What follows are the transcripts from Edmund Callipeaux’s
recorded phone calls made and received between Edmund and his uncle, who is known
as the Kraken, from Thursday, March 29 through Thursday, April 5, 2012.
___________________________
Thursday, March 29th – 2:00 p.m.
“Hello.”
“Kraken, it’s Eddie.”
“What’s up, Eddie?”
“Well, your business cards are being printed at the Insty Prints in Edina. I was just down
there to take a look at a proof and they look pretty good…. Better than I
remember, actually.”
“And you changed them to read, Adonis Extraordinaire, correct?”
“No, they’re the same as before….”
“Well, I guess that’ll have to do. I’d like to give advanced
warning via business card as of the Adonis
Factor. But you’ve messed up the works on that, so that’s that. Yep?”
“I guess. What else is going on?”
“Well, me and the missus are heading up to Barnes for a long
weekend. I might have put a couple of Rib Eye’s in the cooler for when I'm in my Leptin Window, and we’re looking
at nice weather...maybe a little golf.”
“Life is good.”
“Yep. Call next week when the cards are ready. I can
pick them up, or you.”
“Sure.”
“Yep. Talk to you after a while.”
“Okay, ciao.”
[End call]
Proposed business card design.
Monday, April 2nd – 11:45 a.m.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Kraken, it’s Eddie.”
“Yeah, Easy, what’s up?”
“I have your cards in hand.”
“Where you at?”
“I’m down in Edina near hwy 100 and 72nd street.”
“I’m on 50th just east of 1-hundred, heading
toward my house. How do the cards look?”
“Good…. Great…actually! They did a stellar job. Better than the other place
before.”
“But no mention on the cards of Adonis or Hercules, or,
who’s that other guy?”
“The Kraken?”
“Oh, yes! The Kraken, by which you mean, me! - WHO’S BAD? -
I sometimes fail to remember that I am an ancient being who commands all the
forces of the land and the sea and that all living things tremble in my
presence! In fact, just last night, I was perusing the North Sea (on my usual nightly
patrol of all the 7 seas) and what should I find
but a bait ball made up entirely of Humpback Whales!”
“That must have been quite a sight!”
“It was, indeed! However, I only briefly glanced at it
before I gobbled it up! Over a thousand of them by my rough count! I made quick
work of them - - devoured them at one fell swoop…. They never knew what hit
them; those poor bastard whales!”
“And you’re not one to exaggerate….”
“Moi? I should say
not! If I were to exaggerate, I might have said that there were 10,000 or even
100,000 Humpback Whales in that bait ball! (However, my sister has on many an occasion
said that a good story isn’t worth telling unless it’s filed with lies.) No
matter: it might have been 1 million Humpback Whales, I would have eaten them
all the same!”
“No doubt….”
“Let me know if you eat a million of anything, let alone a million
fish that are each the size of a semi-truck trailer, and then you can tell me how
you feel. After last night’s bait ball buffet, I had to call it an early night….
I missed, Dancing with the Stars!”
“Whales aren’t fish, they’re mammals.”
“Listen, you’re talking to someone.... No wait, I’m an entity! You’re talking to an entity whose been around since before we decided to make
the distinction between fish, mammals, birds, etc., etc.!”
“I don’t have my glasses and I couldn’t read the Caller I.D.
so I thought I was sending it to voice mail but I answered it instead and then
I hung up. I’m on a job right now, what’s up?
“I’m working on a project at school, helping hang artwork in
the gallery, and I’m wondering if the laser level is available for me to use?”
“Sure, not an issue.”
“For maybe a week or so…?”
“Not an issue. Keep it as long as you need.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“In fact, I can maybe bring it to you. Where you at?”
“Over by the Cathedral, in St. Paul.”
“I’ll be over on Como Avenue in St. Paul later this
afternoon.”
“That’s close-ish to school.”
“When you going to be at your house?”
“I’m planning to be over there between noon and 2 today.”
“I’ll bring it over then! I’ll be driving through your
neighborhood anyway.”
“But I might not be there until 1.”
“Don't make me no never mind. If you’re there, you’re there, if not, I’ll
leave it in its case at your front door.”
“Okay, thanks a lot!”
“Yep. Talk to you after a while.”
[End call]
The Laser Level!
Wednesday,
April 4 – 12:30 p.m.
“Hello.”
“Kraken, how it going?”
“I’m held up on this job and it’s looking like I won’t be
able to stop by this afternoon. Are you around tonight?”
“I have class until 6…. Should be home by 6:30.”
“Alright, I’ll bring the laser level by then.”
“Sounds good. I was going to run to the grocery store before
school starts at 3.”
“You do that, and I’ll see you later tonight.”
“Sounds good, thanks.”
“Yep.”
[End call]
Thursday, March 29 – 6:30 p.m.
“Easy!”
“Kraken!”
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Hmm…. It’s beginning to sound like I’ll be hanging around
with you.”
“Well, this time tomorrow night, I plan to be just south
of where the 45th parallel and 93rd meridian intersect….
Not far from your house according to my internal map.”
“Storms in the North Sea keeping you from your usual Friday
night schedule?”
“No, not necessarily. An immortal being, such as myself,
don’t pay no heed to mere North Atlantic storms. If the bait ball is
big enough, not even a storm the size of the one that brought down Atlantis could
hold me back. And I should know.... Not only was I the cause of that ill-fated
storm, I was also instrumental in establishing Atlantis as a world-class underwater
destination city! I sit on the Atlantis board of tourism!”
“What’s on for tomorrow night then?”
“Well, one of your aunts has been talking to another one of
your aunts and we may go out. Nobody tells me anything, so I really don’t
know.”
“Hmm…. Count us in. We’re intrigued and in the mood to go
out. I’ll call tomorrow and figure out how to connect after work.”
“Bring me your most expensive fez!”
exclaimed Edmund Callipeaux.
He and I were walking through the
Home Depot in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and Edmund was telling me about his
recent trip to Florida, and to Disney World, with his wife, Le Tigre.
“We were in a shop in the country
of Morocco at that lake in EPCOT they call, The
World Showcase. What a great place! We had so much fun!” Edmund continued
to explain as we walked through the store and toward the lumber area.
“Have you ever been down there,
L5?” asked Edmund.
“No. I’ve never had the pleasure,”
I replied.
