Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it midnight a kmos he always stays
faintly of ozen and stale coffee. There's a unique silence
to radio stations after dark, like you are meant to
overhear something not intended for you. Sometimes I sit alone
at my batted sound board and let the studio strip
lights flicker at the corners, watching the dust spiral, the clocks,
thick red digits crow past twelve. Time feels different here,
half submerged, as if the walls forget what I are
it supposed to be, And whatever voice I used to
keep company with the cities and sawn the axe weld,
I don't recognize it as mine. The nightline, this is Tom,
pull up a chair of the wall's leady's kitchen table.
What's on your mind? To night? I lean into the mic,
dry throated my bantle Land's flat. But that's par for
the course. The expectant hush on the lines is thicker
than usual. No static, drenched drunk, no haunted broken heart,
Not even Hank the guy convinced every eight trucker's houling
uranium to Area fifty one isolation in the wires outside
the glass. The corridor is a tunnel of dull yellow
light in stat boxes, no movement, just the sickly glow.
I drag a finger over the phone line's five circuits,
all little red lights. Tonight they are darkened in the
space outside the city, where radio waves run aground in
the mandins. I sigh. It hid a well worn button
to roll some anonymous jazz under my muttering and try
to conjure up astraya listener. And then just as I'm
about to fill the void with yet another stretch of filler,
there's a click, the emptiest kind a lion's come alive,
right in the center position. My hand rasp edged by
habit and too many nictine patches, twitches. K M, Massie,
you're speaking to Tom words yours for a harp be
eat nothing. I wait, let the silence breathe out into
my earphones, and I am about to prompt again. Then
comes the voice, flat as the mid Western clipped eleven
O four two zero one eight zero five thirty fourteen
dash zero zero. I blink lost for a moment. The
sound quality is weirdly sharp, the delivery deliberate, yet completely in. Heman,
not slurred, not unsure, like a numbus station. Then zero
two six forty one, gene abrupt, hanging pause, dash, dash
zero zero two one. My mouth moves, intending to break in,
but my tongue sticks. The voice goes on uttering more fragments,
some indistinct beneath the mild electroniciss at. Taking a gap
than a breath, each group is divorced from sense. I
steal a glance at the monitor. I call no apparent location,
no collar. ID it ended after barely a minute, anonymous,
If that was a winning lotto ticket, you forgot the
last digit. I joke the humor automatic, but my hands
are cold. I listen for the dial turn nothing but
the steady static. That's a constant in these walls. I
fill the dead air with an old jazz loop, trying
to shake off a prickle at least my scalp. Feeling exposed.
I reach for the machine to replay the tape. I'm
always recording, always Oockaevin, partly for legal but mostly for habit.
If I'd been less tired, less cynical, I'd have left
the whole bit to die quietly in the digital trash
that something about the call, the voice compelled me. The playback, however,
is warped, blank patches, odd jump cuts, as if someone
went an end, deleted pieces before I could touch it.
At one key moment where the voice lowed on thirty fourteen,
the old ear was pure white hiss. I master controls,
half annoyed, half unsettled. That shouldn't be possible with our equipment,
old as it is. I played again, same skips, the
entire thing truncated down to a jagged sequence of numbers,
all meaningless the time stump blog reads did err. Maybe
it's a prank. Maybe, but I feel compelled, almost against
my will, to scroll what I remember on to sticky note.
I glance at my own shaky handwriting odd, though I'm
steady of hand, even half tired. The ink ron's numbers, slashes,
bits of coat, night creeps on, and somewhere between one
and two is swallow dryleie and tell myself there's nothing odd.
But as a stack can come in calls. I keep
staring at that slip of paper, its loops and dash
is itching, as if something on the far end of
the airwaves just scraped past my life. Every job has
its patent, even if your radio host to drift at
the bottom of the market. The years blur at k
m R S, and I know every trick the clock
can play, every electrical ghost that lives in old walls. Still,
not all ghosts are electric, and not every salace is empty.
My name's Tom Keller. I'm the wakeful voice of three
a M. The guy whofirs half the city between nightmares
and sun up. If there's a lonely opost, I haven't
seen it. I arrived at k m R SI thinking
I was destined for hard hitting interviews, maybe the national circuit. Instead,
I wand up here graveyard shift, hard of the city,
sleeping quarter, slumped in a battered chair. I once tried
recovering with duct tape. Graveyard is right most nights. It
feels like being a pointed undertaker for voices mostly dead
or barely hanging on. The station itself is a time
capsule everyone stopped carrying for three renovation zegur. The front
door was glasses improperly laminated, so it sighs against the wind.
The paint in the foy appeals and riverine lays, revealing
decades of pale. He's top ones almost the color of
hospital gowns, despo under the weight of paperbacks, burned out
surge protectors, sticky notes piled thick as carpet. Here and there,
a sticky keyboard, a warb mak, a coil of black
ex a large cable like a garden snake, kmarsies, upper
floors of storage, secking boxes labeled in News nineteen ninety
two or holiday promos. I only use Studio three, with
its coffee stain mixing desks and battered on air light
that still glows a confrontational red when I flip the toggel.
It's usually just me a few shadows, and if unlucky,
a passing with a bleach from the cleaner's bucket. Crue.
Routition's tight by the time I arrive eleven thirty never later.
That way, the last bus home in the morning is
almost empty, the previous hostess fled, and a hallway is
deserted as a shot at bus terminal. I keep an
inventory of faces the way a man cants the lights
on a deserted street. There's Benny Artek, who have lives
in the back room, cursing spaghetti like wiry. He looks
twenty maybe thirty, maybe sixty, depending on the lighting. Never
the same hat, ties, always reeking, faintly of mental Sometimes
he emergers, fiddles with breaker boxes, mutters above gremins in
the patch bay, fournishes again when questions get pointed. Lorano
overseas official them from a cramped office plastered with motivation
Monday's posters that cull at the corners. She takes her
job with a zeal that seems both resigned and faintly hostile.
Our interactions are brief. I fill dead air, keep complaints
off her email, and keep the complaints about her off mine.
This Maggie who stuck in mid courier limbo heading the
day side. She's friendly, but I suspects she's always hovering
one promotion above me. And then there's Danny Cray, who
hung around longer than he shared, turning up for pre
dawn slots until he didn't any more. I say harm,
but Danny vanished a kind of quite that gives station
staff a new inside joke and leaves a box of
his old CD in a brake room. Callers come in
waves or trickles, depending on rain and city stress. Index
Regular's conspiracy Hank, who spends too much of his pension
on hammery deo sets, the guy known only as a
drover who strings together rural ghost stories at quarter past
every Thursday, a course of lonely women cycling through on
returned love, some sounding nearer collapse each week, and a
smattering of kid's midnight eber drivers voices speaking from park
trucks and the Indo state. Sometimes people share something raw
confession a sob but PULSI fol you as she could
reach through the glass. I pretend I'm their friend, the priest,
the conscience of the city wrapped in a horse baritone.
Truth is, I don't carry most of it home. I
learned early on that you only have so much room
for true stores before the scenes start to tear. But
to night, under these flickering fluorescence, I find the routine
want stick Slipping downstairs at four, I run into the
morning crow of, perpetually chatty, always fresh, never quite looking
you straight on. The change of her is fast. By
the time I powered down, someone's always half way into
my seat. I never feel less of the world than then.
