Lost Signals (21 page)

Luke and Mark had beaten the shit out of each other before, Mark usually receiving the worst of it, but lately Luke was all too often on the verge of violence. His body language insinuated he wanted to hurt someone and it wasn’t like he needed much provocation—he’d more than his fair share of assaults and disorderly conduct on record.

“I know how to press play and record at the same time.” Mark’s sneer fell immediately when he noticed Luke’s expression.

Luke leaned his face in an inch from Mark’s. “Or maybe this is another of your faggy musical experiments. You
are
the only queer here wearing makeup.”

Mark grinned, stained teeth and deep red tongue contrasted against black lips.

“Maybe you’re both right.” Molly joked, smoothing down the sharp edges of tension in the room.

Luke threw his half-full beer can across the room with all his strength. It hit the wall, clattered noisily to the floor.

Gavin winced. The beer can’s impact left a crescent-shaped gouge in the drywall. Hops scented foam hissed on the concrete.

Luke laughed at Gavin’s reaction. He tapped his foot against the pedal of the kick drum. “Don’t just stand there, you fucking subhumans. Let’s play.”

***

Molly had the house to herself. She could only watch so much news coverage on the fall of the Berlin Wall before her brain glazed over, so she turned the barely functioning TV off. Gavin had gone out with his girlfriend who refused to step foot on the property. Claimed the house gave off “bad vibes”. Luke was elbow-deep in antifreeze doing an opening shift at the oil change place. Who knew where Mark went when out of the house.

She opened Mark’s bedroom door. Intruding was out of character for her, but she’d put off returning the books she’d borrowed for far too long. She’d been curious about his metaphysical beliefs, but his occult literature hadn’t been particularly illuminating. Not much more than a hodgepodge of Aleister Crowley chicanery, bastardized Austin Osman Spare, and clichéd horror novel tropes. Far too many of those who’d written about the “occult arts” seemed more interested in starting sex-cults than expanding their awareness. Molly wasn’t convinced that Mark had any more insight into magick than she. He certainly hadn’t shown any signs he knew how to “utilize one’s will to formulate a desire, to form a belief to come to fruition”.

Whatever the hell that meant.

The stereo hissed with static. Of course Mark had left the dial on 6EQU-J5.

His bedroom creeped her out. Worn underground club fliers curled from the wall, tape no longer sticky enough to hold them flat. Metal band posters covered the ceiling,
Malfeitor
,
Burzum
, images of occult sigils and demonic figures leering behind the various band’s names. Bottles, glasses, and jars covered every available surface. Most held what appeared to be sand or soil. Stacks of books on the afterlife, witchcraft, and music functioned as makeshift tables to hold more bottles. The place hadn’t been cleaned since they’d moved in. A thick layer of cobwebs sagged in the corners near the ceiling. The air smelled of cheap weed and stale sweat.

She set the books on top of the dresser, next to a collection of neatly arranged antique poison bottles. As she turned to leave, her elbow bumped the furniture. The bottles wobbled in such a way she could tell they were filled with a viscous fluid. The station’s hissing rose in volume.

Curiosity got the better of her. She popped the cork on a mercury bichloride vial.

It was filled with semen.

She gagged, put everything back the way she’d found it. Mark must have been using his fluids for rituals. Some kind of sex magic. Something she had no business knowing. Whatever he did in the name of his religion was no concern of hers.

Something within the radio station’s white noise coalesced into a string of words, an ambiguous chain of sentences all the more disturbing for being unintelligible.

She quickly left the room.

***

The bedroom door slowly swung open.

Mark’s nude corpse hovered in the air. Left arm hanging limply, right wriggling its fingers. Small flaccid penis against pale skin. He marched in place, skinny legs bent at the knees. A grotesque puppet dance.

A woman’s voice spoke soothingly from the stereo.

You’re listening to radio chaos from the Shores of Nowhere.

Mark’s forearms were laid open, red meat and fatty tissue split wide. An umbilical of milky ectoplasm poured from the gaping wounds to a ceiling no longer visible from the miasma of a silvery gray substance filling the room. Wet ectoplasmic strings tugged at his limbs, snaked in and out of his ears, nostrils, and toothless mouth. He floated a foot above the ground, stumbled against the furniture. A clumsy marionette.

