“Now this, this is really exciting,” Hamish Daly was jibbering away in front of the camera, on his knees in the middle of a forest holding a cupped hand up for inspection, despite the pitch black night making whatever speck of filth he had found invisible to Greg’s camera.
“This would appear to be waste from the Mothman himself,” as he spoke, Hamish rooted in his find, digging for that conclusive bit of evidence Greg knew wasn’t there, “Now whether this is some kind of ectoplasmic residue from a mystical entity shifting dimensions or the feces of a cryptozoological anomaly is difficult to say,” Greg cringed. For a year and a half he had been traipsing around in the dark with the apply named Ham to haunted prisons, abandoned hospitals, condemned mansions, spooky cemeteries, and once even a pretty nice zoo with a camera on his shoulder, poised to catch the unexplained. So far he had caught two colds and learned he was severely allergic to coyote dander, but the only thing he had witnessed that he couldn’t explain was how Hamish managed to work the word feces into every single adventure. It was starting to get weird.
“But we can tell this: the temperature is slightly elevated from the surrounding soil, making it fresh, and the pH is way off from the norm in this area, making it, most likely, genuine!” Hamish was carefully tucking his find fastidiously into a resealable baggy, which he then stuffed into one of the random pockets that made up his trademark, and very unflattering, vest. The fifty-something-year-old’s outfit choice of camo hunting pants and clashing blue Hawaiian shirt combined with the vest to make him look more like a crazy old fly fisher than any respected scientist, but Greg knew he had the degrees on his wall to prove his claims to legitimacy. Still the Santa Clause beard and threadbare baseball cap (go black sox!) didn’t help either. Not that scooping up handfuls of random dirt that might be feces was doing much for his credibility.
“We must be getting close, very close- what was that?!” Hamish wheeled with surprising grace toward yet another imagined source of yet another imagined sound. Greg sighed to himself even as he dutifully spun and darted his camera’s view about the very ordinary-looking woods, cinéma vérité-style. Tonight’s excursion – hell, every night’s excursion – was chock full of these what-was-that moments. The Producers (capital P) loved them. Gave them a reliable source of what they termed “trailer shots” to fill the promos for next week’s episode. And to lead into commercial breaks. And to lead out of commercial breaks. And to pretty much make up the entire length of the show. What the fuck was Greg doing with his life? Shooting a crap show filled with fake jump scares and bad reactions, that’s what. Jesus, THIS train of thought just got depressing. Gotta think more positive, gonna be a loooooong night.
The show wasn’t all just shots of an old man running from shadows in the dark, of course. A good third of each episode's run time was introduction, laying out the supposed chilling histories of each local, which often involved a hurried hour or two wondering about some fine, if often dilapidated, architecture, getting establishing shots and scenic views for the voice over. Greg enjoyed the solitude of those times. It was always rushed work (the Producers would rather have more shots of the various crew fighting, flirting, or fearful) but the time constraints simply lent a fragility to the experience that made them seem all the more important. Generally, even the long dark of the night was broken up with opportunities to wander off and get some picturesque images of whatever eerie location had been chosen for that installment, but none of that tonight.
Ham had insisted on just Greg and he out in the West Virginia woods tonight, and while Greg had to admit to being overjoyed by the thought of being free of Scared Girl, Over-Acting Psychic, Fat Scared Girl, No Sleeves Guy, Vapid Historical Expert Guy, Scared Guy, Other Scared Girl, Balding In His Twenties and Thus Wearing a Hat Guy, Southern Guy, and Bored Girl (Greg never was good with names, but with that crowd he hadn’t really tried) he was a little wary of the squirrelly nervousness Ham exuded when pressed about his reasons for the solitude.
“B-b-budget-budgetary concerns,” He’d mumble, looking away. For someone who made his living pointing at blurry videos of dust catching the light and claiming it was supernatural, Ham was a startlingly unconvincing liar. What’s your game, feces-boy? What are you not telling me? And most disturbing of all was how readily the Producers had agreed to the abbreviated crew roster. Sure, Greg figured they would lap up the idea of paying fewer folks to wander around in the dark, claiming they just saw something move, but two guys, neither of them terribly “outdoorsy” bumbling around the woods all night, with one of them carrying the monetary equivalent in audio/video equipment of a nice car (that’s a Producer nice car, not a Greg nice car, mind you) with nothing more to guide them than Ham’s cryptozoological instincts? Anyone could see there was more going on here. Ham was keeping something significant up his sleeve, and the only reason Greg wasn’t as concerned as he could have been was the comfort that came from considering a simple question: How bad could it be if it came from the dark recesses of Hamish Daly’s mind?
“Greg, give me some more light over here; I think this could be interesting,” Ham was in full theatrical swing as he poised once again with a lump of filth in his hand. Greg decided to break Ham’s fourth wall, as Ham seemed to be the only one holding it up.
“Ham, what are we doing out here? Searching for lumps of moth man…feces?” Greg looked at the dirt ball Ham proffered. It was always just dirt that he found, but you could never be too careful. After all, a bear does shit in the woods… “Drop that. You don’t know where it’s been.”
Ham sighed and shrank a little from his bold explorer posturing, letting the dark lump drop, and with that moment of silence Greg was worried that he’d gone too far getting testy with the older man. But when Ham spoke again, his tone wasn’t defeated, so much as confessing.
“Your right, Greg. I’m just giving filler until we get closer to our-” Ham hesitated, and a sudden surge of suspicion congealed in Greg’s stomach, “Our real goal,” he finished quietly.
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