The Bottomlands

I was having a pretty crappy day at first. I was supposed to meet up with a group of friends to go hiking some new trail, someplace out in the boonies where I'd never been before. I was supposed to meet them there, but the directions didn't seem to make any sense with the landscape, and I ended up driving down mile after mile of deserted blacktop, looking in vain for any landmark that matched anything on the scribbled piece of paper that was guiding me. I kept texting back and forth with my friends, trying to figure out where they were, but that wasn't much help either. After about an hour of fruitless searching, there was no way I could catch up to them even if I did manage to find the trail.

That was when I saw a lone building on a flat stretch of road: a small brick structure with a green wooden sign out front that said simply, "The Bottomlands." It looked like a bar of some kind. I didn't know if they'd be open in the morning, but I figured that it'd be a good place to get my bearings, and to take a brief rest before the long drive home.

The door was unlocked, and the brass bells hanging from it jangled as I pushed the door open. It was dimly lit inside, and it took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust. When I could see, what I saw was a...