There are some who will argue that there is no such thing as evil in the world. They will say that no person does anything purely with negative intentions. Instead, they will argue that trauma in childhood or other such wrongs against a person will cause their perspective to become skewed, so that they become convinced that committing some act of crime or otherwise harming someone else is justified. Others will argue that most acts seen as evil are merely a product of peer pressure or groupthink causing a person to do something they would never do on their own. Perhaps both explanations are plausible in some cases, but can we truly rule out the possibility that some people upon this earth are simply only happy when they can harm others? And if this possibility is true, then what justification can be given for allowing these people to exist among us?

“Stupid friggin’ gravel,” he muttered to himself as he stepped from his car and slammed the door. He had just gotten it detailed the day before, and now the sides were caked with the chalky dust that only gravel roads can produce.

Of course, that was just one more problem to add to his list. He had gotten to Portland earlier in the afternoon only to find that the hotel had lost his reservation, and there wasn’t a free room anywhere Downtown. Something about a Shriner’s convention.

“There’s nothing available anywhere?” He had waited impatiently as the pimply clerk at the hotel tried frantically to find him another room.

“Nothing, sir,” the boy’s cracking voice replied, “not Downtown anyway. But I know of a nice place just outside of town…”

And so he was here at the Land’s End Hotel and Resort. From the looks of it, it was probably a place for writers and poets and other soft-brained idiots to hide from the realities of life. He could tell he was going to hate it.

Walking up to the desk, he finds his mood improve slightly at the site of the young woman behind the counter. She is quite a vision to behold; aside from the bandage across her forehead. Her name badge said “Sarah.”

“Hello, Sarah. I’d like a room,” he said in his best charming voice. It apparently did little to impress her; judging from the barely-concealed disgust on her face. They all viewed him with disgust; no matter how neat he kept his clothes and his hair; no matter how polite and charming he tried to be. Snotty bitches.

“Do you have a reservation?” She asked smugly; apparently hoping the answer would be “No.”

It was. “No. Do you have anything available?” he gave her another charming smile; all the while contemplating the notion of stabbing a pen through her temple.

She began to shake her head, but the man behind her, who for some strange reason was wearing a tuxedo and a monocle, leaned over and whispered in her ear while presenting a weak smile across the counter.

“Oh, right.” She turned back to her customer. “Yes, we do have a room available. Suite 495.”

“Smoking?”

“If you like.”

“Fine, I’ll take it.” He tossed a credit card across the counter, and it fell to the floor.

Sarah bent quickly to grab it, but then stopped herself as her head was barely an inch above the counter. He guessed this was how she ended up with the bandage on her head. He had to resist the urge to reach across and snatch off the bandage, so he could see how bad the cut or scrape was. She ran the card and handed it politely back to him, along with a key.

“Follow this hall until you come to an intersection; take a left, then up the first stairs you see to your right, three flights, and then right down the hall. 495 should be the second room on the left.”

He looked at her dumbfounded. “Don’t you have a map?”

Sarah laughed as though this were the most preposterous thing she had ever heard. “No, I’m sorry, we don’t.” She paused, realizing he wanted an explanation. “Changes are … made so frequently around here that it’d be hard to keep up with them.”

“Don’t you have to have one for fire code reasons?”

“No one’s complained so far, and we’ve never had a fire that we couldn’t handle.”

Sarah’s eyes were steel, and he could tell that he wasn’t going to get anything else helpful from her. So he shrugged, turned from the counter, and passed through the lobby toward hall Sarah had pointed him to. Fifteen minutes and several wrong turns later, he found his room.

He shoved the key into the hefty wooden door; decorated with leaves and what looked like naked preadolescent girls with wings. He opened it into a room that seemed much too large for the narrow hallway it connected to. The room was decorated with more leaves, trees, and what he could only guess were supposed to be fairies; confirming his theory about the soft-brained morons that usually stayed here.

The bed was a huge four-poster, accompanied by nightstands, a small dresser, a couch, an easy chair, and a small coffee table.

“Great, no TV,” he growled. “No bathroom, either? And no phone?” This was worse than he expected. Didn’t the artsy-fartsy types need to take a piss in the middle of the night like everyone else?

He grunted in disgust and dropped his bags, and was preparing to flop down on the bed when he noticed a book lying on the center of the bedspread. It was obviously an old book; the pages were yellowed and uneven, and the dull tan cover was worn around the edges. There was a small embossed card placed on the center of the book which read “With Regards, the Management.”

“Oh good, I don’t get HBO, but I can read some musty old book.” He spat the word “book” as though it left a bad taste in his mouth.

He slumped down on the bed and grabbed the book roughly; knocking the note card onto the floor. Flipping open the front cover, he turned to the title page. It read “Stories of the Land’s End Hotel and Resort.” The author was someone named Remington Davis.

He thought about grabbing his bag and heading back downstairs right then, but something compelled him to stay. It occurred to him that no one would be looking for him here. Granted, no one should be looking for him at all, but if they somehow figured out he had made his way to Portland, they surely wouldn’t track him to this backwoods artist’s hangout. It was the kind of place he normally wouldn’t be caught dead in.

Flipping a few more pages, he came to the table of contents. The chapter headings had titles such as Sarah at the Desk, Three Bullets, and Wit's End. The last chapter of the book was entitled “The End of the Line for…”

He dropped the book in horror as he read his own name printed by some ancient typesetter in a dusky book that looked as though it had probably been written before he was born.

“Gotta be a coincidence,” he tried to assure himself. But somehow the doubt and fear in his own voice left him little comfort. He frantically flipped pages until he came to the last chapter.

There are some who will argue that there is no such thing as evil in the world. They will say that no person does anything purely with negative intentions. Instead, they will argue that trauma in childhood or other such wrongs against a person will cause their perspective to become skewed, so that they become convinced that committing some act of crime or otherwise harming someone else is justified. Others will argue that most acts seen as evil are merely a product of peer pressure or groupthink causing a person to do something they would never do on their own. Perhaps both explanations are plausible in some cases, but can we truly rule out the possibility that some people upon this earth are simply only happy when they can harm others? And if this possibility is true, then what justification can be given for allowing these people to exist among us?

“Stupid friggin’ gravel,” he muttered to himself as he stepped from his car and slammed the door. He had just gotten it detailed the day before, and now the sides were caked with the chalky dust that only gravel roads can produce.

He continued to read, horror consuming him as he relived his experiences from the moment he stepped out of his car until the very moment he was in; sitting on the bed and reading. And then he read on.

The next morning, the maid came to clean the room, and discovered no signs that anyone had been in the room aside from a small note card lying on the floor. The card was blank.

The End of the Line for… The Map, The Legend, and the Scale