#blackstatic

Dust …n the… wind

All …. we … Dust… the wind

I give the radio a smack. Then another. 

It’s the only trick I’ve got. 

DUST

The speakers blare. I shoot for the volume controls, but they’re useless. Feedback screams through the radio like a banshee. It’s loud enough, sharp enough that I feel pressure building in my skull. Time for a new station. I twist the dial, but each frequency is met by a fresh stampede of distortion. 

“Piece of junk!” I shout, tearing the dial clean off the faceplate.

The radio shuts up. 

No more static. No more distortion. 

Silence.

I take a breath. I glance down at the radio, check and see what station I’ve condemned myself to for the rest of the drive. But the needle isn’t steady. It’s moving back and forth like a pendulum, drifting across the entire spectrum. 

“Useless,” I mutter.

The speakers crackle.

Ar…

Lis…Ng

An electronic warble fills the car, buzzing until it becomes a voice.

Are… Are you listening?

It’s a woman. She sounds nervous, maybe even…  afraid? Guess I'm catching a signal after all.

... Is anybody there? Can you hear me?

I frown. This sounds like one of those radio shows– a War of the Worlds sorta thing. It’s not classic rock, but it’ll do. 

The woman sniffles. I… I don’t know how long I’ve got. Time is… strange out here.

Outside, cacti fly by my window at the speed of sound. I think I see a tumbleweed rolling in the distance, but it’s tough to say. The moon is gone. Vanished behind clouds, and it’s just me and the car’s headlights shining the way. I narrow my eyes. Focus on the road. 

Hello? Please, I need you to answer me.

Her voice is sending a chill down my spine. It’s hard to explain but there’s something about the way that she’s speaking… It feels genuine. Too genuine for some third-rate radio play. I glance at the watch on my wrist, and it’s telling me that it's 3 o'clock in the morning. For talk radio, that’s the witching hour. I figure this is probably some paranoid calling in to offload their delusions onto the DJ.

… But where was the DJ? Shouldn’t they have answered her by now?

Technical difficulties, I think. “It’s gotta be,” I mutter.

There you are… the woman breathes. Were you… ignoring me?

It’s an uncomfortable coincidence, but that’s all it is. The woman isn’t talking to me. She can’t be. That isn’t how car radios work. Just to be certain, my eyes flick up to my rearview mirror, check my backseat to make sure it’s still just old food wrappers and lotto tickets. No psychopaths. No ghosts.

Just the way I like it. 

It’s okay to be scared, the woman says, and her voice is trembling. It sounds like she’s on the verge of breaking down, like she’s choking back a sob with every word. I’m scared too… The world is a scary place.

I’m tired, I tell myself. I’m exhausted and I’m stressed and now I’m starting to hear things because I’m falling asleep at the wheel. That’s all this is. Highway hypnosis. I’ve read about it. I give my cheek a couple slaps, shake my head and flex my jaw. Gotta wake up. The air whistles as my foot presses down on the gas. A little wind in my face should do the trick. 

He’s out there tonight… You need to be careful.

Don’t engage. 

He’s looking for you…

This is my mind playing tricks on itself. 

If he finds you… Can you give him a message for me?

I swallow. My heart is punching my ribs and my mouth is drier than the desert sand. “Who?” I think, and I don’t mean to say the words aloud but I do. 

Him, she replies, and she’s hyperventilating. Her breathing is getting fast. Ragged. They call him the—

Headlights blind my vision. The blare of a horn erupts in my ears alongside the woman’s anguished screams. In a fraction of a second, everything goes to shit. 

I hear tires squeal. 

The wind in my face becomes a hurricane, and something massive narrowly misses my sedan, clipping the backend and throwing me into a tailspin. My seat belt digs into my waist and I grip my steering wheel for dear life. The car twists like a carousel and it turns my dinner into bile into vomit all over the dashboard. 

I’m shouting. Praying. 

The car comes to an unscheduled stop. It crashes against the side of a cactus, my body slamming against the driver door. Smoke drifts up from the hood. 

“Fuck…” I groan, looking around in a daze. Slowly, the scene comes into focus. The road is half a football field away, and I can’t see any sign of what hit me– wait, what’s that? Just to my right. It’s a faint shadow in the dark, but it’s there. A semi tractor laying on its side. It must have flipped itself trying to swerve out of the way. 

My hand finds the door handle and it opens with a kerchunk. I step out onto the desert dirt. I’m still not sure if this was my fault. Did I nod off for a second? Did I fall asleep and drift into the oncoming lane? 

“Hello?” I call out to the semi truck. Two of its wheels are still spinning soundlessly in the night. “Are you okay?”

My leg is throbbing. I figure I must have smashed it pretty hard when I wiped out, but that can wait. I limp toward the truck, and the nearer I get, the less quiet the night becomes. There’s a buzz in the air. It’s the electronic sizzle of the truck’s radio, and it’s playing what sounds like a news broadcast.

Dreadful evening for accidents, a woman’s voice says. We’ve just received a report that a semi-truck has flipped along Route 50. No word yet on the driver’s condition. 

Absolutely appalling, Jess, a man responds. Our thoughts go out to the family at this time. 

I tell myself to ignore the radio. I tell myself that I’m in the middle of nowhere, that there’s no news vehicles around, that I haven’t seen headlights in miles and all of this is just in my head. A bad dream. 

Wake up.

Wake up.

“Sir?” I say, approaching the cab of the truck. The driver is hanging upside down, his seatbelt caught around his waist and his eyes are closed. “I’m going to get you out of here,” I tell him, raising my voice in the hopes he might open his eyes. 

