Speaker 1: The last time anyone heard from Tommy Wells, the radio
host who brought half a county for sleepless nights. His
voice sounded wrong, shirt, desperate, nearly a whisper, trembling behind
a wall of static. Don't let them off the air,
he said, rushing every word together, no matter though what
you hear, just it. Then a violent tiescaoed the signal clean,
and something else, a brittle memor very deeper, almost stitched
itself around his words, before the transmission cave to white
and noise altogether. I didn't know about Tommy Wells until
the night I pulled my car on to the shoulder
over out sixteen engine, idling headlights catching wheat and bone,
white fence posts. The Cassetta borrowed from the w QUEO
station manager rattled to my recorder. I press play, thinking
I'd just catch up on familiar old eutchects, dead air,
awkward segues, local as for track to repair and farm supply.
But that final minute pricked at every sense I trusted.
I rewound, played it again, then again, sitting in the
dark with my windshield frosting over. There was something in
the signal out of place, an overlay not quite human,
riddled with backward fragments. The hair along my arms prickled,
and I listened heart rates goodding as Tommy's static last
plea faded. A new voices flickered through the carrier wave
far off yet somehow here too close. Broken syllables may
be laughter, then silence that pulls the way a wind does.
The wind stoled a moment to the world on mute.
Inside my cart that lost transmission hovered a trick of nerves.
Maybe I told myself so, but the cold blood deeper.
I stared out toward the water tower beside the station.
It's faded pink, catching just enough moonlight to throw a
slander shadow across the soybean field. The car radio tuned
to w q B are barely buzzed, with an after
image of the broadcasts static folding and on itself, patterns
trickling through. I typed time coats into my notebook, and
in a tall hush that spilled over everything, had the
faintest suggestion of my name, Claire, trailed by the all
consuming hush. I'm not a believer. If that matters. I
don't scare easily. I don't buy stores about haunted air
waves or dying small towns giving up got signals. I
was here to make a feature, just another piece for
public gradio, a melancholy valentine to rural stations you could
drive past a dozen times and never notice. But that
last night in Tommy's booth and his voice dangled by
the unseen. Whatever really happened that kept tapping at me
local myth was something worse wound into the wires, waiting
for silence. Every replay inserted new and knees at the roadside.
I told myself I was being methodical. I played it
back and listened to the dead air, expecting it to
lose its charge. It never quite did. Whatever had posed
through Tommy's transmission had root steeper in wqba's walls than
the line itself. Maybe on the recording. The layers of
static built in waves until it felt less like a
technical accident and more like deliberate erasure. Someone or something
intervened right at the edge of meaning. The recorder word
in my lap. The digital display blinked out at two
three twenty five, the same frozen time simbers in the
police logs. Don't let them off the air. I remembered
what the station manager Myra said on the phone before
I ever arrived. It's odd, isn't it, how much more
you missed the voice when no one says good bye.
She left it there, refusing elaboration, and I thought maybe
that was just real reserve. Now, every time I paused
on that static, waiting for some trick to resolve in
the white noise, my own voice felt dinner. The night
pressed in, I gripped the recorder, rolled my hands steady,
and made a note isolation, technical debt, fading local memory
and possibly voices in the static not goos story. I
told myself just the kind of decay that haunts old technology,
and people left holding it. But as I drove the
last stretch to w QBR's lonely parking lot, headlights sweeping
over frostbit and fields, I couldn't shake the sense that
whatever had closed in on Tommy Wells might be waiting
for the next silence. The radio station squats at the
edge of Hatfield, a town more geography than community. Its
post office perpetually shattered skull, converted to storage. Decade to go.
WQBR sits in the lee of a windbreak, an aging
block of cinder and aluminum siding, championing its coal letters
in some bleach final. If you blink, you'll miss both
the driveway and the signboard. Its ladder's curling at the
edges like a bandoned promises. I pulled up on a Tuesday,
just after six, the sky all lavender bruise, and the
world silent except for the gravel rolling under my tires,
carrying my field bag and too many cords I let
myself and Myra had said they kept the place unlocked
for emergencies. Inside, the hum of old fluorescent tubes and
the smell of burn coffee marked the threshold between expectation
and something grimmer. Myra herself looked half round in the
weak lobby light, fifty maybe sixty, heavy jacket hiding her frame,
silver roots showing blunt at her temples. She pressed to
mug into my hand and gave a weary smile that
edged toward Friendly Claire from the Public Radio group That's me.
Her handshake was small and dry. Appreciate you coming, truly,
haven't had a story about it since the anniversary, and
that was mostly obituaries. Honestly, The glimmer in her eyes
pride stretched thin by habit almost reminded me of my
own mother's old newsroom. Half to find some half fatigue,
I followed her down the narrow corridor. Passing door was
glazed with yellowing paper. Corners were MoU's traps, jutted out,
a rack of staff portraits, seepy Prince and culs snapshots,
all in smiling Hunkrooker. The fourtos trapped every former engineer
in DJ since nineteen seventy five. Ptalmy's amid recent hopeful
out of place among the older faces. I lingered a
second too long at his photo, a word missing magic
market across the bottom. Myer's gaze caught away, and I
let her lead on. We step past a mudroom doubling
as a store in boxes of Haffy's reels, a busted
turned tible balance atop a coil of cabling. I set
down my bag and spoiled my mic and asked, can
I record a quick walk through natural sound for the
intro if you want the full dying radio effect. Sure,
she gestured at the ceiling, A low grave wine in
the air. Can't get rid of that hum, Eddie says,
it's harmness, Just the step down transformer I'm not convinced, Eddie.
It turned out, was the night engineer, as much of
a local fixture as the tower itself. About seventy white
hair clipped clothes, wearing a green corduroy jacket with w
QI biostitch over the breast. He appeared with a roll
of duct tape, eyed me with a faint suspicion of
some one who knows too well what happens when outside
his proker round. Still, his handshake was careful. If people
expect new equipment, he said, gesturing at a rack of
battered sliders and a rotary phone sprouting from the desk.
But if you want the old over night show, you
need of ghosts, or so Tommy said. Is it all
the stuff from the eighties, I asked, Eddie shrugged, older
than me. You watch yourself around the main boarder. Don't
touch the blue label fader. Whatever you do, if it
drops out, sometimes the whole thing dies needs a warm
hand to keep talking to it. Good for the air,
I guess. By noon a catalog most of the place
wave for thin rugs. A wall of cassette case is
sealed behind wire. A bank of her data computers in
the newsroom relion with a flickering monitor and a row
of faded chairs. One window, the largest was black out
with cardboard, every surface layered hope and loss. I passed
a corner, wherefore local sports trophies dusted and cobbbs leaned
against plaques for local journalism, the years running together, Meyer
settling into her office with a fresh mug, hand in
me a station Lockbrook. We only keep the good calls.
Got any plans to interview some of our night audience?
Trying to? I heard they depend on WQBR more than anyone.
She looked down, lips thinning. It's a shame. What happened
to Tommy last month? He filled three shifts and self
emergency coverage, he said, But sometimes the few people listening,
the more they notice if something's off. I glanced behind her.
Her back office door stood closed, a keeperd lock, blinking red.
When I asked about the archives, she shook her head mildly.
Policies has no guess in there are legal and I
suppose old security for the tapes. It's more mess than treasure.