Corpse paint gave him a silly clown face. There was nothing malevolent here. Just a sad, lost young man wearing ridiculous makeup he’d hoped would make him appear intimidating. His vacant eye sockets winked like a perineal reflex.

Molly knew she was having the nightmare again. The consequence of dead-end jobs and grandiose dreams of musical success that had no chance of succeeding. All that anxiety cascading over her soul resulted in epic night terrors again and again.

Molly’s mind was reserved despite the grotesque corpse hovering before her. She should fight back, sink her fists into Mark’s cadaver, tear at the soft pale ectoplasmic strands. Maybe then she’d escape this bleak little town. Hitch a ride to another less depressing though equally squalid burgh where her father would drive out to meet her. Take her home to the old neighborhood, old bedroom, old rituals, old day to day routines. Finish her degree in anthropology, perhaps even work part-time at her parent’s community theater. Maybe she could feel occasional bouts of joy and not dream about ending her own life minute by minute, day to day.

Solace by delusion.

But she didn’t fight back. Mark’s body wasn’t frightening. It was pathetic. A ridiculous thumb push puppet flailing about. Hodgepodge phantom stitched together by depression, exacerbated by anxiety. There was no intention in a corpse’s brain. No desire to harm. Mark’s remains existed solely as a demonstration of just how meaningless any decision would ultimately become.

The woman’s radio voice sputtered in an out of tune.
Be sure to tune into 6EQU-J5 tomorrow night when we’ll listen to the sounds from the deepest depths of the darkest places.

***

Molly sat at the edge of her bed staring out the window at the gray trees devoid of leaves.
That fucking nightmare again.

It’d been three days since she’d gone into Mark’s bedroom. She’d suffered the same nightmare every evening since.
So stupid.
Why hadn’t she just dropped the books off in front of his door
 
?

Here she was stuck in a dead town decorated with dead foliage populated by people who might as well be dead. Her only career prospect was trudging up the retail ladder at the department store. Or failing employment, attending the community college 30 minutes away. Stay in this town with its rickety gray wooden bridges, old tincture ads which made them historically significant per some arbitrary committee decision. Pretty much the only significance in this ass-end of the country.

She’d dreamt that music would lift her out of this malaise. Fame was never a concern, but the chance to create her art, make a living at it, even if a frugal one, meant everything.

But she’d borne the brunt of the band’s booking duties, printed out their fliers, even ordered t-shirts for their modest gigs. She’d had to deal with managers who’d requested a hand job for a spot at a music festival, worse for opening at a state tour for some mid-level band. And they were still going nowhere fast.

This wasn’t how the dream was supposed to manifest.

Maybe it was time to concede defeat. This nagging doubt persisted despite her confidence in her abilities. She just needed to get away from here. She had talent, brains and determination—assets anywhere else but here in this crumbling, sinkhole of a town.

She needed to escape.

***

Retch on the God Flesh,

Bone dust chokes the encroaching storm,

Silt blackens the flesh of the stillborn,

Choir of salt crusted cardinals,

Chant from mouths sick with barnacles,

Praise be thrice cursed abomination.

The song rattled Molly’s innards. Something was different, something both subtle and aggressive accompanied her chords, Luke’s drumming, Mark’s bass lines. She couldn’t be the only one hearing a phantom voice behind Gavin’s vocal track. She couldn’t explain it—everything they’d written since drawing inspiration from 6EQU-J5’smusic had become greater than the sum of its parts. Each component collectively making music that was not only unique, but manifesting as sounds she hadn’t noticed when they’d recorded the songs. Something was wrong.

Gloriously wrong.

When had they last listened to that radio station
 
? It must have been recently, though Molly was hard pressed to place the date.

The band was more prolific than ever. Creativity flowed with the urgency of a slit wrist ever since they’d incorporated the notes, tone and ambience of the various songs from that station into their own pieces. It wasn’t only quantity, but quality. Music of despair, hypnotic waves. Insinuations of the wretched crying out. A bass driven sonic pulse, songs of apprehension that made you look over your shoulder in anticipation.

