Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Even after all these years, the
studio still smells the same, a collision of dust, cold
electronics and the sickly wiff of burned coffee. The overhead
fluorescent light is too bright, bleaching my hands as I
clicken the battered console in front of me, each control
slick with decades of nervous energy and greasy invisible finger prints.
My headphones pressed tight around my ears, I press record,
take a measured breath, and lean into the microphone, one
red ring, going like an eye, hoping my practiced tone
will carry me past the nerves. Good evening, you're listening
to dead eranzolv, I'm darn me and to night we'rein
spriling a story most of you have never truly heard.
His story about silence, about what moves in the gaps,
and about the night my manager Marlene Carter banished from
studio kaiek fiot with the signal still pulsing into hums
all over the valley. This recording is for those who remember,
or for the curious who happen to land on this
frequency by accident. Either way, stick around, nurse, catch him
my throat. I swallow and steady myself. This used to
come so easy, improve after midnight, with news headlines, lonely
listeners and the low hum of the transmitter in my blood.
But to night every syllable feels heavier, as if any
word might crack open. Something best left and disturbed. I
nudged a faded fader upward. I want to stop by
playing you something. This oudio isn't public. It's a transfer
of a real defense siled inside a can miss fold
and the kaek's fio ok ever room when the building clothes.
It's from the night Marlene disappeared. Listen and judge for yourself.
I hit play. The studio fills with the wine of owlock,
tapes offt just before the drop. Then a crisp by gunjingle,
You're up late and so are we kaeks few of
your friend on the air. There's my own voice, thin
with youth walking the minute gap before commercials, the tape wobbles, hiccoughs,
and an abrupt aching how yawn's open. Six seconds of
perfect bottomless dead air, no static, no wall, noise, just
a blank foot where the world should be. Then very quietly.
The silence cracks at rid of whispering unfrills from the speakers.
It's inhuman somehow, both whisper and rumble, and I cannot,
no matter how many times to listen, pick out the
full words. Maybe find remember, regretted. The tape hisses and
the whispering swells, almost rhythmic, as if someone's breathing right
up against the mic in a sealed dark room. I
have her near the fade out. What you're hearing I say,
wasn't any scheduled spot. I was live the whole time.
The only other person in the booth with me was
Morleine Shehery. The sound tech was off, priving the weather
that whispered those words on anything I ever heard, not
from staff, not from Pancolu's. After that night, we pulled
the tapes. The farm metadata doesn't match any of our voices.
Security logs claim the station was locked from the inside,
no movement recorded after twelve ed a hm, But if
you pay close attention you'll hear well. I'll let you decide. Listen.
One last time, I replayed a sample, drawing my thumb
down the slider. The hiss like frostened in my skin.
The whisper seeps out a codo kers caught on meg
NEC tape long after I stopped the recording as it
motionless in the pool of harsh light, ears straining, half
expecting those impossible syllables to spill out again on their own.
Let's go back, I tell myself to that place in time.
Maybe if I stitch the iOS together, the full pattern
will show. Maybe then I'll hear what's true. Hiding in
the dead air, YE never really understand when a routine
starts to go wrong. It shifts so quietly, all white
noise and comfort, that you missed the turn back. Then.
In two thousand one, my life forbited k at Feo's
midnight frequency. Caught in the low swing between commercial slots
and static, the station was ennapost on the city's northern edge,
half awake, next to an expanse of silent lots and
the glassy shell of at Funk Supermarket. At night, its
red tower light splink through the mist, drawing moss and
lost teenages to the fence perimeter, but rarely any one else.
My shift began just after conventional bed time, eleven zero
p m to four zero EM six nights a week.
Rituals were everything around ten forty. I'd passed through the
side door, blinking at the bracing snap of cool air
giving way to the brittle warmth inside. The break room
was always too bright, microwaved din of stewing in their
own seam. She would already be puched behind her partition,
shoes off, mixing up the playlist of groaning about flaky
on air talent. You are late, may she bark, there's
a new call and game. We're trying a two dun't
botch at this time. Marline's vile eyes are on us.
Our studio was a glass fishbowl, flanked by stacks of
vinyl battered Seedean's biary cases and towels of ARCA cassettes
and commercials, some still labeled to need handwriting from the
nineteen ages. By day, the place was crowded and bright.
News anchors in press suits, sales teams in constant motion.
Reception flooded with interns clutching new scripts. But the night
shift belonged to the insomniacts, and they obsessed. Lights were
set low. Half the rooms went dark after midnight, and
a lazy roll of badge swipes at the main desk
trickle to nothing by eleven thirty. Morlene, our manager, was
sometimes it only daylight we got. She patted between studios,
checking schedules, leaving notes and careful black marker. Don't forget
the idea at the top of the IRA, or take
a breather made of cities asleep. You're not unflappable in emergencies.
Marlene was known for her open door policy, in a
priceless knack for talking nervous hosts off the ledge when
techwent sideways. Her personal life remained a tight bundle, but
she was universally liked, more respected than anyone else in
the building. Maybe after midnight, the calls came in, waved,
some loyal, some lonely, Their regulars whose voices became fixtures
in mine, Glenley and Samniac, who called just to debate trivia,
Miss S Patterson, drunk and charming, always requesting Sonatra. Even
the station's janitor, Andy would phone from the next room
for the weird thrill of being on the air. And
then there was the silent line, no label, no public number,
only program to ring after midnight, flashing a queasy yellow
on the phone console. No one admitted placing it there.
Sherry joked that it connected directly to the Devil's office.
I grew used to the idea that sometimes some one
was listening who shouldn't be. Some nights during the two
zerum sign off, I could where I wasn't alone, the
tinkle between my shoulder blaze growing, as if some audience
I couldn't see was closing in past the glass. But
there was comfort and routine. I'd line up the next
Irish tracks, clean my mug, check the logs, exchanging mutter
to sides with Sherry. As Morlene made her rounds most nights.
The worst that happened was a fumble jingle or a
nodble collar trying to slip a dirty joke past the senses.
K x VO at night was a family at sorts,
A frayed and fractious one, may be, but a family.
The city beyond the windows could have flipped up side
down and we'd never know our world, just the red
dot of the bon air bulb and the pulse of friendly,
anonymous voices. All this was snap, of course, and looking back,
I see how the groundwork was there. Marline's while meaning
notes on the bulletin board reminders for a discretion jerks
about the night crew keeping each other honest. There was
a sense some nights that everything was being observed, not
just by listeners calling in from the bedrooms, but by
something in the building itself. Still, all that is hindsight.
At the time, I believed in the safeguard of routine.
I believed in the thin barrier of glass, the comfort
of Marline's knock in the pane before breaking up a
dragi shift. My name was in the air. My job
was to fill the silence, and the World City Studio
tower spun simply enough for me to hold on to it.
