The balled-up sweatshirt crammed against the cool glass of the Amtrak window did little to comfort me. I stared out the window, letting the vibrations jostle my skull, trying to keep my head clear. I reached down between my legs and felt my backpack, something to quell my mind of the thought that it may just disappear from underneath me.
I had messaged The Buyer online on a site I won’t mention. Only after a couple days of trading messages and the eventual reception of a holding payment did I feel comfortable enough to buy a round-trip ticket to D.C.
It wasn’t hard sneaking past my dad. The pills put him to sleep hours before I left. We have been staying with his parents since everything that happened. We couldn’t stay at our house even if we wanted to. At this moment I was grateful though, moving a couple states south had saved me a couple hundred bucks on these tickets. I’d rather be anywhere than home right now.
A real fat guy was sitting next to me. I felt the heat of his body on my left arm. He stared down at his phone, scrolling through video after video of young girls dancing on some app. His eyes were being pummeled with a deluge of teens smiling and twirling. He wheezed with each breath, adding another nuisance. His chubby Pringle dust-covered finger smudged his screen as his insatiable appetite remained unfilled. I can hear the bass of the pop songs through his cheap earbuds. I wondered if this is who girls picture when they upload these videos. This tub of lard huffing away as he opens his second pack of Skittles.
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and found a message from The Buyer:
Driver will pick you up.
I liked the message, just letting him know I got it. It was hard to get a read on him through our encrypted text. I was careful with who I responded to on the forum. Most of the people on there were blowhards, each wanting to one-up the other. I thought they were all full of shit. Probably regular edgelords who thought using Tor browser to buy pills made them Ross Ulbricht.
The Buyer was the only DM I got that actually seemed to genuinely want to plan a sale. Everyone else wanted me to email the video over. That was an absolute non-starter. I needed this video out of my possession completely. If it ever went public it wouldn’t take Sherlock to come knocking on my door. So no electronic trail. I don’t care what sort of encryption, VPN nonsense they suggested. Most balked at this requirement, called me a scammer. The Buyer asked if I could get to D.C.
I stepped out of Union Station into a windy night at the Capitol. I had only ever been there as a stop during a family trip to the Outer Banks in middle school. I spent most of the vacation with my brother. Our cousins were all older than us and thought he was weird. We would walk the beach together, not really saying anything, just showing each other shells or stuff that washed up on the shore. I never thought he was weird. I still don’t really.
I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find the driver. That fear was dashed when I saw the most stereotypical-looking private driver I’ve ever seen. He was a white guy, probably forty-something, wore a suit with a black cap on his head. He nodded at me as I walked down the stairs.
“Are you-“
He raised his hand, stopping me.
“Yes. I am.”
He opened the back seat of the black Cadillac parked on the curb. I slipped into the car, clutching my backpack to my chest. I watched the driver walk around the car, only then did it occur to me my situation. I didn’t really know who he was, where I am going, or who I was meeting. I thought back to my dad, probably slumped in his dad’s lounge chair, drool leaking from his medicated lips as the T.V. plays an infomercial. I thought about the money, the $2,000 I was sent just to prove The Buyer was real, the $25,000 I was promised for the sale. I thought to my dad crying, telling his mom he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for the lawyers.
The door thudded shut behind the driver. Without speaking he started the car and peeled away from the station.
We drove in silence, I stared out the window, watching my lanyard-clad peers stroll down the street, laughing and smiling, probably deciding on what bar to hit that night. A tinge of jealousy hit my core. I had only been in college for a couple months, I knew damn well I wasn’t going back anytime soon, so it was like watching a tangent future pass me by.
“We are going to a hotel first.”
I looked up at the driver.
“What?”
“We are stopping at a hotel first.”
“Oh… ok.”
I shuffled in my seat.
“So, your brother did that school up in Maine?”
I saw the driver’s eyes zone in on me in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah.”
“And your mom too?”
