Last night I dreamed about our house in Victoria. As often in my dreams, it was in a state of disrepair, dusty and abandoned, only resembling the real place in basic structure. It was an uneasy dream. My children were there, along with my step-son, but they were insubstantial, as if they'd been drained of their vital force. All their ages seemed wrong. In fact, everything about the house seemed wrong.
From the hallway appeared my (now grown) son, but as the 8 year old he once was, an angelic, curly-haired boy. In his hands he held a gift tied with red ribbon.
"On my birthday, I was silent" he said, unnervingly, before I woke.
Today the weather was the perfect sort we hope for all year: warm, but not too warm, dry, but not parched. Bright sun, soft breeze. I enjoyed it, despite the sickly dream haze lingering in the back of my mind. Why think of these things when the vanilla scent of the whitebrush is rising and the air is alive with bees? But sometimes a dream won't let go
It's not that I hadn't noticed the date. I had. The 4th of May. I'd seen it at midnight, even. Yet for some reason, it hadn't registered.
"On my birthday, I was silent" says my eerie, angelic child.
Suddenly, I remembered. It was the anniversary of the night we'd left Victoria, arriving here on the edge of a storm. And it's ironic that I'd forgotten, really, considering I'd titled the post about it "The Persistence Of Memory"
This bright day was nothing like the dismal drizzle of 8 years ago, though the feeling of uncertainty is the same. It has not escaped me that this time, the uncertainty belongs to everyone. For 8 years, I've been perched on the edge of this rock watching the world change, and now it finally seems to have caught up with me.
It has also not escaped me that in the dream, my son was holding a gift.
Not long ago, a friend who'd experienced a similar life upheaval around the same time said, "I feel like everything since then has been leading to this. Like I was made for this."
I understood what she meant. This journey has been agonizing at times, yet here I am on the edge of this rock still, riding out these crises - national and international - in relative safety. To be doing so in Victoria doesn't even bear thinking about. For once, this unforgiving landscape holds me like a cradle while I wait to learn what needs to be done.
In this post, I wrote about keeping the old key to the storage unit I'd rented back then as a sort of talisman. What I didn't mention was that the key is tied with a red ribbon. When I realized what the dream meant, the symbolism of the red ribbon on the gift box was immediately clear.
Now that mourning the past is over, It's time to reclaim my autonomy.
At the medical center in Victoria was this imposing caduceus sculpture. It always struck me as a little strange. Victoria being such a conservative place in general, it seemed even less likely that the medical center would be possessed of such a flight of modernity. Especially one verging on a sort of Pagan spookiness.
It was one of those places where the dullness of Victoria had cracked and weirdness leaked through.
Inspired by Uair01's latest post on psychogeographic maps, I decided to make one of my own. Not of the place where I currently live, but the place where I used to live. I haven't been back there in a few years now, so it's made strictly from memory.
Lacking the skill to build a map on my own, I stole one from the internet. Even better, I stole it from the 2003 schedule for the Shiner Comanches sports team, already helpfully marked out with directions to the stadium. Completely meaningless for my purposes here, as I never went to the stadium nor had any feelings about it one way the other. Still, these are the kind of details I find immensely fascinating.
Employing my epic MS paint skills, I denoted each site with a spot of color and a number. There are 20 on this map, and could have been many more, but my eyes could only take so much strain in one night. I decided to stick with the places that have strong, specific memories attached, or have something notably strange about them. Sometimes they are both.
Sites are approximate. More or less.
1. The apartment where my cousin lived, an airy place where her friends blew in and out like the breeze. Years later, after everyone had moved away, we drove past the area where we could see the balcony from the lane. We had the eeriest feeling that we'd turn the corner and see everyone waiting for us as if they had never left.
2. Hall Electric. They sold lamps and fans and things. In the old store, the window display had two lighted fans that looked like pinwheels. Even when the rest of the town was dark and asleep, the pinwheels would spin all night long.
3.The Denny's restaurant where we'd go to study. There was a palm tree near the door where grackles would roost, and a surreal hum from the power lines. This is the place where I met my husband.
4.A traffic light that always took an absurdly long time, even when there were no other cars on the road. This is where I first became aware of the disorienting creepiness that often came upon Victoria at night. As if it became an entirely different place when the sun went down.
5. The Victoria mall. If you park around back, you enter through a dim and echoing hallway. There was a restroom there where the lights would buzz and flicker like something out of a David Lynch film.
6. The former location of the Maranatha used bookstore. We'd raid it every couple of weeks, before it became glutted with romance novels. It had that distinctive smell, like paper and dust. I found my copy of John Keel's Our Haunted Planet there.
7. The place where my husband's ex-wife saw a ghost. Also notable because that bit of road always seemed like an afterthought. It gave me the uncanny feeling that it shouldn't have been there at all.