“Oh, it’s a great place.
(Completely insane and over the top, mind you) but incredible all the same!”
Edmund launched into the full description of EPCOT Center, MGM Studios, and the
Magic Kingdom near Orlando, Florida and how he and Le Tigre had visited them often
over the years because one of their good friends, Johnny Raptor lived in Orlando
and worked for Disney through the mid- to late-1990s and early Ought’s of this
Century.
“We’d go into the parks while Johnny Raptor was busy at work, and then he’d meet up with us later in the evening for
dinner. They have all this fun stuff: roller coasters, boat rides, shows,
fireworks, parades, fun for the whole family - - something for everyone (I’d
say).
“There’s like 4 theme parks and
they are all connected by bus or Monorail or boat. It’s crazy. So you check
into your hotel and forget about the rest. It’s all covered. First we’d take
the bus, or Motor Coach (as they call
it) from our hotel to the Magic Kingdom, hang around there for a while and go on a
bunch rides, like ThePirates of the Caribbean and It’s a Small World, as well as The Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan. Then we’d catch a boat across
a lagoon and to Disney’s Polynesian Hotel, where we would enjoy a Zombie at the Tiki bar. After that we
hopped on the Monorail and rode it over to EPCOT and toured around the lake
that’s lined with these crazy recreations of countries from around the world.
You can walk from Morocco to Italy to Great Britain within minutes! They have
restaurants and shops in each country and it’s really fun to explore all the
spots!” He spoke as we walked past the hardware isles that were stacked high
with power tools and cluttered with signage advertising a variety of in-store
sales.
Edmund continued to describe EPCOT Center:
“We alternated as we walked from one country to the next as to who would be the
President, Prime Minister, King, Queen, Dictator, or whomever. So from Mexico
to Norway to China, one of us was calling the shots and the other person had to
do their bidding. Eventually, Le Tigre knighted me as King of All Lands. And there was nothing I could do…. We were in
England at the time, and she was the acting Queen, so I had to obey the command
of her highness. So I basically had my run of the place! It was great fun!”
Stopping next to a bin filled with
tape measures that were discounted to $9.99, he said, “You know, L5, it’s
surprising…. It’s surprising because I always thought that by the time I
reached the age of 42 that I’d be more cynical and jaded toward stuff like Disney
World (and life in general). I guess that sometimes things don’t always turn
out like you had hoped?”
Tossing a tape measure back into
the bin, I said, “Maybe that’s true, Edmund. It is a somewhat surprising to
hear the excitement in your voice as you describe your time in Mickey Mouse
Land. By the way, what was the most expensive fez they had?”
“Oh, that was a bit of a
disappointment. They only had one standard type of fez, and it wasn’t that
expensive, and none of them fit my head. I think that they were made for little
kids,” replied Edmund as we began to walk through the store once again.
“So I left Disney World fezless….”
Just then, we arrived at our
destination in Home Depot. “Ah, here we are,” Edmund looked up at a rack of
long boards called Brick Molding.
Brick molding is a type of wooden construction material used to make doorjambs
and window edging on houses. We were at Home Depot to purchase over a hundred
feet of brick molding that will be used to build frames for Edmund to stretch
canvas around and make paintings in his art studio in preparation for his
upcoming exhibition in March.
“Hmm…. I don’t know about this.
These look pretty warped,” Edmund said as he eyed the length of a 17-foot-long
board.
Bad brick molding!
“Let me take a look at some of
these,” Edmund began to shift the boards around and he pulled a few out from
the stack for further inspection. As he did this, he continued to describe his
and Le Tigre’s trip to Disney World.
“The thing that we discovered going
to the parks is that you have to have a plan. Or rather, I should say, there
are rules you need to follow if you want to survive past noon,” Edmund said as
he continued to inspect the lengths of brick molding.
“Man, these boards are really
warped. I don’t see any that are worth buying,” Edmund said as he stepped back
from the pile.
“Write this down, L5. Here’s a
pen…. You ready?” Edmund said this as I took the pen from his hand and readied
my notepad.
“The Rules for Surviving Theme
Parks:
1.Sometimes you need to walk single file.
2.Sometimes you need to change your plans.
3.Always plan for lunch.
4.There will be strollers and rude people (see
Rule #2).
“If you follow those 4 simple
rules, you’ll do fine at Disney World, I guarantee it!” Edmund said as he tapped
on my pad of paper with his finger. “Those are the rules for theme parks and
I’m considering adopting them as my basic rules for life in general,” Edmund
said.
He continued to say, “Luckily for us, Disney World
wasn’t too terribly busy while we were there. The kids had just gone back to
school from winter break and the weather was kind of cool, so a lot of the
local Floridians were holed up in their homes trying to endure the 50 - 60°
temperatures rather than flooding Disney World with the usual throng."
The current outdoor Minnesota temperature
just then was about 25° and the forecast was for drizzling rain. This
rain will turn to freezing rain later in the day, causing glare ice on the
roads. And if we stay this unlucky, we might also have bit of snow on top of
the ice as we go into the night. Going from an environment like this, or what
Le Tigre often refers to as, “living on the surface of the moon”, to the Florida
sunshine makes 50° feel like shorts-weather.
“It looks like the Sunday Home
Depot crowd is starting to fill this place up. It can get kind-a busy in here
on the weekends,” Edmund said as a guy holding a box of nails bumped into him,
and then walked away without acknowledging the incident.
“It’s okay,” said Edmund, “To many
people I am merely a gray shape that they only perceive out of the corner of
their eye. It’s as if I have Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak on when I am out
in public. And so it can be rather surprising to people when they bump into me.
“One
of the big surprises for Le Tigre and myself, while we were on our vacation to
Walt Disney World, was the park they call, The
Animal Kingdom. This place was amazing! Considering all the years that we
had gone down there, we had never toured through this park before! We had
always heard that there wasn’t much to do besides look at animals. Which I
guess is cool, but we’re not big Zoo
People.
“Heck, I can’t even remember the
last time I went to the New Zooin
Minnesota, and that’s just across town. Why would we travel to the other side
of the country to go to a zoo then? At any rate, that’s what I always thought
about the Animal Kingdom at Disney.
“But boy, were we wrong! The Animal Kingdom was awesome…a highlight
of the vacation!” Edmund said this as we began to walk through the store once
again.
