CW: references to child abuse, violence, suicide.
Honey, the spirits are here with us tonight and they are deeply disappointed.
[audience laughter]
Momma, do you not own a mirror? Did you think you looked cute when you walked out of your house tonight?
My brother, I’m so sorry for your loss. Losses. Well I have to assume everyone who loves you has already passed, or they would never have let you show your face in public looking like that.
Oh, now, don’t you make that face at me. I’m just the messenger. It’s the spirits who are talking, and it’s not my fault if they’re not thrilled.
[Evan Brabbick, voice-over: narration.]
Courtney Lovecraft will be the first one to tell you—she’s an old-school, old-ass drag queen, and she does old-school drag. Her makeup is caked-on, dramatic and impeccable—the evil queen from a Disney cartoon made flesh. Thick, high eyebrows, sword-sharp cheekbones, an expression as glamorous as it is sinister.
Old-school drag: Her performances are offensive. She lip syncs torch songs. She’s not on TikTok, and she’s never done a clapback video. She is not afraid to throw abundant shade, because she doesn’t have to grapple with the complex realities of a toxic social media fanbase. In fact, she maintains she doesn’t even know what social media is. She’s never sent in an audition reel for a reality television drag competition.
I’m Evan Brabbick, and this [pause; bell toll] is Night Logic-—
[Intro music plays: an accordion echoing in a massive space; wind through broken windows; a syncopated drum beat.]
—the podcast that peeks behind the curtain of the sunlit world of what we believe to be reality, to see the dark side that most of us only ever catch glimpses of. I’m determined to document that dark side—and the people who work along its borders. And I’m glad you’re here.
[Courtney, on-stage.]
You bitches bore me. It’s after midnight and momma is old. I should be at home soaking my feet eating taffy reading Thackeray, but instead I’m up here baring my soul for you because it’s what the spirits want. They’ve got a lot to say, you can’t imagine. Most of them are mad as hell. The guy in here who cheated on his boyfriend and gave him AIDS? Yeah he is fucking pissed, but he says not to worry, he’s going to get you good.
Look at that, like fifteen different dudes just went pale as a sheet.
But not all of the spirits are angry. Some send love and kisses instead of promises of bloody revenge. This one goes out to a certain somebody who knows who he is, from someone who says he’s sorry he had to leave you.
[The opening chords of Donna Summer’s “Our Love” boom through shitty speakers.]
[Evan, voice-over: narration.]
A Courtney Lovecraft show is like no other. She combines the staples of classic drag with the by-now-familiar schtick of celebrity mediums, shifting effortlessly between the profane and the reverent, erotic longing and queer rage and weaponized grief and—her words—“cunty antics.”
[Audience member, recorded interview clip. Noisy after-show background sounds.]
I mean come on [laughing]. It doesn’t take a psychic to know that if you lip-sync a Donna Summer song, some old queen is gonna get verklempt, think it’s their long-dead lover sending a message just to them.
[Evan, narration.]
Her home club is Shenanigan’s Ballroom, a cheap tawdry former movie theater in—of all places—Poughkeepsie. The drinks are cheap, the paint is peeling, and it smells like it’s still the seventies inside: cigarettes and body odor, spilled whiskey and sex and bleach. Courtney is such an underground icon that people travel in droves to this dead former factory town, packing the commuter trains out of Manhattan and flying in from all over. And while her fame is such that she could easily sell out any drag venue in New York City—or probably any city—she apparently has literally never performed anywhere else.
[Courtney, on-stage.]
We’ve got a special guest here tonight. Apparently he has a “podcast,” which people keep trying to tell me is a thing. Who here has ever heard of Night Logic?
[The room goes fucking wild.]
Oh, so you’re all fucking losers. Great. Well, your dreams are about to come true, because he’s recording an episode as we speak. Your moment in the spotlight, as it were. So make sure you make lots of noise. We want to give his listeners something to be haunted by.
[Evan, narration.]
Incidentally, she maintains that her stage name has nothing to do with a certain ’90s grunge scream queen, and that the moniker was given to her by her drag mother, Darlene Lovecraft, “one of the supreme queens of the Niskayuna drag scene.” Extensive research by the entire Night Logic team failed to turn up any evidence at all that the small upstate New York town of Niskayuna ever even had a drag scene, but just because it’s not on the internet doesn’t mean it never happened.