8. The Cimarron Express, where the cashier was always careful not to give me the ojo. She told me once she sensed I was about to receive an important message, and it turned out to be true. I'd go there for frozen coffees and later, my Sad Cheese Sandwich. One day, I will write about the Sad Cheese Sandwich, but not today, not today
9. A place where we used to live.
10. One afternoon, while peering out my bedroom window, I was startled to see the silhouettes of Nick and Jeff on top of one of the university buildings. Turns out they'd found a trap door and decided they ought to go through it.
11. The Sonic between Red River and Rio Grande. There were other Sonics in town, of course, but interesting times seemed to revolve around this one. In fact, we'd just come back from there the night of Reynaldo. Which reminds me, I need to write a post about the night of Reynaldo.
12 (b). Nearby spot of pink I'd forgotten to number but can't be changing everything now - An intersection bordered by a creepy Victorian mansion, Cap'n Jack's rooming house, the crosswalk light that never gave you enough time to pass, and the Coastal Mart which can be seen coming up on the left at the end of this video:
13. The cash machine that seemed oddly out of place, although it was always there when you needed it. It just had a weird vibe, that cash machine. As if the world had ended and the only things left were you and this ATM.
14. Here the little green dot is having to stand in for several things. One was the basement club where we used to dance. Another is the loft where the band used to play. Something dark in the atmosphere there. Chills right up your spine. Across the street was the murder apartment.* Around the side was the funeral home**. If you were quiet very late at night, there's no telling what you might hear.
This is a wretched photograph of me, but it does give a good view of that corner.
Come to think of it, we took quite a few photos in that spot, and they are all wrong somehow. The landscape looks normal, but the people do not.
15. The very cute but suspiciously cheap house we didn't buy because it was bloody terrifying.
16. The radio station, the first place I came to in Victoria and where I realized I'd come to the place I was meant to be at that time.
17. The shopping center that always felt empty even when it was full. The doves' coos and pigeons' wings made a sound as if the place had been abandoned 30 years.
18. Resurrection Cemetery (I missed the location by a couple of blocks on this one, sorry.) One evening, I was waiting at the stoplight when I saw a car full of people unloading flowers at a gravesite. It seemed unusual, seeing a car there so late, but thought perhaps they'd come to pay a last visit after a funeral. Then I turned the corner and in my headlights saw that there was no car, no people...there had not even been any place to park.
19. The original site of Hasting's book and music store. Later, they would build a bigger store across the way, with a coffee shop where we spent many pleasant hours. Still, it's the original location that sticks with me. Perhaps it was because of the high windows in front that let you see miles out into the sky, or the back corner where the off-beat people would gather. I remember standing at the counter there in March, 1996 and having one of those unexpected moments of pure bliss that happen sometimes. If nothing else, that would be worth a marking on the map. The Hasting's franchise went out of business last year, so it's all just memories now.
20. This map is so old, the HEB is still marked in its original spot. The shopping center there had an uncharacteristic good vibe. Everything just felt better in that area. No idea why, but it did. When the store was moved further down the road, the mood became cranky and dour - excellent brick-oven pizza not withstanding. So if we're going to get all New Age-y and ask which place in Victoria was a node of positive energy, I'd point to where HEB is marked on the map. One might say a shopping center is an unlikely shrine, but hey...this is America.
...
One day it would be neat to mark all of the significant sites, then connect the dots to see if they make a shape. Although knowing Victoria, the shape will turn out to be a drunken redneck.
Note - the piece of music in the video is a hidden track at the end of High Roller by The Crystal Method. IMO, If any piece of music captured the feeling of Victoria - not the people, but the place itself - that would be it. Set it to play in a loop while reading the post and the feeling comes through quite well. It's the kind of thing I can never manage to convey with words.
Update - I also just realized that the corner you can see behind me in the picture above is the site where the townsfolk hid during the great Comanche raid.. Could this have to do with the spooky feeling that pervades that block?
further notes - Once, I dreamed that the secret name of Halletsville, TX was actually "Bohemavaria". This struck me as so appropriate as to be hysterically funny and that's why it's listed at the top of the map. Also, having had another look, I see there's too many dots and a couple of number 16's. That's what I get for working until 4AM. You get the idea, anyway. *Am shocked to realize I haven't mentioned the murder apartment **or the funeral home, for that matter. And this blog is called Victoria Phantasmagoria. Sheesh.
Almost any memory, I suppose, can create an air of importance if it's intense enough. Even hard times can acquire a sort of mythos, the status of a personal legend.
It was four years ago now that I packed up my children, pets and anything I could carry, and drove away from my home. My partner stood on the brick walkway, holding one last box of his belongings. He was waiting for us to go before he began the walk to the place he'd live until some indefinite time in the future.
I felt for him. How lonely it must have been, that walk. I had a long drive ahead of me, and the children and pets to occupy my thoughts. He only had the sidewalks and the stars and the gibbous moon waxing overhead. I tried to keep this mental image at bay as I pulled onto the road. If there was regret, for the children's sake I kept it to myself. I would have loved to turn around, prolong the inevitable goodbye a little longer, but despite my tendency to get lost in the past, I don't like to turn back once a decision is made.
