In the early hours of the morning, before the sun was up and before Daniel was on his way into work, I saw something I couldn’t explain. You might think I mean something supernatural or otherwise inhuman, but it was quite the opposite.
We had a visitor to the broadcast tower.
I could see someone, their face obscured by a dark hoodie that covered their hair and eyes, equally dark-colored clothes covering the rest of their body as well. It was clear from the way they stalked around outside the building that they weren’t looking to come inside and chat. It was almost five o’clock in the morning, a time when I would usually still be sleeping for another hour, but a bathroom break had proven timely as I got a perfect view of our new stalker looking around the outside of the tower.
Now usually, calling the police would be the natural response. But out of some curiosity for what this mysterious weirdo was up to, I was just distracted by watching them poke around outside. Their actions seemed curious, but not aggressive. First they marched round, peering through gaps in the wooden walls of the shed, then walking along the treeline and shuffling their feet in the dirt for a bit. It was as if they weren’t looking for anything in particular, but still searched for anything they might come across.
I left for only a few minutes, starting a pot of coffee and resigning myself to an early start to the day. Fog was in the weather prediction and I’d need all the energy I could get to act fast if need be. While I waited at the square plastic table in the break room, tapping at my phone screen and trying to coax the tiniest bit of internet out of it, I never took my eyes or ears completely off of the stairwell or the broadcast room windows. Sure, Creepus Maximus out there seemed simply curious at most, but aside from the eerie feeling they gave me, it was my job to make sure no one stepped into the forest.
I stirred sugar into my coffee cup, dropped the spoon into the sink with a ‘clank’, and groggily made my way towards the door. Before I did, I heard a sound that was a little too familiar. It was a whisper, so faint but so sharp in my ears, and it was coming from the kitchen sink. I thought we were done with this a long time ago.
My gaze was stuck on the drain, glaring at it and trying to decipher quiet, mumbling bits of sound that didn’t quite form full words. I only took one step closer to it before I decided hanging my head right over the source wasn’t an intelligent idea. I watched bubbles rise into the basin. As if liquid down the drain was boiling, the bubbles popped and formed more in their place, splashing tiny pinpricks of dark red fluid all around the inside. A rancid smell was coming from deep down in the plumbing. Immediately, it turned me off from my coffee … which I dumped down the exact same drain in what I now suppose could have been a somewhat accidentally rude gesture. The voice stopped. She had apparently said all she needed to say this time.
I had lost my coffee but gained some tense nerves as I staggered back into the broadcasting room, the quiet nature of the moment convincing me for a time that our visitor had left. I stretched my arms, took a peek at the clock sitting on my side of the desk --
--and then nearly jumped out of my skin.
A hoarse yelp left my throat when I happened to glance outside, getting a full view of that familiar hooded figure standing directly on the other side of the window at the top of the fire escape. Both hands were in the pockets of his sweater, but I could see a human nose, a human mouth. It’s difficult to explain this very specific kind of fear, seeing someone only feet away from you, but still very much separated. He was real, he was alive. And the fact that this wasn’t a shambling, half-decayed monstrosity of human and animal parts made him almost more threatening to me than the rest.
I could get rid of monsters with a single button. I couldn’t get rid of this so easily.
Almost as soon as I spotted him, he turned and pulled his hood further over the features of his face, darting down the fire escape. Faintly, I could hear the metallic sounds of his footsteps racing away one after the other, until at last I could no longer hear or see him anywhere in the pre-sunrise darkness. The last glimpse that I got was of his feet through the grass as he turned the corner of the tower’s base, heading towards the gravel parking lot.
Calling the police would have been a very sensible reaction, and you’ll be glad to know that I did call someone. I had absolutely no trouble waking Finn up at five in the morning and telling him that we had what could have been an attempted break-in at the broadcast station. I’m going to be optimistic and say that his exasperated curse words and tired sighs were in reaction to the hooded creeper and not to my phone call.
I waited in the stairwell, confident that I’d hear plenty of ungodly noise if someone tried to crawl up the fire escape and break into the recording room while I was gone. The only footsteps I heard, however, were that of our brand new guard dog, Finn himself. When he entered, using his own key and pushing open the jammed metal door, he took one look at me and I could practically hear the sound of static as the hair stood on the back of his neck.
“Jesus shitting Christ.” He slammed the door behind him, a puff of dust flying from the floor. “I come in here looking for an intruder and see you sitting there in the dark, looking like a goddamn ghost. You scared every last fuck right out of me. So thanks for that.”
