The Train Car In The Pilot

This post is a collection of thoughts regarding the train car in the pilot.

It is not with insensitivity I post images containing blood and gore. Please accept my apologies if they offend.

• I recently purchased the From Z to A Blu-Ray collection. With the 4k version of the pilot, a detail that had previously eluded me became clear. Pine needles appear to be sprinkled on the mound of dirt. They can be seen on the Blu-Ray, though their color blends with the mound as a whole. The 4K allows you to see their green coloring.

• Brightly colored pellets can also be discerned, possibly perlite from potting soil. The dirt does seem darker in spots as though potting soil has been added. There are small pieces of bark and gold flecks, maybe vermiculite, mixed in with the soil. Playing the Blu-Ray on a PS4 the color seems to contain more reds and golds. The 4K seems darker and muted in some aspects, at least on my TV. Where some colors stand out or are the same as made new, others fade.

Fragments similar to those found in the mound rest on Laura's face and in her hair.

• There are crumpled papers or cloth next to the mound of dirt. They're spotted or soaked with blood. One is coated with dirt or singed.

If you brighten the image, the largest cloth/paper near the mound has a dark line across it. The red threads mentioned by Mike in the International Pilot come to mind. "You know about Teresa Banks? I know the man who did her. I also know about the stitches with the red thread." For more on twine and the possible source of the cloth in the image below, please visit this post.

• Was the 'newsprint' used to make the Fire, Walk With Me note a page torn from Flesh World?

• There is a swell of music after Dale reads aloud the Fire Walk With Me message. It slightly reminds me of Windom Earle's Motif Half-Speed Orchestra 3. It is darkness I perceive from this action as though a spell is cast.
  
  
• Sounds of water dripping. Still industrial sounds like those heard outside the train car, though not as amplified.

• There are sheets of plastic beside a wooden chest. On the chest appears to be a bloody cloth.
  

 The surface beneath the cloth is reflective and almost seems wet. The three darker lines on the side of the chest may be blood stains.

Note how the oddly grouped mass in the circle almost resembles the fingers of medical gloves. In Fire Walk With Me, BOB/Leland wears gloves in the train car, but when Leland/BOB exits, his hands are bare.

BOB/Leland with and without gloves.

The circled area in the image above may contain a metal instrument, possibly a small pair of scissors. Though perhaps unrelated, in The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, Laura writes of BOB cutting her when he takes her into the woods. "Surgery of a strange and indescribable nature takes place. Blood is let."

In the season two premiere (episode 8, May The Giant Be With You, 2.001), medical tools can be seen next to BOB in the train car.

In the full still, a bloodied cloth, possibly a towel, is on a chest beside Laura. It is seemingly meant to be the same cloth as in the pilot. Note that the chest is again wet as the boards appear soaked.

•  A hammer is shown, and at its base is a translucent bag or more plastic sheeting containing what looks like blood or possibly human or animal remains. The hammer, the bag, and its contents are never mentioned.

In season two, episode eight, an extended shot of the hammer is shown during Cooper's reconstruction of the events leading to Laura's death. It is indicated that the hammer was the instrument with which the killer struck Ronette. Something we never see in Fire Walk With Me.

As you can see in the last frame, during the flashback in episode eight (2.001, May The Giant Be With You), there are two thin lines amidst the blood beyond the hammer, perhaps metal bars.

Note that, like the bag or sheet by the hammer, the bloody cloths/papers found inside the train car are also never mentioned. Nor is the bloody cloth on the chest mentioned as evidence. The pages from Laura's diary - which suddenly appear without previous mention in season two - and the bloody towel were supposedly found by Hawk outside the train car. A half-mile down the tracks from the crime site according to season one, episode two. Five miles down the tracks by season two, episode one.

 

As you can see in the image above, the diary pages are devoid of blood stains. They can't have been the papers in the train car.

 

What originally happened? Why, in the case of the articles within the train car, was blood on so many different cloths/papers and the floor of the train car? BOB's practice of bloodletting comes to mind. In episode one (1.001, Traces To Nowhere), Doc Hayward says, "What killed her was loss of blood. Numerous shallow wounds, no single one serious enough to have been the cause of death." The cloth/paper in the image directly beneath this text almost seems to have been dabbed at a wound, as one would a bloody nose. As for the balled-up cloth, my first thought was that it housed something akin to what is in the plastic bag, seeing as how the source of the blood is on the bottom of the cloth. We'll more than likely never know.