The sky had rapidly sunk from twilight into navy blue. Small details came into focus, the way they do at times like these. The little man on the crosswalk sign that never gave you quite enough time to cross; moths and June bugs flittering around the street lights. Through the windows at the Coastal mart, I could see Velma working the register. I thought that I should have said goodbye to her at least, but guessed my husband would probably stop in on his way. He'd buy a bottle of water and a pack of Malvita* biscuits, and maybe not mention that his whole family had just moved away, because who knows what to say to that. I'd be right, but wouldn't know that until later. At the moment, there was nothing to do but drive on.
We turned onto Rio Grande street, then Main. We searched for music to keep us cheerful. The kids rejected Stereolab as too gloomy and French, they would rather have The Pillows instead. We drove out of town, pretending like it was some great adventure when really we were just sad.
At the truck stop on highway 90, we took a break, unwinding ourselves from the boxes and crates to take the dog out. The kids bought snacks and I bought a coffee and a pack of spearmint gum. The coffee was the consistency of motor oil, but I'm not complaining. It was comforting, somehow.
We hung around for a while, watching the traffic pass. So many cars coming and going. I wondered who else was making a difficult journey. I wondered how they would cope with what was ahead of them. The parking lot was a sort of limbo, I suppose. The florescent lights marked out a sacred space where time didn't exist and all options are - theoretically, at least - still open. When you aren't looking forward to your future, spending eternity in a truck stop parking lot doesn't seem so bad.
...
Back on the road, I tried not to think about the line of falling dominoes that had lead to this point, but such things are easier said than done. There had been plenty of signs that things were going wrong. We'd watched with some trepidation, then outright anxiety, as prospects dimmed all over town. We told ourselves that things might get better, we'd keep hanging on, but I'd managed to put aside the thing that would eventually lead to this night drive - my mother's deteriorating mental state.
Well, she'd always been a piece of work, you know, even when she was younger. There was a good reason I'd hardly been back since I'd left home. Not my problem anymore, I'd said. Until the day came when it was. By then, there was no one left to deal with it but me. The least-favored, most ungolden child.
But isn't that always the way?
There was a storm brewing in the West as we wound our way through the countryside. We could see lightning in the distant clouds. Had I been better with metaphors, I might have seen this as symbolic, but instead it just seemed like Spring. Or more damned crappy luck.
The storm broke a couple of hours after we arrived. It was short-lived but the lightning was fierce, the likes of which we never saw in Victoria. Another thing I'd forgotten in all the years I'd been gone. Mother had forgotten things too. When she talked about her children, she seemed not to remember that I'd once been one of them. It was fitting enough, I suppose. My future was unclear. Now my past was in doubt, too.
...
Maybe it's because of this that I become obsessed with fixing all these details in my mind. Perhaps this post should be called the persistence of emotion instead. Memory fails, but emotions remain, attached to even the most hazy recollections of color, temperature and light. It bothers me that I can't recall what shirt I was wearing the night I left. Everything else, yes - DKNY capri pants, black ballet flats, a forest green cardigan - but what shirt? It hardly matters, except it does. How did I let this detail get away from me? How many more will go when I'm not looking?
I can tell you what we did, the kids and me, as we tried to adjust to our circumstances. Navigating the new parts of town that had sprung up in my absence. Buying shoes and extension cords.Walking the dog. I can tell you what we did, but I can't make you feel how it felt. I'm not clever enough. I'm no Robert Coover or anything. The best I can do is try to anchor these emotions to a specific place in time, lest they escape and run amok.
There is no way to describe how at sea we were, doing those things. Who the heck remembers buying an extension cord at Home Depot? Oh, but I do, and also, since when is there a Home Depot here? And this street? Why is the sunlight so white** and who are all these people? What am I going to do about my mother? The most ordinary things return with a pang. Wandering the lonely aisles at Walgreen's. Rainwater swirling at the bottom of hills. And my son and me, in this sort of sleepless underwater haze at 5 AM, watching Popeye cartoons, because we knew his dad in back in Victoria was watching too, and for that hour at least we felt connected.
We drove a lot in those early days, while we tried to learn our way around. We searched through all the new radio stations. Victoria had always been short on radio. The song we liked the most was Miike Snow's Paddling Out.
It seems somehow fitting now.
It was four months later that my husband and I finally came to understand that there was not going to be a simple solution for my mother, that Victoria was finished for both of us, and this splitting of the family was far harder than it was worth. He packed his bags, and I left before sunrise to bring him back. I bought a Kolache and a coffee on the way out of town, and for that moment - a reverse of what had gone before - I was happy.
I'll always feel a bit glum about our life in Victoria that skidded to a halt so suddenly, and the rapid changes that beset our family. That life can only live on in feeling and memory now. The brick walkway does not belong to us anymore. We are all together, though, and for that I am grateful.
* typo, and it stays.
**it's the limestone, we eventually figured out. The sun reflecting off the limestone. On cloudy days, it's gloomier than Victoria could ever dream of.
