Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The silence from the fields pressed
in like a tide. If I leaned back in the
batted rolling chair and looked beyond the slanting studio lights,
the glass wall reflected my own shape, just a pale
smudge in the blue glow of monitors, framed by the
night black rural void beyond. Kovcs on air bob Glare
read above the door, a single cyclops eye, warning that
somewhere out there I was speaking to whatever soul still
tuned in at desire. The storm was closed now I
caught its flicker on the horizon, silent for the moment,
a strobe over the acres of plood, dark running from
the transmitted stunted needle to the edge of town. I
pressed the button to fade out the coal and lines
haul music and tried to master some easy charm for
my lone honor companion to night. Randy truck a haunting
the gravel back roads, his voice coming in with its
usual static in the low growl of his engine. You
headed to the end of state, ran, I said, careful
to keep my own tone neutral, inviting and not patronizing, naw,
sticking to old cold water tonight, he replied, words stretching
and snapping from a cell tower four miles east. Don't
reckon as much to seep a deer and lightning. I
pictured him hunched over the wheel, fomus cup wedged under
his heavy boot, dashboard luminescent in the dark. For a while,
we swap stores about roadside coffee and midnight diners. Script
as worn as the ampmeter in the corner. The clock
on the wall taked its leaden seconds behind to consult
the bat of microphung glow worm shaped for a hand
heavier than mine. Rain hit the glass and sudden sporadic
bursts as the wind picked up. My fern, thrown beside
a heap of program in sheets vibrated with a message
from Jeremy, the remote engineer, listening into night. Few seconds
of dead air feed cut. I glanced over the read out,
nothing abnormal. The old two meters bounced in time with
the thunder Waygert I texted back, just a slow night.
Then the lines indicate a flickered in a way I'd
never seen. A pulse, not a steady connection. Randy's fus faded,
replaced by a dentse insect telstatic that reminded me, for
no good reason, of a crowd whispering behind dick drapes. Hullo.
I sat, finger poised over the cold control. Sometimes local
kids tried to sneak prank calls onto the air waves.
Usually they gave themselves away with giggles or snorting laughter.
No giggling this time. Instead, a man's voice emerged feigned
beneath the hiss. Try Mallory's General Store for all your
penny needs specials on flier, limited time only to the tone.
The temperature will be sixty eight degrees. Each phrase, chopped
and uneven, came wrapped in a cold membrane of static.
There was an old world rhythm to it, like the
cadence of old ads I'd heard in station archives, filtered
through generations. Another click, then a shift of the voice
rising into a and finished sentence to night's guest as doctor.
Then utter silence, the giant blank of dead air. Before
I could kill the lion, the voice returned clear at
cracking with strain and something older. I never left. The
desk light surged for one heart stop moment. Every console
bulb snapped from green to baleful amber and back. The
after image burned behind my eyes. The line went dead.
Only my own shallow breathing filled the booth. My phone
buzzed again, almost instantly, Jeremy, was that a prank got
caught on my end? You ok? I stared at my
fingers begun to tremble now on the broadcast desk. The
air inside the studio felt a natural. The clock ticked
too loudly, and I realized my foot was bouncing out
and nervous to two. The paws of old records on
the floor warped Hillbuly forty five's local gospel quartettes, Someone's
forgotten jazz I oppressed him with their own Waiting in
the hard plastic chair, Every metal joint creaked, the fake
leather appealing under my palm. As I girt the arm rest,
I keyed up a jazz standout let the records scratch,
and warmth flood the room to chase off whatever had
just taken the air. Only when the first course faded
did I day bring my lits back to the mic Kovic.
After midnight, folks, I say, with force, brightness, frottick lines
are open. Only the storm still at a distance, answered
if you told me years ago that I'd find myself
here half past two in the morning, alone in a
radio station, held together by cobber memory and obsolete circuit
sight of cold at a fitting end, but an unlikely one.
My name is Gabrielle Klein. Once my voice could stir
a city full of listeners. Now here in the liminal
I was of a faded valley. I kept company with go,
both living and otherwise. I started out as an investigative reporter,
a job that demands a kind of stubborn hope. You
dig your needle. You dragged the ugly secrets into daylight
for a public that rarely thanks you. For a while,
I was good at it. Then came this crew up,
the kind they don't put on resumes, a source I trusted,
facts I didn't check hard enough, and a storm of
retractions that gutted the story in my name. Rumors chased
me from one freelance assignment to another, ink smudges that
never faded. When the offer arrived from stammach Allister on
our operator of k VC, I barely hesitated. Midnight Djay solo,
just some talking and tunes, No fuss. Nobody's listening. Anyhow,
On paper it was penance. In reality it was exile
with dental if not dignity. The job's rhythm was simple
as comforting and bleak as an old song you can't shake.
Nights were also rolling time, read the local weather, spin
the track, open the line for any collar hardy enough
to be awake. Half the time it was truckers on
long holes, the other half retirees rumbling about the nineteen
seventies or teens with voices pitched high to mimic the
grown ups. They did soon become The station itself wore
its age with a stubborn bride. The main building squatted
behind a chainling fence at the edge of damp farmland,
set back from main street on a gravel track choke
but weeds inside. Floods of sunlight never reached. Walls bore.
The photographs of generations of station staff, all seeby smiles
and slit back hair, appearing with gentle suspicion from warp frames.
The gear was a living archive digital sunboards drury roupe
beside two bamps, the humble like distant engines. The booth
stank of dustin sodder, and during heavy storms a faint
use of earth from the foundation in corners, surplus reels
and batted folders swelled with decades of forgotten signal logs,
faded show notes, and the odd telegram advertising wheat sale
week nineteen eighty two. Some nights, I'd spot Chelsea through
the glass, her dark I make up converted by the
flick of her phone's green as she prepped her sleepy
Saturday show about forgotten rural love songs. She didn't mind
the odd iris, she said, it gave her time to
catch the word. The engineers by Contrass were all voices
and texts to Jeremy Quick with jokes on whose repairs
left notes above on safe grid, but enjoy Stan, silent
and watchful, came only in daylight. His visits always felt
like a threat, whether he said anything or not. The
listeners were dwindling, a town the size does not tolerate
much noise. Farms closed, factory shut, and main streets near
flickered only on weekends. People gathered memories like debts and
radio once a living pulse, was now just another of
the town's habitual ghosts. Still, locals were called the old
days in the Founder, mister Alder, with a zealous mix
of affection and anger. He just vanished, didn't he. I'd
heard a woman ask at the grocery as I tried
to blend into the cereal aisle, walked into the air
one night, never seen again. Some folks say he's still Brookston.
There were stores, always were what I remembered most with
the eyes and sea beforetos, not a single one, smiling
fully as if aware of a joke that never got shared.
At the close of a shift, the world shrank further.