While Finn wasn’t working for the police anymore, he still had this walk that radiated a sense of purpose, as if he was always on his way to fix a problem. He marched around the ground level before passing me on the stairs. “You said you saw a guy out here poking around?” he asked me.
“Uhh, yeah, outside. Never came in, though.” I pointed a finger upwards. “I saw him while I was upstairs. First he was sneaking around by the treeline, then I saw him come up the fire escape. He was scoping the place out, I think, but ran like a chickenshit when he figured out I could see him.”
My footsteps echoed with a distinct metallic sound through the empty room, cradled by the wooden stakes holding the top room up. As I followed Finn upstairs, I only gave one last glance to the doorway. It was sealed and safe, but that heavy metal door never ceased to give me anxiety.
“So he’s not here anymore? He ran?” Finn waited to ask until I had caught up to him.
“Far as I know, he’s gone.” I used my key to get us into the broadcasting room, which was still dimly lit as the end of the night owl block played automatically over the radio.
Finn looked less than amused. Thick, block-shaped fingers reached up to rub the bridge of his nose, veins in the back of his hand prominent when he clenched them. “You called me about a break-in … that never happened.” he clarified. “You called me about an intruder who is gone*.* Evelyn, why the hell am I out here?”
At this point, I had seated myself in the rolling chair I claimed as my own, Daniel’s seat left empty. He wasn’t due to come in for a couple of hours, and perhaps that knowledge made me a little more willing to admit what came to mind.
“...Because I know who it was.” I spoke honestly. “And I was scared.”
...
With only a little while longer before the automatic playlist ended for the night and my responsibilities as radio DJ resumed, Finn decided to stick around and sit next to me while we poked through a few of the recordings from our security cameras. I was still clumsily figuring out how to review the footage, but luckily, it wasn’t too hard to go back such a short amount of time. Before long, we were staring at a paused image of the man I saw outside, this time from the tree’s perspective, as he inspected the very spot where the forest stopped and the clearing began.
“So, who is this guy?” Finn asked as he zoomed the screen in on the blurry, half-visible face beneath the hood. The poor quality of the night vision camera made his face look hollow and even more chilling than reality.
“His name’s Elijah,” I answered. “Least, I’m almost sure that’s him. I never saw his eyes or his hair, but there’s a resemblance. He was dating my friend Jennifer when she … decided to go into the woods and not come back.”
I watched Finn’s mouth curve into a thin-lipped frown, one of thought. I wasn’t an investigator of any sort, but even I could put two and two together.
“Think he was here trying to mess with you maybe? Considering this is where she disappeared?"
I almost said ‘yes’, but I couldn’t make myself believe that in full. I could understand why he’d hold a grudge. His girlfriend went missing and was found dead right outside my workplace, and his last memory of me was one final blowout fight. Anyone who says breaking up with a best friend is cake compared to breaking up with a partner has never had a friendship that meant as much as ours did. But Elijah’s behavior didn’t seem standard for that sort of thing. With a skeptical shrug of the shoulders, I said the only other theories that came to mind.
“Maybe, but it looked to me like he was searching for something. Maybe her. I mean, her case was just closed before they ever found the body. But when he came up the fire escape, I felt more like he was trying to intimidate than actually break in. The door was three feet away but he never even tried it.”
If he had, the alarm would have blared, and only a really desperate son of a bitch would stick around during all of that. Maybe he was a desperate son of a bitch.
But speaking of desperate …
“Hey, Finn?” I broke a solid moment of silence with a very different tone. “Dan and I have somewhere to be this weekend. I’ll split part of this week’s paycheck if you take over for a bit.”
The look on his face was hard to read at first, almost as if he didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. Yes, I thought. I’m not too proud to ask you to do my job.
“Is it important?” He asked, surprising me by not outright refusing.
“Yeah, we’re going to his cousin’s wedding.”
You’d think my answer was a joke from the way he suddenly spat out a laugh as if it crept up on him out of nowhere. I admit, I was a tad insulted that he didn’t take it seriously. But between his giggles and my grumpy, wrinkled brow, he gave me a surprising answer.
“Sure, fine, I’ll let you have your break. You look about a month overdue for one.”
“The hell does that mean?” The question was bitter even though I knew he wasn’t wrong.
“Settle down, sheesh. I could still change my mind.” Finn’s chuckles died down, but he still wore the same rotten smirk. “Promise you’ll dance with Dan at least once and we’ve got a deal.”
