The Argyle Location
In 2006 my friend Pete and I were location scouting for a film in Argyle Texas, just West of Denton. Although it’s close to Dallas and Fort Worth, there are vast stretches a plains and emptiness, coupled with the hard worn terrain of Texas so it’s not uncommon to get lost. We wandered in the summer heat, turning down roads that seemed interesting, fishing for the moment when you connect a physical place to the imagined one in your mind. Location scouting is one of my favorite things; actively participating in deja’ vu, as if what you’ve written or read has been made real. The only thing now is to go find it.
Late in the afternoon we turned down an unmarked gravel driveway that lead into a large field. The path wound through rolling green pastures next to a large pond with cattle scattered around. On the third or fourth hill we saw a two story farmhouse in the distance that looked abandoned, so we drove up to it and parked a handful of yards from the front.
Around the house were rusted out gates and overturned barbecue grills surrounded by a stone fence. The weeds had taken over the yard and windows and doors were either broken or open wide, so got out to take a closer look. I’d brought a camera to take photos, and even though this wasn’t kind location we were after, you never know if you might want to use it in the future. This abandoned farmhouse had all the typical signs of a horror movie and we were already playing the part of the curious passers by and winding each other up.
When we stepped onto the porch and moved into the front room, you could see hoof prints where the livestock had been, but there wasn’t any furniture around. A broken fan dangled from a caved in ceiling and a teddy bear with no eyes sat on the fireplace mantle. Once we’d seen enough on the first floor we headed upstairs. The floor on the second level seemed sturdy enough, but just barely. We wound up in what seemed to be the children’s room.
Nailed to the far wall was a grease board with instructions under two categories: “girls” and “the young men”. The date above read 11.03.03, but it seemed like the house had been abandoned for years. Under the heading for the girls it said things like, “Be Pure” and “Be Busy at Home” and the curious, “Love Yours Fathers” followed by, “Be Obedient to Fathers”. The category for the young men said, “Be Self-controlled” and “Integrity” as well as the specific, “Soundness of speech that cannot be condemned.”
In hindsight, the strict overtone might have been a poetic clue to what we would see next. On the far side of the room we walked through a door that led into a closet. It was a very confined and the drywall had been stripped bare, revealing the thin wood dividing each room. Low on the wall was a small drawing the gave me an icy feeling. A childlike figure with the words: “It’s always dark for me” written next to it. This was creepy enough, but we wrote it off as teenagers who’d gotten into the house the same way we did and were trying to freak somebody out. I had to admit it was working. Our jokes about the house felt like empty reassurances to me. Logic was slipping into fantasy.
We moved back into the long white hallway and followed it deeper into the house. As we rounded the next corner we froze in our tracks. Scrawled on a wall from floor to ceiling was the phrase: “Do you see him?” and my veins went cold. I took a blurry photo and handed the camera to Pete saying “ You can stay if you want, but I’m leaving.”
All at once the memory of every horror movie I’d ever seen flooded into my mind. This is the moment when you realize you’ve been trapped and your curiosity has doomed you. Pete wasn’t far behind when I got back outside and we both laughed about it, trying to act brave but I was seriously freaked out. As we made our way back to the car we noticed a cellar door that was chained and made a joke about it being where they kept the bodies. But after what we’d just seen, the concept didn’t seem that far fetched.
We got in the car and pulled the doors shut. Then as I started it up, I saw a white truck in my rearview crest the horizon behind us. We looked at each other both thinking the same thing. I pulled away from the house and back onto the driveway but heading in the opposite direction from the entrance away from the truck. When I checked the rearview, it seemed like he’d picked up speed so we did too, still not making it seem like we were trying too hard to get away.
The path that lead away from the house was barely the width of the car and the weeds so tall, they completely obscured our view, making it hard to tell if the white truck was following or not. But we kept on, knowing the trail lead away from the house and that was all that mattered.
Just as we started to relax the weeds gave way and the path came to an abrupt dead end with a locked metal gate and a stone fence surrounding it. With a nauseating clarity we realized there was no way out but to turn back and exit the way we came in, back past the house and whatever — whoever was there. We hurried to get the car turned around, but headed back slowly, plotting ways to escape past the white truck.
The the tall weeds became smaller as we inched along, heading back to the house. When we could finally see above the grass, we could see the white truck had waited for us just beyond it. It was clear he knew what we’d just discovered and he was in no hurry to chase us to the gate that he already knew was locked. He put the car in gear, and pulled toward us blocking most of the slender road. We schemed how we could make it by him, but the moment we were within a few feet of him, he casually pulled to the side letting us pass, barely skimming by his truck.I kept facing forward, pretending I wasn’t even aware of the truck. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him eyeing us as we moved by, baseball hat pulled down, mirrored aviators glaring.
A few inches past him I floored it, not caring at all what he thought. A dust cloud kicked up behind us once again masking our escape. This time we made it back onto the road we’d come in on and of course laughed about again, acting like it wasn’t a big deal at all. But any time I think of that day, I see a wall that asked a simple question with no answer.
“Do you seen him?”
Perhaps we did.
