We're Always on the Air at 104.6 (Part 5) [FINALE]

  

We watched the sun go down through the broadcast room window. The sky, painted with strokes of red and yellow that melted into deep purple, would have been a picture of serenity if it didn’t remind me of a wildfire rising up from the trees. Maybe that would have been preferable to what it really was: a long, dreadful night on its way. Even inside, the humidity filled the air with a tense electricity that put my nerves on edge.

We were leaving for the woods, getting our things packed: a compass, flashlights, batteries, the handgun and all the ammo we had. As we did, we decided to tune our ears into one more of those cassette tapes. We bypassed the audio journals in the middle - including the second-to-last that we still hadn’t found - and went straight for the final recording.

It wasn’t what we expected.

“It’s February 10th, 2013.” This voice was different; it was a lady’s voice. “This is Number Eight from the Emergency Broadcast Station … I have been here alone for four days since we lost Number Seven, who reached a record-breaking three months of service before his death. I regretted that I only knew him for a short while, and even more I regret having to be there when he was killed. I had been warned. They told me that the creatures in the woods like to take parts from their victims, but I couldn’t believe how savagely they ripped him to shreds.

The only thing left was his head in the end. But even then, the eyes were gone. Both of them, taken clean from the skull.

I almost thought I saw a glimpse of them this afternoon, but it was just this strange-looking bird that’s been hanging around near the broadcast room window, right where the tree line ends. I can’t see him now, but I feel watched. I’m sorry, Number Seven.”

The recording sent a chill up my spine, or maybe several. Daniel was skeptical at first when I told him that I wanted to go into the woods and get rid of that fuck that stole my eye right out of the socket, but I think that seeing my reaction to the recording was enough to sway him more towards my side.

“I just don’t like it,” I told him as I clipped one of the glorified fanny packs we found in the closet around my waist. I put it to the side so that I didn’t look like a tourist. “I don’t like the thought of my body being out there, even just a part of it.”

Daniel shook the box of ammo that Elijah had given him, making sure it was enough to get us by. He scoffed, his laughter laced with a hoarse snort.

“So is this one of those cases of, ‘If I can’t have it, nobody can’?”

I looked back at him, lips pursed in a frown. “Yes.” I said it bluntly, and I was serious about it. “You don't need to go if you don't want to. After the last time, I'd understand.”

Dan didn't say a word at first. But he looked straight at me as he laced the strap of his bag around one shoulder, securing it tightly and zipping it shut. With one last peek at the monitors to make sure the music was set to play until morning, he gave me a singular, decisive nod of the head.

“Ready.” He stated. “Ready to … go shoot a tree in the face, I suppose.”

If everything failed, he’d be ready to die, I thought. I didn’t dare speak it out loud since those words wouldn’t have been useful; he already knew.

Our steps down the metal stairwell had never echoed the same way they did then. The sound was sharp, oddly uniform, like the hit of sticks against the drum in a funeral march. When the heavy door at the bottom pushed open and the summer air came washing over, it was humid and thick. I heard the crickets and frogs, the sound of my own boots kicking up the dirt and grass beneath me. If I focused hard, maybe I could have imagined that I was still at my mom’s house or drinking a beer while sitting outside my old college dorm.

As the last few rays of sun disappeared and the sky became the darkest it would be, the crickets and frogs went quiet. In an unnatural change of pace, they were buzzing one moment and then silent the very next, as if the night fell so thick around us that it choked the sound out of every living thing.

“Do you want to carry the gun?” Daniel asked, pointing down at his bag. A generous offer, but maybe not the most thought-out one.

“I, uh … don’t think my aim is what it used to be, Danny Boy. I’ll trust you with it, okay?”

Our first steps into the woods were dizzying. There was an energy out here, and I don’t mean that as in some vague ghostly bullshit. It felt teeming with too much life, even when there was none to be seen. When the branches above our heads cracked and moved, the groans of the old wood sounded like a voice. When small animals ran through the overgrowth or scaled the sides of the trees, I felt as if they were watching and whispering to one another. Even the mosquitoes, which were eating the hell out of Dan’s neck right from the start, were active and agitated. This place was crowded and unhealthy.

I stopped for a moment to listen, and Daniel did me the courtesy of standing still as well. There was a very distant sound, like a low bellow. It was far away but the vocal moan was tired and unhappy. I thought of some old dragon being awoken from its slumber, and all at once hoped to god it wasn't as real or big as it sounded.

“I hope the root man doesn’t only show himself when there are kids around,” I said to my companion, who was squinting his eyes to see my lips move.

Daniel shrugged. “He seemed content enough with you and your eye.”

I answered his sass with a sneer and scrunched eyebrows. The one above my right eye socket still hurt to move, but it was worth that pain. “This time, if he wants to take a chunk, he can take one from you.” I immediately felt like trash after I said it. “Sorry...I'm in a shit mood for jokes.”

From the corner of my vision, I saw Dan’s hand reaching out, and I suspected he was going to pat my arm. “I understa--” He never finished the word. From out of complete silence, I heard the crunch of leaves and both of us witnessed a dark, almost shapeless form pass not five feet away from where we stood. It darted from behind one tree and then disappeared around another, crossing directly in front of our path.

Daniel’s hand finally did find my arm, but instead of the gentle pat I had expected, he gripped it tightly, almost painfully. My heart skipped a beat and the air in my lungs was pushed out in a loud, sudden exhale. It was hard to catch another breath. I almost didn’t want to breathe, as the air around us was filled with a rotten, molded stench. It reminded me of rusted metal, mildew, and decay, all set out to soak in the heat.

I could hear him: the creak of old wood and the rattle of mummified flesh and bone.

“Gun.” I mouthed the word to Daniel, nodding my head down at the satchel around his shoulder. ‘Take out the gun.”

He fumbled for it. I wanted so badly to be annoyed, to just tear it out of the bag on my own, but even in the dark I could see his hands shaking. I could see that shadow lurking nearby, circling around. It wasn’t a curious gesture, like an animal just trying to get a better look at something it couldn’t quite discern as predator or prey. He moved rapidly in randomly-chosen directions, and I felt tension in my chest knowing that if I stopped turning to watch him, he could bound towards us so easily and so quickly.

“Fuck!” Daniel almost dropped the gun while he attempted to load it, distracted by the movement between the trees. “Come on, come on...”

I heard the click of the magazine being pushed into place. Daniel readied his stance, but the weapon still trembled and rattled in his hands. His head turned one way and the next, always looking for a single moment when the creature stopped, but the shadow never sat still for more than an instant. In the dull light from the moon, I could see the whites of Daniel’s eyes as they continued to dart in every direction, worry drawn on his face with a heavy brow.

I thought the same thing I thought when he came back after his very first traumatizing day: he didn’t need to be here, but he chose to.

Goddammit, Dan.

A gunshot pierced through the air, way too close to my head for comfort. I covered the ear that got the worst of the sound, but any words that I would have exclaimed would have just been drowned out by the bellow that sounded out and shook the ground under our feet. It came from the mountains, but even that distance made the insides of my ears pound.

Birds abandoned their perches at the trees, the buzzing flies grew silent, and the root-faced man had retreated to the shadows during the silence that followed. I watched Daniel flinch, a hand twitching as it raised half the distance to his ear by pure instinct.

All this time, I wondered about the final sound he ever heard with perfect ears. I considered that moment to be my answer.

“What the fuck was that?” I turned to squint my remaining eye towards the tops of the trees, horrified by the very distant movement that I saw. Suddenly, I regretted not having a weapon of my own. “What the fuck was that?!”

“I don’t care, we’re leaving.” Daniel sounded urgent, the gun still held in one hand while the other flailed outward and grabbed the sleeve of my t-shirt. He tugged me toward him, and in that moment we were both utterly content to leave and give up this entire mission. Did I still hate the thought of that creature having my eye? You’re damn right I did. But I had the distinct feeling that if we waited any longer, the forest would end up taking more than we would be left with.

We made a mistake then in thinking that the bellows and the earth-rattling weight would chase away the creature we came out to find. We turned and began rushing through the same path we took to get there, but the crack of twigs and the rustle of leaves followed after us. A shadow darted to my left, then disappeared when it crossed in front of us, leaving Daniel and I both to stop in our tracks. The son of a bitch was still trailing us, even when the distant rumble of giant steps became not-so-distant anymore.

Just as soon as he was there, he was gone. The woodland stretching out before us, thick with vegetation and spots of shadow, was empty. But then I heard the crack of slow footsteps behind us, this time with a purpose.

The root-faced man released a rattle of breath, like a gasp taken from dried, mummified lungs. He had no mouth, but I could see the dust and dried leaves leaving an empty cavity between his exposed rib bones. He had grown since we last saw him. The worn and ratty clothes he once wore were gone, but where he would have had a naked human body, the forest had replaced the flesh with vines, thorns, and what appeared to be very pale, thin … small hands coming out of his body and curling around the bone and bark.