“Can I interject here, Edmund?” I asked,
“The New Zoo has been around since
1983 and I do believe that it’s actually called, The Minnesota Zoo. The “New Zoo” was an advertizing slogan they
used when the zoo first opened its doors to the public to distinguish
themselves from the older zoo at Como Park, in St. Paul.”
“Old Zoo doesn’t have quite the
same ring. Does it? Either does, Minnesota
Zoo. They should have stuck with New Zoo. It rhymes and it’s branding,
which is storytelling, and a Brand is a promise of the story. The Minnesota Zoo
paints me a picture of walleye fish in a tank and promises me that that tank
will be indoors and under fluorescent lights during the winter. The New Zoo opens
up the door for something unexpected, like Dinosaurs, which is what they have
at the Animal Kingdom!
“The Animal Kingdom was a blast. It
was so cool. In addition to having this safari ride (which was marvelous - - we
saw animals like rhinos and giraffes and elephants), and they have walking
tours (which led you through beautiful gardens and jungle-like areas, which was
really fun to explore), they also had an entire area devoted solely to
Dinosaurs! I think that it was called Dinosaur Land, and they had Dinosaurs
everywhere you went! What more could you want from an adventure?
“Dinosaur Land takes the pages of
my favorite book, The World of Dinosaurs,
and constructs a land that you can walk around in, have lunch in, and there are
rides where these dinosaurs chase you around! It’s the best of a hundred
million years of technology. Or, as Johnny Raptor wrote to me in a text message,
while we were at Dinosaur Land…. ‘Did you
say dino RIDE? That’s two goods joining forces for a greater good.’ And I
could not agree with him more! It’s the pinnacle of human and monster evolution
and adventurism!” Edmund told me about the fun he and Le Tigre had at Dinosaur
Land while we continued to walked through the Home Depot store.
“And speaking of adventure, they
had a rollercoaster next to Dinosaur Land that ran through a mountain that was
built to look like Mt. Everest!
“I kid you not, it was bar none the
coolest rollercoaster we have ever been on. Some guy piloting one of the
boat-shuttles that we took earlier in the week told us that they spent over 100
million bucks on this Mt. Everest ride. They built the experience around a
storyline that places you in Nepal and you’re about to go on a mountain
climbing expedition. Only there have been recent sightings of the Yeti, the
notorious Big Foot-like monster that attacks explorers and wreaks havoc on the
mountainside, and furthermore, this rouge ape-man makes ascending to the peak
of Everest nearly impossible!
Fake Mt. Everest as viewed from afar.
“I thought to myself, I’m in good
shape. I could probably do Everest if I had to…. I’m fit as a fiddle. I could
bench press a T-Rex femur in the morning and do battle with the notorious Yeti
in the afternoon! (Yawn.) What else do you have? Look at these guns,” Edmund
rolled up one of his sleeves to expose the musculature of his forearm, “You
know, they call my house, Cannon Land, after
these bad boys.”
Looking good, Edmund!
I ignored that last line as I fielded
a request for assistance from one of the employees working the floor at Home
Depot.
Edmund continued to say, “The whole
rollercoaster was really well done. Incredible, actually. While we were
standing in line, there were all these objects on display, documenting and
giving evidence of the Yeti as well as all the lost explorers from year’s past.
The attention to detail was amazing. They must have a lot of fun designing and
building those rides, because the amount of work that went into making this
rollercoaster was beyond impressive. It’s hard to not get immersed in the
storyline, and caught up in the whole environment!
Proof that the Yeti really exists!
An ominous footprint!
“So when we got into the actual rollercoaster
train, we figured that we would see the Yeti at some point and I was pretty
freaked out. That’s the thing about rollercoasters and me, I always want to go,
but once I’m strapped into the car, I want to run for my life. And this sucker
proved to be the most intense rollercoaster I have ever ridden!
“The train began going up the
traditional steep incline. Up. Up. Up. You know the story of rollercoasters;
and so as we got to the top, I was preparing myself for part 2 of the scenario,
which is the bloodcurdling freefall. However, that did not happen! Once we
reached the summit of the mountain, the train began to run down a slope as it
built up a bit of speed, but we quickly came around a sharp bend, and the
tracks before the train ended! It looked as if the Yeti had ripped them right
out of the ground and bent them 20 feet into the air as he tied their steel
lengths into knots! The train screeched to a halt just before it ran off the
cliff!
“And there we sat! Out in the open
air, the sun overhead, we had to be hundreds of feet above the park, and the
train was stopped. Le Tigre and I were in one of the last cars in the train and
we were stopped long enough for people to start looking around, and some looked
back, careening their necks to see toward where we sat and the tracks where we
had come from, almost as if they thought that maybe the ride was broken. I had
the thought myself - - for a moment - - you know how you hear about people
getting stuck on Ferris Wheels and stuff like that?”
“Yeah, but you don’t want technical
difficulties on something like a rollercoaster,” I said.
“Very true my friend,” replied
Edmund, “All I can say is that the adrenalin was really pumping, and then,
without warning the car shot backwards in an accelerated freefall into the
pitch-black darkness of the interior of the fake Mt. Everest! It was
incredible! And it was not one of those herky-jerky, throw you about rollercoasters
either. The speed and flow of the train gave us the sensation of flying. Who
knows what the g-forces were…it was incredible; fastest speeds I’ve ever
experienced on a rollercoaster - - and we were going backwards through the dark
and everyone on the train was screaming!
“Then the train stopped abruptly
once more, and we were in a big cave. With the lights flashing like a
lightening storm, we glimpsed the Yeti running around the cavern and we heard
his growls and roars: he didn’t seem too happy to see us, or hear our screams. We were on
his stomping-grounds and he did not appreciate us driving a train full of
people through his lair.
“But before he could get to us, and
maybe tie us up on one of those sticks that’s set across a roaring roasting
fire, the train took off again! Only now it was going in the right direction
and headfirst out of the Yeti’s abode and down the rest of the mountain! It
flew out of the darkness and whipped us around the mountain’s base a half-dozen
times and landed us back in the main train station!
“It was exhilarating!” Edmund
exclaimed as we reached the far side of the Home Depot store, “A total rush!”
“I wonder what sort of wine pairing
the Yeti would have had with his dinner that night if you hadn’t escaped his
lair in time?” I asked.
