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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Born-Beach on 2023-06-27 01:12:55+00:00.
My father passed away last week.
He was an eccentric man. Quiet. A writer by trade, he had a particular aversion to all things radio. Any time we were in the car, the only music he trusted came from the tape deck or, later, our CD drive. When I’d asked him about it, he’d shrug the question off. “There’s never anything good on the radio,” he’d tell me. “Damn thing’s filled with ads.”
It made sense at the time. It made sense all the way up until the day he died.
I was the one who found him. I think I was the only one who kept in contact with him anymore, at least since my mom died. She’d gone five years previous. She drove her Toyota off a bridge six miles outside city limits. No note. Nothing.
Just gone.
My dad, though? I found him lying on his kitchen floor after two days of missed calls. His fingernails were cracked and bloodied. Beside him, an old radio was screaming static. The whole scene was gruesome. Awful. But what made it worse was the words he’d scratched into the linoleum floor– I HEAR IT, over and over.
After that, I couldn’t bear to keep the house. I sold it. While I was clearing out his belongings, I stumbled across an old journal of his– one buried in a box in his basement. Having so little of a relationship with my father, I couldn’t help my curiosity. I wanted to know him better. What had he gone through? Why was he so distant?
So I opened the journal, and I read.
It appeared to be written in his early twenties. Most entries included his insights on women, music, or his next writing projects. But it barely sounded like him. He sounded so cavalier, so… carefree? The father I knew was severe. Reserved. As I read on, I stumbled across his final entry– one made the night after my mother told him she was pregnant.
It chilled me.
After reading it, I’m beginning to question my father’s death– my mother’s too. I’m beginning to wonder if I might be next, and I need somebody to reassure me that this is all in my head. That I’m overreacting.
Please?
I’ve transcribed the entry below.
___________________________________________
The road stretches a million miles.
It’s just me, the black top, the dead of night and the Nevada desert as far as the eye can see. I’ve been driving for hours and I haven’t caught so much as a glimpse of headlights. And really, that’s just the way I like it.
Over the radio, Kansas is singing about dust in the wind. They’re serenading me, keeping me company while I stare at the asphalt and fight my subconscious to the death. My thoughts are eating at me. Memories. Regrets.
I figure this is just par for the course on long drives. If you spend enough time alone, then sooner or later, you’ll go looking for problems. That’s life. It’s human. And right now, I’m tearing myself to pieces over leaving. Was it right? Should I have stayed?
Things to think about.
The radio crackles, and for a second, the music becomes a fractured mess. The lyrics stutter. The guitar strings are all over the map. I think maybe it’s just that I’ve been driving so long, so far, that I’m starting to lose the station’s signal. I give the radio a smack, and Kansas comes back.
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
I hum along, my arm hanging out the window, thumping the door. The wind’s in my face, my hair. It tastes like freedom. It tastes like a new beginning, an escape from all the mistakes of my past.
And all your money won't another minute buy—
The radio fuzzes. Steve Walsh's voice enters freefall, lost in the static as it becomes something churning.
Dust …n the… wind
All …. we … Dust… the wind
I give the radio a smack. Then another.
It’s the only trick I’ve got.
DUST
The speakers blare. I shoot for the volume controls, but they’re useless. Feedback screams through the radio like a banshee. It’s loud enough, sharp enough that I feel pressure building in my skull. Time for a new station. I twist the dial, but each frequency is met by a fresh stampede of distortion.
“Piece of junk!” I shout, tearing the dial clean off the faceplate.
The radio shuts up.
No more static. No more distortion.
Silence.
I take a breath. I glance down at the radio, check and see what station I’ve condemned myself to for the rest of the drive. But the needle isn’t steady. It’s moving back and forth like a pendulum, drifting across the entire spectrum.
“Useless,” I mutter.
The speakers crackle.
Ar…
Lis…Ng
An electronic warble fills the car, buzzing until it becomes a voice.
Are… Are you listening?
It’s a woman. She sounds nervous, maybe even… afraid? Guess I'm catching a signal after all.
... Is anybody there? Can you hear me?
I frown. This sounds like one of those radio shows– a War of the Worlds sorta thing. It’s not classic rock, but it’ll do.