I nodded.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks.”
The exchange actually helped put me at ease. I think the driver was the first non-family member to say that to me. I understood why, obviously, but especially considering what replaced the sorry’s it felt good to hear.
We walked right past the concierge and into the lobby elevator. The hotel room was on the fifth floor, Room 515. The driver reached into his pocket and pulled out two pairs of white gloves. He handed a pair to me.
“Put these on.”
I obliged. Only after he saw me slip the fabric over my fingers did he use his key card to open the door. I was surprised to see that the room was empty.
The driver opened the drawer on the bedside table and pulled out a brand-new laptop. He peeled the plastic casing off of the screen before noticing my confusion.
“I have to check the video first. He needs to know it’s real. Can’t risk having some scammer show up on his front door you know?”
I didn’t know but I nodded anyway. I placed my backpack on the bed. I pulled out a hard drive, the one I was previously using for college. The driver was sitting at the desk, typing away on the laptop. He looked over his shoulder and clocked the drive, with a head nod he motioned to bring it over.
I stood over his shoulder as he slipped the chord into the USB dock. I had deleted everything else off of it, at request of The Buyer. Only the file to_James.mp4 remained. I felt my heart jump when the cursor hovered over the icon.
I initially thought the video was a suicide note. I was expecting to see my brother telling my parents and me that none of this was our fault. That he just couldn’t take life anymore. Maybe allude to some sort of bullying we weren’t aware of. Watching it again I was able to focus on his room, the cluttered mess, boxes of books piled up. He liked to read, mostly history. War stuff. He shared a few books with me but I was never much of a reader.
My eyes look at his as his rant turns towards a girl, one of the victims. How she took advantage of him, used him for kindness then tossed him away. There were times I worried my brother was gay. I had never seen him show any interest in girls. I thought it would just make life harder on him. We never talked about girls. Even when I had my first girlfriend he never asked about her.
He pulled the pistol out at this point. This is at the heart of the lawsuit. My dad’s, really my parents’ home security measure. Both had said that felt more comfortable having one in the house, in case anything happened. Whenever I was in their room and saw the safe underneath my dad’s nightstand a chill ran through me. That feeling of staring over the railing on a skyscraper. You feel that sense of danger, that any wrong move and it is over.
My dad never noticed it was missing. None of us suspected that instead of going to his friend’s house for the weekend he had traveled to a gun show, out of state. How could we have known underneath his bed he had an arsenal?
His eyes keep darting down toward his desk. He is reading a lot from a paper. He quotes Adolf Hitler, Elliot Rodgers, Brenton Tarrant, William Pierce, some of the most disgusting things I have ever heard. Yet coming from my brother’s mouth it almost looks natural. Like he is giving a dissertation, not a manifesto. He knows these words inside and out. There was no shakiness, timidity, his trademark stammer, it all washed away as he let the things he truly believed in take over.
There is a sudden cut. The image now shifting to our second floor hallway. My brother is holding the camera in one hand. He points it at the wall, my high school graduation picture is right there. The camera lingers on it, in silence. What was he thinking?
A clatter causes the camera to whirl around. My mom is in the kitchen, cleaning up breakfast. In about 12 hours, a bomb control officer will find her there.
When I first watched it something in my brain didn’t put the logic together. I knew what he did, yet I thought this tape was something else. What? I have no idea. I stared, frozen, as he crept down the stairs.
I looked at the driver’s face. He gave me nothing, he might as well have been sleeping with his eyes open. I turned away, I knew I couldn’t watch this again. I covered my ears, but I could still hear her scream, then laugh about being scared, then scream for real. The pistol was found on the counter, all ammo spent.
I heard the laptop click shut.
“It’s real.”
I nodded.
“You wait here, I need to make a call. Then we will go. Ok?”
“Sure.”
When I got in the car the driver opened the glove compartment and pulled out a sleep mask.
