Richard greets us at the front desk of the newspaper and takes us back into the building. He’s the editor-in-chief now, so he has an office.
“The net is going to ruin us,” he says, pointing to a young reporter tapping away in a web browser, “But we’re trying to get ahead of it. They keep saying the web is dead now, but I’m not buying it. I guess you caught a glimpse of that with our online archives.”
“Yeah, seems ahead of it’s time.”
Richard smiles, “I’m proud of that project and I’m glad it got put to use. That’s part of the reason I’m willing to help you out. You’re the first person to use those archives.”
We keep walking, Richard points out the different desks as we go, introducing us to reporters I forget the names of before he even finishes saying them.
When we get to his office he motions for us to sit. “After your call, I had one of our interns–we like to call them junior reporters–go through the microfiche to see if we’d missed anything in the archives. The problem with those, as you may have noticed, is the scanning technology that pulls the words off the newspaper isn’t always accurate, especially with longer names, which tend to get garbled up.”
“Did you find anything,” Gus asks, speaking up for the first time since the introductions.
“Sort of, Gus,” Richard is a man who likes to repeat people’s names. That’s how you can tell he’s management. “I wasn’t able to come with any details about whatever happened with that dig you mentioned on the phone. And frankly, it was so long ago I don’t remember much about it. I was pretty new here, so I just took whatever assignment they sent me on. But we did find this.”
Richard flicks over a photocopied piece of paper with a headline that reads, “Sedona Seance Sucks in Local Professor, Coordinator.” Richard smiles, “I was really proud of the alliteration on that one.”
Sedona Seance Sucks in Local Professor, Coordinator
by Richard Yearns
Sedona–Early this morning, police were called to the estate of Bobby Farns, where a noise disturbance had set the neighborhood a rumble at approximentally 2:33 am. When police arrived, they found a whos-who of Flagstaff elites all wearing robes and gathered in a circle in what one police officer described as “some cult thing.”
The noise disturbance, which some neighbors described as a “loud growl” while others told The Daily it “sounded like a series of explosions” set car and home alarms off, disrupting the neighborhood of Ever After, a planned community built just last year by the Sexsmith Company.
In attendance were several public figures, including Mayor Daniel Handly, professor Melinda Bakersfield, Justice Paul Shona, senate candidate Reba Orthal, and museum coordinator and daughter to the homeowner, Alexis Farns. When police arrived, Bakersfield reportedly took point as the organizer of the event.
“We were conducting a seance,” Bakersfield told The Daily, “Just a fun thing, nothing too serious. Whatever noise happened, it wasn’t us and we didn’t hear it.” Bakersfield went on to describe a research project she was working on with Ms. Farns, digging through the rituals of an organization called Owl. “We think Owl had their headquarters here in Sedona, and as we’re working through the history of the group I find it best to get as much first hand experience with their rituals as possible.”
While Bakersfield blew the whole thing off as a big understanding, police weren’t so sure. “When we arrived, the whole group had this glassy look in their eyes,” one officer told us under the agreement we’d keep their identity anonymous, “It smelled like, you know how after a big fire works show the whole town smells like gunpowder? It smelled like that. And it looked like dusk, like the sky was that pale blue, even though it was two in the morning.”
In response, several public and private entities immediately issued nearly identical statements. The Mayor’s office, along with the state offices for both the museum and judiciary, sent the The Daily a statement implying they’d look into the matter but are assured it was just a fun garden party gone wrong. For its part, the Northern University of Arizona tells The Daily they’ll look investigate the incident and take any action they deem necessary.
<>
“This must have been the incident the secretary at the university mentioned,” I look over at Gus, who nods, “She mentioned something happening in Sedona that got Bakersfield in trouble. She also told me it changed her life.”
“I don’t know about life changing,” Richard says, “But it certainly got everyone into a tizzy for a few days. It all felt like a real life mystery around here. But it all faded away and as far as I know, nothing happened again.”
“What did you think was going on?”
“Sally,” Richard says looking me directly in the eye, “I think they were looking for something. Every once in a while I’ll hear rumblings that Bakersfield is still around and doing weird things. And Alexis, the museum coordinator? She is a character.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alexis is your usual grade school art teacher type, right? Picture Birkenstocks with chunky colorful socks, a big wide skirt, a tie-dye button up shirt, and a hand permanently attached to a heavy clay mug filled with instant coffee, and you get Alexis. She’s about as absent-minded as you can get too, always getting lost in the grocery store, or one time police found her wandering the back hallways of the mall. She’s just,” Richard pauses for a moment. I can tell he’s searching for the nicest words he can pull from the air, “the type of person you can’t forget.”
“I gotcha, do you know where we can find her? Or Melinda, for that matter? I’ve only spoken to her over email and based on this it looks like she wasn’t entirely truthful with me.”
“They both still live in Sedona as far as I know. Alexis commutes up here every day to work at the museum, though, I’d start there.”
