We all knew there was something off about the job. Chet tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel all the way there, and Marta kept wrapping her curls around her index finger so tightly that her fingertip went white. The possible exception was Hugh, who spent the whole journey scrolling on his phone— but then, Hugh hardly ever knew anything.
At one point a German Shepherd ran into the street, and the car squealed to a halt not three yards from its snout. We watched the owner go racing past.
“Jesus Christ,” Chet said. “Idiots, fucking idiots, this city’s just full of them. I mean, how hard is it to be careful?”
“I would not have stopped,” Marta said, before turning to face me. “Ben. Is everything good back there?”
I zipped open the carry case, but it was mostly for show. I’d kept it wedged between my legs and the seat in front of me to cushion any impact, so as expected the camera’s parts showed no signs of damage or disturbance. It comforted me, seeing them all laid out like that, each in its self-shaped slot in the foam. Perfectly ordered, like laboratory specimens. “Should be,” I said.
Marta nodded, then glared at Chet. “Then why aren’t we moving?”
“Yeah, yeah, gimme a minute.” The car pulled forward, though we wouldn’t reach our original speed for the rest of the drive.
“Can we get the heated seats on?” said Hugh, who hadn’t looked up from his phone once. “Do we even have heated seats in this one? It’s bloody cold.”
No one bothered to answer.
The call setting up the episode had come late, and was strange in two ways. Firstly, because it hadn’t been made to the studio, passed along through the usual gauntlet of agents and managers, but rather directly to the cell phone of Leo Vandermonde— and the personal number of Vandermonde from Beyond was meant to be strictly classified. And secondly, because it had successfully set up an episode. The producers hated cold calls, fearing they might come from pranksters, or worse, people unfit for TV. They much preferred sending scouts to sites of local legend. But for some reason Leo had insisted, and psychic or not there was no denying that the man could be persuasive.
We’d just wrapped a particularly frustrating shoot. Up in northern Michigan, in the ghost of an old steel town, an abandoned carnival was said to still house the spirit of one Zogle the Clown. What had really happened was clear enough. With the carnival closing and the clown posthumously outed as a sexual predator, the owners saw one final opportunity to cash in on both, so jumped at the chance to let Vandermonde and company root around for a day. There was disquiet among the crew, however. Zogle’s offences had been reported at length in local papers, some of which were archived online, and the concern arose that an episode about contacting his ghost risked courting controversy, given that his victims were still living. The shoot wouldn’t be cancelled— it was far too late for that— but the question of whether and how his crimes should be disclosed was hotly debated right until the sound tests were underway.
This only ended when Marta, standing on an old strength-tester platform, started clapping her hands together until she had the attention of the whole shoot. “Everyone,” she said. “I remind you. If people are mad at you, they watch you.” And that was that. The one compromise, made mostly for the network’s sake, was that Zogle wouldn’t be named as a pedophile.
What frustrated me was that everyone focused on this, when we had a much bigger problem. I’d known from the day the episode was announced that we weren’t equipped to shoot at a carnival. With the set-up we had, all those bright primary colours would come out either garish or bland depending on post-production, leaving no way to achieve the eerie-but-lifelike look we were after. They kept telling me not to worry. Everything would be rusted out anyways, Chet said. We’d avoid bright or reflective surfaces, Marta said. We were making audiovisual slop for morons and no one would give a shit, Hugh said, but Hugh hardly ever knew anything. In the end we shot half the episode with Leo in the funhouse, backed by matte-plastic reds and yellows, and of course it came out looking like digital vomit. As usual, I was a Cassandra ignored.
Anyways. Back at the studio, Leo sat the whole team down for a round table the day after we wrapped. He spoke the way he did on the show, leaning in to the hypnotic quality that his silver curls and big ocean-blue eyes already produced. There was something of the cult leader about him. You felt you weren’t more than two or three personal tragedies away from being ready to goright join him in a bunker in Nebraska or something. And that day, he was even more careful, even more measured in his wording than usual.
