If we’re to believe Sarah, Lost in the Dark was built from another film, a piece of fiction constructed using a significant portion of non-fiction. I use the “if” because, as soon as word of her interview got out, the question of its authenticity was raised. After all, this was a filmmaker who had started her career with a faux-documentary. What better way to mark the ten-year anniversary of that production than with another instance of the form, one designed to send audiences back to pore over the original movie? By those who took this view of Sarah’s revelations, she was variously praised for her cleverness and decried for her cynicism. I’ve swung back and forth on the matter. I did my due diligence. The narrative Sarah relates, of the mysterious woman who stepped down from the train to Wiltwyck, the murdered men at the entrance to the mine, is true. You can read about it online, in the archives of the Wiltwyck Daily Freeman and the Poughkeepsie Journal. Confirming Isabelle Router’s uncle’s story proved more difficult. Richard Higgins died in Tampa three years ago. I located one of his former colleagues, Henry Ellison, who confirmed that Rich had gone into the mine to retrieve that dumbass high school kid. Of any more than that, Rich never spoke to him.
Still, there’s sufficient evidence that Sarah Fiore was telling at least some of the truth. This doesn’t mean there was a documentary shot between her discovery of this information and Lost in the Dark. Once again, I did some digging and came up with contact information for all but one of the members of the (supposed) original crew. Wherever Chad Singer currently resides, it’s beyond my rudimentary sleuthing abilities to locate. Of the remainder of those involved, Priya Subramani listened to my introduction, then hung up and blocked my number. Kristi Nightingale told me to go fuck myself; I’m not sure if she also blocked me, since there didn’t seem much point in calling back. George Maltmore instantly was angry, demanding to know who the hell I thought I was and what the hell I thought I was playing at. Despite my best efforts to reassure him, he became increasingly incensed, threatening to find out where I lived and show up at my front door with his shotgun. Finally, I hung up on him. Somewhat to my surprise, Larry Fessenden spoke to me for almost half an hour; although he did so without answering my question in a definitive way. Sure, he said, he remembered the film that Sarah had brought to him. It was a terrific piece of work. Was what he saw a documentary? I asked. Ah, he said, yeah, that was the story making the rounds, wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember Sarah saying that to him at the time, but it would be something if it turned out to be true, wouldn’t it?
Yes, I said, it would.
Even more unexpectedly, Isabelle Router agreed to talk. Once Lost in the Dark was done shooting, she and Sarah had an argument which resulted in a falling out that has lasted to this day. Isabelle returned to Albany, to work on her Ph.D. at the state university, only to leave after a single semester. For the next few years, she said, she was kind of messed up. She moved around a lot, did… things. Eventually, she pulled herself together, settled in Bolder, where she became a yoga instructor. She asked me if I had spoken with anyone else, and what they had said. Isabelle was particularly interested to know if I’d talked to Sarah. That I had been her teacher was of great interest; she wanted to know what Sarah had been like as a student. When it came to the question of the documentary, her answers grew vague. Yes, they had done some preliminary filming in the mine. In fact, they’d gotten kind of lost down there. Did I know that the idea for the movie, for all of the supernatural stuff, was hers? It came out of the research she’d been doing for her dissertation. You did shoot a documentary first, I said.
“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Isabelle said. “We were just lost in the dark. Sarah got that much right.”
Nor could I coax any more definitive statement from her. There was enough in Isabelle’s words for me to take them as supporting Sarah’s claims, but not enough to settle the matter. Not to mention, the more I paged through the notes I’d taken from all of the interviews, the less certain I was that I wasn’t being played for a sucker. The extremity of Priya, Kristi, and George’s reactions—their theatricality—added to Fessenden’s bland non-answers and Isabelle’s ambiguous replies, seemed intended, scripted, to give the impression that not only had the documentary been filmed, it had recorded an experience singularly unpleasant. On the other hand, quite often, the truth looks glaringly untrue; as Tolstoy said, God is a lousy novelist.
In the end, I would need to speak with my former student. Rather than a phone conversation or e-mail exchange, Sarah suggested we meet in person. Halloween, she was scheduled to attend a special late-night screening of Lost in the Dark at the Joppenburgh Community Theater. Why didn’t we get together before that? She’d bring her laptop; there were clips she could show me that would prove interesting. I agreed, which has brought me here, seated at the back of Pete’s Corner Pub, while trick-or-treaters make their annual pilgrimage.
Sarah Fiore enters the bar as she used to enter my classroom—walking briskly, head down, oversized bag clutched to her side. The heels of her boots knock on the wood floor. She’s wearing a hip-length black leather coat over a white blouse and black jeans. With her head tilted forward, her long black hair curtains her face. Before the hostess on duty can approach her, she’s crossed to where I’m sitting and slid into the bench across from me. Since I didn’t meet her until she was in her mid-twenties, I don’t see as dramatic a change in her as I often do with my former students. That said, time has passed, which I’ve no doubt she notices in the tide of white hairs that has swept both sides of my beard, and is washing through what brown remains on my chin. We exchange greetings, Sarah orders a martini from the waitress who’s hurried to the booth, and she slides a gray laptop from her bag. She places it on the table in front of her, unopened. Hands flat on either side of it, she asks me if I’ve talked to the other members of the original crew.
With the exception of Chad Singer, I say, I have, and relay to her abbreviated versions of our conversations. She smirks at Kristi Nightingale’s cursing, drops her head in an attempt to conceal a laugh at George Maltmore’s furious show. Larry Fessenden’s non-committal response receives a nod, as does Isabelle Router’s remark about them being lost in the dark. “She was intrigued to learn that I had been your teacher,” I add, but it draws no further response from Sarah.