And what about H.P. Lovecraft?
[Courtney, backstage interview.]
Honey, have you seen a photo of that man? Ug. Ly. No lips. Now, have you seen this face? No ma’am, no relation.
[Evan, narration.]
In 1999, legend says, Courtney Love made the long perilous journey to Poughkeepsie, just to see the show. She was given a seat at a wobbly table at the back of the room, leading to speculation that the drag diva had left standing orders with the front-of-house staff that she be given the worst seat in the house if she ever showed her face in the place.
Her attempts to come backstage after the show to congratulate Courtney Lovecraft were politely rebuffed.
[Evan: backstage interview. Solicitous.]
Is it true? The story about Courtney Love coming to your show?
[Courtney: backstage interview. Apathetic.]
I’ve heard it too, honey, and—honestly I couldn’t tell you. If she showed up, no one ever told me about it. But so many weirdos come to my shows, doll. You see them, right? Lots of people try to come backstage.
[Evan; rolling with the punches.]
It’s true—a pilgrimage to Poughkeepsie has become something of a rite of passage for fledgling drag queens these days, and six of the last ten winners of the world’s most-watched drag reality competition show have included you in a list of their three favorite drag queens of all time.
[Courtney; bored.]
Momma doesn’t have a TV, little lamb.
[Evan; upbeat.]
How long have you been doing drag?
[Courtney; annoyed.]
Were you raised in a barn? Never ask a woman her age.
[Evan; narration.]
You get the idea. Courtney Lovecraft is a handful. She’s not gonna crank it up for the cameras . . . or, in this case, the microphone. She won’t give up a good sound bite without a fight. In fact, her publicist told me she’s never consented to a single interview, in the twenty-five years he’s been working with her.
[Publicist; voice fuzzy over speakerphone.]
I don’t know what to make of it, honestly. I almost didn’t pass your request on to her, because of how often she says no. But lately . . . something’s been up with her. She’s more erratic than normal. She won’t talk about it, of course. Honestly she’s never been good with money, so maybe she’s struggling? Feeling the need to make a play for a bigger stage? Or, I don’t know, she wants to launch some merch and could use the bump your episode might bring? I think she’s broke, I don’t mind telling you, or—[surging background noise briefly swallows up his words; wind perhaps] sick, or something. Who knows.
[Evan; narration.]
So, no: not a media darling. But when I asked her about the spirits, and the elements of her show that flirt with the supernatural, she got significantly more garrulous.
[Courtney; interview.]
Far back as I can remember, really. They’ve been with me all along. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting with my aunts, three delightful spinsters who knew all the family gossip and weren’t afraid to spill it. It wasn’t until I shared a scandalous story I heard from them about my grandfather, and a, shall we say, impropriety with a fellow soldier that he was imprisoned for during the war, and my mother slapped my face and asked where I heard such lies—even though I could see in her face that it was the truth, you don’t need to be clairvoyant to know when someone is lying, little lamb, you just have to listen—and I said Aunt Suzie told me, and she started to cry and ran out of the room. Turned out Aunt Suzie and Aunt Ruth and Aunt Iffie all died in a house fire fifteen years before I was born.
My whole life, someone was whispering in my ear. Telling me things. Usually things I didn’t want to hear. For a while I tried to do what I thought they wanted. Pass the messages on. But who would listen to a spooky sissy boy? It just made me more of a target for bullies, chief among them my father. And it didn’t stop the whispers in my ear.
[Evan; interview.]
You said what I thought they wanted. Did they want something other than to have their messages passed on?
[Courtney; confrontational.]
Don’t you know? Mr. Number Two Podcast in the world? Mr. Dark Side, Mr. Leading Authority on the Paranormal? Mr. Man? After all you’ve allegedly learned and shared, do you still not know what the dead want?
[Evan; sullen.]
The dead want lots of things, in my experience.
[Courtney; triumphant.]
Then your experience is bullshit. The dead only want one thing, lamb chop. If they’re still stuck here, on this side of the border. To be rid of their pain. To pass it on to someone else.
[Crowd noise]
[Courtney, on-stage.]
For my next number we’re going to go a bit off the beaten path.
[Crowd roars.]
