by Joel Arnold
From Tammy Whitney’s tour speech:
“The clock you see on the face of the fireplace was also designed by Mr. Reamer. The pendulum is fourteen feet long, its disc made of pure copper. The clock’s face is five feet across, and the Roman numerals are each eighteen inches tall. The present bellhops are quite happy that in the year 2000, a new endless rewind mechanism was installed. Before that, a bellhop had to carefully step out on that vertigo-inducing scaffolding three stories above us in order to wind the clock…”
From Inn housekeeper Andrea Anderson’s statement:
“Oh, the wire. Right. He said it was for some effect he wanted to try. Loop it up and around the hem of the dress to prop it off the floor? Make it look like the dress was floating off the ground? It didn’t really work out. Besides, with the dress lifted up, you could see my hiking boots and calves, although I guess if the guy knows Photoshop, he could’ve just taken care of it that way. But so is it true what I heard about what he did with the wire?”
From the Craig Vetter interview:
Vetter: That’s probably the thing I miss most; walking out on the widow’s walk up to the roof, the sun setting on the geyser field, all that steam. I always had a smoke up there. (chuckles) I guess you could say that’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing real spirits — the way the geyser field steamed, the steam drifting up into a golden sky. Like earth spirits, or some such crap.
Paris: How poetic.
Vetter: (laughs)
Statement by Lee Bartlesby, curator of the Yellowstone National Park Archives in Gardiner, Montana, given to the National Park Service, September 6, 2008, 7:54 PM MDT:
“He came in Saturday morning asking to see an old guest register from the Inn. The year he wanted was 1908. I retrieved it for him, and left him alone with it in the research room. He seemed nice enough. When he left, I asked him if he found what he was looking for, but I guess he didn’t hear me.”
From the Craig Vetter interview:
Vetter: Besides not believing in that kind of crap, I’ve got an even better reason for not believing in the headless bride ghost of the Old Faithful Inn.
Paris: And that is?
Vetter: Because I’m the one who made the whole thing up.
Paris: You’re kidding.
Vetter: Nope. I swear to God. Ask any of the bellmen who knew me at the time, and they’d confirm it.
Paris: Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you spoiling the legend?
Vetter: Spoiling the legend? The legend’s got its own legs. Hell, anyone who really wanted the truth, I’ve told the same thing I’m telling you. But it’s out of my control, now. It’s in books, magazines. Hell, even that Travel Channel show.
Paris: You told them what you just told me?
Vetter: Sure. They didn’t give a crap. The producers had a good laugh. I bet you won’t even mention it in your article, either. Am I right? And for the record, if you want to write that I made the whole thing up, feel free. I won’t dispute it. But I’m guessing after you’ve thought about it a bit, after the concept has rattled around in your noodle a while, you’ll probably realize it wouldn’t make nearly as good copy as just going with the ghost story. A piece about you sitting in the balcony of the Old Faithful Inn, waiting for a glimpse of the ghost of the headless bride on the hundredth anniversary of her death? Much sexier than ‘former bellboy pulled a story out of his ass for larger tips.’ Am I right?
From the statement of Luverne Harding, third shift security guard, Old Faithful Inn, given to the National Park Service on September 6 th , 2008, 3:45 AM MDT:
“He was just sitting up on the third floor, staring out over the lobby with a legal pad in his hand. And he kept looking up at the clock on the fireplace. A few times I passed him, he was staring hard up there. Squinting. Like he was trying to focus on something. I glanced up there a few times myself, like I might see whatever it was he was seeing. But he was just sitting there. He wasn’t wearing that wedding dress, yet. Just a Yellowstone sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.”
From the statement of William Tancredo, overnight front desk clerk, Old Faithful Inn, given to the National Park Service on September 6 th , 2008, 4:05 AM MDT:
“God, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He just — I just — out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t even tell at first. And the sound — the sound of him hitting the floor. Christ it was bad. And then the head. And the blood. Fuck.”
From third-shift security guard Luverne Harding’s statement:
“I entered the 3rd floor mezzanine from the west wing at approximately 2:15 AM, and saw him standing on the balcony in that — that wedding dress. Didn’t realize it was him right away, but by the time I shouted to him, and he turned to look at me, I realized it was the same guy. He had wire wrapped around his neck, and the other end was looped around the clock scaffolding. Then he jumped. His head popped right off. The wire sliced right through his neck. Won’t be able to get rid of that image for a while, I know that for sure.”
From overnight desk clerk William Tancredo’s statement:
“I saw his head. Lying right up there against the fireplace screen. His eyes were still open. Like he was watching the smoke go up the chimney. Fuck…”
From the Craig Vetter interview:
Vetter: See, John, sometimes it’s not always the ghost that makes the story. Sometimes it’s the story that makes the ghost. Know what I mean? Hey, the next round’s on me.
From Tammy Whitney’s tour speech:
“Who here has heard of the headless ghost bride of the Old Faithful Inn?”
