Speaker 1: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
Speaker 2: You are now listening to Observable Radio. Hi.
Speaker 1: There, it's Cameron Suey. This month, we wanted to make
sure we got an episode out for that most important
of October holidays, the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis.
The story originally appeared in the anthology Shadows Over Main Street,
edited by Doug Morano and d Alexander Ward, and exists
between the kids on Bike's adventure and something else entirely.
We hope you enjoy it and be sure to check
out our Patreon for a look behind the scenes that
are upcoming second season. And Now, after a brief word
from the Observable Radio Company store, here's tonight's story. This
is a test of the Observable Radio Emergency alert system.
This is only a test. This concludes our tests. If
this had been an actual emergency, the sounds you heard
would have been coming from your own mouth. No action
is required yet you are.
Speaker 2: Now prom Observable Radio the crisis.
Speaker 3: Erica hold onto my hand as we sit on the
couch and stare into the wide eye of her father's
color TV. Her sweaty palm pulses in time with her
galloping heartbeat, and she sucks at the air in noisy hiccups.
I have to press my lips together to keep from
screaming at her to be quiet. They're showing the photographs again,
the new ones. All week in school, we've talked about
missiles and blast radiuses and blackades, the approach of Halloween
all but forgotten. Our paper machine masks two grinning witches
sit half finished in the corner. Casualties of the crisis.
But it's all changed again and we can't catch up.
Speaker 2: The purpose and function of the structure are still anyone's guests,
but by now it's clear that the Soviets had another
purpose on the island of Cuba. Entirely, we still don't
have a good explanation for how a sinkle of that
size appeared seemingly overnight. The man on the television repeats
what he can about the new photographs as sweat beads
on his upper lip, vivid and crisp on the Doalberg's
new screen. The man on the television doesn't know how
to describe them, keeps tripping over his words as he
tries to make sense of the aerial photographs. No one
can I can hear mister Dalberg screaming in the kitchen,
loud and angry. As of an hour ago, there's been
no more communication with the USSR, and the President's demands
for an explanation have gone unanswered. The man on the
television pauses to drag his sleeve across his brow, and
his hands tremble across a stack of white papers in
the kitchen. Mister Dahlberg drops his voice, but I can
hear the hissing of his whisper over the television. Erica
mumbles something about Jackie Gleeson coming on soon, and I
squeeze her hand tight, as if to say, please shut up.
Speaker 3: Do you have a shelter? Gloria, comes mister Dalberg's voice.
Son of a bitch knew the rookies were moving, and
he didn't warn us.
Speaker 2: Those aren't the sort of folk who deserve to survive.
Speaker 3: Erica turns to look at me, her expression blank. I
drop her hand and shift on the couch. We both
know what he's talking about. I want to tell her
it's okay, that I understand there's nothing she can do,
but my heart starts to stutter and skip into my throat.
Missus Dalberg hisses something below the range of hearing, and
the man on the television continues, we're just hearing now
that an American bass in Turkey reported the sounds of
explosions coming from the east. Shortly after we lost all
communication with Moscow. But in the last ten or so minutes, Washington, indeed,
anyone on the continent has been unable. There's a flurry
of motion as glass shatters in the kitchen, a bright
musical chord, followed by the heavy thudding of footsteps. As
mister Dalberg strides into the living room. I tense, my
legs ready to surge into motion as he lifts the
stereo cabinet and puts the needle down on a record.
Eddie Fisher lurches out of the speakers, dueting with Perry
Como over the two loud distortion Rebecca Honey. He begins
encircles to the front of the couch. He's not looking
at me. He at least has the decency to look ashamed.
We have to talk. The man on the television stops speaking,
his face a mask of shock. He's looking to one side,
past the camera, as if into the room at us,
and what's about to happen. Then the lights go off.
Grab her. Mister Dalberg hisses in the darkness. I can
hear him lunge for me as I drop to the floor,
grinding skin against a thick carpet. Erica contracts to a
ball on the couch and wails. I kick up and
take two lunging steps toward the front door, and then
smack the wall loudly with the flat of my hand,
before reversing direction and bolting for the screen door on
the back porch as quietly as I can. My brother's
old blindfold tag trick. I can hear the heavy bulk
of mister Dalberg's accountant physique follow the sounds away from me,
growling with feral fresh I slam into the screen door
with my shoulder, snapping the hook from the frame with
a tiny plink, and I tumble onto the wooden porch inside.
Mister Dauberg realizes my deception and roars. Missus Daalberg is
screaming at him to hurry, to be a man and
do it already. And I get onto my feet and
I leap down into the yard behind me.
Speaker 2: In the dark.