In the dream, we are driving home late at night. The only light is the full moon, and I can see the silhouettes of palm trees lining the road. Nearing home, my husband says, "there's someone outside the house".
I look up and see a glimpse of a veiled woman underneath my window. We know it is the grave dancer.
My husband pushes me down and says "hide, hide!" He stands guard at the window, but we know she's out there. There are bells attached to the grave dancer's veil, and we can hear them outside in the dark.
Going through my files tonight, I came across this crude map I'd drawn of my immediate neighborhood, back in 2008. It was obviously meant to be somewhat humorous, but it was also meant to illustrate a particular problem at the time.
What happened was, I had found a set of knives (marked in red text, above) on the ground outside my bedroom window. This was disturbing, but it was not possible to tell if someone had been lurking outside the window for some nefarious purpose, or if they had been hidden there after a crime, or they had been flung there by someone needing to get rid of them fast (for instance, a parolee who'd just seen a cop).
We took the knives to the police station, and while the cops seemed unimpressed, it was still worrying. I drew this map illustrating how all three scenarios had potential, and posted it to an internet forum so my online friends could give it a look. (For the record, most people thought scenario 3 - someone running from the Forlorn Intersection had flung them there - was the correct one and since nothing ever came of it, I assume they were right.)
Looking back on it now, though, what I see is a psychogeographical map of a fringe area. Fringe areas are of particular interest to me, being transitional places where one thing becomes another. Fringe areas are often overlooked, even though they are around us all the time. Entrance ways and exits, alleys, the outskirts of towns. Fringe areas are also frequently places where crime is more likely to occur - though I hasten to add, my family never personally experienced any crime there.
There were a few transitions occurring in the scope of this map. First (and most noticeable in person) was the petering out of the gentrified neighborhood of restored houses into unrestored houses and then, across the tracks (off the map) into dusty slums. There was an overlapping of social backgrounds and economic status. Then there is the blending of traditionally racially identified areas. Many different types of people came together in this street.
Studying the map (and also from memory) the true fringe area must have been the Forlorn Intersection. I knew quite a few very nice people who lived on the other side, but that intersection - just a drab little road, really - was always the place where things went down.
It's interesting to note that right on the edge stood the convent house - A Poor Clare monastery, to be exact. Quiet, peaceful, shining like a beacon on prayer nights. No one ever, ever messed with the Poor Clares. Regardless of status, they were there for everyone.
All these years later, it occurs to me that there should be many more things marked on the map. Like the house with stained-glass windows, or the silent hedges. I feel lucky that some of these things are captured in the early part of this blog (which was kind of the point, really). But there are other things that aren't so easy to capture. Dust and silt. Humming streetlights.The church carillon that rang every day at 8, 12 and 5. These are little things that make up the secret nature of a place.
One white hot summer day, my friend Arturo was riding past on his bicycle and we stopped to talk. He waved a copy of the local newspaper. "Did you hear? About the creature?" he asked, pointing at the front page picture of the Cuero chupacabra. We both thought it was fascinating, but agreed that sometimes things were better if we never learned the whole truth.
If I could, I would put that on the map, too.
(apologies - I ended up posting this yesterday before it was finished. (long story))
A friend rang the other morning. He said, I'm calling from inside your old apartment. They are about to tear the building down.
And just like that, the place we used to live moves from tangible to intangible. It exists solely in memory now
Live long enough, and it's bound to happen. We don't only lose people, but we lose places, too. It's been happening at a steady clip as long as I can remember. It's progress, and commerce, urban development and all those other things. The grocery store of our daily errands is now a call center, the club where we used to dance becomes a gym.
If we believe in an afterlife, we can imagine that our lost loved ones are with us in spirit. Aside from the occasional time slip and trans-dimensional gas station, though, the existence of remembered spaces is far more nebulous than even a ghost. Unless, perhaps, the shades of long-ago shoppers still patrol the rows of telephonists, reaching for loaves of bread circa 1996.
The house of memory is a peculiar place; everything lives on top of each other. The boundaries of such a house are permeable and strange. The empty room is never really empty. Minus space time and plus soul time, as Nabakov once said.
You wouldn't know it but there is someone hiding in that picture above. Of course you wouldn't, because he has concealed himself behind the bench. You could raise a legitimate point and say it doesn't matter, since until now, only he knew it and I knew it. If either of us forgets, is the meaning of the photo lost? If a 10 year-old boy hides behind a bench, sometime in the summer of 2001, and no one remembers, does he disappear forever?
For all practical purposes one could say yes, but as long as there are tales of long-dead monks roaming ruined churchyards and Roman soldiers marching along no longer existent roads, then I am not so sure.
The place had stood for 30 years, housing any number of college students, young marrieds, the elderly and refugees alike. Hardly any time at all in the great scheme of things, but more than enough time for the drama of human life to play out. I would be delighted to learn, in 50 years time, of reports of disembodied laughter and running footsteps at twilight, or the sound of splashing from a nonexistent pool. I can even imagine the astonished murmurs as a mirage of the lighted corner store sign (now also gone) appears in the night sky.