“First of all, I want you all to know that I appreciate you tremendously,” he said. “I mean that. This show wouldn’t be what it is without your efforts. I understand that our last episode presented some difficulties, and for what it’s worth, I think you handled them brilliantly.” He smiled with those Hollywood-perfect teeth. I figured this was a segue of some sort, and I was right. Leo made a kind of grimace, then went on: “But, my friends, I’m afraid I have to appeal to your good-heartedness once more. As you are no doubt aware, we weren’t initially planning another shoot for three weeks. That time has regrettably been moved up.”
There was murmuring among the team. “To when?” Hugh asked.
“This weekend.” More murmuring, but Leo held up his right hand like a bodhisattva and the room fell silent. “Of course, your contracts will be respected— attendance is in no case mandatory. And for those of you who are able to join us, you’ll be compensated at overtime rates. In addition”— again the grimace— “well, it’s unpleasant to put it to words, but I was picking up distinct energies from management suggesting that your participation may play a role in decisions about contract renewal.”
That was most all we were told. I wouldn’t get the full story until later, from Marta, who somehow always seemed to have the full story, or at least a fuller story. Not that I’d really needed it. I could tell Leo had been more involved than he was letting on, just from the direction of his glances, just from the look in his eyes. We cameramen are trained to be always watching, and people underestimate what we see.
The other funny thing about the job was how close it was. Of course, we preferred sticking to New York State when we could, but shooting in the city was expensive, and besides, when people think about communing with the spirit world they usually don’t think Wall Street or Times Square. So it was funny indeed when we found out that the drive would only be an hour southwest, to a suburb outside Jersey City. I always found it odd how quickly things change on that drive. Cross one bridge and tomorrow’s skyline is behind you, replaced with yesterday’s world of red-brick delis and too-narrow streets. Keep going just a little longer and you’ve entered the real America, the true, regionless America, the base continent-wide substrate from which your New Yorks and San Fransiscos are mere local aberrations. You know it; at least, you’ve seen it on TV. It’s six-foot fences and friendly neighbours, golf-course lawns and finished basements, schoolkids prancing through sprinkler-spray at block parties. And it’s right where we ended up.
Now, I don’t know if I really believe in the spirit world and all that, but I certainly don’t believe that you encounter the spirit world in the suburbs. No sirree: try depression-fled gothic mansions, lonely mountain hamlets in the Appalachians, even old hollowed-out steel towns, but Mom and Pops are just too clean-cut for this ghost stuff. They’ve got 401(k)s to plan and kids to put through college; that weird moaning in the attic will just have to take care of itself. And the producers of Vandermonde from Beyond had always seemed to agree: people like their ghosts good and far away. Nobody wants to find one in their backyard.
The sun was setting when we arrived at the house. There were a few buildings more than fifty years old in the neighbourhood, but this wasn’t one of them. It was your typical work of end-of-history prefab: granite bricks that almost looked plastic, greyscale planks between the gables, big black-rimmed windows all over. We were the last car to arrive. The others formed a row down the street, with the audio guys smoking on the pavement and the makeup team already fixing Leo up on the lawn.
It didn’t take long for me to spot a problem. “Those huge windows are going to catch the sun if we shoot outside before dark,” I said. “Might really mess with the exposure.”
Marta swung around, glaring at me. “What is it now?”
Not wanting a repeat of the funhouse incident, I threw up my hands. “Fine, fine. Won’t mention it again.”
After we got out, Chet pulled me aside, setting his hand on my shoulder. “You know, Ben, it’s possible you worry too much.” As if I hadn’t just seen him white-knuckling the whole drive.
There was this old lady on the porch, rocking back and forth alone like she was scared half to death about something. One look at her told me we had a true believer on our hands. That was no good— the cynics, like Zogle’s old employers, would go along with whatever you suggested, but credulity makes a person unpredictable. The lady must have been at least eighty, but she wore these round, horn-rimmed glasses with frames so thick that at a distance she looked almost like a little kid. Marta headed over to introduce herself, and Chet went to smoke with the audio guys, so that left me to talk to Hugh.
