The Secret History of Twin Peaks

by Mark Frost

  * Mayor Dwayne Milford, 1989

  For everyone, of course, except his brother Dwayne, the perpetual mayor, who remained convinced that Doug had acquired his pile from some sort of unholy swindle, or perhaps from the stock market, which to Dwayne’s mind meant the same thing. (As he aged, Dwayne had countered his brother’s move to the right, edging closer to what he himself called “socialliberalism,” which made his brother’s public conservatism, and lavish lifestyle, even more irksome.)

  By 1989, Doug was closing in on his 80th birthday. Aside from the year he’d spent living with Pauline Cuyo in the late 1920s, he had, by his own admission, never formed a long or lasting intimate relationship with any woman in his life; he often brought up the four failed marriages on his résumé to prove it, three of them alone in the years since he’d returned to Twin Peaks. But after his most recent misadventure, with a Bolivian flight attendant--which ended in annulment after only three weeks--he swore up and down that he’d finally learned his lesson. From that point forward, Doug took a vow that he would only rent, not buy.

  His impending 80th--and whatever thoughts, feelings or lapses attended that milestone--brought with it, in the matrimony department, what we must charitably term one final relapse in judgment.

  Her name was Lana Budding; at least that was the name on her driver’s license. She claimed to be 19, although a later, more diligent vetting of her available records put the actual number six integers north of there. Lana was a new arrival in town--her accent said southern, and the license said Georgia, but aside from that she never elaborated--and she’d drifted in on a breeze--no one could recall exactly when, but it was recent. Lana’s form was her fate: She had the legs of a chorus girl, the chassis of a sleek jungle cat and a face poised precisely between perky and provocative.

  Soon after securing a job at the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan--where, one assumes, she assayed a glance at Doug’s balance sheet--Lana locked onto her target like a Hellfire missile from the moment he entered her sights. She proceeded to conduct the kind of purposeful campaign to bring down her prey that the younger Doug Milford would have recognized, professionally appreciated and avoided like dengue fever. This was not the younger Doug Milford.

  They met “cute,” as they used to say in pictures, on a visit to his safe deposit box. There was a mix-up with the keys, and Lana and Doug ended up locked in the vault for an hour--and by the time the staff opened the door again Doug was a goner. Before long they were tooling around town in his Morgan and canoodling over cocktails in the dimly lit nooks of the Waterfall Lounge at the Great Northern. Even those of us familiar with Doug’s predilection for the fairer sex were stunned by his abrupt capitulation to Lana’s charms. His refinement, sense of dignity and self-containment--qualities he’d maintained throughout all his prior failings--fell away like empty booster rockets. Even he recognized the absurdity of his situation. “There’s no fool like an old fool,” he said to me once, wearing a wolf’s grin as he watched her sashay out of the room.

  Whatever erotic power Lana exerted over him--take it from me, the effects were in no way confined to Doug alone--most of his male friends found it hard to begrudge a man in the late November of his days, who’d dedicated his life to the disciplined service of his country, embarking on one last personal mission and, to quote Doug directly, “putting some sugar back in my sap.”

  Well, I think we know who the sap was. After their whirlwind courtship--no longer, if that, than three weeks--Doug announced their engagement at Leland Palmer’s wake; awkward at the time but, in retrospect, more than appropriate. (The news also nearly prompted a fistfight with Dwayne.) The truth is, Doug Milford loved romance more than life itself, and certainly more than he’d loved any of his wives. Always an endorphin addict, he’d just taken one last spectacular tumble off the wagon.

  Soon after, Doug and Lana tied the knot at the Great Northern. A grand soiree followed, another inevitable part of his addiction cycle. (His weddings provided such reliable business, the hotel gave him what they called “the Milford discount.”) Lana looked bewitching. Doug looked bewitched. (Dwayne looked apoplectic.) The last words Doug spoke to me that night, with one of his patented grins and a wink, just before they retired to the bridal suite: “Good thing I kept the minister on speed dial.”

