Specious Reasoning: Cedar Key, parts 1

Contributor:
LeTigre – Edmund’s wife, televangelist, lives in St. Louis Park.

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part 1

On one of our many trips to Florida to visit Kidpowertool, Eddie and I spent four days in Cedar Key. The town of Cedar Key is situated on Northern Florida’s gulf coast within a massive marine wildlife sanctuary. The town dates back to before the Civil War and many of the buildings from that era are still standing and being used. Soldiers from the Northern army had used the hotel we stayed at as an outpost during the war. It’s a quaint little town that tourism hadn’t destroyed as it has so many other coastal areas of Florida.

We arrived in town at about 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday in July of 1996. We had called ahead for reservations and were informed during our conversation with the hotel owner that as it was their down season, no one else was currently booked to stay at the hotel. In fact, the owner told us that they’ve taken to not working on Sundays and that when we arrived in town, there would be no one at the hotel to greet us. She instructed me that she would leave a key to the back door of the building in a flowerpot on the grounds. We were to let ourselves in, make ourselves at home, and someone would be by our room in the morning to check us in and see if we needed anything. I thought to myself, “Wow, this place must be in the middle of nowhere.”

We made our way into town that night, found the hotel, found the back door, found the flowerpot, and sure enough the key awaited us. Eddie and I climbed an exterior set of stairs to a second floor doorway, unlocked the door, and entered the building. The doorway opened up to a large parlor with a fireplace and couches and chairs. Doors to the individual guest rooms lined the walls of this richly decorated room. It was a beautiful, warm room with deep, intricate woodwork and soft, sepia-toned murals of the local swampy landscape covering the walls. There were bookshelves lined with books, antique lamps, and worn area rugs covering the hardwood floor. To our left was a grand staircase that led down to the main lobby of the hotel, across which was a small tavern on the first floor called The Neptune Tavern. (Eddie was especially pleased to find the Neptune Tavern the next day…it had a large portrait behind the bar of King Neptune himself, complete with trident, commanding the sea and all its creatures.)

Directly across the room from the grand staircase, and to our right, was the room we had reserved. Eddie and I stood and looked around the parlor, taking in all of its intricacies. His gaze eventually landed on the door to our room. One second after that, his gaze shifted slightly to the left and down to where it found a life-size doll that looked exactly like a four year old girl. It stood about three feet high and she had her back to the wall. It was dressed in a little pink outfit with stockings and shoes. The material that was used to make her hands and head was very realistic looking. And the expression on her face was also very natural looking. Given that dolls are usually exaggerated in some way, like having an extravagant dress, or a porcelain face, this doll lacked any kind of flamboyancy, and for all intensive purposes looked normal and somewhat plain. It was if she was a real little girl, frozen while standing right next to the door to our room. Eddie looked to me and I could tell without him making a sound that he was freaking out on the inside.

Eddie set the bags he was carrying on the floor of the parlor and said, “I don’t know about this.” He then proceeded to walk over to the doll. Crouching down, he addressed her eye to eye. “This is too much. I can’t sleep in a room knowing that this is directly on the other side of the door. What if she starts knocking on the door in the middle of the night?” We looked blankly at each other for a moment or two as I ran through my mind the layout of the town while trying to remember if I had seen any other hotels. There were none.

Reaching out both his hands toward the doll, Eddie said, “Perhaps it’d be okay if we just moved her to some other location.” He then proceeded to pick her up by her shoulders. “My god! The thing weighs as much as a girl of her age…and the weight is distributed evenly throughout her body like a real person. There’s a density to the form that isn’t soft like it would be if she were stuffed with cotton or something. This is not good.” He walked outside the door that we had entered the building from and set the doll down on the landing. He stood up, looked at the doll, looked over at me, looked again to the doll and said, “I don’t know if this works. She might get mad that we stuck her outside. What if it rains?”