Trust me. On air, the soundscape never varied. An uneven
hum bed music poll from a melted CD a farm
supply at two collars, debating church announcements. A caught Eddy
switching out cartridge in the booth. His hands nimbled a
spite age, we don't run live over night any more,
not since Tommy. His voice rode the sentence down nearly
to silence. Between practical tasks, a scan more of the
place in the front hall, a cluster of voicemailted crowded,
a shelf labeled by month, clipboard sign ins from local
teene's home from college, a few indwarnings about the nonio
than nineteen ninety seven on the analog decks, and a
crumple polaroid from a lonego Christmas party. Iddy in a
tinsel crown Myra raising a paper carp A younger DJ
in the background blowed almost away. It was clear from
the first dior that WQBR moved in slow time every day,
laminated over the last, but even so I found hints
of her knees, a lock foul cabinet near the booth,
Ady's tendency to pause any time the power flickered, Meyer's
quick sidestep when I drifted toward the arcad's door. The
building felt frozen between usefulness and the stagia hollow that
had grown around itself. By the end of my first day,
I set up interviews, jotted down a scene about the
last radio voice in the candy, and tied the reels
behind mesh. Meyer's phone rang, and she turned her back,
half whispering, No, there's no update. He no, I can't
give her that. The line crackled. She never explained outside
that sense of isolation pressed up from the land, nothing
but drainage, s ditches, and fields stitched hard by winter,
home scattered like left overseaed barn, light flickering and gone.
I played the tapes in my room that night, writing
notes for long stretches. The others at the motel, nurses,
the trucker, a man in a forestry commissioned jacket, never
asked what brought me here. Even the diner seemed to
serve the same menu for ever, as if no new
ideas or visitors were supposed to stick. Night drivers, Meyer
told me circle back every morning with reports moving lights
near the tower, voices bleeding through the usual country playlists.
One flagger at the grain elevator Ben a kit in
his twentis who listened from midnight until first lights, and
the station's virtues. The only thing that keeps you weak
after too. If you lose the voices in the night,
you start to feel it under your teeth. I recorded
him in the parking lot the night Tommy left. Anything strange,
he shrugged, brow creased. It wasn't like he signed off,
you know, itt just he was talking about local snow closures.
I think. Then all at once he just started repeating,
keep listening, I'm not lone, keep listening. After that it
went weird, static, like two singles fighting, and then nothing.
I asked if he'd ever called the station me No,
but my Buddyrick tried once. After the signal dropped outset
at ryeing m rang, he tapped his teeth, said someone
picked up, but all he heard was what he thought
was Tommy's voice, only wrong, like a recording, but delayed
made him sick to his stomach. Inside the station staff
responded to Tommy's name with practiced reserve and all the
part timer mutter people leave. They always leave nothing less here.
I caught Eddie watching me through the booth glass, like
he expected my questions to wake something slumbering in the circuitry.
The cassette wall, the old clock in the hallway, the
silent phone at the public deskal kept truck of what
was missing, not what remained. I started to catalog these absences,
not just Tommy, but other vanishing initials Tracy D G.
Marv jotted in a notebook on the security desk for years,
and call signs always for the overnight. No one could
tell me precisely when the after midnight slot had last
been vacant, only that it never should. I went to
work as planned, arranged in Mike's scripting angles editing the
local accents out of my own voice for a light touch,
but that sent something vital being kept at bait only
by Routinea refused to dissipate. WQBO didn't hum with the
promise of live radio. It waited patient for the right silence.
On my second night, I set up a portable monitor
in the motel room and queued up the row over
night air check, the same recording I'd listened to my car.
Tommy signed off. The shriek of static and that whispered
warning with hefforns crunked on every outside sound blotted. I
let the minute run longer passed when most had stopped listening.
The hiss at first was almost soothing, crane on corrugated metal,
Then on the left channel only something snapped to pulse,
barely noticeable, then three short bursts, as if someone tapped
a microphone far off inside a box. I isolated the segment,
scrolled back and replayed. Varied in the static was cadence,
A rhythm spinning round the background. The droning of dead
air wasn't random and undercurrent, something nearly musical, repeated with
a logic that felt alien. Tiny rises and falls, snatches
of breath behind Tommy's last word, a voice or sound
not his higher pleading, perhaps not even English. At certain pitches,
it twisted, shaped, almost became recognizable. I tried to enter
keywards fast enough, but every time I paused, the pattern
slipped away. A spike in the wave from lined up
with the moment Tommy's voice went loose during his last
spoken word, as if something overrode the transmission directly. I
called Ben again, asking him to listen with me to
the final five minutes. I watched him fidget by the
paper while I played the tape. You hear that, I asked,
hoping he deny it. He put the handset away from
his ear. It sounds like there's a fire in the background,
far off, like Tommy was arguing with someone. Only nobody
else should have been there, right, that's what stands out.
He nodded, yeah. And there's this part right before it cuts,
like it's where I heard someone else, not a person, really,
just like scrapping to get free fighting the noise. I
thanked him. His answer didn't settle anything. Afterwards, I played
a handful of old listener voicemails pulled from the lobby shelf.
Each carried a lot of bewilderment. Someone else was in
there with him, you could tell. Or it didn't sound
like feedback. It sounded like someone trying to get out
of her room. One woman claimed to hear her own
child's name spoken in that last bust before the signal failed. Later,
back in the motel, I collected time stamps overlaying wavefroms
in an audio editor. The patterns resisted alignment. The art
facts always took up just enough space to write the
transition into dead air, as though following a script older
than the tape. Every so often, words shaped themselves in
the static, only to scatter into noise. The instant if
focused in my throat tightened every instinct save coincidence, technical error.
But too many details lined up against the defense. I
called Eddy late on nd her pretext of asking about
the mixing board. He told me that patch panels old
as hell. But Tommy swore ran harder at night, said
the sound change would no one in the building. He
offered nothing more, but his voice had a shake to it.
Throw a bear with things and said. I considered all
this could be nothing Perdulia, small town meth or maybe
share gilt. But I mark my notebook with a new question.
What is the true shape of the silence at wq
b R and how long has it been this way?
Myra stolled again next morning when I request a deeper
arcave access insurance, she said, an odd glint in her eye.
If you want to look up something, YE let me
know specifics. Her worry lines sat deeper than radio work
should carve. Tommy was the best we had, kind, reliable,
He felt every silence like it was personal. Maybe that's
why the dead air is always hardest when you know
what's gone missing. Trying a different path, I asked if
she'd ever run a slot on automation through the night.
Mayra grimaced, as if tasting something bitter. Not if I
can stand the machines, they don't do quite right, wakes
the whole building up. She brightened up, then, recounting tales
from Betty Year's school children turning in the booth holiday
call and comtesse a moment she played three straight. I
was of local polka bands under a tornado warning. She
tried for hope, but after every bright anecdote came a lull,
thin and lawn. Once I asked about the wall tapes
in the loft back office. We log every air check,
every show, every staff event, she answered, just tradition, and
the insurance says, we have to cattle or get to you.
I pressed, Has anything ever gone actually missing from the archives?
She laughed politely. Here are not the first I ask. No,
nothing ever leaves, not as long as I've been here.
That cavat sat between us. After she left, I peeked
through a glass window beside the office. The shelves inside
shot GAP's labels, missing boxes askew, A rolled copet blocked
a row of unlabeled latches. A handred in inventory taped to
the glass was scratched through in three places, all listing
of a slash an tuminus three am as the time slot.
