It’s cold in my room. Somewhere, a lifetime away, the sun shines through the trees. The light stops before it ever reaches my window. The mercury outside of my trailer wraps its fingers around the eighty-degree line and still it’s cold in my room. I write this to you now because the shadows dance.
The shadows dance.
I stepped out of my car beneath the white stone of the Manresa Castle. Its columns towered over the manicured lawn below. I could see the water within walking distance, only illuminated by the fingernail sliver of pale moonlight up above. Pulsing yellow streetlights decorated the path out to the shore. It was only five in the afternoon and gone was the sun from its station.
Maria, a cozy looking woman with purple-rimmed glasses that swung beneath her chin, checked me in. “Are you here with one of the ghost hunters?” she asked. Something dribbled out between my legs. “Excuse me?” I replied. “Oh! Yes, they do all kinds of stories and shows about us here–Oh! And look here, you’re on the third floor. You’re not in the room but it’s only a few doors down from you, if you want to check it out.” I thanked her and nearly asked her if it wasn’t too late to cancel the reservation. I’d have taken twenty bucks back of the sixty I paid and crashed down at some by-the-hour motel. Instead I walked back out to my car to lug in my red suitcase and acoustic guitar. That was the entire justification for the two-night trip. Find a getaway and pick out a few songs. Finish the lyrics of the half-written songs I had and rectify the unoriginal, placeholding lines of the others. There was a bottle of tequila, too. Always a bottle of tequila.
I made it through three warm shots of the cheap liquor before I’d had enough. I’d told myself a change of scenery would get me out of the funk and I wasn’t patient enough to actually give it a chance. My cracked phone screen told me there was a bar not four minutes down the road. Uptown Pub and Grill, live music Sunday nights, how ‘bout it? A bluegrass duo picked out fiddle tunes for me for the night. An old, pretty woman poured my drinks and let me bum a cigarette. I walked outside to smoke it and found a few new friends to chatter with. We talked music and the guitar and the fiddle and Dungeons and Dragons and shitty people and loneliness and the inescapable grasp the small towns of the pacific northwest all collectively hold. And I walked back inside for the rest of the set.
“Pick me somethin’ strange, slim,
Pick me somethin’ strange,
If you’re feelin’ low, nowhere to go,
Pick me somethin’ strange”
His fingers were a blur as he ran up and down the fretboard in a speed only bluegrass musicians can find. The fiddler stood up and stomped his foot as the song came to a close and he busted one of his strings. He told us that was a sign that they’d overstayed their welcome and they started unplugging wires and microphones. I paid my tab to the pretty woman and found something that almost resembled motivation to get back to my room and finish out those songs. When I slid my keycard into that door, the first thing I noticed was that another half of my tequila was gone. My guitar was propped up on the floor against the table and my songbook was flipped open. Only one line was written on the previously blank page: Pick me somethin’ strange, slim. I threw my guitar back in its bag. I poured the tequila down the sink. I grabbed my toothbrush from the sink, hesitated, then threw that in the trash, too. With my guitar strapped on my back and the plastic handle of my red suitcase in my hand I ran down the steps to my car.
Some two hours later, I opened the door to my trailer. My fat tuxedo cat, James, mewled for me, something he’d never done before. I walked to the back and saw he still had food in his bowl. I checked his litterbox and found it clean. I picked him up and held him by his shoulders in my arms while he aggressively nibbled at my hands. I took four sleeping pills and passed out on the couch watching cartoons. Three days later I was sitting in the chair, feeling like I could write a nice fiddle tune of my own about that eerie nig,ht at the hotel. I opened my songbook and ripped out the mysterious page. It found a new home tucked into the back of the cover, not quite ready to be thrown away yet. Just as I slid the pick from the first fret, I saw James come scurrying around from his food bowl. He couldn’t catch traction and slid lightly into the cabinet. I looked back and saw a small black shape that whispered, “Pick me somethin’ strange, slim.”
It was another month before I picked up the guitar. That piece of paper still hid in the back cover of my songbook. Every time I went to throw it away something stopped me. I sat down on the couch this time, wrapping the leather strap around my shoulder in case James decided to practice karate while I was playing. I picked my way through Blackberry Blossom before I saw a greedy, long-fingered hand wrap itself around my bedroom door. The door was shut and the hand came over the top like a lizard crawling under a rock when the rain came. Pick me somethin’ strange, slim, pick me somethin’ strange.
And I gave in.
I pick through Blackberry Blossom again, nowhere near the speed of Tony Rice. Every time I touch this guitar the shadows grow. The small black shape has made friends with James and they sit on the couch while I play. The long-fingered black hand brings out a phantom fiddle as I try to make my way through Sally Goodin’. They frighten me. They terrify me.
But if I don’t pick up that guitar, they haunt me. // JACKSON RUIZ