Oh, God. The hands still moved. They still clawed as if trying to escape.

They were half the size of mine.

We moved before he did. Daniel still gripped the handle of the gun tightly, but while facing both immediate and eventual dangers, I preferred the fact that he wasn’t trying to shoot it in every direction. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to run so quickly or for so long, not until I knew the feeling of adrenaline taking over every move I made. And yet, no matter how far we thought we ran, it never seemed far enough. We still heard those pounding feet behind us, we still saw a shadow darting from one side to the other, and somewhere up the mountain, we couldn’t outrun that angry bellow.

We didn’t know which way we were running. In the dark, every tree looked exactly the same as the one next to it, but one thing was unfamiliar. My eye caught the straight edge of a wooden sign, the words so old and chipped from the surface that I couldn’t have read what it said even if I had time to stop and look.

A singular sign wasn’t all there was. Twice I almost tripped over bits of wood and stone on the ground, and the second time, the toe of my shoe caught something distinctly metallic. It was a track, smaller than a railway for a train, and moving … downward?

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” I skidded to a stop, grabbing the back of Daniel’s shirt before he had a chance to stumble into the dark and lose his footing. We were standing at the top of a steep downward drop, which had probably been a smooth hill until the ground began to cave and reclaim it. Wooden stakes in the ground held up the partially-collapsed entrance to an underground mine, but the track leading into it was being swallowed by what was at least several decades worth of moving earth and mudslides.

As I moved to race around it, I felt the earth shift under my feet. The ground didn’t feel safe - it didn’t feel sturdy, and those few seconds of hesitation was all it took.

The rattle of bone and bark sent a chill through my body, but nothing froze my blood the way the glimmer of a single eye in the darkness did. Darting, searching, finally focusing itself on me - my own eye sat nestled in the center of the creature’s throat and stared unblinkingly forward as he took staggering, noisy steps through the dirt.

Those tiny fingers in his chest were reaching, clawing, either trying to get out or trying to pull something in. When he moved closer, I moved back, and I could even see Daniel hesitating as the earth underneath is began to shift again. It took him a moment, but I heard the metal click of the gun he had been waiting all this time to use.

He pointed it, hands shaking. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could hear … something else as well. The crack of branches in a large oak tree, the huff of breath through a dust-filled snout.

A single gunshot rang out and I could see the scatter of wooden splinters in the air, but the screech that followed may not have been Daniel’s doing at all. In a split second, a shadow bigger than anything I could have expected fell down from the trees, taking branches with it and snapping a thin birch in half as it landed. The amalgamate had changed. It always did. A flurry of arms and claws, some of them at its sides and others reaching out from its stomach, grasped together to wrap around the smaller beast. The giant stood, four of its hooves still on the ground but two of them in the air. Where its ribs would have once been underneath the fur, the bones had now sharpened into a gaping mouth, one that rippled and dripped in a blood-filled cavity. Antlers cracked against the tree limbs as it rose to its full height, lifting the root-faced man and holding his body immobile.

God, the way it screamed. A dry wheeze escaped his opened chest, but I swear that somewhere muffled in that twisted body of plant and human, I could hear small, pathetic, fearful whimpers…

Like a twig snapped in half, the giant tore his prey in two pieces, cracking the bone and bark with ease. It threw the bottom half aside, leaving the forest floor to reclaim it, while I watched in disgust as the cavity in its chest opened to welcome the rest. It ate him alive, swallowing his body piece by piece until the arms, hands, roots, and that one singular eye were all absorbed, only to find new homes.

Two of the small arms broke through the skin near the beast’s shoulders. Another clawed its way out of its chest. I became aware in that moment of just how many pieces had been taken: bones, hooves, claws, teeth. I could see so many human parts just in one glance, but I wasn’t going to count them. I didn’t want to.

The creature blinked, six eyes glimmering through the dark all at once, until a seventh opened blearily on its forehead for the first time.

If this thing had it, I was never getting it back.

“Oh, fuck this!” Daniel pointed the gun just as the amalgamate fell back on six legs and began slowly approaching us with the confidence of something that knew we couldn’t outrun it. This time, Dan didn’t hesitate. I heard one gunshot, then two, both of them aimed at the beast’s head. The first shot grazed an antler, which agitated but didn’t even seem to injure it, but the second one…

The bellow the beast made was ear-splitting. I felt as if my brain were melting inside of my skull and both hands covered my ears to keep it from dripping out. Daniel had hit the mark the second time, a stream of dark blood falling onto the grass beneath the monster’s front hooves. How Dan managed to hit a target in the center of that thing’s head, I’ll have no fucking clue as long as I live.

The beast stomped, flailing its head in anger, blood pouring from the eye socket. It was a small injury in comparison to this thing’s massive size, but goddamn if that didn’t piss it off. Each step I took backwards, I felt the earth shift a bit more. Those stomping hooves, that weight: he was going to cave us all in.

“It’s okay.” Dan gripped my wrist with a white-knuckle hold and took a large step back. The dirt shifted again, this time crumbling down into the dark pits of the mine. I looked behind myself and couldn’t even see the floor. “Just take one more step back. On three. One. Two.”

Daniel didn’t get to three. The amalgamate flailed its antlers one last time and then began to charge toward us, but those first two steps were enough to crack through the ground and send the earth crumbling beneath our feet. The cold shock of falling backwards, never knowing how far you’re going to fall or what you’ll be falling onto, was a lot like falling into water. Cold, overflowing bath water.

I remembered something then. That split second before my head hit the ground, I could see the tile on the bathroom ceiling where I used to live. It was ugly, made up of all these random scratches and shapes. I stared at one for the longest time because it looked a little bit like a man’s face. A man’s face with a big beard.

When Jennifer slapped me awake, choking on cold bath water, her stark-white face covered the view of the ceiling. After that day, I couldn’t see that face in the tile anymore no matter how long I stared.

There was no water this time, but the stone poking into my back was painful and cold all the same. I opened my eye to the dim, jagged opening above my head, a silhouette blocking the moonlight. It wasn’t Jennifer. Daniel was panting, out of breath, and the dust was still clearing around us. I was only out of my mind for a few seconds.

“Shit, are you okay?” He asked, slipping a hand behind my shoulders to help me sit up straight.

“My back hurts like hell. But yeah. I’m fine.” I squinted my eye up above us, the dust and dirt clouding my vision and stinging something awful. I half expected to see that beast had fallen in with us, but it was out of sight. Somewhere above us, but growing further away, I could hear the heavy steps of its hooves along the forest path.

“I didn’t kill it.” Daniel said, sitting down on the ground. In the pale sliver of moonlight we were offered, I could see his dirt-covered face, tan skin turned red with scratches and glistening with sweat down here in the hot, humid cavern. He wore a scowl. “...Sorry I shot your eye.”

I wiped my face, smearing the dirt that was already on my cheek. “It’s fine, Danny Boy. I didn’t have use for it anyways.” Painfully, I sat up on my knees and then forced my legs to stand. “We should see how far this mine goes, I guess. Got a flashlight?”

He was pulling his out of his bag at the same time I was, but the light illuminated only more unpleasant sights. I expected stone and coal down here, but at first glance, all I saw were roots. The roots of the trees above had taken over, fighting their way through the dirt. An old mine cart was tipped on its side, cocooned in the roots of a tree that had grown over it as if trapping it against the dirt.

We walked quietly, tiredly, and with purpose. Any desire I had to investigate was gone. But a shuffle of sound from my right made my heart skip a beat, my hand almost instinctively turning the light to see. The roots covered every inch of the walls, but somewhere in there, I could see the movement of something half-formed trying to break through. There wasn’t just one. If I looked up close and for long enough, I’d probably see plenty of animals from the forest trapped in those roots, all of them in various states of decay and all of them still moving. Some of the remains, both skeletal and fleshy, were draped in bits of rotten old cloth. I felt another wave of discomfort as I recognized an old firefighter’s coat, almost like the one I used to steal from my dad and wear around the house, only older. Much older.

“What do you think caused them all to come back like that?” Daniel was flashing his light on the opposite wall.

I wished I had an answer for him. “Honestly, I’m not sure anyone knows. Maybe nature’s just different here and no one thing made it that way.”

Daniel took in a deep breath through his nose, but in the dim light, I could see him wince. It smelled awful down here.

“That was a terrible answer,” he told me.

“I know.”