  * Doug’s and Lana’s wedding

  ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  In other words, Lana went to sleep a newlywed and woke up a widow. After he was escorted in to view his brother’s body in the honeymoon suite that morning--wearing only a smile no mortician in his right mind would try to remove--Dwayne tried to persuade Sheriff Truman to press homicide charges, claiming that a copy of the Kama Sutra found at the scene was the murder weapon. That was grief disguised as bluster; Dwayne, I believe, despite their quarrelsome differences, truly loved his brother. Of course nothing came of Dwayne’s talk about manslaughter. If anything, as news of the circumstances of his death leaked out, there was--among his male friends--universal envy that Doug Milford had stage-managed the perfect exit from the cockeyed caravan of life. As one of them--who shall remain nameless--said to me that day: “If that was manslaughter, sign me up.”

  Doug had, it may not surprise you to learn, neither insisted on nor signed a prenuptial agreement, so if fortune hunting was indeed Lana’s game, she bagged her limit. But let’s give the widow Milford the benefit of some doubt; she stayed in town the better part of six months after Doug’s death, until probate closed, and apparently provided, ahem, great comfort and emotional support during that time to our grieving mayor. Once the check cleared, of course, she was gone like the Hindenburg. (But not before providing a thrill the whole town wouldn’t soon forget with her performance of “contortionistic jazz exotica” at the Miss Twin Peaks Contest.) She allegedly fled to the Hamptons, and briefly dated a bizarrely coiffed real estate mogul before marrying a hedge fund manager--sounds about right.

  There also occurred to my mind, alone, a stray thought which I’ve never been able to either prove or entirely dismiss: that “Lana” may have been a paid assassin, sent by unknown figures from Doug’s past, to silence a voice that knew far too much. I offer no evidence for this intuitive suspicion, although if true she was certainly well paid for her trouble, but as anyone who’s parsed the dossier to this point can attest, in Doug’s life, stranger things have happened.

  * The widow Milford

  Per the instructions in his will, after the funeral we scattered Doug’s remains up the mountain, near the old campsite by the Pearl Lakes, not far from the entrance to Ghostwood Forest and Glastonbury Grove, where, as a young scout, the enduring mystery that set him on the path of his life’s work had begun more than 60 years before.2

  1 Significant that the Archivist is now using the word “I”—TP

  2 The Archivist is speaking openly and clearly in his voice. Any pretense of objectivity or journalistic distance is gone. We’re about to learn what we came here to find—TP

  *** LISTENING POST ALPHA:

  *1* REVELATIONS

  The death of Doug Milford marked the end of an era. It also denotes a sharp transition in the narrative of the many mysteries he sought to answer in his work. That job would fall to me now, alone.

  I am the man that Colonel Milford, in his capacity as commander of Listening Post Alpha, handpicked to succeed him. He brought me here to build, develop and run Listening Post Alpha without at first telling me much of anything about it. My name is Major Garland Briggs, USAF.1

  At first I too believed our work here was part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, so a high-security profile seemed perfectly appropriate. It was only after construction was complete, with all the technology and equipment installed and operational, that I came to realize the real intent of the mission.

  Doug had been training me for my mission throughout the process, in a way that sometimes seemed random or haphazard: dropping the “casual” startling remark, leaving documents lying around the site where he knew I’d find them, waiti
ng to see what I made of them. All a test to determine my worthiness to follow him in his work.

  Then there came a fateful day, not long after the work was finished--May 17, 1985--when the two of us enjoyed Cuban cigars and a fine red Bordeaux he’d brought along to celebrate on a concrete patio outside the control room, overlooking the Pearl Lakes.

  Without my knowing, Doug recorded our conversation. I found this tape the day after he died, sitting on my desk, where he’d left it for me. I here include the transcript from that point in our conversation forward.

  * My faithful Corona

  MILFORD: The unknown, Garland. Respect for the unknown. We all know what we know. Most fear or ignore what they don’t. But if you seek the truth you must approach the unknown. Lean into it. Wait for it to speak to you. Are you willing to pass that threshold?

