Accounts From A Lonely Broadcast Station | CreepCast

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to Creepcast. Today we are gonna be reading a story that I've even heard from, only because, when I say that I've heard from, it's only because when we first started this, this is one of the stories that was brought up as like, oh, we could read this one. And this is accounts from a lonely broadcast station. This story is broke up into, like, I believe, three seasons. We're just gonna focus on season one today, which is parts one through nine of the first installment of this series. - As far as I understand that season one, there may, there's also these other kind of side stories related like Dead Air and 104.6 FM that may also be technically considered season one. We're stupid, so we're just gonna read parts one through nine. We think that's safe. This story has been recommended to us a ton. There is one account on Twitter that every time I tweet, there's two people. There is one who, every time I tweet, regardless of what it is, asks me to make a video about Cormick McCarthy's The Road. And there's another account that every time I tweet asks us to cover tales from a lonely broadcast station on Creepcast. So now one of those needs to shut up 'cause we're doing it. We're doing the thing. But this story comes highly recommended people like it a lot. It seems to have a similar following to me as to like tales from a lonely gas station, you know? - Yeah, like people will really into the characters and they do a lot of custom art and stories and stuff like that. (screams) For a limited time, we've got Merch for Sale. Get in on some of our cool T-shirts backpack. All of those goodies at the link in the description, creepcast.store. It's here for a limited amount of time and then it's gone forever. And if you decide to support us over there, it means a lot and thank you. At least from me, 100 doesn't care. - It feels like one of those stories that is going to lean into that, where it's gonna have creepy moments, but it's also gonna have some humor and stuff as well is kind of what, it just feels like a very similar fandom. And that's what leads me to believe it's gonna be like, "Oh, it's gonna go silly in some places." But even with Tails from the gas station, there's some nice fun, creepy moments in that story. A lot of like great writing and character building. So if we can nail at least a little bit of that, I'm gonna be stoked to read it. Which also, yeah, the author's name is Kel Byron and just for people who are going to be listening to this, she has written a full-length novel from a counselor and lonely broadcast station. But it's like way more added way more than what we're about to read. - To my understanding, she made the Reddit post and then afterwards like reimagined it, rewrote it and then is publishing it as a trilogy to which I believe the first two books are out right now. There's a third one on the way. There's also, there's a 10 hour audio book that she sells on her website, which is kelbyron.com. She sells a audio recording of this series that has like Mr. Creepypasta and other people voice acting that is 10 hours long. So if you're into what we're reading today, this is like the first drop in a very large bucket of lonely broadcast station content. And Kel Byron also seems to be cool online. Like she interacts a lot with the community. She has a new story coming out called, we don't hear crickets anymore, which is coming this fall. So that's pretty sick. She also follows me on Twitter and stuff. So I imagine she's a fan. So that's pretty cool. So be sure to support her. We'll have all our links below. She is also a goss girl by the appearances of it. So one of the seven sisters, it would seem part of the family, part of the tribe. So check her out. Also her name on Reddit was Winddingus, which I can only imagine is a Windigo/Dingus play. So once again, or hitting all the spots for me. It's very intuitive, very intuitive detective work there. We'll have like Isaiah was saying, we're going to have all of the links below. You guys are cool about this and go support the author. So please pick up the book if you like it. It really does help the author out a lot. And I think it's just in good faith. You know, what are we doing here? Let's support the fucking authors while we can. But without further ado, I say let's just jump right into part one. I just have to say because I was pulling up all our socials to find this. She made a tweet that said, gonna take four bottles of Tylenol and chase it down with some battery acid to turn my body into a super powered autism machine that only knows how to hate. And then she replied to that with a picture of A.M. from I have no mouth and I'm a scream. So yeah, I think I think we'll get along. We got a nice we got a nice time. We got a nice tie and all writer here. So we'll be, we've got so we got so when it was just off the group just gone writing. All right, are you ready, Hunter? Yep. The story story. So many people have told us to cover. It's happening now. It is time counts from a lonely broadcast station. Part one. I only just started working this new job and already it warrants keeping some kind of online journal. The internet up here isn't so great, but now and again, when I stand in just the right spot, I'm able to get a signal. It probably sounds ridiculous that I'd have so much trouble considering that I work at a broadcast station where you would imagine it's downright necessary to have contact with the outside world. Well, in these last three weeks I've been here, I feel more out of contact than ever. Let me be frank with you all. It's pretty lonely and boring up here sometimes. And other times, it's absolutely bonkers. During those days when it's dull and painfully slow, I think I need some kind of outlet to talk and tell my stories. That's why I've chosen this outlet so that I can tell you all what it's like up here. Right now I'm setting next to the wall by the bathroom. The only spot I can get a tiny bit of Wi-Fi today. My butt is cold, my back is sore, but it's better than not having any internet connection at all. My name is Evelyn, it's an old lady name I know. I'm 24 and I have a degree in journalism. But the best I could do with it right now was apply for a radio DJ position. Three weeks ago, I started working at a broadcast station that sits 50 feet above the ground on a hill between an old rural town and a long, sparsely inhabited woodland. It's a surreal, lonely and sometimes maddening place to be. If you live here, which I'm almost sure none of you do, I'm probably the only station you can listen to. The town is nestled between green covered mountains, but the signal reaches far enough for travelers to hear sometimes. If you've passed through a very long stretch of road next to the woods, maybe taken a piss by the trees after passing the rest off that's been without plumbing for 10 years, maybe you've heard my voice or listened to a couple of songs. There's nothing else for miles. And somehow our town doesn't even pick up the tiniest signal from anywhere else. I can play a bit of every genre of music to keep everyone in town happy. By we, I mean myself and the owners of the place who put me here. I'm the only radio DJ working right now. I know a few of you are probably thinking how this place stays running with only one DJ, and I'll tell you, I live here. Since I got the job, I also received a backroom inside the station with the mattress and a fridge and the basics you would expect from a one room apartment. At midnight, the radio plays an automatic playlist for six hours so that I can sleep, though I've been known to wake up several times in the night just to check how the broadcast is going. Living on site was a part of the deal that many others would probably reject, but it works for me. I lost my home recently, but I mean, that's another story for another post. What I'm trying to illustrate is that I've been working alone without more than a few five minute conversations this entire time. And because I'm the only DJ, obviously, there aren't many things involved aside from playing music, sharing the weather forecast, warning the locals about emergencies, and talking about a bit of local news. Calls happen so infrequently that sometimes, I easily forget that anyone's even listening at all. But all that aside, I did say that things are a little maddening around here, didn't I? I imagine what some would think. It's a pretty remote place, only one corner store and one tiny diner for 50 miles. Woods all around us. And it would be expected if I said we had some backwoods, mischief makers roaming about. That's not it, though. Last week, the same song played on the radio for over an hour. I don't mean it repeated over and over again, and I couldn't turn it off, like some technical difficulty. It simply never ended. I even remember the song. It was Unchained Melody. And I knew it was like from Fleetwood back. - Unchained Melody, I think, from Elvis and shit. ♪ Oh my love ♪ - That's right, yeah. ♪ My darling ♪ ♪ I hunger for your touch ♪ ♪ Are you still mad ♪ ♪ I need your love ♪ ♪ I need your love ♪ ♪ God's speed your love ♪ to me. That one. Okay. Which also is a cover of Unchained Melody and Preacher is also a cover of. I don't know who did the original one. It was the righteous brothers. Right just. Okay. Well, I didn't mean to set you off with that question. I don't know what song I was thinking of. Is it the chain? Is that the Fleetwood Mac one? Yeah. You know now. But now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know. I didn't mean to do it. No. We're in part one. We have to have some semblance of respect for the sort of Benny. I don't the the only reason you're here is because you're going to bark at people who come to the door. If you're left out, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to interact with you. I don't like you. Somewhere else. Okay. It was Unchained Melody and I knew as I listened that it had never been 75 minutes long. There were no calls of complaint and after almost 80 minutes of listening to the song seamlessly, repeat its chorus as if it had been composed that way. I was finally able to simply switch to the next piece on the list, not before getting a call though. It was the first call I'd gotten to the station. On the other ear to the phone was the voice of an old man, Frail and Horst. He simply croaked. Thank you. His words were agonizingly slow, painful, dry. It almost sounded like he had a mouth full of dust and I swear I could smell the mustiness from over the phone. He hung up before I had a chance to say anything to him, but I'm almost glad. I'm not sure he had the energy for another word. Another time, just this last Wednesday, five birds killed themselves on the window. It is to say they smacked against it so hard that they just dropped. I thought they're tiny nooses for it. It's like, well, yeah, I assume that's how a bird would kill itself. It's something tiny, but he's just hitting the window. I know for a fact that this tower isn't invisible. It's an eyesore against the view of the trees really, but on that same day, just minutes apart from one another, five different birds hit the glass of my broadcasting room had first hard enough to, well, die. On the same general spot too, I'm surprised they didn't leave a crack. They did, however, leave a bit of mess that bothered me for the rest of the day until I finally climbed out on the fire escape with a rag like some kind of old timing window washer. We also have interesting rules. There's a board near my desk with a list of guidelines. I've been told I have to follow. Here we go. You can't be, you can't be a narrative like multi-part online horror series and not have a set of rules somewhere. Yeah, gotta have the rules. Gotta have the rules. Yeah, the rules. Rule number one, never let the radio go silent for more than a few minutes. If the broadcast is down due to technical error, activate the bell. Note that I still don't know what the bell is other than the fact that there's a button on the wall labeled as such. It remains a tempting mystery. Rule number two, take care of the equipment. Don't let anything break. Rule number three, any suspicious calls must be recorded, never tape over a recording. Rule number four, when the fog rolls in, do not leave the building, do not open the door, sound the emergency broadcast. I was, I was about, I was about to make a, a common about like, well, all those rules sound like normal rules for a broadcast like to care the equipment, record calls and then the fog be where the fog is. And anytime I hear the when the fog like, like, oh, if the fog comes or anything like that, like in a horror sense, it wants me to think of like Stevie King's of the mist or something like that. You know what I mean? You have no, when you're a teenager, you have no real understanding of the world yet. I don't think. Or at least a lot of people. I don't want to say everybody because I know someone's going to be like, I fucking was stabbed or whatever. So what I was saying is well, at least when I was a teenager and I was a giant piece of shit, which, you know, still kind of am. I just remember like my, I think I remember like my English teacher coming in and being like, I have to take that some days off because my mom was in a car wreck and she died, whatever. And like, it's just that all the kids, we like, I'm like laughing because not really like, not really, not really understanding the weight of something. It's shit like that. Well, there's that, but then there's like, oh my someone died. Yeah, but even the concept, even the concept of debt, because if it was somebody that you like, oh my God, dude, Jordan died, your friend said, even I just don't think that you fully understand what that means. Like you understand the permanence of it. It's not that, but I just mean like the sympathy. I have like knowing somebody for a lifetime. You know, that kind of thing. I could be complimented. I'm just saying that I could see that. I could see that. I could see that. I know what you mean, I think. Anyway, so yeah, the fog. Yeah, for the look out for the talk. Yeah, fog. It struck me as very odd that my employer would have such a strict rule about the fog. I did it now. Was that your first clue? After all, this is the main reason why they insisted on hiring someone who could stay at the station 24/7, at least until they get me a coworker. It seemed out of left field. So specific and yet unrelated to any of my duties. I was surprised the fog was enough of an issue to warrant an emergency alarm, really. But only a couple of days in my job, I saw it for myself. On my second day of work, I was put to the test of getting the emergency broadcast out as soon as I couldn't. You see, the entire room I work in has windows all around so that I can see outside into the woods. I assumed at first that this was just for the natural light, but now I'm thinking it's more of a watch, a fire watch, a fog watch, whatever kind of watch. I figure if I'm positioned so high in the trees, it must be for a good reason. I'd been switching between songs, getting ready to introduce an old classic by Fleetwood Mac. Wow. Wow. You're going to wish it is strong. I'll take that. I'll take that bear trap. When my eyes caught a rolling clout of white on the horizon, I let the songs start, turning off my microphone and rushing to the window, expecting an avalanche coming this way. It seems absurd, I know, but that's exactly what it looked like from a distance. It looked like an avalanche, rolling wide and gray, moving like ocean waves as it spilled over its own form and moved closer and closer. Bugs didn't walk. It didn't. Bugs movement were so perfectly executed that it reminded me of steps. It undelated as if it's motions were being controlled by weight. I almost expected it to make a sound, but that's a stupid thought to have. I didn't watch for too long. Slightly startled by the thickness of the fog on its way towards the town, I did just as I was instructed to do and return to my station, killing the music immediately and taking up the microphone. This is emergency broadcast from Pine Haven. Does she haven't submitted laneic acts? Oh, shit, I was speaking. She is, you know what? This is a, go for it. No, this is an emergency broadcast for Pine Haven. Is that okay? Is that okay? I, you know, honestly, her being like a 50s reporter. No, no, no, I'm not doing that for nine parts. It's going to be like five hours of recording. I'm not going to, I'm going to, I have to try. Okay. I just thought it was a, I'd legitimately was like, oh, yeah, I forgot she's the one that's running the fucking thing. This is an emergency broadcast for Pine Haven. I was speaking straight from a script using my most stern clear spoken voice. This is a heavy fog warning. I repeat. This is a heavy fog warning for Pine Haven. Return to your homes immediately and wait for further instructions. Please lock all doors and windows. That's a stern voice, see. Yeah. She switches into like the old detective cigarette smoke fills the room. She's wearing a trench coat. Yeah. I furrowed my brows at my own. We went out with a group of friends for a wedding a couple weeks ago. And one of my, but two of my buddies were drunk and thought it'd be a funny bit to walk around the room. And anytime one of them was about to say something, he would look at the other and go saxophone and he would start making like a perfect saxophone noise with his mouth. And the other one would just start monologuing as if he was a detective in an old TV show and then they'd walk away and just go do that somewhere else. That is a boy, a boy glad I was not there for that. That sounds just fucking horrible. Good God. Saxophone. Have I boys? Everyone's like, okay. Okay. That's awesome. Saxophone. Yeah. Well, that's cool, dude. It's a nice youth pastor group thing you have going on there. That feels like the very innocent time. Be so funny if you guys were like in an opium den. This was happening. Three black, there's three people overdosing. Yeah, exactly three dead Chinaman, just like laying there with these long opium pipes. It's saxophone. I'm like walking through the opium haze. What? The video is sponsored by our partners at Factor. Fall is here. The kids are back in school. The days are getting shorter and the holidays are approaching fast. And with so much you do, it's hard to stay on top of your eating habits. Thankfully, Factor has got you covered. Factor powers your day, sun up to sun down with nutritious breakfast, on-the-go lunches, premium dinners and guilt-free snacks and desserts. It's just two minutes you can eat, eat, and enjoy, baby! 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This was extreme for fog, I thought, but it wasn't going to creep into anyone's house and commit a breaking and entering, wasn't? Shocked it all up to paranoia. Perhaps it was an unnecessary precaution we were obligated to make for some legality reason, but it still sent a chill at my spine. Turned my microphone off, leaving the music off as well. As much as I loved a bit of Stevie Nicks, I was too interested watching the fog to pay attention to the silence. My eyes were fixed downward. This insanely thick bank of Missyass fog had almost gotten all the way to the station and was curling around the bottom of my tower. It didn't quite reach where I was up in the air, however wisps of clouds still drifted in front of the huge stretching window that showed me the entirety of the forest. I could see just how far this fog went, it must've gone pretty damn far because it was just about the only thing I could see aside from the tops of a few of the tallest pine trees. And those tall pine trees were moving. I thought it was an illusion at first, brought on by the churning waves of fog beneath, but I was wrong about that. The trees that I could see were shaking, moving from side to side briefly in one at a time. It was almost violent as if they were being pushed. The most ridiculous thought popped into my head as I realized what it looked like. It looked like something was on its way towards me. Crashing through the forest and hitting the trees as it went, the motions were serpentine. I watched one tree shake than another to its right, then another to that tree's left, all the while it came closer. I watched all of this with more curiosity than anything else. Judging by the speed, I was about ready to panic at any moment when I suddenly heard something that startled me even more. It was an unfamiliar sound. The phone rang. I ran to the desk and picked up the phone quickly, all the while my eyes continued to stare out the window. It was my boss on the other end. He sounded furious. I could almost hear the spit flying from his mouth with each word. "Turn the radio back on now." Ser there's a fog emergency. I didn't think I'd know. "No, now turn the radio back on." He hung up the phone before I had a chance to ask questions, but it's a good thing I didn't get that time. Glance upwards, eyes fixed out the window to see that the fog was growing higher and higher. The tree tops had all completely disappeared and the window was nearly covered completely. I swore in that moment. I saw something in the murky gray mass slowly pulsing on the other side of the glass. A shape. It was a dark, moving shape that was too concealed within the mist to give any semblance of detail. I didn't wait around to see what happened next. I followed my boss's orders, slammed my ass back into my chair, shoved my head, set back over my ears and turned up the music again. Within moments, the signal was live once more, and some bit by the eagles was playing through my speakers in every radio and town as well. I breathed a sigh of relief. What was I so relieved about? As far as I knew, nothing was on the line just because I had forgotten to turn the music back up, other than perhaps my job. There was still a sense of discomfort, however, as I turned my eyes back up to the window. The fog was still there, but it was creeping further and further down back in the woods. In moments, it had sank beneath the bottom of the window and out of sight. My trees came back into view, and then, before my very eyes, I watched the horizon appear as the bank of fog slowly dissipated and moved on through. Strangely, I got the same feeling that I was looking at something solid and organic again. Well, the fog stopped after that. I didn't have to make another emergency broadcast and it's been two weeks since. Now, things are just a normal level of weird. I get a strange call now and then, usually someone from the town I don't recognize saying some gibberish message I can't understand, or now and then a song in my music line up begins to play backwards. Once or twice, I swear I've heard someone talking in the room even with headphones on, but it's a muffled blur noise. Yesterday I saw a bird perch on the edge of the window staring at me and I swear it has human-like eyes. But unless there's some weirdo out there crossing bird DNA with human genetics, it's probably just me being overly paranoid. I think that happens when you've been alone for a really long time. I have a lot more to talk about, and I'm sure in the following days and weeks, I'll have more stories and things to write down that might be of interest. But honestly, right now, my butt is starting to hurt some of the awful from sitting on this cold floor next to the bathroom. The 20-minute music block is almost over and I'll have to go through the local news. Maybe if you're driving through looking for a place to stop, you might hear me. Oh, and if you are, don't bother with the rest stop. The plumbing is still broken and their coffee tastes like gasoline. It probably is gasoline. This is Evelyn from 104.6 FM. Have a safe night and be careful out there. In the end of part one, that was fun, yeah, like it. It's a good vibe. I really love the whole like a fire watch tower. Yeah. A static in any story. Yeah, I was going to say too. Very alien setting. It's a, it's always like a fun, it has the same kind of idea of like a lighthouse or something. Yeah. Because obviously it feels like Evelyn is up there to keep an eye out for something. But then also for some reason, the frequency, I don't know if it's just the music or if it's the frequencies of the actual radio station is like keeping something at bay because the phone crept all the whipped or windows like 50 feet in the air. And then as soon as you start playing it, it starts to dissipate back down, which is obviously it's like, Oh, yeah, the tower is fending something off. But there's also the angle that I like a lot of human isolation, like your mind starts playing true. I mean, can you imagine being out like isolated like that 24 something that's a prison sentence? It's insane. And you're constantly surrounded by like the visual of trees everywhere like how isolated you are. Yeah. So I mean, the idea of like, because there's been some times of like, I've, you know, worked a long time. I haven't talked to anybody. And either one, when you're really tired or something, you like hear or see something. But even this idea of like a bird coming in and there's like human eyes there on the bird of like, wait, did I just actually see that your mind playing weird tricks with you? I think that's going to be a really fun thing as we start diving through the next like eight parts of the story. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm excited. Should I move on to part two? Let's move on to part two. Before we continue, I want to take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor, Ridge Wallet. I've been using the Ridge Wallet nonstop for over three years now. So to me, it's safe to say they're trusted. And they're here now with the cool new offer. When you're on the go as much as I am, chords become a hassle. We've got to remember the chord for the phone and the chord for the watch and the chord for the laptop and the chord for the headset and the chord for the thing that charges the things the chords are connected to. All of it's a tangle and everything is frustrating. While Ridge saw this problem and just like they revolutionized the wallet, they've done it again with portable charging with Ridge's five and one travel power bank. Ridge's power bank has built in cables that let you charge all of your devices at the same time with just one source. That means no extra cables and no confusion. 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After your purchase they'll ask where you heard about them, and if you could say us, it would really mean a lot. Thank you so much to Ridge for sponsoring the show. We are now back to the episode. Have you ever met a person who was just too much person? I'm talking about one single human who sucks the energy out of you as if they were an entire bustling, big city crowd, somehow condensed into one body. I think we've all met at least one person like this before. The type that makes you wonder how they fit such a big attitude inside themselves without popping like a cheap dollar store balloon. Yeah, it's like you, Hunter. I mean, I fucking knew you're going to change something. I don't know. Well, you know, maybe I can, maybe I can play jazz saxophone with my lips, and it'll start giving me a little more fucking respect on here. Is that it is, do you jealous? Do you wish you could play a saxophone with your lips? Oh, I could. I met a guy like this. He's sitting in the room with me right now. I'm sure you're all here to read about the more unusual things happening up here at the radio station. And believe me, I have some downright creepy shit to tell you about. But first, I need to introduce you to my new co-worker who just started this morning. Today was his first day, might be his last day too. His name is Daniel. Daniel is a lot. He's loud, full of motion, and may genuinely think he's Bob Barker in the flesh. My boss dropped by during my second week here, and noted that I looked weary. He knew why. I sleep four hours a night if I'm lucky and haven't gone outside in three weeks. Dan will be your part timer. My boss said, "Let him take a few responsibilities so that you can get a little fresh air. Folks in town will like a new voice." As hesitant as I was, I knew what he meant. I could use the extra help, and those at home could use a little conversation to add spice to their listening experience. And I knew right away that day and I mixed like a oil and water. I decided to let him try his hand announcing, but the first time he turned on his mic and heard him belt out, "Good morning, Ed, would you look at that sunshine?" I hope Daniel gets hit by a trot. I hope he ends up like one of those fucking birds, Dan. I need him to fall out of the tower. Not even supernatural, just like a dead accident, just literally slip wooden stairs and just fall right off. I couldn't help but give him a stare of both disbelief and the fear that if he keeps bellowing like that, he'll give every old person in town a heart attack on the spot. He cut our population in half. But as much as his over-the-top radio personality irks me, I kind of feel bad for the guy. Not because he tries to harder, because he seems to have some deep seed of need for attention. That's all true, but it's not why I feel bad. I feel bad because, well, right now he's sitting across the room for me in a fetal position. Everyone with blood running out of both ears and one nostril, weeping, okay, I got what I wanted. Yeah. Well, no, no, no. It still has not descended down the stairs yet, so. Well, he's getting there. I'm getting closer to what I want. As far as first days go, Dan had a weird one. At 8 o'clock in the morning, he arrived. I think he was surprised to see that he wasn't getting some cute, spunky thing as his (laughs) I read that like an alien. Cute, spunky thing. Sure. More double. Gleab-glaub-glaub. I think he was surprised to see that he wasn't getting some cute, spunky thing as his co-worker, but rather my tired self with the messy braid and a hoodie filled with two warm granola bars I had forgotten about, but would be delighted to find later on. At 9 o'clock, I let him give the weather forecast, and he did so with enthusiasm. Then at 10 o'clock, I had to explain to him that the bird on the window with human looking eyes has been hanging around for days now, and probably isn't up to anything, it's just ugly. I reassured him. (laughs) At 11 o'clock, he told me that there was some creepy human sobbing coming from inside the bathroom sink. I was a bit shaken that he hears it too, but shrugged it off by telling him that it doesn't excuse him from washing his hands. I actually got to feel bad for Daniel, like that would, the idea, the idea of your co-worker just be like, "Yeah, I didn't put him much just like I had, but with human eyes, a woman crying, it's not a big deal." I mean, like, I would be fucking horrified. Yeah, but after his good, after his, uh, uh, uh, good morning. Yeah. Yeah. He still wants your hands, Dan. Wash your hands. Go ahead. Wash your hands, Daniel. Nah, I just washed him. Then at noon, exactly on the hour, we got a caller. This was very, very unusual. Of all the things considered weird, the weirdest was the reminder that other people actually live here. I stared at the screen for the longest time, trying to figure out whether or not to answer the call, but ultimately decided that it would be ridiculous not to. Hello, caller. We've got you on the line. I spoke in a soft, mature, radio voice. The line was quiet for a moment, but I could hear a soft and static and the slightest hint of a breath. Yes. Evelyn? It was a woman's voice, probably about 70 years old. She sounded as if she was shivering, which I assume was just jitters from being live on the air. My name is Rose. I had something I'd like to tell you. Huh? Of course, Rose. What's on your mind today? Well, I've had about a strange, strange deer in a wintering if anyone else has had the same. You see, last night, I had a dream in which the forest split into the partying of the Red Sea deer. I hope you know the story of the Moses, don't you? We play songs, ma'am. Can you imagine that at this point, I'm like, oh, the fog comes for us all. We're all a little shaken up. Yeah. Yeah. Get in line. I've also had my forest splitting dream. There's a fucking human eye bird and are like a fucking Japanese woman crying in a well below us. Like I think, hey, Rose, you want to come listen to the sink, come over to the sink of quick. Yeah. Can you also fall off of the tower, please? I swear to Glance towards Dan, my lip curved upward in a tiny small mix with a grimace. As if to say, oh boy, here we go. He returned it with a witty grin of his own, but that I was the lucky one to answer. Um, sure, Deuros. What happened next? Well, the ground was open and something was rising out of it. It blocked out the whole sky, you see. I can't even describe it, but it covered everything, the town and the sun, all that my eyes could see, the sound it made, the fearsome bellow that shook the whole earth, then I woke up, thinking that God lives in the forest there. Dan apparently saw the expression on my face, unwilling to answer fear of, well, offending or encouraging any other zealous callers, and so he finally did something good for me and answered in my place. That's an interesting dream, Em, but I think if God lived in the forest, he wouldn't give you a nightmare like that, but that, that, you did at the end of the laugh, pissed me all at Dan so much, the little, like the satisfaction after the laugh, yeah, I want to say that, I want to say that I probably have put Dan into a, like, in a position of no redemption now, no, no, no, no, I feel bad. He's wearing suspenders in a bow tie in my mind now, I've got a fight of, um, he laughed, but his laugh was cut off by a snappy tone from the woman on the line, now he tried to be afraid of God dear, voice sounded like a slither, like a hiss, for an old woman, she almost struck a bit of fear in me with that tone, "Besides, I wasn't talking to you." Our grimace was gone, replaced by a furrowed brow of concern and very obvious discomfort. I didn't like this conversation, it had gone from oh boy to oh no to oh shit, very, very quickly. I had three weeks to get used to some of the weird mind tricks around this place, but this was different for me. This was real human conflict that I couldn't just blame on the stress of isolation. He throws his words and the way she said them bordered on malicious. That sweet, nervous, grand motherly tone was gone and suddenly it felt as if I were on the phone with someone who genuinely had ill willed towards us both. "I'm afraid it's time for the weather, Rose, but feel free to call back. Should you keep having these very interesting dreams? Thank you for calling, ma'am, and have a wonderful afternoon." Kind of the call, then face down with wide eyes while mouthing the words, block that number. It was just like a mentally ill old woman, it's like keep her out of here. The one phone call they've had in like weeks, it's like never. If you were in total isolation, but you're the one in total isolation like she is right, but you hear the music and the only caller is this person talking about their dreams in that manner. Would you ever, would you just be like, I'm not going to answer anymore, or would you have it just for the human connection? >> I mean, you have nothing to do up there. I mean, now she's got Dan, Sherb, I hope he does. So I think you would answer even if it was weird, you know, it's also part of the job, but I don't know if I'd want that kind of like spiritual crisis, like existential, spiritual crisis. - Like at all times. - You just stay in your lighthouse above the trees. - That's okay. - Never interact with anyone. - I feel like I'd rather go and stay and just make up people. I'd call the radio station myself and talk to myself. - You do that anyway. - It's like, that it does feel about what it's like on the show. - Let's give you, let's, (laughs) let's give you my, this is coming from the guy who does cartoons where he voice acts all of them and has arguments with himself in character. So I think it's, I think it's safe to imagine that you were those are, those are, those are videos. So I have to do it. It's a video that I'm presenting. I don't just argue with myself. - I have been with you and I have witnessed you do a voice and then another voice, here's the previous voice and they get into a fight with each other. - That is not true. - You 100% would be stuck in a tower by yourself screaming at yourself. - And I think I would have enjoyment. I think that having someone else call me, it would add too much. - The human interaction would add too much? - Or just the, just the, the, the freakiness of it. Or like, I'm already, there's already so much of the weird shit. I, I'd block the number. All I'm saying is I'd block the number. That's what I would do. - Okay. - I wish I could say that the weirdness ended then and there, but we're never so lucky. After the call from Rose, we had more calls. Two and then three. Then seven by the time five o'clock rolled around. They were all very similar. People in town were recounting their dreams, but they weren't all elderly people talking about God or whatever eldritch abomination they saw rising out of the woods. I heard all types of people. All types of voices, young and old. Some little quirky and others who seem more skeptical. One caught me off guard. I still remember her words perfectly. It was a young woman, maybe my age, and she sounded as if she was hesitant, but somehow still desperate to tell anyone about what she had seen. I saw her bird with human eyes. - Right away, I was curious. As this was something a little too real levels of weirdness. - In a dream? - No. - Woman answered, there was a harsh intake of breath from the other side. - I don't sleep anymore since I started purging at my window. All of them, windows that weren't even there before. Sorry, I shouldn't have called. - Before I had a chance to say anything, she hung up the phone. It's difficult trying to think of the best words to explain how I felt after that phone call. Regret, I think, I felt somehow responsible for the sorrow and hesitance in her voice. The way she saw some need to apologize for telling me what she saw. There's a deep pit of dreaded my stomach. I hope she's okay, whatever she is, and that she figures out where all those extra windows came from. I hope she figured out where all those windows appeared on her house. I hope she gets past that. - Yeah, I feel personally responsible for those windows. - I'll admit that I had to take a break from writing this in order to tend to my new coworker. I had said that he had a rough first day. Rough's a bit of a laks word. At first, he was only a bit spooked about the general weirdness up here, but after what happened with our final phone call of the day, there was enough to warrant actual concern for his physical health. I let Dan take over all the controls while I left just long enough to make a sandwich, realizing that it was almost nine o'clock at night and I had yet to feed my flesh prison that entire day. Human bodies obnoxiously needy. He had a call come in, which I realized only because I heard him answer it. I didn't even hear it ring. It was late and of strange time for calls, but I figured if it was someone being a creep, at least it would be entertaining to see how he handled it. However, Dan was silent after that first initial greeting. Seconds ticked by and he said nothing. Finally, when I stepped out of the tiny employee kitchen with the peanut butter sandwich in hand, I witnessed my co-workers throwing the headphones off his head and letting out a shriek as he covered his ears. His eyes were wide and impossibly bloodshot. Vains were popping in his forehead and neck and his moppy dark hair flew back and forth as he shook his head before dropping to his knees. I could see blood dripping down from his nose over his top lip and his teeth, which were barred in a pained grimace. Through the hair at the sides of his head, I saw a dark trickles of blood streaming over his hands as if something inside his ears had burst. I dropped my sandwich with a few cuss words exclaiming as I rushed over to him, grabbing one of his wrists in an attempt to see the damage. He didn't want to move his hands and I didn't blame him. With that much blood, I'd be afraid too. His eyes blearly scanned over my face and I asked loudly if he could hear me. He simply gave me a dumb pound of expression and whimpered pathetically. As if even more upset over the fact that he could only read my lips. Oh God, his ears were totally shot. Music continued to play. However, with the microphone still running and his screaming likely caught on the broadcast, I made the decision to keep the rest of his struggle private by marching over to the console and turning off both microphones. Let the music run automatically and return to his side where he had fallen over and was now lying with his legs curled up, shivering and traumatized. He looked at me, tried to mouth a few words but didn't get far before his eyes rolled back and he was out cold and a dead faint. I sat across him for a long time. My escalant stover at my sandwich, which was already being feasted upon by some very fortunate ants that probably thought a merciful God had rained down the skiff from the heavens. I left it there, not wanting to disappoint them. That's when I found the granola bars in my pocket, half melted but still a very happy surprise. Maybe I was my own merciful God. After a while of watching over Dan and riding up a bit of my day, I noticed him finally stir. He was startled, gasping for breath as if walked waking from a nightmare. I started around the dark room until he saw me cross the space and approach him. I got down to his level, lying on my side so that he could see my face clearly and understand what I asked him. We were on the floor side by side like two kids at the shittiest slumber party ever, not even one pillow of spare. Your face is bloody thinking you walked to the bathroom? He nodded, "Want to sleep on an actual mattress?" He hesitated the nodded again. I'd already called the ambulance while he was unconscious but I knew it would take a while to get here. Our town didn't exactly have a hospital and anyone who's had to drive around the mountains knows the chore that trip is. Until then, he could rest on the mattress in my employee apartment and sleep off whatever shit he was going through. I was surprised that he got on his feet as easily as he did. It is to say without falling over at all. Although, his balance was worse for wear. One would suspect as much with two newly injured ears. I'll let him sit down on the toilet as I helped clean up his face and underneath his ears, letting him wash his own hands. "Can you hear me at all?" I asked, "Now that we were in a quiet noise free room." Took him a moment before he finally spoke but his voice was a horse whisper that he probably couldn't even pick up. "A little." He said and smirked with a sad excuse for a chuckle. "You're friendlier when I can't hear you well." Okay, so she picks up Dan and she throws him through the pain glass window. I think Dan's kind of growing on me a bit. No. Alright, honestly, you know what I honestly did? Is that chuckle that you did when you were paying them earlier? 'Cause now when he did that, you're a friendlier when I can't hear you well. I could have helped a badge and let it go. Well, you're a friendlier boy. To be fair, I could have read, I could have read it like, "You're friendlier when I can't hear you well." That's what it was in my head. So you didn't have to read it that way. You've already set that in stone. Alright, okay. I would have liked him in the shoulder for that one but I just laughed and let it slide. It felt weird taking care of someone else. I didn't think I was a maternal type of person but I found myself being as general as possible with this bloodied face of genuine care for his comfort. He was cleaned up all except for his ears which were covered in what vanages we had on hand and I helped him to the mattress so he could lie down and rest. Damn, as far as first days go, his was probably the worst I could imagine. I really fell for the guy then. First he was just annoying but now that he was subdued, I'll be it in a terrible way. He wasn't so insufferable. As he lay down with a bit of a wintz, I turned the leaf but not before he waved a hand towards me in a weak sort of attention grabbing slap to the arm. "I heard it," he mumbled. The volume of his voice fluctuating but still difficult to make out. The color was drained from his face and he took in a breath, laced with an audible shiver. A bellow. God in the woods. Like rosehead. My brow crinkled and I turned away. Grabbing a thin folded blanket from the top of a plastic shelving system and trapping it over him. That wasn't some fearsome god, Dan, just something really wrong with your headset. We'll fix you up, just get some rest. That's where Dan spent the rest of the evening. At least until they ambulance came to pick him up. It took them day-am long enough to get there. I decided to spend the night at my desk watching the broadcast go without even putting my own headset on. After a while, it became a surreal experience just watching the music play by itself and trying to imagine who out there was actually listening to it. Maybe I was the only one. It's crazy how I went from hating Dan to suddenly missing his presence now that I was alone and completely uninterested at sleep. And yes, I know I lied to him. It wasn't his headset. Whenever he heard it was very real, but I don't know. He's gone through enough without that to worry about, too. It's after midnight now, and I heard a disturbing sound. The phone started ringing again. Someone was calling in. I took a deep steady breath through my nose and ignored it. The strangest looking bird is still sitting at the edge of my window. End of part. two. I like the way so far. Well, first off, I don't know if you've been feeling the same way, but these read really easy. Like I feel that they flow. Yeah, they're very conversational speak. They're very kind of that there will be a moment of like talking about something or recognizing something, but then it's like back to plot, back to whatever the thing going on is there's not a lot of time. And I mean, it has a compliment. There's not a too much time spent on like mulling stuff over or interpersonal thoughts or stuff. It's just like, these are the things that's happening to me. I think one thing that it's doing well is kind of to your point of not mulling things over. I think that also each plot so far, it's been something very simple. The first one was, oh, there's weird rules and yep, the fog came and it's just fixing on that, fixating on that versus having like a bunch of other things happening. And in this one of now, the second one just being like, well, yeah, there's a new guy coming in because she's like, oh, maybe hopefully they'll hire somebody in the first part. And then in part two, they hired somebody, but mostly the whole thing is, oh, we have callers today. And it's just fixating on the callers and just kind of like that and how that affects the new guy. I think that it feels like it's building it also to I really like Evelyn as a character. Yeah, she's really, she's very sweet. She, she's kind, she's got a little bit of the kind of like, it doesn't have like a, because I at first, I thought it was going to be like a tumbler kind of like, she's always snark like snarky or like she knows that kind of thing, which it's like, there's, it she just feels, which I think I like it because she just feels like a person. It doesn't she? It's like, yeah, she has like a little funny things of the kind of chiseledness that you would find from someone who's like been dealing with this for however long she's been working at the broadcast station. But it's not like everything is accompanied with like a fucking quip, which I feel like a lot of stories that we read that are like this. All the characters do that where everything is just kind of like, yeah, well, he wasn't such a baby or you know, they're like, or there's always something that's, you know, there's way too many there's way too much winking at the camera. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so. Get a load of this guy. But I mean, other than like, like the closest thing we got to that was she was like, humans are needy. I'm in a flesh prison, but it's still not, it's not egregious. It's just I don't think so. She's mostly to herself. She's fine being up in here. Yeah. Like I said, it feels conversational. Feels like I'm just reading like casual. Honestly, what it is, it's it is a girl posting a blog about working in a weird tower. That's why that yeah, exactly. I think that the nose, like the no sleep format works really well for this field, that conversational with the viewer. Also, like I said to Dan, he was insufferable, but at the same time at the end, he kind of felt bad for him. And I like that even as Evelyn was annoyed with him as well. By the end, she was just kind of like, I didn't kind of miss him. Like, I like, I hope that we get some more of those interactions. Or even maybe Dan can come out, maybe come back, I should say. Um, no, no, I don't need a back. I don't, I don't need a back. I don't. I think he's in your fault. He's going to stick around for a while is what I think. The hyper eagerness of him is going to get on my nerves. Good morning. Which if I heard on the radio, I would change the station immediately. All right, part three, part three. I want to take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor, Tushie. Tushie is the luxury today that your bathroom's been missing. And over two million butts love Tushie and it's not hard to see why. