Nightmare Carnival

For the next fifteen minutes of film, the surgeon dissects the man upon the table, who appears conscious the whole time. His fingers twitch once more, drumming the table before he clenches them still, and with their stillness, holds his whole body rigid. The cords of his neck strain, his mouth set in what might be agony, or a wild, delirious grin, but he makes no attempt to leave. The surgeon slits open the man’s arms, his legs, his cheeks, and each one of his ten fingers and toes. The movement of the blade is straight and true every time. Blood is wiped meticulously away after each pass of the knife. The skin is peeled back, pinned. The surgeon’s eyes gleam and the crook of his mouth never wavers. There is no soundtrack, but one can imagine the movements set to a jolly tune.

When there is only bone left, the skin and muscle vanishing by degrees between the lapses in the film, the surgeon once more reaches to the left of the camera frame, and returns with a silver mallet. This too gleams in the lack of light. The bones of the man lying upon the table are systematically and utterly shattered, one by one.

The surgeon leaves the frame, but perhaps not the room. It is impossible to tell. Perhaps he waits, breathing, just out of the camera’s view.

Another minute passes with the camera fixed securely upon the ruins of what was once a man.

After that minute is done, the surgeon reenters the frame backward. From there, the film proceeds as though it is being run in reverse, though when Walter checks, the projector is still running as it should. The surgeon raises the mallet and the bones are restored; he runs the knife up from pelvis to clavicle and the skin is healed.

At the end of the film, the dead man stands up from the table. He does not reclaim his clothes, but he takes the surgeon’s hand. Together, one smiling, one shaking, they face the camera and bow. Still holding hands, they exit the frame.

The camera remains steady on the empty room for an additional thirty seconds. Within the last five seconds of film, a date flashes across the screen: December 14, 2015—a date three months and seven days in the future of Walter Eckert, who watches the scene over and over in a small, poorly lit room smelling of stale coffee and cigarettes, smelling of noir cliché and whiskey, smelling of, above all, fear.

The pieces of evidence don’t match. Walter isn’t even certain they are evidence yet. Only Walter’s mother insists they are and they do.

Walter’s mother is psychic, or claims to be. She even had her own 1-800 number once upon a time. His childhood memories are littered with phone calls landing like exotic birds at all hours of the night, lost souls seeking counsel and hope, weeping and giddy, desperate to be told exactly what they want to hear.

Holding his breath so it wouldn’t be heard, Walter listened to his mother listen to Jeannie from Paramus asking about her job. He listened to John from Denver worrying about his health, Kirk from Sault Sainte Marie wanting to know if he’d ever find true love, and Tina from Havertown who played the lottery every day and was willing to pay his mother $2.99 per minute for lucky numbers.

December 14, 2015, is still two months and twenty-seven days in Walter Eckert’s future when his mother calls from her nursing home to tell him the pieces of evidence, the film and the photograph, are connected. There are two things Walter never discusses with his mother — his work and his dreams, which are usually about Twin Peaks and who really killed Laura Palmer.

Walter has never entirely believed in his mother’s psychic powers, but when she calls him as he’s staring at the photograph of Charlie Miller paper clipped to the cold case file, a shiver traces his spine.

He hasn’t told her anything about the Miller family or the cold case file currently sitting open on his desk. He hasn’t said one word about the two pieces of evidence, not even that they exist, but she knows and she tells him they are connected anyway.

Just before he hangs up, she says, “There’s more. Lemuel Mason. The name came to me in a dream. Find him.”

After he hangs up, Walter slips the Miller file into his briefcase. He puts the picture of the clown, pasted to the section of plywood, and the reel of film into his briefcase, as well. Following what he would call a hunch and his mother would call a prediction, Walter ventures out into the blustery September weather and goes to the local library to do some serious and irrational searching.

Virginia Mason, a resident of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, from 1863 to 1887, wife of the Reverend Lemuel Mason, was generally known to be a pious woman. She aided her husband in his ministerial duties, and was much loved in their town, known for organizing women’s charity drives and bake sales with all the proceeds going to support Mr. Clement and his one-room schoolhouse. The great tragedy of her life, as far as the town was concerned, is that she never bore the reverend a child.

So the stories say.