We followed the mine for about a mile, give or take. Maybe it just felt that long. When we emerged, a red glow in the sky signaled the very early hours of morning, but the fresh air was the most welcoming thing. I took in a deep breath and coughed, tasting dirt and ash in my lungs. I looked like shit. I probably smelled like shit. But seeing the treeline behind us would have been worth ten times as much dirt caked into my body.

We followed the treeline back towards the long gravel drive that Daniel took to work every day, and the same drive where I had been dropped off on my first day at work. Back then, I had no idea what all of this would become. And when I saw the tower again, I thought I’d feel a heavy pit of regret in my stomach. I didn’t, strangely. It’s weird how a place like that can almost feel like home when everything around it is a hundred times more dangerous.

Finn was waiting at the top when we got there, looking like a disappointed dad who had been waiting up for us all night. We got an earful, as I’m sure you can imagine, but in the end I think he was just glad to see that we came back at all. Hell, he even congratulated Dan on getting a single shot in, telling us that they could hear the beast screaming all the way from the main road.

You know, it seems like we didn’t do much. I didn’t get my eye back, we didn’t kill that antlered fuck, whom I’ve decided to call Big Boy from now on. But like all things, I guess it was a learning experience. Finn mentioned in passing that there’s been whispers among his old friends at the police station of forming a new branch, one he’s hopeful he’ll get placed in. Something about ‘trapping and removing’ the creatures that are already in the woods, hoping that maybe putting them down off-site will keep them from coming back to life. We were standing in the kitchen at the time. I poured distilled water into the coffee maker when I asked him if they’d ever really get it under control out here.

“Sometimes you can’t fight to win,” he told me. “You just fight until you can’t fight anymore.”

That was a bit of lukewarm optimism I could get behind.

With two cups of coffee in hand, I stepped out onto the fire escape, which we decided to keep open now that Finn forked over his security keys. The morning was cool and breezy, even if the view was garbage.

“Here.” I handed Dan a cup of coffee, one without blood in it this time. He just smiled and scooted himself over so I could sit next to him.

“You know,” he started. “We’ve got our Number 30 now.”

“Yeah?” I laughed.

“Yeah. We can go on that vacation we talked about.”

I leaned my chin against the railing for a second, but it wasn’t that comfortable. With a sigh, I decided that maybe Dan’s shoulder was a much more cozy spot to lay my head. I was correct about that.

“Where do you wanna go?” I asked.

I peeked up at him, shifting hair out of my eye as he cracked a stupid looking smile.

“I don’t know, I hear outer space is pretty decent this time of year.”

My laugh came out as a snort. Letting the coffee cup warm my hands, I took a long glance out at the tops of the trees, wondering how on earth we’d actually relax if we left this place behind.

My gaze caught a flutter of wings. A familiar face decided to show up then, Bartholomew the bird with its hazel, human eyes landing on a branch closest to us at the edge of the treeline. I watched him pick at a nest of twigs and grass. There was something in that nest - a squared edge of something black, a bit scratched, and made of plastic. I guess we know where that missing cassette tape went.

I stared at him, that shitty little bird. Then I broke contact to blink my one remaining eye.

He winked back with the same eye.

“They’re not all bad.” Daniel said. He took a sip of his coffee, but kept his shoulders still so that I didn’t have to move. “Yeah, some of them are downright rotten, but … some aren’t too bad, right?”

I gave a weak laugh and watched the bird hop away, glancing up at Dan again. “Yeah. They’re not all bad.”

I don’t know if I was talking about monsters anymore, or just people.

Some of them may have been just people.

...

This is Evelyn McKinnon, and on behalf of everyone here at 104.6FM, thank you for tuning in. 

---

Credits

 

We're Always on the Air at 104.6 (Part 4)

  

I spent a good two days in the hospital just learning how to navigate around the world with only one eye. In case you weren’t aware, getting used to lowered perception of depth is absolute, unadulterated bullshit.

Yes, this is Evelyn. And I’ll be honest with you. For a bit of time there, I actually considered giving up trying to tell my story. Then I remembered that Daniel could have quit the day he lost his hearing and still showed up to work a day earlier than expected. Call me stubborn, but I am not going to let that nerd show me up, since I’m pretty sure I’d never hear the end of it. So, here I am, back at the radio station and with more of a tale to tell.

I may have lost an actual part of my body, but I’d argue that Daniel got the worst of it. He was unconscious for two entire days after the ordeal in the woods, and when I was well enough to get out of my own room and visit him, they told me he was lucky that his spine hadn’t been cracked. He had fractured ribs, a ton of bruising, a pretty serious concussion, and needed stitches on the side of his head. As for me, the lost eye was the worst of it, and the rest of the bruises around my neck just made it look like I was into some seriously kinky shit.

The morning we were both free to go, we took a quiet, awkward taxi back to the radio tower. The drive was long and dreadful, seeing the mountains and trees come into view. Being in the hospital sucked, sure, but something about being in a different town around different people was almost like a vacation once we got over the horror and injury aspects of it all. When we arrived, we found Finn at the controls, looking tired but not necessarily unhappy to see us. Apparently the ordeal on the night of the wedding had been punishment enough for how much responsibility we dumped on him.

“You both look like garbage.” He said. Straight-to-the-point, honest, brutal. I appreciated that. I watched him scrunch his brows together, looking at me before pointing to his own eye. “When can you get that bandage off?”

“No idea.” I shrugged, then used one finger and a hollow cheek to make a ‘pop’ noise out of the corner of my mouth. “Scooped it out like a melon ball.”

Finn visibly cringed at that as he turned back to the desk. I heard a quiet murmur of ‘sweet Jesus’ under his breath, and I’ll admit that I was a little proud to get a reaction. I was sick and tired of crying and moping about it. If I couldn't make a joke at my own expense, who was I anymore?

“Anything happen while we were gone?” I asked.

Finn sat back down, though I half expected him to be in his car and halfway down the driveway as soon as we arrived. “A few things.” He said casually. “I got a nice complaint from the police chief for still carrying a gun to work, even though it saved your asses. So that’s confiscated now. Ugly bird won’t leave. There was some earthquake on Tuesday, caused a weird sinkhole out by the treeline that took down a security camera. I put it back up somewhere else though. We got some phone calls. Local news wanted to interview you both about Bernard. Police intercepted the plans and said ‘no’ to that idea though, and left it as a write-up in the paper about a bear attack or--”

“Who the hell is Bernard?” I interrupted.

Finn raised his brows, peering over one shoulder. “The three-year-old you chased into the woods.”

I shook my head, slumping down into the second chair while Dan busied himself starting a pot of coffee. “I feel bad for the little guy.”

“Why?” Finn asked. “He hardly had a scratch on him. You did good, kiddo.”

“No, because his name is Bernard. Have you ever met a Bernard that wasn't fifty five and balding? Or who fought in the goddamn civil war? Let's ask this toddler if he remembers the industrial revolution. And don’t call me kiddo.”

Finn pushed himself out of his seat with a chuckle, leaving me alone at the controls. “Good to have you back. Kiddo.”

I scanned the screens in front of me. The security cameras were up and running with nothing weird to see. All of the tabs on the screen were minimized in a perfect grid, and Finn had even mathematically timed a list of songs to fit each 30-minute block down to the goddamn second. This guy was better at my job than I was.

“You going home already?” I saw him walk away, but instead of grabbing his things and heading out the door, he was just strolling towards the kitchen.

“No ma’am,” he told me. “I’m getting overtime to relax and drink coffee while you do all the work this afternoon.”

Daniel appeared in the doorway then, two generic white cups in his hands. He passed one over to Finn with a grimace of apology. “The water’s rusty. I put extra creamer in it though.” He handed me the second cup, and I looked into the oddly orange-tinted liquid with some hesitation before realizing I had probably drank worse tasting and more harmful things. I gave it a sniff, and something about it made my stomach churn.

“It smells like iron.” I said, taking the smallest possible sip. “Bleh. It tastes like how biting your tongue feels.”

Finn was avoiding ingesting even a drop from the cup at all costs, giving it a scrutinizing look instead. Sure, rusted pipes weren’t pleasant, but I had been here long enough not to be picky about that sort of thing. He apparently didn’t agree.

“I should, uh … check the plumbing, probably.”

Daniel took Finn’s chair when the latter of the two disappeared through the kitchen door. We were back to where we used to be, just the two of us sitting in front of these headache-inducing screens, headsets sitting next to us and waiting to be used. The last few days had dragged on for so long that it felt surreal to be back, as if we had been away for months. I didn’t like this sense of newness that it brought, like sitting down behind the desks for the first time all over again.

“We’ve got some time to waste,” Daniel said, setting his coffee cup to the side of his keyboard. It always made me nervous how closely he placed it to our delicate technology. “There’s quite a lot of those cassette tapes to get through. Do you need a break from the creepy shit or do you want to put one in?”