Things started shifting with a single, perfectly ordinary collar. It
was nearly one, the room humming with the fatigue that
creeps in. Just after the half remark, I slid down
the volume for the night's forth free run of Blue
Oyster Colt, hit the open line button and gave my
usual patter, Jion Kaiek's fire, Who's up with me? To night?
There was a hiss, no greeting, just breathing, shall op
and mechanical, like a bad phone line. Before I could
prompt them off, the voice cut in, vibrating with distortion.
Your secret uncovered. I know what you did at midnight.
Then a thin chuckle and the line went dead. People
called him with all kinds of nonsense. Sure, pranksters late nineteens,
even the regulars had been known to try their hand
at spooking Rookie Darren. But this was different. The voice
was veiled in effects, crackling and rapped with a word
scraping overlay, as if fed for a broken harmonizer. It
didn't sound like normal speech. The syllables ran together, trailing
into static. Something about it crawled under my skin, especially
the way it said midnight. The rhythm mimicked tide filled
a broka slip up near twelve, rushing to id the
station after missing a scheduled proma by minute. No one
outside staff would have known that it was recorded. Sure,
but that lock wasn't public. I chalked it up to
a lucky guess, maybe a regular listening real close, and
finished the iris. Rehearsed, but feeling nagged after the shift.
In a cold quiet at the operations room, I replayed
the OKAV tape first at normal speed, then slowed down
the same hiss the mutative rasp a few impossibly feigned
details behind a voice more shivering than speaking, A passing
of clicks and knucks, the hiss swell write as the
call ended like a curtain of sound. Definitely not normal.
Shery drifted by as I hunched over the console, trying
out some ouvingard programming. Meh, I shruked, Just a weird caller.
You get a lot of those, yea, this one listen.
I queued up the sample, let it play. Watched her
eyebrow's edge together. That's gross, she said, checking the sundboard
for power surge. Run it by Marlene. I was just
about to Marlene arrived before I could fetch her, at
the heavy glass door, swinging with its usual hesitation, arms
full of admin paperwork. She smiled, glanced from Sherry to me,
then to the little winking light of the phone system.
Without dropping her calm, she asked, you two all right?
Lay chiff blues. Sherry scoffed, Darin's got a fan club.
I tried to laugh it off, played her thirty seconds
of the call. The smallest sign of discomfort creased her
usually easy expression, but she overrode it with brisk chair.
Whoever it is must be bored. We've had worse. Keep
a look of calls this week, will you, Darren? If
it's a regular, I'll band them from contest lines. She
left with up morph us, but I watched her wants
or twice peeking in from the glass, lips twitching as
if she was cheering over something. Days later, Sherry caught
me in the hallway. You get the mummo game. Shelled
up a pink slip, addressed her with clip magazine lettuce, spelling,
surey shouldn't lie about her chinel skirt. The night before,
she covered up a spill after knocking coffee onto her lap,
complaining loudly in the lounge but denying it to everyone else. Well,
only you, me and Marlene heard it right. Sherry was
still red face, but now worry pinched her corners. I
couldn't be from upstairs unless someone's got bugs in the walls.
I tried to joke, but the joke didn't land. The
call log grew every night, more interest with each shift.
Distorative voices mentioning slip ups, comments from staff meetings, repeated
back on air, snatches of Gosip only spoken during breaks.
It was as if the building itself had begun to
parrot our secrets. When people started receiving envelopes, the dread
tunnel further in two nicely. Later, as I made my
tie of walk to the booth, I found something unusual
in my mail box. Our internal station mail boxes were
mostly stuffed for scripts left of her birthday cake or
an invitation to the annual company BBQ, but wedged a
crooked angle was a plain white envelope, no stamp, no marking,
not even my name, just a single sentence and groutess
cut up lettering. Turn on Channel three regrets sounds like you.
The envelope felt creasy, faintly sticky at the scene. I
waited until the break, then nanked the boxy little studio
TV over to the board, using a bencoat hanger as
an antendner. Channel three was just static. Now we lost
our network feed to the digital switch of for month's prayer. Still,
I sat in front of it, coaxing the snow to
form a picture for a second. Out of the blizzard
of black and white, I thought I saw Marline's face,
not clear, more like the ghost impression of her profile,
mouth caught midway between a laugh and a command, flickering
and bleeding intero fhiles. It lasted maybe a heartbeat before dissolving,
but it felt stronger than a trick of the eye.
The rest of the shift went sideways. The phone light
flickered without calls, seed tray stuck open, ran in blalelist slooped.
The dead areas of the station felt even emptier. A
corner cherry in the corridor, waving the envelope, Did ye
get any weird mail? She nodded, tight lipped, mine said,
don't forget whose home? Though in home was filled in
with red ink. Even Morlene, who normally fielded complaints with humor,
looked worn. I caught glimpses of her jaws, hot eyes
flicking down to her planner as she made her runds less,
often clutching a sheaf of notes. One night, waiting for
my sign off, I looked up to see her hunched
over the security locks, scrolling through badged time stamps. She
jumped when I quietly entered. She snapped her folder shut
harder than I had ever seen. The mood Achaek's feo
had shifted. It was like waiting for a storm that
never quite broke. The pressure building in the airless halls,
the uneasy atmosphere came to a head the night the
intern quit. His name was Neil, a soft voice student
with the knack for add copy and a tendency to
doze off during late meetings. He came in pale, nervy,
eyes rimmed red, and by midnight he'd emptied his locker.
On his desk, propped against the keyboard, he left a
note half a page written in pencil block lite letters,
don't let yourself in after dark. Please, it's not safe.
The station was too small for secrets. Fear drifted, catching
in coroners and brake rooms. Some staff began openly speculating
about a mole, or less kindly joking about a ghost,
but the fun faded when the threats turned personal. We
were all getting messages, sometimes and calls, a mention of
some one's dog's name, an exact cobe from a fight
with a spouse, the punch line of a private office jerk.
Sometimes by emails subject lines reading how was your drive home?
At two twelve? Our tape spliced into the night's schedule,
whispering the last words spoken off a by the target.
The difference was always specificity the whisperer. However, whatever it
was trapped our every slip, every confessional moment, caught at
low volume. What had started as a prank now felt methodical,
almost surgical. The regulars on the hot line fell quiet, nervous,
were scared off Molly and looked more would drawn reviewing
badge logs after midnight scrubbing for I was of coal
and archives. She took to walking the holes alone, ear
to her cell phone, sometimes double checking the locks on
every studio. Even the janitor, the affable Andy, started staying
clear of the station after eleven thirty, giving us a
tight lip knot before hustling out to the pucking lot.