I try the door, but it won’t budge. The metal is warped, jammed up from the crash. Instead I limp around to the passenger side, try that door, but this one’s locked.

Christ.

Window then. I’ll just drag him out through the window. But my ears pick up something, something that sounds like hissing. It’s coming from the driver’s seat, just beneath the wheel. Gas leak? Oil? The hiss turns into a crackle, a sort of snapping, hungry sound and light begins to flicker inside. 

Fire. 

Oh my god. 

I find a heavy rock, lift it over my head and toss it against the window, but whatever this glass is made of could stop a bullet. I’m smashing it. I’m throwing everything I have into it, but it isn’t enough. The flames are getting higher, and my arms are getting weaker. 

We’re getting reports now that the driver is trapped within the vehicle, the newswoman says. It appears that there’s a fire inside the cab. Rescue teams are currently trying to extract him but they’re encountering difficulty. This isn’t looking good, Steve.

The rock bounces off the glass. 

Truly terrible, the newsman replies. Eyewitness testimony claims some jackass fell asleep at the wheel. Can you believe that, Jess? The truck swerved to avoid him. 

The rock slips out of my hands, and I scramble to pick it back up. I hit the window again. 

Some people shouldn’t have licenses, the newswoman says. 

And again.

If you ask me, Jess, some people shouldn’t have been born. Just think, one abortion and this whole disaster could’ve been avoided.

The driver's eyes open. He blinks, and he looks down at the flames now lashing toward his forehead. His lips part. He screams. 

I bring the rock down.

He screams.

The window isn’t even cracking. 

I bring the rock down.

The driver’s trying to undo his seatbelt, but it’s stuck. There are tears in his eyes, and over the sound of the fire, over the sound of the radio, he’s begging me to help him. “It’s her birthday tomorrow!” he cries in desperate, broken English. “P-please, I have to get home, sir. I promised!”

And I’m crying. Tears are pouring down my face as this useless fucking rock bounces off the glass again and again and–

It’s quiet.

How long has it been quiet?

My arms are limp, my muscles cramped and weak. I stare absently into a red-orange storm behind the glass, and I realize the driver’s stopped screaming. When? When did the flames get so high? When did they reach up and take him, turning the entire cab into a crematorium? 

I stumble backward. “No…” 

And the radio replies.

I’ve been looking for you. 

I put my head in my hands. I pull at my hair with my fists and I shout and holler and do whatever it takes to wake up from this nightmare. But it doesn’t work. Nothing does.

There are others who want to find you first. 

The voice is guttural. It’s deep and distorted and it’s being played from the dying speakers inside the dying truck. It’s a lie. It’s just a broken record spinning inside of my head and–

Something catches my eye.

It’s a shadow, swaying just beyond the wreckage. It’s tall. As tall as a streetlamp. In the glow of the funeral pyre I can make out two gleaming, tiny eyes. They’re watching me. 

Tonight, you give yourself to one of us. Who will it be?

I stumble to my feet. My leg is throbbing, but it’s easy to forget the pain when I’m drowning in fear. The shadow moves. It takes a step forward. Just one. I see a wrinkled snout, and two long ears hanging low enough to touch the ground. 

“What the fuck…” I gasp.

The creature’s snorting. It sounds animalistic. Hungry. It’s throwing back its head, and it’s opening its mouth and inside of that long snout are rows of human teeth. They’re gnashing together. Caught between them are hair and bones. 

The radio tells me, Run.

And I do.

I take off, my leg rioting in agony. It’s gotta be broken. Snapped. Each step is a new Hell, but I push past it because I know the alternative is worse. Right now, all I’m thinking about is my car. Right now, all I’m thinking about is whether or not I’ll reach it in time. 

It’s forty feet away.

That’s too far.

There’s a flurry of footfalls, a rush of dust as that thing pulls its long ears through the dirt. It’s fast. Faster than me. The ground is rumbling with its every step, and my heart is keeping pace. I’m rasping. Sputtering. 

I’m going to die.

I’m going to die. 

Something connects with my back. It’s coarse, almost like fur. I’m thrown forward, rolling through the dirt like a tumbleweed as stones cut into my face. My vision spins. My head aches. I lift myself up on shaking arms, looking around at the blurry mess of wasteland. 

I don’t see the creature. I don’t hear it.

Where did it go?

It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting in my car and getting the fuck out of here. 

I force myself into a sprint. Each stride carries the sickening crunch of broken bone, but I don’t have the luxury of pain. That monster's still out here somewhere. It might be watching me now. 

Almost there.

Just a little closer.

I toss myself into the driver’s side door, slam it shut behind me. My fingers fumble with the key. It takes two tries, three, but I finally get it to turn in the ignition. The engine rumbles to life. 

My head smashes against the steering wheel. Glass shatters. The car lurches forward, its frame groaning as something massive collides with its backend. An arm reaches through the rear window, long, skeletal fingers grasping at me. A snout follows. It’s snapping open and shut. 

My foot slams the gas. 

The car’s wheels spin. Jagged nails cut across my cheek, and the arm and snout vanish through the back window as the car speeds away. My hands are trembling. My whole body is convulsing and I don’t realize it but I’m muttering something like prayers beneath my breath. 

I glance in the rearview mirror. Moonlight is spilling from the sky like the blood from my cheek. It's falling onto the wasteland, illuminating a solitary figure standing in a haze of dust. The figure almost looks like a man. He’s dressed in a black suit and tie, except where his head should be is a bovine skull, and his eyes… His eyes are the glowing, technicolor fuzz of television static. 

He waves at me. And the car radio crackles to life.