314 wt-1

by A. R. Wise

  “Alma.” Rachel waved at her from across the small dining room. She was seated at a table with the cameraman, Stephen. The meeting was set up at a local Chinese Buffet restaurant, and the smell of sticky sweet chicken and pork sickened Alma. She’d been a vegetarian for years, not for any altruistic or health related reason, but because the thought of eating flesh sickened her. It had bothered her since the day her brother disappeared in Widowsfield, 16 years ago.

  “Hi.” She stared at Stephen’s plate, which was loaded with fried pork covered in a fiery orange glaze and mixed with rice. It was steaming, and the sauce clung to his chin as he smiled up at her. He wiped his lips off on a red napkin that had been in his lap before he got up and pulled out a chair for her.

  “Want me to get you some food?” he asked, trying to be nice.

  “No, thank you.” She sat down with Stephen to her right and Rachel across the square table from her. The reporter had a sparse amount of food on her plate, and no meat.

  “Not hungry?” asked Rachel.

  Alma shook her head. “Not really.”

  Rachel tilted her head and sympathetically asked, “Not a fan of buffet food? Me neither. This was his pick.” She pointed her thumb in Stephen’s direction.

  “I thought you’d have the camera equipment here,” said Alma. “Aren’t we supposed to be doing an interview?”

  Rachel smiled and squinted as she bobbed her head as if about to apologize. “Well, that’s not really the case. We’ve got everything we need for the story. I guess I should just come out and admit the truth. You see, Stephen and I have a side project going on that’s been gaining steam lately, and we thought you might be able to help out with it.”

  Alma was confused and looked back and forth between the two of them. “How?” she asked with suspicion.

  “Stephen started a website last year about haunted houses. It was sort of a pet project for us, and we filmed a few Youtube videos to put up on the site, never really expecting much of anything to happen.”

  Stephen wiped his mouth again before he interrupted Rachel. “Yeah, it was just for shits and giggles initially, but now we’re starting to pull in serious numbers.”

  “Okay,” said Alma, afraid of why they were talking to her about this. She could guess where the conversation was headed, and didn’t want to go there.

  “A couple months ago, Stephen caught something on camera in a house out near Pittsburgh,” said Rachel. She absently stabbed her fork into a piece of fried zucchini on her plate. “We didn’t even see it at first, but one of our viewers did. Stephen was calling out the name of a little girl that was supposed to have died in the house and in the corner of the room you could see the shadow of a figure. It’s hard to really tell what it is, but the net just went bonkers over it. We split the video up to just show that scene, and it’s gotten almost a million hits already.”

  “Okay,” said Alma, hesitant to let the conversation continue, like she was being forced to watch a movie she’d seen before with an ending she hated, but didn’t want to spoil it for the others around her.

  “We’re trying to make sure that we take advantage of the exposure and put up new content on the site that can get people to keep paying attention to what we’re doing,” said Rachel.

  Stephen was quick to continue. “You’ve probably seen all of those shows on TV these days about ghost hunters and stuff, right?”

  Alma nodded.

  “That’s sort of what we’re trying to do, but with a more serious take on it. We want to go to places that have ghost stories, or unsolved crimes with a supernatural feel to them, and do a story about them.” Stephen dropped his fork and flung syrupy red sauce in an arc across the wall behind him as the utensil bounced off the edge of the table and fell to the floor. “Shit, sorry,” he said as he retrieved it. The glazed pork had collected a wealth of carpet fuzz when he picked it up. “Gross.” He put the fork on the plate and covered it with his napkin.

  “Smooth,” said Rachel in jest.

  “So, you two are partners in this website?” asked Alma.

  “Yeah.” Rachel seemed to recognize why Alma looked confused. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to mention Stephen’s not just my camera guy, he’s my husband.” She held up her left hand and pointed at her naked ring finger. “They don’t want me to wear a ring on camera. All part of the illusion, you know?”

  Alma shook her head. “Not really.”

  Stephen got up to get a new plate of food from the buffet and set his hands on his wife’s shoulders to massage her for a second. “Rachel is supposed to be the hot, single reporter. They don’t want viewers to know she’s taken.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, it’s a sleazy business.”

  “Well, at least it pays well,” said Alma.

  Rachel gave a quick laugh and straightened her posture. “You’d think, right? Truth is reporters get paid like shit. You think teachers have it bad? Try being a reporter on a local news show.”

  “Really? I had no idea. I just assumed you guys made a lot.”

  “Not unless you’re an anchor.” Rachel looked over her shoulder at her husband. “He makes more than I do, by a lot.”

  “That’s why we’re trying to get this site off the ground,” said Stephen on his way to the buffet table, out of earshot.

  “Look,” said Alma sharply. “I have a feeling I know where this is headed, and I should just stop you before we go any further. I can’t help you with your site. I’ve left that part of my life behind me.”

  Rachel visibly deflated, and she looked nervous as she continued to stab at the zucchini on her plate. “I understand. I really do, but will you just hear us out?”

  “Honestly, I probably couldn’t help you out anyhow. That happened when I was eight years old. I don’t even remember it that well anymore.”