The fear rippled out. Sherry took to jumping at the
sound of her own name over the pier. Engineers began
swapping shifts, trading nights for days, nobody wanting to be
the last one in the studio. Whin a'clock flipped past one,
the station felt peeled and raw, as though all our
soft places and hidden corners had been left exposed. One night,
as storms bunched quietly on the horizon, Marlene intercepted me
in the break room. A darin, she said, voice clipped,
I was darting between the water cooler, and the hull
got a minute. She carried herself with purpose, but her
knuckles were wider round her mouth. She motioned for me
to sit. Reaching into her bag, she drew out a
bout a note, bud. I got a call last night,
not at the office, at home, unlisted number. They they
called me mamma. Her mouth trembled, a rare and private sign.
No one's called me that since I was twelve. They
described my bedroom, my old house, an accident at school
when I was seven. Things I've never mentioned here, never,
not even to h R. I tried to keep my
expression steady. It must be someone close, must be. She
looked up at me directly, and for just a second,
I saw fear, honest and helpless in a person who'd
always been in control. You think I haven't considered that.
Every call, every message, they reference things I've only written
in stuff, Memoso said. Late at night, in this building,
whoever it is someone inside is collecting everything, watching, listening,
then using it. She snatched a napkin, scribbling as she spoke.
I want to try something. We'll wire the phone system,
see if we can trap the collar. A needy to
make a mistake on air, something only stuff for catch
use of fake promo code, something obviously wrong, but only
to us say it at midnight exactly, I'll watch the lines.
I nodded, a weight settling in my chest. You think
they're one of us? She'd lanced at her phone's home screen,
jaw set. I don't know, but after tonight, I'm going
to find out how determination studded me until the end
of that shift, when everything slid sideways. Plan began smoothly
at midnight shop I faked a failed promo announcement, don't
forget listeners. Your code for tonight's game is w I
N and is four hundred forty four ord. There was
no contest that night. Marlene waited in her office watching
the monitoring system, but when the shift ended, she was gone, completely,
utterly gone. I found her office door jar, the security
feeds on a constant static loop, her bag on the
floor spilled open, not even her wallet missing. The outdoor
camera had been wiped blank from eleven fifty two onward,
her cossat alone in its usual space, the driver's door open,
keys swinging from the ignition. Her radio spun up at
max volume, grading pistatic that prickled with distant, warbled speech.
I couldn't decipher it. Managers arrive an hour later, faces
etched with fatigue and anger. They claimed Marlene had quit,
abruptly left the state, no forward address, no contact, Her
email was scrubbed with an eiros. I did not could
not believe it, not with the driver's door hanging a
jar in the cold, not with the radio still steaming
with static, and not with that final coppery silence pulsing
from every monitor and every phone for miles around, as
if the Verria had turned against us. Whatever was alive
in the station, it hadn't finished with us yet. Whatever
was alive in the station, it hadn't finished with us yet.
The very next morning I found myself wandering the empty
hallways in a hunt shouldered days, clutching my badge and
trying to recall every detail of Marlene's last shift. Things
unfolded in a rush. H R called staff meeting for
nine stone, faced and humorless. I went because Sherry texted
demanding it, but my mind was elsewhere. Marlene's sensible shoes
in the shadows by her desk, her rapify keystrucks in
the look books, the brittle snip of a smile, she
offered when her eyes met mine for the last time.
The conference room, usually jammed with snack wrappers and empty mugs,
felt airless, and foreign management had set out boxy pitches
of water. Nobody drank only a half dozen night shifters
bothered showing up all of us, showing the raw seams
of pro sleep. Sherry sat beside me, hands folded and
still for once a strip of gauze around one thumb
where she bitten a nail to the quick our station
g M. Mister Jyry recited from a folder For those unaware,
Marlene Carter is no longer with Kaek's FEO. We thank
her for her many years of service. His eyes avoided
mine cat's steadier on his pen, as if that might
block out the questions surfacing around the oval table. She
chosen to move on for personal reasons. Her files are
now locked. Please admit all administrative issues to meet or
direct supervisors. That was it, no tribute, no moment of silence,
no hint at someone we'd all trust. It had simply evaporated.
Surry let out a tiny involuntary loft shop, disbelieving Jyrouse
lit passed white we expect ol posnel to respect privacy,
he said stiffly. Some one across the table piped up.
I saw her car still outside when she coming for it.
The gienttone clamped down coal Arrangements will be made afterward.
Standing in the hallway, the chatter turned ugly, lo urgent voices.
Some panicked she wouldn't just leave, Not Marlene, She's got
a dog. At least, she hated surprises. Do you think
it's connected to those calls? Nobody said it, ll try it,
but the idea was planted, something in the walls, in
the wires, working through us all while we slept in
blinkchin poor coffee. Sherry waited with me by the battered
vending machine. Door's glitch again last night, she said quietly.
That maintenance guy Andy he swear as he heard Marline
talking in the parking lot just after one, to who
she was facing the tower back turned to everything. A
muscle in my neck twitched. Security badge logs say she
never left, but her car still there. I got two
new emails after three, a m surey added, voice nearly gone,
both blank, just subject lines, remember the code, and we
watch a sharp pang of panic work threw me chased
by NASA. Maybe it's some one spoofing her account, Mattie.
She shook her head. They came from in house, our domain.
For a few hours, we tossed it over, reaching for
a logical human culprit, and night engineer gune Rogue sun
shultered Dixon to infurious at bad review. I poured over
the coal locks by daylight, combing through waves of static
and distorted voices. Let in the relentless tape loops leach
the sunlight from the room, but the evidence wavered and slept.
Time stemps didn't line up. The server would jump backwards,
then ahead, as if an invisible handcap, rewriting history in
real time. By the next night, routine was impossible. We
all huddled in the lounge. The regular was gone, a
nervous clutch of us trading stories and anxious bursts. Andy
de Janitor leaned in gray face, set off by a
flat blue uniform. Here you hear it. After she vanished.
Every time I hung up my mop to go, I
thought I heard her calling from studiocy Like she never left.
I poked my head in nothing just a chair slowly
spinning and a copy of last year springskate or flapping
against a vent A chill slid down my spine. Anyone
checked the badge system, he nodded, shewing his lip. Badgers
keep getting wipe, like someone's trying to erase the last
night shift. Sherry piped up, can't just be a prank.
My laptop at home private pass worded as snippets of
our last show save to the deaftop out of order
stuff I never transferred. No one laughed. Midway through the shift.
As the storm finally broke above the city, thunder rattled
the window glass in the power flickered the station backup.
Systed fired all lights, blinking into an unholy hospital. White
brightness crossed the hall an engineered day as I most
the days since he'd had a newborn cursal out, and
tossed his head set onto the control room desk. Every
speaker in the building blared the same phrase clipped in
metallic turn up to in mister mark. The words repeated
too clearly, clearly pre recorded, not a pranks to hijacking
live control. When I checked the input locks father nix
us on our system, nor when I called engineering support.
Had anyone programmed the message it was as though the
building itself had found a voice using our own nervous microphone.