“This particular Yeti didn’t look
like he had much of taste for fine wines. He wasn’t one of those sophisticated,
snooty Yetis. He seemed pretty belligerent, actually. It’s likely he may not
have possessed the patience, or perhaps even the dignity, to wait for my body
temperature to reach medium-rare on his fiery spit, let alone take the time to set
a table with a robust Cab-Sav or Pinot, before he launched himself into his
typical gorging session. I doubt his furry paws could even operate a corkscrew
- - especially if you consider how enraged he was that we were on his mountain
and invading his happy home.
“Anger like that makes it difficult
to stop and enjoy the simple things in life, such as a decent wine, or even having
a nice espresso after a really good meal,” Edmund was now looking at some lawn
mowers in the garden section of the Home Depot.
“Why the heck are we looking at
these lawn mowers? Don’t they know that it’s freezing rain outside? Who’s going
to buy these things this time of the year?” Edmund said as he looked over
toward me.
“What do you have on your list
besides the brick molding, L5?”
I looked down at my pad of paper,
and the only thing I had written were Edmund’s list of 4 rules to survive theme
parks, “It’s just the theme park list, Edmund. The brick molding was the only
thing we needed for work today.”
“How long have we been in here?”
Edmund asked.
“Nearly 2 hours,” I said.
“Well, we’ve definitely failed on
rule #3: Always plan for lunch. It’s glare ice outside and we’ll be lucky if we
make it home in one piece let alone getting a decent lunch. And I’m not going
to that Arby’s across the parking lot…. So lunch is a total failure.
“And the brick molding is a bust,” I said, “So we have nothing to work on at the studio.”
“So that leaves us with rule #2:
Sometimes you need to change your plans,” Edmund said, “Warped brick molding
and icy roads…. I’m going home to take a nap and then maybe watch reruns of Top
Chef on TV.”
Looking over Edmund’s shoulder, I
saw the increasing number of Home Depot shoppers (some indeed with strollers)
off in the distance, and yet they were heading our way! With that, I agreed
that we should make our way toward the door. And despite the fact that neither
of us had anything in our hands, and no shopping cart in tow, a random guy raced
ahead to beat us to the checkout counter we were to walk past on our way toward the exit. I’m not exactly
sure what he was purchasing; it was just amazing that even though we weren’t
buying anything, someone needed to budge in front of us!
It was rule #4: There will be
strollers and rude people (see rule #2). So we turned around and moved to exit
the building through its northern, rather than southern set of doors. Only once
we got over to the doorway at the north side of the building, the inflow of
people was so great that we had to go single file (rule #1) to reach the miserably cold parking
lot. Therefore, we proved that Edmund and Le Tigre’s list for surviving theme
parks does translate into all other aspects of life:
1.Sometimes you need to walk single file.
2.Sometimes you need to change your plans.
3.Always plan for lunch.
4.There will be strollers and rude people (see
Rule #2).
An elephant made from hand towels in our hotel room!
Edmund with a gnome in Norway!
Dinosaur skeletons at Dinosaur Land!
Flamingos at Flamingo Land
Edmund in Britain while Le Tigre was Queen of the Realm!
Edmund moments later after he was made King of All Lands
I am sitting on the deck of a beach house watching a
pair of dolphins swim around about 30 feet off shore, in the Gulf of Mexico. Life is good. They must
be into some fish or something (we’ll have to come up with names for these
dolphins - - how cool?). It’s unusually cold today for Florida (about
50º - - but it feels like 65º in the sun). And there isn’t a cloud in the blue,
blue sky. The water is rolling in with smallish waves (I think that the tide is
come in). The ocean is blue too. In fact, everything but the sand and the dunes
are blue and beautiful.
We are here to do absolutely nothing for one entire
week. Nothing. In preparation for our doing nothing, Eddie and I have been to
the grocery store in Apalachicola for a Big
Shop: we stocked up on enough stuff to last the week (pasta, salad stuff,
taco fixins, fruit & veg, chips, dips, salsa, spices, and of course,
libations). We then got lunch at a local seafood shack. Nothing fancy, just an
amazing blackened grouper sandwich! Then, we thought that it would be a good
idea to purchase a few pounds of locally caught (this morning) scallops and
prawns at a shop that had all the fishing boats parked at docks right out its
back door!
After that, we stopped by an antique shop to look
around at all the nautical stuff they had on sale. Eddie could have bought the
entire contents of this shop and locked himself away for the rest of his life.
They had every kind of kitschy pirate and ship/nautical thing you could
imagine. They had scull and cross bone signs that read, “Dead Men Tell No
Tales”, giant sharks hanging from the ceiling, nets, ship steering wheels,
treasure chests, buoys, flags, puffer fish, entire boats, and rigging from masts
- - it was 1000+ square feet of stuff that had Eddie’s name written all over
it. But after about 20 minutes of milling around through the densely packed merchandise,
I saw that Eddie was developing a thousand-yard-stare so I had to pull him out
of there before the place took him completely away. He bought a $6 bottle
opener (I fear, however, that we will be back to this shop, and our next visit
will put us down more than 6 bucks).
So after doing all that in preparation for doing
nothing, here we are. We’re back at the beach house and the dolphins are still swimming
around in front of me - - only now there are 4 dolphins! - - hmm…. I need more
names for more dolphins! I’ve been sitting here typing only after washing down
the chairs and table, moving stuff around, throwing in a load of laundry,
setting up the music on the deck, and putting away all the groceries. Eddie has
helped with all of this, of course, and now he’s talking about a scraping and
painting the side of the house. Doing nothing is hard work.
The reason I have begun this story by going into such
detail describing my current status is so that you, my dear reader, do not fear
at any point as you read further, that Edmund and I may have met our fateful
end. The fact that I am sitting at this computer, typing these words right now
is proof that I am still alive (and so is Eddie). So as you proceed to read
about the first leg of our vacation in Cedar Key, Florida, please be assured
that we were not horribly stabbed to death in our sleep, or thrown down a
flight of stairs only to break our necks. Nor were we sawn up with a chainsaw; dismembered
and made into soup. And we weren’t sealed into a wall with bricks and mortar in
a spooky basement full of cobwebs. Ghosts didn’t scare us to death as they
howled in the night and flew candelabras around our darkened hotel room. There
were no poltergeist possessions of dolls, or headless spirits that chased us
around with knives, or ghost trains that steamed through our guest room when
the clock struck 12 each midnight! None of that happened.