“Don’t you think this is weird?” I said.
Hugh yawned. “Think what is?”
“That we’re here. Shooting here.”
He looked up and down the street, then scrunched up his nose in his I-went-to-private-school way. “Don’t see why. We’re in the arse end of America, as usual.”
According to Hugh, the arse end contained not only the present suburb, but also Milwaukee, Southern Illinois, all of Virginia, most of Brooklyn, that steel town in Michigan, and even, apparently, Canada. I knew that if I pressed him on this I’d get the usual spiel about how he wouldn’t be in the country for more than another three months, how any day now his father would forgive him, realize embezzlement isn’t such a huge deal, restore his name in the inheritance, and so on. It was always three months, pushed forward on a rolling basis. We’d had two years of this.
“It’s just not, y’know. Typical,” I said.
Hugh took another look. “Typical how?”
“Spooky, I guess.”
“Spooky? Don’t tell me you’ve caught a case of Leo-itis.” Hugh’s term, for someone who took the bumps and signals that our equipment picked up too seriously. No one else used it.
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really, to be quite honest. Now if you’ll excuse me, I do have work to be getting on with.” A curious thing to hear coming from Hugh, whose responsibilities seemed to stretch no further than holding up a boom mic and the occasional bit of brooding. But you can’t expect much from Hugh. Hugh hardly ever knows anything.
Marta came over about half an hour later. She’d told me the plan: shoot the intro on the lawn while we still had some natural light, then work from room to room. Living room, kitchen, guest room, attic, basement. The basement always came last— that was a given, even in such a strange offbeat episode as this. No one else can shoot a moldy cellar like I can.
I could tell something had got to Marta. She was even paler than usual, and there was a certain unsteadiness in her voice, causing her to stumble over her words and forget English phrases I’d heard her use before. Marta, who half the crew called “the iron lady” and the other half something worse, who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and followed it up with 9/11, that Marta, shaken up? Once you got past the animal satisfaction, it was hard not to feel a little uneasy.
“We have to be careful,” she said. “When Leo interviews her.”
“Careful how?” I asked.
“Keep her on track. She is a— how you say— a rambler.”
“We can always edit.”
“You’ll see. She can get— you’ll see.”
“I don’t get what it is about this shoot,” I said, fully expecting Marta to rebuke me. But she just sighed, so I went on. “There’s something awful weird here. Am I wrong?”
“It’s her son,” Marta said, so softly that I had to ask her to repeat herself. “Her son. She thinks he’s in the house.”
By the time we started shooting, the sun had dipped behind the house. The footage wouldn’t come out looking great; this was something I just had to accept. Chet floated the idea of spreading a few fake cobwebs over the windows to set the mood, but apparently the old woman nixed it. I think her name was Esther.
When we shot the intro, even the way Leo stood was strange. Usually he kept his hands behind his back for the monologues, but this time he pressed his palms together under his solar plexus and stared into the lens with wide intense eyes. Seeing him like that, it wasn’t hard to figure how he used to get crowds on board with the whole psychic schtick, even when half of his guesses turned out wrong. You felt like he was staring at some naked embarrassed thing floating behind your eyes.
I must have heard the spiel a thousand times. “Spirits. Ghosts. The strange, the unexplained. Places where our world meets with those beyond. Some doubt that these things really exist. Some even scoff at the notion. But I’m Leo Vandermonde, and I know different, because all my life I’ve been able to see a hidden world that others can’t. Join me tonight, as we venture into the bey—” he was interrupted by a boom mic crashing down into frame.
“Shit,” Hugh said, racing to pick it up. “Sorry everyone. Fucking thing slipped right out of my hands. Sorry. Fuck.”
Leo looked at him. He smiled, but it was a strained smile. “It’s no problem, my friend. What was your name again?”
