Let me tell you the definition of pain. I’ve lost people dear to me, watched my future slip out of reach from a pit of failure, but none of that holds a candle to being kicked squarely in the pancreas by a guy going record speeds in a rolling chair.
My name’s Evelyn Faye McKinnon, and the fact that my middle and last initials spell out “F.M.” is almost a little too fitting, considering I’ve been working as a radio DJ for a couple of months now. I sit up here, fifty feet off the ground in an old re-purposed firewatch tower, kept company by rolling green mountains, calls from small town folk, and a guy named Dan who just beat me in a game of ‘office chair jousting’.
From my spot on the floor, doubled-over with two of the chair wheels still spinning while sticking up in the air, I could see a pair of heavy black boots step in through the broadcast room doorway. I had met this person before, and perhaps you’d remember him. Finn was a former member of an ever-shrinking police force in this podunk shitheap, and though I didn’t know his name until recently, he had been one of the two officers to detain me during the investigation of an old friend’s death. Between him and the female officer who had pushed me into the back of a cop car, he was probably the more gentle and agreeable of the two. That was until unemployment did something to his attitude. He no longer wears a badge, but has been coming around far more often than he probably ever intended to. Since being removed from the police force, he has instead been given the incredible honor of being promoted to … grocery boy.
“Should I even ask what you’re doing?” He wore a sneer, which looked exceedingly silly from upside down, as his eyes glanced between myself and Daniel. He put the delivery box down on the floor.
“Keeping ourselves entertained.” Daniel answered while the wind was still knocked from my lungs. He got out of his chair in order to help pull me upright, very quietly whispering an apology for knocking me down in the first place. Finn, who had been in a rotten mood ever since he lost his prestigious job, glared with the same distaste he wore each and every time he saw us. I didn’t ask about the specifics, nor did he tell me willingly, but I had a distinct feeling that he wasn’t pleased about the downgrade in his employment.
“Entertain yourselves by doing your job.” He pushed the cardboard box towards me with his foot. “There’s a fancy bit of tech in there for you. A couple of kids from town went missing last weekend and people are all riled up, so the chief wants you two to keep an eye out. He bought a couple of security cameras. We’ll put them right past the treeline and connect them to your monitors, so you can entertain yourselves by watching them.”
I scraped a fingernail against the edge of a long strip of tape, pulling it up enough to eventually rip it free. As he promised, this wasn’t the normal delivery, but rather a heavy box full of individually wrapped equipment, wires, and bits all labeled and ready to assemble. Just looking at it made my anxiety crash through the roof, hoping neither of us would find a way to break all of this.
“I’ll help you get it set up. I’ve installed dozens of these things.” It was as if Finn could read my mind. While I didn’t trust my hands with hundreds of dollars worth of equipment that didn’t belong to me, I still did my part as an active participant.
We ventured down the tower and towards the treeline, Daniel deciding to stay behind to watch the station while we worked. Stepping into the shed to grab a ladder made my stomach churn, particularly as I looked above and noticed the hole in the ceiling still lacking repair. Day by day, I felt desensitized to a certain extent, but never enough. I never felt alone looking out there.
“Missing kids, huh?” I asked, holding the ladder for Finn while he looked for a good place to screw the camera into the tree. “Is that the only thing we’re looking for?”
Finn scrunched up his face, holding a metal screw beneath his teeth. “‘Ey say ‘ey sah’ a ma’ wih’ roohs ah’ hi’ ‘ead..”
"A roof on his head?”
Finn took the screw out of his mouth, securing it to the tree with a frown. “Roots on his head.” he corrected me. “A teenage girl saw him, so did at least four kids just the other day. He was at the edge of the woods near the school, and they said his head and face were covered in roots like … like a helmet or a mask. That fucker’s been spotted for months, and even though we both know his type can’t leave the treeline, every kid who sees him says he tries to lure them in. But it’s been a long time since any kids actually went missing, until just recently.”
My frown became more of a grimace the longer I listened. Seeing this root-faced asshole didn’t sound fun, but seeing any of those kids becoming one with the forest sounded even worse. I thought of Jennifer, her body stuffed into the tree, every limb broken and her mouth a gaping, silent scream filled with twigs and grass … And then I thought of Daniel’s description of her when she came back.
“There.” Finn patted the tree, shaking one of the thicker branches to test the camera’s sturdiness. It didn’t budge. “That one’s set. We’ll put up another on the edge of the tower. Think you can check the supply closet and see if we’ve got a few long extension cords?”
I snapped a flattened hand to my forehead in a salute, leaving just as the former officer was climbing down the ladder. The days were getting warmer, the air muggier, and it made the trip back up to the broadcast room a lot rougher on the lungs. I was out of breath when I reached the top, and Daniel (in classic pain-in-the-ass fashion) snickered with a stupid grin on his face.
“What, did he make you climb the tree yourself?” he bit his lip mid-chuckle.