The spirit of a young boy who drowned tragically sometime in the mid-1800s
after crawling into the hotel’s water cistern wasn’t under our bed eagerly waiting
for Eddie to accidentally hang his hand or foot over the edge of the mattress. And the innkeeper who has more than likely
taken care of the boy since he also died over a hundred years ago wasn’t under
the bed either. When Eddie got up during the night, there was no way that the ghost
innkeeper and little boy would have lurched forward to grab his ankles! I told
him that myself, and I was right…. It didn’t happen! He worried himself
needlessly fearing that they would pull him under the bed and into another
dimension where they would haunt him for all of eternity. I told him that he should
put out of his mind any thoughts regarding any possibility of being so
terrified that he would not be able to scream, and therefore go unheard and
unnoticed as he was dragged across the old wooden floor by these two
nonexistent yet incredibly malicious ghouls. There was no way that I would
awake in the morning to discover that the only remaining evidence of his futile
resistance were the many fingernail gouges that he made in the floor. Because
nothing of that nature could have ever happened, so the argument was mute - - or rather, moot; no
ghosts watched, unblinkingly with glowing yellow eyes for their chance to grab
him and pull him under the bed, because there were no ghosts under there in the
first place. There was never any chance that either of them would even be able
scratch at his foot with a bloody, mud-encrusted fingernail, let alone get an
entire mangled hand around his ankle!
On the list of other things that didn’t happen is
that the Civil War soldier, who has reportedly stood guard since his death
while he was a prisoner of the Northern army during the time when they used the
hotel as a military base, didn’t try to stab us with his ghostly bayonet or
make us answer 3 questions to gain access to the hotel’s bar (aptly named the
Neptune Tavern).
That soldier, with his skin pealing from his mutilated bones, didn’t
mysteriously appear in the mirror of our guestroom either! In fact, none of the
myriad of other spirits who, for one reason or another, are trapped between
worlds was visible in any of the mirrors throughout the hotel at any time
during our stay. Eddie worried himself to no end thinking that he would glimpse
one or more of these specters hovering directly behind him ready to chain him
up and pull him into a vortex that would magically open like a whirlpool, in a
nearby wall. The fact that he is currently trying to figure out names for the
increasing number of dolphins swimming in the ocean before us is proof that
that didn’t happen.
We flew into Orlando last Friday afternoon and drove
toward the Gulf, and to the Island Hotel,
which is located in the little coastal town of Cedar Key, Florida. We had
visited the hotel, and Cedar Key, more than 10 years ago (I think it might have
been 1997). During that trip, we had a great time, but there was a life-size
little girl doll standing in the parlor outside our guestroom that has lived in
our memories these many years - - and we were hoping to not have an encounter
with her again! She really gave us a scare! I wrote about her in one of my past
stories and I can still picture the doll in my mind’s eye as being one of the
spookiest things I have ever seen. In fact, I’ve been asking myself why we
would even want to go back to the Island Hotel after being so scared and not
being able to sleep during our previous visit. Why would we put ourselves
through that again? Luckily, however, upon our return this past weekend, the
doll was nowhere to be found! She was gone; the hotel had changed hands and the
new owners didn’t know anything about her.
Of course Eddie had to confirm this with as many
people working at the hotel as he possibly could: the owners, the bartender at
the Neptune Tavern, various waitresses in the hotel’s dining room - - he got
confirmation from all of these people that they had no idea about the doll.
This interrogation was necessary because we had to make certain that the little
girl was not just currently absent from the hotel, but that she was really
gone. And by gone, I mean wiped from the collective memory of the hotel staff
as well as all of the Friday evening patrons at the Neptune Tavern. And once we
had established that no one knew anything about her, we agreed to drop the
subject of her whereabouts entirely. We didn’t want to risk her hearing, or
sensing through the ether, that we were booked through the weekend and that she
should pack her bags with her rusty cleavers and other miscellaneous antique
surgical supplies, and teleport herself back to her old digs for a weekend of
fun in the sun and bloodbathing under the light of the cold Florida moon!
A Polaroid souvenir from our first visit to the Island Hotel!
Wednesday,
1:20 p.m. – St. George Island, Florida
The 4 dolphins are still swimming around in front of
our beach house. (Wait, there are 5 now!) They’re just swimming slowly back and
forth, up and down the beach about 50 yards off shore. The sun is still out and
the only other things in the sky are a half-dozen pelicans that are diving down
into the water after the same fish that are the source of our dolphins’
extended luncheon (I’m guessing). It’s supposed to be cold again today, but
it’s warm in the sun, and quite comfortable, actually. And even though the
beach is lined with big, fancy beach houses on stilts, I’ve seen a total of 6
people walking along the white sand in front of our house: 4 earlier this
morning, and 2 just now (with a dog). This is just too nice.
Earlier, while considering the ideal conditions of
our beach house (or as I have christened, the Sea Shack) on St. George Island, Eddie speculated that perhaps the
ghosts of the Island Hotel had indeed pulled us into a whirlpool vortex last
weekend and we are now in some sort of parallel universe? The Island Hotel website
listed the front of the building and one of the guestrooms as “a gateway to
other dimensions.” I reminded him that he had just gotten off the phone from
talking to his sister in Minnesota, and that unless AT&T has an interuniverse
calling plan that I am not aware of having signed up for, we are most assuredly
still in same reality as she, and therefore not in some ghost vortex where the
weather is always nice and the ocean is always full of dolphins.
Seeing my point about the cell phone reception, Eddie
mused that if this were indeed a ghost universe, the conditions would more than
likely not be so idyllic. “The ocean would be made of blood, the dolphins would
be horrible monsters, the pelicans would be pterodactyls or those Ring Wraiths
from that Lord of the Rings movie, the beach would be quicksand, the beach house
would be full of rats and murderers and other scary things, and you’d always
hear the sound of chains rattling, and all the door hinges would be squeaky,
and the television would eat us alive….” Eddie’s mouth tried to keep pace with
his mind as he constructed this ghost world by listing all these crazy things.
Eventually, he would have worked himself up into a state of being afraid of his
own shadow. (I’ve seen him do this before!) But before he got to that point, he
realized that he needed more coffee, and he went into the house to warm up his
cup.