Jaswap passed in a fury, half amused, half terrived. If
this is someone's idea of fun, you are getting sued,
he snapped to anyone who would listen. He kept his
head down the rest of the night, refusing to answer
any line outside the main signal, refusing even to answer
a ringing prone at his own work station, as if
the sound alone might carry a contagion. Just before three
a m. I was pacing the brake room, grasping for
something as mundane as a snack, when Sherry stormed in,
fussing with her earpiece. Darrened, I just got a direct call,
different number this time. No caller ID listen to this.
She shoved her phone into my hands, playback running. The
message was short, but a misticable. You were next to
forget listen close. At two o'clock it played a Marlene voice.
But what The vowel stretched and dipped in away, completely
unlike anything I'd never heard her say live. Sherry's hand
shook as she reached for the phone. How can it
be her? If it's a joke, it's not funny. If
it's not, if it's not I finish, then it's someone
trying to break us apart, she glared. Or what if
it's a copycat, someone with all our voice files, or
someone patching in all difchicks. Neither of us believed it.
Not really, there wasn't enough time, enough motive, enough access
for that kind of trick. Someone had to be in here,
working from our side, our files, our messes and mistakes
brought guesting us back to ourselves until we snapped outside.
Windhammered the windows with bursts of rain, every cspulsion ancient
glass like lungs about to bears. The next day, k
x vo's Daytime krew found the playlist system riddled, with
all the desad spots running out of order, a series
of wishful, half completed staff memos scheduled to air as
station announcements, even a stray cut from the nineteen ninety
seven Christmas party loaded into the morning drive. The file
names had all been altered with cryptic notations and tine stamps.
None of us who worked the previous night took responsibility.
Emails funneled him from listeners to strange. Jaudia last night,
wrote one heard someone sobbing during love songs or two.
Another described a lull like the mic was open but
no one breathing, Then a voice behind the host muttering
not safe, AFT too dark, again and again. Management of
course denied everything technical error, with senitizing the system, leave
it to it t They sat ushering us away from
the added base from undated silver repairs. But every night
after something small and impossible would twist on new routines
as key the hallway lights blinking out in sequence, a
stack of memos left, and the threshold between Office B
and Studio D with every night staff as nick Nim
written on the backs, the microwave beeping out the melody
to the old station I D song exactly. At two
seventeen a m. No One admitted programming that people started
missing shifts. Two interns at once quit citing toxic atmosphere,
ann of feeling watched. One didn't even return for his
last check, just send a short text don't trust the
blind spots Midnight's wrong. I finally climax the night the
back transmitter went offline. Shrry and I were running through
the pre roll for a midnight compendium. A slow Tuesday
with hardly any callers. Suddenly, every red light in the
bay linked out, the entire systems stuttering offline. Studio emergency
power stayed up, but the transmitter logs started vomiting outdrocode
after er or co, most translating to no input sores
found across the glass. Andy, the janitor, rubbing sleep from
his eyes, stopped in the open corridor, his mob bucket
tip double. He was staring not at us, but into
the darkness of studio d wh The lights flickered with
a lazy pulse like sinc. It was only for a second,
maybe less, but I caught it, A shadow moving against
the grain of the glass, too big and too slow
for any of us, as if the booth itself was
turning over. The shadows drew themselves back, melting into the
familiar shapes of empty chairs. A minute later, all the
equipment powered up again. The console reconnected on que ou
laylist picked up right where we'd left it, but the
clocks were wrong, each screen showing a slightly different time
off by a minute or three. The only sound besides
our own shaky breaths, was a soft skip of vinyl
at the tail end of an old linder runster track,
picking at the grooven away it never did before. No
one wanted to be last out. That night, we crowded
the exits, barely remember and to log are out times,
fumbling for keys, briefly glancing back at the studio glass
to see if anything any one would weave us off,
before the building locked itself for the day. I called
home from the parking lot, fingers numb, one eye on
the empty windshield of Marline's car, bottle of water rolling
slowly in the dash the sea. Then slept in radio,
still hissing. When I finally crashed into bed after sunrise,
I dreamt the transmitter was buried inside me every failed
idea and whispered secret buzzy and loops through my teeth.
The silent line kept ringing, ladder and triller each time
until I answered and heard only my own voice, doubled
back in mimicry, whispering Acoda couldn't break. My phone woke
me vibrating with a half dozen miscalls from Sherry and
Andy and a number marked unknown. I listened to the
most recent voicemail breath, the staticky someone speaking only in presents.
You will come back. We are here, No call history
just the audio stamped at three twenty seven a m.
Those days blowed together, the station drained of laughter, even gossip.
People changed commutes, change habits. Sherry started coming in only
during daylight. Jay transferred out. Andy put in request for
permanent reassignment to the TV side, joking weakly that he'd
take go sovdad eer Any day. After a staff meeting
where the g M again dodged any questions about Marlene,
I caught a glimpse of her empty desk. The surface
still bore circles where her mug had sweated through late nights,
one only barely white clean. I ran my finger round it,
and some odd rough texture resisted back, as if some
one had scratched words into the polish laminate. In the
right light, I could make out something sign off three
twenty seven. I startled backwards, merely knocking a stack of
year old promo hats off the shelf. The tape echo
from the old VY cart, left too close to the speakers,
warbled a sound like someone softly humming. The theen to
our weather report. Even as we tried shooting out their
known locking doors a little tighter, guarding secrets even more closely.
The fabric of kaek Vio's night life kept him reveling.
Outside the station's back door. The transmitter tower capt its
steady mechanical blink one, two, three, paused, then again, regular
as heartbeat, immune to drama. But the city beyond and
a small corner of it, felt years older for every
night spent listening to the the dead air, each routine
now laced with the certainty that someone with something kept
its own perfect record and could bring any of us
to static at a moment's notice. That was what it
felt like, to be haunted, not by ghosts in the
ordinary sense, but by everything you could not refurract, could
not say, had not even realized was audible until it
was too late. Sherry caught up with me at a
bus stop one exhausted morning, head damp from mister and
eyes and blinking. I'm leaving, she whispered, force more frightened
than I'd heard it since Marlene vanished. Not just Kerkio
leaving town. There's something wrong with this place, not just
the station. I see Marlene in my dreams standing at
the parking lot, calling, but her mouth never moves. I'd here,
sign off, sign off, over, and over, but the lights
never go out. I didn't know what to say. I
squeezed her hound and realized I might never see her again.
Back inside, after she'd left for the last time, I
waited for my night shift to begin. The empty air
between us thicker than ever. The old analog clock up
of the keyboard ticked every sweep of its second hand
nichoing softer and softer, until it felt as if the
hands might stop at any moment. I paged for Marlene's
old notpooc left behind. I noticed by management words between
crumbling operation manuals in the supply room. The lost pages
were half scribble, half list times initial snatches of radio
at texts, all ending with a phrase under line in
shaky ink someone is always listening? When is silent? Line
rind that night three shop precise persis let it go
to horsemail. The tape park have later only contained a
single slow ex hail, too close to the mic, as
if the line itself had become lungs with fear in
a hollow, aching nostalger. I closed the log and signed out.