Myra's shadow muttered the details as she walked past. She
changed the subject at every opportunity. After a late lunch,
I drew a slow circuit of the main hall, I
pressed my palm to the wall behind the booth. A
faint tremor vibrated underneath. More pronounced at night. Each time
I stopped pitching my voice into the silence, the very
structure of the buildings seemed to listen back. Frustrated, I
took to the library. Behind stacks of agricultural news and
jumbled local papers, I found clippings on wq Boss banning
its whole history. The story never made front page's local
host retires, chief engineer relocated, or sometimes a small, awthy
phrased obituary, staff member moved on, or functions suspended following
power loss. On air, none said a disappearance outright, but
a pattern repeated, always around the overnight shift, always in winter,
always the slot between two and three a m. The
station's own decades old newsletter dog aired Brutele raised questions.
I couldn't answer. One stuffer from nineteen ninety two, last present.
During late erjack Fade undetermined, a string of engineers relocated abruptly.
I met surnames, attached service dates, and saw how each
left only shadows in the love books. Later, I circled
back to the station, arriving just as Eddy headed out
for a cigarette. He stopped me at the threshold of conversation.
You're lucky she lets you poke around on the lawn,
he said. Years ago, no one would bother stores have
a way of getting sick when they were aired out,
you know. I asked him about the tapes, had he
ever noticed the missing or a trouble with the overnight
shift When Tommy was around his lip pressed in a line.
Tommy was steady, didn't need music, didn't want company. That's
what made him good. The problems the building, not the staff,
and it wants talking. You let it go quiet. It
remembers you every bit of casual myths pushed me closer
to eighty's door that evening, after the station entered out,
I asked if he'd help me check the wiring for
my equipment. Really a chance to get into the locked
back office. He hesitated, then shrugged. If you know what
you're after, I'll give you five minutes. While Addie checked
the breaker. I eastened to the cramp. Shadowy back office, hot,
battering cardboard boxes lined the shelves, index cards clicked to them,
and furious slanted handwriting, host initials, dates, list of incident
logs stack thickest for the overnight ires, stacks of a
mop tape reels lay at odd ankles only dated by
shift in time, some so old the addiesive label's barely clung.
I pocketed two one from nearly thirty years ago, mark
to slash and two above a m another from a
year before Tommy arrived on a battered desk beside an
unplugged monitor, an open fold bulged with carbon coffee incident reports,
each signed by a string of former managers. Every time
the dead air happened, someone noted, no outed, recorded absence, untape,
un detected, live in two places, subject not located following
transmission showed at once with a line trailing off, as
if the hand lost nerve halfway through. Back in the booth,
Eddie guarded the door. One thing, he said, a voice
low when you play those keep the hephones on speakers
can make it worse I spun up the reel to reel,
calibrated the levels, and press play. The tapeist to life
laced with the texture of another century. The first section,
a host reading headlines, faded into a lull, then thirty
seconds of pure quiet. Right there, a distortion built. The
static wasn't random. It rotated round the voice's last word,
repeated it at odd pitches, then overrowed it with a
blowed whisper, like a melted version of the original voice.
Out of the noise, I heard the same pattern as
and Tommy sign off an urgent murmur apps, maybe only older,
less skilled. Then it ended, the void snapping shut. On
the next reel, a similar event late night winter, followed
by minute lawn gap, then the same spectral overlay, the
same cycle of faint forces edging into assertion. The older
the tape, the clumsier. But it was there a logic
to the interruptions, a pattern invisible in daylight. I played
half a dozen reels, tracking the etchecks to every gap
in personnel, each time their dead aired events precipitated. A
pressing presents a snarl of voices, the vague sense of
something being pulled in from nowhere at all the grain
of the recording, buckling as if infected. I leaned back,
Nurse frayned and scolded a conclusion in my notes, hand
shaking every time someone disappeared, the tape bore evidence the
dead air and were crept into it. That night, alone
in the booth, I tried to persuade myself it was
nothing more than spiraling myth. But a then breath of
wind pressed against the door, and the hum in the
panel intensified, as if the walls themselves were drawing breath.
It was after three a m. When the phone rang
Meyer's number, trembling while he sat thin by a marass.
She greeted me with news from town. People are top, oh,
King Claire. Old ones think you're stirring, which should stay quiet.
There are stories about curses about the station choosing its
son always the night slot. She swallowed hard. We never
leave the night empty, that's how. But she trailed off
when I pressed her. She hung up. At dawn, I
woke to discover half a dozen Miss Cole's room is
spreading warnings, left a scratched out voicemails. Leave it alone,
as some one said, no one needs to hear from
the voices again on the motel dresser. The taper corridor
had flipped itself to play back. The hiss was almost
comforting now, but underneath a new voice appeared, mine earlier,
reading notes behind it, overlapping the faintest edge of Tony's
last sign off, stitched to another older one. Something couldrilled
through me? What if it were still present? Still waiting
for the silo of dead space. Determined, I headed back
to the station adrenaline A slow poison, Myra, block my way.
Why are you pushing? Why now we patched it, we
kept it moving. Don't bring this down on us again.
She was shaking, hence twisting her munk. Have there been
other disappearances, Myra? I pressed? She didn't answer directly, her
lip curled as she walked away. Some rooms hunger for
the sound. When dusk folded over to town, I returned,
No staff, no interference, just the restless hum. I entered
the booth, clipped my lapelmack to my collar and hit
record one experiment. I'd read a passage, then let the
air go still and listen when my words ran out.
When the tape rolled with nothing but ambience sounded there
it was again the breath of static, a chilling plummet
in temperature, pressure building behind the glass, as if the
very room girded itself. The voices spitered along the background.
They sounded almost familiar, crease of my own accent in
the blow, the subtle echo of every host before me.
When I coughed, the entity pulled back the moment I
fell quiet. Their presence pressed harder until my skin crawled.
I restarted my reading, barely disguising the panic. Each time
silence brushed against the signal, the static invaded, quick and patient,
always listening. It felt personal, targeted, not a symptom, but
assentsions agry at my feeble attempt to fill the ancient void.
That's when it struck home. Not just on tape, not
just and old tales, but now, in this moment, whatever
lived in the dead air was alive and working, hungry
for attention, paid in voices and presents. I ended my recording,
feeling the room's walls flex inwards, as if the whole
structure would collapse without the spark of life, radio of someone, anyone,
refusing silence. When our limp put side into the thin wind,
my ears still rang with the hint of others, Tommy's
voice meshed with another someone aldo, the sound not quite grief,
not quite warning. I pressed my phone against my chest, shaky,
hopeful it would capture what my mind struggled to believe.
I knew now that what hunted w q BR silence
was not an accident. It was a pattern, a weiting
mouth that never stopped hungering skies only by the intervals
between absence and memory. I didn't know what my next
step should be, or if I could manage it alone,
but it was too late for indifference. From here on,
every silence would be an invitation, and someone or something
was determined never to be left alone in the dark again.
My shoes crunched over frost as I moved across the
gravel lot, just to feel the air again, anything to
bleed off the pressure that seemed to pulse from the
station's walls. The dawn was burnt orange, feeble, with the
thin scrape of sunn owl lining the water tower. I
tried recording a field note, just ambien sound. At first
I heard only the dull hum of the transmitter shied
and cow'slowing on the wind. Then just a thread was
at my imagination of something like a sigh woven in
gone before I could listen twice if fumbled for the
keys Eddie had slipped me. I thought of what it
must have felt like to be Tommy alone in the
booth the world, a black sheet on the other side
of the window, holding the attention of an invisible county,
with just your own voice. But what if his attention
wasn't all he held. I let myself into the back hallway,
boots squeaking on thenoleum, and immediately saw Myra's office door
propped open, the usual fortress of the archaves lay exposed.