“Uh, Hugh.”
“Hugh. Hugh Barringer, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Indeed. Well, Hugh Barringer, I see only good things in your future.”
“Oh. Uh, thanks.”
“We were almost done,” Marta called out. “Just take it from ‘Join me.’” Leo nodded.
“Hey, hold on,” Chet said. “We’re going to have to splice that. And the boom will have moved, too.”
“We have not much light left,” Marta said. “‘Join me.’ Let us go.”
“It’s, like, thirty seconds of footage. Can’t we just reshoot?”
Marta turned all the way around. “Chet. I will say this only once. Shut your God damned mouth.”
Leo, statue-serene as ever, repeated the final line.
After that, I took some footage of the house, which would play with the voice-over. We didn’t even have a complete shooting script— just one one more strange thing to add to the pile. There was this donut-shaped garden around the house. I suppose it must have been pretty impressive at one point, but the only plants still in half-decent health were some hydrangeas and a cherry bush. You might imagine it had a certain propitiously eerie quality, a deadland patch overtaken by spectres. But, really, it didn’t. It just looked sad.
We shot the interview with Esther next. Ordinarily Chet, being one of the only crew members considered attractive enough to appear on TV, would have been the interviewer. But this time Leo insisted he’d do it himself. I don’t remember exactly what he said, except that it contained the word “vibrations.” They sat on opposite sides of this little formica table by the counter.
“So,” Leo said. “You’ve been having strange encounters in this house.”
“Strange.” She seemed to chew on the word. “Not strange, no. Not a strange thing about it. It’s my Reggie. Thundering down the stairs, leaving the toilet seat up. Just the way he used to.”
“This Reggie you speak of. Who is he?”
“Why, he’s my son, of course. He’d be forty-nine, now. Or is.” Her fingers began to twitch back and forth on the table, and Leo reached across to cup his hand over hers.
“Ms. Dewitt, if it’s all right, could you tell us what happened to Reggie?”
She stared blankly into the kitchen wall, but didn’t move her hand. “Well. He passed, of course.”
“I’m very sorry to hear—”
“By his own hand, no less. Yep. That’s how it was.”
“Thank you, Ms.” Esther had gone awfully withdrawn, and Leo seemed to notice. “Ah, maybe it’s best we change the subject,” he said. “Those things you told me about on the phone. Would you mind repeating them, for the sake of our viewers?”
“Oh. Sure. Well, at first it was things moving around on their own. That’s always what comes first, isn’t it? I watch your show, you know. Every Tuesday night.”
Leo smiled. “I appreciate that.”
“Anyways, it was just small things, little moments that weren’t quite right. A hair curler turning up on the dresser when I know good and well I left it on the nightstand. But then came the bumps and rattles. Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh, but old houses creak and moan—’ well, now, listen here, I’ve lived in houses a darned sight older than this one and not half as well put together at that. I know what ordinary creaking sounds like and this was no ordinary creaking.”
“I believe you,” Leo said.
“You do, don’t you? Oh, you have such kind eyes. It’s even clearer in person.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well, for a long time, it was just that. Things moving around, creakings on the stairs. Sometimes I thought I could hear his voice, but—” she sputtered into tears.
“It’s all right,” Leo said. “Take your time.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “Right. As I was saying, you get to my age, you start hearing everybody’s voice in everybody else’s. Some days I can’t tell my good friend Gerald from my cardiatrician. Oh, anyways. I started having these dreams, you see? Reggie would show up in them, but far away, and it was like he was stuck in molasses. He couldn’t move but slowly and his voice was as deep and muffled as a whalesong. And the strangest thing— the curiousest thing of all— was that he didn’t look like when he was sixteen, the age when he passed. He was— well, he was an old man! Or middle-aged, at least. The age he’d be now, I reckon, with wrinkles and grey hairs and even a bald spot. I’ve never imagined how he’d be today, not once, but he’d show up like that all the same. I could never make out what he was trying to tell me. But then, just last week, I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this shape in front of the bed, this silhouette, and it was his silhouette, it was Reggie’s. And he told me something. I could hear it plain as day. He told me: ‘Keep looking.’”