  BRIGGS: I’ll admit to a certain reticence in my character. A shying away, if you will.

  MILFORD: Why do you suppose that is?

  BRIGGS: Habit. Twenty years in the service. Reticence to questioning command-level decisions.

  MILFORD: A prized quality in the military, no doubt; an order is given, your job is to do it. Highly prized in career officers among the conventional ranks. Do you suppose that’s why I selected you for this detail?

  BRIGGS: I don’t imagine so, no.

  MILFORD: Be truthful now. That’s not who you really are, is it?

  BRIGGS: (a pause) Well, I’ll confess that while I’ve been able to present this characteristic to my superiors--

  MILFORD: And been rewarded for it. Go on.

  BRIGGS: I’ve always, almost willfully, retained an internal independence of mind.

  MILFORD: There you go. And to what do you attribute this?

  BRIGGS: In part, my dear departed parents--

  MILFORD: Tell me about them.

  BRIGGS: Catholic, but Bohemians at heart. He was a concert violinist, she a Parisian-born Montessori school teacher.

  MILFORD: Good. Contradictions. Very helpful. So you went to Catholic schools?

  BRIGGS: Where my Jesuit education ingrained in me the value of fealty to an established order while retaining a private allegiance to the truth.

  MILFORD: Precisely. Excellent. A spiritual nature.

  BRIGGS: That’s the lens through which I view the world. Privately, of course.

  MILFORD: Catholics, real ones, are all about the mystery.

  BRIGGS: What about you?

  MILFORD: Oddly enough, I’m a meat-and-potatoes man. Facts. Figures. What I can see with my own damn eyes. Women, for instance. Mysteries, in and of themselves, are a dime a dozen.

  BRIGGS: How so? I thought you said--

  MILFORD: Their real value lies in their ability to create within us wonder and curiosity. That, and only that, spurs us to seek understanding of the ultimate truths.

  BRIGGS: I disagree. I see mysteries as the truth itself; that they’re the essence of our existence, and aren’t necessarily meant to be fully apprehended.

  MILFORD: So we’re consigned to ignorance, is that it?

  BRIGGS: No. But that final barrier can be breached only by faith.

  MILFORD: (laughs) That’s just your Catholic slip showing, Briggs.

  BRIGGS: In what way?

  MILFORD: The truth can be seen. Directly. The question is, are you willing to accept what it tells you?

  BRIGGS: Give me an example.

  MILFORD: You’ve had a sighting.

  BRIGGS: How do you know that?

  MILFORD: Don’t be naive. Tell me.

  BRIGGS: (pause) Routine reconnaissance flight over western Montana, August 1979. As copilot of an F4 Phantom, I spotted an unknown silvery craft in a distant cloud formation above the Bitterroots. First on radar, then visually. I saw it for about 20 seconds, crescent shaped, hovering, wobbling slightly, then it vanished vertically, at tremendous speed, like a rocket. My pilot saw it as well. We did not give pursuit and he advised that we not report it. Too much paperwork, too many damn questions, he said. And it puts you on their radar.

  MILFORD: Interesting.

  BRIGGS: I didn’t ask whom he meant by that, but his tone of voice raised more hackles than the contact itself.

  MILFORD: A sighting of the first kind. Did you follow his order?

  BRIGGS: I complied with his directive, but something essential in me recoiled from this code of silence. So, soon afterward I filed an anonymous report with MUFON and thought that would be the end of it.2

  MILFORD: And that put you on my radar.

  BRIGGS: So you were responsible for my transfer to Fairfield?

  MILFORD: You checked all the boxes. I’d been looking for years. Background in structural engineering and architecture at the Academy. Extensive flight experience. Your sighting. More importantly: an open mind and a willingness to question authority. Sightings often do that, you know. They’re closest in impact on the personality to what we used to categorize as “religious experiences.”

  BRIGGS: You’re not who I thought you were.

  MILFORD: I’m the white rabbit, drawing you closer to the rabbit hole. And like the rabbit, I’m late for a very important date. You’re my replacement, Garland. You’re going to become the Watcher in the Woods.