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you don't have a bidet, you mean less than me. I did not have a bidet for a long time. I thought that they were silly and then as soon as Tushie sent me one, I now am someone whose life matters. I'm not kidding. There's a few household inventions that have definitively changed my life. And Tushie's bidet is one of them. I now feel like an animal anytime I have to use someone's bathroom who doesn't have one. And you know, this is a personal endorsement because this is far too aggressive for them to pay me to say. Not only are Tushie bidets more hygienic, but people who have made the switch to Tushie use up to 80% less toilet paper. Unless toilet paper means more money saved, less clogged toilets, and less gross bathroom experiences. Since the bidet does most of the cleaning and you use the toilet paper to dry off. And of course, Tushie therefore reduces things like irritation, tear. Tushie is also super easy to use and install. Depending on the model you get, it either replaces your toilet seat or just goes underneath the one you already have. Remember, A-hole is only a dirty word if you want. And if Tushie sounds good to you and it should, then now's the perfect time to get in on the offer. That's because for a limited time, our listeners get 10% off their first bidet when you use code CreekCast a checkout. That's right, 10% off your first bidet order at HelloTushie.com promo code CreekCast to get your incredible offer today. Thank you to Tushie for sponsoring the show. I never knew that your surgery was so simple. Dang it, he lived. That sucks. He's back. Poor Dan. Not to say that it isn't a delicate and skilled process, of course, but when I got the call from Dan's mother, lovely woman, by the way, she told me that with an outpatient surgery, they'd be able to decently repair one of his ears and possibly give him some partial hearing in the other. At the very least, they'd fix it up enough to avoid infection. I suppose I always thought the ear was such a small and intricate part of the body that fixing up those tiny cramped caverns of bones and delicate vibrations would be a huge deal. Dangerous deal. Turns out Dan got the surgery the morning after the incident with his headset and his recovering. They think he'll be able to hear well enough to stick around here and do his job. Dang it. Are you sure? Did you double check? Though he may need some hearing assistance once he fully heals. You won't be returning to work for a few days, probably, and may not be wearing a headset for a long time. But while talking to his mother, I heard him in the background saying, "Is that Emily?" "Till I'm not that big a nuisance yet." It's like a stake in your heart every time I die of love. It's the homesteadest faction after laughing at your own joke. It's absurd. It's awful. So I guess I've still got a part-timer, a nuisance part-timer. He's just taking a very early, very medicated vacation. While he's out, I've been here by myself. And damn it, that bird will not leave. Do you think the bird is some kind of omen of some kind? I hope it's there to kill Dan. I'm wondering if this might be a stupid take or something, but the thing that is existing in the fog, I'm wondering if it's its eyes or something. It's something that it can see through these birds, which is also why they're going up over town and creating this surrealist nightmare of creating new windows that weren't there before. I'm wondering if whatever's existing down there is like vicariously looking at things through it. It could be like a harbinger. Knowing this series, it could be just someone's soul. There's just a person to say the bird. Kind of like how they say seagulls or at least in the lighthouse, they say seagulls. They've got the souls of sailors. Could be the souls of people that have died in the forest or something. I notice something while looking out the window between giving the forecast and playing a block of commercial-free music. It's building a nest. That little shit piece and it's damn eyes is building a nest right out in front of where I set all day. Now, I like birds. I generally don't have trouble with any kind of wildlife. So long as it's not trying to pick a body apart to run off with. But somehow, for whatever reason, the last thing I want to see is this bird create multiple mini versions of itself. I can just imagine tens of them lined up all around the window, staring at me from every direction, watching what I'm doing. I almost decided to go out there and try moving the nest down into the woods, but I don't want to leave the station unmanned for too long. It'd be all wait until Dan gets back and let him take over for a while so I can take that thing far, far away from the tower. I hate the stupid bird. Before I set down in the morning, I cleaned myself up at the bathroom here. The sink was quiet. I know that should be a good thing, but I don't mean clanking pipes or clogged plumbing causing any sound. On Dan's first day, he said he heard the sobbing from down to the pipes and it shook me a bit. I've heard it too, but I figured it was just me. I figured the isolation of being up here, 50 feet in the air with no company except for the grocery delivery man, was starting to make me imagine human voices in places where they didn't really exist. But he heard it too. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed that it didn't continue the first time I noticed the early silence. I was going to try convincing Dan that we had a colony of mold people living in the plumbing as soon as he got back. That joke wouldn't solve the mystery, but at this point, he was just about the only thing keeping me sane around here. But if you asked, did I think it was a ghost down there? A person? No. I didn't care so long as it remained a sound and nothing else. It didn't matter where it came from. I forgot about it for a bit. I stopped thinking about whatever was or wasn't, rather, in the sink and went about my daily work. The skies were blue and clear. The air was chilly, but warm for being in the mountains. All in all, things were boring. But I suppose I could use a boring day after watching my co-workers' eardrum sound. and simultaneously ruptured the day before. I'll take a boring day over a bloody one. I sat down, put my head set on, and waiting for the automatic music block to come to an end. There were envelopes opened and stacked about with get-well-soon cards placed in a line above the consoles. Where it got out fast, the day was undergoing a standard minor surgery, and I imagine that anyone listening to the evening before who heard his pain screams was quick to hunt down the gossipers for information. At least 10 people in town sent cards straight to the station with the early morning mail. I sat them in front of his chair like a cute surprise for when he came back. Even I ordered one for him too, but unfortunately the grocery delivery guy'd accidentally been given a happy birthday grandma a card instead. I still signed it and put it up with the rest. It's the thought that counts. - Good morning, this is Evelyn McKinnon with 104.6 FM. I hope everyone's enjoying the sunny skies today. Daniel Esperanza will not be joining me this morning, but he would like to thank everyone for the kind, well wishes, and can't wait to return at the end of the week. Stay tuned for the five day forecast at 8.30 this morning. But until then, enjoy the 30 minutes of uninterrupted music here on 104.6 FM. - Something that the story's done twice now that I like is it will very casually slip a detail that becomes like the thing the next section talks about, right? Because in the first part, it's like, oh, I'm supposed to get a new coworker soon. It's kind of just brushed over. And then the second part's about that coworker. And now during the part with the coworker, it's like he said he heard something in the pipes. I ignored it. He said he heard sobbing or whatever. And then like this next part's dealing with that a bit. And then maybe the next part will be about the grocery delivery guy or something. It's just a casual way to make everything feel connected, but still having like, there's enough of a point to be like, yeah, this was always the direction he was supposed to go with the next parts. Like the bird with the eyes, stuff like that. Just little bread crumbs that you don't realize are bread crumbs till they're picked up later, I like. I wasted most of the morning away. The Wi-Fi was close enough that I could sit near my desk and serve the web a little, looking for news to talk about. I was in a board days, looking at the clock, waiting for time to pass. The internet's too slow to play much video unless I'm in the mood for a good long buffer. So most of that time was spent just staring at a dull screen. At noon, my eyes snapped to the sides as the noise came through my earphones. It was the phone. Even while the music played, someone was calling in. I thought maybe it was a request or maybe Dan's mother calling again. Apparently Daniel had said enough good things about me for her to invite me to her niece's wedding in June. Sweet woman. I made sure that the audio mixer wouldn't pick up the call or my voice with the music broadcast and with the touch of hesitance, I allowed the voice to come through. This is Evelyn at 104.6 FM. What can I do for you? - There's a loud gasp on the other end. It is shaking, shivering sob and the sounds of a young woman breathing in through a stuffy nose. I recognized the sound. It was less muffled than it had ever been, more direct or human. It was the same pattern of sobs. I heard from inside the sink every day since I had started. And the same one Daniel had heard as well. I felt a chilling sensation. Like the sudden gust of wind you feel walking out into a blustery winter night from a warm building. It didn't hit me all at once, but traveled from the top of my head down my back and all the way to the tips of my toes. Every hair of my body stood on end. Every poor and freckle was like a stinging pinprick. And then words began to come through. - You have to stop. - She was still sobbing. Don't gasp me and it's sniffling. She paused and I assume it was to let me speak. - Are you all right? - Oh my god. Stop me, stop making excuses. - She interrupted me and all at once. I became confused. Was she talking to me at all? - I'm so tired. I'm so tired. This is my home. I wanted to help you, but you all left me. - I didn't respond. It was as if I were listening to only one half of a conversation, like a recording. Something about the voice sounded familiar to me. Enough to make my stomach drop into a pit deep in my gut, but then again, I'd heard it before in the bathroom sink. And I heard it anywhere else. - Please let me help you. Please, you haven't. You haven't been sober single day since graduate. - All at once, I ripped the headset off my ears, pushed my chair back, left the device dangling on a cord, like a pendulum off the side of the desk. It wasn't for lack of reason. I felt the most intense nausea erupt suddenly, stomach churning and mouth watering. No time at all to wander if I'd be able to let it calm or not. I rushed to the bathroom with the call still going, the voice speaking and sobbing into the open air. Vertigo struck as soon as the door was within reach. And those three steps to the toilet felt as if I were walking in a bright spinning carnival tunnel. My legs buckled at the knees and I went crashing down, white knuckles gripping the edge of the toilet seat as I tried to drag myself towards it. My arm liked the shrinks, but it was then that the nausea turned to something else. I was choking. Shit, if there was ever a time I could have a co-worker there with me, this would be the moment. I lost my breath in the vibrant colors that spun around me only grew more blinding. Static in my vision is I prepared a loose consciousness. And then with a desperate cough, it felt sharp pain or something dislodged itself from my throat. My head hit the floor with a thud, but I found myself staring directly at the thing that had somehow gotten inside of my body. It was a stone. Just a stone, a brown speckled one like you'd find out in the woods, maybe on a hike, maybe from a riverbed. As far as things you could mysteriously choke on with no explanation, a stone seemed like a rather boring item. But as I looked at it, perhaps it's sheer frustration that it had almost killed me, I wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. My arm shook as I pushed myself up, grabbing the stone in my fist. Without a second thought, I threw it into the toilet, flushed the handle, watching it disappear down the cyclone of water. It was then that I swore I heard a sniffled at my right, coming from deep down inside the pipe beneath the sink. You can have it back. I wiped my face with my sleeves, then washed my hands thoroughly before returning to my desk. My headphones were still dangling off the edge of the table, swinging back and forth slowly. I picked them up, let them over my head once more, and was greeted with silence from the other line. The woman had hung up the phone. The sense of discomfort hasn't left. That bird hasn't left. What's worse is, I saw it clicking its beak on the window, looking straight at me. It wants to come in. I know how crazy it sounds, acting like I know what a bird wants and is thinking, but the sparrow is too human, not to be aware of its expression. Pleading, demanding eyes are staring constantly as I sit at my desk, only gone when it leaves to fill its nest. I'm not letting it in. There's a fog advisory for Thursday. It's only Tuesday as I write this, but I still find myself staring across the forest, expecting to see the hills of trees start to move. I expect to see a burst open. Where does the fog even come from? I'm imagining it now, drifting up from beneath the ground, rising into the air, and covering the town and the sun. All that my eyes can see. And the sound it might make, fearsome bellow, that shakes the whole earth. Shit. Maybe I shouldn't have blocked Rose's phone number at all. This is Evelyn from 104.6 FM, and I just noticed a brown speckled stone sitting on the edge of the window. Class of 2017, ridden in white paint on its side. I don't know how it got there, but more importantly, who on earth fished that thing out of the damn toilet? End of part three. Start to get a little mystery build up though. I'm liking it. I feel I'm getting more into it the more we go. Because the pieces are cool. Like the lady on the other end saying, you haven't been sober since graduation. She throws up a stone. The stone appears on the window and has class of 2017 written on it. Which is story was written in 2017, right? Eight years ago, so 2017, right? So but our Evelyn isn't didn't graduate high school this year. I don't think so maybe that's like a high school student. Maybe it's something to do with like someone that died. I don't know. Maybe it's something like, maybe it's something like someone died and they're the bird or whatever like souls in the bird or whatever. And then like the woman calling was a mother like a concerned family. I'm just making stuff up. I don't know. Like a lot of the pieces it's giving the little mystery stuff. I think it's fun. Yeah, I think so too. The only way one way to keep finding out this mystery is to read on into part four. I was also confused at the beginning because when she says, I thought maybe it was a request or dance mother calling again. And for some reason, my head's like, oh, this is going to be Dam's mom. And she's just screaming and crying. And for a second, I'm like, maybe he's dead. But no, that's not what it was. I don't get what I want. All right, part four. Honestly, never thought I'd dread a Thursday the way I did. It's perfectly good day of the week. And rarely do you ever hear people complain about how much they hate Thursdays. There's no, is Thursday over yet mugs out there next to the Monday ones. However, as the week drifted slowly by, all I could think about was the constant warning of another foggy day quickly approaching. Top of all that, my morning started with a script for a missing persons report. A woman named Jennifer Cook, aged 25, had wandered into the woods in a supposed sleepwalking incident. And her status, for whatever reason, had been listed as an extreme danger. I recognized her name. We were friends in college. Oh, I didn't even, I'm stupid. I didn't even think about college graduation. It could be class of 2017, you know, for college. Yeah, yeah. One good thing did happen. Daniel decided resting was boring as hell and made the decision to return one day earlier than expected, still recovering, but plenty well enough to pester me. Almost regretted to say it, but I miss the guy. I guess it's true that you don't always realize you'd miss something until it's taken away from you. And even this insufferable pain in my ass was better than the absolute isolation. Beggars can't be choosers. I watched as his eyes lit up seeing the get-well cars that have been left on his side of the console. He snorted when he noticed the one I left for him. Happy birthday, grandma. You're so, I, I want to feel bad because it's not him. It's you that makes me hate him, but it's so inseparable in my mind at this point. Like what, like what we heard his last name was Esperanza. I just coasted over that fact. I coasted over the mansion. He has moppy black hair in my hair in my head. It's like he has a perm. Like a perm almost of like red ginger kid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like in it. It's like a high in type, but it sets off his head in his curly and he's wearing glasses that are taped in the middle. He basically, he looks like a human embodiment of Carl Weezer from Jimmy Neutron. Like, but annoyingly skinny. Gosh. He laughed as he picked it up, opening the car to find no kind words or even a signature, but a doodle of him with two Beethoven inspired ear trumpets, duct tape to his head. What can I say? I was bored. Thanks, Evelyn. You're a very thoughtful grandchild. After the morning weather broadcast, at which time he joined me to announce his return to the station, we turned off our microphones to catch up. I hardly believe it needs saying that catching up for us didn't only involve the mundane. He told me about his procedure in vivid detail, almost excitedly. And to be honest, I was very interested delicately. He tilted his ear to either side to show the scars behind his ears and the surgical dressing still kept on the inside. It was no wonder he still spent most of his time trying to read my lips. Even if his ears had been successfully repaired, he couldn't hear a damn thing with cotton stuff in there. Eventually, we exhausted a talk of scalp holes and stitches and he asked me what sort of bizarre things happened. He had missed while on his vacation. Seek still acting up. The pipes were a little rusty the other day though. I think that was making it a bit weepier than usual. Did you get any calls? I hesitated, but try not to look too unwilling to answer. Rather, I pretended I was in thought, looking back at dull and completely unimportant memories before shaking my head. Not really, just a couple of music requests. Some guy in town had a serious crush on Diana Ross. Daniel's eyes were fixed on my face, reading it far after my lips stopped moving. I think the fact that I avoided his gaze completely was more of a tell-tell sign of secrecy than anything else. I didn't want to tell him about the crying woman on the phone, the rock that had been in my stomach, or any conversation all of that may stir. The feeling of unease that subject caused was so fuzzy, so confusing to me that I had no desire to go tumbling down the rabbit hole, but my own free will. That bird though, I interrupted just as he took in a breath to speak, bringing my knees up in my chair and kicking off from the desk to roll away a few feet, practically jumped out of the seat to stomp across the room. That set left to band it in a finger, pointing at the window. Sure enough, my nemesis was picking at its nest and it built on a tree branch right at the window's edge. You don't like nests? Daniel asked us if there's any possible doubt of how I felt. It's gonna have all of its creepy looking babies right in front of a broadcast room. I put my hands to the glass with an exasperated groan, but even as I knocked my fist against the surface, that shitty little bird did not leave. It just stared at me, face turned so that one human eye followed my movements. If it speak of the ability to move in a grin, I'm almost sure it would have been smirkin' at me. I'm getting rid of it. Hold up. I know it's weird looking, but we're not gonna kill it. No, I'm not killing it. I correct, Daniel. Returned into the desk to hang up my headphones properly. I leaned against the back of my abandoned chair, facing my co-worker to explain my instructions. I'm going out on the fire escape to grab the nest and I'm takin' on the woods. I won't hurt it. Let's make it a nest, a new spot. You need to take the controls while I'm gone, though. You can't wear his headset, but that didn't matter. So long as you go, yeah, leaving the deaf guy to. Yeah, the radio on. The guys whose ears imploded within themselves, whatever. You'll be fine by yourself, right, buddy. And he's like, yeah, and then she's downstairs, and she just hears an explosion, goes back up, and he's just like, particleized all over the room. So long as he could keep the music running on his own and avoid any laps of silence while I was gone, the plan would be simple and effective. I still try to wrap my head around this feeling or urgency. I needed to get rid of that nest, and it needed to happen immediately. Adelaide, so to clarify, she's not saying she got nauseous at the phone call because of the contents. It just made her nauseous, like supernaturally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like she heard the woman crying in the graduate mention and she's like, oh, no, that reminds me of the thing. She just got like a supernatural that the rock appeared in her throat, right? Yeah, I mean, I think. I'm not sure that we have the full scope of that yet. Yeah, I don't think she knew what it meant. I don't think. I had to leave the station in order to get to the fire escape. I know that completely defeats the purpose of the fire escape, but it wasn't worth triggering the alarm just to save a few steps and explaining my stupid obsession to my boss while disarming it. That evolved ascending endless clinking stairs, downwards and downwards, until I had circled a 50-foot spiral of rusted metal to the cold cement floor. The exit sign no longer glowed, but the door's window showed a tarnished yellow light from the overcast sky outside. Wait, so it's enclosed, the staircase is. It's not like a wooden staircase on the outside of the structure. That's what I'm wondering to rusted stairs. I wonder if the cold cement floor is supposed to be like the padding, like the landing. That's what I think the floor is, but she says she gets to an exit sign, and there's a window. Does that mean that the fire escape is like a spiral metal staircase that's enclosed the whole way? I wouldn't say it's enclosed, though. I bet you there's a route, but maybe I doubt it's enclosed. That would be horrifying. That's like a bunch of foot cough in the crawl down. When my shoes sank into the long grass, kicking up tiny pebbles and the tried dirt, I felt a sense of immense insignificance. The world felt big, and I felt small, suffocating somewhere in the middle of all that bass and limitless space. It was the first time and over a week I had felt the wind on my skin so directly, and something about standing in the open air failed to feel comforting. I didn't feel freedom. I felt violated, exposed. I felt like a newborn without guidance. I decided to make the job as quick as possible, secured my flannel around my waist, holding on to either side of the fire escape as I climbed my way upwards. I spared a look out into the mountains, those rolling high hills of rock and dirt covered in newly budding trees and evergreens. Looking at the horizon, brought me stress, that stress formed the gnarled balls that ended my stomach, kind of like a stone really. I didn't need more of those in my guts. "Okay, you feather fuck." Once I was at the top, panting breathlessly in the absolute throws of exhaustion, I waved my hand to shoot the bird away. For once, it actually left. That didn't bring me much comfort. It flew away from its nest without panic, as if it wasn't leaving because it feared me. It was simply moving out of the way to perch elsewhere. Casually, as if to say, I'm only moving because I want to. I reached out over the metal bars to grab the nest, plucking it off the branch. Now as much as I hate this bird and as vocal as I've been about that fact, I couldn't bring myself to be rough with its nest. I held it with some level of tenderness, but still held my breath anxiously as I peered into the circular web of twigs and discarded animal furs. There were no eggs, but the nest wasn't empty. With a shudder of disgust, and every single nerve in my body wanted to get that damn thing away from me as quickly as possible, I threw the nest as far as my arm would let me, wiping my hands on the waist of my shirt as I watched it fly into the trees. Inside that nest, nestled into the center like beloved delicate eggs were four human fingers chewed off from the knuckle. Jesus, yeah, maybe you just killed the bird. Yeah, smash the fucking bird into Smith. Yeah, that's not a bird anymore. Get rid of it. They were young and slim. The nails painted in partially shipped red polish. So this is like a little girl's fingers. It kind of seems like our or could it be the woman in the could it be the woman that's been sobbing? It could be. It could be. Yeah. It was in that I heard a slither behind me, scraping wet against the metal of the stairs. It was a sickening sound that only added to the chill I felt traveling at my arms and neck. I turned, ready to lock eyes with whatever creature it crawled out of the woods and found a thick, dark-covered vine that had grown all the way up the rusted beams that had crossed the first step. I had seen a bird with human eyes, a sink with a human voice, but God forbid would this plant start personifying itself too. Eager to get off that fire escaping back into the station, I stepped over the muddy green appendage and repaired for my shoe to clank against the second stair. Never hit. Instead, another vine, just as slick and swift as the other, snaked its way underneath my foot, then another, and another, down at least three more steps. No matter where my foot fell, it would slide and I'd go crashing down each and every one of those stairs. At least, that's what I thought would happen. As soon as my balance was lost to me, I felt a slimy gripper around my ankle. One of the vines grabbing my leg and using an incomprehensible amount of strength to flee my way away from it. I felt like a fly being swatted with an aggressive hand as if I was the pest in the situation. One moment I was staring down at my feet and the next I was looking at the ground as I began to fall. Fifty feet was a distance I may not have survived. I flailed in some attempt to grab the edge of the stairway, but it happened to fall with my chest pinned over a bar