“Excuse me?” a strange voice said from behind me.
I took my change from the coffee shop barista, giving her a short smile in the process, and carefully turned around to see who was talking. It sounded more like a hesitant question and not a plea to get by.
A pleasant heavy–set man in a windbreaker, holding a coffee and pastry, was behind me off to the side of the line. He had that look in his squidgy eyes that said he recognized me. But for the life of me, I had no idea who he was.
I gave him an even shorter smile than the one I had imparted seconds earlier. I don’t get picked up all that often but it happened enough that it made me leery anytime some strange man attempted to talk to me.
“Uh huh?” I said, trying to be polite but still seem uninterested.
His cheeks puffed up when he saw my face more clearly. He let out a little guffah that stood out against the coffee shop’s irritating music.
“You’re the ghost lady,” he said, smiling, pointing at me with his pastry bag.
I frowned. Was I the ghost lady?
He took a step closer to me and jabbed the pastry in the air again, pink frosting falling off it and snowing onto the tiles below.
“You’re the one on the internet,” he exclaimed, just a bit too loud for comfort. I looked around awkwardly, feeling strangely embarrassed at what was happening. A girl in line was looking at me, obviously not impressed given her once–over, but no one else was paying attention. Typical hipsters.
I looked back at him and smiled again, despite the burning, tight sensation on my own cheeks.
“Oh. So you’ve seen Experiment in Terror?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” he said, chuckling to himself, the jowls in his throat waving back and forth. “I just stumbled upon it a few weeks ago. I love it. It’s very Blair Witch Project. You know, it’s real. We all know the Blair Witch Project wasn’t real, but you know, this seems real. It is real, right?”
“Yeah, it’s real,” I said slowly, aware that every time I admitted the show was real it made either a believer or a disbeliever out of someone.
“I could tell. I knew that was real fear in your eyes. Sorry, it’s Perry. Perry Palomino, right?”
“That’s me,” I said, feeling more comfortable with the situation. He was just a fan of the show. A fan of my show. A fan of me. My first fan!
“Well, I’ll let you get your coffee,” he said as he aimed the pastry over at the counter, where a barista was placing my latte down haphazardly, foamy milk spilling down the sides of the cup and seeping into the cardboard sleeve. “Keep up the good work!”
And just like that, he spun around and shuffled out of the coffee shop, munching away on his confection as he rounded the corner.
I wiped off the sides of the latte with a napkin and shook my head. Not so much about the sloppy coffee presentation but the fact that someone not only liked what I was doing, but had actually recognized me enough to stop and say hello. It was unnerving and exciting at the same time.
So much had changed over the last few weeks. The trip I took to the town of Red Fox in New Mexico had done a number on me. Having nearly died at the hands of two bitter and deranged ranchers/lovers turned skinwalkers, it really made me rethink my current situation. Mainly, did I want to be involved in hosting a “shitty” internet show about the supernatural when our very subject possessed the ability to not only hurt us, but kill us? I mean, despite my run–ins with Ol’ Roddy at my Uncle Al’s lighthouse, the possibility of death hadn’t really been in the job description.
That’s all I was able to think about on the flight home from Albuquerque. Dex had gone on his merry way back to Seattle and I was alone with only my thoughts and my iPod to accompany me on the way to Portland. Too much had happened on that weekend, aside from the fact that we were exposed to a type of danger that most people would never be in. My beliefs in what was possible in this world, in my reality, were ripped to shreds. My partner, who I still barely knew, had become the closest person to me (in more ways than one). And the show began to resemble nothing more than a vain attempt at notoriety through the most amateur of all mediums. After all, who wasn’t famous on the internet these days?
On top of that, there was the fact that I was living a lie to my parents, pretending I had a job when in fact I had been fired from the advertising agency just before.
But within a matter of days of my return, when the nightmares of zombie coyotes and shape–shifting bears began to fade, everything seemed to right itself. It’s almost as if it was my destiny to keep going, to keep our web show Experiment in Terror alive, and to keep Dex Foray in my life.