[A strange sound over the loudspeakers—like feedback and shrieking and whale song and wolf song and a churning bass line all at once.]
I know you all want to hear the classics, the #1 singles from the Whitneys and the Madonnas and the Dianas. But the spirits have strange tastes, and sometimes they can only be satisfied by a truly deep cut. This next lip sync goes out to one of them, who says the person who needs to hear it is here with us tonight.
[Slow piano intro.]
[Evan; narration.]
That’s when I should have known. When she played that song? I should have listened to the alarm bells going off in my head, packed up my gear, and quietly exited. But even for me, after eight years of doing this podcast, hundreds of times I’ve put myself in a position where I’m standing on the threshold between this world and its dark side—it’s amazing how hard our minds work to convince us there’s nothing there. To tell ourselves that the shriek of terror from our lizard brain is illogical and therefore impossible.
Maybe you’ve heard those alarm bells too. Maybe you’ve ignored them like I did.
Side note. You’ve probably noticed something’s not right with my voice on this one, Spectral Listener. I can usually turn it on at will, that thing, that voice, Podcaster Man, Fake NPR Guy. On this episode, not so much.
Trust me when I say that all will be revealed. I wish it wouldn’t, but it will.
[Evan; interview. Measured.]
What made you choose that song? The fourth song you played.
[Courtney; interview.]
I explained it on stage. Didn’t I? One of the spirits wanted to hear it.
[Evan; interview.]
It’s an obscure song.
[Courtney; interview.]
Indeed it is, little lamb.
[Evan; interview. Trying not to sound too hungry.]
Tell me about the spirit who asked for it. What do you know about them? What did they want?
[Courtney; interview.]
Would you believe I’ve never toured? Never taken this magnificent show on the road?
[Evan; interview. Nonplussed by the non sequitur but quick on his feet.]
Yes, your resistance to travel is legendary. In fact no one can find any evidence of your ever having performed anywhere but here.
[Courtney; interview. Amused.]
Shenanigan’s Ballroom. You know there’s an apostrophe in there. There shouldn’t be, but there is. Most people assume it’s a mistake, omit it. Me, I prefer to think this place once belonged to someone named Molly Shenanigan. Or perhaps Murphy Shenanigan. And this is their ballroom.
[Evan; interview. Annoyed but rolling with it. Honestly that’s the predominant tone in his voice for the majority of the interview, so even if it’s not specified just assume it’s there.]
Why is that? Why never perform anywhere but here? Why not conquer the world like you surely could have, with the reputation you’ve built for yourself? Make yourself a couple million dollars? What makes this place so special?
[Courtney; interview. Evasive, mysterious.]
I like to feel safe in my surroundings. You go out to these big places—you can’t control things. You never know what might happen. Whether they’ve got secret cameras rigged up in the dressing room or they’ll go through your gear while you’re onstage. No ma’am, here I know exactly what goes on. What I’m up against.
[Male voice; interview. Quiet academic background sounds.]
Obviously she’s a vampire. Right? She’s got her coffins full of earth in the basement of Shenanigan’s, her dressing room no one has ever seen the inside of—because it doesn’t have any mirrors, which, if you know anything about drag, is like a restaurant without ovens. She’s got all her secret escape routes. The rooms where she can feed on her victims and not be disturbed.
If she ventures out of Poughkeepsie, who knows what could happen.
[Evan; narration.]
Tommy Kinkaid, PhD, is one of the foremost drag scholars in the world. A professor in the Cultural Studies department at Columbia University, he’s also the author of Camp Concentration: The Drag Queens Who Are Resisting the Mainstream and Reserving the Right to be Revolting. In that book, and elsewhere, he talks at length about Courtney Lovecraft, and he was excited to speak with me on the same subject.
[Tommy; interview.]
I mean, I’m kidding—I don’t actually think Courtney Lovecraft is a vampire—but I’m also not. I think that’s exactly the kind of thing she wants you to think. You watch her, you hear the stories, and you think: Something isn’t right here. It’s fundamental to her mystique, honestly. She doesn’t want drag to be broadcast into every home in the nation. She doesn’t want it to be something everyone loves. Something safe. She wants people to be scared.
Because the world is scary, for queer and trans folks. And spreading that scariness around—making the straights sweat a little—can make unsafe people feel safe. Safer. Drag for her is a tool to empower people who’ve been disempowered.