That alone would have made me pause. But something else
may be the hush, maybe just fatigue, kept pushing me forward. Inside.
Myers sat hunched at her desk, framed by Mazeven's pool tips.
Her hands worked taping index cards, as if re ordering
all memory by sheer will. She didn't glance up still.
I knocked on the jam. Didn't expect any one this early,
she said, voice for raspier than usual. Couldn't sleep. Are
you cataloging old logs? I stepped gently to her side,
I smapping the line up of reels. Did Eddie tell
you I was poking around in here. She guided the
index cords tighter, jaw fixed. Is my mess, Claire always was.
Don't blame Eddie for trying to help you. He's got
his own ghosts. The smell of old paper and I
and filings clung to the shelves. I saw dates in
red ink Oh, slush antwo zeromin asterreeasier of circle, then
struck through. She was tidying up, Yes, but there was
a method, an anxiety in the order. Mara finally looked
at me, and, after a moment's sled a single reel
cross her desk. If you're going to dick, you might
as well start with us, she offered, a humorless smile.
Be careful, not all voys is wont to be found again.
I took the reel. The label March three, twenty eleven,
O slash en host Al Featherson final air muskin crawled.
The handwriting was shaky, scrawled, as if pinned in the dark.
What happened to Featherston? I asked, paulse skipping. Myra's eyes
flicked away. He left, Oh, the job left him. One
day he was here, the next his locker was empty,
and his mail forwarded to nowhere. It always goes that way.
I waited for more, but she only bent back to
her carts, assembling a silent archive for some one else's audit.
Are you afraid of what's on these tapes? My throat
was suddenly dry. Myra hesitated. A person learns to respect
old wounds. You patch what you can. We all have
our bargains in a place like this. She eyed a
wall clock as if listening for another call. But I'd
rather retire, never having to know exactly why some knights
swallow their voices. She didn't stop me as I left
the real clutch tight. My hands shook. Part of me
screamed to leave things be let the myth calcify, but
the deeper current pulled at me obsession or responsibility. I
couldn't say. The sun topped the trees. By the time
I found Eddy in the transmitter shed fussing with the
old eight track. He wiped his palms and sighed up
my approach. He keeps stirring it up, and you'll find
more than just names in the log book, he said,
not even Unkindly. I held up the reel. Myra gave
it to me. I want to hear it in the booth.
He studded my face along the lines, and his eyes
going deeper. You want an escort or you want solitude,
just make sure it doesn't go out on air, I said,
forcing a smile. He flicked the booth door open. Holler
if you need pulling back inside. I set up the
tape under the booth, monitors cueuing my own digital recorders.
I kept headphones press for a myer's worn and chewed
the back of my tongue. I braced myself in press
play the first few minutes the tail end of an
odd for a local hardware store than Featherson's force worn,
gentle familiar, reading midnight weather in a recipe sent by
a collar. The air after each statement lingered too long
as a feathers and craved conversation from the static itself.
At two thirteen, a stretch of dead air, not technical
dead air, but poles longer than comfort, as if he'd
expected a coal that never came. Then almost too soft,
a ripple in the static, a yawning sound rising a
has shaped around syllables that were not quite words. Words
pressed at the threshold. Featherson's tone swallowed, bent, then overlaid
by something impatient, reaching it was as though too broadcast
occupied the same space, their requirements of sound and ste
silence and direct conflict. The tape wabble, skipping once, then detonation,
Featherston's last clear sentence, I'm not alone and here after all,
followed by the unmistakable snap of a mic being tapped
and what sounded like the shuffle of more than one
pair of feet. The tip snapped back to music, and
the regular rhythm resumed, as if nothing had happened. I
jerked off the headphones for her damp in the glass.
My reflection hunted from meaning. The longer I lingered, the
more dreadful certainty cement. The phenomenon was opportunistic, predatory, cultivated
in the gaps opened by routine and then left intended.
Eddie tapping the glass, lips moving ouk. I nodded, grateful
for witness. If nothing else, anyone else ever here. My
voice cracked in the headphones. He nodded. Just once you
ask around, you'll find old stuff gone quieter each year.
There's a reason no one wants the graveyard swat, not
just in heart filled. I gazed at the battered broadcast
clock up of the door. Each second hand sweep a
tiny metronome of anticipation. Time here was not simple. It wavered,
pulls deeper, as if the very building were sented every
minute unfilled by voice. Eddie and I I listened side
by side through one more tape, and even older one.
This time, the voice of the host faded entirely. During
the silence, the static rose, not aggressive, but insistent, a
cascade of whispers, all meshed into a single tone too
wide for human throat. When sound returned, it stuttered and skipped,
as if the transmission was recalibrating, seeking a new host.
When the reel ended, Eddie looked hollowed out, as if
he carried these moments for decades, never airing them, never resolving.
Sometimes I think it's the building's design, he said, not
for the first time. Wals so thick, so lad you
can hear yesterday if you press close enough, like memory
sticks to the driwle. I try to joke. Are you
saying it's haunted by tape? He smiled, then haunted by
what we try to forget, more likely by the silences.
Later that afternoon, as Mayramitty and Eddie retreated to fix
a fuse, I wandered out front where sunlight illuminated the
staff photos. My eye caught something for the first time. Faint,
repeated marks grasped into the corner of each face lost
in the overnight slot, a tally, not initials. Myra must
have marked them over the years, tracking those whom I
move away within the patterns of WQBR, slow depletion, Tommy Featherson,
the older names, even a host from nineteen eighty five
whose obituary I had found in the library, but whose
death was never explained. Outside, a blackbird flicked from a
tenant to eve, calling twice, as if a loading the
hidden audience in the fields. I leaned into the wind,
the edge of a cheering my thoughts clear. I pressed
my hand to the stations out a wall felt nothing
at first, but chill, then faint but real, A vibration,
a hum deeper than any broadcast frequency. Back in the hallway,
fall light blinking. Another voicemail waited, a woman's voice. I
didn't recognize. Steady, but rush, if you're the one doing
the story, say away from the main switch panel after dark.
Sometimes it throws you a message no machine should carry.
The TAMAUV was lost. If you don't fill the space,
the space fills itself. Click I saved the message pulse
jangling all at once. Each detail sharpened the liaison between
technical limits and human failure. The tragedy is repeating. The
logic was not ghostly caprice, but ritual. There was a
cost paid in absence, a hunger structured by format. That realization,
once cold and impossible, became something like resolve, maybe just
maybe Understanding at mapping the shape of their disappearances, Tracing
the architecture that funneled all lost towards silence would offer
me leverage or escape. That night, I sat alone in
my motel room, lining up tape boxes, waveforms, every staff photo,
and colin log I could acquire. I pieced together town tables,
traced the chains of night slots, and marked the common
points where, across decades some one stopped being heard. Why
would a station or whatever tended to a need to
fill every hour? Did a feed on voice or simply
a poor gaps in its own memory? Was I part
of that pattern? Now that I'd witnessed and named it?
