Mysterious Richard
Gideon Gale, Pt.3 — Thorson and Tailor watch one of Gale's greatest hits: a spot about a local magician by the name of Mysterious Richard. But something else is lurking on the tape as well...
Welcome to my latest serial, There’s No Such Thing as Gideon Gale, where bereft Midwesterner Calder Thorson investigates an impossible phenomenon overtaking the airwaves in his small town. —
Charismatic feature reporter Gideon Gale is a recent addition at KZMT Local. So why does everyone in Russet Lakes remember watching him as long as they’ve been alive? Well—maybe not everyone. For a select few, Gale’s reports appear only as static snow on the television. But something is interviewing these people, and Thorson intends to find out what it wants, before the whole town—and possibly the world beyond—falls under Gideon Gale’s spell.
Author’s note: apologies for my little Thanksgiving Hiatus, I was spending time with family. I’m now back and excited to share the rest of this story with you all. —C
I Watched one of the Tapes. This Changes Everything
Before I get too far into the details, I want to thank everyone who sent me thoughtful suggestions and ideas for the investigation. Many of you pointed out that it was probably very dangerous to watch the tapes alone. At your suggestion, I reached out to Robert Tailor, GM of KZMT Local. The man’s apparent immunity to Gideon Gale’s tricks has been an absolute Godsend.
Based on what we learned from Mallory White’s letters, I also didn’t know whether it was safe for Tailor to supervise me while I watch. For those of you who have not fully caught up on the investigation, Mrs. White reported that her long-time friend Doris became irate after watching the segment, and learning that Mrs. White could not see Mr. Gale. My hypothesis is that each Gale segment may be what is called a Cognitohazard. In layman’s terms: that’s something dangerous or harmful to anyone who perceives it. For Tailor’s safety, and mine, we decided that I should be restrained for the entire process.
We obviously couldn’t do that in his office. And I certainly didn’t want to do it anywhere near my brother. A motel seemed to be the best option. Unfortunately for us, most of the hotels in Russet Lakes are seasonal. Yes, our town is that small. Instead, we had to drive to “the big city,” which is really just a larger town a couple hours away.
There were a handful of cheap cabins for rent in some lakeside campground. It was the type of place a family on a budget might take their vacation. Pretty barebones, but the room still had a TV with a VCR,1 and that suited us just fine.
For our experiment, Tailor cuffed my hands behind a desk chair and set up a video camera. Our thinking was: the Gale report might have some kind of demeanor-altering effect that I wouldn’t remember. This would allow me to see my own reaction.
With our preparations in place, we began with the first tape. Over several repeat viewings, I put together the following transcript of what I observed and heard:
“Mysterious Richard”
The camera begins with a closeup on a pair of bony hands, shuffling a deck of cards. The cards look brand new, and still make that crisp snapping noise as they zip past his thumbs.
GALE (VOICEOVER)
This might not be magic—
One hand applies a little tension to the edges of the deck, and the cards seem to leap into the air and into the other waiting palm. The hands repeat this movement a few times.
GALE (VOICEOVER)
—but you’ve got to *hand* it to Mysterious Richard:
The hands, apparently belonging to a man called Mysterious Richard, come together with an unnaturally loud clap. He shows his palms to the camera. The cards are gone.
GALE (VOICEOVER)
He really makes you wonder… if your lying eyes can be believed.
Without cutting to a different shot, the camera zooms out and pans up to show Mysterious Richard in all his glory. This is a kid, maybe 19 years old, acne scars still fresh on his face. But he doesn’t carry himself like a teen. There’s a sly kind of confidence in his crooked little smile, as he reaches up and tips the front of his bucket hat.
He’s dressed like he’s coming back from a fishing trip, with a teal quilted vest and waders. He tugs the lapels, and cards rain down, apparently from within the garment.
GALE (VOICEOVER)
Coming from a long line of carpenters, Richard has always had nimble fingers.