My gaze left my coworker’s face and wandered to the corner of the room underneath one edge of the look-out window. The cassette player was sitting there neatly, the tapes stacked around it. “We’re never gonna get a break from the creepy shit,” I told him, marching over to the pile of tapes and searching for the next one on the list.

This recording was a relatively short one, but I still think it merits transcribing. Here’s everything Eric, or Number 7, had to say:

“It’s December Fifth, 2012. I’ve been told time and time again that we’ll find a Number Eight soon so that I can get some time out of this broadcast tower, but it hasn’t happened. I’m starting to think I’ll be waiting much longer than they make it sound.

One of the officers from the police station stopped by today, giving some information on Number Six. The executive decision was made to never tell his family how he had died. Instead, they told his wife and two sons that it was an animal attack - not entirely untrue, I suppose - and that the condition of his body would make a swift cremation preferable. Thankfully, they agreed. No one ever had to see him or the parts they didn’t recover, except for those of us here.

Our conversation was interesting for other reasons, however. The officer, whose name escapes me but started with an ‘F’ if I recall correctly, was curious about my time working in wildlife conservation. In turn, he told me an interesting fact about this location and what it used to be for.

At first glance, I could tell that it was supposed to be a firewatch or a ranger’s outpost of some sort, as the building is much older than the radio mast that reaches above it. He told me that there’s been an outpost in this exact location for almost a century. Before the radio was built, this entire area was blocked off. About two decades ago, fences were places all around the town to discourage people from going into the woods, though a few kids probably still tried. The watchtower itself was occupied by local law enforcement, but when the fences didn’t keep people from snooping, they had to disguise the tower as something more simplistic. Something they would trust, where they’d never question what was happening up there. A radio station.

According to the officer I spoke to, the first known solution to our unique problem was a tower that was built here before this building ever existed. Members of the town council would take turns keeping watch in the towers, and would ring a bell to chase off anything that came out of the woods, seeing as they hated the sharp sound that it made. It sounds like a rotten solution to me, considering they would have to ring it constantly to avoid anything coming through undetected. I’m glad our technology is more sophisticated today than it was back then. Still, an interesting fact.

It’s another fog day. I’m prepared this time, thankfully, and I don’t intend on ending up like my former coworker. The only thing distracting me is this bird sitting near the window. It’s the same bird from yesterday, sitting almost in the same exact spot. Something about its dark, beady eyes makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe by tomorrow, it’ll be gone.”

Of all the recordings, this was probably the least traumatic of them all, but somehow the most useful. When it was over and the tape was left with nothing but empty space, I ejected it from the machine and set it aside, both elbows on the table and a crinkle in my brow.

“It makes sense,” I remarked, eyes scanning the wall until they fell upon the red emergency button. “I guess that’s why we still call it ‘The Bell.’”

At that point, I was just about to put my headset on and get ready for a news broadcast when a pair of heavy footsteps began to stomp towards us from the kitchen. I recognized Finn’s various walks: sometimes he marched around like a herd of buffalo, sometimes he was quieter than a shadow on the floor. This time, his feet raced quickly towards us with more urgency than anger.

He grabbed both of our coffee cups, his own expression looking sick. I lifted one ear of my headset to hear him babbling on his way to the kitchen.

“The water’s not rusty. You don’t want this.”

I took off my headphones fully. “What?”

“I said, you don’t want this.” I could hear him pouring the coffee down the sink, both cups at once. Now, I know I should have just assumed that our sink is always going to be fucking weird, and left it at that. But curiosity tore me away from the comfort of my rolling chair and into the kitchen doorway, where the sight of the mess made my gut churn.

The sink was bubbling again. Large bubbles of thick red liquid popped and left splatters on the edges of the basin. Finn’s hands were covered in it, leaving fingerprints on the coffee cups he had stolen away from us. He turned to me, a scowl of disgust on his face, and showed me the red stain on his fingers.

“Smell the water.” He demanded.

“...No?”

“Smell it.”

“Let me clarify this time. Fuck no.”

Before Finn could further pressure me to inspect the scent of the dirty red sink, a large bubble popped and sprayed droplets across the side of his face, causing him to squint one eye and grimace as a shiver went down his spine.

“It’s not water.” he told me, wiping his face. “It’s blood. And it’s warm. Have you ever seen your sink do this before?”

I didn’t answer him right away, too busy wishing somehow I could wipe the taste off of my tongue. God, I drank that. I actually put that in my mouth. My own, actual human mouth. I was busy trying not to gag and all that Finn could ask was if this has happened before.

Strangely, the answer was yes. That fact made me want to rip the sink right out of the kitchen and chuck it into the woods.

“Ugh … uh, yeah. It has. Once, on the night I called you. While Elijah was here for the first time.”

Months earlier, when I spent my first few weeks here in the tower, I wondered how on earth a voice got in the pipes. Jennifer’s voice, specifically. What I still assume was some creepy parlor trick meant to scare us brought a new level of disgusting to light when I thought about where the water in our taps came from. The ground beneath us, the soil we shared with the forest, was as rotten as the roots that had squeezed the life out of my friend.

“We’re drinking bottled water from now on.” I announced, my voice a quiet rattle in my discomfort. “The cheap shit. I don’t care.”

Was it ever a wonder why this place was making everyone sick? I never slept, I hardly wanted to eat, and now the forest had taken a piece of me for its own. I was positive that I wasn’t the first person to feel like trash just from spending too much time here. And now there was blood coming up from the ground and into the water supply. God, this place was fucking unlivable.

I was sick of this kitchen, turning my back just to get away from it. There wasn’t any time to sit down, however, as a sound surprised both Finn and I: it was a knock on the door. Through the small glass window, just big enough to peek a face through, I could see someone on the other side, anxiously waiting to be invited in. Elijah was back, just when I thought we’d never see him again.

“Oh shit, it’s him again.” I whispered hoarsely to Finn, who was inspecting a partially-bruised tangerine from the kitchen. He put it down on the counter to peer around and catch a glimpse of our visitor from behind the glass. “Finn, stick around in case he tries any shit. Dan … don’t get punched in the nose again.”

I watched Elijah lift his fist to knock on the door again, but I had grabbed the handle and forced it open before he could. Before I could even get a word out to say ‘hello’ or ‘what the hell do you want?’, he was inside the station and pacing back and forth with his hands dug deep into the pockets of his sweater. It was July. He didn’t need a sweater.

“I had to come back. I can’t stop thinking about it.” He was speaking fast, one hand removed to gesticulate wildly as he spoke. He circled around the room, passing me and then passing the window. When he rounded the end of the table where Daniel sat, my coworker actively moved a few inches to keep out of his way. “I can’t fall asleep anymore. When I do, I … I see her every single time, as soon as I start to dream. I leave all the lights on, the television, the radio, anything to keep me awake.”

He stopped walking, having ended up next to the kitchen doorway. He leaned against the wall with his forehead pressed against it, one arm limp at his side.

“It doesn’t work. I look out my window and I see the woods. The trees. Every photo of her doesn’t look like her anymore. It looks like…” He was unwilling to say it, but I knew. After seeing her dead, it was hard to imagine her alive anymore. “Goddamnit, I can’t even turn on the radio without remembering it. I hear this broadcast, I hear you, and the sound makes my brain fucking itch!”

“Elijah,” Finn spoke sternly with a hand clapped down on the other man’s shoulder. “You need to relax. You need to talk to someone about this.”

Elijah laughed. He laughed and he shook his head as he pulled away from Finn’s grasp, resuming his quick stomp to the front of the room and out of reach. “I am!” He shouted, and when he would shout it a second time, he threw both hands up in the air. Inside his pocket, he had been carrying a semiautomatic pistol, which he waved up above his head.

“I am! I’m talking to you,” he pointed it at Finn. “And you, and you!” The gun faced Daniel and I both one at a time before centering back on the former police officer, who had changed his mind immediately about stepping forward to grab him.

The three of us were frozen in place as Elijah’s eyes darted, waiting to see who would move first. I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t stupid enough to get closer knowing that I couldn’t defend myself against a gun. However, I also never knew when to keep my mouth shut.

“You’re acting like a fucking idiot. Now please, put that down!” A tone of voice that I thought was demanding only earned a laugh from him.

“I’m the fucking idiot, huh?” It was chilling, the way he managed to laugh, grimace, and now shed tears all at the same time. His tired eyes were wet and his hand shook when the gun was pointed my way. “I’m the idiot, because I’m the only one looking for justice? How much did you hate her, Lyn? Enough to let her die and then sit up here like it never happened? We don’t even have a body to bury anymore and you’re up here talking about the weather, just fucking peachy!”

As soon as his finger began to twitch near the trigger, I could see Finn begin to move. He was side-stepping across the room from one end to the other, both of his hands up. But even as he inched closer, Elijah didn’t take the gun off of me.