There wasn’t much on this earth aside from shoving a hornet’s nest up my ass that would make me dance.
That being said, I guess we still had a deal.
Six o’clock in the morning came around, then six-thirty. When the sun was rising and all seemed quiet out at the treeline, Finn was about ready to leave just as I set up my headset and broadcasted my morning greeting over the air. In the middle of my speech, I gave him a lazy wave, one of his legs already out the door and eager to return home.
The music was playing and I half expected to take off my headset and hear nothing, or perhaps only the very distant sound of Finn’s vehicle driving back onto the road or Daniel showing up a little early. You can imagine my surprise when the muffled suggestion of voices - multiple voices - was all I heard through the gap beneath the door. They sounded agitated. At least one sounded angry.
My finger tapped the base of my microphone, turning it off before swiftly leaving the seat on my chair. Curiosity got the best of me, as well as some stubborn kind of territorial attitude. As much as I hated this place, it was growing too synonymous with my everyday life for me not to defend it.
There was no one in the stairwell. No shadows outside the door. And still, I could hear unintelligible but aggravated, raised voices from outside. The heavy metal door swung open and I practically marched around the side of the tower, Finn’s yells finally becoming clear.
What I didn’t expect as I rounded the corner was to almost get hit by a flying body, as whatever argument had ensued didn’t stay verbal for very long. I got a split second view of a dark-colored sweatshirt as Finn practically threw his assailant onto the gravel, knocking the wind out of a very red-faced, very breathless Elijah. He was back, now in full daylight.
“He got me good.” I almost didn’t recognize Daniel’s voice from behind me, nasally as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Finn had Elijah under control. He was already pinning him to the gravel parking lot, one arm twisted behind his back to keep him immobile. Judging by the scuff on Dan’s cheek and the way he squinted his watering eyes, Finn was probably the only one of the three to come out unscathed.
“Did he break your nose?” I asked, reaching up to grab Dan’s chin, tilting his head up.
“Ah! Don’t touch it…”
“I won’t.” I assured before he finally dropped his hand, letting me get a peek. No blood, just a big red mark that would probably start to swell. “I think you’ll live, Danny Boy.”
Elijah, only putting up a mild struggle as his cheek was pushed painfully into the loose stone, huffed in frustration as Finn pulled his wallet and a folding knife out of his back pocket.
“What were you planning on doing with this?” He asked, extending the blade to show him.
“Nothing.” It wasn’t a good answer, as Finn only twisted his arm further behind his back to coax a pained yell out of him. “Fuck! Stop it! ...I wasn’t going to use it, it was just for show!”
Finn folded the knife back up and tossed it away from the parking lot where it disappeared into the tall grass and bushes.
“So you’re trying to tell me you were just here to poke around and then leave?” He voiced a skeptical chuckle.
This time, Elijah turned his head to glare daggers up at the man with a knee in his back. “Isn’t that what you did?” he asked in a hoarse, seething voice. “I watch the news, you know. You searched for Jennifer for maybe a whole hour before you gave up and closed the case. You never tried. No one tried. Everyone’s saying she’s dead, but we can’t even bury her because no one's even looking.”
Finn’s gaze, as stern as ever, fixed itself on him first and then up to me. This was making sense now. If Elijah didn’t have anyone to blame for his girlfriend’s death, the most he could do is blame the ones who failed to bring her back.
There was a tense moment of attempted understanding as Finn loosened his hold on Elijah’s arm, letting him rest and drop the limb to his side. It may have been summer, but I felt a chill in the air, like a tickling wind just cold enough to raise bumps on the skin. It made the leaves rustle and the grass blow. From outside, the heavy wooden stakes holding the tower up sounded like a weak, groaning animal as they settled.
I didn’t want to be out here anymore.
“Elijah.” I spoke softly to him, one-on-one for the first time. “You should go home.”
Even when Finn released his arms and stood to take the weight off the other man’s back, he still took his time sitting up with sluggish, aching movement. “You don’t get it,” he told me, expression weary and lips in a frown. “You don’t have to live surrounded by her things every day.”
The shitty thing is, he was absolutely right.
The wind hit me again, branches creaking overhead and the clouds slowly covering the sparse rays of sunlight. With it, it brought another groan from the wood, this time more … vocal. Daniel had long since stopped nursing his swollen nose and was shifting where he stood. I knew he felt it too: the too-familiar agitation of a skipping heartbeat and the desire to get somewhere safe.