  Stephen overheard them as he came back with a new plate of disgusting fried meat. “Did you tell her?” He sounded disappointed.

  “She saw it coming,” said Rachel. “Probably because of your none-too-subtle introduction at the school.”

  “Sorry to be a bummer,” said Alma. “I really can’t help you though. I don’t know anything more than what’s already been out there. And to tell you the truth, I don’t believe all the ghost stories anyhow. The police said that the disappearances were due to a fight between a motorcycle club and the mob. They said that the people in the town are probably all living in Mexico or something, hiding from the mob.”

  “Yeah, but that’s crazy,” said Stephen. “An entire town just packs up and moves because of some drug running mob deal?”

  “What’s crazier?” asked Alma. “That, or that they all got abducted by aliens, or sucked up into an alternate dimension, or whatever other crazy conspiracy theory is out there now.”

  “You told the police that you saw the green light that night,” said Stephen, almost as if trying to confront Alma with a lie.

  “I was eight,” said Alma. “Who knows what I saw? I don’t remember any of it.” She had a habit of avoiding eye contact when she lied, and tried to stare at him when she spoke, but still averted her gaze when she said that she didn’t remember that day. The truth wasn’t that she couldn’t remember anything, but rather that she couldn’t remember pieces of what happened. There was a large chunk of time that had been lost to her.

  “Have you heard about the Widowsfield lights?” asked Rachel. Her light tone calmed the conversation. “Not just what the police report said you saw, but the phenomenon that’s been going on out in Missouri ever since the day the people in Widowsfield went missing.”

  Alma shook her head. “I try not to pay attention to the rumors anymore.”

  “People that live near Widowsfield say that they can see green lights on foggy nights,” said Rachel. “They’ve even started to film it. You can watch some of them online. It’s actually pretty creepy.”

  “And you don’t think that’s staged?” asked Alma. “Come on, the people making those vide
os are setting out green lights on foggy nights and then taking video of it. There’s nothing mystical about that.”

  “And that’s what we want to find out,” said Stephen. He was excited about the project, and Alma could understand how that could be infectious for people around him. He had an almost childish fascination with the subject. “We want to approach this type of thing differently than other shows out there. Our goal is to go in with various viewpoints. Some of the people on our show will be skeptics, and others will be believers. I’m hoping to find a local out there that has seen the lights, maybe even someone that has been to the town a few times. We’re going to try and dispel any of the fake crap out there, and only bring out the truth.”

  “I’m on your side, Alma,” said Rachel. “I always try to think of the most reasonable solution to things, and I agree that the people of Widowsfield probably just fled the mob. It was a pretty small town, and it’s not impossible to think that the majority of them were mixed up in the meth ring.” She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. She looked over at her husband as she continued. “Did you know that right around the time all this went down, the DEA had just changed the laws around pseudoephedrine? They made the sale of large quantities illegal, and they discovered a meth lab in Widowsfield after the disappearances. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  Stephen shook his head and frowned as if he thought Rachel’s point was ridiculous at best. “They found a tiny little meth dealer’s set up. It wasn’t Breaking Bad or anything in there. Shit, I bet there’s a home meth lab within walking distance of this restaurant. They’re not exactly rare.” Then he looked at Alma and got excited again. “But you see, that’s the kind of thing we want to go over on our show. We want to explore every possibility, no matter how ludicrous they are.” He cast a snide look at his wife.

  “It sounds great,” said Alma. “But I’m not sure what you want from me.”

  Rachel and Stephen looked uncomfortable. It seemed that they were wary to ask for what they wanted, as if they knew it was asking too much. Stephen eventually explained, “We were hoping to convince you to come with us to Missouri, to go past the place where your brother disappeared.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” said Rachel.

  Alma laughed uncomfortably. “No way. Sorry, but I’ve left all of that behind me. Besides, my brother didn’t disappear there. The police agreed with my father. My brother was kidnapped from his room.”

  “Yeah,” said Stephen, “but that’s not what you told them originally. You told them he was…”

  “I know what I told them,” said Alma, and was immediately embarrassed by her abruptness. “But I was eight years old. Remember? I had a bad dream, and that’s all there is to it. You have no clue what this whole ordeal did to my family. It ruined us.” She looked back and forth between Stephen and Rachel as if admonishing them for daring to bring this subject up. “I haven’t talked to my father for more than a few minutes in almost a decade. My mother…” she faltered and cleared her throat. “My mother killed herself.”

  “I know,” said Rachel. “I’m sorry.”

  “And the worst part is, every year around this time I get a call from someone that wants to dig up the past. I get letters all the time from people with all sorts of insane theories. They say that the government was involved, or that some corporation with a facility near there was doing tests on some Greek boat they bought,” she laughed at the absurdity of the next theory. “For fuck’s sake, I even had one guy say that sightings of Bigfoot skyrocketed right before the people in the town disappeared. He accused me of trying to hide the fact that the government kidnapped everyone in the town to turn them into Sasquatch super soldiers.”

  Rachel chuckled and then gave Stephen an apologetic glance.

  “It’s nuts,” said Alma and couldn’t help but smile.