Home isn't much to step into a studio apartment above
a failing laundromat, a view of the alley in dunstairs,
A lamp that buses slightly, casting a hailo that fails
to reach the corners nets off. I pour cheap whisky
over melting ice, try to start asses forb could tell
myself out right one day. A shelf of unfinished draft
and a row of lick a bottles stand as testament
to that all lie. Marriage ended two moves and a
dozen apologies ago. I keep in touch with my grown daughter,
but only in careful defan texts. She thinks my job
is a historical curiosity, like a railroad brakeman or a
telegram operator. I try not to prove her wrong. But
night after night, as city noise thins and those distant
hillside sirens become the city's lullaby, all routines feel rigged
for interruption. Some nights you stare into the glass and
imagine something looking back. Sometimes, like last night without voice,
something does. The day after the strange call routine becomes
a performance I can't quite keep together. I wake at
three in the afternoon, eat breakfast in the kitchen's twilight,
and pick my way through the morning papers wreckage to
see if anything matches that call. I tell myself to
let it go. Anonymous widows cryptic numbers is part of
the scenery, but pulling into the station's private lot, there
is a sleep walking rhythm to my steps. I had
my jacket clock in, and before the first hour is
on air, I am already replaying the incident like a
list tooth. Back at the consol a slot, headphones over
my ears and try again playing back the troubled recording,
this time with high volume and slower speed, helping some
yawns emerges from the digital haze. It's as if somebody's
gone into the audio and painted over whole sections with
silence impossible unless you at access and no one does
accept me and Benny and may be lorn with her
master keys though she can't tell an MP three from
a paper clip. I scull the most audible strings, eleve
them in his foremanas two thousand, eighteen, five thirty fourteen
and two minus six hundred forty one into my phone's
notes at because writing them out makes them feel less
like incantations. My first thought is there times code, secret
meeting slots and numbers racket for the digital age. I
laugh it off on air, even if on it inventing
an underground code ring to amuse the small IROs. When
the second dire SAgs again, I get restless. Something in
the way the digit stuck makes my hands fidget. Instead
of prepping the next break, I pull up the city's
local news feed and search for stores tied to any
fragments and nervous pointless exercise dot. As I scroll the
skin out, the base of my neck goes. Call this
a headline from last week. A local student reported missing.
Last seen May thirty, twenty eighteen. That's barely separated from
the number sequence. There's another two disappearance, continues to puzzle
woman last heard from April eleven. I double check April eleven,
twenty eighteen and May thirty, twenty eighteen. Not perfect fits,
but close too close. I show traces my spine as
if a window opened an inch behind me. I argue
with myself, a city size disappearances aren't rare. It's midnight rationalizing.
Still a weird ga feeling clams down. The number groupings
on my note slip match more stores than probability ought
to allow. I open back dead at incidant reports, stretching
the web by dodn't know what I'm hoping to find.
The more I cross reference, the more my brain aches
from the pressure of coincidence. Stacking up, I stave off
the feeling with routine K M MASSI night line who's
out there? The board lights up intermittently, mostly regulars, A
static the ghost of the earl are coal hovers as
I check of the recent show logs, half on suspicion,
half on impulse. I scroll through a week's worth of
save coals, letting the sound whays flicker in time with
the screens tied blue. One glitchy clip from a few
nights before rings odd. What I've written off is rostatic
kas on second listen short clip beats almost hidden under bathers,
as if someone's kying a coat. I jack up the
gain underneath the noise buried like a bone. Words or numbers,
struggle to surf as snippets busier or five dashed out
two to one zero. I freeze. It's the same rhythm,
just less clear, camouflaged as noise. My own archive riggd
against me. The skin pricks up along my arms. I
check coll records load by time and line. The voice
always line three or four, never source, always vanishing a
heartbeat after the message. None of this shows up on
the digitized version, only to patch analog feed. Every radio
hose expects to find patterns. Seat enough faces, run enough
lonely nights, and your brain it routines from randomness. But this,
this is different. Something slips under my guard, like an
unseen hand pushing through static. Obsession is built for the lonely.
Then I'm well trained in it. That night, for the
first time in years, I don't leave a five. Instead,
I settle in pos shift lights low, the city's garbage
trucks rumbling two floors below. I rifle the show's digital logs,
replaying not just last night's oddity, but digging back weeks.
I scribbled its times and line numbers on the back
of a torn envelope, the stat growing messy the deeper
I go, half the files. Ill find songs, slow, confession,
the odd emergency test bas But in Serdan's lots, late
at night, as the city sleeps and the DJ voice thins,
there's a gobble always brief, always code had always gone
before second pass. When I try isolating these moments, the
software splinters, the files, reporting a buffer under run errors.
I've never seen I pull up the station's agent analog
tape deck, dusting off three or four reels from an
archive box labeled Security Dubs twenty eighteen. Even the far
back patterns echo low, static, rottled signals rising and falling
sometimes among the his and almost human breath dates dashes
minute precise notations. It's as if someone used our own
airtime as background for passing signals. Pickaback messages time to
haunt on the insogni acs and graveyard hosts like me.
By three, my focus sharpens. I jot each corrupted segment
onto a spreadsheet. I note which lines, which dates, which
voice pitch, each time the same mechanical chop code. None
of the affected recordings ever contain a full confession, just Fragman's.
At about three thirty, Benny stumbles in with his ever
prison cherry red toolbooks, muttering about POWs bugs. Again. Our
exchange is typically last under thirty seconds, but I'm keyed
up and corner him in the outer corridor. Hey, Benny, listen,
I say, voice ringing, sharper and intended, been getting some
weird digital glitches. Recordings all punched out, audio sliced up.
He doesn't look at meat eyes on his boots, picking
at a band eight on his thumb. Old building wiring's
junk studio three was supposed to get upgraded years ago. Yeah,
but it's just the same. Two lines, always late at night,
and old tapes. Two. Something's piggybacking our calls. He shrugs,
a twitch in one eyelid. Best I can do is
check the several locks. But were's normal around here, It's
radio right. He edges past, slipping away with the promised
to take a look. The brush off stings more than usual.
A track down lorner whose prepping paper can barely looks up.
Can I ask about these system failures? I say, efforting casual.
She sets down her pen, but doesn't meet my gaze.
If this is about more equipment money, save your breath, Tom,
You've been here long enough to know what can be
fixed with brute force. You live with where you find yourself.
Some dead air pr asflick to mine a little harder
than the joke deserves. We're not inventing drama to fill
your segment. You want to stay on air, keep it light,
keep it moving. No conspiracies, no ghost stores, night lends,
not a police ganner. You get me. I get her,
but not in the way she means. Later, as I
passed the snack machine, Maggie just clocking on, pulls me
aside Tom word as you've been handing Benny and the manager.