The low hiss beneath my lance spun possible answers with
the ceaseless patience of the land round Hartfield tomorrow I
would draw closer to the heart of w q BIA,
determined either to break the cycle or at least to
learn the contos of its oldest wound. Sleep came in fits.
Each time I woke. The room felt thinner, as though
the next gap would swallow more than just my voice.
The static never truly left, seating itself between my thoughts,
biding its time. I barely slept the night before I
returned to wqbr rest fracture, but dreams of vacant control
rooms and a phone in the dark, ringing endlessly. Each
time I jolted up, The hiss of the Motel radiator
took shape in my ears, twisting for a second into
words I almost understood. By dawn, aches haunted my shoulders,
and the dread beneath my ribs felt worn smooth, a
shape settling in removable fog pressed in off the fills.
As I popped by the silent transmission tower, the air
sharp enough to bite through my jacket. The station itself
seemed changed, windows shining weakly in the low gray sun,
as if watchune my approach. Myra's s uv was gone,
but I spotted Eddi's battered pickup idling at the far
end of the lot, its exhaust feathered out in lawn
white streamers. Inside the lobby felt colder, the fluorescent buzz
at a lower frequency than usual. Eddie stood in the
hallway with a battered blueprint case and a battered look
on his face. He jerked his chin and greeting, grimacing,
as if expecting bad news. You get any sleep last night,
he asked, Not enough to matter? I said, what's that?
I nodded to the tube at his feet. He shifted,
looking past me toward the locked doors. Oh, plan stations,
bones figured, if you're going to keep pushing, you may
as well know what you're working with. He led the
way down the corridor, passed the tangle of ancient extension
cords and the pat truck of sticky nose lining Myer's
office window. The main control room was deserted but not empty.
Faint warm still clung to the padded studio chair and
the stale aroomov spent coffee on over the rack of
time one faders. Eddie reverently envolled the blipperants in the
main desk, flattening corners with a cowou's hand. See here,
he pointed, to a cross hatch in the center the booth,
this heavy black outliner round at double thick walls like
a vault. Didn't notice it till this morning, looking for
the power trunk. It's older than the rest of the drawings,
older than the fm ad ons and the margins. He
ran a finger down the crumbling edgacy these notes, I
leaned in, tracing the faded script signal continuity must be
preserved at all times. I read traffic cannot be interrupted
between two hundred and three hundred earlier warning protocols. Eddie grunted.
Nobody builds a radio shack this way unless they want
to keep something either or out. I gutted the a
M room once when we updated the generator. The ductor
behind a booth isn't just for h fact, there's a second,
smaller room nestled inside the first. Nothing hooked up, not
even power, no way in but through the booth itself,
like a box built inside a box, then sealed. He
fished out an envelope, shaking three half a dozen photocopid
workers station found in notes typed in loopy arkkurr Our charter.
He said, first manager's notes talks about sustaining local conversation
and one odd line. We were at a hunger residing
in the threshold. Really must never fail it shill worked
up my spine. I took the sheets, scouting for familiar names,
but only the founding signatures recourd again and again. Then
a final page, handritten in a hard's crawl. If the
night becomes long, do you not leave the slot unattended?
Fill the air, or it will choose for you. The
air cannot abide silence. It felt like mith ritual warning
habits are deeply worked into the structure itself. It began
to shape the lives orbiting it. I compare dates, every
major personnel lost, costed around outages in it ire always
paired with references to continuity. It wasn't any one manager
or era. The pattern ran up from the foundation, went
into the walls and schedule. We both stood in silence
as a realization settled. Eddie shifted his eyes hooded. I'm
not much for stores, he said, but we never lost
any one on purpose. Claire, every time we patched it
over paid our respects, you know. But it's not just
about people forgetting. It's the building, like it's hungry for
the promise of a voice, and turns on you when
you're alone. A sudden hollow from the hall. We broke
the spell. It was Myra, how merely than I expected,
Her face deeply lined in her words, colliding with warning
and fatigue. You shouldn't be rooting around in gosts, she snapped,
but her voice barely held together. They follow you right
back out the booth if you're not careful. I met
her eyes head on, not ready to play it or plea.
He told me to stay out of the switch panel.
What's the real story, Myra, She hesitated, then fleck a
glance at Eddie. Something private and heady passed between them.
A host is only as good as the loss broadcast,
she finally murmured. We filled every gap every night, because
that's what the founder said. The first engineer said. The
airs at what was silence here lost two people before
eighty two, without any storm or accident. After that, we
never let the night go blank. And when Tommy disappeared,
did you hear it? She shuddered, folding her arms. I
tried to stay awake. I always left a tape running
just in case. When it happened to Tommy, I was
in the next room. There was a sound like a
gasp after he stopped reading, then a cold heaveness, as
if the station was underwater. I never saw him again,
just the static. You can say it was exhaustion. But
every host that vanished, it happened in the space between words.
So why keep risking it? Dry? Amusement cracked her lips.
You think we had a choice. In Hartfield if we
went off the air, the town panicked. It was as
if the silence stretched all the way out to the
corner and came back in here looking to claim another.
This place it remembers who leaves it hungry. We always
made sure someone was speaking at midnight. I drew a
deep breath. The old host they left tapes, those voices
in the static, like the phenomenons, learned to better imitate
us over the years. The last few even tried to bargain.
Worn the gaps line up exactly with every incident. Eddie
gave a short, sharp nod. That's why I don't do
the night's lot, not for all the money. At Buoria,
we stood a moment in an uneasy truce. Planners and
so of something older in local rumor. Finally, they both
look to me. What do you want to do, Eddie asked.
Myri's eyes pleaded with me to let go, but she
didn't say so aloud. I stead in my voice. I
want to go live to night during the slot. Personally,
I'll fill it myself and document whatever happens as evidence.
Maybe if I can lower it out, we'll capture something irrefutable,
or at least prove this isn't folklore. Myra recoiled it don't.
You're not local. You don't owe this. Let the paperwork
pile up, turn the row over to the computer, Let
the static win if it wants to. Eddie looks somewhere
over my head. Running automated music is safer until the
tapes themselves get strange. Then well you've heard the warnings.
I shook my head, resolute. It's not enough. The store
has drowned too many. If it's hungry, maybe I can
learn why, or at least hold it back until someone
smarter finds a way to get this thing forever. Meyer
Pal's paper relented only with exhaustion. No one else is willing.
That's true enough, But record everything and keep it back
up running to be sure. She cleared her throat brittle.
If the static ron, she whispered, Just to do what
we always did, keep the air fill, don't let it
go blank. Not ever, our preparations unfurled with a grim energy.
Eddie ran extra cables through the booth, triple checking faders
and installing a red lamp above the guest mic. Fair safe,
he muttered, if you lose the main transmitter, this will
kick you over to replays old as polka band tapes
from the vault. The ghosts never liked this much. I
stat my notes, scripts, loosen my throat with water, and
rig my digital recorders at every angle. I could manage
two tripods faced the main console, so every gesture would
be archived. I carried the old real myrat surrender the
others from the off limits office, and a small folding
photo of Tommy, now worn ghostly. At the corners. Eddie's
back up music carrousel ticked over automatically at one thirty
in the morning, a slow carousel of banjo instrumentals. At
one forty five, I pressed the stand by button silence
in the automation, the booth became an island, windowless, infinitely,
still the only space for miles where my voice still
had wait I'm Claire Mortensen. I began my hands trembling,
though my tone held to night. We're filling the overnights.