I would hit the off air buttons, went through the
darkness as the fluorescence bled out, and wonder the thin
holes lined with dusty glass cases and curling polaroids. In
one come when the staff portrait from nineteen seventy one
hundred mister Aldo Dead's center flanked by a dozen staff,
including a man with a heavy chin, and where he
gaze I later alone, was Stan's father. I would key
and a cord for the exterior gate, hoist my messenger
bag onto one's stiff shoulder, and step into a world
still trembling with the aftershocks of a hundred thousand broadcasts
reverberating in Dead farmland at my back. The building murmured
with residual energy, as if it too was waiting for
the night to end. It was a Sunday when the
pattern began. The usual calls trickled in, mostly of the regulars. Marlene,
the farmercy night manager with her long secured as tales
of broken machinery. A pair of boat teens asking for
oecure tone of the century hits that we both knew
the station didn't actually possess. The playlist went down to
war two. That was when the line seized up, cutting
the easy banter Hello KIELVC, you're on the air iron'
honed expecting the digital swalk of a dropped handset or
at worst a car backfiring. The same insectal static seeped
through halo by the warble of a line jumping time zones,
then the voice that same clip tone. Half advertising crew
in half parlor act were reciting oddities from the steas
passed up. Next the willow etroquartette direct from the nineteen
sixty two harvest Jammuury Mallory's General Store one mile east
of temple Ford, Penn can penny a brief and steady
pause rustling, as if the collo was leaving fernan scene
script tell them it ended without finishing, like some one
had forgotten the punch line awake. A slice of dead
eer hung there, and just as I reached for the
cut off of the statement returned. I never left. The
tone was needya, this time not an ending, but a plea.
The line clicked and bled away to noise. I shut
off the microphone. My phone buzzed, you got Ghostyle or
fuck that was weird, wrote Chelsea. Down the hallway at
breaker box, wont and the corridor lights blinked in triplet.
I waited for the relief of sound, a passing car,
someone entering the lobby. There was no one. The clock's
relentless march was all that tapped me rooted in time.
Monday brought no answer, The phone logs merely listed unknown.
Owen texted that night to say the Lion's cola ID
was scrambled, but probably just interference. I tried to push
it a sigh blaming boredom are one of those local
radio games meant for spooking new staff. But by Thursday,
the coals returned, always during the same half hour, never
from a traceable number. The voice's narrative deepened, tucking details
from the grave, prayed lost to the rain, shelter in
place which the founder would it ended. Strangled between these
fractured memories were interjections, sometimes the faintaker of a woman's voice,
not quite my own, not Chelsea's reading weather updates from
the late ages. Sometimes a child's giggling song about the
jingle belcap. Always the static under current deepen until the close.
I never left. Over nights, I replayed the recordings with
heaphuon's clamped tight, intent on finding splice points of giveaway laughter. Instead,
I heard a second layer underneath slow was a submarine's
paying forces, threaded together in counterpoint words so warped they
dissolved into strangeness. On one play pack, I seemed to
hear my own voice, warped and ghostly, saying things I
could not remember ever having broadcast. This was not my
first brush with stage radio hoaxes, but I never heard
one so carefully curated, so tailored to local history and
forgotten broadcasts. The shivers followed me Home. Listeners, most of
whom had tuned to KLVIC since their parents childhood, noticed
I'm not sure what your pulland gave one regular. Marty
said on air, but those old tape samples. Man had
me checking my dials. Theated this once before, back when
I was a kid. Mamm made a shut it off.
I asked him for details, but he demurred. Just got strange,
I guessed, heard voices we didn't know, stores cut short.
I went back into the uckhouse the next night, tension
a coil behind my ribs. The love books moldering and incomplete.
Listed the years before San's tenure in heavy black type.
Founders Programming special Sequence February nineteen seventy eight, which shot
pan strikes through the margins. Whole pages had been excized.
From what remained, it looked like older had run experimental
broadcast events, a phrase never explained. After midminus one thousand,
nine hundred seventy nine, his name vanished from every entry,
replaced by loser handwriting and generic notation normal programming resumes.
I fone stand the following day, knowing he be in
his office. You ever hear weird stuff on the air
back in the day, I asked, feigning nonchalance. Stan's voice
dry as flyer came back with the usual ghosts and
the wires. Only thing haunting this place is bad wiring.
Don't go rilling up old stories, klean. But the next
night new and omaly surfaced. The board lights, used to
doing the slow comforting dance, became unpredictable, flickering with each call,
as though the voice on the other end was drawing
current from the entire building. Twice I had to unplug
ems at half the studio. Yet, when I'd asked the
audience any one else hear that, the phone lines would
go dead quiet, But tension crawled up inside my skull.
Oppressed on alone, I played back the odd calls, isolating frequencies,
scrubbing for voice signatures, and underneath I began noting extra
layers a phrase here, a word there, woven inside the static.
The chills that rolled down my back had nothing to
do with window busted air conditioning. It was in a
third week Thatt I finally committed to a structured investigation.
The idea was an old comfort. If I could discover
the logic, unravel the pattern, then it was just a
puzzle and not a haunting. I arrived early on a Tuesday,
well before the sunset. The station felt abandoned. In daylight
its outer offices, thick with motes down a private hallway,
passed cabinets with wilder doors sat The founder's storage closet,
always locked, its door, shrunken by the ears. I'd never
ventured inside, nor had as seen any one else do,
so most of us treated it like a tomb. But
the strangers was mounting, and my curiosity burned hotter than
I fear. I saw a chisel from the broken broadcast
racked while the rest of the town watched the weekly
football replay at the Eagles Hall. I pressed the thin
metal between the door and jam and popped the old padlock.
Within the air was syrupy with milty in dust. Bottles
of lawn, van of spirits leaned empty and vestedal against
the far corners. Cardboard boxes, labels, half a race, public tests,
to tip storage, not for air orders, a keep out
Rummaging through these, my hands grew gray with grime. At
the back, beneath a ruined box of fan mail to
Missy in warts Sea, Ye make the weather bright. I
found the squat container of heavy duty tape reels, no labels,
only a piece of masking tape with a pencil decks.
I unspoiled one onto player in the control room. As
the new ship's playlist rolled quietly in the background. Through
the home, a chaos bled out, screaming for alder and
frantic banging, as if broadcast from the inside of a
locked room. Between paddock shouts, the audio would walk, voices
would distort, sometimes breaking into what sounded horribly like my
own speech. No, nor not yet, turn it back up.
The meter's life. You have to that, the low book said.
The tape was recorded in nineteen seventy nine, long before
I was even born. The desk where I sat to
listen belong at one time to the Founder. The strawers
were jammed, but careful patient to revealed a metal slide
and compartment to draw face and raved with Kay obviously
fourteen fifty. I yanked at the handle, only to find
the unmistakable click of a lock. The only key I
had seen was on stands of a present chain always
leaped around his neck, even in the heat. I waited
until Wednesday, when Stan came into the broadcast, butth to
check Invis's I caught him as he taled the adcopy.
You ever go through the Founder's stuff, I said, sliding
the tape toward him. He gave a hard look at
the reel, then at me. That's not meant for Eric Gabe.
Station history gets muddled. Best leave it where it sits.
He stepped closer, voice lowering the old history. This town
doesn't want it back in the broadcast. To let it be,
he left, taking the inverses, but not the tape for
Ioseskin on my arms prickled with adrenaline an uncertainty. Knights
in the booth shifted as I replayed the tapes. Reviewing
audio from both real and digital recordings, I would sometimes
catch a fleeting shape and a glass shadows that twitched
and vanished in the corner of my sight. During playback,
the lights over the old mixing board flickered, bulb sizzling
in short, strange patterns whenever the off voice emerged. Outside,
the weather pulsed with the deep turbunance of late spring,
but inside the studio it was the air itself that
seemed loaded and expectant, isolated. I fought the growing certainty
that something, someone paid attention to every move I made,
that each time my kneeme rang out on Taple live,
it called up new echoes. Folding me into stores not
entirely my own. The weeks ND drew close attention. Snowballing
on Saturday, as rain pounded the roof and far off
thunder rattled the filament lights, the air sharp into a
razor's edge. I opened the line at the usual ton
and waited, expecting Randy Omarlen. But after three rings, the
studio's coal board flickered and bled, dull purple, broadcasting a
low whine even before a voice arrived. This time, the
words cut through, Gabriel Eno, where to find me? Come downstairs.