You're too smart to pick at old winds. We are
here to entertain, not to dig up dead air. If
folks start tuning up because they are scared, Lorna will
drop the axe. She's trying to sound reasonable, but I
see a flash of warning in her face. Here is
in radio teach you'd spot which smiles her invitations and
which are shields. I nod, promise the bare minimum, and
slip back to my studio. The rest of the night
spins out in cautious silence. But when the iur DIDs
closest to three, one of the station's spattered laptops, usually
left idling, flickers, awake of its own accord. I stably
releads desktop. Sprout's a new folder, mark den falcosa time
sent for Time day two fifty nine. My hand's tense
as I open it inside a string of misnamed audiophiles,
Each one coarse bonds to a song break or commercial
for my own show. Except the file sizes are all wrung,
tightening headphones to my head, A press play. For a
few seconds, there is only background hum of the studio,
the silent, ticking, pained hum of the age fac my
own shifting weight. Then lay just behind my own voice,
someone whispers in a tone pitch below natural human range.
They hear you don't follow, don't trust anyone from the station.
The hairs on my next stand up, I replay, trying
to catch some edge of familiarity, some accidental overlay, and
then it hits all at once. The shape of the
voice is Danny Craze, or some haunted version of it,
Danny who disappeared without saying good bye. He left a
dent in the chair and his entire locker untouched. The
whisper devolves into a garbled chorus, as if a crowd
behind glass is trying to break through. This is not
a warning, it finishes, It's a schedule. Instinctively, I reach
for my cell and tried to call Danny's last known number,
found on an ancient staff contast heat. The number rings
into side dalleance, a digital cut off, then straight to
a chuirpe. The number you have dialed is not in service.
No choice of him. The voicemail box is equally abrupt, full, unavailable,
or purged. Dread seeps in, as if someone poured cold
water through my earphones. I realize, whether through accent or design,
I've cross a boundary. The show isn't just staging weirdness
any longer. It's become a condurate. I print spreadsheet I've
made and skulk back through tawny corridors to the sell
A closet where Benny sometimes doses. He's awake now, wrench
in hand, posture tight as a coil cable. Did you
see this? These coal logs, the tapes. I keep my
voice low, but I sense the strain. It's not just
system errors. Someone's manipulating every show for something. Is he
backs away? Face pale, which pressed together so hard there's
blood in the creases. Dani started with all that paired things.
Nights he worked, started making tip coppers, marking call sheets,
and code got so he wouldn't touch the mic unless
the main studio door was open. I press harder. You
know more? Why did Danny quit? Was it? Did he
hear these messages for a second? Binny's mass cracks, his
voice lowers, choked, Danny left because he couldn't sleep. He thought,
he said, the static was talking, not just dead air.
He thought the station was a signal gate that things
could come through. After he disappeared, we scirped everything or tried,
did you I press feeling my own edge, He shakes
his head. The signal's still in here. It's not just
ghosts in the tape. It wants broadcasters, tom, it wants ears.
The hallway feels colder with every word. Danny grabs his wrench, starling.
He pulled the wire too hard. It bites back. Just
leave it alone, man, before it marks you too. He
leaves me standing under a too bright bulb, hand shaking,
but I don't let it go. I stayed later, still
piecing together every fragment of candate line color at the
timing of each break. When I match up the last
week of numbers, something emerges. Every strange coal falls a
nine or two after a missing person's report. Every corrupted
file times out in the minute after the coal ends.
Back at my counsul, I scanned the digital sound shape
for anomaly. Spots and static were a different frequency pulses.
Each time it circles my own voice, as if my
mic is the entry point, not just for callers, but
for whoever or whatever is hijacking the air. The more
I stare into the cove, the stronger the headache grows.
My fingers tremble as I realize someone is embedding encrypted
patterns into my chawfeed, using my signals as camouflage. Each message,
each voice, each broken call is a coordinate, a date,
a flag left for those who know how to read it.
My clock flash is four forty seven. The city outside
as longs and stopped humming. I kill the light, grab
my bag, and is on halfway across the deserted bullpen.
My phone rings number withheld instinct stops me from picking up. Instead,
I let it go to voicemail, returning to Studio three,
almost out of habit, I, however, about the sound board
sliding on the headhrones one last time when I chanced
the air again after a stretch of burned out jazzds
as comforting as anything can be. Now lined three flickers
read k M r C. This is Tom speaking. Who's this?
The reply is instant, measured and so neutral. A Chilsey
Air transmission scheduled Key fifty three, twenty nine twenty seventeen.
I swallow, who is this? Dead lines, then a static
burn that resolves just as the line dies into the
faintest almost digital echo Tom Keller. There's nothing else left.
My sign off is uneven, and when I finally push
through the narrow lobby light though one is flattening the
city into gray ash. It's not my show any more.
It never was, I realize as I locked the door
behind me, I am no longer just carrying the signal.
I've become the signals come to it. Or maybe it's
necks preach in the static. I drive home with the
radio off, letting the city's pridorna pulse around to car, garbage,
truck shuttering streets, street lights flickering and lazy intervals, the
hollow hush of alleyways closing up the night. I want
to believe I am just sleep deprived. A dreen lies
by weak worth of bad coffee and two close coals.
But the feeling at the edge of my awareness that
shows certainty rides shot gune with me. Static seems to
cling to my clothes like a scent I can't shake.
At every stop light, I glance in the mirrors for
headlights that never appear. Home is unchanged. The weak porch
bull blends the concrete. My mail book stands open, a
always from last male carrier shift that the door knob
feels colder than you shall under my palm. I shoulder
my way into the dim apartment, reading an old upholstery
and detgent, and head to the sink, washing away the
day's sweat with water that runs too long, swirling down
with more determination and uncapable of mustering. I flicken the
lamp beside the ratty arm chair and sit laptop open,
spreadshef front and center in the sake of cold times
that dates fragments of unintelligible words ticked off by a
checkmock system, only I would understand. I stare at the patents,
daring them to mean nothing, to resolve into mere random bleed, tiredness, coincidence,
but pattern breed its own logic. A cluster of coals
always nests a round local disappeared digit clusters bear some
near mirroring to report a town's people, clock, leaving parties, officers, apartments,
never to be seen again. I rub out my eyes.
My phone buzzes with the notification and news alert from
earlier in the day, another missing person, an office worker
lost authenticated checking through a sweat badge at two two
a m no trace since the time stamp too. Two
fits one of the number of syllables that trip through
the coaler's monotone. My stummach empt is itself in a slow,
queasy coil. If I close the laptop, sleep won't come.
So I do what night men do best. I see
the TV stays off, the light hums. My bookshelf stands
a Swiss cheese of unfinished books and lown dead ambitions.
Some time past five, I dragged myself to bed, phone
clutch beneath my pillow, a half believed talisman. Sleep, when
it finds me is piecemeal in one slice of dream,
A field of radios hum in a thunder storm, red
lights blinking out in time with heart beats far off.
I hear numbers winding out in a voice that is
and is not mine. I jerk awake at dawn, skin
crawling head aching. The day impossibly resumes. By noon. I
am at the station again, early and shaven, shoulders hunched
as if they could keep suspicion from following me indoors.
No one greets me. I catch the tail end of
Lorna briskly ushering a client door, more likely a deck
collector from her office, eyes flicking briefly my way before
shutting her door with a click. Then he's not around.
The cleaner is face anonymous behind herbuds, mop head darting,
and slow, methodical circles down the back corridor. Yesterday d
I might have made a joke, cut the tension with sarcism.