“Thank you, Ms. Dewitt,” Leo said. “I think we’ll call it there for now. Get some rest, alright?”
There weren’t many breaks after that. I shot Leo wandering from room to room, holding his thumb and index finger pressed together in front of him as if following an invisible thread. Esther’s lights could be dimmed with a sliding switch, so setting the mood was simple enough. One of the audio guys suggested we take a long shot of a humanoid shadow cast in what was once Reggie’s bedroom, which we could cut to when Esther mentioned her vision, or sleep paralysis, or whatever it was. I had my reservations. But damn if I didn’t make it look good.
Later still, I shot Chet futzing around with a REM meter in infrared: first in the ex-bedroom, then in the attic, and finally in the basement, despite Esther’s insistence that Reggie had always hated the basement and wouldn’t go down there. Wouldn’t you know it— the beeps were loudest in the basement. Always are.
A typical episode would end with Leo down there, asking questions and getting answers both electronic and telepathic. But he told us he wanted to do something a little different. He said it would take a little time to set up, and a few minutes later I noticed him talking with Marta outside. Weird thing was, he was pacing. I don’t think I’d ever seen Leo pace.
I found Chet on the porch, white-faced and chain smoking. “Ben,” he said. “Ben, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
I moved in close. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed how insanely weird this all is?”
“Jesus Christ, Ben. I mean, half our bad IMDb reviews already whinge about how we exploit people. But this? The woman’s son was bullied into suicide, and here we are farming that for views.”
“Well. Sure. Remember what Marta said. If people are mad at you—”
“Yeah, yeah, they watch you. But you know what they do if they get really, really mad at you?” He ground the butt of his cigarette into the porch. “They fucking blacklist you from the fucking industry. Now, maybe you’re happy shooting bootleg Ghostbusters for the rest of your life, but me, I wanted a career in show business. And I’m the one who’s on camera. No one will even remember who the fucking cameraman is. Fuck.” He ran his hands over his face.
Chet got like this sometimes. You couldn’t take it personally. “We’re underappreciated. That’s true. Doesn’t mean we can’t do our best. Say, you said Reggie was bullied?”
“What do you care?”
“I just think it’s weird it wasn’t mentioned. Seems like it’d be important context, for how we frame things.”
“Dear God. You cannot honestly still be thinking about how we’re going to make this shitshow watchable.”
“Times like this, I figure that’s all you can do.”
Chet pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “Whatever, man. The bullying thing— I dunno, I heard Marta say something about it. Ask her. As for me, I’ll just be here, mourning the death of my aspirations.”
I planned to ask Marta, but didn’t get the chance. Leo called us all into the kitchen not thirty seconds later. Once again, he sat opposite Esther at that formica table. She looked tired— barely awake. At Marta’s suggestion we shot her mostly in profile. On the table, Leo was holding up this little red notebook in both hands. It was well-worn: half the binding rings were missing, and someone had scribbled roughly on the cover in black ink. I don’t know what it was about that stupid little notebook, but it was what finally pushed me over the line. We’d already broken every other rule of reality TV; I wasn’t about to let a major prop emerge from the host’s ass without a fight.
“Excuse me,” I said, just before we started shooting. “Uh, Mr. Vandermonde, what is that?”
He smiled at me. “Please, Leo is fine. And this”— he glanced at Esther— “well, this, I’m told, is Reggie’s diary.”
“Right. I’d, ah, just like to point out that we don’t have coverage on how you got that.”
Across the room, Marta planted her face in her hands. “Ben, for God’s sake!”
“Look, I’m just saying. It’s a continuity thing.” I could feel myself growing bold with indignation. “I mean, we all know something’s funny here, right? Everything we’ve done tonight has been sloppy at best, and frankly, just plain off. Can’t we just get this one thing right? Like, really, haven’t any of you people heard of Chekhov’s gun?”