Dex sent me over the footage of what we managed to capture in Red Fox, and the results blew me away. So much so that I had to watch it with my younger sister Ada; otherwise I would have probably shit myself. Though not everything was captured on film, the fact is, everything really happened and it wasn’t hard for me to mentally fill in the missing pieces we collected on digital film. Even Ada was scared by the whole ordeal. She had already known the whole story but seeing parts of it come alive must have throttled her.
It was hard to know what the public was going to do with the whole thing so I did the best I could and wrote up everything on the blog that would accompany the footage. I changed some people’s names to protect the innocent (Dex had actually blurred out the face of Will Lancaster, the man who was tormented by the skinwalkers – I think that was a guilty reaction on his part) but I told the story exactly as it happened. I knew that a lot of people (probably 80% of viewers) wouldn’t believe a word of it but it was truth, and to quote Fox Mulder, the truth was out there.
Luckily, whether people accepted the truth or not, Experiment in Terror got its proper (i.e. not a demo) debut on the Shownet website that following Sunday.
It was…amazing. OK, I know what you’re thinking; of course, it was amazing because I was in it. No, not at all. In fact, I was barely in it (which I kind of liked – still not used to this whole “on camera” thing yet). But there was no denying that the show actually looked great. In combination with my blog and with the score Dex somehow whipped up in a week, “Red Fox” actually worked.
We had a show. Even my parents looked a tad more impressed about it (and they are the show’s toughest critics). Dex would send me text messages throughout the week keeping me informed on hits to the website and if people were linking to it. That one episode was becoming a bit of a phenomenon, just as my original footage of my adventures in my uncle’s lighthouse had been. Well, a small phenomenon, but that still surpassed any of the doubts I had earlier about the future of the show and my involvement in it.
The next step to ensure our success continued was for me to make Twitter and Facebook accounts for the show and manage them. I knew enough from my marketing programs at the university that we had to promote as much as possible. And since Dex was busy being a composer, a filmmaker, editor, and trying to arrange future filming opportunities, that all fell into my hands.
It had been a lot of fun, actually, even though all the “tweeting” became a bit of a crutch when I should have been applying for jobs. Then came Dex’s brilliant idea to open the blog to comments. By the way, I say brilliant in the most sarcastic way. Opening the blog comments did increase a sort of communal feel on Shownet, and maybe attracted more attention overall, but unfortunately a lot of the comments were rather negative.
At first it was just people like ALEX64 saying things like, “This show is crap, what bullshit” and that sort of stuff, which is to be expected. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t want to say the same thing. Without a ghost (or whatever) coming up to you and slapping you in your own face, it was a hard thing to fathom and even now I had a hard time coming to terms with what happened. Honestly, it was easier to just pretend it was all a figment of your imagination than to accept that the world, as most people know it, is just an illusion, and predatory, evil, things really do lurk in the shadows. Lately, though, the comments were getting a bit personal.
Two weeks ago, Dex had come to Portland so we could do some filming. We ended up actually filming two different places that weekend – Portland has no shortage of haunted tales. The first place we hit up was The Benson Hotel, which always had a scary reputation. It’s actually a really nice hotel with a spiffy doorman outside and everything, and most people have a very pleasant and lovely stay. Still, there was always someone, at least once a week, complaining to management about seeing a strange lady roaming the hallways and the grand staircase, or weird sounds and noises, or random stuff going missing. A lot of staff workers acknowledged that weird things did happen, but no one seemed very bothered by it, evidenced by a local “Ghost Walk” tour that poked around every weekend.
So when we showed up at the hotel, they didn’t bat an eye. They said that we could roam freely in the hotel and poke around (without poking around in people’s hotel rooms, of course).