And that’s helped her build a massive fan base of people who are just as scared—and just as angry—as she is. Sometimes when you attract an audience of people in extreme states of mind, extreme things can happen.
[Crowd noise]
[Courtney; on-stage.]
Alright you fuckers, let’s cut the shit and get to work. We’ve got a great show and I’m in a foul mood.
[The same strange blended sound over the loudspeakers—guitar amp feedback, the wail of a woman or wildcat, Godzilla’s cry echoing across the Tokyo night sea—but going on longer now, throbbing deeper in your chest, until it ebbs into silence.]
[A long silence. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds.]
[Crowd noise builds]
[to a frenzy]
[The next lip sync starts: “Killing Me Softly,” by the Fugees.]
[Evan; interview. Sly. Thinking he’s got something.]
Tell me about Alger Sinani.
[Slurp of a straw sucking up the last of a drink.]
[long pause]
[Courtney; interview. Cold.]
Why don’t you tell me about Alger Sinani, since you’re the one who brought it up.
[Evan; interview. Chuffed.]
With pleasure, Courtney. Alger Sinani was a huge fan of yours. He made eleven Facebook posts about you, eleven Saturdays in a row, after attending your shows. In several of them, he indicated that he was trying to get in touch with you. Waiting after the shows, beneath the marquee or at the loading dock out back. He was a local gay boy, from right here in Poughkeepsie, and he gets quite plaintive at times. I quote: Does anybody know how to get in touch with Courtney Lovecraft for real. I heard she grew up near here, went to Spackenkill High. For real I need to talk to her, it’s like literally life and death.
The following Sunday—the day after he would have seen your show for the twelfth time—he brutally murdered his best friend’s stepfather. He maintains he has no memory of committing the crime, or any explanation for why or how it could have happened.
[Courtney; interview. Rustle of an ostentatious dress, as she leans closer.]
A local trans gay boy.
[Evan; interview. You can practically hear him blink.]
Well, yes.
[Courtney; interview. Her voice low, so low.]
But you didn’t say that part.
[Evan; interview. Thrown.]
I didn’t say he was twenty-seven years old, either. I didn’t see those details as the most important—
[Courtney; interview.]
Exactly, Evan. You didn’t see.
[Evan; narration.]
At this point, Spectral Listener, I must confess. I was frustrated. A little bit angry, even. While I understood Courtney’s general feeling of rage at an ugly world, it wasn’t nice bearing the brunt of it. I was trying to help her tell her story, broaden her audience—every episode of this podcast is heard by 11,000 times more people than can crowd into Shenanigan’s Ballroom on its busiest day—and here she was giving me hell for it.
By now it was clear to me that I’d lost control of the conversation, but every journalist will tell you—sometimes that’s where the best stories are.
[Courtney; interview. Sad.]
The truth, Evan, is that Alger heard something in my show that made him believe I had knowledge of something I couldn’t possibly have had knowledge of. He wanted to talk to me about it. I felt sorry for him, honestly, so I finally sat down and had a beer with him after a show. That’s all.
[Evan; interview. Almost gleeful.]
And the next day, he killed someone.
[Courtney; interview.]
He played Candy Crush that week as well. Why aren’t you calling up that company and asking them if they drove him to murder?
[Evan; narration.]
When I announced on social media that I was preparing for an episode on this subject, lots of you came forward with Courtney Lovecraft stories to tell. Shows you’d been to; stories you heard. All of it was amazing, Spectral Listeners, but one thing really rocked my world. A scan of a print clipping from a 1974 issue of Vector Magazine, “the San Francisco Bay Area’s foremost periodical of the homosexual experience,” from the column “Stage Directions,” whose anonymous author reviewed theatrical and musical performances. In it, we learn of one Bette Bathory, a drag queen who performed in October at the Li Po Cocktail Lounge, a notorious queer night spot. Countess Bathory was a “dramatically made up creature, more evil-cartoon-queen than female impersonator, with a Bride-of-Frankenstein wig (with bright red-auburn hair, for some reason) and a broad-shouldered male body artfully concealed in a corset and crimson-lined black cloak,” whose show “alternated torch songs and obscene comedy and communion with the Great Beyond, with multiple audience members moved to tears by alleged messages passed to the Countess by the supposed spirits of their dead loved ones, who coincidentally happened also to be in attendance that night.”