And by then, only the old folks will remember why.
I was the last to notice that something was wrong about the woman in the corner apartment. She was only very aged, I thought, and maybe a bit out of touch with reality. Lawrence said she gave him the creeps, though, he didn't like walking past her door. Angela said she was crazy, but when I asked how she knew, she just said, "I know."
The first time I understood was when the topiary angel appeared, set up in the garden facing the woman's windows. I should say, it was once a topiary angel. Now it was something else, and we felt cold when we walked by. It still had the vague shape of wings at its back, covered in ragged greenery like the rest, but its face was greyish with mold.and its crown was a triad of spikes. It was no longer the thing it was meant to be, but had become something chilling and strange.
We could see the angel's dark shape beyond the ash trees, and learned to circumvent that part of the garden. Sometimes we'd forget though, and realize too late that we would have to cross its path.We'd hurry as quickly as we could, feeling the gaze from its eyeless, moldering face.
The woman watched from the window. At night, she would creep into the garden to talk to the shape in a low voice. Sometimes she would place objects inside its frame; marbles or bits of colored foil. Then she would take them away again.
Stephanie said, I want to get rid of it, just run by and snatch it and hurl it into the nearest dumpster. But I can't stand the thought of touching it.
The woman on the corner muttered and whispered. She talked about poison, how they all wanted to poison her. There was a strange smell in her apartment, in the vents. They had killed her dog, she said. But the angel was watching them.
She disappeared one night, the woman, along with the angel. Only the crown of spikes remained, wedged in the boughs of the ash tree. We all stood, staring, wanting to take it away but too afraid. Eventually, the crown disappeared too, and the fear at last began to fade from the garden.
I had bought the vintage orange turtleneck over at St. John's Bargain Box some time before. Maybe a month, or a few months, there's no way to remember now. The sweater was one of those thin, ribby ones from the mid-60's, in pristine condition, and I was glad to have it. Things were pretty gloomy then and I needed some color in my life.
This is the prologue. Well, the prologue before the prologue.
...
The first time I came to Victoria, it was unexpected. It hadn't been part of the day's plan. What had happened was, my mother had gone to visit my aunt and uncle near Houston, and I'd ridden along. Mostly because I liked my aunt and uncle, but also because I needed a distraction. A friend of mine had killed himself that week, and everything looked grim. Since three hours in a car with mother is not something to be undertaken lightly, I had the Sunday edition of the Austin American-Statesman on my lap. The front page told the story of my late friend's shattered hopes and broken dreams. That was the ostensible reason I had the paper. The real reason was because I was searching the job and apartment listings.
I can't remember exactly when I'd come to the conclusion that my life had veered off the right path, but it was a distinct, uneasy feeling I couldn't shake. Things kept going wrong, badly wrong, and I felt there was a turn in life I should have taken but hadn't. It would have been simpler if I'd known where I should've been instead, but it wasn't clear at all. Hours spent trundling between work and my therapist's office only seemed to kill time. Holing up in my apartment brought no relief. The best solution I could think of was to find my way back to Austin. I wasn't sure if that was the right place to be, but it was better than where I was. I'd received my acceptance letter from the university there, so the day I ended up in Victoria, I'd been in the midst of planning my escape to somewhere altogether different.
The house of my aunt and uncle was a place of happy memories. Once upon a time, I'd romped with my cousins, playing Star Wars and having flashlight battles in the fog. But time moves on, and my cousins had grown up and moved away. We did get to hear a lot about them that visit - auntie not being one to hold back about her kids. Nancy, she said, was going to college in Victoria, and worked at the radio station on weekends. In fact, she called from the station every Sunday evening around 6, if we wanted to wait around to talk to her. 6 o'clock was a little late, considering we had such a long drive back, but auntie said that Nancy would be so disappointed if she'd missed us. Whether that was true or not, mom said we'd wait a short while longer.
Here is a point I don't like to ponder too frequently: had we left before the call came that evening, would the rest of my life have been completely different? Had Nancy not said "There's too much to tell you over the phone, is there any way you can come here?" what would have happened? There are so many ways it could have gone wrong. If my aunt's insistence that it was "just a simple drive" to Victoria had not won out over mom's protests, or if I had not had enough money for bus fare home, if it came to that...what would my future have been instead?
But we did end up driving to Victoria that evening, through the seemingly endless rice fields, with mom bitching all the way. We drove in from the east side of town, by Rio Grande street. We searched for the address Nancy had given over the phone, which I had written down as North Star instead of N. Star. We took a wrong turn and drove through streets milling with hobos, while mom shouted that she was going to turn around and go straight home. We did find the radio station eventually though, right as dusk was beginning to fall.
This is the part where I say, I told you all that to tell you this:
The moment I stepped out onto the cracked pavement, I knew - by some strange miracle - I'd made it back to the path. The disquieting sense of wrongness was gone. In some deep, ineffable way, I knew this. For reasons that were beyond me then, this confusing, creepy, backwater town was the place I was supposed to have been all along. Things had been so hard for such a long time. I breathed a literal sigh of relief.
