I do reckon not that I’m an easily spooked fellow, but I’ve definitely had a fair share of jump scares in my dog days, dog-gone it.
A few weeks ago, Wally and I came across a video recorder in a state of considerable disrepair. It was at the bottom of a bucket of other relics of the ’90s that a local reporter wanted to sell to us. It was one of those old home video devices, roughly the size and shape of three VHS tapes stacked facewise with a Tamagotchi on either end, representing the one side that you squinted through and the other with the thick lens that recorded the world in 120 pixels. There was a cassette already installed in the side of the device with its tape spooled and pinched by the hatch that opened when you pushed it.
Wally had already sworn off the collection of odds that we found in the bucket because it was all poor and obsolete technology, but I talked him into committing the quiet afternoon to helping me find a way to inspect the contents of whatever might have been captured on the cassette by our friend reporter guy.
I made a quick excursion to my grandparents’ house. They’re the talkative sort. I knew that they still had the fixtures for recording and playing old video tapes, so I snuck in, set an alarm clock off upstairs, waited until they staggered up there to find it, and then scavenged downstairs for their VHS player.
In the late afternoon Wally returned with a TV, and we plugged it all in to the spare outlet in his corner office. We covered the window and huddled in front of the TV, trying to decipher the crude colors on the old screen. It appeared that we were watching a man ride a bicycle at night from his own perspective. Our view was of him careening down a residential street at an incredible pace for a one-handed cyclist, but then we saw each hand appear in turn as he scratched this arm, then that one, peddling all the while. This man must have secured the video camera to his head like a Go Pro somehow. With duct tape? A very long and military-grade bandana?
Our hero came upon one of the nearby city parks. In fact, we could explicitly make out the sign for Weanley Park. He dismounted the bike and immediately set to marching through the dimly lit area. He was heading directly toward the giant hills which profoundly sandwiched the park like bookends made of bread all around meat and cheese in the form of a shelf of books (which were actually the trees in the park). There was a cave of sorts which was coming into view.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I said aloud despite my conscious intention to pay close attention to the footage.
“This is starting to get good,” Wally whispered. I noticed that Wally was snacking on some peanuts that he kept in his desk.
The man practically dove into the cave, a shadowy crevice which for several seconds we could not see. Then his flashlight shot on. Its beam tangoed up and down the walls with surgical resolve, like how a dermatologist’s fingertips dance across his own skin in search of cosmetic discrepancies. As he made progress into the cave, a tangible sense of dread seemed to be embodied by his flashlight as it became shakier and shakier, joltier and joltier, and slower to react to the swivel of his wrist, like a hose that’s been choked whose water stream was growing weaker. He forged in until there was no seeing back out the mouth of the cave.
Then suddenly… a smattering of protrusions manifested along the distance of the visible cave floor. It was only by creeping closer that it became clear to us that it was a skeleton of some decayed beast. Was it a man? A dog? A two-toed ungulate which chews the cud? The bones looked like generic bones, the sort that you might be more likely to find at an Uncle Eagle’s-type store rather than a Brownlee’s.
Then suddenly… a clatter noise hit us from out of the silence and the cameraman collapsed. The camera fell to the ground fast and hard, and the recording petered out to the sound of his gallop out of the cave.
Wally looked at me, pleased with the viewing experience. I, admittedly, suffered from the shocking moment just a little. I suppose I will be receiving a lot of links to Reddit rabbit holes by text this week.
Not Half Good 