Now, I’m not saying Bette Bathory and Courtney Lovecraft are the same person, but I am saying that these two queens and their acts sound eerily similar, and that Courtney wore a wig that fits that description the night I saw her in Poughkeepsie.
[Evan; interview. Leaning in.]
Have you ever heard of a seventies San Francisco drag queen called Bette Bathory? She sometimes just went by “The Countess”?
[Courtney; interview. Sound of a glass being firmly set down.]
Sad to say I haven’t, Evan. Why did you come here? Why do this show? I’m not your standard fare.
[Evan; interview.]
On stage tonight, you said you didn’t even know what a podcast was. Now you know what my standard fare is? Earlier, you knew I was “Mr. Number Two Podcast in the world?” “Mr. Dark Side?”
[Courtney; interview.]
It’s a stage persona, little man. Have you not heard of such a thing? I know lots of things Courtney Lovecraft doesn’t, and vice versa.
[Evan; narration.]
It’s the first time the mask has slipped. In our conversation, and ever, as far as I can tell. The first time she’s allowed for even the remote possibility that Courtney Lovecraft is a fictional character, that there might be a real live separate human mortal under the makeup. And you can bet I jumped on it.
[Evan; interview.]
What’s your name, then? This person who isn’t Courtney Lovecraft after all?
[Courtney; interview. A greedy happy laugh. The laugh of a fisherman whose bait has just been taken.]
I have a theory, actually. Why you’re here. Why you’re talking to me. Let me lay it out, and you tell me if I’m hot or cold. If you’re capable of honestly assessing your own motivations, that is.
[Evan is audible attempting to say something, but Courtney steamrollers ahead.]
Gender transgressors are public enemy number one these days. Drag performers, trans folks, anyone who breaches the borders of gender. A whole lot of people are very invested in stirring up hate and fear, using us as the boogeyman. Straight white cis folks are doing their damnedest to distract from the mess they’ve made of the planet, and we make a convenient scapegoat.
And how better to cash in on all that manufactured dread than treating your Spectral Listeners to an intimate sit-down with drag’s biggest creep?
[Evan; interview. Stung, you can hear it.]
I’m not your enemy, Courtney. I’m sitting down with you, having an actual conversation. Letting you tell your side of the story. I know those people you’re talking about, and I am not one of them. I know that for a fact. I’m not here to hype a manufactured narrative and my only concern as a storyteller is to present real people and their experiences of the in-between, the spirit world, the ancestral plane, the afterlife, the Dark Side of our world that is all around us and that most people try so hard not to see—
[Courtney; interview. Talking over the last bit of Evan’s practiced narrative, until he trails off.]
Your only concern is getting more listeners. More attention. That’s all you’ve ever prioritized, Evan: what people think of you; how you can get more people to like you. Ophelia told me so.
[Evan; narration.]
I swear to God I didn’t get it. The name didn’t even register the first time she said it. If it had, Spectral Listener, you can trust and believe that I would have switched off my equipment and sobbed and begged for an explanation.
In the moment, I assumed it was a feint, a distraction, some meaningless nonsense, so I didn’t ask who Ophelia was. A critic, I figured, someone who said something mean about me. Lots of people have, over the years. Lots of people don’t take too kindly to my attempts to rationally explore the irrational, and plenty of super-religious people think I’m practicing witchcraft—or, at the very least, legitimizing it. I’ve been sued for allegedly exploiting people; I’ve been lied about in fraudulent police reports; I’ve been hated and canceled and bullied and that’s what I thought Courtney was doing.
[Audience member; recorded clip. After-show background sounds. Someone in the background is crying. Someone else is yelling.]
Wow, man. That woman is wild! Fuck. Fuck, that was everything I dreamed it was. And more! So much. Maybe a little too much. I’m like fully dizzy. [laughter] [laughter spikes high, hysterical, unhinged] Yeah I must not have drunk enough water today.
[Evan; interview.]
I’ve been in Poughkeepsie for a week, by the way. I took some time to get to know the locals. The cast and crew of Shenanigan’s Ballroom. Including one bartender—who often ends up on janitor duty too, mopping up messes in the bathroom—who’s been working here for fifteen years. He says something’s been happening, lately. To the people at your shows. For one thing there’s a lot more vomit in the toilet stalls. People getting sick. He says, every time you have a show he sees at least one person with a nosebleed. Is this something you’re aware of?