“Shut uuup.” I was pulling open the storage closet door and crouching down to check the boxes upon boxes of useless junk hidden at the bottom. I dug around, finding a lot of old recording equipment, some broken microphones and headsets, a few frayed cords. I used a foot to push the biggest box out of the closet and crawled in looking for one further in.
It was then I saw something I had never noticed before.
“Hey Danny boy?” I asked, turning to Daniel as I pointed into the closet. “There’s something back here, like a … tiny little door.”
I watched him squint his eyes, brows lowering as he abandoned the controls and joined me outside the open closet door. Without hesitation, he was down on hands and knees as well, experiencing the full glory of cobwebs and the slight scent of mold.
With a flashlight pulled out of a cardboard box and shining its light at the wall, he confirmed what I had seen. Way in the back near the corner of the closet, a piece of cheap plywood was covering a roughly 6-inch square spot of the wall. It wasn’t just leaning against it, but had been nailed down specifically to cover whatever was behind it.
“A patched hole in the wall?” Dan asked, turning the light towards me.
I shrugged. “No clue. But it creeps me out.”
We silently looked at the piece of board, then at one another, back and forth as if waiting for someone to make the first move and start digging around for a hammer. Given enough time, maybe I would have been that person, but all hopes of investigating further were put on hold as the broadcast room door squeaked open.
I heard Finn’s heavy boot-steps enter, then stop after just a couple of paces. Silence, and then …
“Seriously? Between the both of you, neither can find an extension cord?”
I was the first to attempt crawling out of the closet, knowing that Finn probably didn’t want to have a conversation with just my ass. I only managed to smack my head on the doorframe once as I crept back, pointing my index finger to the largest box already removed from the closet.
“They’re all in there.” I told him, tired of his attitude. Hell, he was probably tired of mine too. “We found something else.”
Finn dug around in the box, pulling out a long green cord and tossing it aside to look for another. For a moment there, his curiosity got the better of him and he tore his eyes away from his project to look at me. “What did you find?”
“I don’t know what it is.” I answered honestly.
Finn simply shrugged, slinging three long cords over his shoulders. “If it’s nothing we can use, it’s not important. Now, start looking through the manuals. I’m going to get these cameras fired up.”
After snaking wires over every inch of the station and running back and forth to re-adjust the cameras a few times, I started to actually forget about the little door in the back of the closet. It was a passing curiosity that had … well, passed. But when the cameras were set and Finn bid his farewell for the day, the stillness set in again. It was just Daniel and I, sitting at our respective places at the desk, eyes darting between the radio controls and the fuzzy, pixelated images on the monitors. I already wasn’t a huge fan. Every time I looked up, I expected to see something. I just didn’t know what it would be. In looking for anything else to focus on, my gaze found its way back to the cracked-open closet door.
“I really want to know what’s in there.” I said to Daniel with a sideways glance.
I watched the gears turning in his head. He couldn’t resist the temptation either, I knew it. This was just a matter of who would be the one to smash that door open.
“I’ll get a hammer if you hold the light for me.” I never was the patient one.
I didn’t realize just how much shit was hidden in the back of that closet until all of it was removed and thrown out into the broadcasting room. We got rid of it all - every box, every bit of old tech, every outdated or broken machine stored away for parts. Finally, it was just us, that little door, and my fingers making a fist around the handle of a hammer.
Maybe it was a little too therapeutic smashing that piece of plywood to bits, because I immediately gave up trying to simply pull the nails out of the wall cleanly. If anything living had been hiding in there, it would certainly have chewed its way out in any direction other than that one. But as we pulled away bits of wood splinter and rusted old nails, what we found inside was even more perplexing.
“Cassette tapes.” Daniel picked one up gingerly between his fingers, blowing dust off of the surface. “Ever seen one of these?”
“Yeah, I had a shit-ton as a kid.” I said. “Britney, Backstreet Boys, N’Sync … Backstreet Boys were better though.”
Daniel scooped up a few more of the cassette tapes, a snort of laughter under his breath. “I don’t think these are the same kind of tapes, Lyn… Though I do agree. Backstreet Boys were better.”
That hole in the wall was bigger than we thought. We found over a dozen cassettes hidden back there, and in one of the boxes of old equipment, we dug out a cassette recorder that was still in working condition. It was tempting to stick in a tape and immediately see what was on it, but just from a glance, we could tell they were meant to be in some sort or order. Faded sharpie marker was written on masking tape, stuck to the center of each. Number 1, Number 2, Number 3… and so on and so forth until Tape Number 14. That’s where we lost one. Fifteen was gone, but Sixteen was there, and it was as good a start as any.
I looked at the time. It was just a few minutes after seven-thirty, and Daniel’s shift ended in two hours. “Think we’ve got time to see if one works?” He asked me, and I’m certain you can guess my answer.