We get an establishing shot of a local business called “Whittaker and Sons Carpentry.” It’s a well-maintained facade, made to look like some frontier stockade. Bookending the place on either side is a food store, simply labeled “Grocer,” and a dive bar called “The Gulpin’ Gull.”
After a slow zoom in, the piece cuts to Mysterious Richard performing sleight of hand tricks before a semi-circle of men wearing tool belts. I’m assuming these are his coworkers. Richard wiggles his knuckles and makes a framing nail dance back and forth over his fingers.
RICHARD (VOICEOVER)
I started young. My Godfather got me this neat trick for my birthday one year. There was a black dice, in a little container, and with a little magic, you could make it explode into a bunch of tiny white dice.
We cut to an interview setup, with Richard and Gale sitting opposite each other in chairs that looked hand made.
GALE
We’d love to see how it works. Could you show us?
RICHARD
Sorry Gideon, a magician never reveals his secrets!
Both men laugh. When Gale stops, the smile falls from his face a little too quickly to be natural.
GALE
But you *can* reveal how you discovered your talent.
A note here: something about this statement bothered me on each viewing. It’s an order, not a question. That much is obvious. But it’s not that his tone is imperious—it’s almost desperate. It’s like Gale can’t stand his interview subject sidestepping a question.
RICHARD
For sure; it was nothing special. My school had a talent show, and my dad told me I should do the little magic act I’d been putting together.
Richard continues talking in voiceover, as we’re shown old family photos. There’s a grainy, low quality home video of Mysterious Richard when he’s even younger—maybe 8 or 9.
His costume is different here. Instead of the fishing attire, he’s dressed in a conical hat and robe, with a loose-fitting long sleeved dress shirt. Something you’d buy a child who wanted to be a wizard for Halloween.
RICHARD (VOICEOVER)
I’d gotten tons of store bought tricks from the hobby shop, but there’s something special about inventing your own. Most of my early stuff was done with tools and nails. Work with what you’ve got, you know?
On stage, kid-Richard is hammering a row of nails into a board. After driving two nails straight to the head, the wooden handle of his hammer appears to turn to rubber, flopping around every which way.
We can hear applause from the old recording, tinny and far away.
Kid-Richard considers the hammer carefully, stroking an imaginary beard. Then he turns back to the board, feigning surprise, and holds it up for the audience. The nails he’d driven have all disappeared.
RICHARD (VOICEOVER)
I used to test out my new tricks on the guys who worked with my Dad, around the shop. I started working there as soon as I was old enough, and did little shows on our breaks.
We cut to a new face: a stocky bald guy with a big mustache. According to a banner at the bottom of the screen, his name is Vernon Long
VERNON
You hear a lot of horror stories about working with the boss’s kid. Richard’s nothing like that. Works as hard as anymore here, and loves making the team laugh.
Vernon and a few other men in work clothes are sitting at a rickety table in a dive bar, sipping beer and paying close attention to something off screen. The man beside Vernon holds a poker hand—black aces and eights—like the magic show had somehow interrupted a game of cards only he was involved in.
The camera pans to a small raised platform in the corner where Mysterious Richard pats himself down, searching. He holds up a finger in exclamation, like he’s had an epiphany. He takes off his bucket hat and holds it up for the audience. Everyone leans forward.
The camera zooms in. Among the lures tacked to the side of the hat was an enamel pin.
Black aces and eights.
The crowd realizes, not all at once, and starts cheering in sporadic bursts of awe and applause. The energy and excitement builds, and carries over underneath the next voiceover.
GALE (VOICEOVER)
With a little help from those coworkers, Mysterious Richard became the Gulpin’ Gull’s first and only magic act in residency. You can catch his performances there every Thursday night.
RICHARD
There’s so much magic in the world when you’re a kid. But it all dries up by the time you’re grown. If I get to help people catch that feeling again, even for a second, then I have a pretty good day.