They played late into the night, at such a frenetic pace Molly’s fingers began to bleed. It wasn’t until a high-as-a-kite Luke pushed Mark to the ground and kicked him repeatedly in the ribs that practice came to an end. Gavin intervened, shoved Luke a few times. But it was a half-hearted attempt at masculine aggression
 
; both quickly went their separate ways. Mark insisted he was fine, shut himself off in his room. Luke crashed on the couch. Gavin went for a drive.

Just another Saturday night.

Molly went to bed. Between the harrowing all too familiar nightmare and a nasty virus that had her bent over the toilet bowl until the early morning, she managed to get little sleep. It didn’t help that Mark insisted on playing that radio station so loudly she began to hear coherent phrases within the static.

***

Gavin never returned from his drive.

“You don’t wanna try calling his girlfriend again
 
?” Molly asked.

Luke shook his head. “Fuck both of ’em. Hasn’t answered in days. Gavin hasn’t even dropped by to pick up his clothes or equipment. Face it. He got sick of the fighting, quit the band. Ain’t comin’ back for shit.”

Mark was still wearing sweatpants and the same dirty t-shirt from the night before. His hair was greasy and clumpy. Blotches of corpse paint oily on his skin. “I’ll cover Gavin’s vocals. We don’t have time to hunt down a new lead vocalist.”

Molly sat on the couch. Someone should call the police. Report Gavin as missing. Nobody knew where his family lived. Couldn’t even remember what he drove. But her concern was superseded by anticipation for the new music.

“Dibs on his boombox.” Luke was hunched over the stereo, eyes glazed over in excitement. He twisted the knob fine tune reception for the station. Mark stared across the room at nothing in particular. The air filled with that all too familiar white noise.

A woman’s voice broke the monotony.

Welcome to 6EQU-J5, dreadful radio for dreaded listeners. Tonight we’re broadcasting from the caverns at the—

“First try. Impressive,” Mark whispered.

“Shut the fuck up.” Luke glared at him.

—join us for the next few hours as we take a trip to the end of the line.

The music began. Slow, plodding riffs, grooves dragging like a wounded animal’s shattered limb. Molly couldn’t differentiate individual instruments—a sitar, a woodwind, definitely drums, so muffled yet resonant she couldn’t tell if they were tupan, snare, maybe dhols. Leaden, incremental notes of doom laden progression. A claustrophobic, persistent chill vibrated bones and stilled muscles.

The songs played for an hour. When it was over the speakers took to spitting out static once more. Molly couldn’t ignore the woman’s intro’.

Broadcasting from the caverns.

Trip to the end of the line.

It was too similar to her cave and train tracks vision for her to simply dismiss as a coincidence. But none of this made any sense. She was connecting the dots where there weren’t any. Even so, she couldn’t shake it out of her head.

They were eager to practice. The sounds they conjured were far beyond anything expected. Soul stirring tunes that made chests ache and heads reel. The three musicians had never produced anything as sublime as what they were now invoking.

Gavin’s disappearance quickly became a distant memory.

***

“Molly. We need to talk.” Mark nervously peeled a sliver of black polish from his thumbnail.

Molly continued to fiddle with the distortion pedal. She’d been dreading this conversation for days. “What about
 
?”

“Just wonderin’ if you’d picked up anything useful from my books.”

“They were interesting. So mote it be and shit.”

“I wanted to explain about the bottles.”

“You really don’t have to.” She plugged the cable jack into her guitar.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Pretty sure you don’t.”

“Please hear me out.”

“All right. All right.”

Mark sat down on the floor, slouched so low his chin touched his chest. “Look. It all started with Victorian séances. Always been obsessed with them. Mediums back then would tap into these eldritch realms. Séances. Honest to God séances. Usually run by women fighting back against a society that saw female sexuality as mysterious. Dangerous shit. Practiced their arts the only way they could.”

Molly had read her fair share on the history of the occult, even written a paper on Eusapia Palladino for her Women’s Studies class. She doubted Mark even considered the possibility she wasn’t clueless.

“Damn. I’m not explaining this right.” He straightened his spine, sat upright. “There’s this German poet. Died 1800s. Said something about music that really spoke to me. I memorized it.” He rubbed his palms together as if bracing for a grueling task.