Speaker 3: My best friend howls in helpless terror and there's nothing
more I can do. The autumn air bites at my
cheeks and the tip of my nose, and I shiver involuntarily.
My brother's woolen jacket lies somewhere in the Dalberg's hall closet,
and I try to forget what it feels like, how
safe and warm it smells. It's dark outside, darker than
night has any right to be powers out everywhere. I
try not to follow that thread to its meaning, and
focus only on the lumbering shape that bursts from the
dark bulk of the house onto the porch. My eyes
aren't adjusted yet. When I hit the backyard fence, jumping
up to wrap my fingers around the unfinished wood, splinters
bite into my fingertips, but I grit tighter and pull
myself up and over, Landing hard in a narrow alleyway
lined with trash cans. To the north, across the platte,
the glow of Omaha is absent. The sudden lack of
the familiar light feels like a physical blow, and I
fight to keep my breath. I hear him coming through
the backyard, just on the other side of the fence.
Then I hear another sound, a muffled thud, almost too
low to be heard. It rattles my skull as it
rolls across the lightless river valley. There's another thud, a distant,
massive tremor, then silence. It's begun. I look for the flashes,
like my father told me, eyes down to the ground
and shaded by my hand, but there's no illumination beyond
the watery moonlight.
Speaker 2: There's another rolling.
Speaker 3: Thud, and mister Dalberg unlatches the back gate a few
feet away from me. He's heard the bombs too, and
he's cleaning, a thin animal sound of panic and rage.
But he's too late. My brother's bike is right where
I left it, one torn red streamer from the Fourth
of July parade, still clinging from the handlebars, I swing
onto the phantom's leather saddle and press off chrome flashes
in the moonlight, and once I have the momentum to
stay upright, I flick at the light switches. A wide
pool of yellow splashes across the gravel of the alleyway,
and I stand up in the pedals, scattering rocks behind me.
As the shwin accelerates behind mister Dahlberg spits a curse
that shocks me even now and turns to run back
into his house. The brief elation of freedom is drowned
by the understanding that he's heading for his car. The
phantom is fast, but I know my limits. I hit
the end of the alley, the Phantom's tires gripping the
McAdam road and surging forward. As I press my whole
weight into each pedal and turn east toward home. People
are trickling outside, clutching flashlights close like childhood blankets. Widow
van Gundi grips an old rifle and stands on her porch,
wet eyes fixed out on the horizon for any sign
of the Russians. Some of the people look at me
like mister Dalberg. Did they know my father wasn't quiet
about the shelter or the ones he helped a dozen
other families dig. I lean over the handlebars, pressed faster
and avoid eye contact. Mister Dalberg's old ford fair lane
barks a cough as it rounds the corner onto Seventh Street.
I can see his wide, wet smile behind the headlight glow,
and the car cough says he presses it into gear.
I cut through the alleyway between the Cooper's and the
Wallace's houses. Both families watch me in mute confusion from
their front yards, the Phantom's tires hurling a plume of
loose gravel into the air. I'm halfway through to sixth
Street when mister Dalberg's fair Lanes screeches to a halt
with a blast of the horn. The alleyway is too narrow,
and I look back to see a map of veins
bursting forward on his sweaty brow. He's screaming now to
anyone who will listen, wildly pointing at me.
Speaker 2: Someone stop her.
Speaker 3: Her parents are with them. On any other day, this
might have sparked laughter. My parents have lived in Plattsmuth
since they were children. My dad has worked across the
river at off At Base since the end of the war.
He's the secretary for the odd Fellow's Lodge and volunteers
with the fire department on weekends. But tonight, in the
impossible dark, with the rumbling promise of the end on
the horizon, it doesn't seem so out of place. At
the mouth of the alley had swiveled toward me, blank
scared eyes are praising I push faster exit the alley
onto sixth Street, hook left and then right again, towards
the looming expanse of Garfield Park. I can hear the
fair Lane a block behind, an angry song of rubber
and road. I slow the Phantom as I enter the
dark hollow of the park without the street lamps, the
trees become hazy clouds of shadow, and I feel momentary
solace in the dry whistling of the oak leaves. The
silver slash of the moon provides just enough light to
pick out the outlines of the swing sets in the gazebo.
The whine of mister Dalberg's fair Lane in the distance,
another drumbeat of distant roars, and I shake off the
familiar comfort. Only a few more blocks, Mom Dad the
shelter safety on the far end of the park. I
stop the Phantom and lean it down in the wet
grass lying beside it. My skin ripples with goose flesh,
and I let myself shiver with cold dread. The fair
Lane rounds the corner onto Fifth Prowling like a lion.