on one of the spirals right below the top. The breath was knocked out of me, arms gripping the rails, pain erupted in my shoulders and my elbows from holding up my weight. I kicked my legs upwards, wrapping them around the closest bar I could find until I was clinging to the edge. The endless force was in front of me and all I saw was a first sea of green. That's when I saw movement on the horizon. It was the undulating swirling thick clouds of fog slowly creeping towards the radio station in the town beyond us. For the first time since I had started working here, I could hear a groan on the wind. It was quite a rumble, like one would expect from thunder, but a low, well-like mound, one might imagine, would echo from the ocean floor. The fog was making that sound, like a living thing with a voice of its own. I yelled out some stream of curses mixed with unintelligible sounds of panic as I used all my strength to pull myself up onto the landing. Using the stress of sore arms over a long drop, I pulled myself up, tumbling over the railing and falling to my stomach on the solid metal. As I stood, I lost my flannel shirt on a snag and then it bothered to come back for it, even if it was my favorite. I half ran, half stumbled down the remaining steps, skipping over whichever ones I could while the ground below wriggled and moved at my line of sight. The same mud-covered vines had thrown me off the fire escape, were crawling their way out of the ground, all of them twitching and agitation. I tripped my way through them, making a dash to the door, but when it was finally within my reach, there was no opening it. The door had been covered from bottom to center in a thick layer of vegetation, overgrown as if the forest had swallowed it in a coat of thorns and branches. Young miniature trees had sprouted from the ground in that short amount of time it took me to leave and come back. Their trunks and branches intertwined to keep the door fast and shut. I tore my hands at the bark, the thorns biting into my skin, but with every tug and crack of solid wood, the trees would rise and snap back into a place in a stubborn game of tug of war. The distant groan was closer now, wisps of fog surrounding my ankles as it slowly began to cover the ground and grow, but as panicked as I was, I only screamed when I looked back to the door, seeing a darkened face in the whites of eyes staring at me through the window. It was Daniel, knocking on the tarnish yellow glasses he attempted to force the door open on his side. "Get up there!" I screamed through the door. "Make the emergency broadcast. Go upstairs!" He stared at me, shaking his head as he tried yet again to bust the door open and no avail. The staying window clouded my face, making my lips impossible to read. I turned around to see the same trees covering the door had now sprouted at the bottom of the fire escape. The fog was tumbling closer, completely engulfing the trees only a dozen feet away from me. With nowhere to go, I turned back to the door with one last desperate attempt to tear the plants away. I saw Daniel's face, washed out and blank with fear, with both of his hands on the glass, and then as the fog wrapped itself around me in the radio station itself, I couldn't even see an inch in front of my face. Dan disappeared from my view as did every single thing except for the swirling grey clouds. I don't think I've ever experienced such silence. There's no wind, no birds, only the sound of my own labored breathing as the air grew thick with the taste of wet soil. Though I had been facing the door, the clouds in front of my eyes made it seem as if I were floating in some endless waste. It was a sea of cold, heavy air that tickled every hair of my arms and all my head. There was that well-like groan again, it was followed by the strangest series of clicks, like a tongue against teeth rapidly popping in no real pattern. Hose are prepared when it touched me. I burst my lips tightly to keep for making the sound as something sharp and then grazed the raised flesh on the back of my arm. It was followed by another, and another, like impossibly long fingers with the legs of a spider toying with my hair and poking at my arms. It felt threatening, but also curious, so whatever it was patrolling in the fog was trying to figure out what I was or what it could do with me. My eyes were clamped shut in my arms, squeezed tightly around my body. I can't even begin to describe what it's like in your head when something massive, unseen and unidentifiable, pokes and prods as if you're human toy. I was waiting for fangs and claws. I thought for sure in that very moment, I was about to be eaten alive by something I would never get the chance to see. My last act on this earth would have been harassing a dam burn. My teeth rattled as I waited for a fade that was certainly grim, but it was surprising when I felt all the presence around me suddenly back away. The ground shook once, twice, and then the world went still again. My eyes cracked open as I watched the swirling grey clouds in front of my vision slowly be into clear. The doorway, as well as the normal trees surrounding it, came into view bit by bit. The curling ropes of bark and thorns began to untouch from one another, and the spiral back down into the ground as if they were beckoned beneath the dirt. The door was in my sights as the fog all disappeared completely. Well, as it turns out, I didn't die. Shocking. I know. I don't think I ever opened the door so quickly in my life. I rushed inside, slamming it behind me, wasted no time at all, sprinting up the stairwell towards the broadcasting room. Pure adrenaline got me to the top in what seemed like an instant, where I found Daniel sitting at the console with a microphone situated in front of his face and the radio line up back on track. It was better light than ever. I breathed a loud, heavy science slumped against the wall, moving, catching my gaze at the window. My flannel shirt was still caught on the edge of the fire escape, torn to absolute treads and waving like a flag of surrender. It was in that I made a solemn oath that should I ever see a bird's nest near the fire escape again, it can stay. Now, I'd throw in a damn welcome party if you would keep this from ever happening again. Since afternoon arrived, some things have come to light. I've gotten more than one angry call from the owner of the network who claims it took us far too long to sound the announcement for the people downhill in the towns. Merry couple last scene taken a walk near the trees hasn't come home since the fog passed. And of course, we made the missing persons reporting immediately. I've also got a huge pattern of bruises appearing on my chest from the fall, and I must say, hurts like a bitch. We did call the police about the fingers. They assured us there wasn't a murder or loose in the area, though that sounds simpler to deal with. I was a bit surprised that the police asked for copies of our caller records from earlier in the week, and luckily, the roles of the station man none of them had been deleted or taped over. The only recording missing was the one danger that had taken the very moment he lost most of his hearing. How would our boss delete that after collecting his copies? Ever heard whispers of who those fingers may have belonged to? They say the missing girl, Jennifer, was probably the victim of an animal modeling while wandering in her sleep due to a newly prescribed pill as she had only just started taking the sleeping pill. I decided that when I'm done here, I'm looking at our call records from the last few days. A certain call from a sleepless woman is coming back to me, and I may recognize that phone number if I see it again. I suspect it might match number, I still have my own personal cell phone. I'll be honest, I hope I'm wrong, there's a lot I need to explain once I know for sure. This is Evelyn from 104.6 FM, and I might take a walk in the woods later. I really enjoy how the mystery keeps kind of building up. Like it's it's yeah, I don't know if you feel the same, but it's kind of losing its goofier town. Mm-hmm. It's hard to shed a bit, and it's more into like there's a mystery around Evelyn herself. She knows something about this woman that's disappeared, why are there fingers in the woods, why are the police covering up, why is the boss covering up the phone records, what's on the other end of the line, it's it's it's unraveling in pieces. I like it. That set piece was really good with the fog coming in and the branches covering up the fines and stuff. It felt you've mentioned the mist earlier, that felt very the mist. That whole second. Yeah. Well, definitely the the tingly finger spider kind of tickly thing, but I will say I really enjoy the almost as if the force itself is like coming to life and attacking her. Like, just there's something so creepy about like vegetation growing and attaching itself like very quickly, you know, it's almost like the forest understands that the radio station as a watchtower and as soon as the watchtower is done. empty or vulnerable. That's a moment to it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, shit on to part five. Yeah. I'm vibing with it. This is, this is really cool so far. Part five. So here's a thing. It's dog outside. The force is apparently alive. And you want to go out there looking for a dead body? Okay. Daniel had been here only a few days and already he was mountain off to me. He moved fast, I guess. I shot him a look expression cold. As I said on the floor and laced up the first of my boots. If those fingers are the only part of her disconnected from the rest, there may not be a dead body. She might still be alive. So one thing I haven't pointed out about the story. Honestly, because I've been hooked is, you know, the question of why don't they just quit? Why don't they just leave? But I feel like the tone of it where it is so fantastical. It's not really, you know, I feel like another story would be like, just walk away. But because of how high fantasy it kind of is, it's like, you know, who cares, right? Why don't they just walk away? I mean, one, I think that it's been established that this stuff has been, like they have Evelyn, at least, has been existing in the weird for so long that it's become normal. And only recently hasn't been something where it's like, okay, well, this is a little more out of the comfort. This is more out of my comfort zone of what this weird shit is. But now it's become a thing where I feel like one, Evelyn is so attached to this job, the kind of cushy nature of it. And then it's become her lifestyle that I think that some men are there. But then too, I do think that like we've established two that she's caring and that she, like at this point too, if she believes that she can help somebody, I think that she will. So now I think that, so I mean, and Daniel, I think too, I think he's just a bit of a younger, ignorant kind of kind of character that I think doesn't really realize the severity of the situation is in even though his ear drums fucking imploded and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. After the last time I sat down to write my thoughts and experiences, I ended up looking back at all the calls that came through in the last few days. I wasn't looking for the recordings, but rather the numbers, something that I really paid attention to. My heart sank when I saw that my suspicion had been unfortunately correct. The number on our work phone matched the cell phone number I had listed for Jenny, college friend who I graduated with a year earlier, although there was a surprise I hadn't quite expected. Jennifer didn't call the station only once, she called twice. The first time to tell me about a bird with human eyes that had been keeping her awake for days. The second time, I heard a woman crying and pleading over the phone. That woman was her. Maybe it's true when they say that no one ever sounds like themselves over the phone. I'm going along with you. Dan was turning into his chair ready to get up when I shot him a look of disbelief. No, you're not. I thought I sounded demanding, but he didn't listen for even a moment. He was already up on his feet, leaning over the console and fiddling with the music line up. We can't leave the station completely empty. Who are we going to ask to take over for us? The weird-ass bird? The toilet ghost? Excuse you, it's the sink, not the toilet. Besides, I have an idea. He wasn't bluffing either. His idea sounded silly and impossible at first, but the more I molded over in those moments, the more I realized it would work. He told me that we should pre-record all of our content for the night. We'd record the evening weather, the 10 o'clock news, and even a good night message, then put those recordings in the lineup with the rest of the music. No one would know, and if it took much longer than expected, we'd simply set up the broadcast schedule to continue into the six-hour night outblock. I will say to the one thing I was thinking while you're reading that, I was like, well, if the boss shows up, they're fucked. But that's one thing we haven't really talked about, Isaiah, is the boss. Who is this? Who is this man? So we think that knows the rules, who owns this place, but he also does stuff like delete call records that man. What? Exactly. That's where I'm like that. I'm very suspicious of that man. The deleted call record thing, that was kind of fucked up. It's also insane if like this is a giant like the fog can come in and kill everyone and there's monsters in the woods and stuff like that. To be like, I'll just hire some girl to do it. No, I won't explain to her. Maybe I'll do the second guy later. This is like a huge oversight. Well, it sounds like an oversight, but to me, it kind of sounds like it's purposeful. He's like, I either need someone who doesn't know what's going on, who can do this very mundane task, or it's something that he's like, I need someone that will fulfill X in time. Not sacrificial, but in just as an example, like, oh, and then we can sacrifice, once this person that has been working here for so long, there'll be like a sacrifice. Not saying that's where it is, but I'm just saying like it all seems too convenient, I guess. Well, here's the other thing too. If they leave, like sure, they may be able to trick the people listening to the radio station, but I don't think you're going to trick the woods. The woods is going to know there's no one in the town. No, exactly. And that's what I'm like, how would they ever pre-record like a fog warning? Sorry, they just fucking over the whole town. Well, they did say so the fog came last time because there was an expected fog on Thursday. Then that Thursday fog showed up. So if there's no fog forecast, I think they're safe from that. But I mean, who knows what else goes on in these woods, you know? I'm almost picturing the fog is like the evil dead fog that kind of rolls in very quickly. Yeah. Well, even the way that they, it's just been the way that Evelyn described it earlier, where it's like, oh, it moves like it has footsteps, like it's a creature roaming. It isn't just like, oh, there's a fog report. But I mean, maybe it is, it can be like, you know, calculated like the weather. So anyway, I was supposed to leave it 10. Dana reminded me. He was only a part-timer, whereas full-time took on a whole new meaning for my eternal presence here. It's almost nine o'clock already. You don't think I'll go over time if anyone finds out we were dicking around the woods, do you? There'll be no dicking. But I'll pay the grocery guy extra to bring the donuts if you require compensation. I'm going to believe I was actually going to do this. I'm going to believe I was letting Dan do this. Honestly, I don't know what scared me more. Thought of walking into the woods at night and leaving the station abandoned or the thought of going alone and leaving Dan with the responsibility of taking my place. Now, I'm not saying he's incompetent, but I'm almost sure a wild badger could run across the radio console and operate it just as good as he does. He has a lot to learn is what I mean. We put our plan into motion, according to all of our segments, one after the other and making a long automatic playlist, including those files. With any luck, it would sound just as genuine as life conversation. By the time that was finished and the radio was set to play on its own until just before sunrise, Daniel and I rated the closet for flashlights, water bottles, and a first aid kit just in case. I hope we wouldn't be needing to reattach any of our fingers, but yesterday's grim findings had brought that possibility up from not worth mentioning to unlikely, but could happen. I've been sitting here trying to think of what the story reminds me of. It reminds me of the Curly and Frequency, Curly and Curly and Curly and whatever, which is a series about like a town full of like vampires monsters, but it's from the perspective of a radio host. And it also, isn't that what the plot of Welcome to Night Vale is? It's about a radio broadcast station. I think so. It's like a podcast or like an audio show, I think. I think that's the same concept. Also, for those who are curious like myself, you can build, they sell pre-fabricated firetowers. It's like one room all windows. They range from 15 to 60,000. That is 100 percent to. I'm building a fire tower. That's going to be the new podcast set up. I'm going to, good man. Would you come? We're going to, I'm going to make a studio and we're only going to record at night and it's going to be horrific. We're only going to record at night. We're only recording at night. That does sound absolutely frightening. My second trip out into the fresh air didn't feel as daunting as the first. Maybe it was because the fog wasn't set to roll in for a few days or maybe having an important cold drowned out the feeling of insignificance. I fished my phone out of my pocket looking at the minuscule number of bars in the corner. Out here with a wall of trees all around us and a seemingly endless forest through the mountains, it was dangerous not to have some kind of connection with the outside world. I'll watch the bars disappear as we continue to walk, the wet leaves squeaking under our feet. I don't think I've ever been out here. Not this late at least. And it was flashing as light on the ground then up to the trees that I level. I hated when he did that. I had some hidden fear that he'd shine the light up suddenly illuminate something terrifying. You do know your way around here, don't you? I was grasping at memories. I left town so young and stayed away for so long that any recollection of playing in the woods was lost to me at this point. However, I did remember returning. There were bits and pieces of a memory in my brain, but it seemed to melt as if some of those thoughts ran like water straight out of my mind. I was here about a year ago, but I can't remember my past that well. But it's not as if we can't see the radio tower for miles away. Daniel shrugged, nodding his head and accepting that answer. He looked back at our metal and wooden sanctuary, which sat so tall on the hill with a huge tower looming above it that it would be near impossible not to see it from almost anywhere the side of the forest. I stared forward in the dark, squinting as Daniel moved his light back to get a view of the station. I kept my own flashlight turned off and ordered to save its battery in case his right now that I had to admit is constant Tom Follery with this damn flashlight was going to get on my nerves if he kept it up. When you stop that, what? Dicking around the flashlight. What about the flashlight? I raised my voice for him remembering the continent's ears. You're dicking around with, before I could finish that sentence, a sound erupted from in front of us, even loud enough for Daniel to hear through his bandages, it was the groan of an animal, either aggressive or indefensive itself, day and whipped back around. His flashlight pointed straight towards the source of the sound while I stopped in my tracks and stood perfectly still, it was an elk, enormous in size with eyes flowing and widened us in the darkness. There's no way it could have gone unheard, leading me to believe that it had been standing there perfectly still all this time. It's antlers clacked against the surrounding trees as it shook its head, stomping its front hooves in the dirt and stone, then and I both backed up several feet, but the elk didn't charge at us, rather once it was finished making noise and stomping about, it turned and stared at us for the longest moment, its eyes were reflective orbs, but I watched it blink, its eyelids were to the right and left, meeting vertically like that of a reptile. Then with a heavy grunt, it bounded heavily away further into the woods. I noticed between instances of wondering how close I'd been to shitting my pants just now, that it ran with a very odd gallop and had three back legs, one on one side, two on the other. It was a seriously screwed up elk. Is there anything out here that doesn't look like an absolute abomination? Nothing would make me happier than for Dan to get impelled on the elk's antlers. I say justice for Dan off into the woods. Justice for Dan the man give me one reason he deserves to live. He's he's a trooper. He showed up. He helped our girl Evelyn, okay, his job is to stay in the radio tower and alert. He sees the rulebook, same as her. He turns on the siren if the fog shows up, a fog shows up and he's like, I should go down stairs and tap on the glass really hard, he doesn't get points for doing his job. He's as curious as a cat can't blame day in the man. I'm going to blame him for a lot of stuff. I back a blame anything on him if I wanted to. Daniel asked in a horse whisper his flashlight slowly scanning and search for anything else that might be hiding in the trees and overgrown bushes. There was nothing, not even a sound. After a few hesitant moments, we were on the move again, though I decided shouting probably wasn't the best decision to make. I was looking down at my phone, watching the bars in the left corner. I wouldn't have expected to have any signal out here. Strangely, single bar kept flashing and then disappearing as if it wanted to find a connection. I had no explanation for it, but I didn't thank on it too much. Off the weird crap, I'd seen out here a cell phone signal in the woods was the least of my curiosities, but if I could just get one more bar, maybe I could try making a call. How do you know her? Daniel broke the silence after we were sure no more giant mutated elks were stomping around. The missing girl, I mean, you seem dead set on finding her. She was my best friend in college. We had a dorm together and graduated together, we lived together for a bit. She was a generous, she was generous when I needed a place to stay, and now you live in the radio station. Turn my eyes back to my phone, trucking my shoulders. Back to nonchalant, like I didn't give two shits, I actually gave quite a considerable amount of shits. She didn't want me there anymore. I could feel the question in the air. I didn't have to look at Daniel to know what he was thinking, how badly he wanted to ask why a generous best friend would kick someone out of their house. Luckily, before he had a chance to speak and before I needed to think of a new conversation, I saw it. Two bars on my phone, springing to life and to find all odds against a wild, uninhabitable mountain. I raised my phone up in victory, stopping exactly where I stood for fear of losing the signal. "Yes! We have it! We have a signal!" Daniel gave me a confused stare before I had a chance to explain. I was tapping away at my phone, finding Jennifer's phone number among my minuscule list of contacts. "I'm calling her. If she's nearby, she can help us find her. As soon as she has a signal on a battery, assuming she has her phone." Daniel was obviously skeptical while a sleepwalking woman presumably leaving her bed would take her phone. But, I had a theory that Jennifer had a sleepwalking at all, something that had been luring her here. I just had a feeling. I didn't answer him, whispering a horse as the phone began to ring in my ear. It rang once, then twice, then, both of my ears. Her tone, basic selection from the library of sounds was distant but audible in one exposed ear. I lowered my own device, listening to the sound echo from further in the trees. Faint, but there. Daniel turned to the direction of my gaze, flashlights scanning along the ground to find a path of broken twigs and flattened grass, trailing off deep into the brush. "What are you?" Her phone. That was all I said before I chased the glow of his flashlight on the ground, deciding that one source wasn't enough. I pulled a spare light from the statue around my shoulder, tapping it against my hand as it flickered to life. The tone stopped ringing, and so I called it in, desperately hoping this wasn't just a trick my ears were plain. I couldn't help but feel some level of paranoia, knowing that this forest could be drawing us further in with the illusions of sound and direction. Perhaps that's exactly what it did to Jennifer. I felt a sense of familiarity with the forest then. I knew this path. I almost felt sick the moment some old buried memories started to resurface, but not because those memories traumatized me, no, the nausea was part of the memory. I remember the campfire, roaring high in the center of a clearing, one person's distinct voice nagging that it would burn the trees down if it got any higher. I remember tripping over beer bottles in the sound of shitty guitar music, some drunk idiot singing off key. Shit, maybe I was the drunk idiot singing off key, that was