  Steve looked pensive. “I’ve never heard anything about a Greek boat. What was that one about?”

  Alma shook her head and laughed in exasperation. “You don’t get it. That’s the point, it was bullshit. All of it is just bullshit. Just like the 9-11 conspiracies, and the faked moon landings, and the magic bullet that killed Kennedy. People turn things into conspiracies because they have some deep-seated notion that the world is more mystical than it really is. The people of Widowsfield disappeared because they were involved in a drug ring that went bad. That’s it. And my brother was kidnapped in the middle of the night, from his bedroom, and not by some creatures in the fog.” She was frantic now, and had trouble keeping herself from crying. She got up and got ready to leave. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’m sorry. Good luck and everything, but I’m going to go. Okay? I’m sorry.”

  Stephen got up, but Rachel was faster and motioned for him to sit back down. “It’s okay, Alma. Don’t be sorry. I understand.”

  “I just,” Alma tried to explain herself. “I just left that part of my life behind me, and I’ve been trying to move on ever since. I just wish I could. Every damn year it all starts up again.”

  “I can imagine,” said Rachel as she walked to the front of the restaurant with Alma. “I’m so sorry to have dragged you into this. We never meant to hurt you.”

  “I know,” said Alma. “I don’t blame you. I’m not mad or anything, I just want to put that part of my life to death.” She meant to say, ‘to bed,’ and was surprised by her violent wording.

  Rachel didn’t pick up on the Freudian slip. “I get that, but if you ever want to talk about it, or anything, please don’t hesitate to call. Here, take my card.”

  Alma took the business card, if only to be polite.

  “That’s the one. The cell phone number on there is my personal phone too.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “They don’t even buy us our own cell phones, if you can believe it. We have to supply our own.”

  “I hope the whole website thing works out for you,” said Alma. “You guys seem like nice people. Sorry I’m being so weird about this.”

  “No, don’t worry about it.” Rachel waved off Alma’s apology.

  “Who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll be ready to talk about it. Maybe that’d be good for me, but I’m just not ready for it now.” Alma lingered because she felt guilty.

  “I understand,” said Rachel. “But if you ever do, you know, want to talk, you’ve got my card. I’m a good listener.”

  Alma got to the exit and looked back at the two. Rachel still stood in the middle of the restaurant, and had a look of concern that reminded Alma of a mother watching her child go away to college. Stephen seemed frustrated, but not angry, and continued to eat his fried pork. They were a good looking couple, and seemed kind. If circumstances were different, Alma might’ve enjoyed getting to know them. However, the fact that they wanted to dissect Alma’s past made them seem parasitic and dangerous. She waved goodbye, feeling a unique mix of regret and disdain at leaving them behind.

  She sighed and started to walk through the parking lot, but then jogged, eager to get as far from them as possible. She fumbled with her purse to find the keys to her Subaru Outback. Emotions swirled, sorrow battled with anger, calm fought frenzy, and she wasn’t sure if she was about to cry, scream, or laugh. “What the fuck,” she muttered to herself as she pushed through the things in her purse in search of her keys. She stuck Rachel’s business card in a pocket on the inside of her purse as she continued to rifle through the contents.

  It was a chilly night, just past dusk, and the moon cast a brilliant blue light over everything. Bats squeaked as they zipped through the night sky, spots of black shooting through blue. Alma found the teddy bear key chain that her ex-boyfriend had bought her and pulled the keys out. The ring caught on one of her white plastic wrapped tampons, which fell to the ground beside her car. She cursed again and picked it up. When she knelt down she saw the shadow of a man cast by moonlight against the side of her car.

  “Alma,” said her father in a frantic, hushed whisper.

  She yelped in shoc
k and stood to face him. She pressed her back to the car and held her mouth with the hand that her keys were in.

  He was ragged. His clothes were a tattered mess and his hair was greasy, with strands of grey and black sticking up in various directions. His eyes were wide and darted back and forth above dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in weeks and his stubble was almost completely white. “Alma, baby. Baby girl. Alma, what did they want?” His words flit past his lips too fast for him to properly say them, causing the syllables to mix together between quick breaths. He had sores on his lips and cheeks, as if he’d been scratching at himself until he’d bled. “Did they want you to go with them? You can’t. You know that, right? You can’t go there. You’ve got to let that die. You’ve got to let it die.”

  “Let me go!” She pulled her arm away from his grasping hands like a disgusted royal squirming to escape a leper.

  “Don’t fuck me like this, babe.” He scowled.

  “I said back off.” She palmed her keys so that they poked out between her fingers as she made a fist.

  “You’re never going to save him.” He backed away, just as Alma had asked. Then he glowered as if he’d forgotten hatred for years, only now remembering it. He surged forward and grabbed the back of her head with one hand as he pressed the other against her mouth. All at once, she was a child again, caught in the grip of a sadistic father, tasting the grime of his palm as he kept her silent. He pressed himself against her tall frame, and still towered over her, just as he did so many years ago. She clenched her eyes shut and a hundred terrible moments were suddenly fresh in her mind. It was impossible to breathe, to scream, to do anything but cry as he growled at her.

  “You better keep your whore mouth shut.”