A new establishing shot shows us the exterior of a place called Hornsby’s Hobbies. From the dirty window, it looks like the place sells modeling kits and games.
GALE
He’s not just a talented Magician: a teaching career may very well be *in the cards…* for this youngster.
RICHARD
The owners down at Hornsby’s know me pretty well. I come by a couple times a month to pick up stuff for my act. Eventually they offered to pay me a little to teach the basics.
As Richard continues in voiceover, the piece cuts to the inside of the shop. Someone has set up a few rows of folding chairs, ll full. At the front of the room, Richard demonstrates what amounts to fancy shuffling.
RICHARD (VOICEOVER)
Sleight of hand, trick shuffling… that sort of thing. Most of my tricks though, those are still a trade secret.
We crossfade back to the storefront. It’s clearly shot at a different time, and Gale is in frame once again, wearing his three piece suit and a flashy smile.
GALE (STANDUP)
Mysterious Richard is one heck of a teacher too—
Gale claps his empty hands together. When he pulls them apart, a full deck of cards has appeared, looking like an accordion as they waterfall from his top hand and into the other. The camera zooms out a little and reframes the on his face.
GALE (STANDUP)
—because I managed to pick up a trick or two out here in the West RL.
For KZMT Local, I’m your local guide, Gideon Gale. Back to you.
I watched the whole thing a couple times to really absorb it. After that, I rewound the tape and watched it piece by piece. Already, I’ve noticed a few quirks that are worth mentioning.
Firstly—although this may be subjective—the quality of the reporting is phenomenal if you watch the entire piece uninterrupted. Viewed as a whole, it’s a masterpiece in story telling, from the narration and scripting, right down to the camera work. But taken piece by piece, there’s nothing really remarkable about it. It’s not bad. Probably better than average, but this is meant to be Gale’s best work.
Tailor and I did a bit of an unscientific test, having me watch a few seconds at a time while he watched the clock. We found that after about five seconds of uninterrupted viewing, this sort of enhanced appreciation kicks in. The effect gets stronger the longer you watch. What’s more: after five seconds, I began to feel irritable if my viewing was interrupted. Not murderous or violent, but I imagine that over weeks or months of routine consumption, I could be just like Doris.
My second conclusion isn’t subjective, and is a bit confusing to explain. When we paused the tape, the TV kept showing the exact moment we stopped on. As soon as I looked away, or even so much as blinked, the frozen image was replaced by a single frame of static snow.
The best way to clarify this, I think, is with a concept I’ve seen floating around online recently. It’s rooted in the whole “vision based on movement,” shtick from Jurassic Park. Someone created this illusion clip where you can see shapes and words in the static, but only while the video is rolling. Pause, and your brain remembers roughly where the shape should have been. But blink, and it vanishes entirely.
Take a look:
Gideon Gale’s pieces are like that, in a sense: scrub through them at the granular level, and I see each frame exactly as Tailor and Ms. White; static.
String a couple together, and I see a video.
String the whole thing together, and I see a compelling piece of journalism.
But there’s nothing really there. Put another way: it would be like taking apart a clock, only to find that each individual part vanishes when you try to look at it.
At this point, I can’t say for sure why a select few people can see straight through this effect.
While making my third observation,I developed our most promising theory yet.
“Who shoots these, eh?” I asked. “I imagine you have a fictitious photographer named Phineas Frank, or something?”
This got a dry laugh from Tailor. “No, everyone at KZMT seems to agree he shoots these himself. Sets up the camera, does his own lighting and audio, the works. We used to call it the ‘one man band,’ in the business. Now, they’re calling a multi-media journalist. MMJ. Makes it sound like you’re a specialist, not the victim of some deep budget cuts.
“Then who’s adjusting the camera?”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh! Duh, I’m sorry. I forgot you couldn’t see it.” I explained how the shot shifts, zooms and pans, all while Gale remains on camera himself. “Come to think of it, I didn’t see a microphone either.”
“Was it on his lapel?” Tailor asked. “We switched over to those a while back.”