Emerging from the house with a fresh cup, he strayed
from the topic of his imminent capture and transportation to a blood-soaked
alternative universe, and turned his questioning toward a different course of
logic that asked that if there are indeed these parallel dimensions and
universes (some more spooky than others), what are their names? And for that
matter, what is the name of the universe that we currently occupy? I told him
that he should occupy his mind with trying to come up with names for all the
dolphins swimming around in the non-blood-filled ocean of this dimension. In
fact, forget altogether about these nonexistent ghost dimensions to which the
front door of the Island Hotel is not the paranormal gateway. Ignoring my
advice (or perhaps not even hearing me), Eddie said after a long pause, “I
think that I’ll call this dimension: Edventureland!”
This past Saturday, which was New Year’s Eve, Eddie
and I began our day wandering around the island of Cedar Key. The small town is
loaded with little shops selling gorgeous things, such as canvas bags and
purses, and books, and other various accoutrements. It’s a lovely, quaint town
with people driving golf carts down the streets and out to a large pier that is
built up with more shops and restaurants. We discovered at one of these
eateries, that clams are one of the local catches. And so for lunch on New
Year’s Eve we ate steamed clams and sat watching the ocean (also with dolphins swimming around)
from an outdoor deck overlooking the ocean. It was on this deck that Eddie and I hatched our plans
for the New Year and the purchase of our next vehicle.
Our Ford F-150 pickup truck, which we call The General, has been getting on in its
years (and miles - - 230,000 actually). It’s a useful truck because Eddie hauls
around a lot of bulky stuff for his work as an artist, but we fear that it
might soon become too expensive to maintain as things continue to break and
need repair. So we’ve decided that when The General finally dies we will buy a
white cargo van! This van will be even more useful to Eddie than the pickup
truck because he’ll be able to stand up inside it rather than crawl around on
his knees to get at his tools. And we’ve decided that we’ll name this white
van, Shadowfax, after Gandalf’s white
horse in the Lord of the Rings! Those of you not familiar this horse will soon
have its likeness burned into your retinas, because we are going to hire an
artist to airbrush a painting of the mighty steed on each side of the van!
Instead of an Econoline van, it’ll be an Equestriline van! Picture it now: a
life-sized white stallion, running at a full speed gallop, long white mane and
tail blowing in the wind (probably mountains and a sunset in the background),
and the words, “Shadowfax: Lord of the
Vans”, painted in silver and gold metallic beneath the beast’s magnificent
hooves! Then we’re going to get vanity license plates that read: THE 1 VAN. And
across the front of the vehicle, written in backwards letters, so that people
can read it in their rearview mirrors, we’ll write: One van to rule them all! (Those
of you not familiar with the Lord of the Rings storyline: it’s basically a
movie about an evil ring that controls everything and how all these other weird
people destroy it.) Finally, the horn will mimic Boromir’s Horn of Gondor, and when sounded, it will call all good people to our aid to help
make the idiot in front of us take that left turn, for @#$%sakes!!
That’s our plan, or shall I say, New Year’s Resolution: a) to buy this van, b) transform it into the
supervan that I described above, and c) drive around Minneapolis and St. Paul
and see how long it takes for us to appear on a Strange Twin Cities List in Metro magazine or something. Eddie said
that he couldn’t imagine a better year that begins with us eating clams and
drinking beer on a deck perched out over the ocean, watching dolphins swim into
the sunset, and ending it driving around Edventureland behind the wheel of Shadowfax: The Lord of the Vans!
We
spotted something running along the kitchen baseboards the day of our arrival. But
we thought it was just a mouse that had come inside because of the unusually
cool weather outside. The management company sent over a pest control guy who
set a trap on Tuesday. But Tuesday night the trap went off and we heard a loud
squeak! And when we checked the trap the following morning, there was nothing
in the trap! So we filled it with more peanut butter, reset it, and placed it back
under the stove. But then the pest control guy came over once more and set out
a few of those sticky pads that the mice get their feet stuck on. He asked us
about the trap under the stove and Eddie told him that not all of the original
peanut butter was eaten and the guy speculated that it might be a rat that we
are after. And he looked a little worried, as if it didn’t look like we were up
to dealing with a rat. I agreed with that sentiment, but deal we did, like it or
not.
At
about 10:00 p.m. we heard squeaking again and, looking into the kitchen, we
saw that a rodent had gotten itself stuck to one of the pads near the
refrigerator! And it was definitely at rat! I should back up here and say that
“we” didn’t really see it, actually, I was too afraid to look! So by “we”, I
mean “Eddie” saw the little monster, I hid in the dining room and offered moral
support: “From staying at a haunted hotel to dealing with Hantavirus! I don’t
know which is worse?” It’s as if we know instinctually that these critters are
bad. “He’s stuck to the pad, but I think it’ll take him a long time to die,”
Eddie reflected somberly, and with a furrowed brow....
“So I shall smote him with this wooden spoon!”
He then withdrew an old wooden cooking spoon from
a large vase filled with a variety of cooking utensils. Doing this he made an “Shhhink” sound to imitate a sword being
drawn from its scabbard. He eyed the spoon, looked over to me, and disappeared
into the kitchen. I then heard him say, “You shall not pass,” which was
followed by a few squeaks, and then there was silence. Eddie walked back into
my view a moment later with triumphant, yet stunned look on his face (I don’t
think he blinked for a full 5 minutes). “I hope he doesn’t have any friends,”
Eddie said, still without blinking and barely moving his lips. Followed by, “We
should go check the ocean and make sure that it hasn’t turned to blood and that the
sky isn’t full of pterodactyls!”
Friday,
10:15 a.m. – St. George Island, Florida
There
have been no additional rat sightings and the ocean didn’t turn to blood (as
far as I know). We haven’t heard any squeaking or the sound of anything running
around in the sea shack. Yesterday, we went for a long walk along the beach and
the ocean was as beautiful as I have ever seen it! We spent the afternoon
walking about 3 miles down to the end of the island where there is a narrow
waterway that separated us from the neighboring isle. There were a few people
on the beach, walking up and down the seashore as we were. But not many
considering the number of beach houses we passed. Most of the houses appeared
to be vacant…. This place must get crazy busy during the high season (whenever
that is?).