To day, I glide silent past the shadows, aware of
every echo of heel and humming vent. I duck into
Studio three and lock the door behind me, as if
they could keep anything truly out. My first act is
to check all systems loggins are as usual, except some
one's been into my show's daily scripts. I check my
back up folders now, then i'll calls folder is gone,
as if a raised by cautious hand. The schedule boards
show nothing odd, but my skin prickles all the same.
I press play on the most recent coal lock this
time normal. The static routined the voice's mere echoes for
two hours. I try to function read some news arranged
cheerful Why the copy answer a listener email wishing me
a good rest and fewer nightmares. But something stalks the
age of my perception, the feeling I am being tuned
out by something or someone. In the station's bloodless air.
The day drags to its low arc by twee p M.
Mighty Breeze is by coffee in hand. She keeps her
voice deliberately light, but her eyes scanned my desk as
she asks about tomorrow's plan playlist. Everything's fine, just static
and late Iro blues essay barely bothering to sell it.
Maggie stays quiet for a beat. You look rough, tom
burned out the killer. Maybe take a couple shifts off
it to give Benny a reason to fix the mixer.
At least. Her gaze flickers off me at the window.
I force a dry chuckle. Somebody's got to keep the
dead air warm. My voice almost breaks undead. She picks
at her cup's sleeve, uncertainty flickering across her features. We
all get moments like this. You just have to tune
out the bad frequencies. You start listening too close and senior,
hearing your own echo before I can answer. Lorna merriages
and headed by professional hurry pulls Maggie away for a
conference call. Alone again, my resolve WAPs restlessly. I check
the transmitter logs, noting again the engineering notes. Benny's left
to some cables, noted loose, one warning of the signal
direct ar six panel Arsi's the same rack station that
pipes my michin overnight signals cross in my head. So
many stores about ghosts in the machine, and I wonder,
now what kind of appetite the ether breeds. I stare
at a screw full of coat, the numbers almost pulsing
hypnotically in rouse, clashing against my own show's familiar script.
Restlessness breaks when Benny finally slouches enough to for tillbook's
banging against his thigh. Eyes rimed red as hail lights, Hey,
he mutters, then stops as he notices my weld eyed
attention on him. You checked the several logs yet. I
try to make a casual but my voice is too eager.
He shrugs, kick the condemn the road. Everything on this
circuit's always been squirry, but I ain't seen anything you
couldn't chalk up to years of neglect and a couple
badly grounded boards. I lean forward lowering my voice. Do
you remember if Danny ever mentioned before he left cols
coming through that didn't make sense, patterns, dates and times
instead of regular talk. Benny blanches, hand tightening on the
handle of his box. Danny saw faces in the static Tom,
started tipping stuff at home, playing it back to himself,
started writing notes nobody could read. Then he just disappeared,
cleared his desk during my smoke break, gone before lunch.
Ain't nobody talked to him since far as I know?
He say why? I press eyes, boring in as though
hoping to prive something for sheer intensity. Benny's jowl works,
wrestling with the words said. There was a message in
the dead air, something about signals being doors. Whatever it
was he wanted out. He looks away, not everything that
disappears once to be found. He turns, feigning a sadden
interest in the tangle of wiring above the control panel,
but has spot a trimmer running up his arm. He
left anything behind? I ask? Benny is silent. At first,
I think he'll just walk out, but finally he says,
very softly, almost as if to himself, checked the back lockers.
But do it when no one's here? It isn't an answer,
but it's the first brick crumb I've had in days.
The ires crawl on when my shift ends, I feign
casualness and linger until the station is empty, as if
reviewing promos. Finally a ghostand the corridor to the ancient
row staff lock is most rusted. Never locked homes for
half finished novels, out of date toe jackets of Ferrol
Sukin of five Danny's I recall is number twelve, the
one with peeling blue taped, shaped like a lightning bolt,
its dial still less, the old code wan's a roominous foremnistry.
My hands hes tape before I spin the dial. The
lock barely resists, clicking open with a sound that echoes
too loud in the concrete hallway. The door SAgs wide,
revealing chaos inside battered note book of a handful of
creased cassette tatees at the bottom, magazine clippings, an old
badge stamp with the k Mrcy host. There's a faint
scent to metal and eucolytus, the sort of after shave
only men of a certain age. Everwhere I pull out
the notebook first, its pages are fitthered with obsessive handwriting,
feverish krub loops, whole weeks of columns filled with single inches,
line three, time lost, retrieval, failed, signal, lingered of message
partial two forty one, deadline static static. Later they listen
through me, not to me, transmitters humming louder than voices,
each entry paired with numbers, dashes, time stamps, and occasionally
a phrase under line twice. Don't trust the relay. My
breath shallows. The tapes are next. Four bat of Maxill cassettes,
each marked by hand. April seventeen, d alcohol, May six, static,
twenty two thirty three, denis lash night. I pocket the tapes,
intend on playing them back at home. Nothing in the
station feels safe any more. A folded sheet at the
very back off as a scroll that makes my skin
go cold. Came, I'll see as the key transmitter equals GIT.
Too late to warn Tom Keller if found leave, don't
let it learn your voice. For a long moment, I
just stand there, scowning the rows of empty lockers, half
expecting someone to round the corner. But the corridor holds silent.
The only s my shallow breathing in the distant, familiar
hum from the server racks. I stuff the items into
my shoulder back, relocked the door, and returned to the
min floor, heart thumping too loud. On my way out,
I catch Benny in the rear garage, smoke curling from
his lips. He sees the tapes, nods just once, like
he's both relieved and sorry for me. At home, I
crowd around my old tape player about it relic from
the nineties, its play button, sticky gears, whining as it
accepts the first set. The tape wobbles, crackling to life
with a resonance both and canny and heartbreakingly familiar. First
this Danny's voice clear resigned. If you hear this, you're
already deep enough to choke. Don't dig further. The calls
aren't calls, their signals. The numbers are borrowings, like coordinates
for whoever's left listening. That eases to show it needs
a host. He coughs, static overwhelming his words happens most
around it. Here Time's slips, voice evolving into garbled binary deadlines.
Between the dead lines, the rest of the tape cycles
true white noise, interrupted by what might be snippets of
other voices the cadence of plea warning or memory, but
never long enough to follow. The second tape, marked Proof
is all clip breathing and background chatter until midway, when
a string of numbers is broadcast over a faint jazz tune.
Over this, Danny's voice mutters, listened for the shift. Sometimes
a person doesn't leave, they are left behind inside the signal.
A cold sweat breaks along my spine as I hit
rewind again and again, searching for words that might ground me.
But the implication is clear. Danny left because he feared
he become the relay, and now so have I. The phone,
lying to the right of my elbow, amids a chirup
of block number deep into the night. Instinctively, I silence it.
The city outside is still unwaiting. I grabbed the notebook again,
flipping through the coated entries, ending on a page earlier
than I expected. Its labeled key fifty three minutes, twenty
nine minutes, two thousand seventeen at the same as to
Nights and Nevan call below a nearly i llegible script.