I bought a w q BR live for the first
time since Tommy Wells went off the air. This eyes
for the voices that never got a goodbye. I opened
with town history, spinning the story of w QBR for
imigration through loss and fire and flood. I described my
journey arriving, noticing small things, the way the wind rattled
the antenna, the secret life of late night callers, every
kindness and awareness I've been given. I played contributions from
listeners past and present, throughouting their voices to keep the
space alive and moving. For nearly half an hour, the
pattern held and I almost relax Then at two eleven
a m. The hum in the boar changed pitch, a long, low, wine,
too deep to belong to the circuitry. I heard it
through the headphones, a pressure mounting behind my eardrums. My
voice faltered for a split second to just as I
reached for the next page of my notes, sliver of
true quite krypt in the static rushed in immediate like
a shroud. A clawed at the threshold left by my
breath and beneath it, multiple voices crowded. The first was
Tommy's read by exhaustion, limping through with a child's terror.
Keep talking, Claire, it pleaded, don't leave us. A then
a chorus, overlapping fragmentary, an older woman reciting the names
of roads for memory, a man singing part of a hymn.
I lurched back to reading, frantic, falling between anything that
came to mind, recipes clip from the paper, a joke
scribbled in my note book. The prisons refused to yield,
bunching behind the glass, alatent heaviness, a cold press in
my chest, my scalp, prickles swept, beating as the lights flickered.
I babbled, desperate, filling each second with anything but silence.
Song Lyrics were all calls, even mere descriptions of the
blinking clock and the sounds I imagined from outside. Every
pause cut the temperature lower, the pressure mounting, until it
felt like the air was pressing me into the chair.
I thumbed through my pages, ignoring how they shook, and
pretended composure for whatever audience might remain. I brought up
Tommy's own words. The last transmission, the warning to never
let the air remain empty. The static in my ears
cocked higher, folded, dramping as it overlapped my recording. For
a brief second, my own words played back, warped, stacky
atop each other with the delayed effect of a tape
loop forced into recursion. Then the voices grew more articulate,
more confident, stepping forward as if emboldened by my fatigue
in the thickening dark. You are not alone, was whispered
in the cadence of every lost host. Voices layered as
a trying to teach me their rhythm. Don't let it
choose another managed trogy elongated into a moan. At one
moment I froze, I distinctly heard a hiss of clerk,
followed by a sound like papers torne in half. These
flesh ran the length of my arms. I slammed one
palm on the desk to prove to myself I was awake,
drawing blood beneath my thumbnail. The board flicker, the back
of disks spun up, whirring to life. Before I stabbed
the manual override. Desperate, I tried a new tact to
cary drag the oldest tape I'd found into a player,
then set a looping que inside the feed, so that
the broadcast began to chase itself, all voices chasing you,
never allowing a second of pure dead air. The entire
band was bristled with the collective memory of the station,
all those years, all those voices, never quite a longing,
avoid truly saddle. And yet it wasn't enough. When my
energy lacked, When instinct forced me to pause for breath,
the static thickened, until it felt as though I had
dropped into a well, sound rising up only to be
caged and funneled through another's mouth. A deep vibration rolled underfoot,
not the ordinary rumble of trains of trucks, but something
generated by the very wise and dryble, as if the
building strain to keep the entity tethered. The circle tightened,
Every word cost me every stone second, press a chill
deeper into bone. Then the transmission twisted, the frequency lossless,
the tape hid, stuttering, the voices in the STATICA lined
up onson just for a heartbeat, spoke with something like intention,
We listen when you listen. Aflanged many lay a version
of my own voice in tone the word slippery and
echoing in impossible stereo. Silence takes silence chooses, don't mute us.
I forced myself to reply a nonsense half a story,
then an audio test, anything to cut through. But the
room vibrated, every device screaming, feedback, needles on the meter's pin, wheeling,
light strobing overhead. For a moment, I thought I saw
Tommy standing on the far side of the glass, maup,
moving as if to coach me through, and after image
memory or just panic, I'll never be sure. My eyes blurred,
fatigue snaggered, the edges of my voice apps appeared in
my tape, impossible to prediction, deep holes in the river
of sound that no loop or override could fail. The
entity inside the silence pressed harder each second. I felt
what the old host must have, the air thickening, the
promise of vanishing more forceful than any rational terror bargains
filtered through the static snippets of pass voices begging or cajoling,
stay with us, read anything, hum if you must, just
do not let us stop what they offered. If anything remained,
mucky warnings and pleads tangled up, as though the lost
ones now wove themselves into the presence they had once feared.
As a clock thundered towards ree a m my own
name spoken first by a multitude, then in Tommy's warp
decks and tresonated off the glass. I reached my lemette, words, jumbling, panic, overwhelming.
In one last hopeless act, I slammed the fail safe,
but Netti had wired a content to let whatever sound
fill the next seconds keep me from being chosen. The
blast of polga music erupted from the backup system, jarring, relentless,
cutting through the static with a force almost physical. The
entity reeled inside. The walls are felt, never seen, as
if the vibration across the old analog lines had driven
a wedge between it. Emmy I crashed off Mike, gasping, reflexively,
clawing at the desk as the boost pressure let go
all at once, the light shivered, holding, then slowly steaded.
The emergency ef felled with accordian and laughter from some
long gum broadcast and a soap, with relief, not caring
that my voice would go out to no one at all.
Eddie must have been waiting nearby. He burst in caution, dropped,
He checked my pulse with an engineer's steadiness, hustled me
through the anteroom and sat me hard on the battered
sofa in the lobby. It didn't get you, he muttered,
voice thick. He brought it close. But it's not clever
enough for new tricks. Not yet. I saw my hand shaking,
The bone stood up pale anew. The night pressed on
some distant fond dog barking at the returning silence. Mayer
appeared wordless, offering only a flask of sweet, bracing tea.
I drank and felt my throat nearly close, the sensation
of hollowness persisting long after the tea warmed my chest.
For a while, we sat, none of us speaking, just
the sound of the far off pocket loop tumbling through
the Really, it marked time, not as winds, but a survival.
When the sun breached the horizon, I drifted into a
sleep so brittle every sound jangled me awake. Some time
in that suspended morning, Itty took me to urgent carry
my memory of the drive barely a smear of yellow
headlights and hands folded tight. A day passed, then too,
News filtered outward, the event quickly transmuted into rumor a
technical malfunction during the graveyard shift, a public radio intervention
gone wrong. The tape by tape contained at all the
words had spoken and the voices that pressed in, but
most were dismiss it a stress or technical blip. After
I was released, pale and sore and unable to be
inside any room containing a radio for longer than a lull,
I called Eddie, asking if the booth felt any different.
It's more tired, he grunted, less hungry maybe, or just
used to the taste of new voice. I won't know
for sure until another sloco was blank. We're running automated
music now, no more live hosts. I don't think anyone left.
As the nerve, local chatter spiked, National press ran stories
of haunted airwaves, but the land itself ignored them. Hartfields
continued dwindling, its homes thinny, its bones growing quieter as
each day died. Mara moved on, slipping retirement papers under
Eddie's door before she left for her sisters in Florida.
Eddie waited only long enough to send me a package,
two tapes and the battered blueprint before leaving town without
a four forwarding address. The station itself rolled on the
automation soft were looping old broadcasts in the dead eyer,
replaying ancient phone inns and high school basketball coverage. For
a while, the static slept. Yet in the weeks that followed,
I developed a new condition, dread of silence. Not clinical,
not diagnosable, just a deeper animal knees. Whenever ambient sound
faded below a hum, Empty rooms became suspect, elevators angry
with the mechanical hush. Even sleep felt like a risk.