Nancy popped out of a side door, waving cheerily. She ran to the car and pulled me across the parking lot, yelling over her shoulder for mom not to worry, I'd get home somehow. We rushed into the building, moving fast because she has to get back to the DJ booth before the end of the song. At that point, I already know - in that same ineffable way - that life is different now. The story that came before is over. Everything has changed.
I didn't move to Victoria right away, of course. That first visit I only stayed a few days. We had a lovely time, my cousin and me. A constant stream of friends flowed through her apartment, her phone rang off the hook. We bought cherry vanilla cokes at Sonic and drove for miles. We had ridiculous adventures, like breaking into an abandoned farmhouse and being chased by bees. At night, in the cool dimness of her bedroom, we'd lay out her Russian Gypsy cards and tell each others fortunes. It was just like old times. But I did have some vestiges of a life in my hometown, and I had to get back to it.
At home, things seemed wronger than ever. My job was becoming a problem. My friends were unsupportive. My apartment was haunted. My granola-and-Dan Fogelberg-loving boyfriend turned out to be a dud, though really that shouldn't have been a surprise. There was a constant drumbeat behind everything that said "this can't work, this doesn't work, this can't work..." Even my therapist thought I should get the hell out of town. I fled back to Victoria often that summer, when I was tired of swimming against the tide. Things were so much easier there. When mom scuttled my Pell Grant for UT because she didn't approve of higher education and my former stalker appeared down the street, it seemed I had many more reasons to go than to stay.
This is the prologue.
...
After the fall semester had started in September, Nancy and her friends had begun a new routine. Once a week after class, they'd all go to her place to study, except it was actually a party. This is what Nancy had told me over the phone. I had missed the first of these events and had gone home again before the second. Consequently, I was in my own bed asleep that Wednesday night - it must have been Wednesday, even though memory insists it was Thursday.- if the weather data for that year is at all correct, it was in the wee hours of September 14th, when I awoke to find Nancy standing over my bed.
It had been a warm summer night when I'd gone to sleep, but an early cold front had blown in, and gusts of wind were howling as Nancy stood over me calling my name. As Nancy lived three hours away and as far as I knew, I'd locked my doors, this was startling. Also, she was dressed like a cheerleader. I screamed. Since (as she explained later) Nancy thought I must be screaming at the apartment ghost which she figured was standing behind her, she also screamed. We screamed until we were brought up short by the sight of her friend Jason, who wandered into my bedroom wondering what the hell was wrong with us. That's when I realized they had just got bored after the party and had driven up in the middle of the night to bring me back with them.
I changed into some warmer clothes and threw some things into a bag. The orange turtleneck must have been one of them, though I can't recall choosing it now. I zipped the bag, locked the door and ran out into the windy night. That wouldn't be the last time I saw that apartment, but almost. We got into the car - fast, because of the cold - and drove back to Victoria before sunrise.
If that was the 14th, there are three days in this story left to fill. I only remember some things with certainty; how the next day was grey and chilly, and we cut our shopping trip short because of it. That we hung out at the Froth 'n Java drinking cappuccinos. I sat in on a class or two and we borrowed someone's copy of Pulp Fiction. We made repeated trips to Sonic. We must have hung out with friends - they were always around - Jeff, Jason, Ben, Lisa and more than a few Richards. The only one I hadn't met was Nick
Everyone talked about Nick. He was the funniest guy they knew. He was a genius. He was sophisticated. He was older and almost finished with his master's degree. He knew a lot about politics and once tried to replace a newspaper graphic of Ronald Reagan's brain with a picture of a walnut. I'd almost met him the first night I'd come to Victoria, since he and Nancy usually went for coffee after work on Sundays. He hadn't called that night, though, and since then I always seemed to miss him by moments. He'd begun to seem like a mythical creature to me, often rumored but never seen, so the night of September 17th was a little exciting. I'd woken up from a late nap to find a note from Nancy saying that we were going to meet Nick at Denny's after she got off work.
It was exciting, but a little worrying, too. I had the impression that Nick didn't suffer fools gladly, and I wasn't convinced that I wasn't a fool. I had a bowl of Campbell's vegetable soup and watched Star Wars while I nervously contemplated my ignorance. I also contemplated my wardrobe. I was again grateful for the orange turtleneck. It was the only item of clothing I owned that might not draw the disdain of some educated genius smart ass.
...
At Denny's, Nancy and I ordered coffee and french fries while we waited for Nick. He got off work later than Nancy, and it was already after 1 AM when Nancy's eyes brightened and she said, "there he is!" The door hissed behind me and I turned to look, but I only made out a vague shape before I turned back. A terrible heat had suffused my body and I realized I was blushing all over. Oh, the humiliation! Nick had made his way to the table with his cup of coffee by the time I had the nerve to look at him. To my surprise, I saw he was blushing, too.
