Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“We used to have street signs all around here, but the mailman told me they removed them,” he said.

“Who do you mean by they? “ I asked.

“The people who live up there.”

“You mean the Cordova family?

He nodded.

“Why would they remove the road signs?” I asked.

“They don’t want people up there. They like to keep to themselves. That’s what I heard around town. I used to see all kinds of fancy cars driving in and out from midnight till all hours of the morning. Especially in the eighties and nineties. Limos. A Rolls-Royce once. A few times I heard helicopters landing in there. Music, too. But starting in early 2000, it’s been quiet. Never see a soul go in or out.”

According to Garcia, in early December 2004, he received a series of UPS deliveries that were intended for The Peak but, by mistake, were delivered to him. The first was a massive box stamped with a label reading Century Scientific.

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S. McGrath

Interview with Nelson Garcia — April 3, 2006

Century Scientific, Inc., based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is a company that specializes in medical equipment. They vend beds, wheelchairs, stretchers, and other therapeutic devices to private hospitals.

“My daughter sometimes sends me packages, so I signed for it,” Garcia told me. “After the boy drove off, I realized it wasn’t mine.”

“Who was it addressed to?” I asked.

“Someone named Javlin Cross. And the address said 1014 Country Road 112. I’m 33 Country Road 112. I didn’t open it. But it was heavy. I could barely lift it. About four feet high. I guess it was some kind of chair — that was the shape of the box.”

Garcia called UPS and within the hour the package was picked up.

A week later, the driver delivered another box, again for Mr. Javlin Cross.

“The return address said something or other ‘Pharmaceuticals,’” Garcia said. “I told the boy he’d made a mistake. He apologized, said he was new on the job. And that was really the last of it. For a month or two, though, once a week in the afternoon, I’d see the truck drive by and turn in there, bringing them God knows what. I’d wait a few minutes and then I’d hear the real shrill scream of the iron electronic gate opening to let the truck drive up. A piercing hinge so shrill it hurt to listen to. You’d think it’d shatter the TV.” He shook his head. “My guess is someone was sick up there. Or injured.”

Garcia told me he’d probably have forgotten about the mix-up had he not noticed something else strange about a week after the accidental deliveries. He drove his garbage to the Dumpster at the end of the road and noticed a strange odor emitting from the other plastic bags.

“Never smelled anything like it. It was foul. Like burned plastic.”

Garcia said only he and the Cordovas used the disposal site. The week after this observation, he noticed no other trash bags had appeared, and to this day, he’s the lone user of the bin.

“Now they set fire to all their garbage,” he said. “You can smell it when it’s hot at night. Burning. And sometimes when the wind’s blowing southeast I can even see the smoke.”

I asked Garcia if he’s ever seen any of Cordova’s films. He shook his head.

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S. McGrath

Interview with Nelson Garcia — April 3, 2006

“I’ll get nightmares,” he said.

“In his film Isolate 3 ,” I explained, “there’s a man being held in captivity against his will. A former convict that the main character has to hunt down and free. His name is Javlin Cross — the name on those packages you received.”

Garcia nodded, thinking this over.

“What’s the consensus in town about the Cordovas?” I asked.

“What d’you mean?”

“What do people say about him? About the property?”

“No one likes to talk about it. Don’t know why. But they don’t. See, how it works up here is, everyone minds their own business.”

He had nothing more to add and looked ready to settle in watching Wheel of Fortune , so I thanked him for his time and left.

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S. McGrath

Kate Miller

May 28, 2003

5:30 am

On May 28, 2003, at 5:30 AM, sixty-two-year-old Kate Miller was walking along deserted Old Forge Road in Bainville, New York, a small resort town a hundred miles north of Albany and forty-five minutes from Crowthorpe Falls.

It was the end of a long night. Miller worked at the front desk during the all-night “witching shift” at Forest View Motel, a vacation resort south of town. Every morning, regardless of rain or snow, six days a week, Miller hiked the two miles from the motel to Bainville’s Main Street in order to catch the Trailways bus that took her twenty miles north to Danville, where she lived with her husband and twelve-year-old grandson.

Old Forge is a narrow two-lane road that heads toward town at a steep incline. Its hairpin curves are notorious spots for car accidents — mostly local teenagers or tourists. Miller told me she was two miles from town, walking on the left side of the street, facing oncoming traffic, when a silver sports sedan careened past her in the right-hand lane.

“I thought it was a drunk driver [because] he was all over the road,” she said. “He disappeared around the bend, there was silence, then a crash, glass shattering, and a cracking noise. The horn was going off, too.”

She hurried toward the accident, though the arthritis in her knees prevented her from running. Less than a minute later she saw what had happened: Miscalculating a turn, the driver had lost control of the car and collided with a hemlock standing at an eight-foot drop off the road.

The car was severely smashed, and a blond woman in her fifties was crawling on her hands and knees up the dirt bank to the street. She was badly shaken, but didn’t appear to be injured apart from scrapes on her face and arms.

“She was crying. And shaking all over. I asked if she had her phone on her but she said she’d left it at home. I’ve never had a cellphone.

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S. McGrath

Kate Miller

So I said I’d go straight into town and call an ambulance. I asked if there was anyone else with her, and she shook her head.”

Miller continued down Old Forge, but not before she stepped to the road’s edge and looked inside the car again.

“This time I noticed there was someone lying in the backseat,” she said. “A large man all in black, unconscious, covered in bandages. They were all over his arms and face. They looked bloody. But I didn’t stop to argue — she’d just been in a wreck after all and probably didn’t know what she was saying. I decided to get help as fast as I could.”

Fifty minutes elapsed between the time Miller walked the two miles, dialed 911 from a gas station, and an ambulance and police arrived at the scene. They found a woman who identified herself as Astrid Goncourt. The car, a silver 1989 Mercedes, was empty.

Goncourt admitted she’d been speeding, submitted to a Breathalyzer test, and passed. Police saw no sign anyone else had been with her in the car. She was treated at a local hospital for minor cuts and scrapes, and hours later, discharged.