“I didn’t hate her.” As my voice trembled, I became aware of Daniel’s hand now tightly gripping my own. “How could you think I wanted her to die? How? Elijah, I miss her so goddamn much, you don’t even realize! I want her back too.”

His trembling finger began to steady. The shake of the gun no longer rattled as loudly as it did before, his lips pursed in a thin frown. He was glaring, unblinkingly, taking heavy breaths through his nose.

“Then act like it.”

After he said those word, I expected the next loud noise to be the shot of the gun, but instead, an ear-piercing alarm cut into the open air, shrieking in the cramped space. I covered my ears, Daniel fidgeted with his hearing aid, and Elijah’s concentration broke long enough for him to drop the gun and put both palms on the sides of his head.

Finn had been circling around the room with a purpose. He had pushed open the fire escape door, which sounded the blaring alarm now tormenting all of our ears. As the siren continued, I watched Daniel as he released my hand and raced across the room, kicking the handgun across the floor to sit at Finn’s feet. He stooped to pick it up, releasing the magazine and shoving the now unloaded gun into his belt loop. With the same hand, he pulled out a ring of keys, using one of them to disable the alarm box next to the door.

I was instantly pissed that Finn had a copy of those keys, but somehow they never gave me one.

“Get out.” The former officer said, gesturing towards the fire escape. “You’re going to sit on the stair, both hands on the railing, and I’m going to watch you until the police get here. If you so much as move two feet, I’ll have this thing loaded and aimed before you reach the first landing down. Now go.”

Without his weapon, Elijah’s confidence seemed to drain. It was like watching dirt wash away under a water tap, there one moment and gone the very next. He had no words to speak, only a tremble in his breath as he followed Finn’s orders and left the room, his anger turning into what looked like shame, embarrassment, maybe disappointment.

“Wait, wait.” Daniel stopped Finn from closing the door behind Elijah, slipping through the crack just as it was about to latch. When he was outside in the sun, easing himself down next to the same man who just pointed a gun at him, Finn and I both exchanged looks.

“Your part-timer’s a dumbass.” He said to me.

And I agreed.

With the fear of danger in the room somewhat dissipated, I joined the party huddled around the fire escape, sliding through the doorway and leaning there against the outside wall. Finn had propped the door open with one of our chairs, making some distance while he used the phone.

Elijah wrapped his hands tightly around the railing. His eyes were squinting as he looked out across the treetops, blinded by the sunlight.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse as he spoke to Dan. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just hate this place and everything it’s done. I hate that I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Daniel didn’t attempt to touch him or even sit close, but there was compassion somewhere in the way he looked at him. We both understood, I think. The part with the gun was a little over-the-top, sure, but I think at one point or another, we both wished we could just leave and never think about the radio station again.

“What’s keeping you here?” Dan asked.

I saw Elijah shrug his shoulders after a moment of thought. “I don’t know. It’s where we lived together, it’s where we’ve been all this time.”

Daniel shook his head. “No. No, that’s a shit reason. If you hate it and the memories just hurt now, there’s no good reason to stay. You can take the good memories with you, you know. No one ever said you had to leave those behind.” Elijah rested his chin on the railing, eyes focused up at the clouds. When he didn’t answer, Dan spoke again. “You need to get out of town, Elijah. You don’t have to come back.”

Sometimes, I think living in a small town makes it seem impossible to leave. You forget that there’s more outside of the village limits and that those long, endless roads surrounded in woods or corn fields or abandoned barns actually go somewhere. We were sitting in a world of complete isolation, but it wasn’t forever. It only reached so far.

Elijah wiped his face, a few stray patches of tears having collected on the surface of his skin. One hand reached into his pocket, but he pulled it out quickly, a box of handgun bullets slapped down on the floor of the fire escape.

“Keep it.” he said, sliding the box towards Dan. “Keep the gun. I don’t need it and I don’t want it, but you might.”

Daniel’s silent thank you came in the form of a nod as he picked up the box, setting it in his lap. Moments later, Finn was at the doorway again, moving the chair out of the way and gesturing towards Elijah to stand up.

“I made the call,” he said. I expected him to follow it up with a warning for Elijah’s arrest, and I think the others did too. “I told them the alarm went off by accident. No one’s coming out. But you have to leave, Elijah, and you can’t come back. Can you promise me that?”

Elijah stood, his hands dropping from the railing and releasing the white-knuckle grip. “Yeah,” he said with a nod, glancing towards Daniel and then towards me. “I don’t think I’ll have a problem with that.”

The gun and bullets were stored safely in one of the desks between where Dan and I sat. Elijah left, getting in his car and disappearing down the gravel road. I stood outside to revel in the fresh air for just a few minutes, and realized something that felt strange to me. This was probably the last time I’d ever see Elijah again. I hope so, really. I hope he listens. I hope he finds something better.

But I wish he could have taken us with him.

This is Evelyn at 104.6FM, and the gun in the desk is giving me an idea.

I'm getting my eye back.

---

Credits

 

We're Always on the Air at 104.6 (Part 3)

  

I never thought I’d be taking over for Evelyn again, but here we are.

This is Daniel, and right off the bat, I will say that my coworker is doing about as well as can be imagined. She’s sleeping beside me, curled up in a chair meant for hospital visitors, the kind that squeaks if you even just think about moving. She’s in pain, but very much alive. We both are. How it ended up this way is a long story, but I’m skipping none of the details.

Finn kept true to his word. Days after Elijah had appeared and the fog made a mess of things at the station, the stress had slowed to a normal speed of ‘mellow weirdness’, and we began to see him returning to drop off deliveries and keep an eye on things. I remembered the relief on Evelyn’s face as she passed her keys over to him, finally feeling the weight of their presence lift as Finn took our responsibilities for the weekend. This was the first day off she had ever had since starting, unless being arrested counts as a vacation. No matter how many times she had stepped outside before this moment, this was the only time she actually seemed lighter in spirit as soon as her feet hit the ground.

“Where are you staying tonight?” I asked her, hoping the question wasn’t invasive. Luckily, she didn’t seem phased by it as she reached around to pat her back pockets, checking for her wallet for the tenth time.

“I’ve got enough for a motel. The one down by the main road. It’ll put me close enough to the shops to find some kind of dress to wear.”

I laughed. “I thought we agreed on matching tuxedos?”

Evelyn snorted when she laughed, climbing into the passenger seat of my car. Her eyes wandered down to the floor and I noticed the way she tried to be subtle about avoiding a few granola bar wrappers left abandoned, melted underneath her feet. I probably should have cleaned things up.

“If I can find two in both of our sizes, I’ll let you know.” She leaned back in her seat, buckling in and giving the tower one last look out the window before the wheels crunched through gravel. “Can you drop me off at Parker Street? Next to the old motel?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror, getting one last look at our workplace before the main road came into view. I had left so many times before, but it took me this long to realize that Evelyn had never actually left with me.

“Sure you don’t want to eat first? I’ll buy you lunch.” I asked as I scratched my face, the stubble reminding me to shave before tomorrow.

Evelyn was visibly thinking it over, her lips scrunched to one side of her face. “Maybe tomorrow before the wedding. I kind of just want to take a nap right now.”

I didn’t push, and she didn’t need any excuse. She deserved some time to herself that wasn’t spent in the broadcast tower, sleeping in a real bed even if it was covered in a few mysterious stains. “Alright,” I told her, distracted by the annoying blink of my turn signal as we entered town. “I’ll pick you up at noon, how’s that sound?”

The rest of the ride was quiet, brief, and with a few small intervals of actual comment when there was something worth talking about. Now and again, Evelyn would point out an old store that had shut down or tell me about which houses her elementary school friends used to live in before she moved away. As much as she said she hated this place, the freedom of leaving the radio tower seemed to awaken an appreciation for it.

The car was put in park, still running in silence. Evelyn unbuckled herself from her seat, nothing but her wallet and the clothes on her back to take with her. She still wore a clumsy smile, freckled cheeks pulled in a grin as her hand fell on my shoulder with a hard clap.

“Call me before you pick me up, okay? I sleep through alarms.”

“I’ll do that,” I assured her. “Now go get some rest. And a shower. See if they’ve got a free hair brush you can steal.”

She bit her tongue as she stuck it out at me, eyes squinting and nose crinkled. The annoyed expression didn’t last though, and I was lucky enough to get a small glimpse of a smile before she shut the car door, tripped over the curb, and straightened up again on her way to the motel entrance while giving one last pat to her back pocket to check for her wallet.