We didn’t really see anything too out of the ordinary. I was still scared out of my wits, as usual. It didn’t seem to matter if I was getting attacked by animals in the fathomless New Mexico desert or if I’d seen a ghostly apparition in the elevator of a crowded hotel; I still got scared. But there was nothing wanting to kill us (a nice change) or anything really sending our minds packing. Just a load of things that “could be,” which always becomes “is” in my own overworked mind. And thanks to Dex’s clever work and bit of luck, we were able to convey the same thing on film. We caught a lot of weird floating orbs of light, and picked up weird heat shapes on the infrared camera.
Same thing happened the next day when we spent the entire night at a haunted pizza joint that used to house a brothel. Apparently the madam had been found at the bottom of the old elevator shaft with her neck broken; the verdict was murder. We often heard people walking around in the upper dining area (when we knew no one was up there) and we managed to get that on film. And the basement, the basement was something else. Hot and cold spots everywhere, more weird orbs and an incredibly creepy feeling at every turn. Even Dex, who is normally quite composed when he’s filming, said he was happy to get out of there.
We had aimed to film something every weekend but as our series was just getting off the ground, and I had to keep up the illusion that I was still working for most of the week, that wasn’t feasible. Luckily, filming both the hotel and the pizza parlor on one weekend allowed us to get two episodes out of it.
I’m getting a bit off track. Anyway, the hotel episode “The Benson” just aired and to as much applause as the “Red Fox” episode did. Unfortunately, that also meant the comments were coming in as well, and this time they were meaner. More personal, as I said. Someone “Anonymous” (aren’t they always?) had started attacking me and the way I looked. Saying I was too fat to be on camera, that I was ugly, that I looked stupid and sounded stupid. You get the idea.
The worst part of it all was that I believed it. This anonymous coward was just reinstating everything I felt about myself already. I had always felt like I was too heavy to be on camera. I always felt ugly and I knew for sure I sounded stupid.
I know I should just shrug it all off. I know that the internet is a terrible place that attracts terrible people who wouldn’t have the balls to say anything if they had to put a face to their name. But it was getting harder each day. Yes, some people said some nice things in defense of me (I wasn’t fat, I had a pretty face, I sounded knowledgeable) but it was only the negative things I believed.
I wanted to tell Dex that perhaps we should switch off the comment section, or run it with a moderator, but I couldn’t figure out how to bring it up without sounding totally insecure. Although I had been in daily texting contact with Dex, and sometimes it wasn’t even work–related, I wasn’t in that place where I could just tell him how I felt.
Back in New Mexico, after spending almost every waking (and sleeping…but just sleeping) moment with him, I had felt so connected to him. I know it makes me sound like some blathering girl, but I honestly felt like he and I were on the same page. We were finally communicating.
But since we got back, I only saw him for that weekend in Portland. Because it was my hometown, I just stayed at home and he got a cheap motel by the airport. I saw him when we did our filmmaking, and there were a few times I thought maybe something was going to happen (what, I don’t know) but then he would go back to his motel and I would go back to my parents’ house. All the intimacy I had felt in Red Fox was gone.
And the contact we had now was just in text messages and emails. I can’t lie and pretend that I didn’t get kind of giddy and stupidly smiley every time a message from him came in, even if it said something as simple as “liked what you wrote” or “I hate the new Muse album.” But that was the extent of our “relationship” at the moment. It was like the kiss never happened.
Yeah. The kiss. It weighed on my mind. It’s what my thoughts turned to whenever they drifted away for a few seconds. It’s the feelings that were stirred up when the wind on the street caught my face just right, or when a certain song came on shuffle. Dex had kissed me, as we were perched up in a swaying pine tree, as we were certain we would meet our deaths below.
It seemed appropriate at the time. I thought I was going to die and I know he did too. But it couldn’t have been just that, could it? Couldn’t it have meant more, couldn’t it have been something he had always wanted to do? I know it was something more to me. I’d been wanting to lay my lips on him ever since we first met.
There was Jennifer though, Dex’s mega–babe girlfriend. The tiny, pathetic voice in my head, the one that so hopelessly wished that maybe they’d be through after our trip, was stifled. They hadn’t broken up. The kiss meant nothing in the end. Dex was back with Jenn and back to his zany self.