No one spoke. Marta was staring daggers, but Leo raised his hand, stemming the flood of invective that was surely building up in her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m sure Ben is just stressed.” He turned to me, smiling widely. “It’s been a stressful day for us all.”
I looked around. Everyone else, Chet and Marta and the audio guys and the makeup team and even Esther, was glaring at me like they’d just watched me kick a dog across the room. Everyone except Hugh, but you know the deal with Hugh. I felt like I was in school again. The bad kid, acting out and going too far, feeling suddenly that clowning around only makes you a clown. Being frank: it got to me.
“Uh, sorry everyone,” I muttered. “Leo’s right.”
We rolled. Esther kept glancing around the room uneasily.
“Ms. Dewitt,” Leo said, “would you mind explaining for me what this book is?”
She leaned in. “Well, that’s Reggie’s old journal. He never did like it when I called it a diary.”
“You found this just recently, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. After that dream, the one I told you about, when he told me to keep looking. So I did, and I found this loose floorboard in his old bedroom— right in the corner, you see, out of the way. I guess that’s where he used to hide it. It had— well. Let’s just say I learned a few things I might’ve preferred not knowing.”
“You don’t have to say anything else,” Leo said.
“Oh, Leo. You know, as a mother, of course you feel like you’ve failed when a thing like this happens. But now, all these years later… oh, what can I do? What can I even do?”
Once again, Leo put his hand over hers. “Ms. Dewitt, I’m afraid I have to tell you something that you may find unpleasant.”
She nodded. “That’s life, isn’t it?”
Leo took a deep breath. “I believe that Reggie’s journal has become what we in the industry sometimes call a tether. An obstruction, of sorts, preventing your dear son’s spirit from moving on.” The crew exchanged glances. This was not a term we’d heard Leo use before.
Esther withdrew her hand. “What are you saying?”
“I know this will be difficult. Believe me. But the best thing we can do for Reggie now— the only thing we can do for Reggie now— is to expunge the tether.”
“Expunge?”
“Yes. Speaking crudely, Ms. Dewitt: we need to burn it.”
“Oh. Burn it.” For a long time, Esther was quiet. I thought I could make out tears welling up in her eyes, but she could have just been tired— it was, after all, well past three in the morning. The only sound came from the shuffling of the crew. “You know— he didn’t even leave a note,” she said at last.
“I know,” Leo said. “It’s a hard, hard thing— too hard to put on the shoulders of such a kind woman as yourself, and one who’s already shouldered so much. And yet in the end, Ms. Dewitt, a parent must do what is best for their child. You do want what is best for Reggie, don’t you?”
Tearing up, she nodded.
The funny thing about the burning was that everyone knew it shouldn’t be done. Chet knew this would make a bad-looking episode worse, Marta knew Leo had motives quite apart from what he’d told Esther, and Hugh— well, Hugh hardly ever knew anything, but even he knew there was something rotten about the whole affair. Me? I just knew we weren’t equipped to shoot a fire at night. And yet, of the fifteen of us standing around in that backyard, who would be the one to step out from the nervous-faced crowd, raise their voice, declare: no, hold on, there’s something wrong here? Who would be the one to object? No one would, it turned out. Not when Leo sparked the kindling in Esther’s old firepit, not when he came through the back door holding the journal before him like a sacrificial offering, not even when he gave the thing up to the flames and started waving his hands around while reading from the Bardo Thodol. Certainly not me. I just filmed. Did my best to make it look good. That was my job.
When it was done, there was silence. We shuffled back into the kitchen like a bunch of bored kids on a field trip. Esther was sitting in the living room, looking smaller than ever; she’d asked to be alone. Leo was the first out the door.
Then: a thundering sound, coming down the stairs. A curious excitement rose in my stomach; could it be Reggie’s ghost after all? No— only Hugh, racing around the corner, pale in the face.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I— I went to take a piss,” he said.
