I finished off one reel and switched to another. Then another. I emptied my coffee and went downstairs to get another cup. I tried one of the cat-hair muffins. When you woke up and cried, I changed you. At one point, because I was exhausted, my eyes drifted shut while the film was playing, and I had to rewind and watch it again. The whole morning passed that way, reel after reel. I knew I was looking for a needle in a haystack, without even knowing whether the needle was there at all. And yet I kept going.

Along the way, I spotted a few people I recognized. High school friends. Mine workers. A lot of beer got drunk; a lot of practical jokes got pulled. You could see the Ursulina myth taking on a life of its own the longer the search went on. The stories got more lurid; the claims got wilder and harder to believe.

During what was probably the ninth or tenth reel, I saw myself. It was just for a few seconds. We weren’t far from Norm’s Airstream, because I could see its silver frame through the trees. Ben was interviewing an old man who said his grandfather had told him of seeing the Ursulina come down to the beach under a monster’s moon, while he was in a fishing boat in the middle of the inlet. According to the man’s grandfather, he and the beast had stared at each other for almost an entire minute before the Ursulina turned around and stomped back into the woods and vanished.

In the midst of this story, I passed behind the old man. I didn’t look at the camera, but it was me, with my scraggly black hair and pale face. I was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt that I’d left untucked. My eyes were glued to the ground as I used a cross-country ski pole to push through the undergrowth and find whatever might be hidden there. I went across the screen from left to right in a few seconds, and then I was gone. I’d been on the search the first day, and I’d come back on the second and third days, too. Like everybody else, I’d found nothing.

Sometime after noon, Ben came upstairs to check on me. He carried a whiff of his pipe smell with him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Mom’s got leftover hotdish in the oven. It’s better on the second day.”

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Are you warm enough? I can get you a blanket.”

“No, I’m okay.”

Ben glanced at the screen. This was a nighttime reel, black trees dotted by lanterns, the camera whipping around at every sound. The interviews were conducted in hushed voices.