[Evan; narration.]
At this point, Courtney Lovecraft actually peeled off her fake eyelashes. She wears three sets for every show, apparently. For maximum pop. If I knew more about drag, back then, ages ago, six entire days, I might have seen this reveal for the major red flag that it was. I watched her stick six strips of mink on the table, and then look me dead in the eye.
[Courtney; interview.]
I’m tired, Evan. I’m so fucking tired. The spirits have never given me much rest. Singing me songs. Telling me secrets I don’t want. But I could always keep them happy, with just a little effort. That’s what my act has always been about. Giving them what they need. Bringing their words out into the open.
Lately, though, they’re out of control. I can’t satisfy them. Their pleas grow bigger as their pain does.
[Evan; narration.]
You can hear it, right? How her voice just dropped an octave? Courtney Lovecraft’s speech carries such power and commands such respect that I hadn’t thought of it as an affectation until that moment—but there he was, suddenly, the man beneath the wig and the moniker, letting himself be seen. Heard. A man who smokes cigarettes; a man who is no longer young.
[Evan; interview.]
You say their pain is growing. What’s causing that?
[Courtney; interview. Weary.]
I’m shocked you haven’t seen it—smelled it—but I shouldn’t be. Dark smoke has blotted out the light. There is a black sea rising to swallow us all. Hate, thick and viscous, pouring into our open mouths. This world has become a graveyard.
But you haven’t noticed. Have you? You’re not actually tuned in to the other side at all, Evan. Mr. Dark Side.
[Evan; interview. Amused. Waiting for the punch line.]
Uh huh . . .
[Courtney; interview. A thick rustling sound, close to her body mic: she is taking off her wig. Evan’s gasp is audible.]
People are dying, Evan. People are being murdered, or driven to suicide, or hiding central parts of themselves until something inside sickens and dies. Coded messages in lip syncs won’t cut it anymore. The spirits want me to do something bigger. That is why you’re here. To atone for your sins by helping me help them.
[She shouts to the bartender:]
Bring me the black caddy from my dressing room? And a scotch on the rocks? And play my last track for me?
[Evan; narration.]
And then—Courtney Lovecraft did the unthinkable. She started taking off her makeup.
First she sprayed her face with a makeup dissolving mist.
[Sound of a very long spray. Like a verrryyyyy long spray.]
Then, she rubbed it into her face.
[Vigorous rubbing of flesh on flesh.]
Then, she smeared her face with a makeup removing wipe. And then another. And another.
[Wet smearing sounds.]
Until I kind of started to lose my cool.
[Evan; interview. Wincing slightly, like he’s playing a card he hadn’t wanted to have to play.]
Your publicist said he thinks you might be broke. That that’s the real reason you’ve agreed to do an interview for the first time ever.
[Courtney; interview.]
I don’t have a publicist, sugar snap. Never have. [To the bartender, who has come by with her drink:] Thanks, lamb chop.
[Evan; interview.]
He’s not playing your last track.
[Courtney; interview.]
Yes, he is. My last track starts with ten minutes of silence. Which should be wrapping up . . .
[Eventually, for a third and final time, the strange sound booms out over the loudspeakers. The whistle of a freight train rolling down an endless midnight flat; the dial tone from the dangling receiver in the phone booth in the rain. A foghorn crying out to the deeps.]
There it is.
[Evan; interview. Sounding shook.]
You said I was here to atone for my sins. What sins specifically did you have in mind?
[Courtney; interview. Sounding gentle. Almost kind.]
Don’t you know, honey? Just ask Ophelia.
[Evan; narration.]
And, this time? I got it. Instantly. I heard the name Ophelia and, somehow, this time, I knew who she was.
And it was impossible. Really truly completely impossible. Courtney Lovecraft knew something—someone—that there’s no earthly way she could have known. I shit you not, Spectral Listener: for the first time in a hundred and fifty-seven episodes, I was confronted with something that there was simply no fucking rational explanation for.
She reached out her hand for me, and I took it. On blind dumb helpless instinct, a child’s terrified submission to the stern but unquestionable parent, I put my little hand in hers.