“You what?”
“Oh, come off it, Ben, I had to piss, and then I saw this— Christ, Ben, it was in the mirror first, and then coming out of the bathtub, this horrible black shape like a shadow come to life—”
Chet had noticed us. “Can we get this idiot in the car?”
Hugh glanced around wildly. Most of the crew was well within earshot, but no one was paying him any attention. Most were looking at their feet. “Hello?” he said. “I’m sorry, are we not filming a ghost hunting show here? Is nobody interested in the actual fucking ghost I just saw?”
Marta came by to tap him on the shoulder. “In the car,” she said. It was probably the gentlest I’d ever seen her.
“You’re probably just tired,” I added.
“You’re crazy people,” Hugh said. “You’re all literal crazy people.” And he looked us over, and laughed in frayed disbelief. But he went to sit in the car all the same.
Even under better circumstances, what could you expect? It was Hugh. Hugh hardly ever knew anything.
In the car, we were quiet for a long while. Hugh pressed his cheek against the glass, staring outside like a little kid imagining figures in the dark. But Chet and Marta and I, we just sat. Upright, unmoving. There was simply nothing to be said. The steering wheel had indents where Chet’s fingers dug into it.
Finally, without warning, Marta slapped her thigh. “Damn it!” figuresshe shouted. Chet jerked the steering wheel, almost losing control of the car.
“The fuck’s got into you?” he said, steadying himself.
She shook her head, taking a long deep breath through the nose. “I am sorry. I got— carried away.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Chet said. “You know that? I’m the one that’s screwed here.”
Marta seemed to sink into her seat. “You are not,” she said, so quietly that I could barely hear.
“And how would you know?”
She waved her hand at Chet, as if he was some insect she wished to drive off. “The episode will not air,” she said. “At least, I very much doubt it. Leo will not allow it.”
You could feel Chet taking his foot off the gas. “Seriously?”
Marta shrugged. “Why would he do otherwise?”
Slowly, methodically, Chet pulled over to the side of the road. Then in a sudden jerking motion he slammed his fist against the horn. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes! Yes! It’s not airing! It’s not airing! Yes! Yes! Fuck! Yes! Hallelujah! God is good! Yes!”
“Are you finished?” Marta asked.
Laughing to himself, Chet got us back on the road. “No way. Thought I was, but no way. Just getting started.”
I decided to ignore him, turning instead to Marta. “How do you know all this?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marta said, sounding very old and very tired. “He’s got what he wanted.”
I leaned back in my seat. “So. Uh. What do we do now?”
“We do jack shit,” Chet said. “And you delete that footage of me in the basement, you hear?”
“He’s right,” Marta said.
I shook my head. “I dunno,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right, you know? I mean— Hugh, what do you think?”
Hugh was still leaning against the window, and hadn’t paid us any attention at all. “There’s ghosts out there,” he said, distantly. “There’s real fucking ghosts out there.”
I’d like to say this was a kind of breaking point. That me and Marta and maybe Hugh put our heads together, found out the truth and compiled some dossier proving it , eventually sent Leo’s whole house of cards tumbling down.
If you think that’s how it turned out, you haven’t been paying attention.
Look. You do a thing long enough, get too used to keeping your head down, not asking questions— you can pretty well forget how to do anything else. It’s like learning to play piano as an adult. Maybe you can imagine pulling off “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or something, but go much beyond that, think about all those dozens of little hand motions per second… hell, where do you even begin? Better to stick with what you know.
So here’s what really happened. We all showed up to work on Monday, except for Hugh, who still hasn’t come back— frankly, I’m not sure anyone else even noticed. No one has said a word about what happened. I deleted the footage of Chet, per his request, and the rest ended up on the server system. Editing work still hasn’t begun. I’d be surprised if it ever does. Leo comes to the studio, sips coffee, smiles. There’s another episode coming up: this fishing town in Maine. A haunted lighthouse, or something like that, I think. We shoot on Saturday.