Persistence
They keep calling. Every ten or twenty minutes, from 8 in the morning ‘til 9 at night. I know I should answer, but by now it’s the principle of the thing. Look, I know it’s a computer that dials the number, and a human only picks up when some schmuck like me answers the phone. I used to answer, tell them I’d make a payment the next day, or by the end of the week, but then they’d call again as soon as their computers indicated the payment never showed up.
I tried to hide it from Jessica as best I could. I didn’t want her to be bothered. I didn’t want her to worry. I admit, I didn’t do a very good job at that.
They always want the payment right away; they want to take your banking information right over the phone. And they’re damn insistent, but the problem is, we just don’t have the money to cover it. Or if we technically do have the money, it’s slated for other things; you know, unimportant things like food and shelter and gas so that Jessica can drive to work. Jessica has her own personal savings account, too, but it’s for the little things; a cup of coffee here, new eyeliner there. But she’s had that since high school, and even when her hands are cold and dead, God forbid, there ain’t no one who’s gonna pry it from them.
But here’s the thing. We’re trying. We’re trying to earn enough to pay them. Jessica’s got her job, and I’m working from home, but they don’t care about that; they keep calling, the phone ringing every ten, twenty minutes, and you can tell who it is by the caller ID, and you’d think we just wouldn’t bother, wouldn’t be such slaves to the phone, but what if it was actually someone important, you know? Like a neighbor, or someone with work to do. So we have to at least look at the caller ID.
“It’s all about persistence,” Jessica tells me. “They just keep calling and calling knowing that at some point you’ll pay them just to get them off your back.”
“It’s not that we’re holding out on them to be spiteful,” I say. “We really don’t have the money they’re asking for.”
Jessica says, “They count on you to have a tipping point. They count on you to get so annoyed, so bat-shit crazy from the sound of the ringing phone that you’ll do anything to make it stop. They don’t care how you get the money. They just know that somehow, at some point, you’ll reach critical mass, and you’ll get them their money.” She nods. “It’s all about persistence.”
The phone rings. I look at the caller ID. Damn.
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Persistence.
But Jessica says, “Give me the phone.”
I hand it over.
To them it’s just a job, and they sit at their little consoles, or switchboards, or computers or whatever the hell it is they sit by, and wait until a computer tells them one of us poor schmucks have picked up the phone, and then they swoop in like vultures.
Jessica winks at me. “Where are you from,” she asks the caller flirtatiously. “I know what company you’re from, but where? Where are you calling from?” She smiles, and asks, “What’s your name?”
She does this with every call now. We still haven’t paid. We still don’t have the money. But she answers every damn call after she gets home from work. And they still call.
Most of the time, they don’t answer Jessica’s questions. That’s not why they’re calling. But sometimes she gets names. Locations.
She’s persistent.
And with a name and a location…
Jessica has been away for five weeks now. I didn’t realize how much money she had stashed away in her personal savings account. She’s way more frugal than I realized.
So far the killings appear random. As far as I can tell, nobody’s figured out a pattern.
She sends me postcards. “Having a grand time in Michigan!” or “Getting my kicks on Route 66” or “Loving the food here in India.”
You’d think they wouldn’t be so forthcoming with names and locations. But like I said, it’s all about persistence, and if I had to find one flaw with Jessica, it’s her damn persistence.
Cowboy Cthulhu
Deep within the midnight ink of ocean
upon a Cyclopean nest of rock
Cthulhu sits waiting, dreaming
of being—
A cowboy
He squats upon steeds dragged braying from the apocalypse,
and mosies across the ocean currents
with chaps fashioned from the cool hide of squid,
a Stetson coaxed from the leather of whales.
His spurs jingle, jangle, jingle
a pestilent ditty that drove Azerhed mad,
while four barnacle-cloaked rustlers
scour R’lyeh on bony nightmare feet.
He awaits the alignment of sea-tarnished stars,
and on cool autumnal nights warms himself
over the volcanic heat of telegraphed nightmares.
He smokes cigarettes rolled
from the skins of drowned sailors,
strums tunes on a guitar made of
shipwreck timber and strung tentacles,
lusts for the feel of saddle-horn and stirrup,
the taste of burnt beans and tin-pot coffee,
the smell of rusting barbed wire and blood-soaked rawhide.
When he opens his beak-like maw,
whirlpools birth on the distant surface,
barnacles crumble and octopi burst,
and the thin shellac of sanity melts
from those who dare listen.
The brine-infused dead rise from their vast trenches
and dance, as his fearsome yodel erupts;
Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Fhtagn!
Director’s Cut
Amazing how one press of a button can change a man’s life forever. A simple transference of electronic impulses. An invisible leap as the remote control breathes life into the components of a television set. There is blackness at first. Then static. Carter sits back in his leather chair. An image pops on the screen, a subtle glow that captures his breath. He leans forward.
EXT. A FOREST — NIGHT.
A woman runs screaming from the video camera, the camera work amateur and shaky. The nozzle of a gun appears on screen, a thick black pointer, its tip wobbling against the running woman’s ass. There’s a loud crack, and the woman falls. The camera, relentless, is drawn to the fallen woman, and the smoke from the spent bullet can almost be smelled wafting up through the lens as the camera zooms in and leers at its subject.