Courtney Lovecraft was gone by this point. A man with a wet oily face sat before me: fifties, maybe possibly even sixties, in a wig cap, with a five o’clock shadow and a constellation of acne across his face.
I took her hand because I was fucking terrified. I took her hand because she’d opened a window onto something that made my blood run cold and my heart pound in my chest.
[Courtney; interview. Very softly.]
Ophelia. Your sister.
[Evan; interview. Sounding like a small weak thing trying to sound big. Strong.]
I don’t have a sister.
[Courtney; interview.]
You and I—and Ophelia—and no one else on this earth—know that’s not true, Evan.
[Evan; narration. Voice trembling with emotion.]
So. Here it is. The backstory you’re missing. The one Courtney knew, when there’s no fucking way she could have known it.
Most of you have heard me talk about my brother. Trevor. He’s come up on dozens of episodes. I’ve described him more than once as the origin story of this podcast: my attempt to grapple with the loss of the person I loved most in the world. He took his own life the summer he was sixteen and I was nineteen, and I’ve been hunting for him ever since. And, yes, that fourth song she played was his favorite.
But what I’ve never shared, not with my podcast listeners and not with my family and not with fucking anyone, ever, is that the night before he died he knocked on my bedroom door. He’d been crying. He said he needed to talk to me. I’d just smoked a joint and I was tired because I had work early the next morning but I loved my brother and I told him sure, come in, he could tell me anything. And he said—
[Courtney; interview. A slight stuttered syncopation to her speech.]
“Evan, I’ve been living a lie my whole life, and it’s tearing me up inside. I’m a woman, Evan. I’ve always been a woman. My name is Ophelia, and I need your help.”
[Evan; narration. Tearful.]
I think by this point we can be honest with each other, Spectral Listener. I can say it: I did not react well. I didn’t call my brother an abomination or tell him to never speak of this again—but I think he could see it on my face. My confusion, my sadness . . . maybe even my horror, my anger.
A thousand times I’ve wondered whether things would be different if I hadn’t smoked that joint, if I could have controlled my facial expressions better, but in my heart I know that’s bullshit. Drugs just unlock different faces inside us, and the one Ophelia saw that night was fully me.
The next day he was dead. And—you see, I keep saying he, that’s how deep I buried this revelation—I swore to forget the secret he’d shared with me. Fuck—she’d shared with me.
[Courtney; interview. Soothing. Evan’s sobbing is audible in the background.]
You failed her, Evan. And, yes, you failed her through your own ignorance and fear, not through hate or malice, but that’s not a distinction that helps Ophelia much.
But, Evan—you can help her now. You can help her and so many people like her. [A deep breath; a new slight hardness in the voice.] You can help her, or you’ll be dead in a month.
[Evan; interview. Sound of tears being wiped from his face.]
Wait, what?
[Courtney; interview. Her voice very deep and very steely.]
Listen to me carefully, Evan. I want to help you. But you’ll die horribly within the next four months if you don’t do what I’m about to tell you to do.
[Evan; interview.]
Are you threatening me?
[Courtney; interview.]
I’m not. But they are.
They’re all around us, all the time. And they’re madder than they’ve ever been.
[Evan; narration.]
We can cut to the chase here. I’ll spare you the actual recording of my confused frightened questions and her infuriating enigmatic non-answers. It wouldn’t help, even if I included it in its entirety.
I’ve listened to it again. Even played it for others. It doesn’t do the job. It won’t give you what I got, sitting there, listening, piecing it together—the chills, the nauseous certainty. It doesn’t convince.
So I’ll summarize.
Courtney Lovecraft told me I had to complete this episode, and release it, and promote it. Make sure it gets the widest audience possible upon release. And she said I would be tempted to not comply. I’d want to bury it, pretend it never happened, destroy it utterly. But that if I did that, I’d die horribly.
That sound you heard, three times, in the audio I recorded at Shenanigan’s Ballroom? The weird wail-howl-weep-roar? It wasn’t a glitch or feedback or some creepy sound effect, like you probably assumed—like I assumed, when I heard it in real life. Courtney called it the chime at midnight. And she says that once you’ve heard it three times, the veil falls away. The one that protected you from the other side.