The woman sniffles. I… I don’t know how long I’ve got. Time is… strange out here.
Outside, cacti fly by my window at the speed of sound. I think I see a tumbleweed rolling in the distance, but it’s tough to say. The moon is gone. Vanished behind clouds, and it’s just me and the car’s headlights shining the way. I narrow my eyes. Focus on the road.
Hello? Please, I need you to answer me.
Her voice is sending a chill down my spine. It’s hard to explain but there’s something about the way that she’s speaking… It feels genuine. Too genuine for some third-rate radio play. I glance at the watch on my wrist, and it’s telling me that it's 3 o'clock in the morning. For talk radio, that’s the witching hour. I figure this is probably some paranoid calling in to offload their delusions onto the DJ.
… But where was the DJ? Shouldn’t they have answered her by now?
Technical difficulties, I think. “It’s gotta be,” I mutter.
There you are… the woman breathes. Were you… ignoring me?
It’s an uncomfortable coincidence, but that’s all it is. The woman isn’t talking to me. She can’t be. That isn’t how car radios work. Just to be certain, my eyes flick up to my rearview mirror, check my backseat to make sure it’s still just old food wrappers and lotto tickets. No psychopaths. No ghosts.
Just the way I like it.
It’s okay to be scared, the woman says, and her voice is trembling. It sounds like she’s on the verge of breaking down, like she’s choking back a sob with every word. I’m scared too… The world is a scary place.
I’m tired, I tell myself. I’m exhausted and I’m stressed and now I’m starting to hear things because I’m falling asleep at the wheel. That’s all this is. Highway hypnosis. I’ve read about it.
I give my cheek a couple slaps, shake my head and flex my jaw. Gotta wake up. The air whistles as my foot presses down on the gas. A little wind in my face should do the trick.
He’s out there tonight… You need to be careful.
Don’t engage.
He’s looking for you…
This is my mind playing tricks on itself.
If he finds you… Can you give him a message for me?
I swallow. My heart is punching my ribs and my mouth is drier than the desert sand. “Who?” I think, and I don’t mean to say the words aloud but I do.
Him, she replies, and she’s hyperventilating. Her breathing is getting fast. Ragged. They call him the—
Headlights blind my vision. The blare of a horn erupts in my ears alongside the woman’s anguished screams. In a fraction of a second, everything goes to shit.
I hear tires squeal.
The wind in my face becomes a hurricane, and something massive narrowly misses my sedan, clipping the backend and throwing me into a tailspin. My seat belt digs into my waist and I grip my steering wheel for dear life. The car twists like a carousel and it turns my dinner into bile into vomit all over the dashboard.
I’m shouting. Praying.
The car comes to an unscheduled stop. It crashes against the side of a cactus, my body slamming against the driver door. Smoke drifts up from the hood.
“Fuck…” I groan, looking around in a daze. Slowly, the scene comes into focus. The road is half a football field away, and I can’t see any sign of what hit me– wait, what’s that? Just to my right. It’s a faint shadow in the dark, but it’s there. A semi tractor laying on its side. It must have flipped itself trying to swerve out of the way.
My hand finds the door handle and it opens with a kerchunk. I step out onto the desert dirt. I’m still not sure if this was my fault. Did I nod off for a second? Did I fall asleep and drift into the oncoming lane?
“Hello?” I call out to the semi truck. Two of its wheels are still spinning soundlessly in the night. “Are you okay?”
My leg is throbbing. I figure I must have smashed it pretty hard when I wiped out, but that can wait. I limp toward the truck, and the nearer I get, the less quiet the night becomes. There’s a buzz in the air. It’s the electronic sizzle of the truck’s radio, and it’s playing what sounds like a news broadcast.
Dreadful evening for accidents, a woman’s voice says. We’ve just received a report that a semi-truck has flipped along Route 50. No word yet on the driver’s condition.
Absolutely appalling, Jess, a man responds. Our thoughts go out to the family at this time.
I tell myself to ignore the radio. I tell myself that I’m in the middle of nowhere, that there’s no news vehicles around, that I haven’t seen headlights in miles and all of this is just in my head. A bad dream.
Wake up.
Wake up.
“Sir?” I say, approaching the cab of the truck. The driver is hang...
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