I spent that night the way I spend a lot of nights. That is to say, not doing much at all before falling into bed. I thought for a split second about texting Evelyn, asking if she’s doing alright, before remembering that she’s safer now than she ever was. I’ll admit that there are many times when I sit awake at night and wonder why the hell we still bother going back. Thinking about her set up in the motel, both of us free from the broadcast station, made me ponder how we’d get away with just … leaving. It would be easy, wouldn’t it? It would take hardly any effort at all to just get in the car and drive, dividing our money to get as far as we could and sleeping in the back seat if we had to. But somehow it still felt wrong. To give up a burden we chose would just push it onto someone else who didn't even ask for it. I don’t claim to be a perfect person, but I don’t think either of us are that heartless.

As I laid down in bed, putting my phone next to me on a charger, I was about to close my eyes before I saw the glow of the screen light up and the motion of vibration. It was after eleven o’clock and I half-expected it to be some spam email, but was surprised and amused to see three messages from Evelyn:

“Holy shit they have REAL COFFEE in the machine!!!!”“Not ducking gasoline!!”

“*fucking not ducking. Autocorrect can suck my ass.”

I snorted, eyes squinting in the bright light of a screen in a pure dark room as I texted her back.

“Save it for the A.M. and go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And she did. At noon, just as I promised, I stopped by the motel just as she walked out, a department store bag full of wrinkled clothes in one hand. I tried hard not to audibly laugh as she approached the car. She had found a dress to wear, which was simple yet attractive, but the part that made me chuckle was that she still had a pair of dirty old boots on beneath the knee-length skirt. That aside, she looked neater than I had ever seen her before, somewhat rested and with her hair down and combed properly. It looked like she made some small attempt at makeup on her eyes, but there were patches of red skin near her temples and cheeks as if she had rubbed it off and tried several times to put it back on. Still, she looked good. She looked different.

“Hey, Danny. Look at you! We’re going to be the fanciest assholes at the diner.” That was the first thing she said to me, and at that point, I knew that the change of appearance did not change the person. I was glad of that.

“You look nice for a change too.” I complimented. “And here I thought you’d find a tuxedo.”

Evelyn smirked, buckling herself in. “I was going to buy one but I didn’t want to outshine you. Besides, I can’t tie a tie.”

I glanced down at the blue tie at my collar, pinching the top of it and pulling it off the shirt in one motion. It was a clip-on, which I put back in place instantly. “Me either.”

Once we arrived at the diner, which was the only place to eat in town, I felt fully immersed in the culture of ‘small town paranoia’. I hadn’t lived here long enough to experience the feeling of being a local, but from the glares of townsfolk sitting at the bar, I got the distinct feeling I never would.

Evelyn was being very precious with her coffee cup, doing her best not to spill it on her dress. As we waited for our orders, she glanced around but specifically avoided looking at any one person for too long. In towns like these, everyone knew one another. Everyone knew who moved in, who left, who came back, and who got into trouble. She quickly brought her attention back to me, resting an elbow on the table with her hand cupping her chin.

“What’s the bride’s name?” She asked. Goddammit, I felt like an idiot then. I had mentioned her to my family, but never even thought to introduce them the other way around.

“Her name’s Adriana. She’s sweet, you’ll like her.” I hummed for a second, trying to think of who else she might meet. “You’ll get to meet my parents, aunts, uncles … grandma only speaks Spanish but you’ll meet her too.”

Evelyn nodded. “Don’t try chatting with grandma, got it.”

“Oh, no, she’ll still talk to you for an hour whether or not you understand her.” I actually made Evelyn laugh that time. A real laugh.

We saw people come and go through the diner, tables filling and emptying and filling again. We talked the whole time about anything other than work or the woods. She asked where I went to college, where I grew up, where I’ve worked. We bonded over shared stories of crummy retail job woes and our weirdest former roommates, then complained about how bad the nachos were while simultaneously trying to get one another to eat an entire hot pepper in one bite. It was almost two-thirty and we were fifteen photos into a mobile album of my parents’ dogs when we realized we weren’t alone anymore.

A group passed by, made of four older men all dressed eerily identically in denim and trucker hats. The last one passed us, his eyes peering from Evelyn’s face to mine with a frown hidden somewhere in a bushy gray beard. He stopped, took two steps back to stand next to our table, and spoke to us.

“I know you two.” His voice was a dry old croak. “Heard ya’ over the radio.”

Evelyn’s gaze darted from him to me as the most uncomfortable smile stretched across her face, more like a grimace than anything else. “Hey, thanks, glad to hear someone actually listens--”

“It won’t do any good.” He interrupted, shutting her up in an instant. “Nothin’ will stop it. We’ve been tryin’ for decades, you’ll be tryin’ forever. … Tryin’ as long as you last.”

It’s amazing how quickly everything seemed to dim, like the life had been sucked out of the room and the happy conversation meant nothing anymore. Evelyn was silent, I was silent, and the man took that moment to draw in a slow, deep breath. Then he tapped the front of his cap and nodded in farewell, saying only one thing: “Good luck.”

As unpleasant as that was, perhaps the distraction was a good thing. It was getting into mid-afternoon now and we had a bit of a drive to get to the wedding, but Evelyn didn’t seem to mind the prospect of getting out of the village limits for a day. After getting in the car and passing by the last tiny corner store before the stretch of road began, the easy feeling was coming back. We rolled down the windows to feel the breeze in the mountains, keeping the radio off the whole way.

It really was a wasteland. As soon as we left the town and rounded the mountain range that separated our little piece of civilization from the rest of the world, there was nothing to see for miles. A small rest stop with one gas pump flew by, the inside of the building dark and the door practically hanging on one hinge. After that, there was the endless expanse of forest, which was quite honestly an even less pleasant sight. All the way there, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone spotted strange things on this side of the wood.

The sooner all traces of that town disappeared, the better. Evelyn was talkative, but in a nervous sort of way, asking if I thought my family would like her or if they’d try to get her to drink any champagne. “Don’t worry,” I assured as we pulled up to the building, several familiar faces making their way in. “I’ll make sure you stick to orange juice tonight.”

…

It was oddly refreshing to sit through the ceremony, not only because it was nice to see family and loved ones, but because it was a big reminder of how things still went on as normal with the rest of the world. My cousin and her new husband looked happy. The children attending were whispering and being quickly shushed by their parents. My grandmother was loudly crying in joy from the front row, which made Evelyn snort with laughter even though I could see a trace of her own heartfelt smile. None of that reminded me of the woods or the radio tower. None of it scared me. The normal world was still there, and it wasn’t as far away as I thought it was.

The reception was a whirlwind. My family was naturally loud, talkative, and energetic, but all of that seemed to hit us like a brick wall when we arrived at the post-ceremony celebration. I watched Evelyn’s face become blank and stunned, caught in the headlights the moment the door opened and we were bombarded by at least five different people. Everyone wanted to know who she was, where I’d been, and as my coworker was getting her third hug from a great aunt who assumed that she was my significant other, we made the decision that it was time to sit down before we were ambushed any further.

“Your family is sweet.” She said once she had a second to sit and take a breath. I laughed, knowing what she meant by “sweet”.

“Sorry, I know they’re a bit much. I only told them good things about you.”

“Really?” She had that shit-eating grin again. “Did you tell them about my terribly crude language and all the highly infectious diseases I’m carrying?”

“Oh yeah, and I warned them about the smell too.”

She punched me in the shoulder and we had a good laugh before my mother decided to make an appearance at last, recognizing Evelyn by association. At first, it looked like my poor coworker was about to have an allergic reaction to the sheer amount of hugs she had been receiving, but eventually the socially exhausted smile was mingling with a real, genuine one. I left them to chat for a moment, came back with a drink for myself and, just as I had promised, passed a cup of orange juice over to Evelyn. I’m not one to take back a promise.

Before we left for the night, I learned a few things. I learned that I’m not the biggest fan of champagne, that jokingly calling Evelyn 'La Llorona' is a quick way to get smacked by my grandmother, and that neither of us have any rhythm for dancing. She graced me with one slow dance near the end of the night, stepping on my toes at least a dozen times. I didn’t complain. We both left with a smile, and every sore toe and scuffed shoe was worth that.

The drive back to town was a long one, but it started on the right foot. We laughed about a few particular family members after a few drinks, joked about terrible dancing. It was one of those moments where I realized that Evelyn and I were actually friends. However, things felt different the moment we realized where we were headed, driving down the winding stretch of dark, forested road. It wasn’t until the mountain range came into view beside us that the full weight of our return began to eat away at the glow of a somewhat casual evening.

“I don’t want to go back yet.” Evelyn said, faced away from me as she stared out the passenger’s seat window. “Not until morning, at least.”

If I had my way, we wouldn’t have to go back at all. “You wanna crash at my place? You can have the bed.”

