARRIER!!! Then after I had finished reading that dark ominous message my eyes fell on the sign that swung from the silver chains.


“Now behold, here comes a troop of riders, horsemen in pairs.”
And one said, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground.”

And below that one was this:


"I SAW AN ANGEL, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her immorality.”She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird.

Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer.
Revelation 18:17


for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste!’ And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor, and as many as make their living by the sea, stood at a distance,
Revelation 18:19


And they threw dust on their heads and were crying out, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she has been laid waste!’


I kept rereading the sign trying to understand what was meant by those verses and warnings, when the whisling comenced again. I lost myself to it as if I where drugged by it somehow. I felt by some miricle that I was being lulled hypnotisied somehow and i fought back against it with all of my will. But I was walking against my will right toward the barrier in the road and God help me if I should have crossed it!!! I know that sounds just as crazy as the rest of this narrative but I'm telling every word of truth. That was when my eyes flicked up and over the arm of the criscross in the road and that was why I saw THEM! Mr. Marquis I hope that you have and open mind, and I really hope that you dont call for the men in white to come and cart me off to the insane aslyum. There where at least fifty people SHAPES standing up a head at the area where the bend wound out of sight, but shapes is all they where! They where shadows of PEOPLE dark shadows and where their eyes should have been tiny pinpricks of red shown out like all the lights of hell! It was the sight of those eyes and the foreknowledge that if I went past that barrier I would be lost forever. Consigned to a fate worse than mere death, that finally allowed me to break free of the lulling voice what tried to pull me down that godforsaken road.