“Put this one and pull it tight.”
I had come this far, if he was going to steal the video he would have done it already. So I agreed.
The silk was comfortable but not being able to see made me car sick. My head spun, I lost my sense of direction.
“Hey, I’m not feeling too great back here.”
“Don’t take the mask off. It isn’t much farther.”
He told me that every 15 minutes. I took deep breaths, trying to center myself a little. Settle my body down.
I couldn’t take the blindfold off until I walked in the front door. From underneath the thick black cloth I watched my step on the nicely paved walkway, noticed areas of woodchips scattered along the sides of the footpath. A couple glimpses of flowers. We were a long way outside the city, the ride had lasted almost two hours. No traffic based on how smooth the ride was. I was anxious, I didn’t tell my dad what I was doing. I said I was heading to a friend’s house and he just stared.
Once I was inside the driver told me to take the blindfold off.
“Stay here. I’ll go get him. Don’t touch anything.”
I nodded and watched him ascend the spiral staircase to the second floor. I looked up at the shimmering chandelier dangling from the ceiling. The room was white marble, or at least made to look like white marble. I obeyed and didn’t touch anything so who knows if it was just a design choice. The floor was definitely marble done, hard and adding to the cold.
Beneath my feet was a seal, a picture of the earth with a red ring orbiting it. There was a navy blue border around the image with the words “Supra Et Ultra” repeating around it. Seemed custom, expensive. I made sure not to step on it, a classic college orientation superstition. Avoid stepping here, or touching this statue, or else you’ll never graduate. I figured now was not the time to tempt any karmic influences in the air.
“Hello.”
His voice was soft, monotone, non-threatening. It retained an eerie quality, it was too high an octave, too relaxed to come from the six-foot-eight rail-thin man descending the staircase. His suit, despite appearing to be tailored, dangled just enough from his frame to show how gaunt he was. His facial skin was stretched thin, allowing his cheekbones to protrude, giving him a very triangular pointy vibe. His smile was small, barely even registering.
“Hi.”
“I want to thank you for coming. When I buy something over the internet, I’m sure you know how it is, there’s some anxiety.”
“I get it.”
He stood at the bottom of the stairs. He pulled a travel-sized bottle of Purell out of his jacket pocket and squirted it onto his palms. He rubbed his hands together, staring at me.
“This house is crazy.”
He smirked.
“It can be.”
He motioned for me to follow him. I walked a few paces behind as we entered the bowels, giving me a better idea of the size of this place. It seemed to be an expansive mansion, it was hard to tell where the outer walls were, every room bled into the next, many without windows into the outside world.
Paintings hung in every room, I never got a great glimpse. The only one I recognized enough to find on Google later was The Isle of The Dead.
We arrived at an elevator where the driver was waiting. He handed me a paper bag. The Buyer explained to me while pulling a pair of latex gloves and an N95 mask from his front chest pocket.
“I’m sorry to be so particular, but we are about to enter a climate-controlled environment. You see, some of the physical objects down there are very sensitive to moisture, like from our breath, and oils, like from our fingers. These items cannot be replaced.”
It was no problem to me so I put the gloves and mask on before stepping into the elevator. I remember thinking it was fitting that the elevator was going down.
The elevator reached the bottom but the door didn’t open. The Buyer, without turning to me, just spoke.
“I must say, if for anyone reason you’re uncomfortable with selling me your tape let me know now. We can go back upstairs, we can drive you to the station, and my account will disappear.”
“I’m good.”
“What I am about to show you I show everyone I buy from, when it is possible that is. I want you to know you are entering into a fraternity, a secret society of survivors, collectors, voyeurs, appraisers, archivists that the world has no idea exists. We are impossible to find, to link, to expose. You’ll never be able to prove to anyone that you’ve seen what is behind these doors.”