I'm sure if this was the beginning of my own
long fade into silence, or just another note on some
larger score, playing out in the frequencies no one else
could hear. The final months after Morlin vanished left scars
on every corner of the station, but the woind frob
deepest in me. Rumors lingered, rippling through the staff, even
as management scrubbed every trace of her, swapping mail boxes,
reassigning schedules, pretending her old office hadn't existed at all.
But there were reminders everywhere, her favorite fountain pen still
wedged beneath the phone and studio. A post it flapping
remembered the little things, her rounded script and mistakable halfway's
peel from the battered fridge in a break room. Sherry
was gone by then, a ghost of herself in a voicemail,
her apartment empted, and her name quietly struck from the company.
Were page without marline anchoring us. The edges of normal
effichaic feofrid and odd subtle ways. The overnight crew scattered.
New hires came and went, none lasting more than a month.
The shift went strange. Phone lines would blink into life
at late hours, showing numbers no one recognized, ringing through
to empty air. Sometimes half way into my own shift,
a stray jingle, one we hadn't queued, one the system
insisted didn't exist, would interrupt the playlist, always just a fragment,
a burst of voices, then dead air. If I stayed late,
I sometimes imagined a presence moving past the closed glass doors,
intent on something I couldn't see. Nane, the regulus fell off,
each with their own excuse. Glenn's line, always the first
after midnight, was disconnected. Missus Patterson stopped calling after a message,
a slurred, uncanny version of her own Vosaire during my
Sunday slot, warning no secrets after dark. Dear Andy, the
janitor stopped staying past nine. Is Mopbucket now the only
witness to the station's transformation into her shell. I should
have quit then, should have packed up my tapes, handed
in my badge, and walked out into the gray morning,
like so many others. But I didn't. I held on,
tither to some stubborn sense of unfinished business, or loyalty
to Marlin, or maybe just to the cause and console
that had steered my life for so long. As weeks
called by, strange things began to show up around the station,
small but too precise to be dismissed as chance emale
subject lines composed entirely of initials Mine, Shuri's Marlin's Coming
from Nowhere, containing nothing in the body except to dates match.
In the time of Marline's last sign off, a cassette
unmarked waiting all my console one Tuesday afternoon, as I
came on Chiff, I played it after every one else
had left. The tape was mostly dead, e every so often,
my own voice cutting through, stuttering old station id from
the previous year. At the end of the reel, a whisper,
familiar and distortive. Next to forget listened close at two o'clock.
The words made no sense, but the chill the conjured
was unmistakable. Management's solution was to sanitize the station, calling
in it t replacing phone banks running fiber where the
old copper lines had pulls for decades. But the shivers
of static remained, winding around every broadcast, pitching up at
odd moments, creating new gaps that no one could patch.
Sometimes I think I saw movement just inside the reflection
and the glass below the red on air bowl. Shapes
there and gone, faces pressed up, watching with patient, infinite attention.
The pressure to hold the corner. Steady gave way to
something heavier, rougher. By midwinter, I moved through the station
like a sleepwalker, jumping at echoes and fountom smells, Marlin's
puffume mofting from event. At three a m. The aroom
of berntos drifting from a break room with no one inside.
The antonists gathered became a present, Its edges always just
out of sight. Messages continued bolder, less plausible. At the
close of every shift, I'd find the console log files corrupted,
overridden with strings of code or short sentences built from
our show transcripts. You are on now to something hears all.
They do not sign off. Even after deleting them, they reappeared,
hundreds of dupl kits created in the system logs, multiplying
like static on a bad line. With every passing week,
the memory of Marlin's life last night grew heavier, less coherent.
My own face looked pale and drawn in a security
monitor's glare, eyes haunted, lips moving as if repeating some
silent and the script just out of reach. Friend outside
radio asked if I was sleeping. I was. I'd lie
in bed, replaying the final audio again. And again, straining
to isolate the whispers and the reel, desperate to divine
some meaning from the storm of noise. The anniversary of
her disappearance came and went. No tribute was aired. The
weather was mild, barely worth noting. But that night the
transmitter's red lights blinked in an erratic sequence, three quick,
too slow, one law. It looked like co but I
never managed to decipher it. That's when I knew the
answers when't going to come to me in the night,
not by wish routine of flickers on a console. I'd
have to go back to the beginning, to the place
everything started, and drag whatever truth I could find from
the silence itself. Two years passed, the city moved on
a shape shifting. Old landmarks erased, but one stubborn relic persisted.
Kaiks Feo's building, foreclosed in hollow, stood sentinel at the
city's fringes, its windows ordered and doors chained. The yard
gone wild with dry grass and candy wrappers. The red
lights atop the tower still burned steady as a pulse,
powered by an emergency circuit that no one bothered to disconnect.
The place was a scar the story most wanted to forget.
I tried to ignore the itch to return. I started
a podcast, easy at first, disposable mysteries, urban legends, haunted signals,
drifting into static. But each season I circled back to
the whole marline left. In the nights, the station swallowed
itself in whispers. I set up a portable recorder, cradling
the old headphones to my ears. My fingers trembled as
I unspoiled the battered court. I hesitated at the padlocked doors,
hot thudding, as if to warm me off for good.
With the permission of a city council member, an old
friend from production days, I unlocked the side door for
a single visit. The metal groaned as I nudged it
with my foot, breaking the fragile crust of dust. The
building received me like a patient animal, silent pulsing just
beneath the skin. The air inside cooler than I spected,
careful not to disturb anything more than necessary. I followed
the faded lines and the tile of familiar corridors unfolding
in darkness. My flashlight beam skittered from one wall to
the next, Familiar posters yellowed, now peeling at the corner's
advertised shows long since forgotten. In the break room, an
empty chair still bore the imprint of a once favorite cushion,
its colors leached out. I recorded everything, arrating as quietly
as I could, as if afraid to wake something sleeping
just beneath the surface. Back at Kaiek's fio, first time
since that week. The silences heavy is the wrong word.
It's not silent. You can feel the transmitters humblow your feet,
some echo lingers. The heart of the station was the
control room. I moved through the darkness, shoes crunching on
loose to briet left by squatters or wind. The studio glass,
once clean nightly by Andy, was now scored by dust
and grime. But the old mic still stood, its red
band waiting with the dumb patience. The board was covered
in a film of coboards, but the head pun jack
felt strangely warm to the touch, as if it had
only just been a plug. A faint artificial music seemed
to filter through the walls, probably with full thinking, the
memory of playlists leaping into my ears. I pressed my
hand against the calendar by the door. Some one had
scratched out every date except one from the Yamaline vanished
March seventeen. The number was circled three times, the pen
indented clear through to the cardboard. Backing past the glass window,
buried in shadow, I found the back office Marling called
her den. The door, always unlocked in her day, was
now closed hard, but the lock gave with a bit
of an effort. Inside, the air was denser, old and sire.