Picking up the doll a second time, he moved back into the parlor and to the far end of the room…as far from our door as possible. “Hey, there’s a little nook back here that I could stick her in.” He set the doll down and stood back once again. From across the room, I watched him as the expression on his face went from mildly satisfied to worried once again. “No, this doesn’t feel right either.” Whereupon, Eddie picked up the doll for a third time and began to move her to another part of the room. I watched him go through this same exact process at about five or six other spots in the parlor.

Eventually, despite all of his attempts to move the doll to a new location away from our room, we stood a few feet apart. Eddie was still holding the doll and I was trying to hold onto my patience. Each time he set the doll somewhere, he got a little more worried that she wouldn’t be happy in that new spot, and therefore she would exact her terrible revenge upon him late that night whilst he slept. “Maybe I should just put her back where she was when we got here.” He then moved toward our door and crouched down to return her to her home. “I’ll just turn her around to face the wall though, then she’s not watching us while we’re out here.” And there the doll was left with her face toward the wall.

Our guest room was like something straight out of Gone with the Wind. It had the four-post covered bed, with mosquito netting draping down, an old-fashioned sink and washbowl, antique wooden dressers and tables. It was beautiful and extremely well maintained. There was also a door in the room that opened to a wide balcony that wrapped itself around the entire second floor of the building. After getting settled in a bit, we went out to sit and read our books on the balcony and listen to the sounds of the night. I don’t know if there where more than a couple hundred people living in Cedar Key, so it was very quite and peaceful that night. Of course Eddie wouldn’t shut up all night about the doll. I told him that he was making things worse for himself by perseverating on the matter. I don’t think that he slept much that night.

The next morning, Eddie woke up before the owners had arrived at the hotel. I awoke to see him climb out of bed and I watched as he crept toward the door. He paused at the door to listen for any sounds of life or movement within the hotel. After a moment, he opened the door slightly to see if there was anyone in the parlor. Opening the door a bit further, he bent down and with one eye he peeked out into the parlor. Immediately he stood back and closed the door quickly, but silently. “The doll is facing the stairs again! How the hell did that happen?” He stood there frozen in his underwear as he stared blankly at me. I thought back to what should be done to treat someone whose having a stroke. We then heard voices. The owners were downstairs and other people were checking into the hotel at the front desk. Across from the Neptune Tavern the noise of clinking plates and silverware emanated from the hotel dining room as they set up for breakfast. Eddie cracked the door open again and peered out. “I don’t know how we lived through the night.” Adding to his sentiment I wondered how I was going to get through the day with this madman whom I was trapped with in the middle of nowhere. – LC

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part 2

We stayed three nights in Cedar Key, Florida. To this day, I don’t know why I have such great memories of that trip. Perhaps, I remember the place fondly because the phrase “terrible experience” is often replaced by the word “adventure” in one’s memory. Adventure carries connotations of exploration, bizarre encounters, and heroic behavior. It’s a word that implies a “road less traveled” sort of thing…but let’s face it, a vacation that involves taking the road less traveled usually means that when you get home, you’ll need another vacation to recover from the vacation.

As it turned out, our hotel at Cedar Key was indeed haunted. The owners told us that a woman from the time of the Civil War was still occupying the building. She had been seen several times in the hotel restaurant kitchen and was known to move furniture around at night. Eddie began to ask about the life-like little girl doll that the hotel owners had standing quietly in the parlor next to our guestroom door. But he stopped short before verbalizing the question that was paramount on his mind. In a rare display of restraint, Eddie held his tongue before his fears of what could be were replaced with the terror of knowing what was is indeed a fact. He didn’t ask them if the ghost was capable of possessing this doll.

