“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.