I jerked upright, almost yanking the mic from its mount.
Who is this? Was all I managed, But a few
seconds later my own voice answered, almost perfectly, overlapped with
the question I had not yet uttered. Who is this?
The line snapped with feedback, the kind of claws at
the teeth and vibrates the bones. As I reached to
kill the switch, the distortion grew. My mouth opened on
or to pilot, you need to stop, I, but the
voice on the line spat back the same plea perfect time,
a half second before my lips moved. It was as
if the board, the broadcast, and myself had become a
single tangled not of time. The system light strode monitors
rolled within sictile text. For one brief of a small moment,
I caught sight of myself seated in the boose's reflection,
mouth moving after the words were already in the air.
When the noise cut a blessedly violently, I shoved the
headphones off and grappled with the dick in the play pack.
I warp bordiou Splice's future and present voices, both the
founders rasp and my own, describing things I had only
just decided to say. It was beyond any trick of
radio delay. The messages were folding a timeline in on itself.
This spiration replaced routine. I tried to wake Jeremy, then
called Chelsea. Both led it were into voicemail alone. I
faced the reality that I could neither trust the tape
evidence nor ignore the sense that whatever had overtaken kay
lvc's waves was growing in confidence and strength. The only
place left unexplored was the basement, locked off since lawn
before I arrived. The deck is lonk down behind the
main console, concealed by a battered panel and a priv
of staff only pluck out behind which lay a hatch.
I only glimpsed in passing as the last beats of
thunder rolled away. I found myself standing tapeer corder clutch
so tight my knuckle's ache before the jam of the
hidden stair through the half open basement door, the faintest
liver of saund echo distorted and familiar at Gabrielle come down.
I never left her, and my own voice lost all
but the static beckoned me into the dark. And my
own voice lost to all but the static beckoned me
into the dark. I stood breath shallow, unsure if the
ike in my chest was fair or the panic of
a sleep as weak. Catching up the taper corder in
my hand felt suddenly absurdly heavy. I pressed my thumb
to its warm play button. Is of contact alone might
anchor me? In the corridor behind the booth outdated advertising
calend is culled away from the rough plaster, The air
was thick with meldeer and the lonely scent of the
crawl space below. I nudged the private staff only placard aside,
and found, just as I had half remembered, a narrow
door layered in decades of biscuit color pane, Its cheap
rossknobs scratch to bear metal around the latch. Beyond this door,
the hiddenstead ascended a steep as a shoot into a
hush colder than the night outside. My skin prickled at
the temperature drop. There had always been rumors about the
foundation flooding, but the air did not carry water. It
was a static chill, like the quiet of a seal vault.
If I bordered unbelieving in ghosts, this would have made
a fine test. I forced myself not to think of Alder,
or of my own name. Leaping back from the disembarded voice,
one tented to have stepped down the stairs, grown the
kind of sound that spinnt to three your skull a
split second after you expect it. I let the door
rest off open behind me, careful not to jar it,
mindful that silence no mattered in a way I couldn'
yet explain. All the while I tracked the tape recorder
as tiny redilidy according recording. I wanted a record of
this proven plastic and magnetism, no matter how the mind unravel.
The rolling hum of the transmitter faded as I lowered
myself step by step. Instead, I picked up new notes,
a rattle echoing from the unseen below, and once midway down,
a cough, sharp and amistakable. It was old as cough
from the old er jis time, just as I remembered
hearing at once in the station's historical arcaves, a succinct
talk that made the hair on my arms stand up.
At the bottom of the staircase, the concrete opened into
the forbidden basement. The ceiling was pressed low, crisscrossed with
the kind of ancient electrical cables that braided up aboard
through the rest of the station. Though down here the
insulation cracked in sag of like flaking bark. A single
bulbs wung overhead, motionless, washing everything in a colorless half light.
The far walls staged the remnants of a storage area,
stacks of obsolete equipment, rusted transmitters, the collapse of bullocks
of a portable antenna, piles of yellowed, creased newsprins on
a shattered wirespool. Some one long ago had set up
a work area. I stepped closer, the flasklight beam jittering
with the shallow breath I took, makeshift disappeared. Set up
was unmistakably a broadcast point with a single batt of
microphone crusted along the grill, a leaping reel deck, and
an array of switches and knobs, labeled and fading pencil
Maine waf air lip start. The dasts thick everywhere else
formed odd clean semicircles here, as though equipment had been
recently adjusted or fingers had traced controls in the thin
grip before me. Something about the arrangement mirrored the upstairs booth,
a warp reflection more primitive, but arranged in the same
functional layout I used every night, down to the batter
mismatched have once dropped on their hook beside the mic.
The resemblance was intimate, uncomfortably so I reached out, unable
to help myself, and brushed the top of the console.
I half expected the lights to surge, or for another
feedback screech to tear open the airwaves above me. Instead,
what followed was the suttles to stick through the heart.
A slow, deliberate clicks unded from the reel to reel player.
As I watched, the right moost spooler taped sell threaded
began to turn, halting mechanical fits I stared and certain
if my touch had triggered it. The tape moved, It
motioned jerky until the speaker, tiny and inadequate, likely jerry rigged.
Its ceiling flared its help, but just above a stage whisper,
I don't you see we can reset it, it says,
any signal above one point four No, not yet, don't.
The voice was olders, stretched, thin and desperate. At the edges.
He sounded exhausted, words fizzling out after each fragment. There
were other voices too, snatches of panic, static, and dreading
through with what sounded like a warped tack of my
own voice, perhaps from a life show upstairs, sliced and
layered until any sense of original intent was lost, and
under that the familiar phrase near I never left it.
I stopped the player, trying to calm my hands. There
was no air for sound to hide in. I heard
the blood tacking behind my ears. The smell reminded me
suddenly of cassettepe iron, oxide, electric and EARTHI a tang
layered on top of the basement gloom. I dug a
thumbnail into the edge of the table, just to feel
something solid and immediate. The shuffling. It soon became clear
was not all mechanical. When the playback fell silent, the
hush filled with another kind of motion, the slick drag
of footsteps, a long unfinished concrete. My mind looped rapidly
for irrational explanation, the duck system, raccoons, the pop and
give of old foundations, I told myself. But deep down,
as the footsteps fell in accountans inconsistent with any animal,
I was not convinced. A circle of light landed on
the nearest wall, old clippings pasted beneath the cracked clay
plastic sheet. There were newspaper stores from the nineteen sixties
and seventies, all concerning gayevicy, tower upgrades, blackout coverage, the
new own's arrival. In the corners, preserved in pencil notes
of much ballpoint were annotations rof to Parliament, rules to
no copy sent to Mallory family, the Jamma freak that,
and beneath a photograph of older thenomic loop initiates. After
first break we recorded to avoid entrapment, I traced a
finger along knees, feeling the groating call of pale paper,
entanglements of time mine the founder staff strange listeners and
now me. I had the irrational sense of being observed
and worse of being judged for what I would or
would not do. I circled back to the center of
the space, drawn to the thick, tangled nest of wires
connecting the microphront to the looping deck. It didn't make sense.
Each cable was new within the last, someone mistakably installed
in the past decade, others vintage with their cloth wrappings.
It was as if through the years, technicians and employees
had been drawn to reinforce rather than dismantle. Alders haunted,
set upon winning eccoltes to broadcast richel even they didn't
quite recognize. I felt the recorders rate again in my
fist proof or trap. I press play and let it
run hot hammering. The silence was broken by that same
layered hiss. I began quietly to interview the room, my
voice trembling just above a whisper. If you're here, I began,
if any of this is you? Alder? Why the cycles?