That's the latch. The rest is static. Don't reply, don't answer,
I tried to calm myself logic flick of fading against
the undertold superstition and exhaustion taking root. Maybe it's a
constructed threat of prancre at large over years by someone
who knows radio psychic toll. But the shape of my
fur is too precise for fabrication. I stand leaning into
the glass of my apartment window, watching the night shrink
into dawn. In my faint reflection, I see myself friend
with static. I close my eyes. The dead air is
not empty. All this time I thought I was alone
on the air, but I'm starting to suspect the silence
as listening back. I didn't sleep, I couldn't. Instead, I
watched the Little Green Led on my batter tape record,
a glow faintly in the dark, the reels occasionally groaning
as I reaped the Danny's voice over and over. Dawnsweek
blaze did nothing to burn off the static in my skull.
Even pouring boiling water into instant coffee. The kitchen felt
hostile ever reflection, the windows skimming too close to the
motion of some one behind me. By eight, I'd read
Danny's notebook cover to twice. I kept coming back to
k m RSI as the key transmitter at equals gait,
too late to warn Tom Collor. I tapped my fingers
on the page, tracing the underlying phrase, searching fulishly for
some ovel of reversal or explanation. There was none. The
words lay flat, black, accusatory. I took the notebook and
tapes back to my car, glancing up and down the street,
expecting what a watcher the missing knocking for help. Nothing
in the familiar shabness of the city gave me a reassurance.
Yet for the first time, there was an edge. Every
passing face seemed part of an audience I couldn't see.
Full of knowing reluctance, k m RSI stood silent as
I arrived the entrance. Only light above the service door
flickering as I passed underneath. I paused before swaving my card,
half convinced the system would lock me out, half relish
in a proof I could still enter. The old plastic
badge led out a chirp, and the latch buzt it open.
The hallway cold as a fridge extended before me, office
doors and serve as closet shuts vaults. I kept my
eyes straight ahead, the air inside The building was sire,
full of old coffee ozone and the undertone of too
many electris roonyx run too hot for too many hours.
As I pushed through the station towards Studio three, a
Husher Company me not the usual lazy draining of daytime energy,
but something deeper, stifling. There was activity behind closed doors,
Maggie's laughter, Lorna's feet, hustling through contract paperwork, Benny's toolbooks clanging,
but all muffled, as if I was moving under water.
At my desk, I retraced my movements from the night before,
searching with almost religious precision for any evidence that end
al Cahals existed. The folder was wiped completely, though the
computer clock showed a system to start at three thirty
four a m. A time when only a handful of
people could be present. But I had been locked in.
Why was stout that late? Was I being watched right now?
The hairs on my arm stood up. I tried to
call Downy's disconnected number one more time, as if repetition
could draw out a ghost. The line buzzed with a
series of sonic art facts and nothing else. No ring,
no operator, just failure of broken connection. Final I got up,
checked the outer door, then pressed my ear to the
lock staff room where the main server racks lift inside.
I heard Benny cursing quietly. Soon he slouched out, rubbing
sleep grip from his eyes. Two books couched in tense hands.
I called after him, Benny, I said, trying to keep
my voice. Needral Did you see anything word in the
logs last night? Someone poking around? After ires a sudden
rebute After three, he stood side whis to me. Jacket
pushed back as if atchinterly Eve powers Spike took down
the rack as six needed a cold bot. Several logs
glitched for three minutes. He sounded irritable but mostly tired.
Could have sworn there was an extra audio stream up,
like someone was locking your shore from inside the network,
but I didn't get to trace it. His tired gaze
flicked toward me, ambiguous, almost pleading for me not to
ask more. He lucked out caller half the outstaff never
last through a year on grave Valve day. People have
it easy. Nothing in his tone offered answers. I eased away.
He knuckled his brow, huddling back toward the racks. The
hindess abrupt retreat lay more truth than any statement. I
could see him trembling. I filled the morning with rud activity,
checking y copy, tuning up the playlist, tracking local news,
the interview with the city public Works supervisor at nine
a m. Once merely barely breaking the thickening veil around
my senses. But even in the gentle Friday chain of
phone calls and copy, the servanty built in me something
was going to happen. And soon toward noon, I heard
the familiar shuffle of Lorna's loafers. Approaching my studio door.
She offered a brief Morning Tom, her tone more perfunctory
than friendly. She set her mug down on my desk,
careful to keep it on a coaster. Here shifts walk,
next week, day cruse short. Her words were clipped, eyes
moving everywhere except on me. Everything running clean, I hope.
I nodded for now, but Benny mentioned a spike, and
my computer logs show another ghost folder might be local system.
But it doesn't look like she cut me off tilting
her mug. You worried too much. These boards are from
the rigan eer o Tom files. Vanish glitches happened. It's
not a court of law when not archiving Mortgate. Just
don't make trouble. Stations had enough atmosphere lately, don't you
think sure, I said, just trying to keep things smooth
for you. Her lips compressed tightly, forming a line that
all but said, should have been happier with my resignation
than my corperation. She left quick as she come, hipps,
working to the measure beat of her own parallel station.
I spun in my chair, tapping the battered surface, weighing
my options. The radio show was the city's night'scape, and
I was at point man now apparently also its nerve,
ending for signals I didn't invite, even turning the board off.
Stato A kissed faintly through the console. I pressed two
fingers to the mutes, which with a little more force
than necessary, just to make it stop. With a kind
of stubborn pragmatism born of too many years doing the
job not as a shield but as a hammer, I
structured my afternoon around survival. Callers want the only ones
desperate to stay anonymous. Sometimes so were the hosts. I
called my daughter, left a message salted with mondanity. She
didn't answer. I told myself it was best safer anyway.
By the time I clocked my end of shift at
three and knowing fever had replaced hunger. There are moments
when you know you've left the regular world behind, when
only the logic of threat and the cold rolls of
isolation holds way. That day, I realized how lone I
actually was. The anxiety didn't fade when I got home,
The tip sprawled across the living room table, the notebook
marked up with the yellow sticky strips. My cell phoned
Inch twice, both notifications not from anyone I knew, but
account security alerts. She mailed location unknown password guests from
an IP address I couldn't identify. It doesn't take much
for an already haunted man to redingder in digital static,
every pixel out of place, every system anomaly takes in
the sharpest of warning. The apartment seemed to contract around
me as I played the tapes again. Each time Danny's
voice emerged from the fog, more strained, more hurried. It
became less like a friend and more like a room
map through a maze that didn't want to be solved.
I tried to eat, gave up after three bites. Instead,
I got lost in my notes, code states, snippets of numbers.
I searched online for missing persons, matching Danny's times, matching
the coated calls and static breaks in every show lock
Each case felt too squarely inside the framework I'd mapped
cherts weeks, sometimes just iro was between the signal and
the event. Where had they gone? Why was only the
radio left echoing them back? When dust pried its way
over there. I checked my mailbox, hands braced on its
cold metal inside, wedged between bills and a glossy piece
of flier, A single slip of paper with a line
of blockie, uncertain handwriting. The transmitters, the gate trust, no
regular checked Danny's locker, no signature. I cupped it in
my hand and stood there, throw it tight as wire.
I'd already found Danny's notebook, but now I realized I
hadn't fully excavated the locker, hadn't risked opening every pocket,
every zip, side panel. Back in the station after IRS,
I ducked stray eyes and hops the cleaning crew had
gone home. There pales glinting in the far end of
the hall. The locker stood twelve, and all the battered
blue tape mistakable I unsnapped down as again, deeper this time,
and was rewarded with a false back had taped over Schuberck's.
