Their black eyes stare back at me without blinking. There’s got to be six of them.
Seven.
No, sorry—eight. The glint of my flashlight reflects off their cold, lifeless eyes.
The litter of rain-drenched teddy bears circle Jessica’s headstone. Their fur has faded from all the months out here in the cold. The constant barrage of rain has sapped their color.
The soggy display reminds me of my little sister’s bed. It was always covered with a mound of stuffed animals. Even then, at age ten, when I attempted to count all the teddy bears piled up around her pillows, I couldn’t help but think of the grainy black-and-white photographs of lynchings from my American history textbook. The dead bodies hanging from the trees.
Their blank eyes. Glaring up at the gray winter sky, unblinking.
Like marbles.
Like the eyes of Danielle Strode.
History is always watching you, I think. Always at your back. Turn around and you’ll find its lifeless eyes staring right at you. Waiting to see if you’ll break the cycle.
Waiting to see if history is gonna repeat itself.
Over and over again.
Not this time.
Not with me.
I’m not afraid of history. Not afraid of the past.
Not some ghost.
There’s enough to be afraid of in the present for me, thank you very much. All these people, all these Ambers, the people of Pilot’s Creek, living in the past. They’re the ones who make the world a messed-up place. Believing this shit. Believing in witches. It’s their ignorance, their unwillingness to see the truth, see their own shortcomings, their own bigotry and sexism, that permits these bogeywomen to exist. Makes me sick. Makes me want to shine a big, bright fucking spotlight right into their faces and say, Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? The only monsters around here are you. Not some mother and daughter who got burned at the stake. You.
The molding stuffed animals that lie at Jessica Ford’s grave are offerings. Alms for the dead. Even Little Witch Girls need to play with something every now and then.
There are other items. A toy race car. A heart keychain. A soggy Snickers bar, half eaten, a tendril of caramel oozing out from its torn wrapper. Anything to satisfy the witch.
I spot an empty Heineken bottle.
Cigarette butts.
The careless litter of thrill seekers left behind after spending a night out here in the cemetery, waiting to catch a glance of Jessica’s ghost as it wanders along her lonesome grave. I had spent an evening back at my apartment sifting through videos uploaded to YouTube. Dozens of personal graveside testimonies. Mini Blair Witches. We’re talking crappy home movies. Out of focus. Muffled voices. Amateur ghost hunters and dipshit couples wandering out into the cemetery in the middle of the night, filming their vigils with their camera phones.
Waiting for Jessica to arrive. Waiting for her ghost to materialize.
Waiting for her to reach out.
Take their hand.
After several bleary-eyed hours and over umpteen uploaded videos, I had not found one single, actual, real-life, documented sighting of Jessica Ford’s ghost.
Now it’s my turn.
The headstone barely comes to my knee. I can’t make out the inscription. The sandstone has long since worn down. Just the slope of the J and the upper flecks of an s are left behind.
The graffiti is far more legible. Someone took it upon themselves to spray-paint across the crumbling tomb in bright, neon pink:
HERE LIES JESSICA FORD.
MAY SHE ALWAYS BURN.
It’s from Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave. Whoever vandalized her headstone decided to paint over Jessica Ford’s actual inscription with the one from the film version. They sprayed too close to the surface, though. The pink paint bled before the letters could dry.
It’s not lost on me that the paint is the same color as that on the side of Amber’s trailer.
I snap off a shot with my camera phone. The image will make a great icon for the website. I’ll Photoshop some text across the headstone: WHO GOES THERE? THE REMAKING OF THE LITTLE WITCH GIRL OF PILOT’S CREEK.
The crucifixes are sagging. They barely look like crosses anymore, the fence slowly corroding over the years. Each metal pillar leans at its own awkward angle, dragging the neighboring cross with it, until each flailing crucifix droops in one direction or another.
But here it is. I finally found it. I am finally seeing it with my own eyes.
Jessica Ford’s grave.
What’s left of it.
All this time the story has been so hypothetical. A will-o’-the-wisp in my imagination. Yeah, sure, I knew she was out here, somewhere, but up until I locked eyes on her tombstone, there was still a part of me that couldn’t believe any of this was real.
That Jessica Ford wasn’t real.
But here she is. Or some version of her, at least. I’m here to cut through the crap. The onion layers of legend. Peel it all back until I reach the core of the story.
Her story.
Her.
I turn to Amber, eager to see her reaction. I’ve got to admit, I’m feeling pretty charged over our little discovery. My pulse is picking up. There’s an electric spark in the air.
But Amber barely registers the grave. Barely looks up from the ground. She has been pretty quiet ever since we arrived at the cemetery, wrapping her arms around her chest to keep warm. Or hide. Who knows what the hell’s going through her head right now. She won’t say.
I convinced Amber to drive out to the Pilot’s Creek Cemetery with me to commemorate the eighty-fifth anniversary of the actual murders of Ella Louise and Jessica Ford. I had to promise a few extra shekels to pave over her current financial rough patch, as long as she kept that part just between the two of us. Look, she’s obviously in a bad way. Those royalty checks aren’t coming in anymore. Not for a forty-five-year-old film. And Amber hasn’t done a convention appearance in over twenty years. No one will take her.
She needs this.
Needs me.
The drive to Pilot’s Creek Cemetery with Amber was totally stilted. I figured it might be a good opportunity to start the interview. I had whipped up a laundry list of questions to ask in the rental car. I’d record her answers while documenting our descent into the surrounding pines.