Why the repeat? Who's really listening? No direct reply, only
the ambient hum though out of the left speaker a
feigned voice. My voice spoke, I am still here, Gabriel,
come down. I never left the words of a lot
my own, creating a lutch in my stomach. I let
the deck spin for a few more seconds and cut
the playback, not trusting my nerves. Above my head, the
sound of rain intensified. It seemed distant, as if now
the outside well shrank by even more insulation between myself
and sky. I tried to steady my breathing. Just as
I set my flashlight against the control box, the bulb
overhead flicker, I braced fur a bluckad instead of reelay
beneath the boost snap shot, sending upholstery the tape player's board.
Throughout the basement, a dozen maybe two dozen ancient meters
and indicator bulbs, each connected seemingly at random through snaking cables,
began to glow. The effect was sickly yellow green hailos
that illuminated the far corners. A moment later, the console
meters bounced and the main loudspeaker cut in with startling clarity.
This time, the voice was not fracture, not overtly panicked.
It was alders unmistakably. If you're listening the voice in toned,
it's too late. To reset the signal. The signal keeps
us here. Each time some one answers the night's last cold,
it begins again. There was a cough softer now. We
tried silence, we tried erasure. There is only the loop. Please,
if you can end it differently through this my own
voice infiltrated, intermingling with alders. It's me, It's Gabrielle. I
don't want to static cut the wrist. I lunged back
the swaying bulb above me, suddenly dancing as though something
huge had just shifted in the house. Overhead, my tape
recorder blipped and was started a soft click as it
reached the end of its side and auto reversed. Hannick
told me to flee, to scramble back at the narrow
staircase and shut the store forever. But curiosity, or maybe
something more driven, rooted me in place. I knelt side
the looping console against the nearest bulkhead. A stack of
notebook slumped, water stained and mort with age. The first
several pages were smaared beyond legibility, but within between trembling lines,
familiar handwriting stood out show lockbooks, but with entes merged
over it. The past sin to have spilled across the pages,
or else someone somewhere had forced the locks to retell themselves.
A testing live Michael eleven fifty three p M feedback
and loop and correctible advisorrasure at sign off Wolder's last
entry cycle, breached cycle, breached cycle, blow the ease, almost illegible,
don't let Gabriel aunder, please blooper sets With each confession,
shills cut down my back. I cycled the recorders play
head once more, hoping for fresh sound. The noise was overwhelming.
Bursts of signal, then Older's voice than mine, each chasing
the other outer phase. I asked, this time aloud, is
this what you want? Is that why you keep calling?
At once the nearest speaker vomited up a burst of static,
after which the phrase I never left to have it
in the air, lingering, then doused by a deep, hollow click.
In the seconds that followed, the power in the room shuddered.
Banks of indicator bolts above the rack wars pulsed in
time with something almost flat, a steady tone I only
have remembered from the station's test signals. I squintad trying
to focus in the original source, and realized with a
start that it wasn't the electronics producing the note, it
was echoing up the concrete stair behind me. For a moment,
fear gripped me in a vise. What if this was
had always been a trap? What if every voice alders
the others, even mine, was merely a mask for a
larger loop. The more I tried to grasp the logic,
the more reality seemed to slip, But the low remained.
Each art of fact, each torne clipping, was a tether
back to the nun. Maybe if I could catalog at all,
sort out the time, mine eye could find a way
to break the chain, as with the flask, wide across
the gloom, searching for anything overtly physical. In the farthest corner,
beneath the tangle of cable and what looked like the
skeleton of a half classed shelf, stood a portable safe,
the dial painted over and shipping blue spray paint. As
I knelt to inspect it, the tape player hissed in
the background. I didn't dare look away. Behind the safe,
the wall itself bore another hand drawn schematic, wider and
more detailed than anything upstairs. It laid out the radio
frequency sir quiz circle and orbrows of arrows, one labeled
open three seven am and beneath it in a different pen.
Don't break the ring alone. I moved my thumb across
the cracked plastic dial, feeling for any hint of life
inside My mind spun with calculations. Should I try a
day old as last known, broadcast my own first on
ere night? But rez aprosty. It was clear from the
spiral diagrams seam key maybe what was required was not
to conceal, but to broadcast open the liber wide as
if improved. The equipment behind me hummed into yet another voice,
clipped and formal mid century radioddiction, clear as a belle.
It tipped me a moment to realize that this new
speaker was reading the station's most sacred and changed script,
the sign off the call and greeting to all in
the listening area at the proud k l v C
Voice of lamp of Valley County, signing off until sunrise only.
This version ended not with the promise of return, but
a bitten off plea. If you hear this, don't answer,
please please let it rest. It a froze, fingers slack
on the safe handle. Abruptly, lights across the border above
me flickered to dark. Only the flashlight beam remained. My
hands were trembling so violently and nearly dropped it. Somewhere
toward the back corner. Something of body, or only a
draft moved. I pivoted fast, swinging the light. There was nothing,
only another stack of old water warped binders, labeled by decade.
I picked one up, fingers almost numb. Pages inside were
pasted with yellowed editing slips, phasing instructions, transmission checks, and
half way through a sickly familiar poor were taped over
a segment about the nineteen seventeen nine Strange broadcast event.
The photograph showed the inside of this very basement, but
the arrangement was subtly off cable snake not in a
neat arc, but entangle nervous knots. The microphone was appended
split on the floor. This is pressed round it older
the ancient engineer perhaps stands Father Anne in a shadow
of beriphery what looked horribly undenowly like my own siloette
standing at the edge of the shot head bout as
a fe listening, no date, no explanation. I tried to
reconcile this a truck of double exposure, surely, but standing
in the same spot now, I fought the echo of
that gaze, as though past and presented were crowding close,
each feeding on the other's resonance. Behind me, the speaker blared,
knew its return, finished the loop, Gabrielle. I squeezed my
eyes shut against the verdigo in a darkness. Stat a
cross to the surface of my hearing, and mixed among
the hiss was the shape of a voice that was
and was not my own. Another flicker, this time from above.
Somewhere up the stairwell. The main board shaddowed with unnatural light,
rupturing the gloom. I heard, or thought I heard some
one moving at the top, heavy steps and incertain pause.
The phone panel chine once. Then another long rattling cough
echoed from beside me, a saw not produced by any
mechanical means. It durred me back to my body. I
back towards the stack, striking the tape recorder with me,
my shoulder scraping against the wall. Lightning strode through the
bullet window far overhead for a law and beat every cable,
every cut wire glowed silver and trembled with a vibration
that made my teeth ache. At the threshold of the stairs,
I paused, breath, catching the tape deck unbidden whirred again,
and on its battered speaker, Oldo's voice returned, when last
time quieter, now thick with resignation, they always come back. Listen, Gabriel,
don't let this end as it always does. For a
moment I considered smashing the play, but a stronger compulsion
and need to know a journalist just made me seize
the tape, tuck it under her arm, and mount the
first creaking steps upward. As my feet met the riser's
I heard it, my own voice, caught on the still
lived mic, echoing back from the depths behind me, warped
and plaintive, not for an ordience, but for myself. I
never left, it said again, the conviction in its kittens,
so final, so desperate, that even the oldest ghosts in
the station seemed to fall silent, listening, waiting, and above me,
the amber glow of the moone air bulbled through the
half open door, painting a circle of light at my feet,
drawing me up again toward a whirl that, for all
its emptiness, at least had rules waiting to be rewritten.