“Let me check.” I reached for the remote and rewound. After the first few viewings, we determined whatever came over Doris must be a long-term effect of repeated viewership, and decided it would be easier if I had my hands free to transcribe the tape.
Rewinding the tape, by the way, similarly shows static.
I replayed the interview shots, paying close attention to the collars and lapels. Halfway through, there still didn’t seem to be any microphones.
Out of the corner of my eye, Tailor picked up my rough transcript and started reading through. “Fascinating to finally know what’s in these,” he said, turning the page. “Wonder if we have enough information here to track down and talk to this Mysterious Richard character.”
I hit the mute button so I could keep an eye on the piece, while still focusing on my conversation with Tailor; which was how I discovered my fourth and final observation.
“Gale mentioned he’s at the Gulpin’ Gull once a week. How old is this? Maybe he’s still performing, and if he’s not…” I trailed off.
“What?”
I’d turned away from the TV ever so slightly to look at Tailor. When I looked back at the special, it was just static snow. For a second, I thought I’d accidentally stopped the tape. But a quick double-tap of the pause button confirmed it was still rolling.
“Now I can’t see it either.”
“Wait, for serious?” Tailor asked.
“Yeah. Just static. Did something change, I wonder?” Even as the question came tumbling out of my mouth, my attention drifted to the mute icon stamped over the static in the corner of the screen.
Curious, I pointed the remote at the TV set, and flipped the sound back on. The instant the little mute indicator vanished, the news report snapped back to life. The volume was still low, barely audible even. But I could still see it, plain as day. This was the part in the recording where Gale and Richard had that sit-down interview.
Another tap of the mute button turned the report back to a sea of static.
“Interesting,” I said. “When I can’t hear the tape, I can’t see the tape.”
Tailor weighed this for a moment, then nodded his head in apparent agreement. “That makes sense, I suppose. I mean, I can’t ever hear the tape.”
Sometimes people throw around the phrase “jaw dropping,” and I’d never had a proper picture of what that meant until that moment. My mouth actually fell open, like a rusted bumper dropping off the back of some ancient farm truck. Tailor was deaf; he’d told me that he lost his hearing in an accident as a young adult. Hardly anyone out in Russet Lake knew a lick of sign language—Latin might’ve been more common, and that’s only because of the tiny Catholic church out by Heron Point. But that was no bother. Tailor spent enough of his younger years talking so as to speak without too much trouble. And the slow speech of our Minnesota neighbors, he assured me, made for easy lip-reading. He was so good at it, I hardly noticed, except in the moments where I got distracted and turned my head or obscured my mouth while I speaking.
“If you can’t hear them…” I said, trailing off as my thoughts drifted back to the letters he had let me look at. I’d read them enough times to recite them by heart.
Still, I’d glossed over so many details; phrases that seemed mundane and useless at the time, but stuck out as glaring signposts now:
This young gentleman assured me—through Doris—he’d never missed so much as a single report from Mr. Gale…
I had Doris ask them…
She’d never fib when interpreting…
“Ms. White can’t hear the tape either!” The revelation had me rocketing out of my chair, knocking the remote aside. “She’s deaf too. Sound, Tailor, Gideon Gale is in the sound!”
Thank You for Reading
If you have any insight into the Gale investigation, please consider sharing in the comment section. Again, this is an ongoing process, and I will do my best to respond to your comments.
If you or a loved one has an encounter with Gideon Gale, or believe you have met a similar entity in your own locality, please reach out via email to calderthorson@gmail.com. Just throw SIGHTING in the subject line, so I know right away what you’re writing about.
Do make sure you’re subscribed to Cole’s Chapters. This is where you can expect updates on my little investigation. And remember, until we meet again: there is no such thing as Gideon Gale.
Antiquated, I know. But Tailor only has the one VHS copy of Gale’s story. Based on everything we know so far about these segments, I am uncomfortable digitizing them.