It came apart, reluctantly resisting my search inside a cache
of old sets and binder clip polaroids. On the photos,
blout faces circled in pen always at the edge of
broadcast events, night time galas, music marathons, sometimes nothing but
rooms of empty microphones or rows of people with averted eyes,
a short wave hand held radio and a slip of
paper with compound code d EL channel of fifty three
minutes twenty nine impotent zero or two really only if
warmed on the box for next host. If you can
still leave, leave hot pounding. I stuffed the tapes and
photos into my back and slunk out. The station remained hollow, lights, harsh, overhead,
digital clocks blinking red, relentless. My life outside had grown
third bare, but it was all I clung to Now.
At home, A forced the ancient cassette player again, this
time new confessions. The cassette ZEBB with white noise interrupted
by numbers, always spiraling outward, never resolving, never apologizing between sequences,
a whisper to listen to the silence echoed a voice
like mine. I may be what I'd sound like after
years of dread. There was another tape halfway through, with
a different hand labeled date, last message, d l org
I press play crackling static, then Danny Horse and desperate.
It comes from the relay, every missing person, every brooken voice,
tied to a frequency. The show just lends it a face.
If you hear this and can still turn away, you
it some lines you dunk cross Tom. The rest burned
out an indistinguishable sound, a warning send off. Upply. It
was almost two a m. When I began plotting my
next move. Whatever I had used the station before, it
was still running on a schedule. It wanted the same
a host, a line, and message. The question was what
happened when someone topped back. Sleep was not in the cards,
not that I would have slept even if I tried.
The following night, I returned to the station early, carrying
my shoulder bag with the tapes, Danny's notebook, and an
old pocket sized digital record of spare batteries and all
if I was going to catch the next scheduled deadline
call to be with as much redundant hardware as I
could muster. The building was nearly empty, but in the
gloomy hallway some one had propped open studio be the
old emergency broadcasting studio almost never used now, their one
air at light was dark, but the computer screens inside
glowed faint blue. Inside, the smell was both antiseptic and stay,
a paradox i'd come to associate with institutional neglect. I
set up my back plugging the recorder into an unused
audio feed, making certain the streams would loop to both
my personal device and the station's digital console. If the
net were went down, one of these would finally catch
the coals clean. As the clock crept closer to the ir,
the eight grew thick electric. Each passing minute felt lean
and compress, fraught with the potential of intrusion. Then at
exactly two two a m my phone buzzed lock number.
It declared the font two bull to ignore. Instead of answering,
I pressed wreckers on everything, then picked up the live
studios call interface, muting my own outgoing mike to keep
the line privately. Two way go ahead, I said, my voice,
barely a whisper. There was a hump, far more pronounced
than previous coals are gathering glow drone, as if the
station itself was giving off a feed bacal. The next
sound was a distortive voice, sometimes flat, sometimes slurred, pitching
between my own keddens and Danny's, but never fully either.
Studio be confirmed transmission, Await relay. I sat rigid as
the voice continued its words, arriving in clipp batches. Choice
play through or end signal. He heard the relay pass
and disappear or become the next link. A cold spot
bloomed at the base of my spine. What does the
relay mean? I choked up through it? Raw. There was
a harmonic in the staf, a course of smothered speech,
so much like a roomful of breaths, all inhaling at once.
My voice pined back through the speakers, walked them reversed,
as if being played for an audience just out of range.
Here are the voice. Now you keep the line open.
They listen, we listen. Stop and you will follow the
others except and carry the call. My mouth worked. What
whose theay? Are you? People from the station? Is this
a society? Or is this here? Are on the dead lines?
Beyond the lines? No cul goes unanswered. I flexed my hand,
finding a recorder. It was still running that the audio
boss bazened wild in a way no voice as static
could account for. Then from somewhere just behind me, impossible
in the sealed studio, or breath ahush, and the unmisakable
scrape of her chair like on tile. I spun wild eyed,
no one else, only the echo of my own movement.
But the noise didn't fade. Instead, it harmonized with the static,
becoming words. Whereas that piled under the audio like a
choir of ghosts. You are broadcasting for us, A couldread
washed over me confusion and terror, straining and equal parts.
The air shimmered for a moment, just faintly above the console.
Later I tried to explain it away, but right then
all I could do was watch. Then, as suddenly as
it began to console doken, the studio lights flickered, and
the digital clock ticked over to two four, my phone
buzzed again, this time attacks of to night studio be
bring nothing else. It was already too late for escape,
already too late to call anyone for help. I felt
the careful order of my universe unravel. I found outside
the door snapped me awake. My hot caught. I flipped
off the board, tried to gather my things fast without
making sound, but the footsteps were already moving up the corridor.
Confident measured, the door eased open, and three figures ended
in quick succession. Lorna at the lead, ice hooded lipped first,
then the next, Torbalk's clutch, trying badly to hide the concern,
twisting his mouth. Maggie hung behind them, arms folded skin
pail as copy paper. They closed the door, quietly, locking
it from the inside. No one spoke at first. The
silence was thick charged. Lawna broke it. We didn't want
you to go far. Tom Dead has been part of
this place longer than any of us. I looked at
each of them, waiting, pulse hammering so loud I could
almost hear it over the failing lights and whispering electronics.
And he tried shows a relay. Tom signal wants a
conduit always has goes back to day one of broadcast.
Every missing person you found, they're not missing, they're relayed
part of the network. Now what does that mean? I demanded,
are you threatening me? This is just a freak show
of intimidation. He shook his head, face crumpling. He think
I want this. Danny thought he could warn you, so
did the guy before him. No one ever gets out
unless the signal lets them. Maggie lean forward, voice low
but urgent. Every time you try to find it, things escalate,
people vanish, tips, fry calls come through the static with
your own vustisted up the audiences and people any more.
Larna braced her hands on the soundboard, her gaze steady,
weighed me. Play a law on Tom, Just ride out
your shift, Keep the signal open to you. What's always
been done. It works when we don't pick at this gap.
That's the deal. Try anything, go outside the routine. You'll
see what it can do. They all watched me, three
distinct faces get her resignation, fear, and something else, moving
quietly in their shared expression relief, maybe or hope The
problem would soon be someone else's. I sitched each face,
searching for a flicker of humanity, assigned the person I
had known still lived under the relay. For the first time,
I realized none of them were fully present. They too
were half in, half outcalled something larger and older than
any conspiracy, I reached for my back up, her corder
still running. You're not going to scare me off. I'll
take this public stream, the call about everything. There's got
to be someone who can crack this wide open. A
mirthless laugh broke from Maggie. Many have tried. Some of
your best evidence never makes it out, the coal gets
lost on upload, the sound files won't play, or she shrugged?
Are the ones who try hard to join the cycle?
Asked Danny. Suddenly her voice changed on the overhead. A
new signal bursts through feedback, howling, then resolving into the
familiar monotone, now speaking as if from the station's walls. Deadlines,
tom Keller relay open relay received, The lights jettered, the
boards all flickering, random data. I tried to wrote my
stream for a spare wireless device, anything to push the
audio out beyond the station's failing firewall. In that moment,
from the phone system, the callers started coming through. At first,
I hoped for a regular conspiracy Hank or one of
the lonely hearts, but the voices were all wrong, speaking
in a new rhythm. Fifty three really now two one
sevent channel live transmission accepted. I stared at the last thing.