But as I climbed recorderss gnarling with imprinted static tapes
clutched so tight my fingers ate, a new and unanswerable
certainty arose. Or toever lived on these air waves, whatever
story spun itself out in tape loops and head and rooms,
had found in me its next broadcast, and was waiting
patient for the signal to rise once more. The basement
steps groaned as I climbed one by one into the
upper hush. Behind me, the sandscape of rusted wires and
mamored voices seemed to drop away with each rise. But
the press of the station, the way the rooms above
stead down behind warted glass, and the groove in every
linoleum towel remembered a thousand soft old shoes, clung to me,
layer on layer, as if reluctant to let me pass
back so easily. The tapeer corridors reverse coil ticked against
my knee, My hand cramped around its case, aware every
step that if I faltered now, while I'd have to
show for the night as a platt box full of
static and my own thin breathing. At the landing, I hesitated,
half expecting the door to assist, as if it could
sense the charge I carried from some floor confession below.
Pannel swam away on a whimper of hinges, revealing the
night booth. Warmth hit me, thick with the halagentine of
overworth bulps. The a ai our circle still glowed, not
so much reassuring as possessive. I closed the hatch, heart thudding,
and stood for a moment in the nerve center of
kaye VC, aware of everything and nothing at once. Lightning
flushed against the window. For a heart beat. The booth
became a shadowgraph my outline, loose gables flaring on the wall,
a constellation of notes and broadcast logs scattered across every surface.
The clock above the mixing board read three twenty seven
A and fither impossibly late, was startlingly early, as if
the very definition of time was up from negotiation to night.
I darted past the staff's schedule tacked to the wall,
and looked for signs of intrusion. The light on Chelsea's
studio dark stands calm missing from the side lot I
was alone still except for the arrangements of Gussie's sound
that seemed to follow me up a stairwell. I set
the tape on the console, dropping into the ruined desk
chair with a rattling sigh. I pressed my pump to
its sloped arm, feeling the heat that lingered dere a
memory of my own earlier passage, or perhaps a signal
that whatever I carried up the booth now shared its burden.
Two My laptop barsed through the auto schedule, switching slowly
from Jazz standards to Cairn whether ports, each one slightly
walked as a digital clock drifted off by one or
two seconds. KOVC voice of lamp with Valley are listening
straight through the nights, built on repeat from the monitor's
tiny speakers, half in toned, half mutated with every pass.
I glanced at my phone, no service for the fifth
time and twenty minutes I refresh it, recalling how the
basement radio loop had silenced everything else, even text messages
wouldn't squeeze past the static. I thumbed open the last
threw from Jeremy a string of emojis from Eurs, before
feeling the gap in silence. The tape from the basement
lay halfway across the mixing board, still damp in one
corner from the clam air below. In a blue wash
of the monitor's green, the scribbled reels looked less like
an odd fact, more like a dare. Above them, the
staff photo from seventeen nine olders Cardboargren immortalized, watched with
the sword of patients reserved for the terminally lost. I
checked the decks. The main channel blinked lazy green. Three
phones in the coalbank, all dead tones. A thin line
of light sherwer beneath the door to the lobby, But
that was just the exit sign, braving its own oblivion
outside the Booskuy. Thus the transmitted stanchion in the northfield
strode once with lightning. Just visible in that moment was
the valley, seated with the print of decades of radio lives,
call signs, signals, wishes, good buzz, none of it entirely dead,
only waiting. A rumble came from inside the wall. Then
the faintest flickered in the power. The decks petchwobbled, warping
the midnight song into something no singer ever intended. Something
in me unclenched with the recognition I was not being hunted,
not exactly more, I was being crowdshorsed, enlisted, made into
the next temporary caretaker for this recursive, needy archive. I
laid my head in my hands, elbows braced on the board,
and blinked hard and welcome images rose. The liopid scratch
of Aldo's nervous, exhausted confession, the layering of my own
voice into his oral grave, the polaroid in the binder,
my shape at the event horison of a history threatening
to draw me in without appeal. My throat felt raw.
I wanted water, sleep, a door that locked itself without drama. Instead,
I forced myself upright, gave the sound boat a practice
tap to check for granding, and watched each channel's green
light ache to amber before settling to study. Muscle memory
ran me through all the closing reacheskeenes, but to Night's
ritual seemed almost theatrical, a performance for a ghostly director
lurking in a parallel booth, scoring every move. Ten minutes
became twenty. The station clock continued stubbornly towards for each
artifactstacked within reach the reels, the battered notebook, the binders
full of annotator broadcasts, the tongue of static at the
far end of the spectrum wants mere dead air now
held the jittery voltage, a pulse unique to this night.
I caught my own reflection, half shadow in the soundproof
glass and forced a brittle smile for those out there
with us, were those who've left but still listened. Key
of his ears in the line, the words fell like sand.
I queued up a battered gospel quarter, let the four
note harmony roll, and tried not to hear the ghostly,
undertoned stitch beneath the melody. The clock moved forward. Whether
I'd skipped anything or only trapped myself more thoroughly in
radios or cursivatic, I couldn't say. Every light seemed more suspicious,
now more loaded. Every hum of the transmitter felt doubled.
One here now another, ever so slightly behind, just waiting
for someone to answer. As the sky over lampfordpaled a
fet on my hands, reaching again and again for the tape,
begging for some sign that what I'd dragged from the
dark was real and not merely a story invented by grief. Fatigue,
or the unfinished business of some one else's program. But
kay only see, Like everything else broke us both ways.
I sat in my chair, waiting for the next signal,
the next break in the noise and exiuration in the loop,
unsure if it was escape I craved, or simply a
pause in the transmission before the story began again. A
click somewhere near my feet made me flinch. I traced
it to all his patch in the console. Wire was
lightly exposed, tape curling at the end. Not dangerous, not yet,
but suggestive, like so much else in the beeth a
question not quite resolved. Static quitting for sense, I forced
myself to breathe, steady, gaze fixed in the clock. Five
minutes crawled by. Then a tinew wine rose from the
monitor's left speaker, slow and drowning, followed by the pop
of a phone line coming alive. At first, nothing but
a fragmented insectaleis. I steeled myself, reaching instinctively for the
call fader, then clear, this time painfully familiar as this
The voice began, then fishured into fratured adds and so
I nots. Half remembered it was the recurring collar only
this time the caden snapped dangerously close to my own.
The board light flicker one by one, the on aile
light flared, and even above the buzz of the dying psalm,
I could hear words laird atop each other, clawing for meaning,
special programming found as nut I never left. I swallowed words, failing,
paralyzed by the full realization that every measure of the
night's loop had tightened. Whatever was listening or held that
the mica cross of valley was ready to step further in.
I muted the line, just in time to cut off
what sounded like the tail of my own laughter, backwards
and wrong. Another message blinked across the studio computer and
sent and sent, trying and failing to reach Jeremy Chelsea
Stan then no service to soon held over the whole station,
I rocked back and forth, Our rhythm old a sphere
torn between barricading myself in the booth or running keys
in hand across the wet lock to my car. I stood,
forcing myself to pace the tight length of the control booth.
My knees drubbed. Every footstep echoed one here another deeper,
a feedback loop of my own existence outside the glass.
Nothing moved, even the rural highway seemed chirked of life.
I returned to the chair and glared down at the tape.
The label's pencil decks had blood from sweat. My thumb
ran over the groove, as though by friction alone I
could extract either comfort or clarity. But the coal light
flicked back on the phone once again demanded notice. This
time for a second it was Chelsea clear and nervouscape.
I'm hearing things on my feet, Jeremy says, the upland
keeps echoing by eu static swallowed the rest was I what? Taife? Competent?