In the movies, the implication of a specter or demon is always more scary than a detailed view of the monster. Our minds can fabricate a horror that is much more intense and real than anything that can be shown to us on film. However, in real life, thinking that a ghost might possess a doll is scary, but that is nothing compared to knowing, without a doubt in your mind, that the entire time you lay in your bed, there is a 19th century woman in a little girl’s body scampering around the parlor just outside the door to your room. She’s muttering and swearing under her cold breath as she searches for knives or pick-axes or chainsaws. Or worse, she’s in the parlor arranging all the people she’s killed over the past one hundred years on the antique chairs and couches. She then serves them tea and little cakes under the flickering glow of the fireplace and the scratchy sounds of a Joplin ragtime playing on a spooky old phonograph. What if the owners of the hotel had told us that every once in a while she likes to add a few new people to her tea party of the damned? What if these suspicions were confirmed? You only want to imagine that stuff like that is possible, as opposed to knowing that it is imminent that you will play the protagonist in a tragedy that would be acted out entirely for HER pleasure.

The town of Cedar Key had many other adventures in store for us. The hotel had a wonderful covered balcony that wrapped around the entire second floor of the building. There, Eddie and I spent many hours relaxing and reading books above the street and under the warm Florida sunshine. But we were on the Gulf Coast, and being so close to the ocean made us long for a beach to sit on to while away our days in leisure. Unfortunately, the town itself had no sandy beachfront. It was built around a port that sponge fishermen had founded long ago. And since the area was deemed to be a marine wildlife sanctuary, no development of the coast had taken place for years. Inquiring at the hotel, we were told by the manager that we could charter a boat to take us out to one of the countless islands in the bay. There, she said, we would find some of the best beaches anywhere on Earth. Intrigued, we decided to take her up on her recommendation, and we made our way to the harbor that afternoon.

Seeing the harbor and its fleet of fishing boats, I thought, “This will be exciting! Going out to some island on one of these big boats with some salty captain will be grand!” Arriving at the docks, we were greeted by a sea captain who introduced himself as Creek Runner Bill. Creek Runner Bill was salty, but he didn’t quite match the strong, chiseled features I had imagined in my Captain of the Sea. He was more of a sinewy character, with a lean build and medium height. He was wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts, a wide-brimmed hat and flip-flop sandals. His skin was tan, leathery, and tough looking due to his many years working as a fisherman under the intense Florida sunshine. He had a wide, cheerful smile, and was an instantly likeable fellow. The boat we were to charter was a skiff, or a dingy, with a little outboard motor at one end. It seemed seaworthy enough, I thought. I looked over at Eddie and I could see that we were soon to set sail in this motorboat because he was extending a ten-dollar bill to our salty captain whose grin was assuring us that we were in good hands.

We managed to get into the boat with no difficulty. And as the skiff headed out to sea, I could tell that Creek Runner Bill was at home as he piloted us through the low surf of the harbor waters. I looked out into the bay and saw what seemed like hundreds of small islands peppered about in the distance. Moving beyond the “no wake zone” of the harbor, Creek Runner Bill gunned the motor and we began to zip across the water.

As we reached the center of the bay, I looked back to shore and saw that the town had become a series of little dots on the horizon. Turning back to look off the bow of the boat, a small strip of land, far away in the distance, was pointed out as our destination. “But first,” our captain yelled, as he promptly killed the power to the outboard motor, “let’s stop for a little while here.” The boat slowed to a complete stop as I wondered what he had in mind for us out in the middle of the bay (far, far away from any land). He then said, “Hop out of the boat!”

I looked quickly over at Eddie and then together we looked at Creek Runner Bill. We found him at the helm with a mischievous look in his eye. I thought, “Oh no, this is the part where he throws us out of the boat after taking all or money!” I could just see him and our hotel manager laughing at the stupid greenhorns…laughing and high-fiving each other over their murderous and profitable scheme. The perfect crime! “Them Yankees just keep getting stupider and stupider!”

As I was about to scream, Creek Runner Bill stood up, and with the agility of a gazelle, he leapt out of the boat. He did not, however, disappear into the depths of the water, but rather, he landed on his feet in about two inches of water! He stood there for a moment, and then turning to us, he said, “We’re on a sandbar. It’s just barely covered by the water. Let’s walk around for a while…it’s a great place to find sand dollars.”