She actually seemed to consider it for a moment, sitting stiff in her chair and looking out the windshield, at the rear-view mirror … anywhere but at my face. After a moment of silence, she cocked her head to the side with a sudden idea just as I turned the car to enter town.

“Let’s go to my place,” she said. I was perplexed, but too curious of what she had planned to say 'no'.

We passed the apartments, the residential district, the shops. I was driving slow, expecting her to tell me to stop or take a turn at any given road, but she didn’t. She waited until we were driving by the old elementary school to point out my window at a small stone driveway near the park.

“Here. Let’s pull in here.”

I did as she said, parking the car right in front of the playground where the children would play during school. It was empty, as to be expected, and behind the swings and slides was an upward hill that met with the thick, dreary treeline.

Evelyn gave me a look, eyebrows raised, nudging her head towards her door as she unbuckled herself. At the time, I didn’t understand why we were there, but she was so confident that it was where we were supposed to be. She got out of the car, stretching her legs after the long drive, and I followed right behind her.

“So…” I started, hands in the pockets of my black dress pants. “This is …?”

“My last residence.” Evelyn stated it without hesitance, as if it was common knowledge. “I went to school here as a kid for a few years before we moved. When Jenny and I moved back and I ended up losing a place to stay, I slept underneath the slide for a little while. So this is it. This is my place.”

She passed underneath the monkey bars, lifting a hand to tap the metal above her head. I, on the other hand, had to duck to get underneath it, all the while trying to think of a response. The playground looked used and well-loved, years of rust covering the equipment and the colorful paint chipping. The swing-set made the most chilling sound as the chains rattled in a light breeze.

I looked at the slide, which was made of yellow plastic and faded in the middle from years of use. Underneath was simply wood chips, as well as a few stray pieces of trash from children and probably adults who had been hanging out after school. It didn’t look like the best place to sleep.

“I’m … sorry.” How else should I have reacted?

“Shit, don’t say you’re sorry.” She laughed as she grabbed a swing-set chain, propping one boot-clad foot on the seat and instantly making herself taller as she slowly swayed back and forth. “Just … ask if the wood chips ever poked my ass. Make a joke about it. It doesn’t have to be awkward anymore, Danny.”

Alright. I decided it wouldn’t be awkward anymore. I gave her an embarrassed smile, sitting down in the swing beside her own, and wondered when she decided to start calling me ‘Danny’.

Evelyn plopped her heels back down in the wood chips to properly take a seat on the swing, using one foot to slowly tip forward and back. We were both facing the woods, a feeling that brought me discomfort and I could only imagine it did the same for her.

“Finn told you about the abductions, right?” She asked, and I nodded. “He said the kids were being lured into the woods outside the school. You think he meant right here?”

A chill went up my spine and I chuckled an awkward, reluctant sort of laugh. “Oh god, don’t say that. At least wait until we leave to put that image in my head.”

Evelyn made a spooky ‘wooo’ noise and wiggled her fingers at me. This was how she did things. This was how we both did things. If we were scared and uncomfortable, we had to laugh or else we would go mad.

We were swinging next to one another in silence for a few minutes before eventually Evelyn began to slow, her foot nearly motionless on the ground and no longer propelling her forward. I noticed the way she sat perfectly still, eyes stuck on the wood chips between her feet.

“The wedding was nice.” she said, a touch of sorrow in her tone. “Thanks a lot for inviting me.”

“Oh, of course. Well, technically my mom invited you, but --”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have gone if you didn’t say I could go with you.” She was sitting still now, looking at me instead of at the ground. There was a sad, comfortless expression on her face, as if the fake smile she wore caused her physical pain. I didn’t know what to say to make it better. “You know, I hoped I’d be going to Jenny’s wedding someday. Maybe be a bridesmaid, help her get ready, go to some stupid party with all her other girlfriends that I would complain about for weeks.” There was that joyless chuckle again. “...I feel bad for Elijah though.”

I had stopped swinging and leaned my head against one chain. “I feel bad for him too,” I said. “Even if he tried to break my nose.”

Here we were again, in a situation that wasn’t funny, still chuckling about it. Though to be honest, the moment I got out of my car and ended up getting punched in the face was rather hilarious in hindsight.

Evelyn kicked at the ground, pushing herself back to start swinging again. She leaned back to look up at the sky, and when I copied her and did the same, I found it surprisingly dizzying. The stars were bright on a clear evening, out here away from the lights in town and far from any big cities.

“You can usually see Mars this time of year.” She said, pointing up. But the hunt for the red planet was cut abruptly short. We both heard the sound of footsteps through dry grass and leaves: small ones, moving quick and clumsily. Evelyn straightened up while I stood with eyes squinted into the treeline, expecting to see some normal or abnormal creature crawling out from the brush. What we saw instead was a figure, small and quick, hidden in shadow and on its way towards the woods. It was a child, a little boy dressed in red pajamas, and we both watched him make those final steps into the forest towards something tall and obscured in the shadow of the trees.

I thought Evelyn was going to fall off of the swing, her legs landing pigeon-toed as she rushed to stand up. This was exactly what we feared.

“Did you see him?” She asked, but she didn’t need to. I was already on my feet and ready to follow. “Was he following something?... Goddammit, Dan.”

She wasn’t swearing at me, but rather, her exasperation came from a place of concern. Neither of us waited around to discuss what we were going to do, but we somehow agreed in silence that the only option was to catch up with the boy before there was no chance of ever finding him again in one piece.

I got to the top of the hill before her, but stopped to grab her arm and pull her the rest of the way. Though out of breath, she was the first to rush ahead and pass the treeline that separated our safe, normal world from one that was wild and unpredictable. In the darkness of misshapen blobs of shadow where it was difficult to tell the difference between a bush and an animal, our eyes were in constant search of a flash of red, a bit of movement, or the glow of eyes.

The forest echoed our steps. I could no longer tell what sounds were coming from us and what sounds were coming from him, but twice Evelyn stopped in her tracks and grabbed my elbow as we kept still. I felt my own heartbeat, pulsing out of control. Distantly, I heard the sound of small, clumsy footsteps, sometimes running and sometimes walking. Evelyn heard it better than I did, holding up two fingers: two sets of feet. We didn't wait around before speeding through the upward tilt of the hill.

“Where the hell did he go?” Evelyn grabbed a tree, panting for breath and turning to look behind us. I could no longer see the entrance to the woods and there was no telling how far we had gone. I couldn’t have even told you the direction we were facing after making so many turns. When we found the boy, then we would worry about what to do next. He was so young, so small … I knew neither of us could live with ourselves if we were the last ones to see him alive but refused to do anything.

“I don’t see him anymore.” I told her, legs stiff as we soldiered on at a slower pace. We had both kept our voices to whispers, but we were already lost and in plain view - there was no point in staying hidden anymore. “Hey! Little boy! We’re here to help you! Where are you?”

A small group of bats tittered and squeaked above as they abandoned the tree beside us, while in the bushes, the rustling of rodents moved further away. It left the forest in an eerie silence for several seconds, before Evelyn perked up and pointed a finger past me.

“I heard crying.” She said. “In that direction.”

The constant, dull ring in my ears drowned out the noise almost completely, but when I paid close attention, I could make out some suggestion of a high-pitched, uneven sound. It was the sobs and hiccups of a child, moving further away from us until I could no longer pick it up. But Evelyn could. She seemed to realize this, as she took the lead and guided us both through a section of close-growing pines that scratched at my neck as we pushed their branches aside.

We were running full speed when we noticed a flash of red up above. It was on the ground, crumbled up in a heap. My heart sank, hoping and praying that the only red stain in my vision was the color of his pajamas. As we grew closer, we noticed him moving, rocking back and forth. He was sitting on the ground, hunched over and pounding little fists into the dirt.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t move. It’s okay.” Evelyn dropped down to the boy’s level. He looked alarmed to see us at first, his tear-streaked, red face ready to burst into terrified wails until he realized he was looking at two very ordinary humans. He didn’t say anything, but it made my stomach sick with dread to see him crawling towards my coworker and I as if looking for someone to comfort him. He had to be no older than three. Shit, this kid was hardly big enough to upgrade from a crib. This tiny thing could have been dead, and the sight of that is something I don’t think I would ever recover from.

“Let’s start walking. We’ll either find our way back or we’ll see the radio tower, one or the other.” I offered a hand at Evelyn’s elbow while she preoccupied herself in picking up the boy, who seemed more than willing to cling to her rather than walking on his own.

“Shit, he’s shaking like a leaf.” She told me. I almost commented that maybe she shouldn’t cuss around a three year old, but it wasn’t the time or place for that.

“Lyn, have you been keeping track of how many turns we’ve made?”