probably me now that I think about it. I could hear Jenny's voice, mingling with the crackling fire in the terrible music. Evelyn, lay off, you've had enough, don't you scream at me, you're such an ass. To imagine that graduation party's the last time I'd ever seen this place until now. Damn. Why did I ever come back? Ah, Christ! Her Daniel yelled before I caught sight of what he had found. God, I wish I hadn't seen it. I turned my light to him, first catching a glimpse as he staggered back with his eyes glued to the ground in front of him, then I foolishly illuminated the grass below. There was blood soaking every inch of grass and dirt that I could see, bits of cloth and who knows what else, strewn around the forest floor, and a man, the top half of him, at least, nearby the bottom half of another person, this one wearing a pair of tacky shorts and walkin' shoes, both of them had been separated across the middle, only one half of their bodies thrown down where we could see them. The rest, where was the rest? Those have to be the two people that went missing, right? Yeah, this is the couple that went missing. Yeah, yeah. I shouldn't have scanned the light upwards, but the sound of creaking branches tempted me. My light followed the trunk, stained all the way up until it illuminated what happened to be the other halves of the two corpses. They were stuck in the branches by their clothes and their limbs, as if thrown into the air and getting caught wherever they fell. The second body was of a woman, but it wasn't Jennifer. I felt sick. All the shadows and shapes were swirling around in my vision, pungent smells, not only in my nose, but on my tongue, as the full wave of that terrible scent hit me. I gagged, but before I could turn my full body away from the scene, my light caught something else. I could close my eyes from the trunk of a nearby tree. Let me just say, I've seen some uncomfortable things, merely in the time I've been working out here in the woods. I don't just mean gruesome, terrifying things, but unsettling things, unusual things. As of right now, this takes the cake. We found Jennifer. She was in one piece, as far as I could tell, aside from a hand missing every finger, except ironically the middle one. I'd like to think that was some final joke from whatever murdered her, but that's probably wishful thinking, where humor is realistically non-existent. She was stuffed. Her limbs twisted to roll her into a human ball inside the hollow trunk of the tree, with their stark white face peering through a hole in the bark. Eyes were open wide and staring forward, making her look like some kind of pale nightmare shell. Her mouth was wide open, filled with dry grass and twigs almost like a bird's nest. That's sick, man. One of her hands was sticking out of the tree. The arm likely broke in an order to accomplish such a position. Her hand was tilted, palm pointed upwards, and a cell phone was sitting in the center, flashing its 10% battery warning. Well, that, and the two missed calls for me. My name was on the screen. Evelyn, followed by an alien emoji, is perfectly appropriate. There's not a single damn person on earth who could convince me she wasn't positioned that way on purpose. We weren't even friends anymore, but shit, man. I really failed her one last time. At least I'm consistent, I suppose. Daniel and I knew we couldn't stay there. not only was it uh. nightmare to behold, but the smell from the blood and bodies on the ground was making both of our stomachs churn. As a smell, you don't really forget. I don't think. It's been a full day and I still recall it in vivid sensory detail. So we turned back to leaf, completely silent. We had nothing to say to one another, nothing comforting and no energy even to talk about our fears. We were halfway back to the radio tower when Dan finally spoke up. You know, I wanted this job because I thought it'd be right up my alley. I thought it'd be good at it. Maybe make people laugh and smile a bit, but so far it's only been horrifying. He's still wearing like shorts with suspenders in about time, my mind, by the way. Now, while I know that Harry and Dan had been none of my responsibility, I still felt a twinge of guilt. He meant well, and his heart had always been in the right place. But he was suffering for it. He had the chance to leave, but chose to come back regardless. Sometimes I wondered if this bizarre messed up situation was the only exciting thing he had to look forward to, just until actual death entered the picture. Now he was in too deep, both were. Hey, Dan, I assume shining light on my own face. Yeah. Your mom invited me to a wedding in June. Mind if I go with? He laughed. This is the first time he had heard him laugh like that. Well, ever. I didn't say much considering we had known one another for less than a week, but time seems to drag out after you have some freaky shit with someone. Matching tuxedos. Okay, this is my bear trap. This next line is my bear trap. I nodded decisively with plaid bow ties. You know why, Isaac? Because you are this person. That's why. It's not bear trap. That's a mirror. That's a new thing. That's one of the worst things you've ever said to me on the show. What do you mean? I'm this person. What do you mean? Explain yourself right now. I'm propping up. My mirror is what I'm saying. That's why you bear trap. How is that me? How? I could just, I could see you being matching tuxedos and then you would have a plaid bow tie. I could see it in heartbeat. Don't you ever? Also, I feel like you've never heard anyone ever go to. Yeah, because I got like 40 friends who I got married this year and it's and it's I'm at my limit. They all get one. If they get divorced, I'm not going to the next one or whatever. I do. I do. I think that's only fair. You get one. You get one. Or guess what? Your spouse dies. Sucks. Not coming to the next one. You get one. No, I think a death is a restart. That's not fair. Nope. Nope. I've been too many. I'm over it. What do you mean? I'm Daniel. The mones and like sad is like hums at his own jokes that he laughs at. Okay, are we to believe that so Jennifer's body was cool and all that, especially like the bird's nest in the mouth. That was awesome. But like is the implication that all these memories are kind of being hidden from her, like her true connection to Jennifer and stuff like that. All that's kind of like being seen through a dark glass and she's trying to understand. I mean, it all feels a bit convenient. Like I think that you're on to something. It would be too convenient to just be like, oh, and Jennifer, she's the one, you know what I mean? So it seems like the forest is articulating that or it's like basically like revealing these things in these horrible ways and it seems like it's torturing specifically Evelyn. Because she said earlier, she couldn't remember the path while she was talking to Daniel. But then when she hears Jennifer's phone ring, she says, I knew this path and she talks about buried memories and she says she gets nauseous, but she's like, oh no, nausea is the memory. And she remembers the campfire and she remembers someone being drunk and acting a fool. And then remembers that's herself that she's so it's like it's a weird way to remember something. Like she's getting it back in pieces as things become too familiar. Yeah. And I mean, we keep, we leave, we're starting to establish an idea to have like hurt not her as an unreliable narrator, but like we obviously she's had some kind of substance abuse in the past. So that also plays a factor of like, oh man, you know, like we're unraveling things at the same time as her. But there's also things where I feel like she's either trying to forget or she completely doesn't remember. And they're kind of like coming back, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The rest of the walk was quiet. We got back to the radio tower after midnight. The late night music block beginning on its automatic run just as we had planned. It took the opportunity to take the evening slow. No need to rush back to the console or even to that old lumpy masters where I slept. Daniel was leaving, as I expected and wanted him to, but I made an extra effort to stand out in the gravel driveway and tell him goodbye. Good of any emotional about the whole thing, thanking him for saving my life and the fog here for insisting on going with me to find Jennifer. Instead, I just told him to drive safely and to show up in one piece on Monday. Two pieces at most, so long as it's a small loss. Just pointed to one of his ears and said, "I already made my blood sacrifice." I spent a long, long time that night just sitting cross-legged in my chair and looking out the window. I had my headphones on, listening to the music. I just wanted to turn on my microphone to ask who's out there listening with me, but an IP2 disappointed if nobody called in with an answer. This is Evelyn at 104.65 and I have some advice. Don't treat your friends like shit. End of part five. Man, that's going to be in reference to Jennifer like her. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, obviously she was probably a junkie and ruined that relationship and it's quite been why not. She drank a lot. What's that? Would you call that a junkie? I guess not. Maybe just alcohol, I care. Yeah. But the, yeah, I mean, just, you know, definitely pissed on someone's kindness and someone that was trying to help, whatever. Yeah. Man, it's insanely feel that we've been reading this for like a little over two hours. It's just, it's moving. And also part six already. Yeah. Each time kind of singing in, I'm wondering if there's, if there's going to be a moment where it starts to curve and this mystery become like I'm wondering if, I mean, there's multiple seasons. So obviously the whole mystery can't be solved. But I'm wondering as we're reading into this because we're over halfway, how much are we actually going to get because I'm, I'm, I'm just like, I'm a little fucking piggy right now. I'm like, give it to me. I want to know which, by the way, I also have, what do you do, hey, Vinnie just started chewing on a gun. What are you doing? Are you insane? My gosh. He's saying, free me. I have. He's saying, he's saying, he's saying, get me out of here. He's saying, please kill me. I can't do this. He's like, I want to, because you're like, I want to give you a little bow tie. Is he saying, Tom? Shout out. Shout out. Don't, don't bring that voice, the mention of, no, it's, I, so I have the short story pulled up. It does say that book one is contains the events of a counselor, lonely broadcast station. And we're always on the air at one of four point six FM and then other bonus stuff. But it covers this. The other parts and that. Yeah. So confirmation there, but there was something, I had a train of thought that I lost. I guess it's not that important. Yeah. Oh, just that. There's a bunch of side stories about these characters. Like they're like little characters live their own pieces. It looks like in other writings that Kell has done. So they called someone to come get the bodies, right? Well, it is. But surely. Yeah. I mean, you would assume so because I was, I was kind of wondering because they were like being a bit too chill about it because I was like, I feel like you guys should be like freaked out. And you should all, or, or at least just like, oh my god, this is horrible. We need to call somebody. You should be scared. Yeah. But maybe that's just implied or they're like, I don't know, fuck it. Whatever. There it is. I'm not moving that bird nest again, so it's, they belong to the woods now. That's what, that's why I feel like you would do with me. For like a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars. A hundred percent. Well, the forest wanted them. I'd walk up with my flashlight to the forest. I'd see your body separated up or half of your face with your upper lip hooked and your bottom lip on the ground. And I do. And I'd just turn around and I'd walk away. Can you tell anyone? No, I wouldn't. Yeah, even your wife is like, have you seen Isaiah and I know, nope, nope. No, I haven't seen anything. You know, you shouldn't be up here, right? This is, this is authorised people only, as I'd say, if I was, if I'm up in the broadcast station, you realize that you're not supposed to be here, right? This is, so this is in, this is five years from now when I build a fire watch on my property. And you find me dead on, again, like in my backyard. And then Kayla comes to find you once again at my house and you're like, you know, you're not supposed to be up here, right? I would, I would, I'd leave like bits of very good smelling food to attract bears to come and eat your body. You should just get rid of all the evidence, too. So you killed me in this scenario, no, no, no, you're still dead, then why is it evidence? Then why is it evidence? because I mean, here's a murder. That was a Freudian slip. and I wish I wish I would have been the one to do it. But I'm one I do dang it. That's why I say I still I come across your body and I say, aren't it? Okay. Well, thank God, I have these hosts. This is twinkies on me. I dropped the twinkies down and then the bear started to go to when you said that we're going to host us. I thought you were saying that God, I have these hosts. Like you have backup host on speed dial. Yeah, they've got a bear related accident. All right. Hey, you want to start? Hey, bear, do you want to start a podcast? I love you, bear. So does that say to immediately? I love you, bear. So we have a joke on the show called bear traps. I think you're going to love it. I'll change it just for you, bear. I love you, bear. The whole show is just you reading stories in the vein. Like, I love you, bear. I love you, bear. We so much. Yeah, I've been present that he talks on his legs. I mean, maybe that'd be worth. Let me worth listening to the show. Yeah. Yeah. You have a you have a show with the talking bear, but it's like what we read. That's the scary. He does. And then I did. Oh, my God, that's kind of scary. Isn't it buried? He does. Oh, yeah. I believe we're screwed. Wow, bear. That's so cool. I'm so glad you're here. Definitely not that other guy. I'm still rotting in the woods. Like the corner side. Part six. Part six. Benny, what do you want? If I let you up my lap, you're not going to be chill. You're going to freak out. I'll start this off in the most direct way possible. I'm not who you think I am. I work at the radio station person in the air looking over a forest covered mountain range. It's an absolutely bizarre place. I've seen animals with human features. Some eldritch abomination living in a fog bank and even went partially to have to do a phone call on top of all that. My coworker Evelyn McKinnon just became a murder suspect. Oh, interesting. Daniel. That's cool. School that's wished a Daniel's perspective. It's interesting. That being said, I hate hate that I am now speaking for Daniel. I'm speaking to Daniel's tongue. That's unspeakable to me. She didn't do it. There's no way she could have done it. And I think everyone in this tiny superstitious town knows that. I may not have been here long, but I've been here long enough to know that when something strange happens, people know when to turn their heads and ignore it. The death of a well-respected couple and a promising colleague graduate gets people just a little bit riled up, however. If you've read her post, you probably already know who I am. My name is Daniel S. Peranza. I'm a part-timer at the radio station and right now I'm taking over Evelyn's full-time position until she gets back from a drive into town. She's not arrested. At least I don't think she's arrested. The police came by to ask a few things, which is understandable considering how our tower is less than a mile from the scene. Some things happened and they took her into town. I haven't heard from her since. I'm sure you're all wondering a couple of things. First, how did I log into her account? And also, why would I ever choose to work at this backwood's piece of garbage on stilts? The second is a story for another time, but the first one's simple. I called in on anonymous tip to the police last night after I left. It was Evelyn's idea. Seeing as there's no way they would have been able to trace the radio tower and I'd have an easier time finding a public phone than she would. But after the police promised to stop by the woods and confirm what she had, but after the police promised to stop by the woods and confirm what we had found, I stopped in to see that Evelyn had packed up her laptop and was giving it to me for safekeeping, she said. Wait, why did they just call and say, hey, we found a body? I think that they're explaining that. Okay. She told me that this online document she's been keeping wasn't supposed to be found. Is a good idea to get it far away from her just in case they had any questions. So I have her laptop. She was still logged in and well. I guess I've got a story worth telling too. Okay, no, they didn't explain that. So why I feel like I feel like Evelyn's hiding something. She could be. There's some reason she didn't want to call the police. I don't know. It was early about seven o'clock in the morning when I called the anonymous tip and then rushed back to the radio station to warn Evelyn that there might be visitors. I know. I know his doorky, his goofy, uh, sprinted up that staircase and through open the door went, Evelyn, we've got company. Evelyn, you're going to want to see this. He's been like she's trying to do the broadcast. He spends all day walking up to the window where the bird is and then turn into her and going, um, it's right behind me, isn't it? And then he walks over and he like eats snacks and then it five minutes later. Um, it's right behind me, isn't it, uh, Jay's a wait. The drive there's daunting. This town sits nestled so tightly between a range of mountains on all sides that you'd swear it was doughnut shaped with the townspeople all stuffed in the center. It's a winding swirling hazardous past to get out of here, which is why people rarely come and no one ever seems to go. As I've followed the path to the edge of the woods, the ground became steeper as I went. There's a natural feeling of heaviness that just sits on top of you as you look up into the trees. The way the mountains raise, it looks like the trees grow miles high, but it's just an illusion created by the thickness of the forest. It's suffocating and really no wonder why people seem to get lost so often. Like looking up at a giant sitting at the bottom of the mountains can make even the strongest humans feel small, puny, insignificant. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near the strongest humans, so feeling insignificant is less of a steep drop for me. I understand this isn't the time for herself depreciating jokes, though. Evelyn wasn't on edge when I arrived at the station, though she was surprised to see me. I found her where she usually is, sitting in the chair behind the console, staring off into space. I don't think she goes into the details too much, but anyone who believes she spends her days buzzing around and keeping busy as a bit was taken. In the week that I've known her, Evelyn spends an almost worrying amount of time in silence, looking tired and even sick. Every day she looks more and more like the poster child for anemia. When she's not screaming at a bird or answering creepy phone calls, she spends the rest of her days seeming miserable with a few short intervals of pretending to laugh at my jokes. I know she's faking it, that's to not disappoint me. I want to tell her that she doesn't have to try so hard. I told her that I called in the tip, and she already seemed prepared. She gave me her laptop and charger, all packed up in a case, and told me to put it in my car. It was then I was noticing the edge I hadn't seen before. She was expressing her anxiety and silence, highs avoiding mind and her arms staying close to her sides or crossed over her chest whenever possible. I studied theatre, trust me. I know the telltale signs of someone who isn't feeling very confident. Of course he studied theatre. Of course he's a theatre kid. That made me turn on Dan a bit. I hate that too. I studied theatre. You know what Dan, why don't you fucking jump off the top? You took a theatre class in high school. What are you talking about? What if you, what if you did a flip and swan dove onto the elk antlers from the top of the also could you could you like I like how he's like you know I work for the FBI you're you're a fucking theatre major dude. Yeah, I have a pudding at time. Blading people. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. I sure to her even though I had no idea what we were in for. We didn't do anything. Maybe they won't even bother us. As it turns out, I was wrong about that. I left the radio tower heading back to the tiny gravel parking lot that ended a long twisting path through the woods. I took the laptop case to my car where I hit it on the floor of the backseat. Underneath a few bags of plastic bottles, I kept forgetting to recycle. Of course, of course, he's the kind of guy that like carries around plastic and he's like, Oh, I'm going to turn this in. No, I'm going to take this to recycling plant guys. No, no, I'm going to take it there. Now for sure, for sure. Next week. Next week. It's a good thing it did happen then because the globe had lights at the end of the long winding gravel road were coming closer. A police car in an ambulance drove right up near my car in the small cramps space just picking up her employees. You work here? One of the officers asked me, he was a tall broad shoulder guy who looked like he could probably pick me up and toss me into the woods like a tree branch. I'm sure that's every guy you've ever encountered. Yes, sir. I answered without hesitance. Of course, he would. Because you know what? Because he said he does whatever they tell him. He does whatever. I'm so heated. It didn't matter that Evelyn, now we're innocent. Acting suspicious in any way wasn't a good idea. And it didn't help that, what kind of a statement is that from him? It didn't matter that we were innocent. I should enact suspicious. Well, if you're innocent, why would you access? Okay. He's a theater major. Didn't help that we were already hiding her written evidence. I was just stopping by for a few minutes. Can we help you? Who's we? Ask the second one, female officer. What she liked in size, she made up for in the most stern, thin-lipped expression I had ever seen. Now, I'm almost 30 years old. That is the most surprising thing I've heard in this whole sport. Now, I'm almost 30 years old, and I still felt like I was about to get grounded just for looking at her. Myself and my co-worker, Evelyn McKinnon thought I recognized your voice. Female officer was the first step forward. while the others followed right behind her. My shelled off to see two remaining police officers, as well as their leash canine and two medical responders, passing us to go straight into the woods with all the tools to mark off a crime scene. As part of an ongoing investigation, we're gonna have to ask a few questions to the both of you, as well as to ask that you don't go wandering into the woods today. Is that all right? It's fine, it's going fine. I was thinking to myself, we had nothing to worry about. We weren't criminals, sorry. We weren't criminals. Still being face-to-face with authority, especially when they were just itching to put someone behind bars for a triple homicide, was not the most comforting place to be. Of course, come right up. I led the police into the radio station, where Evelyn was sitting with her headphones over her ears and fingers adjusting the console controls after her first morning announcement of the day. She didn't even hear the door open, and I hated to startle her. When saying her name didn't catch her attention, I reluctantly reached out a hand to nudge her shoulder, though certainly enough to get her eyes on me at last. Though she jumped so suddenly that I thought she'd lose her headphones in the process. Don't do that. She stopped speaking, words halting in their tracks as her eyes glanced from me to the two officers standing by the door. Wasn't as if she didn't expect their company. Of course, he calls it company. We've got company, but she still looked uncomfortable when all four eyes locked on her. Microphones were silenced, the radio was set to automatically run for the next half hour, and the police got questioning the both of us. It started pretty normal, pretty unassuming, and an easy to answer. - Did anyone stop at the station in the last two days? Do you happen to see anyone suspicious outside? Is it either of you had any contact with the missing individuals? - Luckily, the answer to all three of these was no. I admit, I was further out of the loop than Evelyn was. She spent all of her time here and had no dinner for cook for years, whereas I had never even visited this town before hearing about the job offering. They seemed to pay far more attention to her than they did to me. There was a moment when one of the police pointed out a dark, bluish mark peeking out from the edge of Evelyn's neckline. She put a hand to her chest, so if she had forgotten about it until the pain came flooding back, the moment her palm touched the spot. All it took was a pull of the fabric to reveal a small portion of a huge elongated bruise that stretched across the upper ribs and breastbone. - Where'd you get that? - Pilloffs are asked. I could tell Evelyn was taking a moment to think, realizing that the story of how she had gotten the bruises was very farfetched. Things were weird around here, but maybe not weird enough