  (The colonel rolled up his sleeve, revealing a series of three triangular marks or tattoos on the inside of his forearm.)3

  ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  He began by relaying to me, in his sophisticated, matter-of-fact way, the many strange experiences he’d had in the surrounding woods as a young scout. Drawing me in gradually, sprinkling a trail of bread crumbs straight out of the Brothers Grimm--who I’ve since learned drew inspiration for their stories from real events in their own dark woods--until, by sundown, I realized I’d followed him all the way to the heart of the forest.

  He talked me through his hair-raising exploits with the various investigative USAF bodies. He showed me raw data from the many cases included here, from Roswell to Nixon. He shared with me the dossier he’d compiled of the town’s history. Turning it over to me, he said, “This is your job now.”

  I didn’t respond. Overwhelmed. The approach of night sent a chill through me, but I couldn’t move. We sat in silence. Somewhere an owl hooted from a treetop.

  Finally he said: “Ask me two questions about everything I’ve given you. Make sure they’re the right ones.”

  I thought about it for a moment: “Did you choose this life, or did it choose you?”

  He grinned. “I lived a wild, dissipated youth. Brought on by emotional problems caused by the disturbing experiences I had in these woods as a kid. I didn’t know how to begin to handle what I’d seen or felt, so I tried to drink them away. For the better part of a decade I was little more than a drifter. The war and the Army gave me a structure to hang a life on.

  “As a result of those misspent years I had developed, shall we say, a gift for dissembling. This caught the eye of a superior officer, who instead of sending me to the brig--which he could have done, had he followed the book--recommended me for intelligence work; I’d found my metier. When news of these unsettling sightings in the skies began filtering out of New Mexico--where, at the time, the Manhattan Project was our number-one security priority--they sent me in undercover. Kismet. What I witnessed at Roswell connected me back to events I’d witnessed here. That performance earned me a promotion and a more meaningful job: following the saucers. I’d found my path, it opened up before me and I didn’t question it. I never have. In other words, I believe it chose me.”

  Many of the colonel’s experiences made their way into the middle and later sections of this dossier, accompanied by my modest attempts at interpretation. Modern sections about the people of Twin Peaks we contributed together.

  “Why am I telling you this?” he went on. “A secret’s only a secret as long as you keep it. Once you tell someone it loses all its power--for good or ill--like that, it’s just another piece of information. But a real mystery can’t be solved, not completely. It’s
always just out of reach, like a light around the corner; you might catch a glimpse of what it reveals, feel its warmth, but you can’t know the heart of it, not really. That’s what gives it value: It can’t be cracked, it’s bigger than you and me, bigger than everything we know. Those tight-ass suits can keep their secrets, they don’t add up to anything. This deep in the game, pal, I’ll take mystery every time. Ask your second question.”

  “What is our mission here?”

  “Monitor our array of equipment in order to detect signs of intelligent nonhuman life not only in deep space, but here on earth, in our immediate surroundings. Attempt to discern their intentions and keep a watchful eye for signs of imminent attack.”

  My astonishment was complete, my sense of responsibility enormous. I bent my shoulder to this solitary task with dedication and never breathed a word to anyone about the true nature of the work, not to my superiors back at Fairfield, nor to the many friends I’d made in our new community, not even to my family. For nearly five years nothing of consequence appeared in the data I collected. An occasional anomaly surfaced, but nothing that seemed to justify the expense and effort we’d made to create the LPA in the first place. I grew discouraged, and during this time the colonel himself seemed to lose interest; he made fewer and fewer trips up the mountain.

  My career sank into limbo. At Fairchild, officers junior to me began receiving promotions that, given the length and quality of my service, should have gone to me. I began to wonder if I’d made the worst mistake of my life. Making colonel, something I’d felt would one day surely come my way, seemed out of reach. I struggled with despair, and buried myself deeper in what began to seem like meaningless routine. Dedication to duty, without questioning the purpose, that’s the life of an officer, I told myself.