He sat down at the table and surveyed his lack of silverware My future husband spoke to me for the first time, these immortal words:
"can I use your spoon? I don't have syphilis."
....
That was 20 years ago tonight, and since then, no one can tell me there is no such thing as love at first sight, or that Fate doesn't step in to conspire in your favor. We tell our kids not to mock the holy sanctuary of Denny's, for if it weren't for Denny's and Fate, they would not exist.
But I can't help but think the orange turtleneck had something to do with it. Ever since then, orange has been my lucky color.
(note: I wrote this back in December. I'm just now dragging it out of draft.)
Last month, I went back to Victoria, returning to a house I once stayed in many years ago. It was a bit sad and nostalgic, because it was at a major turning point that I had come to stay back then, on the eve of starting a new life in a new place. Now that time has long passed, the couple who lived in that house are gone, the people we worked with are gone, everything is irrevocably changed.
Well, one thing is the same, something I'd forgotten after being away for over a year. In my current town, you couldn't take a spooky-looking picture if you tried. In Victoria, all you have to do is point your camera at random and snap:
See? Which was really the idea behind this blog - my wish to document what made that particular town so very strange, even if the strangeness went unnoticed - or at least unmentioned - by the majority of people (the minority who did mention it admitted to being spooked as all hell).
It did catch me by surprise, though, after all this time. Snapping away with the camera, mostly out of boredom,.and seeing something very different turning up in the viewfinder than what I'd seen with my own eyes.
Case in point -
I don't like posting my own photo on this blog in any recognizable fashion, but it's kind of necessary here. I had entered the bedroom I once slept in, nigh on twenty years ago when I was but a young thing, and I thought, ah, let me take a picture for memory's sake. Here is the mirror I once gazed at, the daybed I once slept in, exactly as I remember it, an ordinary little room in an ordinary little frame house, nothing special or unique outside of personal attachment...
Oh, no, wait a minute. Apparently I had been sleeping in Dr. Dread's Mausoleum of Doom without realizing it. (enlarge to get the full effect)
Sadly, there are no non-creepy photos to compare these against. I took plenty, but some things are just too terrible to bear looking at.
This was all very interesting, so I got a little curious about how the rest of the house would photograph. How would I, product of the 70's, look in the 70's era kitchen? The 70's weren't creepy. They were tacky, but not creepy.
Well, it was fine, except in the photo it looks like a potential crime scene: Or like that bit in a movie right before something bad happens:
After that, I ventured into the room in the house that I did find overtly creepy, the den everyone had always seemed to avoid. I would soon find out why.
While setting up the camera and finding a suitably dramatic pose, I think I manged to tick off whatever was in there, because I definitely began to feel a presence. It was not pleased. The self-timer was set to take three shots, but I was so spooked that I couldn't manage to stay long enough for all three.
I'm normally more curious than afraid when it comes to haunted houses and mysterious presences, but this was a truly awful feeling.
There is something really wrong with these photos, something besides bad lighting and noise. I often take photos with poor light experimentally, to better understand how lighting affects the image. No, it's something else. Something looks wrong with my shadow, like it's someone else, standing behind me...
And another thing, harder to pinpoint. It's as if I don't want to look too hard, because there might be something there I don't want to see hiding in the image. It's like that with all of the photos I took that night, the sense of another presence there, watching the camera watching me.
Maybe that's the thing about Victoria, for those who notice it - it's not just the sodden air and the swollen ground, the isolation or the tension and angst swirling like a low-lying fog - those things are obvious, only those in deepest denial could miss them. It's something else there - the spirit of the place, immaterial, watching, just out of sight.
It was a long time ago now that I first encountered Creepy Hollow, though I didn't know what it was called then. My cousin and I were out for a drive that day. Nancy could drive for hours and she was always looking for a place to go. She'd overheard some of the profs at the university talking about Salem Road and how long it was. "Pack a lunch", they said. That's how we ended up heading out to the country one afternoon, singing along with The Beatles, laughing, smoking cigarettes, back when they were still cheap enough to smoke. It was sometime in the summer, 1995.
Salem road runs though town like any other street - straight and boring - then crosses the highway where it becomes a twisting country lane. Not too many people live on the other side of the highway. There were fields, the occasional farmhouse and some scrubby trees..At first, it seemed fine. There was nothing unusual about the place, and I'm sure I didn't notice anything awry until it was impossible not to notice. Nancy was unperturbed as well. Mostly our minds were occupied with romance and boys and whatever love triangle was happening that week. That's the way it often is when you are young.
We didn't see the bridge until we were very close to it. A sudden dip in the road and there it was. Nancy slowed the car. Somehow, we hadn't been expecting this. The bridge was very narrow and she hesitated. Her hands were tense on the steering wheel. She said nothing, but I could tell she was thinking hard about whether to cross. I noticed this, despite the vague horror that was creeping through my bones. Knowledge was gathering into an absolute certainty that whatever was on the other side of this bridge was like death, or worse. Indescribably worse. I felt cold all over and wanted to scream at her not to cross, we had to get out of here now but I did not - there was no obvious reason, you know? It was just a low bridge on a country lane and there was nothing visible to be afraid of.