The only one in the building who knew what was happening.
I tried to reply, juggling the coal board, fighting to
keep my voice inside the normal range for broadcast, but
the interference was too great. The channel died, replaced by
bone dry silence that ran with accusation. Another lightning flash
rolled over the transmitter. For one instant, I saw the
studio's windows mirrored in the wet assphalt, a double reflection,
here alone and there another me another booth caught in
a loop, neither quiterial nor entirely avoidable. I leaned closer
to the board, drew the taped to the main deck
and threaded it with shaking hands. If the only way
through was forward, perhaps this time clarity, or at the
very least, a new variant of the truth, waited at
the end of the reel. As I press play, a
sense of exposure. Client may spine the clear, crystalline sensation
of someone else in the booth watching. But there was nothing,
no body, no abrupt cold, only the sense that the
air was crowded with things unspoken. All His voice rose
clear as I'd ever heard it, not panic but entreating.
This is the last tape, he said, Do you hear me, Gabriel,
If it plays now, it's already started. Rain thundered on
the tin roof above, punctuating every stutter in alder speech.
Signal cuts across the ears. Transmission holds us. What we
do not say is what keeps us, not what we confess.
You have a moment before it falls again folded. Haw
was a damage in the signal, whether listening or both.
In my mind, questions chased themselves like cross stuck, never resolving.
I tried, Alder said, his breath rising in a hitch.
I tried sign off silence, razure nunheld. If you hear
me break it, finish what we started, not in secret,
stay at then unexpected in my own voice, whispering over
his reversed but unmistakable, E already did Hans trembling. I
stopped the reel. The silence that followed was absolute, Even
the monitors had fallen into a waiting electrical hush. In
that instant, the overhead fluorescence searched for a breath. I
saw reflected in every surface, from the glass to the
face of the power up a dozen versions of myself,
alder and the looping path of the signal, each croding
against the other, each demanding a verdict. The tape snapped
at the spol the actual oxide striped, snapping against the drive.
I swore aloud, the sound sudden, injuring something had changed
irreparably in the network. I pray could happened not only
in the magnetic strip, but perhaps, just perhaps in the
deeper pathway's binding us all to this loop. The phone
lines remained dead. The board lights trembled, then settled, but
some charge in the air pressed at the base of
my skull. I found myself, despite the ire, despite exhaustion.
Unable to detach, I dug into the broadcast logs, pulling
another binder from the pile. My pulse pounded in my ears.
Each lock, each schedule, each annotated memo told a partial story,
but shuffled them how I might none describe an exit,
only a repetition, or a cover up, or an accident
or set. My mind returned to the schematic in the
basement wall. Don't break the ring alone. A warning or
a rule was a loop, holding us here only until
some one bore witness, or until some one else outed
the call. I scanned for anything I'd missed log enters
from the weeks before Olda's lost show, out of place
engineering memos, instances of stuff complaints, a common fred emerged,
sudden resignations and planned absences, unexplained equipment failures, all building
toward a night like this where every line blurred, which
Ruth and Rumor colluded to down the story behind a
wall's static Again, a bust cut across the monitors. The
network server rebuted itself, deploying standard ebias tests three chirps
followed by flat grating tone. Except to night, a voice
interrupted the test pattern ko VC do not adgest your dial.
This is the last broadcasts. The feet cut without explanation.
A coal sweat slicked my arms. I scanned the halls,
the empty cubicles, hope for movement, for any sign of
another living person. There was instead a deepening resence, like
the station itself breathed in time with my anxiety. I
drew in a shaky breath. A folders to sent into
the basement had begun. This was the answer to send
break the cycle, not by burrowing deeper, but by stepping
out into the air outside, letting the tapes be heard.
Or was I by even asking, inviting the lip to
double down to call me back into the fold the
rainy east, When wrapping the chain link fencing beyond the wall,
a single glimmering strip of pale dawn edged the low hills,
though one air like glowed apologetically, as if longing for
the certainty of daylight. But the time for hesitation had passed.
I had proof, I had evidence, and regardless of retribution
of offense, of the possible cost to myself of the town,
I was the last one left to decide whether the
signal stopped here or would be deemed to echo again
and again for another nervous generation. With numb fingers, I
prepped the deck for a final tape. My voice horseboo
committed sounded in my own mirrors. Good morning, Lamford Valley.
This is Gabriel Klein. If you're listening, stay with me.
I've something you need to hear. Stage two, escalation of consequences.
For the first time that night, I qued the emergency
override on the board, a button I had been told
during training never to press unless in the dire circumstances.
It's rare. De compulse with indecision, the function designed to
hijack the autopilot feed and push live inport to every
receiver in a twenty mile radius, now sat at the
tip of my trembling finger. Beyond the glass. The field
evaporated into a wall of mist and the last shreds
of thunder. I sensed the hum of the transmitter surging
toward its upper limit, a keen vibration radiating outward, as
if the very air was being pressed into service as
carrier for the unresolved tension below. I lean hard into
the microphone, adrenaline eating holes in my voice. The tension
Please if euroic listen closely. The air in the booth
felt galvanized, heavy, as if the next words might tilt
the world off its axis. I'm about to play a
tape as Calvic's history. Not everyone will want to hear this,
but maybe it's time. I heard my own words twice,
once in my head and again seconds later, bleeding through
the off air monitor. As the station's digital delay tres
to catch up, I press play on the damaged reels,
splicing the fragments into the min feed. Oldo's voice, thin
but unbroken by panic, rolled out. It is a loop
started when we lost the brocast at night. The signal repeats,
every silent moment, every erased confession seals us here I am.
We are asking you, whoever you are, to listen all
the way. Third answer, do not answer, Do not answer.
The tapes works played over the station's frequency, folding the
past lost words into the presence open channel. I braced
against the mixing board, watching the channel meets climb, verge
on over modulation, then snap back under control. Once, just once,
I heard the undertow of my own breathing, patched and
by some audio necromancy, as if I too had been
woven into the legacy against my will. The phone lines jittered,
then burst alive. Three then four calls in a rush.
Blinking frantically, I shunted them to the queue, almost afraid
to take any live but needing to know the outside
world hadn't been raised by the eruption of decades old
spectral testimony. The first line came through as a local number,
mis identified as the old switch boarden impossibility unless the
system itself was cannibalizing its smallest files, reaching backward and anchor.
A woman's voice, brittle and unfamiliar. Are you putting it
all out? There is a safe gabe this history. She
trailed off, flooded by another's insistent whisper careful, they don't
want it in the open. Never did. Three silent beats.
Then a man, unknown yet nuinously local voic rough from
Decea spoke up about time Klein let the town listen.
We all wondered if you do it or just fold
like the rest. I wanted to argue to insist I
understood nothing, but realization froze my tongue. They static behind
a cold board. A half heard phrases from early tapes
lost Parade found as I don't break the ring alone.
More calls cute, the lines, wrapping themselves into a choking loop.
The board oscillated feedback, edging up, needles jittering above my hand,
though one EIR bulb flickered between amber and read until
my vision blurred. A sudden call slipped through what I
didn't remember. Patching in the display showed nothing. The voice
that followed came as a direct echo holders mixed with
a child sing some repetition. Finish it, Gabrielle, finish what
we could not tell them. The last story a tear
in the signal, both live and delay present, un ancestral,
every art a fact of hurt and cover up, funneled
in with the kind of urgent honesty. Another storm sill
rolled itself across the valley. The building's pow sagged. In
the two seconds the generator hesitated, I heard, for the
first time a chorus of dub voices, old and new, older,
my own molline from the pharmacy, half the staff whose
polarly taunted the halls. We never left, they said, laered him. Resolute.
