“This is a roadside attraction,” said Wednesday. “One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power.”
“Come again?”
“It’s perfectly simple,” said Wednesday. “In other countries, over the years, people recognized the
places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that
was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some
focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples, or
cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or…well, you get the idea.”
“There are churches all across the States, though,” said Shadow.
“In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists’ offices.
No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from
the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere
they’ve never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat-house in some part of the country that bats have
traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where,
in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and
buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly
dissatisfied on a level beneath that.”
“You have some pretty whacked-out theories,” said Shadow.
“Nothing theoretical about it, young man,” said Wednesday. “You should have figured that out by now.”