Toward the cemetery.
Everybody loves ambience in their podcasts. The peal of tires over pavement. The hum of a motor. When people listen to these episodes, they want to feel as if they are there.
They want to imagine they’re in Pilot’s Creek.
In the woods.
I could replicate the aural sensation of the pines swaying in the breeze, the bitter chill in the air, the darkness all around. I’ve mastered the art of sound design over the course of constructing these episodes, perfecting my podcast with each subsequent chapter. I could go back and embellish the sounds later in post. Tweak them. Enhance them. Even create a few extra clicks and clacks along the way, just to enrich the listening experience.
I want my listeners to believe they’re in the car.
With Amber.
I want them to hear the brittle crackle of gravel underneath the tires, getting kicked up and clattering against the underbelly of the car. On our way to the cemetery.
To Jessica’s grave.
But Amber, my fading star, is a horrible interview subject. Nothing but one monosyllabic answer after another. Whenever I prod her to elaborate, she only turns away from the Olympus and stares out her window. To the darkness all around.
“So I’m curious,” I start for the fifteenth fucking time, straining to mask my questions under the guise of small talk.
“What do you think it is about Jessica Ford’s story that sticks in everybody’s craw? What gives her urban legend more power than others?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you? There are plenty of urban legends out there. Not all of them get movies made about them, let alone two. Why her? What’s her deal?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on…”
Silence from Amber.
Time to change my approach. Attack from another angle. “When’s the last time you came out here? To the cemetery?”
“Twenty years.”
That’s surprising. I had to pick that apart. “For real?”
“For real.”
“You’ve lived here all this time and you haven’t come out here since…since filming?”
“Yes.”
“Not even once?”
“No.”
“You’re messing with me…There’s no way that’s true.”
“No.”
“Well…Why not?”
Silence.
“There’s gotta be a reason. You don’t move all the way to Pilot’s Creek, after everything that’s happened, after everything you’ve gone through, set up shop down the street from the most decisive moment in your life and not come out here, not even just once, for no reason.”
I assumed she wasn’t going to answer. I’d get a grunt from her and that would be the end of it. But after a breath of silence, she finally spoke. “Wasn’t time.”
What was with the cryptic answers all of a sudden? Jesus, I was getting pissed. Why the hell was she shutting down? Why wasn’t she talking? Why did she agree to come here, take my money and waste my fucking time if she wasn’t even going to answer me?
What was she so afraid of?
“What about your mother?” I asked. A bit more forcefully than I intended, but still. I hoped it hadn’t sounded like as much of a dig as it had come out.
Silence from Amber. Her focus was out the passenger-side window. To the pines surrounding us. So many trees out here. It would be so easy to get lost.
To lose yourself.
I doubled down. “What do you think she’d say about you living here?”
“She’s dead.”
“Sorry,” I had to concede. I already knew she had passed away. Cancer of some kind. The lungs, most likely. “What do you think she would say? If she knew you were here?”
“Don’t.”
Okay. Okay, now we’re talking. I could work with this. “Oh?” My voice lifted an octave. “Why’s that?”
“Don’t go,” she echoed. Her voice was hollow. Distant. I started to fret that the Olympus wouldn’t pick any of this up, her voice lost to the ambient sound all around.
The hum of the engine.
The crumbling road.
To the pines.
The radio said it was 10:35. I wanted to make it to the cemetery with plenty of time to get the lay of the land. Record the ambience. Wander the grounds. Perhaps get Amber to give a little tour. I knew the chapel had burned down decades ago. The people of Pilot’s Creek still hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding it, all these years later. Probably never would.
I parked at the entrance. The gate had collapsed back, no longer held up on its own hinges. I was ready to scale the fence, but it appeared like I could just walk right on in.
The grass was dead. Browned all around. I hadn’t checked the weather report, but I didn’t remember anything about it being this dry. When was the last time someone tended to these grounds? Had the town completely forgotten their cemetery?
My flashlight found the first row of graves.
“After you,” I said.
I should have come during the day first. Bad call on my part. I couldn’t get my bearings out here. The cemetery felt super tiny and vast and expanseless at the same time. I couldn’t tell if I was three rows in or thirty. Weeds choked most of the headstones, until there was no telling who was buried where. My foot accidentally kicked a toppled tombstone, sending my ass stumbling forward a few steps before I could correct my balance.
Tomorrow, I thought. I’d come back tomorrow. In the day.
When there’s sun.
Now all I had was my flashlight and a fucking nutcase who seemed to know exactly where she was going, weaving through the tombs without tripping or—
There it was.
Holy shit, there it was.
The fence! I recognized it as soon as my flashlight brushed over its crucifixes, wilted with rust.
Here was Jessica.
Jessica Fucking Ford.
“Found you,” I said.
Amber Pendleton believed in ghosts. She had been haunted by them her whole life. Whenever she looked at herself in the mirror or saw her image blown up to enormous proportions on the silver screen, she didn’t see herself…she saw the phantoms that had been following her ever since she was a girl. She saw Ella Louise Ford. She was Jessica Ford, the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek.
So…what happened to Amber Pendleton? The real Amber? She vanished. Disappeared from the public eye. But her films remained. Her ghost lingered, wandering over the screen for all to see.
Amber Pendleton had become her own ghost story.