I didn’t really know what to say. This had gone so much farther than simply sliding a flash drive across a table and getting an envelope of cash. I didn’t get if what he said was a threat or an invitation. I wasn’t going to leave without the money though. I nodded. He placed his bony fingers on my shoulders.
“I’m very happy with your cooperation.”
He pressed the door open button.
The room was shockingly familiar. It reminded me of my grandparents’ living room. Green carpet, well-worn leather furniture, and a large T.V. I stepped inside and looked to my right and saw wall-to-wall shelves filled with every type of media, DVDs, VHS, film reels. Each was uniformly labeled.
The walls were glass, showing right out to the stone walls of the basement. A room within a room. I looked up and saw some sort of air purifier on the ceiling.
“For moisture,” The Buyer said, noticing my glance.
The T.V. was playing some old version of local news. She was describing some police shooting in Sarasota.
“Please sit with me,” The Buyer said. He took his seat in the recliner, not leaning back at all, body still sitting in a stiff upright position. I walked over to the couch and sat down.
“One day I think you’ll realize how lucky you were to be invited down here. If you knew what some people paid. I would just feel wrong not letting you enjoy it though, given your contribution.”
I looked at The Buyer, confused. I didn’t know if I should say thanks because I didn’t know what I was thanking him for. Inviting me into his weird basement man cave? I turned back to the T.V. and noticed something was wrong, the anchorwoman was stammering.
“In keeping with our practice of presenting the most immediate and complete reports in local blood and guts news we present what is believed to be a television first, in living color, exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.”
She pulled out a pistol and blew her brains out.
I was stunned. The camera jolted a bit, a man in a suit ran onto the soundstage. Somebody’s scream was cut off as the T.V. went black.
“What was that?” I looked over at The Buyer who just smiled at me.
“You don’t understand? You just saw everything.”
He was right, I had no idea what was going on. He stood up.
“You can pick what’s next.”
I followed him over to the wall of media. Each label had a last name and a date. I had no idea what I was looking at. It was nonsensical. Names and years, they meant nothing to me. I’ve tried to keep them in my mind.
Marshall – 1969
West – 1974
Bittaker – 1979
al-Abub – 1985
Bernardo – 1991
Meiwes – 2001
If I remember any more I’ll make sure to add them in the future. At the time I had no idea what I was looking at. I picked at random, pointing to a film reel labeled Randall – 1963.
The Buyer smiled, gently lifting the reel out of the row.
“This is a favorite of mine. You wouldn’t believe the price I paid to get it.” He spoke while loading the reel onto a projector. He motioned for me to sit as he sauntered to the other side of the room where he pulled down a white screen.
The grainy footage began. It looked like a parade, people crowded on the sidewalk, waving American flags and laughing. The camera is shaky, handheld. The crowd seems to erupt, there is no sound with the audio but I can read their expressions. People are jumping, smiling, screaming.
A black convertible comes into frame. My brain connects these images to my memories just as Kennedy’s head snaps back and to the left. The Buyer jumps up and rushes over to the projector.
“You recognize this footage? Seen the Zapruder version, maybe the Nix? Together those two paint an almost complete picture of that day. Almost.” He winds the reel back. He points toward the wood fence situated on top of the grassy knoll. A plume of smoke.
“You see it. Clear as day.” He chuckles to himself. “Through my work, I actually met the gunman. He is long deceased but he once told me he was shocked with all those cameras nobody caught him that day. Little did he know.”
“This is real?”
“You think your eyes deceive you? It is real. You see, this group I’m a part of keeps a watchful eye on all types of media being sold around this country. We have a master list of people who we can connect to some of the most heinous events in, well, history. We monitor them, their social media, financial records until we find gems like the reel you just watched. This man, Steve Randall, from what we found never told a soul about this film. Through our research, we knew he was at Dealey Plaza in 1963 and when we found out he was in poor health I simply flew to Dallas to attend his estate sale. Most of the time these trips are fruitless. But this, for a paltry $150 I was able to buy four film tins. I’m sure the planner thought I simply wanted them for decoration. A foolish error on his part.”