“I never realized how tall the trees were from down here.” I squinted my eyes at the woods, my hair tickling my nose and chin in the breeze. I heard another creak from the tower. No … beyond the tower. The woods.
I never realized how little we could see when we weren’t fifty feet in the air.
Daniel and I shared a glance. He was touching his arm, feeling the prickling of gooseflesh on his skin, and that was enough of a reason to abandon whatever stupid problems we thought we had down here.
“Fog day. Everyone upstairs. You too.” I pointed to Elijah, who seemed to be the only person who didn’t understand our urgency. Finn pulled the back of his sweater to help him up, much like a mother cat picking up her kittens by the scruff, while Daniel and I trusted that they could get up the stairs without us holding their hands.
Dan had the door swung open by the time I rounded the edge of the building, holding it wide and patting my shoulder to get me through the door first. Next was Finn, who stomped heavy boots up the winding staircase after me. My hands fumbled once I reached the top of the stairs, looking for the right key to unlock the broadcast room, all thanks to our new security. I still hadn’t found it when I realized only two of us were on the top landing.
“Elijah, hurry up! We need to get inside.” Daniel was yelling out the door to an unseen man somewhere between us and the woods. I was only partially watching my coworker as I sifted through my pockets, realizing in a moment’s notice that my keys were exactly where they didn’t need to be - in my bag, inside the room.
“Dan!” Yelling down the entire length of the stairs made my throat burn. “Dan, I need your keys! I need your keys!”
He turned to look at me, but his expression didn’t register understanding. Without the light or the right distance to read my lips, I supposed he heard his own name and that was about it. I swore an oath then that I’d start using my spare time to brush up on American Sign Language, all while pushing past Finn to stomp back down the stairs and tell him face-to-face.
“I nee…”
As soon as my feet hit the bottom landing, neither Daniel or I were paying attention to one another. Our eyes were collectively drawn to the treeline, where heavy, swirling clouds of gray crawled their way into the clearing, and where Elijah was standing with his back to us, still as the dead.
Let him go. Let him get swallowed. The thought was tempting, but sick. I had more to worry about than one man standing outside like a moron, but I couldn’t do it. It was our job to make sure no one else ended up like Jennifer Cook.
“What are you looking at? Get in here!” I raced out the door, but wasn’t alone. Daniel reached him before I did, immediately grabbing hold of one arm, which was quickly swatted away. Elijah never looked at us, but from beside him, I could see his eyes glazed in an almost trance-like state.
He was watching dark, shapeless motion from within the clouds, billowing upwards and snaking through the branches as it spread. It began to crawl across the ground, the grass beneath it quivering as if being brought to life. But Elijah wasn’t looking at any of that. His stare was fixed completely on the many pairs of eyes, glowing white between the trees, that were all staring straight at us with purpose.
“She’s in there.” Elijah whispered hoarsely, voice dazed. "I hear her.”
Between the groan of movement somewhere in the mountains, my ears couldn’t pick up any other sound. Elijah was being tricked, just like those missing children. Just like the delivery guy. Just like Jenny herself.
Daniel let out a small yelp as I reached to tug on the waistband of his belt, unhooking the keys he had connected to his jeans. His moment of surprise at my rudeness dissipated in seconds; it was time to go, and to make it quick. We both grabbed one of Elijah’s arms, and though he struggled with unwillingness to leave the forest’s edge, we had no choice but to drag him back kicking and screaming. And kick and scream, he did.
Trees quaked and branches cracked, the fog swirling around our heels as it grew ever closer and quickly abandoned the limits of the woods. I shouldn’t have looked back. I shouldn’t have even considered it. But as I listened to Elijah’s breath hitch and felt the resistance of his body trying to pull away from my hold, I couldn’t help but face the forest.
I hadn’t had the incredible honor of seeing Jennifer’s corpse the way Daniel already had, broken and rotting as it struggled with every limb and muscle to stagger out from the trees. That changed as soon as my head turned and I caught an instant glimpse of her ruined self, walking so without support that I was surprised she didn’t break to pieces. She had changed. In the crack of her neck where the skin was broken, the beginnings of a fifth limb was growing out of her throat, but through the mask of fog I couldn't tell you if it was human or animal. I never understood ‘shambling’ so well until I watched her desperately move in every awkward, jerking motion that would bring her closer to us, like she needed to get here no matter what it took.
Elijah’s face was washed out to a pure white, his legs and arms going limp as he was forced to take in the view of her in such state of utter decay. Her whispers and croaks, her white orb-like eyes, and the way strings of her hair tangled between bits of exposed scalp and bone would be the last image he ever saw of Jennifer in the flesh. And mine as well.