to openly admit that sentient vines had tossed her and pinned her against the fire escape. - I was out on the fire escape and fell. She admitted, but refused to library any of the stranger details. - When I rolled down the stairs, I hit myself hard on one of the handrails. - They didn't press further, but it didn't mean they weren't still keeping those details in their minds. - It was uncomfortable, watching how intently they glared, taking in every small detail. - I knew it was just part of their job, but it felt almost unnecessarily intimidating. - Kinda sounds like a. - I knew it was part of their job, but I thought it was a little rude. - Kinda sounds like also, they're sending up that she just sounds like a drunk still. - Yeah, yeah. It'd be funny if like there's absolutely nothing supernatural happening. She just gets hammered and rides this stuff. - That would actually honestly be fun. - Like I fell because there's like a vine that like grabbed me and that's why I fell. That's why I went downstairs and something like touched me and then I walked back up. - Minutes passed in a half hour. Then an hour. And the only time the police weren't asking questions was when Evelyn or I attended to our work to keep the radio running. They were almost too attentive when it came to making sure everything was going smoothly with the broadcast, but then again, they lived in the town below. There's no way any of the bizarre stuff that happened all around this building to didn't get their attention. Maybe they knew even more than we did about the sold radio tower. I think I was the first to see movement in the woods. My breath hitched in a small gas, but I think the police heard me because moments later, they were swiftly marching to the window to see their fellow officers emerging from the forest. Medical team carried back two clothed stretchers covered in white sheets. Two, only two. We were told to stay in the broadcast room until the police returned. We watched nervously as they exchanged words below us. Silence through the glass. Evelyn said nothing, but she looked alarmed as the men and women below took terms making clanses up at our location. Something was wrong here. Evelyn pays back and forth until the police came back upstairs. One of them holding a familiar object, Jennifer cell phone. Well, shit. With a glove-clad hand, the female officer held up the device, which was sporting a dangerously low battery and two missed calls from the night before, that phone should have been dead, I thought. That somehow it was kept alive to the entire night just long enough to reveal its secrets. My coworker's face washed out, paler than ever when she realized that her name was flashing on the screen. However, what they said next was perhaps even more chilling than all the facts that were laid out in front of us. Miss McKinnon, it appears you and Jennifer cook were in contact and he clues to a war about you're not telling us. My heart sank and I knew hers did too. She looked at the two figures in front of us, and at me, I'm now slightly agape with the beginnings of a question that would have come out. Whereabouts? Jennifer had been out there. She was cold and dead in the trunk of that tree and if they found her phone and the other two people, how the hell did they not see her? The only answer I could possibly think of was that she wasn't there anymore. But if that was true, who or what pulled her out of that tree? I know her. Evelyn slips trembled. I never seen her look this close to tears. In fact, I didn't know she ever cried. Ever since Jennifer was announced missing, Evelyn had made an effort not to talk about their former friendship. It was easy for me to forget that she probably was grieving behind the mask of indifference. I was just thinking about her and thought I'd try, but she didn't pick up when I tried to call. We haven't talked in over a month, and I promise I don't know anything. This time she wasn't lying at all. This new development put us far into the dark as we could possibly get, making me question everything I'd seen the night before. There's no way we both dreamed that up. Was there? No, not when the rest of the scene fell into place. The other two bodies had been collected, but Jennifer had been taken while the others were left behind. I couldn't even begin to think of her reason why. God, I can't believe I even let it cross my mind, but for a split second, I had the chilling thought that maybe Jennifer had gotten herself out of the tree. There was a lot of weird shit out there in the woods, and I wasn't ready to start worrying about the walking dead, too. Evelyn's answer was honest, but it wasn't good enough for them. Deciding that this wrong place, wrong time situation wasn't satisfactory, Evelyn was given a beck any gesture of the hand from the female officer, whose other hand hovered close to her side. It wasn't where her gun was placed, but rather the handcuffs. She must have noticed that Evelyn looked down at them, because she moved her hand away, almost on cue. We have more questions. We would like to wait until we get to the station to have a real talk. If you, if I don't argue, you won't cuff me. Evelyn finished her thought while peeking out from the hair hanging in her face. The policewoman gazed at her, and silently nodded her head. My coworker never did have the most expressive face. She often looked weary or annoyed, sometimes a bit above. But this time, she looked towards me with a heavy frown and eyes that could only be described soulful. I could tell she was scared, but not with the type of fear we face before now, faced with impossible things. It was a very realistic dread with no disbelief. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. Follow the rules, okay? Those last thing I heard from Evelyn's lips before, she was escorted for questioning. It's been so long now that I can't help but feel something went wrong, and that maybe she's not coming before the day is done. I want to leave. I want to go find out what happened Evelyn, but unfortunately, I can't do that. I have to make sure the broadcast never goes silent. This is Daniel at 104.6 FM, and I might be your host for just a little while longer. - End of part six, into part seven. It's interesting. Now she's basically being blamed for the murder here. I wonder how, I wonder, makes you kind of think I kind of like that, like a narrator switch throughout there too. Makes you wonder if we're even gonna see Evelyn again, because she's no longer our only point of view, it kind of paints the idea of what if she is up to something, you know? - Yeah, I'm maybe. I don't know. I'm wondering if it's just a convenient thing that the cops, well, also them calling the cops, I don't know, it's very odd. Like I said, the mystery is still up in the air at the moment. I'm thinking, I kind of, I see what your guts going, and I agree, I don't think that we've heard everything yet. It seems to like, oh, well, I got kicked out. I think there's something there that we just don't know yet, but I still don't think Evelyn is like. - I don't think she'll be part of it. - To be clear, I don't think she knows either, but I think it's like the memory she's getting if like, oh, I was here, I was drunk or something. She may have something to do with it, but that she may not be privy too. - Right. - All right, well. - Part seven. - Part seven. - Snooping through someone's computers, a quick way to make an enemy out of a friend. But I somehow justified my decision. I'd have all the confusing and traumatic things Evelyn and I have witnessed. My evasion into her post isn't quite as bad as, well, murder, was it? Oh, wait, does that mean she did? - I don't know, I'm wondering if now, if they're gonna have him basically be like, I guess race is special. where he's like, "Oh shit, did she do this?" You know? - Hmm, no, okay. First, I think you all need to know. It's been a couple of days now and I haven't heard from my coworker at all. It's almost as if she's dropped off the face of the earth. I've been handling this radio station on my own and things haven't been as weird as they usually are. There's no crime from the sink, no freaky looking birds outside the window, no fog. However, I was still uneasy. So please, we're almost always present on their search in the woods looking for that girl's body. To fact that they couldn't find it, even in the light of day, gave me the sinking feeling that Jennifer was out there somewhere, moved or hidden, or maybe devoured. Who knows? I saw the same officer from the day they dragged two bodies out of the woods, taking Evelyn with them. She looked just a stern and just as unfriendly as before, but at least she allowed me to ask her a question. I simply asked her when and if she expected Evelyn to be done doing her part in the case. I hope my role as the concerned trainee would convince her to give me an estimate on when I might see her again, especially after I pressed that I was having some difficulties adjusting to the sudden full-time position. Guilt tripping a cop is in something I would advise. Can't be sure of that, she said matter effectively. Depends on how well she cooperates. We can't question her yet though. I had to let her go in for medical treatment first. She refused to elaborate any further. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Evelyn didn't look her healthiest, but I somehow doubted she would have agreed to a hospital stay in the middle of all this mess. No, I feel there's something else going on. That coupled with all of the unexplainable things we had seen in my curiosity for what she had witnessed on the days I was gone, prompted me to look around her computer whenever I had some free time. Now, I know she was hiding a few things for me. More than a few things, really. Her thoughts seem scattered, documents filled with revisions and half written bits of her daily experiences, but it still looks like she's avoiding the follow-through on so many thoughts. It was cloudy in the early afternoon as I ate a late lunch, throwing away half of what was in the fridge that Evelyn hadn't touched, and committed to reading all of her prior post. The stone, the crying woman on the phone, that thing and the fog almost can't believe how much she was hiding from me. And yet, I have this feeling that too much of this is personal. I should have stopped there, but I didn't. I'm ashamed to admit that my curiosity got the better of me and I looked at her internet history. It was a lot of this, this website and her post, I mean. It seems as if she dedicates most of her time to writing, but there were a couple of other things. Facebook page, notably, the rest look like the production of boredom, clickbait articles, dumb quizzes, a Google search for mountain birds. I told myself I would visit the Facebook page for just long enough to check my own, not expecting hers to still be open. You can't, you can't be like, I went through all of her search history I think she had. I didn't want to pry on her Facebook page, like, okay. Yeah. It's not with the coy attitude. Apparently she had it logged herself out at all because the moment the page finally loaded after a long lapse of inactivity, there were unchecked notifications on the screen. There were so many that it seemed like Evelyn hadn't read through them in weeks and she posted even less. Much of the content on her profile belonged to other people. Some relatives of hers may be a great aunt, asked, how you been, which she never responded to. A young woman tagged her in a post with several others calling for a group hanging out sometime, which she didn't react to at all. And then there was an entire library of tagged photos, photos other people had taken. I admit that I smiled at first looking through them. They must have been from last summer because Evelyn's hair was shorter and she had a sunburn across her nose because then it was some major sun-inducing freckles. There were pictures from a college graduation ceremony featuring her with all of her friends and professors. She was smiling wildly, grinning with all her teeth, looking bright. The last graduation photo was her and a familiar woman making faces at the camera. It was Jennifer. As I continued looking through, I saw Jennifer a lot more often. Mostly on photos she had taken. Lynn and I went hiking today, moving day with Evelyn, Evelyn and Jenny, couch lifting champions. Then there was a dark and blurry photo. It was the first of many. Someone posted an album tagging Evelyn and at least 15 other people, pulled the pictures from the woods. My smile started to disappear. Seeing that forced in the blurry faces of strangers, most of them drunk or in clouds of smoke made the photos seem ghostly. Then I saw her again. Evelyn was in the background of a few photos. Sometimes so small that I had to pay an awful lot of attention to see her. She was smiling in one or two, talking in another. Then one photo in particular, chilled me right to my core. Evelyn was at the edge of a group, as if pulled into a photo while passing by. But my coworker was pale, eyes wide and glowing from the reflection of the camera flash and her face was stuck in a grim look of terror. It was clear something had happened. She had seen something she didn't want to see. I couldn't get away from the photo faster, and so I skipped forward again and again. She was in almost every picture, holding a cup in her hand each time, and I watched the progression from that scared, tired look to near unconsciousness as two friends were holding her up in the background. Either she was drugged, completely wasted, or both. And then her and Jennifer both disappeared from the remaining photos, leaving no trace behind. I regret lingering so long on the photos because my online status or rather Evelyn's online status had caught someone's attention. I saw the blip of an instant message in the chat automatically popped at the corner of the screen. Reading her messages was the ultimate betrayal of any kind of privacy, but I couldn't refuse just a small peek. I can't take it. I can't take Dan being like, "Oh, but Dan, I don't want you to be in her privacy." Just grow up. Just you're doing it. Be a man. Evelyn, if you're reading this sometime from now, I hope you don't kill me for this. I scrolled through. It was a person I hadn't seen, though Jennifer was one of the two faces in his profile photo. It didn't matter as he made his purpose as to go between very clearly through a flood of at least 20 unanswered messages over the course of a month. This name was Elijah. April 2nd. - Hey, Lenny, can we talk? - April 5th. - Where are you staying? Are you getting help? April 18th. She's been asking about you a lot. She really wishes you would unblock her. - April 23rd. - Evelyn, please. - And just now. - Len, hello? As I scrolled upwards, I found the first message that started it all. It was on the first of the month, April fulls day. - Hey, Evelyn. Jim told me what happened. I hope you get well soon, but please take it easy from now on. She can't babysit you just to make sure you don't drown in the tub. You know if you need some help, they've got anonymous progress for that, right? You should look into it. Jim cares about you, but she perverged you when you were sober. - So it sounds like she saw something in the woods that night. - Resorted, right? - The traumatized her and she started drinking to deal with it, yeah. I think. Also, like, this is a very interesting move for the story to pull because I really like they're switching to Dan here 'cause it gives us a perspective on a narrator in a way that, as established, our narrator wouldn't give us this information. - Yeah. - You would have to come from someone else, but they set up someone previously, so it's a smooth transition into a new narrator so that we can get like background on the person who's talking. And now the story isn't so big, it's kind of honed in, like it's narrowed its focus down to one person, which is pretty cool. I just like it, good touch. Another red bubble. There were more messages waiting below. I was hesitant, so curious as I scrolled downward, finding that Elijah had left a handful of short, aggressive messages just seconds ago. - Answer me. Where's my girlfriend? - You know, don't you? Evelyn, I know you're reading this. - We'll stop it again. It's seconds later, another message appeared. - They all die on that mountain. Every single one. - I closed out of the browser and slammed the laptop shut as quickly as I possibly could. His words struck me instantly with the sudden fear that if I stayed on the page, I would have seen and read far more than I wanted to. They all die, he said. Who is they? The people who worked here before? Hikers, climbers? I'm still not sure if his words were a threat or concern. I'm no detective, but I'm worried that nothing here is coincidental. I know my coworker will read this and I'm sorry to her in advance, but I just can't pretend that all of this doesn't fit together somehow. Evelyn, if you're reading this, I hope you can remember what you saw that night in the woods. - Could also be the thing that when the fog that was like that didn't attack her, it like came up and you know and like-- - Touched her. - Touched the back of her arms and stuff. Could be something of like, maybe having, she has maybe done something with that creature before too. Like, you know, been a part of Jenny's death or something and gave, you know, like some kind of deal or something. - Yeah. - There's a memory that's been hidden. - Yeah. - Yeah, there's a memory she's forgetting. She might have seen something or became possessed by something or says, yeah, she's more in than she knows. - Yeah. - Or that she's telling us. - Or that we know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to post this earlier, stopping where I did above, but I'm glad I chose not to. It's evening now as I put this down and something has happened outside the radio station. I'm realizing the full weight of working around the clock. There's boredom, especially being alone and attention that has been putting me on edge. I was fitted for a hearing aid, which I received just a day or two earlier and somehow being able to hear it decently from both ears again made the silence even more daunting. That and I've noticed a faint sting in that ear since I came here. back to the station. I gave the evening news and prepared for another 30-minute music block. The time to spare and no real interest in trying to hear any muffled bits of music through the headphones, I paced around the room and took a few moments just to peer out the window. With the purple glow from the sunset, I saw something that caught my attention. There was a man out there, standing upright but swaying slowly side to side. Now I would have been suspicious that this was something unnatural, considering how many times the woods have messed with both our minds, but I recognized him. He worked for a service that brought groceries to the station twice a week. Oh, look who was right, I said that the grocery guy would come back, I mean that's not really a bear trap or a good call out because of course he'll come back but I'm still taking those, I take those. He was facing away from me, staring off into the woods. I washed him intently, hoping he didn't take another step. His last words, Jennifer's boyfriend, and sent to Evelyn's messenger ringing my head, they all die on that mountain, every single one. In hindsight, I did the stupidest thing I ever could have done, I went out there. The thing is I knew it was a bad idea, but three people had died in the woods in a matter of days, maybe even hours, I didn't want to witness one more person getting lost and being pulled out in a body bag. I banned in the broadcast room, running down that long, wanting staircase to the exit. It was almost impossible to see it, but a very dim shimmer from the outdoor light led me there. When I whipped open the door and ran outside to tell the man to come back, I saw only one of his feet as he stepped into the darkness between the trees. Already pushing his way through the brush, I was a bit foolish, but I wouldn't say I'm stupid. I didn't follow him into the woods, I yelled at him to come back, but he didn't even seem to register that I was there. Said my eyes dropped to the ground, where I saw he had dropped cardboard box. Why don't you make a delivery this late at night? As I stooped to pick it up, I heard the crunch of branches and rustle of leaves. I thought it was him, turning back around, realizing his was safe, it wasn't the grocery guy. It was something so much worse. I saw Jennifer walking out of the woods and making a path towards me. I'm not sure walking was the right word. Her neck was broken, her back was twisted, and her legs were snapped in directions that made my skin crawl, just hearing the sounds her bones made as she moved. One arm was twisted backwards at the shoulder, wrist dangling so loosely, I thought it might fall right off. She shambled towards me, putting weight on whatever parts of her legs would support her. But she looked like a dark covered marionette being operated by a puppeteer that had no idea what he was doing. There were twigs, dead leaves, and bits of long grass sticking out of her hair and stuffed into her open mouth. The sound she made was unnatural, like breathless gas being mixed with these low, guttural groans. I couldn't even tell if she was looking at me. Her eyes were milky wide and her head rolled back and forced loosely on her snapped neck. Without even thinking I'd banded the box on the ground, whatever was in there didn't mean a damn thing anymore. I ran back to the bottom of the tower, practically throwing myself into the building before slamming the door behind me and locking it as fast as I could. I peered out the window, it was a mistake. Jennifer was inches away from the door. Her head snapped back to the front so that her face was right there in front of me. I don't know how she got there so quickly and honestly didn't care. All I wanted in that moment was to get as far away as I could. I ran up the staircase, pure fear and adrenaline pushing me to the top without so much as a second to pause. I didn't care about the grocery guy anymore. Just being locked in the broadcast room was all I wanted, that and the comforting sunlight. It was still so many, many hours for morning. I locked myself in, getting as far away from that door as I could, avoiding the window for fear that I'd see your shambling up the fire escape, her face, I can't get her face out of my head. It's almost midnight as I write this. I just got a call on my cell phone and I've never been so relieved to hear someone else's voice. When I picked it up, I would have been happy for anyone to answer me, just another living, breathing human being to talk to. Daniel, are you there? My heart skipped a beat, it was Evelyn. She sounded tired, but it was her voice without a single doubt. Where are you? I asked her, skipping all pleasantries, but they sure heard the panic when I spoke. Please. Please, please tell me you're not in jail. They didn't arrest me. I think they wanted to find a reason to, but I'm coming back. I'll be there before six, that's all I can promise. I'll catch up to speed when I see you. She must have heard me let out the biggest sigh of breath because her next word sounded concerned. And what's wrong? I'm fine. It was a lie, but my nerves weren't ready to have that discussion. Just be careful and get here safe. I will. Okay. Don't you think that maybe Dan should say something to the effect of? Hey, why don't you wait till daylight and not come when your dead friend's body is shoved up against the door to this building right now? Yeah. Maybe wait that one out. I think, well, one, I think that one, I think he's freaked out. And then two, I think that he's still, I just think that there's like, there's not tension building, but suspicion building, you know, I think that he wants to know the answer is now is what I think, Hunter, if you, if you were like, Hey, can you come here quick? And I'm like, yeah, and you didn't tell me that like Harry's decomposing corpse was going to mom in the death. When I got to the building, I would never forgive you. That's okay. What did you say? I said, that's okay. Okay. All right. She agreed softly, but I could tell she didn't call just to tell me she was alive and returning. There's a storm coming tomorrow, a really, really shitty one, high winds, lightning, power outages, maybe she didn't need to explain why that was a reason to worry. There's an impossible pressure keeping control of this place. And still, I didn't even know why this radio station was a center of every weird thing happening in these mountains. All of a sudden, I had a feeling that I hadn't really noticed until just now, I realized how much this job and this place changed my life. Evelyn? Yes. I spared her glance to the window, relieved but surprised that Jennifer wasn't there. However, I did see a small, unnerving side, twigs, long grass and bits of dead leaves in here, littered at the top of the stairwell, making a path down the steps. How long was she standing there before she disappeared? As soon as we get a couple more part-timers, we're taking a vacation. This is Daniel with 104.6 FM, and I've never been so eager for an early morning in my life. In to part seven, you know, that comment at the end, like we need a vacation, I hope I wish Jennifer broke down that door and ripped him in the office. He is definitely not the most, he's definitely not the most charismatic guy. I'll give you that. I do think, I don't know, I, which I don't know if I'm being bought in too much, but before getting to eight, I'd legitimately feel like Evelyn has something, she's done something bad. I think I'm kind of talking to that. Yeah. She's done something. She did something someone, Jennifer's spirit or whatever's mad about it. The boyfriend blames her. Or who knows? The police that know about supernatural stuff suspects her for some reason. 