Eddie and I proceed to climb excitedly out of the skiff and onto the sandy ocean floor. The water barely covered the tops of my feet! It was surreal to walk around in the middle of the bay at least a mile from land in any direction. The glorious sunshine made the turquoise water sparkle and the 360° view was unmatched by anything I could imagine. Plus, there were indeed sand dollars all over the place. I could feel them out with my toes as they were just beneath the soft sand. I looked over to Eddie, who was about twenty-five feet from me, and he exclaimed, “Look! I’m Jesus!” He then mimed the famous story of Jesus walking on the water. From my vantage point, it did look like he was treading on the surface of the ocean. But I thought to myself, “There isn’t a cloud in the sky, but that idiot better watch what he says before the Big Man Upstairs decides to set him straight with a few lightening bolts.”

After exploring the sandbar for a while, we got back into to the boat and Creek Runner Bill shuttled us over to where our tropical island paradise awaited our arrival. As we approached, the details of its landscape began to emerge into view. The main body of the isle was formed by a thick stand of palm trees that towered into the air with a deep blue sky forming a magnificent backdrop. The white, powdery sand of the beach extended fifty feet out from these trees before it touched the water as it made a ring around the small island. A seagull soared briefly into view and then off into the distance on its search for whatever a seagull eats. The only sound in the air was that of Creek Runner Bill’s motor, and I knew that soon we would only have the slight rustling of palm fronds to serenade us. I looked to where we had come from and I could just make out a tiny sliver of land that the town of Cedar Key occupied.

“Aaaaaaah, The Grail!”

Creek Runner Bill landed the boat and we gathered up our gear. He walked us across the beach saying that we weren’t allowed to go into the brush on the island on account of it being protected land. We were to restrict ourselves to the sandy beach and the water. He saw that we had all our supplies (drinking water, lunch, beach towels, suntan lotion, etc.) and began to walk back to the boat. “I’ll be back to pick you up in three hours.” And with that said, he drove the little boat off into the distance and out of sight.

“Wow! This is amazing!” proclaimed Eddie. “We are in the middle of nowhere! I wonder if there is any pirate treasure buried anywhere along this beach? Swag!” I looked across the blue-green ocean and felt the hot sun and cool breeze on my face. The warm sand sifted between my toes and I thought to myself, “I hope that guy comes back for us.” In truth though, I was too overwhelmed by the beauty of our setting to spend any serious time dwelling on a negative thought like that. I’ve been on a lot of beaches with Eddie, but none were ever this isolated and remote. The island seemed completely untouched by human beings…there were no bottles or candy bar wrappers in the sand, no sounds of cars or some kid’s radio, no scary-looking teenagers, no freaks throwing a Frisbee around. Nothing. Nothing but the sand, the palm trees, the ocean, the sun, and occasionally a bird!

We established a base camp of beach towels midway between the palm trees and the water’s edge. We had food to snack on and a few bottles of water. I got myself comfortable with my book after applying a nice layer of suntan lotion to my exposed skin. Eddie did the same with the suntan lotion, but he decided to hit the water right away. This was just about perfect. I didn’t have a care in the world as I adjusted my sunglasses and turned the pages of my Puffy Shirt Book. A fly landed on my arm and I thought, “Aha! I have come prepared for this!” I fished a small bottle of bug juice from my bag and began to spray it around to ward off any further annoyances. Returning to the base camp, and seeing the bug spray, Eddie said, “I wouldn’t have thought to bring bug spray. You’ve got everything in that bag, LeTigre. I swear, there’s nothing you don’t come prepared for!” As he helped himself to a bottle of water, he said, “Hey, I think that there's a dolphin swimming around a little ways out.” He then ran back into the ocean, crying aloud about being Aquaman or someone.

That fly that had lit upon me flew away after I applied my bug spray. But don’t think that it was because he feared the repellant. I think that the little guy flew away to find his friends and exclaimed that there was something new and wonderful sitting on the beach. Because after a few minutes had passed, a swarm of horseflies descended upon me. It was terrible. They were huge! And they went right for me despite my efforts to swat at them! Eddie has an uncle who once told me that the mosquitoes in Northern Wisconsin were so big that they carried violin cases to hold their stingers. These horseflies looked to be carrying cello cases containing all manner of medieval stinging and biting devices! I momentarily withstood their attacks but was soon forced to abandon base camp and head for the safety of the water.