I let the tapes pull out, risking the kind of
dead air that makes us he see auditors. Blanche silence
flooded the system. Rich in waiting, the phone lines grew
frantic that indicators of pacing, the machine's ability to log
them all. Chelsea's voice cut through, urgent, her pattern unmistakable.
Gabe stands on his way. He says, kill the feed now,
he says, you don't want to do this. He says,
this is how it started the last time. Before I
could answer, a clatter in the corridor. Keys fumbled at
the entry, boots dragging against warmanoleum, a body bracing itself
for unpleasant business. Through the lobby swap window, I caught
sight of Stand charging the wholeway hardashevel, face pinched with
raffo terror. I killed the mic out of habit, but
the funds kept howling. Stan reached the studio door and
slam a fist against its chipward. His voice, usually soft, raw,
now came in as a tremor. Open up, Glene. You
don't understand what you're putting out there the station this time,
that's not your story to tell. I held my ground,
letting the tape run between the urge to explain myself
and the certain the explanation would never suffice Stan. It's
too late, it's already in the air. Everyone's listening. He
drew in a mechanical breath, as if mustering the whole
valor's disappointment. If you break it, there's no going back,
he warned. Some stores keep the land quiet, let us
burn it down. Ask your friend and the tape what
comes next. For a moment, I wondered if he'd been
in this position before, if some version of this argument
echoed a reel or two back in the past. But
I steeled myself, fueled by knowing the truth had pressed
so far toward the light. Any attempt to rebury and
now felt both useless and cruel. Behind Stan Chelsea hovered
as wide as chapel windows, hands squeezing her phone. The
storm out doors peeled harder. Or maybe it was only
the rising tone of honest panic, weaving through the booth
and into the town. My own voice now reap laying
from a tape I hadn't recorded yet. Slip from the monitor.
They're listening, they always have been. Don't let them close
the loop. I hit Paus, breathless. Stan's knuckles wrapped harder
on the studio window. The booth, for all its glass
and steel felt as fragile as an Oldwell's idea of safety.
I flicked open the lock. Stan burst in, huffing. He
went first for the board, but I blocked with my arm.
Don't I barked, more desperate than commanding. He shook his head,
glancing sidelin at the half ruined taped deck, then back
at the monitor, which still scrolled the spectraliic of confession.
You think old Or tried to save us by hiding
the truth. Clein stand snapped close enough now that I
could smell the cinders on his breath. But sometimes the
only way to break a curses to muffle at, make
it private. You aer it, it grows. Chelseie now at
the threshold, whispered Stan, Don't we agreed? Our father's agreed?
He spat, turning a trembling gaze, honor. We never had
a real choice. The three of us stood caught between
action and in action, the pull of regret and righteousness,
the sharp scent of old circuitry sparking at the board's edge,
A pulse in the left channel, another layer threaded through
the signal. Alder's voice thin mine, then so softly, I thought,
I imagined it a new one, feminine, unsteady, perhaps one
of the women in the old Polaroids, straining for closure.
The board meets climb, as if every story in the
valley was fighting to be told at once. The signal
I understood with sudden clarity, did not want closer. It
wanted exposure, understanding, irresponsibility handed down but never met. But
the price, the price seemed tire now than ever. The
whole station, the whole town, their secrets and their ghostprot
howling out of silence and public decibels. Stan tried to
reach for the cutoff switch. I caught his rest let
it play, we need to finish it. He wrenched away, uncertain,
but did not try again. Chelsea laid a trampling hand
on the door frame, voice touching the edge of prayer.
It don't break alone, Gabe, That's what they always said.
Somebody else needs to listen to. I shunted the speaker up,
but back on, flooding the booth with the full, unspoilt
history of Kovic, confession, regret, warning, prayer. Across the valley,
every sleeping radius sputtered to life. In that collective moment,
I felt the loop shovin neither closing, nor quite breaking,
but pulling, stretching, demanding a verdict. Outside dawn cracked up
an untrembling world Stage three revelation or confrontation. For a breath,
we all simply listened the real spat and grand all
dos voice as alive as any in the room. But
if I leave it and told it finds someone else.
The night's silence is never empty, its waiting, waiting for
a voice to return its call. The line flickered, Then
the tape skipto of laying passed, imprisoned into a composite. Now,
for the first time, the voices on the air mine
and Alders and others began to blend seamlessly. I heard
Stan's hesitation, stitched in Chelsea's hopeful whimper, even Marty's groff
skepticism from weeks before. As each fragment played, the meaning built,
every erasure, bread recursion, every public admission snapped the loop shorter.
Every story, however painful, dragged the thing closer toward conclusion.
The phone bank shorted signals, braiding and unraveling. Listeners from
all over the county patched in forzzes, washed in delay,
each recognizing pain or lost time or names left and
said they saying there Some one tried the feed warping.
Why did no one tell us another? Their syllables folding
back across the tape, sancient hiss through it all the
mixed boards ali D level spiked, then receded, evidence of
transmission resistance, then acceptance on the sound boards battered meata.
The only silent band was the one reserved for public safety,
which to night registered a pale, stable hum, as if
the world itself was listening in holding its breath. Then
the reel reached at end point, the room fell into
a hard, scraping quiet. Stan's shoulders hunched with exhaustion, looked
at me, not with facility any more, but with the
nakedness of a man relieved his part, and the relay
it ended? What now? He muttered. Chulsy crossed the studio,
laying her palm on the tape. She avoided looking at
either of us, eyes fixed on the stickered howl. The
handriton explode almost beyond recognition. In the new hush, kayle
resees monitors ticked as if ensure how to fill the void.
No new calls came in. For all the world the
station felt momentarily free, unlooked, unburdened, even as the first
rays of sun stain that transmit a pasture's gold. I
reached for the Boar's volume, ready to sign off, but
a winnot rattling pulse from the left speaker interrupted me.
This one deeper, wider, as if it emanated not from
any living person, but from the station's ground itself. Would
any a voice or the ghosts of once spoke up? Frody, measured, familiar,
thank you, it z ed. The word was neither resigned
nor triumphant, simply honest. It was older or was it
all of us? The layer composite of every confession finally
spoken aloud. A click, then silence. A wave, physical, almost tactile,
collapsed across my shoulders. My hands fell away from the boar.
Stan's eyes glistened with and shed tears. Chelsea, flinching, covered
her mouth. The sun board finally quieted, for the first
time since the night began. On the monitor at the
frequency drifted, settled, then stabilized. No more overlays, no more
ghosted phrases, Only the sound of the morning static and
the gentle feed by co storerspen somewhere beneath the booth,
the old loopers and splices ground down and died. The
burden of old confessions, old guilt felt lighter, if only fractionally.
So we sat there, unwilling to speak and willing to
risky opening whatever fragile piece we inherited. A beam of sun,
sharp and certain, swung across the lobby carpet, gilding every
photograph on the wall. Time real time, unbroken, and leaped
crept forward Stage four, immediate fall out. The booth finally
was quiet. I could feel the three of us me
stand Chelsea wrapped in that hush, listening as the old
equipment ticked and cold. Chelsea pressed her forehead to the
rim of the batter tape deck, to stracing her cheeks.
Stan's hand gripped my shoulder with unusual gentleness. The board's
green bars glowed a steady line, as if daring us
to speak and break the brief truce. I call blinked once,
then went dead. Nothing else, no more overlays, no charge,
shadows in the corners. Even the daylight shop through the
glass felt like a cleansing current. In that fragile silence,
the burden fell away for a moment, it was just
a radio station and three people too tired for more secrets.