Her battered box lumped beneath the desk. Inside shredded papers,
security printettes, paytubs, and the stack of cassettes. One stood out.
It was labeled in ball point. After I urd I
pocketed it. Behind the box, something metallical linted a set
of keys, Marlene's initials, one faint on the tag. I
turned them over and over, weighing no significance. Why would
she have left them behind? A strange wine whistle through
the holes the wind, maybe finding a broken vent somewhere
above me, or as I stood perfectly still, the unmistakable
warble of a phone ringing once from the main console,
it stopped as quickly as it began. I stood there
in the thickening dark, breathing as shallowly as possible, barely
trussing the surge of adrenaline in my veins, as if
to answer a distant thumb presounded like a door slamming
or something heavier moving through the depths of the building.
I forced myself to remember I was alone, that I
e jecked each room as I had entered. I told
myself the place was empty, except I could feel, same
as all those years ago, a presence moving, cataloging, witnessing
every footful, every breath sweating. Joel clanched at, took one
last sweep of Marlene's office and ducked back to the
main studio. I sat recording, whispering into the time one microphone,
if you're a hearer, if anything's here, or I'm not afraid.
I want the truth from Marlene for everyone. Back in
my apartment, knees trembling, I played the after Ires tape
on an old deck, patching it signal into a modern
editing rig. The sound was dirty than I remembered to
his riding high, punctuated with faint metronomic thumps. I turned
up the gain, folding the playback, and buried beneath the
first two minutes. I found what sounded like my own
voice but slowed and cut together, repeating a chain of
words list, list, mistake, night, regret, midway through another voice
layered underneath Morlene's or mmic, expertly stitched together from years
of ear checks. The phrases ran together, but every so
often distinct names flickered through mine, churies, kneel, the intern
andy jay one after another. A set of slow, purposeful
knocks followed the names, as if some invisible hand were
taling sculls on the other side of the tape. I
spent days pouring through Marline's call logs, torn some pages, shredded,
others written. Every mistake of staff were made, landed as
both a memoent and annotation always followed by the same
strain missed. Three twenty seven, I reached out to Sherry
Ron off a hestoned email and sure if it would
reach her or die in some day zone of long
abandoned accounts. To my surprise, a reply came quickly, short,
almost brusque, but tinged with the old urgency. Still dream
about it, Still hear things in the static. Know you're
going back careful. It was always someone here, not something
find the logs TRACE's system. I pressed her for details
she agreed to a phone call. Voice even drier and
sharper than I remembered. People were recording everything. Every beef
was hot miked, even off ires. There was a patch
in the wall engineer side, no scheduled maintenance and no lock.
The threats, the weird calls, they always came after staff
confessions late at night. Thinking no one heard, it's someone inside.
I asked about Marlene. Silence, then a sigh. She knew
more than she let on. She was trying to map
it all out. She started a list of names, mistakes, dates.
Whoever did this, They were playing us all another form
of staffer. Aurri, a part time board opt, sent me
a string of texts. I received letters after I left,
detailed stuff from taper rooms. I never told anyone someone
had everything arker. When I asked about the after IRAS tapes,
Auri hesitated. Then how the patched old sessions into the
phone systems could make anyone say anything in any order,
ghost in the machine or a person with too much access.
The latest after IROs tape seemed to reinforce it isolated
and slow. The lay of voices fell into pattern, almost
like a mindless computer routine. The tape I realized wasn't
supernatural at all. It was the careful curation of a
technically savvy, malicious insider, someone with full access to the
broadcast network who could capture it. An insert audio dwill
old Studio Mama suddenly made sense. Systemic logins from maintenance
engineers at odd ires, the wiring closet, badge inventory, never
quite lining up, back up tape, cycling through it, and
scheduled times. Someone had built a system, automated and vicious,
dedicated to turning our mistakes and confidences into weapons. My
mind turned with terror and all how long had this
been running? And why? Desperate? I dug for more, reaching
out to the one person who had beyond shift. The night,
Marline vanished but never spoken out, towing a former security
who quit the station immediately afterward. Getting him on the
phone took ires. When he finally answered, his voice sounded raw, terrified,
nearly broken. I saw Marline at night, he confessed, in
a hush. After she left the main building, she walked
out to the tower. She had her phone out, talking,
but nobody was on the other end. She kept saying,
we sign off together, We signed off together. Then she
turned and walked into the dock, toward the base of
the tower. I went out the five minutes later, no sign,
only her car radio cranked static. That never saw her again,
not even in the tapes, the logs. Someone wiped them clean.
He hung up before I could ask more, Whatever or
whoever had comee oreograph. This network of surveillance, fretz and
silencing had gone deeper than any one person could track.
But the roots were human, not spectral, not a ghost,
but the relentless watch for recording. I owe someone determined
to control the station staff with their own worse moments
in private details. Still there remained the sense of something unresolved,
Attention thick in the air, as if the system had
ended but not dead, was still listening, still waiting for
a final sign off. I decided the only way forward
was to confront it directly, calling on what contacts remained
at city Hall. I ranged for a single live broadcast
from the station, one final radio show in the dead
of night during the week of Marlen's disappearance. The legal
team blanched and hesitated, but after signing every waiver and
promising exhaust of safety precautions, they reluctantly agreed. I signed
off on the guest less and prepared as if for
a last stand. Determined to pull a life thread on
whiever dark pattern had been haunting KPHEO on the night
of the broadcasts. I entered through the side door, the
building's call breath greeting me. Mericord oppressed height to my chest.
I checked every lock, every controlled, every phone. The console
bled blue aledy from beneath the shroud of dust. But
once I quyed the master switch, the familiar hum swept
through the room. The air transformed charged an alert. The
station dead for years, it seemed felt awake. I prepped
the playlist, reconstructing the ire before Marline's vanishing classic rock,
then two pop spots, then the same weather jingle shurry
used to toss in for lock. I checked the old
ice schedule, stacked the audio logs, and fired up the
main foam line, riding calls through every known channel. I
weed it. My pulse beat in my ears for an
hour or nothing. My own voice sounded Tenney, scared as
I delivered the ancient intro. Good evening, you were listening
to k x PO to night we remember. I passed
the midnight mark, breath ragged reading weather warnings and silly horsecopes.
As in the old days. The phone line stayed dead,
a slow rhythmic blink, never quite resolving into a ring.
Just as I began to lose hope, the first call came,
no number, only unnumb flashing and gnossus yellow on the board.
I pressed the talk quy, this is k x v O.
Who is there? Static answered at first the russell and
clip of a poorly shielded connection. Then a voice, O whisper,
ragged and pitchifted, called out of the line. We hear you.