Finding Eddie knee-deep in the cool water, I told him about the horseflies. He was watching the dolphin swim back and forth in front of us about thirty feet away. I followed his unblinking gaze and said, “That’s no dolphin. That’s a shark!” He turned to address my profile, “That’s two sharks.” We both watched as the trademark dorsal fins of a large shark and a larger shark swam side-by-side just beyond where the water began to deepen. The larger shark, which we guessed to be the mommy-shark had a second tail fin emerging from the water about eight feet beyond her dorsal fin. They were tracking back and forth, back and forth, directly in front of where we stood, not coming any closer, yet not moving further out to sea. “I don’t think the water’s a good place to hang out in.” And with that said, Eddie and I began to move toward shore.

Once back on land, and safe from the sharks, the horseflies attacked us full-bore. They had recruited more of their allies and dive-bombed us from all directions. Eddie moved back out into the water a few feet. I stayed on land, determined to take a stand against the wretched flies. “Hey, the flies won’t go over the water!” Eddie stood in about three inches of water observing the lack of flies biting him. I ran over to where he was, and sure enough, no flies. The ocean was calm and there were no waves to shift the border between land and sea. Tempting the flies, I walked right up to where the water met the dry sand. They would not cross over the water’s edge! Taking one step onto the beach, the viscous flies descended upon me once again. Stepping back into the water a bit, and they were nowhere to be found. “Those little buggers will not fly over the water! That’s crazy!”

The two of us stood six inches from shore wondering why the flies wouldn’t dare journey out over the water. “Maybe they’re afraid of the sharks, like I am.” Eddie turned back to confirm that the sharks were still were still maintaining their incessant course, waiting, hoping for us to wonder out a little deeper. Looking down to gather his thoughts, Eddie put forth the next relevant question pertaining to our situation: “What is that?”

Looking down I saw what looked like a small, lightly colored grey, diamond-like-square shape. It was moving almost as if it was flying…or more accurately: it was like a taco, a prehistoric taco, that was flapping its square tortilla shell to propel itself and glide through the water. It was no more than six inches across as it flew from our right to the left, about three feet from where we stood. “That looks like a stingray. It’s got those wings, and a long tail, and it’s gliding through the water. It must be a baby. Hey, there’s another one!” I looked to the right and sure enough, there was the baby stingray’s little bother or sister. “And there’s another one! And another! And another! And another! Holy crap!”

What came to be known as StingRay HighWay turned out to be a single file line of baby stingrays following each other through the water, about eighteen inches apart. They appeared to be swimming counter-clockwise around the island. StingRay HighWay was about three and a half feet from shore and it looked like the 405 running through Los Angeles with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Eddie and I looked at each other. “Okay. I don’t know if we’ve been here twenty minutes, and we’ve got horseflies on the beach, sharks out in the water, and StingRay HighWay just off shore. We’ve got a strip of water about three feet wide that seems to be safe. When did that guy say he was coming back for us?” We stood in that spot for two and a half hours.

Watching the sharks was mesmerizing. (They probably hoped that they could hypnotize us into venturing out into deeper waters.) The stingrays glided by, the sun beat down, and occasionally that stupid bird flew overhead. We waited. I think that I’ve blanked from my memory how we passed that stretch of time. Occasionally, one of us would try the land, only to be beaten back into the water by the dreadful horseflies. And the water was only deep enough to barely cover the tops of our feet. Hundreds of stingrays paraded by us on their oceanic speedway encircling the island. After what seemed like an eternity, the sounds of Creek Runner Bill’s boat motor began to fill the air. As the vessel drew near, the sputtering coughs and gurgles of the outboard motor overwhelmed the grueling tranquility of the rustling palm fronds.