Stage five, final action. I stood, stretching aching legs and
reached for the batted microphone, feeling an odd obligation to
speak one last truth. I pressed the board's top key
and summon my lust reserves. Kaovci is signing off from
the night shift. If you've heard strange things to night,
if you recognize voices from lon agot, no, you are
not alone. Our story's matter. Sometimes the only way to
break the loop is to let each other listen. With that,
I clicked off the main input and threaded the mangle
tape from the deck and placed it gently on the
broadcast lock, where the fading sunbea touched its scarred surface.
I powered down the console, feeling the charge saddle from
my arms into the quiet air the arnee I all
light flickered once I thready farewell, then died. I opened
the studio door and stepped into the lobby, where every
photograph watched silently and burdened. At last, Stage six, closing
the station held as breath as I stepped outside, squinting
into the new morning, A single bird sign up of
the empty lot, and for the first time since I arrived,
I heard no voice but my own. The air outside
was sharp with ozone, the walld slick and luminous from
the just pass front. I lingered beneath the eaves of
the low hump roof, breathing in the late spring damp,
its minnow tank, cut by the warm coil of the transmitter. Upward,
what's in the gravel lot filled with white sky. With
every step the Knight's tension crawled off my skin like
a shedd invisible but real. I felt impted and strangely light,
as if some deep from that had kept me poorsed
on radio was knife edge had slockened and not worked
loose in the chest. Inside, the silence was thick and absolute.
Chelsea stood a moving behind a glass wall, headbout over
her phone. Stan was already half way down the hall,
toward the little kitchen, keith jangling boots, scuffing linoleum. Some
part of me felt a raw, childish urage to call
them back in, and cisted to stand facing each other
until a new routine emerged. Instead, I let the door
thump shut behind me and warped the perimeter of the
lot until I could see every scap wall of the
station and the rusted tower above. A pickup truck crawled
down the server's road, headlight soft in the haze. For
a panic moment, I wondered if trouble would walk out,
disgraced listeners, more ghosts the law. It was just Marty,
the lineman from County Maintenance, slowing for a look. I
gave him a half hearted wave. His eyes and the
half light looked hollowed and older than even he deserved.
The truck slipped, pasted, its tires hissing over wet gravel,
and I stood alone, again, witness to whatever act we
just pursued, pitated a distance, iron wand up warbling, but
no one came, no rescue, no reprimand only the gradual
return of background noise, wind creaking the gutter, a coyote
leaping far off, birds reasserting themselves in the dawn. Even
the hush felt changed, less loaded. In town, I guess
the earliest listeners would be pacing their kitchens, searching for
whatever words I've forced out over the valley. Would someone
try to find me? Would any one believe it? Or
even want to? I pressed my palm against mastarnam, feeling
my happy brousettle in my minds. I flashed the boards,
the tapes warped, evidence, alders hollowed warning. I wondered if
it was enough admission to the public and to myself
were if soon the Lubert began to repair and take
route again, waiting for the next soft voiced host to answer,
to confess, swap out names, and freshen the drama for
a new generations and specting airs. The main thing now
was to wait, let the dust settle, let the first
wave of shock and contingency burn itself out. Chelsea joined
me outside jacket and zipped over her shoulders. Despite the jail,
She watched the sun peel silvery light off the station's
empty sign. Her eye searched my face and found need
a gloating or apology, only confusion, relief, wrestling with fright.
You think that's it, she murmured, voice breaking the calm
so gently almost went unnoticed. You think it'll stop now,
I shrugged, unable to summon certainty. Maybe enough forces heard
it this time. Maybe that's the only thing that matters.
She pulled her sleeves over her hands, staring away at
the horizon. Stan says, this isn't the first try, not
even close. But the tates nobody ever just played them
before the conversation lapsed, not out of awkwardness, but out
of the sense we'd said all a person could usfully say.
In town, the morning traffic started up, trucks on the
farm to market road, a bus engine shuddering at the bend.
Life returning if warily inside the lobby. The phones rattled
in their cradles, one after the next. Few may have
been pranks, but I picked up one for the formality
of it, the sooner to get through the ritual. A
dright roaded woman, voice shaking with an emotion I couldn't
cont down, simply asked, I was real, wasn't it that everywhere?
Feeling that listening? Her words lowed as if damp was
that us. I hesitated, gave her what truth I could. Yes,
we all heard it. You weren't imagining things. She hung
up without another word. Throughout the morning, fragments came in,
some angry, some silent, some grateful, none fully processed. The
studio became an impromptu confession booth, echoing back every flavor
of dread and recognition. The broadcast had provoked. Stan wandered
through eyes a map of sleeplessness, dropping a half hearted
memo on my desk, contact the regional manager, schedule repouse,
decide how to phrase the morning programming note for if
you see logging without of course seeing upright? What happened?
He paused at the threshold, consideration, weathering his face. You
may have let something out, Cline, he said, force grave,
but maybe you've fixed it too. What no till tomorrow?
I nodded, accepting the ambiguity. He drifted away toward the back.
Boots echoed on tale, leaving the budon for Daylight's staff
to inherit. By noon, social media and the county rippled
with someone scrambled phone recording, misquoted lyons, fragments looping through
group chats. K LVC lost its mind last night? Did
anyone else hear the old founder's voice? Sounds like an accident,
but nobody's talking. For the first time, the station's own
story landed outside the bottle neck of Massaga and the
local room a mill an open wound exposed for collective examination.
At my warm desk, I saw did the night's wreckage
the batter tape its edge, wrinkled and translucent from heavy use,
sat near the main transmit o' lock. I debated, varc
ivor destroy stay or vanish myself Inerse, She prevailed. I
logered the tape as part of the day's broadcast and
locked it away in the main safe, not trusting even
myself to decide until the air thinned a little more.
Chelsea sprawled in the guest chair, phone pressed her a thigh,
scrolling through the county form. She looked up once, caught
my gaze and almost smiled. Ye did what needed done,
she muttered. No, I replied, after a pause, just what
no one else would risk. Outside. A pickup rolled and slow,
and an elderly man in faded work where touched two
fingers to his brow, half a salute, half a benediction.
By lunch time, the cause has stopped. We were left
with the silence. Later, after the others had gone, I
sat in the silent station, watching the copper wires of
the transmit of fence gathered you streets beyond, still hushed
by whatever collective luminality we forced under town. Settling back
in the booth, I scammed frequencies. The air was mostly empty.
Sports skipping talk radio of the soft crush of pop
from a town two valleys over on our own channel.
The automator platace stuttered for a few seconds every hour,
all ads for grocery specials and the lost pet bulletins
patchworking one another. No more colts, no more spectral overlays,
only the mechanical tick of the system moving forward. I
sipped hepid coffee, clinging to the half superstitious hope that
after all, this simple, honest silence would be enough. That night,
I lingered, long after the lawbook was signed, the only
witness to the fact that klvc's air was, for the
first time in living memory, clean of repetition. For now,
at least, the station had gone quiet the night. Stories
confessed and released, waited out there in the valley for
someone new to retell them someday in the daylight, in
the lonely glow of the controlled bruth As my eyes
drifted toward the reddening led clock, the consoles hum crept
up my bones, warm, expectant, but for the moment undemanding,
until somewhere beneath the sofa static, the faintest possible clear
suggested that even closed loops rail and Vanish. They just
refred themselves for the patient, the curious, and the damned
to find. And so I waited not for Gus, but
for the piece that comes when all the voice is
in the room, are finally truly silent, and that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.