We always heard you, Darroin. We know every word, every miss,
every secret. The voice began till liss names in slow
deliberate sequence. Surey may Ander Sint, Glenn Smith, are avers
February mistake, wrongweather read, Tony Miller at left, door unlocked,
Neil Harris left five minutes early. Molly Carter signed off
and complete you Darrowin every night we watch. I steadied
my hands, swallowing fear. Who are you? We know about
the tapes, the memmos, the threats. You can stop now.
We won't be pushed around any more. The whisper wavered,
blurring half the solving. For a moment, the tone shifted
a deeper, more personal, then unmistakable marline voice or what
sounded like ker clean and sure. You were supposed to
keep us safe. You let it in. He never signed off.
I flinched, looking to the security glass, searching for a
sign of life. My reflection looked unfamiliar, and for an
instant the glass flickered a shape standing just behind my own.
The words on the console flickered, substituting letters until all
lines live blinked on screen, then returned to static. I
scanned the rooms alone, no no one else present. The
phone dropped into a low moan. The layers of recorded
audio folding in on each of the old shows, cut
together in raw, scrambling loots, tiny moments of confession and
air feeding on one another. It hit me then, a
realization nearly as chilling as any supernatural possibility. All the
pieces fit a system, not a ghost. Some one had
built a script routine and automated patchwork of stolen moments,
voice prints and audience cues, all tied to the internal
phone and PA systems. The signatures, the time stamps. They
were all wrapped around the fatal minute tree twenty seven
a m. I checked the equipment locks, engineering access, remote triggers,
and an array of automated cue sett to deploy whenever
certain words or slip upsccur. The signature loop was triggered
at last night. Some one had installed code on the
server to record, sample and weaponize off air staff chatter.
As I dug deeper into the system directory, the glitches escalated.
The monitors flashed lines of code, scrolling and encrypted detail,
then devolving into strings from the coal locks. I rolled
through the automation schedule, finding layer upon layer of shell
commands labeled only dead air, highlighted and red the time
of marline's last sign off, and the note left by
someone with admin password to forget nothing. At the bottom
of the event list was an instruction set to loop
on exactly this anniversary every year. Patch AI schedule all
open channels, mimic memorialize, no sign off until regret is complete.
The system had been running and supervised for years, spinning
out news threats, new tapes, new whispers every single time
and anniversary approached or script went off schedule. I froze
a tremor running through my arms. That's why even the
X staff, the people who'd left still receive messages. The
system left and pruned, swept through every channel it could, grape,
hoem voicemails, station accounts, private numbers, all out of program
duty to record, list and reaply what had been said,
missed or regarded. The wine in the phone rose, I
pressed mute my mind a tornado. As the clock struck
three twenty six, the studio lights flickered to black. The
only elimination a red led above the mic. In the
silence the tape and the system. Ruwan then played a
single final recording, my own voice, stuttering loss from us
years before signing off. I'll be back with you after
the break. Then Marlene's voice, one final echoing word. Listen
for a moment, I found myself staring at the glass,
waiting for a figure to materialize. Instead only my own
weary face, stab back, drawn and shaken, haunted by all
the things left inside. The whisper returned anew less, perfect,
more broken. He never signed off, Darren, He left us
here At that The lights blinked on, the screens cleared,
the foam line went dead. The studio returned out of stillness.
My last broadcasts, the first in decades, cut to silence.
No afro, no farewell. The system finally exhausted. I sat
hands trembling as the computer terminal flashed a single command,
delete all the code, vanished the memos, erase the scripts,
and frets expunged from the locks. Only then did I
realize what Marlene's final attempt had been, a desperate effort
to break the loop, to free us all from the
system she'd been drawn into, at the cost of her
own disappearance. Outside the transmetter towel blink quietly in the
first light of dawn, bloove read against the pallining sky.
The rum remained frozen for a breathless minute, the and
slowly soundlessly, it all let go, the hum, the sadic,
the pressure behind the glass, as if the station itself
denied its secrets at last, could finally rest. In those
final heartbeats, I swept the old studio for one last detail,
praying for something, the truth, a sign and answer. My
recorder caught the deep hum of the transmitter at the
soft side of the aged fence, the hush as all
machinery powered down in sequence offt forever. I gathered up
the after Iro's tapes, snapped it in two and pressed
it deep into my pocket, the files, the coat, all
traces gone from every system, but the silence remained. It
was heavier, deeper, thick with the residue of old habits,
old wounds. But now, at last it felt empty in
the ordinary way, not haunted or pressed by unseen attention.
I checked the open mail box by the door, half
expecting an envelope. None, no voice, no new threat. Only
daylight creeping in, as if for the first time in years,
through filthy panes. Taking a single slow turn around the
deader room, I forced myself to let go of the rituals.
No more logs, no more sign off, no more silent line.
The transmitter's last light flickered out, the red dot receding
to nothing. I stepped outside, locking the door, certain that
whatever had watched them weapon has down nuts no longer
had anything to hold on to. Before I left, I
powered down the recorder, my fingers shaking less. Now the
sky was clearing, The city's sounds began to rise, traffic, birds,
ordinary voices, the signal of normal life resuming. I walked away,
careful not to look back at the studio's dark windows.
For one brief instant as I passed the old sign
off clock above the door. I heard faint of breath,
the echo of Marlin's laughter, softer and more distant than
ever before. I let it fade, unrecorded into the morning air.
Then I left Kaek's vieux for the last time. Then
I left kaeks Fear for the last time. At home,
sleep did not come easy. My muscles ache in the
predictable way of stress, but my mind remained called, darting
through all the possible consequences, the stories I would tell
and those that could never leave the empty bones of
the station. An hour pass, then another, The texture of
morning indscinct. As I sat hunched at the edge of
my beds portable recorder beside me, phone glowing with soft
notifications from distant time zones. I kept flipping the battered
after iOS set in my hand, feeling its broken house
catch against my palm. Heavier now than anything plastic ought
to be the podcast as it waited, I couldn't touch
it right away. The silence that had settled over the
apartment felt pubsful, as if the city itself was pausing
for me to fill in the space. After my long
absence from that haunted broadcast. Room. My emails stated with
a slow accumulation of listener notes, odd signals, sleepless recollections
of their own questions about the ending that I hadn't
yet been able to document. The thread pull tight again
every new message, every clip for his file forwarded my way,
every fragment of static they claim matched our loss broadcasts.
The reminders sunk deeper than nostalgia. They were evidence or hope,
or one last prey against the door I'd locked behind me.
The consequences reached outward. Was in days of the live show,
local reporters began leaving voicemails on my persantal line. A
couple from familiar print columns, some from community radio start ups,
too young to remember the old ka ek fioatl. They
called with careful questions. Would I comment for the anniversary coverage?