I could my own wavering reflection in the glass, now
strobing in the pulsing studio light. I masked the broadcast button,
patching the audio directly to a ramschical Wi Fi stream
I prepared at home voice jagget with desperation. This is
Tom Keller Keamosi. If you're hearing this, help, There's something
in the station, something living in the lines. My words
twisted midstream into another voice warped, digitized, distorted with layer
de eckoes, really stable voice ockaved deadlines continue. In that moment,
Benny lunged for the recorder, but it was too late.
His serage from the console spats box, knocking him back.
I heard his breath hissing and panic, the other shutting
the sound system shrieking. I yanked the recorder free, slammed
it into my jacket, and bolted for the nearest take
it All around panel's flashed and alarm screamed, but the recordings,
both live and back, were still running in my pocket.
I ran down the corridor, my own footsteps overlaid with
dozens of phuntom echoes, calling and answering, as if my
very movement was being looped in some impossible auditory circuit.
I made the outer doors the magnetic clock fail, kicked
it open and spilled out into the rain streaked alley.
Nobody pursued behind me. The building went dark. The station
enough for the first time I could remember, gave itself
over to the storm on the street. The world seemed
shifted too, quiet, flickering and reel. My teeth rattled with aftershocks,
my head throbbed, my hands tangled in wires and tape,
and the coal clutched bag couldn't stop shaking. But I
had the tapes, I had the notebook, and somewhere some
one outside was listening. The next night, I returned to
the station, but all was changed. My card had been revoked,
The reader, blinking mute, read a fresh devat, cleaned on
Studio three's door, papernses pasted, and the wall listed me
as on sabbatical staff faces. Those few present turned away
without meeting my eyes, shuffling out in silence, as if
I was contagious or had already vanished with the others.
I called Laura from the cup. Her voicemail brisket and personal.
This is Laura. If you're calling about programming. Please contact Benny.
If this is Tom, you have officially resigned. Her tone
held no hint of our confrontation, a coal gas lighting,
as if nothing ought had ever occurred between us. On
the news that night, a single line sawy caught my notice.
Second year student to Bithelotton missing since may reappeared at
local shelter, no memory of absence reported in stable condition.
Her name was on one of Danny's polaroids, her face
circled in frantic pen report a voice of her no
signs of trauma. Experts baffled another unexplained return. The implication
called like a question in my mind as I read
the coded log for the fifteenth time, whoever or whatever
controlled the reader could let people go as easily as
they slipped them away. I had it only enough proof
to know the pattern, not enough for the world outside
the radio blast to listen. My emails to the police
were ignored, lost in a pile of digital complaints about
frequency hacking and disgruntled DJAY detectives I contacted were brisk
and distracted, friendly only until the moment and mentioned the
radio station, the tapes, the peating signals. After that, conversations
cut short or never returned. Desperate, I visited Danny's old
walk up apartment near the University. No answer, the male
slot round with dust, the box empty but for circulars.
Through the thin sliver under the door, I caught a
glimpse strip walls, bare floor, no evidence of occupancy save
for the faint trace of Eucolytus in the air. The
wall had swallowed him up, as if he'd never been
part of the city at all. When I tried to
upload my files one by one to every obscure podcast
board in call case audio cyberdet I could find, the
connection failed. Each time. The upwards truncated of the audio
played back as white noise, with none of the sinister
and occurrents intact. Whatever force lived in the relay was
still intercepting, still steering its own evidence. My own life
unraveled by half measures, I wandered the city, afraid of both,
returned to normalcy and deeper inquiry. At my apartment, I
took to record in every thought, every anomaly. The thread
of my own voices had cracked and circled the clock.
Each taping felt less like broadcast, a more like final testament,
a desperate hope that someone somewhere would catch the signal
and rescue me from my own echo. The in saw
near reached new heights. I found myself staring for long
stretches into the empty band with on my hum radio.
At midnight, static rolled through the cheap speakers, a rush
of sound that sometimes seemed almost to carry meaning. Sometimes
I'd listened so long the gats between hiss has began
slowly to resemble words like a memory or a warning
of the fractured cadence of my own internal monologue. One night,
in particular, as the rain tapped against the window and
the city slept, the static found its pitch low, even insistent,
and threw it with the surety of a voice he
recognized but haven't heard in years. Came a monoitor, and
I knew too well. Tom Keller reelid transmission continues. I
fumbled for the recorder, breath shortened, ragged, but the radio
SALIDI just blinked green, looping the same phrase fifty three
twenty nine, dead lines, dead lines, dead lines. My own voice,
surfacing at the edges, mocking, imitated, echoed an impossible frequency.
That night, half afraid and half resigned, I pressed myself
to sleep, the city humming around me, the radios hissed,
neither louder nor soft time, and the old ghosts I'd
nursed all these years. I dreamed not of the answers,
but of relate repetition. Each time I spoke the words
aarked out and returned slightly changed. In the morning, I
woke to find a slip of paper press under the door,
just a single line. Silence means consent. The handwriting was
my own. I didn't leave my apartment that day. Instead,
I paced curtains, drawn a roster of polaroids, and taped
segments scattered on every flask surface. Shadows from the blinds
kept replicating, multiplying as the light shifted. It was as
if the city itself was receding, pulling back from a
person moped for broadcast. I sat down, hands against hard
table top and resolved to try a last transmission, a
final gesture. I would fill the air with a story
no one else seemed interested in hearing, maybe even one
simple enough for the ghost in the tape to understand.
I powered up the batter tape deck, keyed of Danny's
last recording, and began to read aloud. The entries from
his notebook, dates, numbers, warnings. I spoke into the silence,
as if the city was waiting to answer. As the
static outain flowed, the foot rang, not the cell but
the land line I'd barely used in years. I answered,
out of refects. The voice was my own and Annie's,
and the flattened monitum from all those impossible calls. It
didn't ask for permission. It just said, the relay is open.
You may speak at that. Every radio in the apartment
turned itself on their dial, cycling through stations, Each produced
the same message, words winding back on themselves, climbing toward
meaning and falling away. On the whiteboard. By the fridge,
condensation formed numbers fifty three, twenty nine, twenty seventeen. Cycling
again and again, the cocks all froze two two a m.
Blinking in unison. I wasn't speaking to an audience anymore.
I was being spoken through. The ultimate broadcast is horror.
I lunged to the window, peering out across rain, wet
roofs and empty lots, the city indifferent, unaware, every and
tennye bristling in the dark. The first of the new
calls arrived just then, invisible and insistent, a voice I
didn't recognize, or perhaps had known all along, asking for
the time, the date, repeating their own echo back to me.
It's Tom Keller, I said, unsure of the truth of it,
but sure it would carry somewhere beyond the dead lines.
I took the recorder and every scrap of paper I
could carry, left the dates behind, and made for the stairwell,
determined at least to keep moving. Every step was accompanied
by sense of pursuit, but only the echo of my
own breathing, my own voice finding its way down through
concrete and wire. Outside, I found dawn breaking gently, hestiedly,
I turned the recorder on hip record and walked until
the city brightened into memory. That was the last transmission
I ever made. Even years later, I have I'll let
myself DRYFTNI asleep the glow of the little radio on
my nights and flares at midnight, whispering in my own
voice answer, slooping back before I can ask the question,
the dead lines persist started coming in deep, measured intervals.