I forced the door open before the fog could reach it, just as Daniel practically shoved Elijah into the building. They could handle themselves. I had to start the broadcast immediately, and Finn was already upstairs attempting to pick the lock in case I didn’t come back.
After he moved aside, I don’t think I’ve ever unlocked a door quicker in my life. Cursing the attention to security the entire time, I ignored the keychain hanging from the doorknob as it was thrown open, smacking against the top of the staircase with a metallic clang. As soon as I looked outside, watching the writhing fog move beneath us, I was overjoyed to hear three pairs of footsteps joining me in perhaps the only safe room there was.
I sat at my desk, microphone on, prepared to give the emergency broadcast. It would take a minute for the frequency to drive off the fog, but I hoped to god that we had that amount of time. Buttons were switched, my headset was connected, but all the while I watched the mass of gray from outside the window with caution. Elijah was there, half-stumbling towards the glass, visibly shaken to the core.
From out of the fog bank that had spread all the way to the fire escape, I could see the pallid trace of skin taking steps towards the window. Elijah, his legs shivering, put a quaking hand against the cold surface, where there was a pressure from the other side as well. Obscured partially by the mist, the dark hollows of Jennifer’s eye sockets and the open gape of her mouth were visible, only inches away from where he stood.
If she was this close already, there was no telling what else was out there. We didn’t have time.
He had to say his goodbyes quickly.
Jumping up from my seat, deciding that the rash method was the only one, I flipped up the plastic cover that surrounded the red emergency button on the wall. The Bell was our quickest option, one with the furthest signal that would drive away everything in sight. Daniel was already removing his hearing aid, tossing it onto the table before it had a chance to go haywire. Without a moment’s hesitation, my hand slammed down on it with a satisfying push. Nothing seemed to happen, but that’s how it always was. Just because we didn’t hear it didn’t mean nothing else did.
Jennifer’s mouth grew even wider in a silent scream through the heavy glass, the pain from the noise causing her distress that I hoped would drive her away. And perhaps she would have left, if she hadn’t been dragged way first. Everyone in the room felt a sudden shake from the fire escape, which jostled one way and then the other, before Elijah was the first to see a long, clawed hand reach for Jennifer’s throat and pull her with enough roughness to break whatever bones weren’t already shattered. We all saw a glimpse of at least six distinct eyes and the points of large, gnarled antlers. It threw Jennifer, limp as a rag doll, over its shoulder and then shook the entire room as its horned forehead pounded against the glass. My fist smacked the button once more, as if perhaps the first time didn’t work. I didn’t want to imagine in a million years that this thing was stronger than the sound.
Finally, the air began to clear. The muffled moans and screeches of amalgamate beasts became distant as they sank back into the safety of the woods, taking the fog with them. Six eyes stared directly at us, blinking in pairs, before the heavy falls of hooves made a dent or two in the fire escape as it descended. The fog disappeared and it took every unnatural thing with it, leaving us all in a still, sickening quiet.
God, my heart hurt. There was a heavy pit in my chest, one of fear and despair. Elijah was a god-awful prick, but he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to see that. I knew what would happen to Jennifer now, and it was a fact that made my stomach tighten in knots just imagining it. The giant that had grabbed her would tear her apart and take the pieces of her body that it wanted, throwing the rest like garbage to the other, smaller beasts who settled with its unwanted scraps. Jennifer was no longer Jennifer, but one of dozens who had been claimed by the giant’s need to grow.
We’d never see her again, I was sure. Not in this form, at least.
“Finn. Can you drive Elijah home?” I asked our new ‘recruit’, who had nothing rebellious to say. He simply nodded to me, grabbing the stunned and silent man by the arm to drag him from the window.
Neither of the would say ‘goodbye’ as they left, but there was no need. This wasn’t a pleasant visit and it deserved to be over as quickly as possible.
Later that afternoon, Daniel and I put in the next tape from our found collection, all thanks to employee Number 7. It was odd to hear how many stories co-aligned with our own. This time, however, he talked about a missing child found dead in the woods, mutilated and fused with the roots growing around him. I can’t force myself to transcribe it word-for-word here, but it was disturbing in ways I can’t even imagine.
This is Evelyn from 104.6 F.M., and I’m pleased to announce that an old friend has returned. Strangely, as we listened to the cassette tape, our ugly bird pal Bartholomew didn’t stop tapping on the glass the entire time.
---
Credits
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