Thinking back to that situation, I have no idea what possessed us to be left on a deserted island for three hours by a guy whom we’d only just met. Hasn’t a great deal of classic literature been devoted to the subject of Man vs. Nature? And Man usually doesn’t fair too well in those books, does he? As Creek Runner Bill’s boat approached, I saw that he had two additional passengers with him. I guess he’d been ferrying people like us out to these little islands all day. Getting in the boat, I thought that they also looked a little spooked and I wondered what sort of adventure in paradise they had found that afternoon. I can only imagine that we looked completely shocked and totally out of sorts. Glad to be aboard, Eddie took his place at the bow and I sat back with the two new people toward the stern.

Creek Runner Bill idled the boat through the shallow water away from our island of terror. I told him that we had seen sharks just out from the beach. “Oh, I saw those, they’re all over the place out here. They’re only Tiger sharks though, it’s the Hammerhead’s that you’ve got to watch out for.” I noticed his alligator-like skin once more and imagined him swimming fearlessly through the ocean depths with a knife clenched between his teeth. I was daydreaming about Creek Runner Bill waging war against a giant octopus or something when he gunned the motor and up out of the water came a massive splash and a large black square, both of which blocked the sun for a moment before disappearing back into the ocean. Eddie was thrown back off his perch at the bow of the boat as he yelled, “HOLY MOTHER!”

The four of us city slickers sitting in the boat had a series of individual heart attacks while Creek Runner Bill calmly shifted the toothpick in his mouth and said, “Stingrays are all over the place out here too." As we had traveled out of the shallows, and into deeper waters, Creek Runner Bill had kicked the motor into high gear and the bow of the boat had surprised a humongous, fully-grown stingray! It reared up and breached the surface of the water not two feet from where Eddie sat! The monster must have shot five feet into the air!

We made it safely and without any further incident back to the harbor at Cedar Key. I thought Eddie looked like Ponce de León must have after the long trip across the Atlantic as he hugged and kissed the dock after we had disembarked from Creek Runner Bill’s skiff. In kindness, we thanked him for facilitating our little adventure and began to make our way back to the hotel. We rejoiced in every step as it brought us closer to the comforts of the hotel and further away from those terrible sea creatures that had unwittingly tortured us all afternoon. Arriving back at our room, I flopped down on the bed and cried, “We made it! I can’t believe we made it!”

“I’ll be in The Neptune Tavern.” Eddie said, as he moved back toward the door. I replied, “Wait for me!”

Warily, we descended the stairs to the first floor of the hotel to where the Neptune Tavern awaited our arrival. Finding two stools at the bar, Eddie asked if they had shark or stingray on the menu. “I don’t even know if they eat stingray around here.” In lieu of appetizers of cold revenge, we were given two frosty beers. We then took our seats at a table near a large picture window overlooking the bay. I could barely make out the individual islands far off in the distance, and I wondered which had been the isle that had held us captive by our own stupidity.

The sun was beginning to dip down below the horizon, and everything was turning colors of pink and amber. We watched as the setting sun wowed us with overwhelming displays of hue and color that the greatest Masters could never have hoped to emulate with paint. It was a stunning view to say the least. Stunning, but as we had learned, also deadly…stunning and deadly like a spy in one of those James Bond movies.

We sipped at our beers and watched the atmospheric ballet of color and light play out for our pleasure. Our blood pressures seemed to be normalizing as the stress of the afternoon was waning along with the sunlight. Someone played a Boz Scaggs tune on the jukebox as darkness began push the panoramic view into obscurity. With the dazzling light show almost at its end, Eddie turned to me and quietly said, “You know, from now on, I prefer my nature on the other side of a plate-glass window.” – LC

Looking north, up the beach of the Island of Terror.

An easterly view from the island showing Cedar Key in the distance.

One of the smaller palm trees in the "protected" part of the island.

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Part 3

by Le Tigre Callipeaux – 3 January 2012

Tuesday, 4:30 p.m. – St. George Island, Florida

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!

Thursday, 11:30 a.m. – St. George Island, Florida

There was a rat in the sea shack last night!

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