Ghost Radio (27 page)

But what object went with what letter?

He studied the first line (“Efficiency and Progress is ours once more”), scanning the room for anything that matched it. As he searched, searing images of Gabriel's altar danced through his mind. Then he saw it, peeking out from under a book.

A newspaper with the headline:
EFFICIENCY AND PROGRESS KEY TO
INTERMEDIA'S SUCCESS.
He grabbed the yellowing newspaper and placed it on the floor.

On to the second line: “Now that we have the Neutron bomb.”

“Bomb, bomb,” he mumbled to himself as he studied the objects surrounding him.

Ah, there we go, he thought, grabbing a toy rocket and placing it below the newspaper. The two objects began to glow. Tendrils of light stretched between them, stitching them together. He was on the right track.

The next line: “It's nice and clean and gets things done.”

That's an easy one. He snatched one of the Kwik Kleen bottles and placed it below the rocket.

Outside, lightning flashed. But it wasn't ordinary lightning. It had a distinct reddish cast.

The fourth line: “Away with excess enemy.”

Hmm…excess enemy…excess enemy. This one really puzzled Joaquin. He struggled with it:

What does excess mean? A glut. A surplus. Too much. Something you already have enough of. An extra enemy. An extra nemesis. One opponent too many.

He rubbed his brow.

A flash of crimson lightning filled the room.

He grabbed an alphabet block from a box of them sitting on the table. He tossed it up and down as he continued puzzling through the bewildering line. He walked over to the window, placed the block on the sill, and looked outside.

Bathed in sporadic explosions of bloodred lightning was a world in flux. A strange rain seemed to wash away the very fabric of reality. Signs on buildings morphed into other signs, streets rerouted themselves.

A family was rushing down the street with newspapers shielding their heads from the rain. A truck zoomed by, splashing them with water. When it passed, the family was gone. Only the father remained. Dejected and alone, he trudged down the street, oblivious to the downpour.

A hard wind hit him and with it came a different family. Where the other wife had been brunette, this one was blond. And the father's two sons were now replaced with three daughters.

Joaquin shook his head, barely able to process the odd scene. The last twenty-four hours had been rife with the bizarre, but these sights boosted it to a whole new level. He felt unhinged but exhilarated.

He'd passed from the world he knew to a land of boundless and frightening possibilities.

He considered the alphabet block that rested on the window sill. Its brightly painted
E
looked up at him, like the eyes of a child. It calmed and centered him. Abruptly, the building, possibly the whole world, shook. Joaquin was thrown across the room. He slammed into the table, knocking the blocks to the floor. He barely kept his balance. One of the blocks caught his eye. It was an
E
. He glanced back at the windowsill, the other
E
still perched there. It gave him an idea. He dropped to his knees, and found two other duplicated letters: An
N
and an
M
. The last line was a trick. It wasn't “excess enemies.” It was “excess
N, M, E
s.”

He grabbed the blocks and placed them under the Kwik Kleen bottle.

On to the next line: “But no less value in property.”

Another easy one, he thought as he grabbed the brochure of a realty firm and placed it under the alphabet blocks. Now the final line of the first stanza: “No sense in war but perfect sense at home.”

“Home,” he whispered to himself as he grabbed a toy house and placed it below the brochure.

The entire line of objects glowed with a beautiful sky blue light. The first stanza was complete.

On to the second stanza: “The sun beams down a bright new day.”

He scanned the objects and quickly saw the one he needed. A replica of an Aztec sun stone: that strange mixture of calendar and mythic tableau that honored the sun god Tonatiuh. He picked it up and placed it on the floor.

The building shook again, and lightning flashed through the win
dow, disappeared into the floor. Joaquin reeled, trying to understand what was happening.

The floor beneath him was splitting apart. Vast shafts of crimson light shot up from the cracks. Slowly, the cracks expanded. Joaquin was forced to retreat to a corner of the room as the entire floor disappeared, replaced by a blinding light.

He closed his eyes to blot out the glow. But it seeped through his eyelids, searing his retinas, searing his brain. He screamed in pain, and then the wall behind him gave way and he fell and fell and fell.

After several seconds, the light dissipated and he cautiously opened his eyes. Beneath him, there was a jungle. An ancient, verdant landscape stretching as far as the eye could see. And then, as it drew closer, he made out a city among the riot of vegetation. A city of pyramids and ziggurats and grand stone plazas. A Mesoamerican city. A Toltec city.

He made out greater details as the city rushed up to greet him. He saw a vast crowd moving toward one of the central plazas where a large object glowed with pale blue light. As Joaquin came to within a hundred feet of the ground, his descent slowed, and he touched down gently at the edge of the plaza.

He pushed through the crowd, making his way toward the center and the blue light. Finally he reached the center. And through the blue light he saw brightly costumed figures constructing a great machine. They fitted together gleaming metal objects while the crowd cheered.