She said Alger Sinani heard it three times. And he heard the void open up all around him. And he tilted his ear toward the void and when he woke up he was drenched in the blood of the man who had been abusing his best friend.
Courtney says it will do the trick for folks who hear it in a recording, just as surely as it does for people who hear it in a crowded nightclub.
Now, I am sure that now you’re like okay, Evan, woooooo spooooky, it’s like some The Ring bullshit where you hear this podcast episode and go insane. Right? I understand that feeling, that skepticism. I’m sorry that it won’t last very long.
If I had any decency I’d probably kill myself. Delete every shred of recorded data; burn the devices and hard drives to make sure; jump off the GW Bridge.
Because I believe her. And I believe her because I can hear what she heard. Smell it, too—the fucking smell is the worst, you never think about ghosts leaving behind scent traces in addition to sounds or visions, but fifteen times a day it’s burnt popcorn or too-strong cologne or the stinking intestines spilling out of someone’s belly.
And with that kind of proof, that we continue after dying—and it’s not fucking pleasant—I can’t take a chance on suicide. Just because I rob them of the chance to kill me horribly doesn’t mean they won’t get their hands on me—and the thought of eternity in their nightmare clutches scares me enough to stick around and take my chances. Even if it unleashes unspeakable hell upon the world.
I’ll do it. I’ve done it already, if you’re listening to this. And I hope that she’s right. That doing what they want will make them leave me alone. And that when the veil parts for you, you’re smart enough to do what they ask.
[Evan; interview. You can tell he’s been crying. Hard.]
But if what you said will happen really happens—if eleven million listeners suddenly start—I don’t even know—doing . . . crazy things . . . ? What will happen?
[Courtney; interview.]
Honestly honey, I have no idea. Neither do they. They just know what’s wrong, and what they can do to stop it.
[Courtney; on-stage. Somehow you can tell immediately, from the energy of the crowd in the background, that we’re early in her set.]
You there, momma. [inaudible response] Yes, you, cunt, you think I would be hollering at the couple behind you? My time is too valuable, I don’t talk to ugly people. You look amazing momma, are you having a good time tonight? [inaudible response] Yes ma’am, my brother behind the bar has a heavy hand. The price is right and the drinks are strong, that’s the Shenanigan’s secret. We want everyone who walks through that door to have a hell of a time.
But I have to get real with you for a minute, my sister. Is that okay? [inaudible response] You can handle a little bit of too much truth? [inaudible response; crowd laughter]
Your father is here, honey. And he says he’s so so sorry he never believed you.
[inaudible, lengthy, response]
No, honey, your man didn’t message me anything about you. Look at him, I bet he doesn’t have the gumption to load the dishwasher when you’ve had a hard day at work, am I right? So no, he’s not trying to give you a special moment right now.
[inaudible response]
Your father says that your mother is still on our side of the border, but he says—she always believed you. She told him so. She believed you but she lied to you about it, said she didn’t, and she refused to act on it.
[inaudible response]
I know, hon, I’m sorry. I did warn you it would be too much! This fucking hurts right now, but it’ll feel better soon, I promise.
[Evan; narration.]
I feel them. All around me. All the time. I hear them.
The Dark Side is real, Spectral Listeners, and after 157 episodes of hunting for it I’ve finally found it, and I wish to fucking Christ I’d never started down this road.
And I think that what she says is going to happen to you is actually going to happen to you. And I’m sorry.
[Courtney; on-stage.]
Let it out, momma. Your dad says the pain isn’t real, only the love. The love is everything and the love is everywhere.
At the end of the day, beloveds, the dead only ever have one message for us. Okay?
[The intro to “I Feel Love” begins to play: soaring synthesizer, lurching bass line.]
People pay big money to hear it, to get the personalized version, but I’ll piss off every working psychic by telling you the big secret. It’s always the same message: Be good to each other. Live and act with love. In every fucking thing you do.
[“I Feel Love” bleeds into the Night Logic theme song. We’re waiting for the credits, the familiar canned recording where Evan gently helps us return to reality after our fifty-seven minute tour of the Dark Side, but on this final episode they never come. There is only Courtney, playing us off the stage.]
Okay? Is that so fucking hard? To be decent to each other? [laughs] Pity the poor fuck who fails to clear that very low bar.
Life doesn’t have to be hell, any more than death does.