She grumbled at my question. “No. I haven’t. And I can’t see a damn thi--”

She was silenced, jumping with a start as the tree branches behind her cracked and snapped as if something moved very quickly through them. For only a second, I saw a dark shape taller than myself, but it appeared and disappeared through dense shadow in an instant. She backed towards me, holding the little boy tighter as he whined and hid his face in her shoulder.

“Walk faster. Walk faster.” She was taking quick steps, trying not to jostle the child in her arms while keeping her head turning in every direction. The look of panic on her face was one I had only seen once before. It was the same face she wore the night the power went out, but this time, we were in enemy territory without a generator. They were already here and looking for us, fog or no fog.

“No!” We heard a shrill voice. It was the boy in the red pajamas, pointed behind us. “No, no!”

We stopped, one last crunch from both of our feet bringing silence around us. And then, another crunch, and another, moving agonizingly slow. I hated to turn, but we had no choice. My mouth was dry and my heart was racing as I glanced over my shoulder, seeing a figure standing perfectly still a few yards away with a blank, wooden stare pointed in our direction. His face was gone, or rather, it was covered. His head was encased in tree roots and his clothes were torn to reveal a skeletal cavity with vines and bark twisting into his hollowed-out body. He creaked when he moved like a brittle tree being blown in the wind, swaying on the spot. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps if we stayed quiet and still, the blind creature wouldn't know we were here.

But then I blinked, and he was closer. The sound of twigs snapping followed as he took long, huge strides towards us on legs that creaked like wooden planks every time he bent his knees. He made no sound and had no voice, as if the human inside of the mask had been eaten away entirely. The boy screamed and Evelyn and I both began to run, her speed impaired by the weight in her arms. She was screaming at me, yelling many words I couldn’t make out but a few that I could. Most of them were exclaimed swear words, but I distinctly heard one sentence: “don’t look back”.

I didn’t, but my mistake was when I chose to watch her instead of watching where I was going. My feet hit the edge of a thorn bush, and I was more startled by the impact than actually injured. It was enough to falter my steps, and in that moment, my upper body was moving forward faster than my legs were. I began to stumble, stuck in place, and the final impact that I felt before hitting the ground would be the last clear thing I fully remembered.

There was a blur of activity. Before my head hit the forest floor, a sharp pain sent a surge through my back. A heavy weight was pressed in the center of my body, spine aching as I tried to rise onto my knees only to be pushed back down by the back of my head. I remembered the smell of leather and mud, the feel of hard rubber kicking the side of my head. Twigs wrapped around my shoulders, but they weren’t twigs at all. They were wooden hands, flipping my body over until I saw the sky and the silhouette of the tree-faced man disappearing into the trees after cracking his boot down into the middle of my chest. My sight was becoming nothing but a blur, seconds stolen away as everything above me moved faster than it did in real life.

I heard the little boy crying. I heard Evelyn yelling at the top of her lungs. One moment, I was looking at the stars, and the next I was looking at her face as she pulled me by the sleeves of my shirt, trying to drag me through the dirt with the boy clinging to her hip.

“Danny, you have to get up!” Her voice was distorted, sometimes quiet and sometimes loud and shrill. “Dan please.”

I felt the grip of her arms as she attempted to lift me, but I couldn’t move. My head felt heavy, my arms felt non-existent, and consciousness was there and then gone with every passing second.

A few moments were lost from me, but what remained of my awareness was brought back by a scream. Evelyn was telling the boy to run, her voice a dry crackle, and in an instant the warmth of her hold was torn away as she was ripped from the ground upwards. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t even move my head. I could only watch the towering man, his wooden face featureless but his posture predatory, as he held her in the air by her throat.

I was incapable of making a sound as the creature’s free hand rubbed her forehead, her hair, pulling it out of her face to inspect the look of terror that she wore. The only thing I could do was watch in silence, struggling to breathe, while her flails turned into desperate kicks for freedom.

The creature traced lines on her face with a long, sharp claw. That moment was so agonizingly slow, before one finger found the top of her eyelid and pushed it upwards, revealing a frantic, darting eye. Every single part of me wished that I couldn’t see this, but more than that, I wished I could do something. Even in the blur, there was no mistaking the choking scream that tore through her throat, the sound of sharp edges digging into soft skin, and the color of blood dripping onto the grass and dirt below us.

And she cried. She cried a wail that hurt more than anything else to hear. I watched the monster drop her into a huddled mess on the ground, where she moved and writhed in any attempt to get away. One hand covered her face but in the darkness, I could see blood seeping through her shaking fingers. She crawled on her knees and one elbow, one visible eye open wide in shock while the root-faced man held his own hand up to his chest, putting a mass of blood and flesh into his body cavity as if it were a pocket. The entire time, Evelyn never stopped whimpering and gasping for breath in sheer panic.

I blinked, and the creature was gone. I blinked again, and a dark shadow loomed over me, swaying and glaring down as if looking for signs of life. I watched it tilt its head upwards, and from beneath its chin, a single human eye was staring down at me. I only saw it for a split second, and then the smell of leather and the pain of impact against the side of my head sent everything into cold, quiet darkness.

Like being in a dream, nothing was linear and nothing was altogether there. I no longer heard Evelyn’s sobs, but I heard the distant voice of a man. Was it far away, or was I not entirely in my head anymore? My sparse hearing picked up the pop of gunshots, then the sound of a screech and frantic steps, then all I registered was pain in my chest and neck as I was dragged immobile through the grass. I opened my eyes for only a second to see heavy black boots and a pair of denim jeans above me, then the limp, auburn strands of hair from a body hanging over a broad shoulder. The next time I closed my eyes, it must have been for a good, long while.

…

I didn’t wake up until two days later. I heard the beeps of machines, smelled the sharp scent of disinfectant, heard distant muffled voices. It was a chore to open my eyes, and even when I did, there was nothing but a blur of white in my vision until I gained the awareness to blink. Underneath me was a stiff, but warm mattress, and my fingers touched the smoothness of wires and cords.

I was looking up at a hospital ceiling, lying in a white bed. I glanced down at my body and saw the bandages peeking out from the neck of the blue paper smock I had been dressed in. Tightness around my head suggested my forehead had been wrapped as well. Before I had a chance to ask what day it was out into the open room, a quiet voice greeted me from my bedside.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” My tongue and throat were dry, which I would have expected once I realized I had been asleep for two days. I turned my head and saw her sitting in the seat beside me, curled with her knees up and her head leaning on the arm of the chair. It was Evelyn, a paper bracelet on her wrist, wearing a hospital gown two sizes too big and looking at me with one tired eye and the other covered by a large white bandage.

“Evelyn, what day i--”

“It’s Wednesday.” She said. “...It’s good to see you, Danny.”

I could say the same. My final thoughts before being plunged into a near-comatose state were the bitter realizations that we all could have been dead. The idea crossed my mind for one dreary second that perhaps we were.

“Where’s the little boy?” I asked her, which she answered after taking a heavy breath and exhaling a sigh.

“He’s okay.” Her words washed me with relief. “He’s okay … Finn found us. Chased the thing away and called the police. But the boy wasn’t hurt and is home with his family now.”

I was suddenly caught by the impulse to reach out my hand, and did it before even thinking it over. Evelyn looked at my open palm for a moment before resting her head on one hand and holding mine in the other, our arms creating a chain between us.

“Can they fix it?” I asked her. “...Your eye.”

It was a stupid question, but she didn’t tell me that. She just shook her head and spoke in a hoarse croak, frown pulling at her lips. “He took it. The whole thing.”

“Fuck...” I looked for the right words, but there weren’t any. “Evelyn. I’m so sorry.”

She had no witty jokes this time, no sassing, no crude humor. Evelyn’s ‘Evelyn-ness’ was faded. As we looked at one another across the way with our heads both flat to the side, I was remembering this moment as it happened before.

She was lying next to me on the floor of the radio station. My ears were stinging, her voice was far away. It was my first day on the job when I saw her mouth the words:

“Wanna sleep on an actual mattress?”

This time, I was the one to say it. I watched her stone cold expression change as a stiff lip began to quiver, and after a moment of silent hesitation, she nodded her head. Our hands slipped away from one another as she pushed herself out of the chair, where I saw for the first time how many bruises littered her shoulders and neck. I gritted my teeth with stiff discomfort in an attempt to move over a few inches, but it was enough for her. My coworker, who once upon a time wouldn’t even shake my hand, crawled into the bed beside me and laid her head on my shoulder without a single word. Her hand, spotted with freckles and fingernails bit down to the quick, rested on my chest where my pulse was steady and warm.

This is Daniel Esperanza from 104.6 F.M., and I’m lying here hoping this is the last blood sacrifice either of us will ever have to make. 

---

Credits

 

We're Always on the Air at 104.6 (Part 2)

  

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. 

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Credits