Mister Dalberg's head and arm hang out the window as
he scans the dark houses. Halfway up the block. Mister
and missus Talbot sign frantically to one another as they
pack a half dozen lumpy double bags into the back
of their truck. Their fingers dance in a private argument,
arms swirling as if to approximate shouting. No one else
is in sight, no one else who might have seen me.
Mister Dalberg passes my hiding place, screaming to himself, a
noise like a kicked pig. He drives his foot into
the accelerator, and the fair lane leaps ahead, circling the
park again. I stand the Phantom up and run beside
it toward the road. I jump onto the saddle, slamming
my bony thigh hard enough to bring tears and pin
wheel my feet in search of the petals. He still
hasn't seen me, and I lean forward to accelerate. I'm
hooking around the corner, so close to the shelter when
the bells in the county courthouse begin to ring. It's
a frantic, irregular rhythm, and I turn to look, slowing
the phantom without thinking, there's a new light on the horizon,
a bright shining star that for a moment gives me
hope that the power has returned. But it's rising Beneath
it rises a column of billowing smoke, lit by the
crackling glow, an unfurling flower stretching up to touch the
black sky. Another blossoms beside it, then another to the west.
I see another cluster of arcing lights on the horizon.
My heart frosts over and I watch the cearing line
split the night. I'm not moving any longer. One foot
in the mat him, I can't stop shaking, and wish
again for my brother's jacket. He honks the horn just
before the impact. I turn to the sound and throw
one hand to block out the headlights, and the fair
Lanes strikes the back of the Phantom. The bike frame
bends and shears in two with an almost musical screech.
My head hits the concrete just in time to watch
the Phantom's back wheel and gears slide beneath the fat,
white walled tires. My thigh is crashed between the frame
of the bike, the pain a bright flare of white.
But as soon as the car is free of the
Phantom's wreckage, I drag myself out and kick off the
ground with my good leg so close the fair Lane
screeches to a halt. As I begin to hop skip
away and I hear the car door grind open. My
hurt thrashes in my chest, fighting with my lungs, and
I'm sure I'm going to be sick less than a
block until home, just fifty more yards, and then Dad
will be there, and then all of this will make sense.
But I can't run, this will ever make sense. I
let the tears go now, and they burst forth, as
if held under pressure. My nose leaks down onto my
upper lip as I shuffle forward on my bent leg,
letting the heavy sobs drive my irregular gait. Rebecca, Honey,
oh god stop, I'm so fucking sorry. I never Mister
Dahlberg's voice warbles as he begs. The heavy, flat slapping
of his footsteps are almost behind me. There's a figure
in the dark coming out of the Geller's house, head
covered in a cowl of black shape on a black background.
It glides towards mister Dalberg a silent motion, like the
release of a spring, and I see the figure pull
a long object from his coat. The sliver of the
moon glints off gun metal. Rebecca, sweetheart, you can without
without you, Erica and her mom and me, his words
blur together as he starts to cry along with me,
his hands up in a gesture of peace. See he's
shaking every bit as terrified as me. His heavy lips
quiver as he struggles to speak, and then the shotgun
sparks a plume of fire from a few feet away.
Mister Dalbert curls inward, does his hips and torso. Wrapped
into a wet ruin, he collapses in the center of
the street without uttering another word. The man with the
shotgun turns to me, and in the hollow of his hood,
I see the warm wrinkles of our neighbor, mister Myers.
His smile absent, his face looks wrong without it, and
my head swims in the uncanny confusion. I turn around
to see another hooded figure almost beside me, arms reaching
out for me. I try to shrug away, but I'm falling,
my leg giving way. At last, my father catches me
in his arms. His face beneath the hood is grim too,
but his eyes still twinkle. He nods to mister Myers,
who slides another shell into the open breach. Yeah, mister
Meyer says to us, I enjoyed that, and then strides
away from us. Into the gloom. Dad looks down at me. Hi, Beck,
I was hoping you'd make it. This might be a
rough night for you, honey, might be. I want to ask,
but as he holds my shaking body aloft, I see
the wild arcing of missiles across the sky and I
can't speak. He walks, holding me as if I were
still five years old, toward a house. I can see
a faint glow from the back, the shelter safety. I
made it from behind. I hear a brief scream, and
then the roar of mister Meyer's shotgun, then silence. Nothing
makes sense. I whimper into the collar of Dad's strange jacket.
The cloth is rough and faintly musky, but beneath it
are his familiar, warm sense. It never did, honey, and
it never would have. This was for the best. Come on,
I think I can help you understand. We pass through
the side yard of the house, back towards the glow
of the shelter, but there is no shelter, only a
perfect sinkhole, the sides lined with slick black rock, where
other channels split away into a twisting network from deep
within the central shaft, a hazy glow washes out in waves.