Was it true the servilogs had been wiped? Had I
given a police statement or awkward pause to Dad plan
to publish the after Iro's tape. I stoled, promising little,
unwilling to shape a final statement for any version of
the story but my own. Then real escalation arrived. A
week after the show aired. I woke to a strain
of missus colsumarked no voicemails, but enough to fill more
than a page in my phone's history. Overnight, a brief
chiliene from an now retired city detective landed in my
in books. Looking into k x VO tower files you
abroadcast made de rounds. If you have evidence left to tape,
code anything, bring it, don't put yourself at risk for
a story. I reply, but received no answer. My own
file copy of the night's session corrupted, itself, replaced with
an error message I could not replicate all back up attempts,
producing only blank noise. For the first time in twenty years,
the kx eocite reappeared in the news briefly, quietly with
the run of sanitized headlines. Anniversary of himself caught her disappearance,
broadcast oddities for surface in local legend, a digital hauntings
form a host speak out. The stores quoted me in part,
but mostly turned to speculations. Some blamed culture of silence,
others hinted at something much stranger, feeding the folkhoors in
ways I never intended. A pair of podcasters from a
national network reached out asking if I'd land material or
commentary to their own upcoming series. I demurred again, this
time feeling a thread of something like gaeld or remorse.
In parallel emails trickled and from names I remembered better
than my own. Jay, one time engineer, now a union
rap on the curves, send a single sentence thank you.
I heard the sign off, been waiting a long time.
No further reply. Ari the board op wrote at length
the kind of late night confessional I'd forgotten possible about
waking it to read twenty seven for years, checking every
ring on their cell, haunted by Naneern' self doubt they
could finally let go. Andy the janitor braver, now released
from the cycle that had bound him, sent a photo
taken outside Marlene's old office tower, lights bleeding red into sunrise.
The file came caption is over. Not everyone found. Cloder. Surrey,
now living out west, returned a single voice note late
one evening, the sound of a train crossing somewhere in
the background. I stopped hearing her after midnight, but sometimes
if I close my eyes, I hear to sign off's
giving again, like we're being counted. She paused, and for
a moment the old fear edged in fragile beneath a
careful calm. Don't let them say it was just a mistake.
Some sores are meant to end. My own night changed,
but not in the way I expected. Dreams stuttered. Sometimes
I heard the phone rain, and I'd bolt awake, reaching
for a receiver that no longer existed. I'd see Marlene
standing by the glass, her shape misted into condensation and hovering,
just shy of waving. Moments after she was gone, I
replayed her voice in my memory, not the warped version
that spun out on the after Iro's tape, but the
real laugh cadence of a thousand station meetings. The patients
were nos freed. In daylight, I'd almost forget the way
the static preston against every late shift, almost forget the
wayfaar oudrew shaped how we trusted each other. But even
with out the tapes, it was impossible not to notice
the lurgend filling up behind our absence. Listeners' emails scrambled
aldio they found saved on digital radios, odd cluffs, scrape
in her own pass This was you right? Or is
this Marline not too free? Sometimes the files contained pure silence,
sometimes just a muttered phrase unintelligible, sometimes the shiver of
voices mixed in strange and correc harmony. For every theory,
every attempt to explain, there was a new question. Why
keep the locks, Why raise the badge records? Why target
only the small mistakes nobody else could see? I tried
putting it all into the podcast, but the story resisted,
refusing a tidy arc, giving back any more questions, more
cross talk on lines never meant to be patched together.
I could say at least that the station's rhythm never returned.
When k FAO was finally scheduled for demolition, a local
preservation group pleaded for artifacts. There was little left to
claim two would come down, but the hum, so many
years later sometimes echoed through the night as I passed
beneath old power lines. Not long after, a listener sent
me a clip brought a nearly indistinct a tail end
of my final broadcast, the sign off slurring, followed by low,
broken laft fading out into the same hiss that had
haunted the after Iro's tapes. That was the first time
I wondered if something truly had breached our ranks, Twisted
by code and routine and the failures of ordinary people.
That was the instant, brief but searing that I thought
I heard a crowd inside the static every voice I'd
ever worked alongside, overlapping and indistinct signing off together. At last,
the legend, of course, creded out almost all truth. A
few news rumored prospectives ran, some honest, most prying, most
spending every odd technical detail into omen occurse. Rumor said
those who worked nights at the new Unrelated to k
k vo's success is sometimes her dead air, followed by
the ghost of the sign off, while that the phone
line still ran long after the transmitters had been pulled down,
playing nothing but sellance, punctuated by a far away click,
as if one last entry had to be made before
the system truly went cold. I had no wish to
fact check. Thus stores no were left to gather more evidence.
The idea that suffering could become utine, a habit of
airways and error, left me worried each time I sat
down at a microphone, even in the comfort of my
own home. I shortened my own sign offs, clipped my gratitude,
pressed each file into storage with obsessive back up that
felt more like a charm than common sense. My listeners
eager or fearful, cat chasing echoes. Some suggested a book.
Some wanted a raw audio more than if you asked
if it ever really ended, for if I might try
broadcasting again, just to see who would call I. I
never replied directly. Instead, I let the feast publish, I
let the files go alive, and then I left the
window open and failingly at three twenty seven each morning,
just in case one last voice needed space to speak.
The day the transmitter was dismantled, I marked the time,
closed up my office, and left for the longest walk
I had taken in years. My feet found the city's perimeter,
tracing old commutes and smaller rituals. In the rhythm of
traffic in the low like to pulse through the cable lines.
I sometimes caught a familiar cadence, faint, just shy of discernible,
but real enough to remind me that no story worth
telling ever truly dissolves into silence. I walked home, recorder
tapped away. I'm sure if it was worth another episode,
or if it was simply my own ending, announcing itself.
Later that night, as rain pecked gently at the window.
I queued up the last edit for the podcast. I
listened closely to the final minute, waiting for phantom static,
the out of tingjingle, the click of a front line
that might or might not sill be wired to gain
fioz ru in booth. And then, just as I faded
the master track into silence, an audio notification leapt on
to the screen, no color ID, just a blank wha
file with a familiar, precise times dump. I hesitated for
a half breath, then played it. My own sign off
walked and glitching at the ends, twisted into the impossible
LOLd of a voice I hadn't heard in decades. Not
everyone leaves when the show is over. For a split second,
the sound hung between headphones and memory. The metadata attack
glowed entry three twenty seven zero, the exact minute Marlene
had vanished, sistant time, unbroken after all these years, behind
the hiss. As the recording wound to a halt, I
heard the faintest strangled after a sound cut between relief
and resignation, and then, impossibly, the soft rush of a
vinyl record spinning backwards on a deck that must, by logic,
have been silent for years. The tape ended. There was
no ot fro, no coda, no sign off this time,
only the deep, perfect quiet that comes at the true
end of broadcasts, when even the memories, for a moment
let go, and that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.