100%. Yeah. Who knows? Part eight. Part eight. This is really good. I see why so many people were excited. This feels like a perfect creep cast story, like conversational, you know, language is very, like it keeps the pace up, keeps itself going easy, fun story, you know, very, very well written. Yeah. I have so much news to tell and yet I don't really know where to start. First, let me clarify. This is Evelyn. Our turn to the radio station at about 545 in the morning. Was it one day ago, two days ago? I'll be honest. Sometimes I'm not even sure how long I'm here. That day, the week it is anymore. I screamed at Dan for a while and locked him in the bathroom for about 15 minutes before I realized that he was sincerely just trying to be helpful and makes sense of things. I still wish he had stayed off my social media though. Now I'm adding, putting a 30 year old man in time out onto my list of activities I never thought I'd be doing at the workplace. But while I was gone, I saw, heard and experienced so much that I have to just sit down and tell you everything from start to finish. That's right game. That's the story this reminds me of. I was thinking that like the wording of it and the style of the setup is similar to one we've read, life right game, like how Bristol would have these kind of conversations where she wouldn't dwell too long on how she felt about things. It was mostly action, but it gave inside and stuff. That's what this feels similar, similarly, pays to. Oh, nice. The storm is on its way and the lights have flickered a few times already due to the winds. I'm typing this as quickly as I can because, well, I'll be honest, I don't know what will happen after I submit this. When the police picked me up from the radio station, they didn't really give the impression that they were questioning me as a suspect of Jennifer's murder. I was never put in handcuffs. I was never put in a cell, but they didn't want me out of their sights until we had a good long conversation. However, as soon as we arrived, I was inspected a bit too carefully. As a woman in gloves waved a little flashlight in front of my eyes and told me to strip down to my tank top so they could inspect my arms, I immediately had my suspicions. Did they think I was shooting up the radio station? High out of my mind. It lasted far too long and I had to go through a seemingly unnecessary amount of searches and swabs before I was fired. Finally allowed to sit down. All of my items confiscated except for my clothes. When one of the investigators came by to question me in a private room there at the police station, I voiced my concerns. - Listen, I'm not a junkie. I told him, perhaps a little bit too aggressively. - I thought we were here to talk about my friend. - We are. - He sat down on the other end of the table and contrasted my bitterness. He seemed far more concerned than he was watchful or judgemental of me. - But due to your exposure, we're gonna have to get your permission for a full medical exam before we do any of that. - What exposure? - He seemed hesitant to explain, but I had a feeling that he couldn't just keep it for me. - At the radio station? Is there something dangerous in the air out there? I deserved to know what I'm getting around. - Detective Sugar's head. - Nothing like that. I'm not talking about radiation or gas leak. - He folded his hands on the table as he continued. - We see a lot of people coming down with illness or sustaining injury outside the town. And while we can't explain it, we've learned to be very thorough when it comes to making sure anyone who spends a considerable amount of time in the woods is safe. - I'd only just gotten there. Already I felt confused. I felt as if so much was hidden from me. So much that I wanted to know but wasn't being allowed to understand. The detective didn't say any more, but instead he's slid a piece of paper across the table. - We need your permission for a full medical examination in an overnight stay. After we're sure you're in decent shape, tomorrow we'll talk about your friend. - What was I supposed to do, refuse? I found it all very strange, but I admit that I was curious how all this fit together with the goings-on at the radio station. It was all seeming like some kind of inside job or perhaps some knowledge that I hadn't been awarded that everyone else knew about. I allowed them to do the medical exam, taking samples of my blood and basically everything else they could get their hands on. I was questioned a lot about the bruising on my chest, but when they had been assured, it was from an honest injury and not some disorder in the blood. I was permitted to get a night's rest before being picked up first thing in the morning. I saw the same investigator, a middle-aged man with dark skin. He had a low voice, it sounded nice, but I still couldn't shake this feeling that he wasn't any kind of friend to me. I picked it to glue exposed on the frayed edge of my paper hospital bracelet and an attempt to get it off cleanly, but the residue just collected under my fingernails. - Evelyn Famicannon. - He wasn't asking the clarifying. He rifled through a stack of papers and I found myself growing impatient. - You were arrested twice in the last 12 months. Do you always, both times? You and your roommate, former roommate. You and your former roommate, Jennifer Cook, were fined one time for a domestic disturbance. - We had a punny, we had a purely verbal argument. I had just gotten out of the hospital and she started lecturing me about my point is. - The detective spoke such a piercing tone that I shut my mouth immediately, letting him talk. - We had your fingerprints. We matched them to a set of prints on Jennifer Cook's cell phone, which we found a half mile away from your workplace next to a tree filled with blood. - She's like, "Well, that, I can explain that." (laughing) - Yeah. - That definitely isn't what it looks like. I squinted my eyes. Field was the word I had had thought to hear and nonetheless a tree sap was a subject of conversation. At that point, I think he could sense the question I was about to ask, "What do you mean filled with blood?" - I mean, the tree was oozing several quarts of blood right from a hole in the center of the trunk. And Jennifer's cell phone, the one with both her and your fingerprints was found at the base of it. - Gave me an icy stare and I was waiting for a question. I was waiting to somehow be blamed. - I didn't have anything to do with it. Again, he didn't let me finish, but his words both comforted and confused me. - Nobody thinks you were the one to hurt her, but we need to know what you saw in there. Anybody, anything you may have witnessed, we received an anonymous tip saying there were three bodies in the forest. And clearly, three bodies were not discovered. It's very, very important that we find her body and that we find it soon. - The urgency in his voice was somewhat shocking to me. I imagine Jennifer's family would want her remains, but the way he looked at me was almost desperate, as if finding her body is more important than just for the sake of her loved ones. - She was in the tree. - I explained though I knew how insane it would sound. - Stuffed in the center of it. I don't even know how she fit, but her face and one arm were sticking out of it. She was dead. Her mouth was stuffed with a bird's nest, and that's where she was when we turned around and left. - You know what, it's slowly, and I knew that none of that would help them actually find her. It wasn't as if they had to check the entire area, probably 10 times over by now. - Anything else? - Yes, with the raised eyebrow. - Anyone, anything strange out there? - I found myself hesitating. - What kind of strange was he talking about? I had weird stories and sightings. Oh, I had plenty, but at what point would it become too crazy to talk about? - No one else. I saw some weird mutated elk though. It had like three back legs, really fucked up looking weird eyes too. The two other bodies were on the ground and up in the tree and pieces, but I mean, that was all. - Paces? - The best guy to ask. I gave him a quizzical look. I'm wondering how he hadn't known the other two people had been split in half. That was a detail that wasn't overlooked so easily. - Yes, the man and the woman, they were both cut in half in the middle and the man's legs and the woman's top half were stuck in the trees as if they had been tossed in there. It sounds stupid, but that's exactly what it looked like. - He was slipping through his papers again, pulling out photographs and files. I saw only a glimpse, but I recognized the forest floor, grass covered in blood and the colors of the torn fabric of one of the bodies wore. But the sigh pulled out photograph in particular and slitted in front of me on the table. It was the scene, obviously, but the photo had been taken far away enough to show the entirety of the area's surroundings. I grimaced as I saw the far away shapes of two dead individuals in the blood-stained tree, now empty-wards, and if it would have been. However, I was surprised to see that the limbs of the other tree were completely and utterly bare. There no sign that the man's legs or the woman's head had ever been there. - They were there. I saw the woman's body and her face, what she looked like. - As I rattled on the detective's stochermis seat, fished a cell phone out of his pants pocket, dialing a number quickly and turning away from me. He spoke in a hushed voice, but I could still hear him. Sounded urgent. - It wasn't her, it wasn't just her. They're three of them now. - Said, his free hand rubbing at his forehead with his eyes squinting, shutting his stress. They were obviously moved, but we can't find her. The others must have already left also. If that's the case, it's too late, they're part of it. - He hung up the phone and I watched him return to his seat. So many questions tumbling over one another in my head. - What's going on? - I asked him annoyed. - A part of what? Why are you asking about fucking animals? I thought we were looking for Jennifer. It's all important. You don't need to worry. If it's important, I should know. I mean, I work out there. I'm the one giving you all that I know. What the hell was with the medical exam? What are we in danger of that no one's telling us about? - I watched the investigator lean back in his chair. The expression is calm and cold as it was before. We waited for my outburst to end, but the look in his eyes had a sharpness to it that spoke of some reluctance as if I were asking too much for him. But when I didn't choose to leave, he had no choice but to lean forward and speak. - People go missing. Several sometimes dozens a year on that mountain. Sometimes their bodies are found and sometimes they aren't. But they never return as themselves. But it's not just the people. We hire Rangers to collect any dead animals they find and get them out of those woods. But far too often, those Rangers don't come back either. - I was silent for a long moment processing his words. - None of it was making sense yet. - What happens to them then? We can't explain it. - Continued horse whisper. - But sometimes people have said strange things. They've gone for a walk in the woods and said that they saw a rabbit with one human ear, maybe a bush with fingers growing in a place with a few branches. One time an old woman nearly scared her son to death because she tried to coax a deer out of the forest saying it had her husband's eyes. Her husband had died collapsing on a woodland trail one month earlier. As she said, he had fused with a deer. - I felt sick, thinking of those human eyes. I didn't need to make it up for my imagination at all. That bird, that damn bird, started to wonder whose eyes those were after all. The detective continued. - We don't know what's in the air around here making people see this kind of shit. But all we know is that when the fog season comes around, more people go missing and more weird things start to appear. It's all around that spot too, your radio station. Maybe there's some magnetic disturbance. Maybe there's something under the ground we don't know. - You lean closer across the table. I didn't even try to say a word. I just stared, exhaling through my lips as you looked me straight in the eyes with the look that was dire. - One thing we do need to know though. In the last five years, we've hired 27 different people to speak over that radio. You and Mr. S. Beranza, you're 28 and 29. - I know the cliche of a heart-dropping is overdone and insensible, but I felt it then. My heart wasn't in my chest anymore. It sunk so low I felt every bit of confidence and safety in my blood disappear all at once. One thing was bothering me though. One little thing that had been in my head for a while now that I was just now piecing together. - We've hired? - Did it avoid the question? But it took a good long moment to answer. Finally, he shook his head, singing back down to his chair across for me. - The Brock has tower is a lot more than just a radio station. - You know that by now. People around here feel safer when they think about the music and that's what we tried and that's what we're trying to do. Keeping everyone calm until we know how to get rid of this problem forever. - It was making more sense to me now. While the station was so high off the ground and why it had to be on air at all times, whatever signal we sent out wasn't there just for people to enjoy. The music was just a mask covering something that served a more defensive purpose. It was a watchtower. The Brock has station was never for entertainment but for protection. - What had happened to the Brock has just stopped for good. - Yeah, it's with the small hint of fear in my voice and I didn't like to think about it, but I needed to know. Man, across from me shrugged his shoulders with a heavy sigh. - We don't know, but we never want to find out. The fog is stretched all across the town before and we think that potentially it could keep going as far as we let it. And whatever's in that fog has been stealing people away. That married couple that went missing the last time it crept into town. Well, you saw first hand what happened to them. And when the fog rolls around the next time, we may be seeing them again. - Sit up from the seat, walking around the table, giving me a heavy pat on the shoulders I sat there wearing gondom-mush. - You better get back to your station. Number 28. - So, I like that scene. I feel like that section did what a lot of stories we re-tried to do, where they have that scene where the person goes to the investigator or the researcher or the cop. And they have the whole like, at the end of something's wrong with that story, where it's like, well, I shouldn't be telling you this, but that's a goblin man that came from the ground to blah, blah, blah, you know? Like it's super, like they tell way too much, there's too many details. This feels more twin peaks. Like she goes down to the station, she's like, what's going on? And the cop's like, honestly, we have no clue. Like we know it has something to do with the fog. We know people disappear and they don't come back. There's a lot of deaths. Could be radio, he doesn't say radio. He's like, could be magnetic, could be a gas. Could be, we have no idea. But we know that this works to prevent it. It's almost like an honesty of, yeah, we're doing our best, whatever that looks like. - Yeah, I think that it translates to, it's a good desperation with the people that are just trying to solve a problem. That have no idea how to do that. - Yeah, it's not like they're, well, this is, it's not like she's like, tell me what's going on. And he's like, well, we trapped Cthulhu under the mountain. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like there's, he's just like, weird stuff's going down. And if you stop what you're doing, it'll get worse. It's all we know. So I do appreciate that. 'Cause there were like, we got some stuff out of that. Little mentions of like, fog shows up, people disappear that come back. The woman who said, she saw her husband's eyes in a deer, which is cool, but it's honestly just, it's almost like just more pieces that we've already seen, more little weird instances happening. So I appreciated that. It also makes sense that the police would be in on it. That morning, I took a cab back to the radio station before the sun came up. Before I did, I made one brief stop along the way. In the early hours of dawn, I walked to Jennifer's house, the same one. She had kicked me out of and the same one where her boyfriend Elijah now lived on his own. I didn't awkward ring the doorbell, but I did a small piece of paper underneath the door. It was the only printed photo I had of Jennifer carried around in my wallet next to photo of my parents. And now it was his. Daniel filled me in when I arrived back to the tower. And after I had a bit of a fit, which may have been a lot of a fit, I tried to fill him in on what I learned as well. It was a lot to relay, a lot for him to understand, but I felt better knowing that he wasn't any more in the dark than I was. So the people who hired us? Not really a network. I finished the idea for him. It's some agency or town government. I don't know. That's why our signal only reaches so far. There's no reason for it to expand. Daniel looked overwhelms and I didn't blame him. Tell I wasn't feeling so great about all this either. I went from being stressed about some weird shit to suddenly knowing that a lot of people could get hurt if we felt hurt or jobs. When I told Daniel about all the other former employees who had gone missing, he was visibly shaken. What happens to them? Do they die? Do they quit? I don't think they quit, Dan. Yeah, Dan. Do you think they get their benefits? What about, is there a reference package? No, you're fucking idiot. I don't like what? I don't think. It's like, Dan, what are you talking about? There's no one's quitting. We shared a silent solemn moment between us. We didn't say it, but we were both thinking the same thing. How long would we last? And if we didn't survive, which one would be the first to go? Rumble of Thunder interrupted any conversation that may have happened next. Both of us snapped our attention to the window where the heavy clouds were rolling in across the sky. And the trees furthest in our view had started to sway back and forth from the winds. A flash of lightning cracked through the dim light and was followed by another deep bellow from the sky. That same low, roaring groan that sounded like an angry god. Evelyn, this place has a generator, doesn't it? Yes, it's the lights flickered for the first time. The radio skipped a static for a split second as another deep rumble resonated from the mountain. Yes. Where is it? I frowned, giving him an almost apologetic look outside. This is number 28 from the 104.6 emergency outpost. Fog advisory is in effect. Stay calm. Stay safe. Stay indoors. End of part eight. End of part nine, the finale. The finale. I like to switch at the end how it goes to like emergency outpost. Yeah. Now recognizing what it is. Number 28. That's pretty sick. That's pretty cool. Hard. No, I understand why this has such a phone. Like at the last part, it linked off to our slash 104.6 FM. So it has its own subreddit and I get this is totally the kind of story I can see people getting into writing their own scenarios, characters, stuff like that, you know. Yeah. People could lie about what number they are too. I'm number 16. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could do so much with it. There's so much to run from. Run with. That too, I guess. Yeah. All right. Well, are you ready for the finale? Let's do it. Part 9. The forest was alive. Even before the fog came, we could see it moving and wriggling with electric energy as the thunder roared overhead and lightning cracked at the top of the mountain. I'll admit for a moment, I actually wondered if a forest fire would be preferable. Obviously, death hadn't been enough to keep Jennifer and countless others from coming back in some form. And so I later decided that setting every strange abomination on fire would only create more dangers for us. I won't beat around the bush. We were scared. We knew enough and had seen enough to know we wouldn't be safe. As the rain poured down and the cables and lines swayed from side to side off the tower, Daniel and I were not only afraid for our own safety, but for everyone else's. This broadcast tower was keeping the town alive. We were keeping the town alive. An alcoholic and a failed theater actor who knew. Some would describe this podcast, much the same, I would think. I think so. And gladly, gladly. The lights flickered again, prompting the broadcast to turn to static and skip as I scrambled behind the desk to get the sound going again. From here seconds, the waves would go silent. Then spring to life again, just as a rumble would vibrate underneath the tower. I noticed Daniel Flinch holding one of his ears just moments after the broadcast came back and static filled music played again. I heard. I asked him, but he shook his head, stretching out his jaw. No, my ears won't stop ringing, though. I shrugged it away, matching all those cliche excuses. It's the weather, the pressure is different up in the mountains and so on and so on. But he bounced back immediately, marching over to the window to scan his eyes over the dreary looking forest. It was hard to see much of anything through the rain, but he squinted it to make out shapes on the horizon. There's something moving out there. Far away, but it's getting closer, it's hard to see. I didn't need to see for myself to know what he was looking at. In the midst of the rain and the lightning, the fog would still find a way to roll in. After all, it wasn't really a product of the weather at all. It's more of a living thing, rather a malcomation of all formerly living things on the side of the mountain range. I need you to run our emergency broadcast. I told him as I pushed away from the console and popped up out of my chair, a strong wind whipped past, rattling the walls and making the wooden floor boards creak beneath our feet. I fell on steady, suddenly worried the old stilts holding us up would give in and we crashed down into the trees below. The only thing worse than the fall would be the exposure to the open woods should we even survive the way down. The floor rumbled as the building itself were breathing before it settled back into place. I looked at Daniel and he looked back at me and both knew we'd have to prepare for the worst the storm could do. As he practically fell into the chair, turning on the microphone to broadcast, crackling message over the air. I rummaged in the storage closet for industrial size flashlights and the keys to the generator shed. Now all of this supplies made more sense to me. Backpacks, emergency food rations, first aid kits, flares, fire starting kits, this place was never meant to be a radio station. It was most likely a ranger lookout that had been adapted into something capable of a large scale broadcasting. While knocking things out of my way and searching the keys, I found a pack of walkie talkies and checked them for batteries. Daniel was already done with his announcements by the time I found them and appeared at my side to snatch one out of my hand. He seemed to be thinking the same thing I was. If the power went out, one of us would have to go out there to turn on the generator. One of us. Couldn't risk both of our lives with nobody to take the responsibility. Did you start the music again? Daniel nodded. It's going. But the lack of confidence in his voice spoke of a deeper thought. He was running now, but if the lights continue to flicker, it might not be for much longer. There's nothing else to do but wait. As the fog bounded through the forest, moving the trees with the weight of its eerie inhabitants, could only watch as it engulfed the entire woodland. I had never seen the fog rest at the edge of the forest, but it did this time. Something about the music, rather the signal, kept it from crossing that line between us and the town further down the road. You know, plugged our headsets, letting the music play in the studio for both here, set down at the edge of the window on the floor. It was a call before the storm as we stared at the swaying poles on the wires outside, wondering which one would be the first snap, or end up snagged at a tree. Wait, hold on. So every time they continue to play the music, the fog just stops, right? And the only time it's kept going the previous two times is because the music hasn't been playing for some reason, right? Well, I think that it's not that it stops. And I think it just, er, it's not that it stops rolling. I think that it just can't bridge that divide for some reason. Right, right. Like it's like the signal creates a barrier. Right. You have some kind of. So the previous two times, the first in the first part of the story and the other when Dan was controlling it, where they didn't have the music playing. They just filled the town with the Stephen King mist for a couple hours while they figured out what they were doing. Well, just monsters and creatures running around in the fog because they couldn't keep the radio on how many people have they killed? Well, three, I guess. Yeah. I mean, technically three and possibly more today, depending on the generator. Yeah. Well, that's not their fault. The first one was our narrators fault because she saw the fog and turned