I listened to Tape Number One twice in a row: once just to listen, and the second time, to transcribe for Daniel in writing. It was a journal entry of sorts, the voice of a man crackling through the dusty player. Some spots on the tape were pretty damaged, but I did my best to write down exactly what I heard. This is the entirety of Tape Number One:
“Today is November Twentieth, 2012. My name is Eric, and I am Number Seven: the seventh person to work at the Pinehaven emergency broadcast station. This morning, at approximately five-fifteen, I pulled my old climbing gear out of the shed in order to assist the police in retrieving Number Six from the radio tower. His legs are still missing from the knees down, but at least now we’ve found the torso.
I am a former Conservation Officer. I spent four years in wildlife rescue. I have studied the mountain terrain, the deep marshlands, and the rehabilitation of injured animals, mainly birds of prey. It’s my hope that there won’t soon be a need to replace me, but I want this recording to survive whether or not I do.
At four-thirty this morning, I was awoken by a sound from up above. It was chilling. The sound of metal scraping and whining, like something heavy attempting to scale the radio tower, was almost as grating to my ears as the sound of radio static. I realized the latter was a huge problem immediately. My very first lesson upon arriving was to never let the radio go off air under any circumstances, and doing so would unleash horror I didn’t even want to imagine. I tried my hand at quickly repairing the signal, but after pressing all the buttons I could get my hands on, I realized the problem was outside.
I could still hear it. Something was climbing up the radio tower, messing with the signal. I didn’t even think those things from the woods could get this far away from the tree line, but their craftiness knows no bounds.
With nothing left to do but take action, I raced down from the watchtower to get a look from the ground. It was still dark outside, and freezing cold like you wouldn’t believe. Flashlight in hand, I shone it up at the metal tower looming over the former firewatch building.
The first thing I saw was a blob of flesh in so many different tones and textures. But it wasn’t just one thing up there. There were birds, at least a dozen of them, picking at the wires, messing with the signal. Their wings and voices made an ungodly noise as they all fought for pieces of electric cable to rip away and take with them. But wrapped in the metal bars, holding onto the tower with a weight that seemed to put it in danger of falling over, was the most grotesque beast I had seen since my arrival.
This thing looked like a deer at first glance, but its eyes were pure white and its fur was a dusty gray, caked in mud and rot. Antlers smacked the metal around it as it moved its head, making a massive amount of noise. But what struck me most about this beast was the sheer inability I had to recognize all that it was made of. It had more than two eyes. Six at least. I saw a glimpse of giant hooves, claw-like hands, and perhaps limbs that weren’t even necessary, but it moved in such slithering motions in the dark that it was difficult to make out the details. All I knew was that this was an animal I had never seen the likes of before, and it was enormous.
It didn’t shamble clumsily up the tower, no. This monster was crouched up high, its filthy claws holding a bundle of flesh and cloth. It was Number Six, at least from the waist up, one arm missing and his skin about three days decomposed.
I had seen this bastard before, and like with all freakish abominations from the woods, I knew better than to try fighting it. They don’t die, you see … they just end up absorbed by the others. I did the only thing I could think to do. I ran back towards the door, my intentions only going so far as starting The Bell: the drone that has been driving them away for years.
Perhaps one of the least-desired sounds I could possibly hear just then was the screech of stressed metal underneath the beast’s weight. I listened as it shifted, its dead, empty eyes following me as it was inspired to make a change of course. From the corner of my eyes, I could see it leave Number Six far up tangled in the metal structure and begin to crawl its way down, hooves clumsy but long claws making up for it with added dexterity. Like the strangest, most grotesque spider I had ever seen, it quickly scaled the tower downwards, and just as I reached the door that would take me inside, I could feel the weight of the beast as its feet hit the ground. Its hooves pounded on the ground, the dirt beneath me trembled with each quickening step it took, it let out a deafening roar that made the insides of my ears sting … and that’s when I threw myself inside and slammed the door behind me.
I could hear the creature ramming its antlers against the door the entire time I ascended to the broadcasting room. Once at the top, I could see the figure of the beast still outside, resting from its attempts to break in and instead staring at me from far below. Then, after pressing the red button on the wall and hearing what sounded like nothing to my ordinary human ears, I watched the dreaded animal begin to stagger and shake its head before turning to bound back past the treeline.
The radio is up and running now. Number Six has been retrieved from the radio tower, though no one is sure if his uncovered parts were eaten or misplaced. One other thing has been bothering me, though. A small mountain bird has been sitting outside the window for a very long time now, and the way it taps its beak on the glass is getting on my nerves.”
...
Listening to the tape was insightful, but unpleasant. Knowing that Daniel and I were the only surviving people to have worked at the station made hearing the voice of one of our own seem like a mournful experience. The man in the recording was dead. At some point, somewhere and somehow, the forest had won and he had to rely on these tapes to tell his story.
“You think this will be us one day?” I asked Daniel with a sly smirk, but the suggestion wasn’t humorous in the least. “Reading all of our own stories on a cassette, saving them for other people to find when we’re gone?”
I watched him pop the tape out of the machine, blowing the dust off of it like an old game cartridge and placing it back with the others.
“Nah,” he answered in a mock casual tone. “We’ll use a flash drive.”
This is Evelyn from 104.6 F.M. It’s good to be back on the air.
---
Credits
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