The Buyer pulled out a VHS tape. He delicately placed it into a pristinely maintained VHS player. What I see could only be described as a dungeon. A blindfolded woman is strapped down, struggling against the handcuffs holding her arms and legs to the stained mattress. I can hear her muffled cries. She stops when she hears the door creak open, revealing a man holding something in his right hand.
“What is this?”
“Just watch.”
“I don’t want to.”
The Buyer stops the tape.
“Why do you have all of this?” I’m nervous, the screen uncomfortably frozen on the shadowed man approaching the helpless woman on the bed. The Buyer shakes his head. He spoke to me as he pulled my hard drive from his pocket. He sat at a nearby desk and began to prepare its label.
“It is fairly simple. My library fills a demand. These moments, these are the moments people want to experience. They want to feel like they know something nobody else knows, see something nobody else has seen. It goes deeper than that though. When you go to the theater and watch whatever monster is on screen you are there to experience your own fears. You want a controlled dose of adrenaline. That monster, or killer, or whatever represents our fears, humanity’s fears. What these tapes do, they remove that symbol and give you a pure dose of human cruelty and violence. And people desire that. Our minds instinctually desire to be a part of these disgusting, terrifying moments. We don’t dream of our normal lives, we don’t desire to live safely, anonymously. We have a primal urge to live on that narrow threshold between life and death. We are fascinated by it. We are entertained, mesmerized, thrilled to see it. People might think they’d recoil away, like you have, but if I let this tape run, you’d peek between your fingers. You’d want to know about this. You couldn’t help yourself. Depravity, cruelty, gore, violence, sadism, whatever you call it, it is in each and every one of us. When you stare at an abyss, isn’t your first thought to wonder how far down it goes? When you watch someone do the previously unimaginable, do you not wonder if under the right circumstances, unburdened by society’s shackling empathy and gentility, could you do that to another human? Do you wish you could? Are you jealous that these monsters have inflicted their will on us unencumbered? Etched their names into our history books with blood?”
The Buyer stares at me, eyes wide, a grin spread across his face. His enthusiastic diatribe at an end. He sits down next to me, relaxing, deflating.
“What people will pay to see the horrors in this room, all but proves my point. We love this. We couldn’t live in a world without it.”
We sat there in silence, just the sound of the dehumidifier to keep us company, the screen still locked on the last moments before god knows what happens.
“I apologize if I’ve offended you. It’s just… I so value your contribution to my collection. I just wanted you to understand what your video will mean to me.”
I told him it was fine. I said that I had a train back that I needed to catch. The rest of the night was just me being led out of the house, being re-blindfolded and handed an envelope that contained $45,000 and a note thanking me again.
I’ve spent the last three years scouring the internet hoping to find this guy. I know that I have very little to go off of. I’ve tried to retrace my steps in D.C., I’ve searched government databases, scoured message boards but all come up with dead ends. I thought I found the house once, but a family lived there. I rang the doorbell and talked to the mother, making up a lie that my grandfather had built this house and asked if I could take some pictures. She was weirded out but her husband came by and let me in.
I walked around, feeling a sense of déjà vu. It felt right, but the details didn’t match. There was no chandelier, the floor tiles were gone. I asked about a basement and they said it was just used for storage. I think they started to catch on to the fact I was just some rando and as politely as they could asked me to leave. I looked down at the footpath as I walked back to the sidewalk, trying to dislodge any memories trapped away in my mind.
If anyone has any kind of leads, please let me know. I need to know I’m not going crazy. I need to know that this is all real, that there is some sort of organization our there collecting these tapes and showing them off to each other. I’ve felt immense guilt since handing over my brother’s tape. I’ve just imagined groups of people sitting around together, laughing as my mother bleeds out on the kitchen floor, like it’s all a just a show. I need to make this right.