The light seems to have both substance and weight as
it curls into foggy tendrils of indescribable shades, coiling upward
toward the yawning sky. The shelter, I murmur, It was
never going to be a shelter, he says, not once
mister Myers and I found the old echoes buried. There
lots of digging these days, lots of people hearing it
all over the world. We got to talking organizing. You'll see.
We keep going past our proper, up to the gentle
rise where we used to eat suppers on a picnic
blanket on warm evenings. Down the other side, the Missouri
flows like oil in the night, only visible in the
flickering glow of the missiles and moonlight overhead. Dad sits
me down in the grass, and if I shut my
eyes and hold perfectly still, I can almost believe everything
is normal. He ruffles my hair. I love your dad,
I mumble, pressing up against him. I know, and I
feel like I love you Beck. But that's just the
cruelty of chemicals. It's just the lie that keeps the
whole thing going. But not anymore. We don't have to
lie to each other anymore. Across the broad plain to
the east, there's a flash, and I instinctively look away.
Another light flares, and I see the red blood of
my eyelids. As the spheres of light dim, I open
my eyes and catch the hint of movement at the
horizon above, missiles arc downward, American missiles tilting down to
strike American soil. It takes a long moment for me
to accept what I see. The old ones can set
us free, so we cleanse the world for their coming.
More bright blossoms of fire paint the night, and flashlight strobes,
and I try to look away, but my eyes still sear.
The world heaves and its death throws. As the ground
begins to shift. There again, something moving, something vast. I
try to put it together in pieces in my mind,
but it keeps leaping apart, impossible to conceive even as
it strides across the world. It rises from beyond the
curve of the earth. It stretches far above the thin
clouds and across half the width of the horizon, numberless legs,
like iron spikes, the width of city, the rise and
fall matching the rumbling rhythms of the night. Somehow they
join into a nexus, a central torso. But when I
try to look directly at it, my eyes slide away.
Some were swimming in the night above. There are eyes,
There are eyes like black stars, and they see me.
At last, I understand. Another blast paints the sky white.
I raise one hand to cover it, and the phantom
images of fingerbones shine through the dry autumn grasses. Whisper
as Mom strides up the hill to sit with us,
her hooded robe reeking of blood and a seeping wound
in her gut. Duck and cover, she sings beneath the
rising roar in her sweet and warbling voice. We sit
in silence, letting our eyes burn and fade. As it approaches,
one of the unthinkable legs strikes the ground at the horizon,
and the earth cracks. Fire and liquid stone leap into
the sky as miles of Iowa farmland vanish beneath each step.
Tornadoes scour the planes behind it, conjured into being as
it tears.
Speaker 2: Through the air.
Speaker 3: We wanted to tell you, Beck, but you were too young.
My father lays one hand on my shoulder, like a
cold slab of meat. Your brother made us promise before
he left that we'd keep you innocent of all this,
even if we knew you'd see our way in the end.
I want to think about Jacob, the whole of his
absence and the fawn warmth of his memory. But what
fills my mind instead is disgusted at the useless hulk
of my clumsy, broken body bathing in nuclear radiation. How
good it will feel to slough it off and be
free of the clanking chains of flesh, to let all
thought and being evaporate before the sweeping gaze of the
eyes like dead stars. He wanted to be here with
you at the end, but the stars were right. It
had to happen. I understand, of course I do. Mold
has no claim on the apple. This was never our world. Yeah,
I gasp as I let go of it all, the
old word bubbling deep from within, and then we are silent.
We sit on the hilltop to wait for oblivion and
watch as the world is reborn.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to Observable Radio. Tonight's episode The
Crisis was performed by the Ensemble featuring Perporina, written by
Cameron Suey, produced by Cameron Suey, Phil van hest Perperina
and Wendy Heckner. Edited by Cameron Suey. Our psychology consultant
is doctor Elisa Liel. Art by Carinn Fletcher. Our theme
is the Backrooms performed by Mew. Additional music from this
episode provided by Almost Here, elm Lake, Enigmatic, Martin Lanstrom, Gutta, Lucina,
Ellen Peel, and Water Mirrors. Observable Radio is listener supported
thanks to all of our patrons and listeners, including Kathleen
John Tidd, Russ, Rick Callison, Brianna Zach and Jasper. Patrons
fund the production costs of the show, as well as
get access to behind the scenes information, extra production material,
a discount at the Observable Radio Company store, and an
ad free early release feed of this show all at
patreon dot com slash Observable Radio. Thank you for listening
and stay tuned.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 3: It's so it's such a silly fucking lovecraft. I think
it makes me laugh because it feels like I'm saying
a weird version of.
Speaker 4: Yeehaw yeah yeah yeah yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: I hope you got a good one out of those