Nancy drove slowly onto the bridge, then stopped the car. We seemed to stay there for hours though it would have been no time at all. "Hey" she said in a high, artificial voice, "you know what? I think we'd better turn around now." I agreed, we backed up, turned around and drove back the way we came. Nancy's face was as white as a sheet.
It's funny, when I remember this incident, I could swear it took place at twilight, with a chilly wind and a violet tinge in the air. That's not possible of course, it couldn't have been later than four in the afternoon. But the memory is so hazy now. That's another funny thing - despite being scared out of our wits, as soon as we got home we promptly forgot the incident. That sounds silly, like something out of a bad novel, but it's true. For years, it was never mentioned again.
underneath the bridge
It was not until 2002 that a talk with a neighbor jogged my memory. She mentioned that she and her brother liked to go fishing at the creek at Salem Road, they would fish from the bridge early in the morning. The bridge? A fuzzy memory took shape in my mind. She began to describe the location, but she'd hardly said a word before the memory hit me. That place! How could I forget it? But not quite forgotten, not really. As soon as I remembered, I realized I'd been dreaming about it for years, dark and eerie dreams about loss.
I mentioned this to my boyfriend at the time. Oh, yes, he said, that bridge! It had taken 5 tries before he managed to cross it, he lost his nerve every time. It's hard to explain, he said,.there's just something wrong with that place.
It was after that that I began to ask questions of the people I knew. What was the strangest thing that ever happened to them? Was there anything about the town that made them uneasy? Had they ever been really scared? While the answers were always interesting, the name "Creepy Hollow" turned up unusually often. It didn't take long to figure out that this was the local name for the Salem Road bridge. The stories were all over the place, but very strange indeed. There were tales of witches and devil-worshipers. Ghosts. Black magic. The fishing neighbor wasn't bothered, but her girlfriend wouldn't go near the place. My friend Lawrence had seen piles of bones on the bridge. Heather had heard tales of a hundred black cats materializing out of thin air. Angela's story was most impressive - she'd been invited to a Halloween party at the far end of Salem Road, but after seeing flickering candle flames and hearing voices in the woods, she turned tail and fled. There was no way she would cross the bridge on Halloween night.
Always present in the stories was a common theme, that they simply could not cross the bridge at first. The fear wouldn't allow it. Tallying up all the stories I'd heard, from more than 20 people, the average number of tries was 5. If you look carefully at the top photo, you'll see that the grass is worn through on the right side by cars turning around to leave.
I made it in four, though it was Angela who drove me across. She was veteran of the bridge by then. She still wouldn't go near it on Halloween night, though.
The other side
Eventually, I knew that the only way to find out what was happening at Creepy Hollow was to have a look at it myself. Already I'd met several self-proclaimed Satanists who said they had gone down there to perform rituals because the place was a "vortex of negative energy", Well, hearsay was all very nice but after so many tales, it was simply not enough. I went down on a very bright day in the summer of 2005, when these pictures were taken. I'd been across the bridge enough times by then to be prepared. I walked up, looked around briefly then crawled underneath. I saw a snake, but no signs of witchcraft or devil worship, nor anything else that oughtn't be under a bridge. On top of the structure thought, things were a little different.
About halfway across, I noticed what appeared to be a skein of sheep's wool wrapped around the railing, splotched with red. There was a bloody rag, and a trail of bloodstains on the concrete. There were three cigarette butts lying near the biggest stains, as if someone had leaned against the railing, casually smoking while they bled profusely onto the ground. It was...odd. I didn't take a picture of this, for a now out-dated reason. These photos were taken with an analogue camera, with film that was sent to be processed. I didn't want the person who developed the photos to think I was psycho.
I crossed the bridge, went to the other side and stood there, trying to get a grasp on what it was about this place. After coming here a few times, the fear was no longer intense, but...the place felt dead. Lifeless. No birdsong, no insect buzz, the clouds didn't move in the sky. There was no happiness or sadness, just...nothing. Later, I drove a friend, a practicing witch, out to the place to see what she thought. She also noticed the lack of birdsong, and the second hand on her watch failed to work on the other side of the bridge. She said it felt like time had stopped. I had to agree. After the fear subsided, it felt like time had gone dead.
It wasn't until a couple of years after that that I saw Nancy again. I asked her if she remembered our drive on Salem Road. "oh, gods," she said with widening eyes, "That evil place, I was so scared. Why did you have to remind me?" But she was relieved to know that we hadn't been the only ones.
...
Searching the internet one day, I came across this short piece of video, made at the same bridge:
It tantalizingly promises "more to come" but of course, it never came. It's the way of things here, I suppose. Even paranormal investigators get stymied, get bored. Despite the rumors of tragic accidents and suicides and other horrible happenings at the bridge, not a one can be proven. There is no dramatic solution. At the end of the day, all that can be said is that a lot of people have been afraid of this place.