Last
weekend in Cedar Key, we were told by a number of people that it was their busy
time of year, the weeks after Christmas and the New Year. There were a good number
of people milling about in the shops and restaurants of the town. It was steady
at the Island Hotel with people checking in and out on a daily basis. The
Neptune Tavern was at times busy, but never so packed that we couldn’t find a
place to sit and chat with the locals.
We asked about the murals and paintings on the walls
throughout the hotel on Saturday night while we waited for our New Year’s Eve dinner
reservations for the main dining room of the hotel. Several people sitting
nearby chimed in about how they were painted in the 1940s by a woman who was a
divorcee from New York. Evidently, she had swindled her daughter out of a
thousand dollars to finance moving to Cedar Key where she painted murals at the
Island Hotel in trade for room and board.
The paintings are quite nice, actually. In the
upstairs parlor, or common area that has doors leading to the individual guest
rooms, there are sepia-toned murals forming a 4-foot wide band around the room
at eye level. They depict scenes around Cedar Key, showing the landscape with
trees and the port with boats. They are very elegantly painted with a
monochrome palette of reddish-brown showing visible brush and sponge marks. The
paintings are soft and gestural as they cover the rough-sawn wooden planks
that run horizontally around the mid-sized room. The planks have aged by
warping and splitting slightly, and there is evidence of stains from sap and
moisture affecting the surface, giving the artwork an aged patina.
Downstairs
in the hotel’s reception area, there are 2 large paintings by the same artist,
one above the fireplace, and the other on an adjacent wall. They exhibit a
wider palette of yellow, blue, and red hues, but they too are lightly painted and
depict views of the houses and streets of the area. Lastly, lording over the
bar at the Neptune Tavern there hangs a large painting (a masterpiece, really) whose
subject is King Neptune himself! He is seated on a throne beneath the sea and
he has mermaids as well as a bunch of other sea creatures at his side.
He magnanimously gazes out across his watery realm
with a stern, fatherly visage and long white beard. In one arm, he holds one of
the mermaids, and in the other, he grasps his famous trident spear. A second
mermaid conveniently decants wine into a silver chalice at the right side of
the composition. Consistent with the style of the other paintings found throughout the hotel, the scene is rendered in soft pastel colors with no
sharply contrasting tones comprising this underwater utopia.
“How
do you think it’s possible that that mermaid can pour wine into the goblet
while they’re all underwater?” Eddie asked as we sipped at our drinks.
“I’m
not sure, but it looks like they’re having a good time,” I replied.
“Do
you see the bullet holes in the painting?” asked the bartender.
“Bullet
holes?” we both asked.
The
bartender proceeded to point out the 3 dark holes in the wooden panel’s
surface. Each was about the size of a dime, with a charred ring circling its parameter.
They were barely noticeable. She told us that not long after the painting was
completed and installed at its current location above the bar, a jealous
husband fired 3 warning shots over the head of a man he had found talking with
his wife. The shots struck the painting, one just missing Neptune’s torso, a
second that pierced his lordship’s clavicle, and the third hitting 6 inches above
the head of the mermaid with the wine.
“I’ll
be darned!” exclaimed Eddie. “That’s crazy. They almost look as if they were
shot into the painting on purpose. Their placement is perfect.”
“The
daughter of the artist, the one whom the mother swindled the money from, was at
the hotel 2 years ago. She’s in her 80s now and she spent some time applying
her artistry touching up, and restoring the paintings during her stay. She had
worked with her mom on the paintings back in the 1940s. So she was able to help
out old Neptune with a touch of paint here and there,” the bartender explained.
“I’m
not sure if it looks like Neptune needed any help. He’s probably been bragging
to those mermaids about having been shot and having a cool scar for the past 60
years,” responded Eddie.
“In
fact, the more I look at that old fellow, the more he looks familiar to me.
What is it? Where have I seen him before?” Eddie asked.
“He
does look familiar, doesn’t he?” I added. The bartender shrugged a bit and went
to ring up the bill for another customer.
“You
know what it is? It’s a copy of Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in Rome, in
the Vatican. That’s what it is! It’s an exact copy! The artist and her daughter
knew their art history, or they had traveled to Rome. Whichever it is (or maybe
both) that is the definitely Moses! Only instead of holding the Ten
Commandments, he’s got a topless mermaid in his arm!” exclaimed Eddie as he
solved the riddle of the Neptune Tavern.
Saturday,
12:45 p.m. – St. George Island, Florida
There
was another rat in the sea shack!
Last
night at about 10 o’clock we heard the trap under the stove go snap! At first, Eddie tried to say that it
was probably just the noise of metal clanging from a vent, but it wasn’t. We looked
under the stove and the brother or sister of the first rat was lying lifelessly
on the shadowy floor. Eddie quickly stood up and said, “Oh no…. If there’s more
than one, then there are probably hundreds! One on a cold night might just be a
random fluke, but 2 rats with two days between them means that they’ve set up
shop in this place!”
I
couldn’t agree with him more! The sea shack was overrun!
Since
it was well past normal business hours, we called the after hour phone number
for the management company. Dialing the phone, Eddie said, “If I am one thing,
I am a man of action. And I can tell you right now that we are leaving this
place first thing tomorrow morning!” I agreed that it was likely that nothing
could be done that night (and that we would have to spend another night in the
rat shack!). Eddie chatted on the
phone with the caretaker, who is only on call for extreme emergencies, like
fires, so we were out of luck if we thought that someone would come running to
our aid.
I was hoping that it would be one of those grand
rescues where a team of Navy Seals burst in through the windows, silently usher
us using only hand signals to rope ladders that are dangling from the choppers
above, and then, we all lift off and fly away as they nuke the Rat Shack
leaving a massive crater in the earth. Eddie said that it would also be nice if
they then flew us to a secrete volcano island hideout out in the Gulf and served
us martinis, but that was not going to happen and we were doomed to spend the
night alone!
We stayed up a while longer trying to
distract ourselves with what was on the television, but after watching as much
of Batman Returns Forever as any two mortals
can, we decided to throw the dice and cast our fate into the wind. We had to
sleep so we could get up as early as possible and get the hell out of that
place! So we walked very slowly through the house turning off each and every light
and pausing in each room. As each switch clicked between our fingers, more
shadows emerged, and the places not lit by the moon dissolved into voids.