down the radio. And then when Dan was there, when she fell over the railing, he came down to look and then the broadcast quit. So that's three, they have a kill count of three so far between the two of them. A moment passed, but it was a long and excruciating moment of silence. Dan was the first to break it as his talking of self almost always was. You want to know what I did before this? He asked, but I knew he'd tell me anyway, I know it's still. After I graduated with a master's degree in performance art, a master's degree, the only acting job I could get was recording a commercial for some plumbing service. I record lines in the actual studio talking about toilets for 20 takes and you know, it was the worst part. You laugh looking over with a stupid somewhat disheartening grin. They didn't even pick mine. I heard the commercial in the radio in my car and it was someone else completely. Never in my life did I think I'd be legitimately pissed because I wasn't chosen as a spokesperson for a toilet cleaning. You know what? I'm glad. In my name, I'd be like, we're not using his lines at all, not one that actually made me laugh. Even if it was a bittersweet moment of light hardness, I sharpened my shoulders with an expression of nonchalance, you get good things you get led down by the radio twice, gesture to the room around us and Daniel snorted midchuckle. What about you? Tell me a stupid thing you've done. I was getting over my hate and it's back now, it's a back full, full power. I had to thank for a moment, not because I couldn't recall any, but because there was too much to recall. Somehow all my stupid mistakes just ended up sad. I almost died in a bathtub once. I said chuckling even if it wasn't all that funny and you'll seem to unsure if you should laugh or not. Okay, now this actually is me and you because there's multiple times on the show where I'm like, oh, here's a little lighthearted whimsy and you're like, yeah, so my grandfather shot my dog and tried to kill me, it's like, oh my gosh, I was shit-faced and I felt terrible so I wanted to take a bath, ended up passing out almost the second I got in and Jennifer found me after I had apparently flipped face down. She honestly thought I was a suicide until they got me breathing again and found out I was still just hammered as when I went in. That's not my laugh, but Daniel didn't. I even knew it wasn't funny, but I was desperate to grab it's straws just to find a reason to take it lightly. I saw the severity of the frown on his face, my smile disappeared and I suddenly felt like a child being scolded. I didn't need to question how he knew it was an ongoing thing. After all, he had seen enough of my computer to know most of the truth by now, both the tightness of my throat and the breath I took in the next shakie and uneven. My first sober day was the day I came into work a few weeks ago, and I bought my bottom lip to keep from letting it tremble, putting it in a perspective felt pathetic, reminded me of just how stupid it was. The only reason I'm not drunk right now is because the fucking grocery guy only brings me cheap shitty iced tea. That's how we both laughed, but didn't last. In a second, amusement turned tears as I unwittingly felt a sob escape me, both my hands covering my face. As my eyes squeezed shut, I only felt Daniel's hand pat between my shoulders and remained there until I uncovered my face. Our fused to let myself cry out loud. Those thoughts and feelings were pushed back down as my eyes returned to the fog at the edge of the forest. I watched it move and swirl, many eyes and many shapes moving and twitching as waiting eagerly to be allowed further, the shed was so close to the edge, too close. So earlier, there were little mentions of her looking sickly, because I kind of forgot the alcohol thing, and there were mentions of her looking sickly or sad or depressed and I was like, oh, that must be a fog taking a toll on her, but no, that's probably just because she's, you know, getting over an addiction. Yeah. That's a nice touch. A familiar pair of eyes stared back at us then. Up in the tree, free from the fog, hopping near to Taffet speak at the window, it's that timbre again. I looked at it closer this time, size were hazel. Now if I myself wondering less where it came from and who it had borrowed those eyes from, what did you see? I heard Daniel's voice but didn't process it at first, but the deep breath, I wiped away the tears from my face and turned to him with a, hmm, of confusion. At the graduation party, you were in the woods and you saw something, didn't you? The word graduation in itself made my stomach sink. I looked away from Dan again, squinting as I struggled to bring those thoughts forward again somehow, just looking for the memory caused an internal pain. I didn't know there was anything fucked up about the woods back then. I told you that I left here, right? When I was a little kid, my dad died and my mom remarried, so we moved with, we moved in with him out of town. Then I came back the week of graduation with a bunch of people I used to know as kids and they all said this woods got creepy since I left. Bits and pieces were still missing from my thought process, but I was piecing them together in the moments I paused and kept silent. It was some terrible puzzle slowly coming into view and made my face turn to a grimace. I wandered off, probably because it was loud and everyone was acting like an ass, but out in the woods I heard something. It was a growl I thought at first, but now that I remember that sound, it was, it was a voice. The low, gravely, painful groan. This animal stepped out of the bushes and I thought for sure it was some kind of cougar or wild dog, but its face, God, it had this face, yellow eyes, like a wild cat, but the nose and the mouth were different, human and familiar. He looked at me and I saw his mouth move trying to say something, but all that came out was this terrible rattle, like it, like it hurt to breathe. It sounded like he was suffering, like it took everything he had just to say a single word. I ran back to the party and I drank and I drank and I fucking drank it till I couldn't remember that thanks face anymore, and it worked for a good, good long time too, but now, now that I'm sober, all it took was thinking about it once for it to be stuck in my head again. Dan gave me an apologetic look, as if he had some reason to feel sorry about it all, his hand fell on my back again and he opened his mouth to speak. I'm sure it would have been some great words of wisdom or encouragement, but he never had the chance. There was a flash of lightning and a deafening crack as it struck one of the poles standing around the station. The thunder blended into the sound of the crackling radio for a split second before the lights went down. The sound stopped and we were plunged into a dark, thick silence. All I could see on the dark were Dan's eyes, illuminated by the flashes of light as he watched the forest edge. The fog twisted and moved in patterns of rolls, tumbling over itself like a living beast as it crawled towards us. It was almost too dark to see, but my eyes can make out blots of shapes inside the fog, arms, legs, bodies, all of them eager to inhabit the land they have been barred from until now. The myths world around the stilts of the tower creeping upwards before we had a chance to make a split decision. Daniel turned on his walkie talkie, testing it by holding it up to his mouth. I could hear the crackle of his voice come through fine, even just a few feet apart. I'll let you know when I've got it going. I told him, sternly jumping up to my feet. I was about to push open the fire escape with no hesitation, but I fell a rough hand grab the back of my shirt before I had the chance. Stay in here so you can get the radio going. No. I answered flatly, refusing to follow that order. There's a scale pulling at the edges of my lips as I glared at him. I wasn't there when you got hurt and I couldn't help Jennifer either. So let me do this. Let me do this. You stared at one another for almost too long, but I could feel him slowly letting go of my shirt. His arm dropped, giving back my freedom to move and he nodded his head once in silence. Daniel, if you're reading this, you snooping bastard. Thank you. The door took a heavy burst, but I shoved it open and was surprised for a moment when I didn't hear an alarm. Of course, it didn't take long to remember that the power outage had taken everything, not just the lights and the radio signal. The fog was already rising, covering the ground and crawling upwards over the size of the building. It was only moments before I was trapped inside of it, not sure whether to run for my life or take it slow to stay hidden. It had been no use. They knew I was there already. I held my flashlight in shaky hands to illuminate the steps of the fire escape. There were no vines, no slimy mud covered appendages, and nothing waiting there to trip me. Still, I didn't trust that the fire escape was unoccupied. I could hear a faint clank from the bottom as if something was trying to pull itself up to the open door behind me. The sound and the fog was maddening. The amalgamates were suffering inside of themselves, parasites eating off of one another and groaning in some constant pain. The ones that didn't mown cry in their torment were voicing aggressive growls, rattling breaths as they searched through the fog for another living thing to tear apart and added their collection of stolen bodies. My flashlight caught a glimpse now, and again, of milky-wide eyes, there was a glimmer of rain-soaked skin or fur. I didn't dare look back, but I could hear and feel the crash of weight against the fire escape as if something was trying to crawl its way up underneath the section as I passed. Once the end of the stairs was in sight, I made it my goal to run to the shed as quickly as possible and lock myself in immediately until the generator would start. The problem would be getting out. My light caught the end of the step and there I saw what had been making all that noise. A woman's face stared up at me with dead pale blue eyes. She was dragging herself. Her upper body struggling to leave the ground and crawl its way up as her lower half was weighing her down. This half of a woman, when I remembered seeing sprawled over the branch of a tree, was being engulfed in roots and bark. The living plant her corpse had been fused with, pushed itself along the ground, but clumsily, as if it was too heavy and too scattered in its movements to make any progress. Her arms, however, were still moving and capable of grabbing me if I got too close. The worst part was how pleadingly she looked at me, as if the human part of her was begging for a way to get out. I couldn't help but feel that the aggression was fear, but it didn't tug on my hard shrinks quite enough to convince me to stop. I jumped over the edge of the stairs, falling only a couple of feet from the ground and making a straight line to the shed. Keys of my pocket jingled and slipped between my fingers as I tried to find the right one. All the wild, far too aware of every shadow and every glimmer of eyes creeping closer. The fog was too thick to see well. My flashlight only served as show me there was nothing directly in front of my eyes, but it was perhaps a blessing that the creatures hunting in the fog were stuck in it just as much as I was. I still sense that they knew I was there, searching and struggling to catch anything in their grasp. I even heard the shriek of one, like the sound of a winding animal and pain as it was caught in the clutches of another larger and likely more terrifying beast. I felt the surface of the wood in front of me, whispering words of relief as I pat it along the edge of the shed until the door was at my fingertips. A pair of keys were fished from my pocket and my clumsy fingers struggled to swiftly find the one small bit of metal that I needed. Just then I heard a crackle. It was the walkie talkie connected to my hip, Daniel's voice on the other end. Did you find it yet? I would beat Daniel the death with my bare hands. He's kind of coming ahead at the worst moment. Just sneaking around that you hear the cries, the shrieking, and then it's like, "Earth to hello. It's your best friend. Earth to Captain Tom. Are you there?" Just kill him. Just be like, "Hey, everyone. He's up there. Go that way." He asked, but I felt my stomach type and knots when his voice rang out over the silence. I was the only one to hear him. Heavy grunts and stomps of feet like hooves sticking into the dirt surrounded me. I could hear the shriek of something vaguely avian mixed with a human-like scream and bellowing roars that shook my skull from the inside. I was in a rush to open the door. I'm trying every key as I blindly search for the right one. Finally, as I prepare to swing the door open, I could feel the vibration in the ground as something heavy and tall landed by my side as if jumping from the tops of the trees. In the blinding fog, I could see brown and gray fur spotted with blood. It smelled like rotten flesh and mold. It's joints cracking and groaning as it bent down to my level. I could see its eyes and the periphery of my vision. At least six of them pale, stained with flecks of jaundice yellow sitting above elk lights now. It's antler scraped the side of the wood with a terrible chalk clenching sound. I felt a touch to my back and recognized it immediately. Spider-like appendages that had brushed my arms on the last fog weren't the legs of some giant spider, but this thing's fingers. It breathed in, then out with a rattle. The stench of blood and death was warm against the side of my face. When I told Daniel that almost drowning in the bathtub was the stupidest thing I had done, I meant it. It was the stupidest thing I had done yet. But this day, I changed all of that. I threw the shed door open, stepping out of the way to let the heavy wooden plank hit the hulking beast beside directly in the nose. Moving quicker than I ever had in my life, I slipped into the shed and jammed the door shut behind me, locking it up tight and throwing anything I could find in front of it as I heard the beast bellow more in annoyance than in pain. My light shone on the generator, but this thing's so big, it's just going to lift the shed off the ground. Yeah, it's huge, right? Just hurl her into the next area code. Which by the way, like I'm good at actually, you know that the monster design sounds sick. Like amalgamations of eyes on like a head and like the woman who's upper half is mixed with the tree. She was in and stuff. Very cool. Yeah, I love the like very, I like that it's a mixture of the forest itself. That's just a lot of fun. My light shone on the generator, but I had to work quickly. I felt a tremble in the floor as whatever stood outside knocked against the door so roughly that it caused dust and debris to fly into the air. I fumbled with a can of oil spilling a bit into my shoes and my pants, but still managing to fill the machine as the thing outside rounded the edge of the shed and only two large steps. It pounded on the roof big enough and powerful enough to cause the wooden beams above my head to crack bit by bit. I threw the nearly empty oil cans to the side and tried to find every button and switch and order before the ceiling collapse under the weight of that thing's fists. I flipped the first switch then the second, knocking my fist against it as I patiently waited to hear it spring the life. "Dan!" I yelled over the walkie talkie. "I've almost got it. You have to get ready to switch the breakers though. They're downstairs, go!" I heard his voice, but it was muffled and his words weren't making sense over the endless crackle. God, I hope you heard me. I felt a pain in the back of my head as a bit of wood from the ceiling fell with another forceful hit. Suddenly, I could see a pale light from above as the foggy sky became visible. A hole had been punched in the ceiling, but in moments it was blacked out by the multiple eyes of that tall, decaying abomination from the woods. I flipped the last switch and the generator began to rumble. It was a success. Regardless of whether or not I survived to escape this crumbling wooden hazard, the station would have power in moments. I staggered back, clothes and hair smelling like oil staring up at the pale eyes, it's roof with a frightened defiance. A shed rattled, another hard puncher kick hitting it from the side where I stood. It was enough to push me forward and knock me onto my hands and knees, but it didn't last. I could hear it before I saw it. The lights outside buzzed as they all came alive one at a time, bathing the entire clearing with yellow light. That's when I heard my device crackle again. Daniel's voice speaking clearly on the other side. I can't get the radio started. Told me in a panic. It's there's not enough power to run it. It won't work. It seemed like a failure at first, but then I remembered that stupid laminated piece of paper I'd been staring at for the last month of my desk. Rule number one. When the radio was down, activate the bell. Oh, I completely forgot about that. Same. Wow, call back. I was only pissed that he'd be the one to push it after that button had been tempting me since my first day. See the button on the wall? The one behind the case, push it. I showed it back to him sternly. Don't hesitate, just push it! I could hear him on the other end, fiddling with the case before he did exactly as I said. The next thing I heard was surprising. Nothing. Didn't hear a damn thing. At least not from the speakers on top of the radio tower. Instead, I heard Dan let out a pained yell and fumble around the room before a small mechanical wine and a clatter followed. Later I would learn what that was. It was Dan throwing his hearing aid across the room. It'd be really funny. funny, if he hits it and it just explodes. Like, the creatures outside didn't disappear. Rather they became noisy and they're pained and agitated sounds, rumbling past and dragging themselves away in any way they could. They were retreating to the forest, bothered by some sound that my ears couldn't pick up. A drone, perhaps too high or too low for my ears to hear, was driving them off. The bell, just like every other tool around here, was solely there to control them all along. Or rather, to control the forest itself. My eyes disappeared from the hole in the ceiling and I could hear the hulking creature above me slowly stomp away, resigning itself to return to the mountain. My legs felt like jelly and my head was pounding, but I still managed to find the door and push my way out into the fresh air again. Just as a glimpse of a giant, mud covered hoof disappeared into the tree line. Daniel had propped open the fire escape when I came back, slowly and exhaustively forcing my way to the top. The lights were on, the radio was off, but we were safe for the time being. The first thing my coworker did was pull me into a huck, lifted me a few inches off the ground, and saying these profound, thoughtful words to me. You smell like petroleum. I wish I could say that was the last time anything weird has happened here, but as you can guess, a day or two has passed and everything is still bullshit. The sink doesn't cry anymore, but we still get some weird calls. Dan told me that it rained pebbles the other day. I told him I was pissed off that he didn't collect any for me, like a baby otter. I'm sure things will always be weird around here, and there will always be some story to tell. Now, I think I'm going to focus on doing my job and lasting a bit longer than employees one through 27. But I'm sure if you don't hear from me, Dan will be sneaking on my laptop again someday. And I could change my password, but yeah. This is Evelyn at the 104.6 emergency broadcast station. In case you were wondering, that bird's still out there. Daniel decided to name it Bartholomew. I hate Bartholomew. And that is end of season one of kind of it's end of the part one because season one's technically the other parts and stuff. So it's end of the end of the end of the big first part of a counselor lonely broadcast station. You know what I liked about this, this first rundown of like quote unquote season one blah, blah, blah. Is that you got to run through of every rule. I thought that was kind of nice. It wasn't like a glaring like rummer rule too. It was like only the one time when it's like, oh, fuck yeah, the bell. I thought that was yeah, I forgot about it until the end. Yeah. Yeah. I was like these stories, you know, like the voodoo shop till some gas station, all that stuff where it's these little excerpts where it's not necessarily like a full encompassing story, but little vignettes of somebody's time and this thing. Like I'm glad it didn't, you know, I'm glad that this season didn't end with like they killed the thing that was in the thing or you know, they figured it out. Yeah, there's no big way in or like moment of like and we we saved the city, you know, kind of thing. I will say that I like how it was written in such a way where like you said, it never gave too much, but it kept calling back and making references to stuff mentioned earlier. And then I feel like that was a pretty good account from the broadcast station because then I'm reading the stuff that Kell Byron has written afterwards in the future parts go to like different perspectives within the small town or like different things around the radio station and stuff like that. So it's like, okay, we've told a pretty good story there. Now we can kind of look at it because I was going to say before I saw that the one thing I wish we got was maybe some more stuff about what's life like in the town or like what, what the hikers what do they see stuff? My immediate like the other accounts give that my immediate first thing was I would love like just one part doesn't need to be a huge thing, but if one of the parts was just the guy that delivers the groceries. Yeah, yeah, like that'd be a lot of fun, which I'm sure there is something out there for that. And I'm glad that there's more to it as well. But I can see how people can latch onto this and be like, Oh, yeah, I'm number this or that. You can kind of like make your own if you wanted to. It really leaves it open. And I think that's what when dingus or is it kale? What's what's what's their name again? It is tell Byron. That's one thing I think KEL did really good is create a universe where it's just like they are writing this specific thing, but it's very easy to jump in. And I think with this kind of format of like internet open writing and creepypasta, it's fun whenever it's an idea that, you know, anybody can just kind of hop in and you kind of understand the rules and you can kind of just make whatever amalgamation into the woods or put your own kind of stuff into it because we got so much like fun little vignettes like the guy that delivered groceries. It's just like, yeah, there's just a guy that carries stuff out here. Think about all the stuff he's seen. And we see him once. And that's it. And there's little moments like that. There's so much you could go with. But it's just like no, for this first part, we're just sticking with these two characters. This is our story. And there will be more about those other people later. That's really way more way more with Daniel to, I mean, I think that like, I think the police or the local government, whatever, it seems like they specifically let certain people in on this job. I mean, it kind of seems like it's like, well, if you're willing to do it, but it just seems like, I don't know. I I'm curious if there's more development of like how and why they let people run this thing. And it seems like I'm curious to see like, what's the average length people survive? Yeah. So who knows? All in all, really fun story, though. I would really, really highly urge people to go and just get some of these the physical books. I mean, like we read this parts one through nine, there's a full novel that's reimagined and contextualized to be a novel. So that's really just that everything we read, just the first part. Then there's the second part, which is titled, uh, uh, we're always on the air at one of four point six FM and some standalone stories. And then like I said, this is going to be a trilogy. So all that stuff is just book one. And then there's book two that has a bunch of other parts. And then there's the book three coming out. So we'll have their stuff linked in the description. Like I said, there's an audio book where they have like Mr. Creepypasta narration and stuff like that. Um, that's like 10 hours long over book one. So there's a ton more content leaked below the story interest you highly recommend you check it out. Yeah. And also, uh, thank you to all the audio listeners that stuck with us today on Spotify and Apple podcast and give us a good rating there. And to all of the patrons who support this channel and just get all the little bonus content as well. We appreciate you. And for anybody interested, be sure to check out, uh, the website in the description or in the link below. Go to creepcast.store if you want some merch from us. Uh, get some nice fun fabric. We have a lot of cool shirts this time around. I'm stoked. So be sure to check that out. It's a lot of a lot of fun stuff. But other than that, I hope you all have a great rest of your week and we will see you in the next one. Stay creeped. Stay creeped. Uh, this was a really good story. Uh, would have been better if Dan tried an adat tragic elk slash fall slash impalement slash explosion incident would have made it cooler. But, you know, it's good for good for what it was, I guess. Bye. (light piano music) (bell dings)