If I dreamed and too much quiet, I'd waked it
at stifling expecting pressure Again, I finished my piece for
the public broadcaster. The final segment ran with caveats, the
story of rural radio and memory. I called it. I
left Tammiat hid the coldest parts inside the static, But
the station arkavas for occurred as something to mark the
end of a lawn error. That closing iro became mine.
My own voice, dulled from fatigue, lay it atop a
bed of field recordings, rain, old wind, the hum of
indifferent transformers. Yet when Ellison back, some other axent joined
the cadence, not mine, not entirely. It was something stitch
from all food go before woven through my syllables, the
warning and tone for whomever might linger. The stories. Echo
carried farther than the land. It became local legend. New
room is stacking atop hold. Occasionally a message would find
me from strangers who claimed to have heard what I'd heerd,
though not often and never when two people listened together.
Hot Fuel shrank into its own legend. A few porch lights,
the bare shape of the station's lonely tower skulking in
November dusk, the building itself w q b oswitch to
full automation, only a caretaker and a cleaning crew visiting
by day. It was for a season enough. There were
only minor mundaneglitches, a song looping for six minutes too long,
a sudden, unexplainable snatch of static interrupting a morning farm report.
Some of it reached me, most did not. The pattern
whatever willed itself through the wires, hidden programming out facts waiting.
One night in March, six months after the last live broadcasts,
I tuned in by accident in zombie chasing me through
a drive in another Amos county at two six a m.
There was a gap, no music, no announcer, only a
feintcisl on the F and dial. I waited, heart thudding
as the static thickened across the air. Then just beneath it,
a voice impossibly familiar whispered to cracked, warning, as if
through water. Don't let them off the air. The static swelled.
I clicked a radio off, sat motionless for a long minute,
feeling the h in my palm where the cold had
bitten me all those months ago. This a silence is
where memory settles at WQER. It's where something else weights,
learning ship by what's lost. It listens for a voice
to trust, any voice, any full hoping to fill the
void months laid on, WQBR shifted ownership. The new operator,
lured by cheap rates and tall tales of our legendary
haunted title, off free for sponsorship. In late autumn, I
caught a business right up on the station's website. A
blurry photo showed the new manager beaming beside racks of
digitized archives to save on kosts. We're running nostalgia dead
air midnight to three a m. Just static, so folks
can imagine their own stores. It's peaceful, they say, it
was peaceful. The first week was uneventful. Then on a
Sunday at two eighteen a m. The phone lines led up.
Local listeners, all insomniacs, were parting a presence they couldn't shake.
Heard someone else in the room with me read one
for a bare of voicemail didn't sound right, like someone
reading over my shoulder, only out of order. Some claimed
the radio played voices backward. Others said their own name
called from the static. Always at the far end of
the air. Deep in the archives, a cleaning crew reported
music playing, except there were no discs. Loaded from somewhere
in the building's nest of wires, the oldest tape spun
in reverse, broadcasting snatches of warnings in a voice almost
but never quite my own, lipping fraying, don't let them
off the air, don't let them off the air. The
new owner, more annoyed than afraid, rebooted the system. Static
ountain flowed, but late at night, when the silence grew
too long, the signal always pulsed with that impossible suggestion
of broadcast, waiting to claim new words, new memory, new flesh.
Listen carefully and you can hear it. A voice layer
through a bed of noise and longing hunting through every
gap for someone willing to listen back the cocks all
ticked toward three. Somewhere, another voice stirs, rehearses what must
be spoken to keep the dock from learning the shape
of their absence. The signal continues, patient and endless, always
listening for the next silence, A waiting a new host
to fill the air, and something else pressed close behind
a hiss, is still waiting. A following autumn arrived, in
slow yellow surges and long ribbons of mist over empty fields.
I started drifting further from Hartfield in every sense. Apartment
packed Olderpotter's notebooks box and shoved into storage. My calendar
dotted with radio assignments from distant cities that seemed to
eco but never quite touch what happened at wq b R. Yet,
no matter how far I drove, pieces of the place
gone to me. The way my skin honored the crackle
of static as a new form of chills. How my
breath hitched in elevators when the mechanical hum dropped into
new silence. How even friendly small towns nudged my nerves
if I heard the faint familiar history cracked open winder
life outside the station proved more brittle than I had hoped.
Storers came in the burned out arts collective housed in
a decommissioned mill, with rumors of voices heard under the floorboards,
a hospital, running ghostly pages through the old pa at
three m. I chased them, sometimes half hearted, sometimes like
a bloodhound, hoping each new oddity would let me lay
a distance between myself and Heartfield's haunted slot. So much
of my time blurred in to lawn drives, bad coffee,
and the erratic pleasure of sounds filling every minute, tenpur
audio books, fragments from strangers with lively, distinct voices. Still,
when each broadcast faded and the world slipped toward pause,
I fought the urge to fill my own apartment with
the tumble of my own voice, lest the old habit
creepin and the quiet stretch too wide. My phone filled
with voice mails, listeners who tracked down my story, fellow
public radio producers, even the stray night listener from years ago, Ben,
whose gentle country droll sounded older were rare through the line.
Some called off with thanks, some to ventdinese a future demand,
quietly that I returned and finished the story I'd begun,
reassured in that what slither through Hartfield's frequency had finally
been rooted out, or at least named. I wanted to
answer them, but the honest answer no one ever clears
a ledger not fully felt cruel in daylight. Still, every
few weeks I found myself scanning frequencies at the exact
ir WQBR slot branded on my sleep cycle. Nothing definitive,
ever surface, mostly music looping, sometimes a gap, more rarely
the clip trailing ends of a voice of replay and error.
I stayed away, I let it fade. But hot feel
found me again on a frosty Sunday evening when a
package addressed in Eddie Skull arrived at my apartment's doorstep.
Inside tightly wrapped in Mark's paper, with three cassettes taped together,
a sheaf of note paper and a tarnish key. The
first tape was labeled Automission twenty twenty three slash ten,
slash ten two, Cyremenius three zero, not for broadcast, alongside
a brief note static's been different. Listen close if you're willing.
If it gets bad, just let them speak. Ye. It
took two days to bring myself to load the first tape,
The machinery in my home studio creaked is a sense
in its own risk. The air itself seemed to cool
by the minute. As a press play, the first minute
was only automation, old pocket tape, a look at then
a farm report, exactly eight minutes in a polka faltered,
jumping forward three seconds in a rough splice. What replaced
the music was a new kind of static, heavier, almost beligent,
firming in time with my heart in its texture. As before,
words began to untwist, syllables revealed in strobing bursts. There
was no live host, no collar, no ovisource. But as
the pattern cycled, a phrase emerged, not a direct imitation,
more like the way a child repeats over her adult conversation.
Zaco intent not content. Air must stay er, mast stay
not empty, not empty. The real cycled grew, gobbled, then
shifted again as the station's automation restarted. I checked the
time stemps, the static gap line to the exact movement
on the exact date Eady had circled so many years before,
when the yacas claimed a house moved on. The second
tape contained even stranger anomalies lay it beneath that a
phase music and fading commercials, a sequence of burst, seat
and new voice, none lasting more than a handful of seconds.