I realized some signals once received and never quite switched off,
even years later. If I let myself DRYFNI asleep, the
glow of the little radio on my nights and flares
at midnight, whispering in my own voice, answers looping back
before I can ask the question. The dead lines persist
started coming in deep measured intervals. I realized some signals,
once received, are never quite so witched off. The days
there followed settled into a sort of pallid rhythm, but
nothing returned to Howard had been. I spent hours at
my faded kitchen table, coffee cooling and half empty marks,
scanning every news feed and a m frequency for a
hint as some one else was struggling with the same puzzle.
Silence ned every effort, no word from the station, no
reply to my message boor confessions, not even spam. An
email account had set up for anonymous tips. My social circle,
never wide, seemed to evaporate. Overnight, texts from my daughter
went unopened or on sand. Neighbors barely nodded in the hall.
Even the mail th end jumped, drying up as if
I no longer registered as part of the city. There
was no true reprieve from the insomnia. NED stretched some
heavi as wet wool, others brittle with anxiety. The city's
distant sirens and the tick of the hallway radiate offered
the only company. But even those Familian noises seen together,
meaning under the dead hush of midnight. When I did sleep,
my rest broke against dreams full of buzz and repetition,
dial spinning lights, flickering voices, echoing cod Once I riske,
venturing downtown, I passed the station, staring at K Marcie's
neon sign. One letter in R blinked in certainly the
rest stady Benny came up for a smoke, saw me
and paused. We stood on opposite sides of the lot,
a single glance enough to communicate the measureless distance between us.
He didn't wave, just finished his cigarette as heavy and
slipped away. He moved with all the wary carefulness of
a man who knew what it was to be watched,
or at least haunted by circuits older than trust. I
didn't try going inside the station, locked up tight behind
re enforced glass. Returning home, I noticed subtle shifts and routine.
The elevator waited at my floor before I pressed The
botton lights in the hallway flickered on exactly as my
foot crossed each threshold. Nothing overert nothing the building super
couldn't blame on tining or a lucky guess, but the
co ordination the rhythm reminded me of the signal the
way anticipated wererouted adapted a kind of algorithm, content, small
but persistent, following me into my most private moments. My phone,
once overloaded with robe calls and spam, now rang only
once a day, a blank sy id, never a voicemail.
I answered once, only static. Still it nodded at my result,
whittling away whatever resistance I had left. I checked my
recording equipment obsessively, rand diagnostics that always showed the mics
open even when power cables were unplugged. The truth I
had uncovered or stolen really from Danny and those like him,
grew into something unmanageable. I started to notice irregularities everywhere.
Stopped clocks, radios glitched, two tier and cab numbers mirrored
those in the coded calls. My own name showing up
in graffiti on subway tiles. I didn't dare draw a
line between calls and effect. I simply cataloged, made lists,
for comfort, for order, for the chance that one day
I could explain this to myself or some one else.
One morning, even as sunlight led through my blinds, I
found every piece of paper in my apartment had been reshuffled.
The notebook, the polaroid from Danny's locker, even the slips
of code had stashed in a lock drawer roll out
scattered across counter and floor. Equal Pot's invitation and threat
proved that my home was not in violate. I was
being counted, indexed. Sometimes watching feels worse than up freight harm.
That evening, the radio in the kitchen moved on its own,
shifted half a foot across the countertop, else switching from
news to static. Through the haze. Just within hearing came
three steady beaps, like a test pattern, but slower, insistent.
I turned the volume down. The beeps pressed through the
mechanical limit, audible even after I hit the power. I
stared at the black window glass, convinced that with the
right angle and enough courage, I might glimpse not by
reflection but the conscious of the faceless presence behind me.
I took to leaving the apartment, Wandering the city after dark,
each intersection felt like a note. Traffic lamps blinking head
ANDCE headlights cuss in the puddles in backlots, the shush
of f M static filtered from iiding work vans, snippets
of numbers beneath the music scrambled. Once I passed up
handed box, TV screen chatter and power, somehow running a
single green bar along the top fifty three twenty nine,
twenty seventeen, the date code from the call. I didn't
linger the final week. It escalated again. One afternoon, every
radio station on my dial, the all Rocket one hundred
four point three public Radio at eighty eight point nine.
Even the sports chatter on NAM flushed to static, then
to my own late night shows, pumper music looping a
fracture tune note interval. I heard my voice in the mix,
pitching with a copy, odd copy, then numbers, then silence.
After five full minutes of this programming resumed. No one
seemed to notice. The news never mentioned the event. I
found brief posts on local forums any one else's radio
freaka this morning, But the posts vanished by the ire, scrapped,
were retracted or consumed by some wider mechanism. My world
grew smaller, feverish. I lost track of the days living
by the rhythm of the signals. I let myself grow careless,
tuning in writing everything in, increasing the fragmentary bursts. My
handwriting began to sprawl, numbers leaking into every margin, my
dreams closing around the whisper of the relay. One night,
the old land line rang after midnight. The voice that
answerved was my own. But then I drawn down to
an opt vie'd only here in the deepest sleep, ready
for relate, it said, Then, clear as church bells, step outside,
Tom Keller. My body responded before my mind dud. I
opened the front door, barefoot, jacket clutched tight, cassette recorder
in hand. The hallway was empty but for the hush
of the building's pulse refrigerate, a hum distant elevator chime,
then the faint pressure behind my ear, the warmth of
breathless speech. I moved toward the stairwell, every nerve hot
and nunned. As I rounded the landing, I caught in
the stairwell mirror a shape standing on the next floor,
done a man or a negative of one face gun
to static suit, indistinct posture, familiar. He raised a hand.
For a moment it looked like he was holding a mic.
I staggered, clutching the recorder tighter, and he vanished. Only
static kiss in my ears. But now it did Kedon's
mechanism approof. I understood finally what no one at the
station could ever say. Afright. The dead lines are not
about absence, but intercession. Something reaches through the apparatus, seeking
a voice, a pair of hands, and name. I stepped backwards, dizzy,
anchoring myself by the wall. My own breathing doubled in
my ears, reverberating like a feedback loop. You can go back,
hissed the static, where you can broadcast forward, Only the
really persists. I returned to my apartment without conscious decision.
Threadburron rattled and pushed the recorder, already running on to
the t. I whispered into it. If you are listening,
know that the voice is borrowed, that the message continues
with or without the host. As morning crept up through
the ragged blinds, I realized I'd said nothing that changed
the facts. The relay was open. My only proof was experienced,
fluid and translatable, alive for a moment in the transmission,
and then gone. I tried the radio one last time,
tuning it to the now intended ninety seven point one
f M. Only music greeted me, a gentle, easy jazz.
The call and lines were dark, no code, no number,
no invitation, but in the windows faint reflection, the cities
living static, the web of stores caught, half heard, half remembered,
and the signal twisted into a shape that looked for
just a breath, like me, then like Danny, then only
the suggestion of some one holding a microphone in the
darkened room, and in the hush that followed, I understood
some stories can only be told once, on a frequency
nobody means to find, running out across the night, hoping
against hope that just one soul is still awake to
hear them. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next this one