And then he noticed something odd. Although he could still make out the Toltec priests and their mechanical contraption, layered over this image was an image of him and Gabriel constructing their altar in that damp radio studio so many years ago. And even fainter was the arrangement of glowing objects on the floor in the room he had just left.

Suddenly he was back in the room. He rapidly finished the construction. An old coin (“No more welfare tax to pay”); a flashlight (“Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light”); a wire whisk (“Jobless millions whisked away”); a postcard of children playing (“At last we have more room to play”); and the CD itself (“All systems go to kill the poor tonight”).

The entire room was enveloped in light and he felt himself slipping away.

 

Watt sat beside Alondra, who was rubbing her eyes and smiling, like she'd just woken up. Joaquin walked over to them, but when he was within a few inches he stopped, unable to go on. He couldn't touch Alondra. He couldn't hear them, and it was obvious they couldn't see him. They were separated by something that looked like a shop window or the glass walls in the snake house at the zoo. Joaquin stood still, taking it all in. Everything was completely normal, except for one fact: He'd crossed over to the other side.

Confused and disoriented,
Joaquin wandered into the complex labyrinth of ever-changing hallways and corridors that winds around and behind the world of the living. He looked for an exit, a gate out of this strangely familiar, yet completely unknown world. He had the sensation that he was looking into a waterless aquarium where those who have passed on can see what the world is doing, in which they can spy on moments public and private, but silenced, muted. And just as Gabriel had told him, Joaquin became aware of a cacophony of radio signals. It was only necessary to move slightly in order to tune in to one broadcast and disconnect from another. Resigning himself to this strange semisolitude, to inhabit this confined, transitional space forever, was not easy. Joaquin, who had given up everything else, was at least left with the consolation that he'd always be able to hear Alondra's voice through the disembodied transmissions of
Ghost Radio.

 

Finally, after having captivated the radio audience and the recording studio for what seemed like an eternity, the voice on the phone fell silent. The host interrupted the dead air.

“Gabriel, I gotta tell you, your story has put us all in a trance. Thank you. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. So, my friends, we leave you with this tale still ringing in your ears, about a radio host who becomes an energy vampire, and who breaks the cycle of death by trading
his being for a woman's life. To all you insomniacs out there, and to all of you who just woke up and are only now tuning in, we'd like to say thanks for listening. Join us again tomorrow, from midnight until five
A.M.
, and please stay tuned for the early-morning news.

“Have a nice day.”

Alondra shut off
her microphone and leaned back in her chair, shooting Watt a tired smile. Somewhere else in the building, the early news team had picked up the broadcast reins, beaming information to the busy CEOs, short-order cooks, and housewives whose lives ran on a normal schedule. It was an experience she and Watt shared every morning, but that made no difference; it was always a tremendous, unburdening joy, that of a Sherpa who finally lays down his load after scaling a cliff, a packhorse released to graze while the master pitches his tent for the night. Even on those nights when the stories left them with a lingering sense of dread, those last few minutes when they shut off the equipment gave them a palpable sense of relief.

Hosting a program solo was tiring, that was for sure. Thank God Watt really knew his stuff. Alondra found herself wondering for the thousandth time where he'd honed his skills; he had mixed the voices of dozens of callers a night, making them sound like they were sitting in the studio with her, and he was a master.

“Quite a night, wouldn't you say?” she said.

“One of our better ones, yeah.”

“I would never have imagined that a DJ could be the subject of one of our tales.” She laughed a little, half to herself. “Maybe I need to pay more attention to what goes on around me. I might be in the middle of a ghost story and not even know it.”

Watt gave her a sly, sidelong glance, the way he sometimes did when he was in a good mood. “Well, you better close your bedroom door tight,
if that woman who called earlier was telling the truth. Her ‘thigh-caressing demon' might come after you.”

She gave a chuckle that was indulgent, if a little uncomfortable, and collected her things. As she was heading out the door she turned.

“What did you say?”

Watt was bent almost double, checking the wires under the mixing board, and hit his head as he sat up. “Huh? When?”

“I thought you just said something.”

“No. Can't say that I did.”

She looked at him strangely, her skin prickling. What she thought she had heard was a man's voice, intoning as if from far away the words “In a dark corner of your mind, remember me.” It didn't sound like Watt. She had the strangest sensation that she had forgotten something; it was on the tip of her tongue, if only she could find the words.

Watt stared back at her. She could tell that he had sensed something too. For a few moments they each turned inward, searching for something unknown, perhaps unknowable.

“You okay?” she said finally.

“Yeah. Déjà vu.”

She nodded slowly, agreeing with no one in particular, her hand still on the doorknob. “I'll see you tonight.”

He winked. “The devil himself couldn't keep me away.”

Lost in thought, Alondra closed the door behind her and moved down the hall as if it were a river and she were swimming, slow but determined, against the current.