To the casual ere it was nothing, just digital flutter
with headphunds, though the cadence of names, words, entire fragments
surfaced and slid back under, knotted together by the old
mechanical hunger. Some sounded like my voice, some I recognized
as tummies by rhythm alone. At one point the tape
stuttered and reversed, and a full phrase, my cautionary sign
of from that last night, never let the ear go dead,
not even for breath, spooled backward in a rolling out moan,
before collapsing against the static tide. The third tape was shorter,
no music, only a clipse sequence of sounds, the first
a faint intake of breath, the second a flurry of
keys being pressed on the distinct wobble of a tuning dial.
Then a new voice, not mine, not Eddy's, not any
I knew, emerged, ashing the clurse in the foreground. Who
listens now, not gone, not gone, still waiting. I played
it again, and this time a cold pin pointed my spine.
That phrase felt as if delivered in direct response to
my mounting certainty, a demand that presents itself be recognized
if not obeyed. My first impulse was to call Eddie.
His numbers disconnected, no voice mail, no forwarding, only a
dead line, humming faint comfort. I emailed myer's last address,
hoping for some signs should want to discuss it. Two
weeks passed in silence, left alone with the tapes and
my own growing dread, I found my dreams thickening again.
The booth, the red veils, a flamped, the rhythm of
my own voice tangled with the others. Always a moment
would arrive when I paused wind, silence deepened, and I'd feel,
somewhere within the marrow of my sleep something a line
and look back at me, hungry for a sillvil I'd
failed to provide. By early December, the atmosphere at WQR
and died. Local news once more a cot threads online,
low level forum chatter from its OMNIAX and truck drivers,
technical notes from Mattilla Communications hobbyists. Two tratch persistent dead
zones echoing across the Tri County FM dial. Some conspiracy
forum speculated on coast call signs. Others just swap go
stores about the broadcast. You can know, only hear if
nobody else is listening. One account posted by high school
Guidance Council or two towns west chilled me in its simplicity.
Brove past the old station last night, she wrote, late
looking for lost dog radio with blanket just blank for
ten minutes after my phone showed thirty three calls from unknown,
No messages, just a voice may be female saying still
with us, Still with us, over and over. Got home
and my living room clock was ten minutes slow. Stores
like this multiplied, each more disordered, each less deniable. The
automation system meant the building itself should have been dominant,
no staff, no live mic, all potentially flake a wiring
patch de vow with software. But the voice is poured
back any time dead air returned to the feed, and
it was never music alone that felled devoid. A friend
in the radio industry, a skeptical sound engineer named Hopper,
contacted me for coffee in Chicago. She'd listened to my story,
wrote it off as local flavor, but lately she'd noticed
signal oddities in their own late night test transmit similar
wave firms similar sudden apparent call ins on all night Automatician.
She wanted my honest opinion, is this technical? Is there
some broadcast tack I'm missing? Or did you bring something
back from Hartfield on your tapes? I shook my head,
stirring cold coffee while snow bat at the play glass
behind us. If it's technical, it's so deep, if follows
you from tape to feed. If it's not, If it's
what I think, I'm sorry. I don't think it started
a w qb R. I think it just found somewhere
to read itself for a while. Harper eyed me ensure
you ever think about going back. She let the question hang,
half dear, half dread. I answered, honestly, I don't want
to wake whatever's sleeping, but I've never stopped listening. After that,
a new tension Frondon daily life. As the holidays approached,
the pattern changed. A fresh crop of small town station's
w q BR's peers, abandoned towers rural m servos began
to show up with similar reports. Always the phenomenon clustered
at the same hour. Always silence was the catalyst. Sometimes
host computers running the automation cycle would glitch spitting static
or backward speech until a human voice was patched in,
even as a placeholder text called at the heart field
minute that dread, once contained to one booths in one
empty county, now radiated outward. I received one winter night,
an anonymous recording a light shift staff er somewhere in
the Midwest fingers tight on a mic. December twenty two,
two twenty six, A m long silence system went dead
for six minutes. When voice returned on air, wasn't mine,
wasn't anybody's spoke as if it knew me? Say more?
We are not for fun local police, But who do
you call for a missing voice? The recording ended in
a tone I recognized well, exhaustion and warning equal pots.
I tried to convince myself this was only a technical virus,
a legacy of failing infrastructure, the cost of analog bone
shuddering and a digital skin. But every time I closed
my eyes, I heard that stately phrased tangle through static
not empty, not empty. I requests or require each syllable
needing its mark. Made One Saturday in late January, the
new owner of WQBR made the first public appearance, inviting
local press to walk through the town's legendary haunted airway studio.
The article printed in newsprints so cheap, the ink blood
onto my hands ran with the grainy photo A group
of bourdiuse clustered at the main desk. The owner grin
in hands, played atop the mixing board. That evening, I
watched the first live stream from WQBR in a year.
The video was grainy audio encoded with the ten second
delay for accident prevention. At first, it was a fast
college kid staring one another to stay quiet while the
feed rolled on. But at the twenty sixth minute, the
student running the desk froze mid sentence, eyes flicking away
from the script as the light stammed for a fall
naked ten seconds, silence claimed the feed. The audio stream crackered,
far louder than the rest of the evening airn clear
as daylight. A voice piped up, multiple voices stacked, shuffled
in sequence, uttered the precise worn at last heard on
my own road. Don't let them off the air, don't
let them off the air. Chaos swelled, the chemi lurch,
static running wild, and the stream cut mitch out. Commenters
lost their minds, most joking, some not the station issued
a blanket apology. The clip made it to social media,
where anxiously denounced it as a hoax or else a
viral marking play. But a week later, the same voice
flickered through a rural West Virginia station and then in
the background of a test patten in the Ontario countryside.
I stopped listening to the news for a while after that,
but I couldn't stop wondering what was growing, what had
slipped the boundary's heart feel, and that old hands had
managed for so long. I worried most for those who
didn't believe. Who would wander into a silent studio at
t a m. Thinking the ire harmless and the air
their own. On a cold, fractured night in February, my
phone rang from a local Heartfield number, even though the
listing had long since vanished. A young woman's voice as smooth,
trembling Alto spoke with shallow composure. I heard your name
in the static last night, nor story, something old and heavy,
repeating you are you still listening. I didn't know how
to reply, only that I understood, and that, like every
voice before me, I could not truly walk away. I
wrote her a letter that night and pressed it into
the mail books, not sure what she would find or
which part of me would seep through the lines. Over time,
the story of w qb AF faded from active memory,
a local legend, replaced by fresh and news more dramatic
CONTs in new succession of hosts determined to speak over
every gap, But the real recity remained invisible, seated in
every quiet place of transmission might one day fall silent,
waiting for a particular emptnies to drag something old and
listening into the light once more. Even now, sometimes I'll
leave my own radio on, whether at home, in hotels
or on n highways across count is where the static
grows thickest. I'll listen, attentive to the pauses, waiting for
my own words to finish dissolving. And when the murmur comes,
a distant a coin plea of the high, uncanny droll
of a voice not meant for landline nor e'error, I
feel the pressure, and half against my will fill the
gap with the sound of my own story, buying a
little more time for us Aul. Every transmission for now continues,
but in the dead hour, when silence tightens its grip
and the hump. Beneath the frequency's thickens, something is always waiting,
always learning, always hungry for the next breath. I heartfield
and beyond the signal only rests, never ends,