Finally, ending up in the kitchen area, we stopped as we scanned around the
room and looked further out into the dining and living areas. With the flick of the
last switch, the entire place went dark, but the ghostly after-image of the
furniture and architecture glowed briefly in my mind, and at once it began to
move with the roiling scurry of thousands of rats covering every surface! Eddie
quickly turn the light back on and the room returned to its normal state with solid
countertops, floor, ceiling, etc. There were no rats (none visible at least).
So we went to bed.
Sleep was rough and I think we both had nightmares. I
got up during the middle of the night and turned on all the lights in the house
before using the bathroom. Eddie’s snoring was about as bad as it usually is, but I
didn’t mind when I thought that perhaps the rats might be afraid of the snoring
monster in the bedroom. Perhaps that kept them from crawling all over us during
the night?
We made it unscathed through the night and the next
morning an old-timer handyman came by the house to tend to the rat and reset
the trap. He thought it was just a mouse, but Eddie and I still think it was a
rat. Its tail was too long and thick, and his legs were too long, and he was
too crazy-looking to be a mouse. Discussing these finer points, the handyman
said that he once had one of them run up his pant-leg.
“Yikes!” replied Eddie, “What do you do when that
happens? Stand as perfectly still as possible, trying not the spook the critter more, or
run around like you’re on fire?”
“You get out of those pants as fast as you can.
That’s what you do!” answered the handyman as he grinned. As we stood there,
discussing rats and pants, I looked the elderly gentleman up and down and
thought that he looked about as tough and stoic as I could imagine, so any
thought of us being too wimpy to deal with wee-little mice (or rats) dissolved
when he finally said, “I wouldn’t stay in here either.”
With that, the handyman left, and we continued to
pack our bags. Eddie had called the management company earlier this morning and
they were looking into the possibility of finding us new accommodation. It’s
Saturday though, and we were slightly concerned that they wouldn’t be able to
(or perhaps, unwilling to) find us anything comparable to what we had before
the Sea Shack became the Rat Shack. So as we packed up all the food and
supplies we had in the kitchen, we speculated as to what would constitute “Plan
B”.
We discussed returning to Cedar Key and the Island
Hotel. Eddie thought that maybe he should call down there to ask if they had
any vacancies for the night. Thinking that that might be a little premature,
however, Eddie began to worry that it might not be such a good idea to go back
there, “Maybe we only just made it out of there alive and if we went back, the
ghosts would take it as a personal challenge to get us back, and get us back
good!”
Eddie continued to say, “And you’ve been writing all
this stuff in your blog-story about how nothing bad happened at the hotel because
there were no ghosts in the first place! What if they’ve been able to read what
you’ve been writing, and now they’re extra mad? They might be out for revenge,
which is what ghosts do best!”
I didn’t acknowledge his point, but secretly I agreed
that it might be too soon to return to the Island Hotel. What I’ve writing here
could possibly be perceived as bragging and they may take it as a ghostly challenge
to make everything I’ve cited in this story as not have happened, happen.
Revenge indeed!
“If we end up going back to the Island Hotel, I’m
going to call Nell and schedule a hair coloring for when we get back to
Minneapolis,” Eddie said. (Nell is our friend who cuts Eddie’s hair back home.)
“Because those ghosts will not be happy with us one bit! I might even expect that they will be furious with rage! They will terrorize us
and scare us so bad that I bet my hair will turn completely white!
"They’ll pull
out all the stops! Once they see us coming back down the road it’ll be like
that Clint Eastwood movie, they’ll set up a Ghost
Gauntlet and that’ll be the end of us!! They’ll shoot the Island Hotel so
full of ghost holes that the entire place will probably dissolve into another
dimension with us in it! We’ll be stuck there for the rest of eternity!”
At that very moment, the telephone rang and Eddie
nearly jumped out of his shoes. “Yikes! It’s happening already! The ghosts can
hear us through the phones!” That may be true, but when he answered the phone,
it wasn’t the howling screams of a million hungry spirits on the line; it was
the voice of the nice lady with the management company who was calling to tell
us that our problems were over. They had found us another place to stay.
Sayonara, turquoise-roofed Rat Shack!
We packed up the gear and got the heck out of the Rat
Shack! Driving to the main office, we were giving the choice of 2 seaside
houses nearby. So we hopped back into the car and went to check them out. And
so, my dear reader, rest assured that things worked out (for the time being)
and I am now sitting, typing these words into my computer as the waves of the
Gulf of Mexico roll gently toward shore. Eddie is running around inside the new
beach house (which we haven’t christened with a name as of yet). He likes this
place much more than the other one because it looks like a Red Lobster
restaurant on the inside, and it’s not as fancy as the Rat Shack (that sounds
like an oxymoron on multiple counts!).
We haven’t seen any dolphins, however. I imagine that
they’re out there though. Which reminds me, we never came up with names for all
those cute dolphins.
Hmm….
Well, one will have to be Shadowfax…for the van. Another will be Gandalf for 2 counts: 1) being the rider of the horse, Shadowfax,
and 2) for him waging battle with the Balrog, which mirrored Eddie’s
dispatching of the first rat. A third dolphin will be Moses for being the inspiration for the Island Hotel artist. The
fourth would definitely then be Neptune.
Finally, I will call the fifth dolphin, Poseidon.
Even though Neptune and Poseidon are the same person, Eddie mentioned last
night that he thought he remembered reading (perhaps years ago when he read the
Agony and the Ecstasy, by T. H.
White), that Michelangelo fashioned his likeness of Moses after an ancient
Greek statue of Poseidon. (We’ll have to look that up.)
So it comes full circle from sculptures of Poseidon
to the paintings of the Neptune Tavern, from parallel ghost universes to
driving around Edventureland in a van with a big horse painted along its sides,
and from the Rat Shack to the sea hut that’s not as fancy, but looks like a Red
Lobster, and may or may not be infested with rats, mice, cockroaches, bedbugs,
spiders, or the zombie hoards that are floating with the tide just out to sea
who will soon make landfall and proceed to chase us around the unnamed house.
I’ll let you know how that all turns out. – LC
Looking down the street in Cedar Key, Florida.
Looking out to sea from the waterside shops.
A restaurant on the pier.
Fishing docks in Cedar Key.
Sunset in Cedar Key
Apalachicola Bay Oysters!
Eddy Teach's, the raw bar in St. George Island, Florida
