Day 2,403

Something strange happened today that reminded me of when I was relocating across the country a few years ago and managed to stumble upon a town that doesn't exist. To set the scene, I'd been driving for about seven hours and hadn't seen another living thing out the windows for a good while. It was almost pitch black outside and there hadn't been another car since the main highway.

It was just me and the missus back then, both tired and debating the pros and cons of sleeping in the car versus driving a little longer and hoping we found a motel somewhere along the line. While we'd been talking it had started to rain and not a gentle easing into a storm kind of rain either. It was like turning on a showerhead - just this spontaneous flood of rain, absolutely violent downpour without a single cloud in sight, just stars as far as the eye could see above us.

And if that wasn't weird enough as we drove further those stars turned out to be windows and we found ourselves entering a town whose batter sign declared "Davelmagne  Population: 185". Thankfully there was a small B&B that opened their doors to us even thought the weather was apocalyptic and it was late enough into the night that the sun would soon be up.

The woman who answered was dressed like she'd stepped right out of an old western - spoke like it too but we figured it was just the local dialect. She took our names and said she'd happily take our money first thing in the morning as we'd hardly be able to go anywhere else in the storm. Everything about her seemed slightly... off. Like she was reading from a script and we were meant to know our lines already.

The room itself was quaint, one of those old floral and doily kind of places where all the paintings are either flowers, cats or meadows. At some point in the night I thought I heard somebody coming up the stairs, walking down the hallway til they got to our door and then stopping. I was tempted to get up and look but then I felt a drop of water hit my cheek.

It was like a cloud had been lifted off our heads - we woke up slouched against a sign that said the nearest city was a few dozen miles away, soaked to the bone and shivering like crazy. The car doors were wide open and it was still running but none of our things had been taken and the fuel gauge looked fulled than when we'd set off.

The town itself was nowhere in sight, just fields and nothing far as our eyes could see and we haven't been able to find it on any maps or websites ever since. We made it to our new home, a little shaken and damp but otherwise fine - definitely glad we hadn't paid for the night in advance.