She is still alive, but no longer screams, her hair a tangle of sweaty black, her eyes underscored by sleep circles so dark they look like bruises, and as she tries to scoot away from the camera on her back like a crab, a black gloved hand comes into view pointing the gun at her neck. You can hear the heavy breathing of the cameraman, and as the sounds of an oncoming climax nears, the bright explosion of the gun nozzle blinds the electronic eye of the camera for a moment until it refocuses, re-meters the scant incoming light. When the picture is once again clear, we see the damage the bullet has done.
The woman no longer moves. She lays there, her throat a rose in fresh bloom, the residual petals dotting her face and chest. Her eyes remain open and void of fear. It is as close to a miracle as anyone can ever hope to witness. A brief bridge that spans the chasm between life and death caught on tape.
Carter’s thumb misses the stop button twice before finally finding it’s mark. He stands, the hint of sweat licking at the collar of his shirt, and looks out the window, making sure Angie hasn’t pulled into the driveway. He knows how he gets when the tape is new, his total immersion into the picture, his obliviousness to outside noises. He knows this can be dangerous and shudders at the thought of his wife of ten years catching him.
He shuts the blinds. Sits back in his chair, the remote in his hand, presses rewind, then play. Again the black and the static and the picture popping on like a quick jab to the gut.
Angie comes home first, followed shortly by their eight year old daughter Brittany. By then, Carter has set the dining room table and taken out the meatloaf which he’d hastily stuck in the oven over an hour ago.
“How did your day go?”
It’s Angie’s usual opening question at the dinner table. She bites a piece of meatloaf off her fork, then reaches over to cut Brittany’s slab into bite-size chunks.
“Busy.” Carter catches himself nodding at his food a bit too long. “And yours?”
Angie begins a soft-spoken litany of the day’s events, and although Carter tries to follow the thread of her speech, he can’t concentrate. He left work early today, and the newness of the video flows through his head like molten steel.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh?” Carter realizes both his wife and daughter are staring at him. “Yes. I mean no. A bad headache.” He gets up from the table, pats Brit on the head. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“You haven’t even touched your food.”
“I’ll eat at my desk.”
Angie brushes Brit’s long blond bangs from her eyes. “You shouldn’t let them work you so hard.”
“It’s part of the job, Angie. You know that.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.” She turns her attention back to her plate.
Carter feels Brittany’s eyes dig into him. He takes his meal to the den and locks the door. The meatloaf sits untouched and forgotten as he picks up the remote and presses play. He turns the volume down next to nothing
Black. Static.
The woman running through the trees.
Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop.
Rewind.
Two hours later, he ejects the video from the VCR and places it in its black plastic box. He opens the bottom desk drawer and buries the box beneath a stack of Playboys. He locks it and forces a smile on his face before leaving the den.
After a month, the tapes wear down, a white static veil shrouding the image. He needs a fresh face, a new scenario. He leaves his money in the hiding place; an empty videocassette case nestled inside the hollow of a maple tree in a nearby park. An even fifteen hundred dollars cash. The first one was only five hundred dollars, and he sees the cleverness of it now. He would have balked at fifteen hundred the first time. Now it seems reasonable. He needs them.
When he comes back later in the evening, he scopes out the park, and when he’s sure no one is watching, he pulls the cassette box f
rom the dark maw of the maple. It now contains a videotape. He can only speculate as to its contents. But he doesn’t watch it right away. He waits irritably for the long night to end.
He calls in sick the next day and drives downtown to a large hotel. Before entering the revolving glass doors, he looks up at its facade. It looks back down at him, the sun a harsh wink in each of its many windows.
In the room, he puts the chain across the door and shuts the thick maroon curtains. He takes off his clothes. Pops the video into the VCR. Picks up the remote and presses play.
Black. Static.
Then—
INT. AN OLD ABANDONED BARN — DAY
Sunlight pours in through the worn wooden slats of the walls like spotlights. Straw is strewn about the floor as well as splintered pieces of wood, beer cans, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. A twenty-something prostitute enters the picture looking back at the camera and smiling. She chews gum, wears too much make-up, sports badly frizzed hair. She has the voice of a serious smoker.
“I don’t know about this. You shoulda brought a blanket.” Her steps slow as she searches for a place to sit down. “You grow up here? Is that the deal?”
She finds a place where the straw isn’t too moldy. She tosses aside some large rusty nails. “Is this where you want it?” She winks at the camera.
The cameraman’s hand comes into view holding three hundred dollar bills.
She frowns at first, perhaps because the camera is recording this transaction, but she takes the money just the same and tucks it into the pocket of her tight skirt and raises an eyebrow in mock seduction.
Her expression suddenly changes. The cameraman’s hand comes back into view holding an evil looking hunting knife. Its large blade reflects the incoming sunlight into her wide-open mouth. She screams for the first ten plunges as her blood speckles the camera lens. There’s a dull clang as the knife is dropped to the ground. The camera zooms in slowly on her face. The cameraman’s breath pounds the microphone in quick, distorted bursts.