Lost Signals (39 page)

***

It must have been fifteen minutes later that I went over for another batch of copy. Morgan was slumped down in his chair and had switched his green electric light shade so that the gleam missed his eyes and hit only the top of the two typewriters.

Only the usual stuff was in the righthand pile, but the lefthand batch carried another story from Xebico. All press dispatches come in “takes,” meaning that parts of many different stories are strung along together, perhaps with but a few paragraphs of each coming through at a time. This second story was marked “add fog.” Here is the copy
 
:

At 7 P.M. the fog had increased noticeably. All lights were now invisible and the town was shrouded in pitch darkness.

As a peculiarity of the phenomenon, the fog is accompanied by a sickly odor, comparable to nothing yet experienced here.

Below that in customary press fashion was the hour, 3:27, and the initials of the operator, JM.

There was only one other story in the pile from the second wire. Here it is
 
:

2nd add Xebico Fog.

Accounts as to the origin of the mist differ greatly. Among the most unusual is that of the sexton of the local church, who groped his way to headquarters in a hysterical condition and declared that the fog originated in the village churchyard.

‘It was first visible as a soft gray blanket clinging to the earth above the graves,’ he stated. ‘Then it began to rise, higher and higher. A subterranean breeze seemed to blow it in billows, which split up and then joined together again.

‘Fog phantoms, writhing in anguish, twisted the mist into queer forms and figures. And then, in the very thick midst of the mass, something moved.

‘I turned and ran from the accursed spot. Behind me I heard screams coming from the houses bordering on the graveyard.’

Although the sexton’s story is generally discredited, a party has left to investigate. Immediately after telling his story, the sexton collapsed and is now in a local hospital, unconscious.

Queer story, wasn’t it. Not that we aren’t used to it, for a lot of unusual stories come in over the wire. But for some reason or other, perhaps because it was so quiet that night, the report of the fog made a great impression on me.

It was almost with dread that I went over to the waiting piles of copy. Morgan did not move, and the only sound in the room was the tap-tap of the sounders. It was ominous, nerve-racking.

There was another story from Xebico in the pile of copy. I seized on it anxiously.

New Lead Xebico Fog CP

The rescue party which went out at 11 P.M. to investigate a weird story of the origin of a fog which, since late yesterday, has shrouded the city in darkness has failed to return. Another and larger party has been dispatched.

Meanwhile, the fog has, if possible, grown heavier. It seeps through the cracks in the doors and fills the atmosphere with a depressing odor of decay. It is oppressive, terrifying, bearing with it a subtle impression of things long dead.

Residents of the city have left their homes and gathered in the local church, where the priests are holding services of prayer. The scene is beyond description. Grown folk and children are alike terrified and many are almost beside themselves with fear.

Amid the whisps of vapor which partly veil the church auditorium, an old priest is praying for the welfare of his flock. They alternately wail and cross themselves.

From the outskirts of the city may be heard cries of unknown voices. They echo through the fog in queer uncadenced minor keys. The sounds resemble nothing so much as wind whistling through a gigantic tunnel. But the night is calm and there is no wind. The second rescue party . . . (more)

***

I am a calm man and never in a dozen years spent with the wires, have I been known to become excited, but despite myself I rose from my chair and walked to the window.

Could I be mistaken, or far down in the canyons of the city beneath me did I see a faint trace of fog
 
? Pshaw
 
! It was all imagination.

In the pressroom the click of the sounders seemed to have raised the tempo of their tune. Morgan alone had not stirred from his chair. His head sunk between his shoulders, he tapped the dispatches out on the typewriters with one finger of each hand.

He looked asleep, but no
 
; endlessly, efficiently, the two machines rattled off line after line, as relentlessly and effortlessly as death itself. There was something about the monotonous movement of the typewriter keys that fascinated me. I walked over and stood behind his chair, reading over his shoulder the type as it came into being, word by word.

Ah, here was another
 
:

Flash Xebico CP

There will be no more bulletins from this office. The impossible has happened. No messages have come into this room for twenty minutes. We are cut off from the outside and even the streets below us.

I will stay with the wire until the end.

It is the end, indeed. Since 4 P.M. yesterday the fog has hung over the city. Following reports from the sexton of the local church, two rescue parties were sent out to investigate conditions on the outskirts of the city. Neither party has ever returned nor was any word received from them. It is quite certain now that they will never return.

From my instrument I can gaze down on the city beneath me. From the position of this room on the thirteenth floor, nearly the entire city can be seen. Now I can see only a thick blanket of blackness where customarily are lights and life.

I fear greatly that the wailing cries heard constantly from the outskirts of the city are the death cries of the inhabitants. They are constantly increasing in volume and are approaching the center of the city.

The fog yet hangs over everything. If possible, it is even heavier than before, but the conditions have changed. Instead of an opaque, impenetrable wall of odorous vapor, there now swirls and writhes a shapeless mass in contortions of almost human agony. Now and again the mass parts and I catch a brief glimpse of the streets below.

People are running to and fro, screaming in despair. A vast bedlam of sound flies up to my window, and above all is the immense whistling of unseen and unfelt winds.

The fog has again swept over the city and the whistling is coming closer and closer.

It is now directly beneath me.

God
 
! An instant ago the mist opened and I caught a glimpse of the streets below.

The fog is not simply vapor—it lives
 
! By the side of each moaning and weeping human is a companion figure, an aura of strange and vari-colored hues. How the shapes cling
 
! Each to a living thing
 
!

The men and women are down. Flat on their faces. The fog figures caress them lovingly. They are kneeling beside them. They are—but I dare not tell it.

The prone and writhing bodies have been stripped of their clothing. They are being consumed—piecemeal.

A merciful wall of hot, steaming vapor has swept over the whole scene. I can see no more.

Beneath me the wall of vapor is changing colors. It seems to be lighted by internal fires. No, it isn’t. I have made a mistake. The colors are from above, reflections from the sky.

Look up
 
! Look up
 
! The whole sky is in flames. Colors as yet unseen by man or demon. The flames are moving
 
; they have started to intermix
 
; the colors are rearranging themselves. They are so brilliant that my eyes burn, they are a long way off.

Now they have begun to swirl, to circle in and out, twisting in intricate designs and patterns. The lights are racing each with each, a kaleidoscope of unearthly brilliance.

I have made a discovery. There is nothing harmful in the lights. They radiate force and friendliness, almost cheeriness. But by their very strength, they hurt.

As I look, they are swinging closer and closer, a million miles at each jump. Millions of miles with the speed of light. Aye, it is light of quintessence of all light. Beneath it the fog melts into a jeweled mist radiant, rainbow-colored of a thousand varied spectra.

I can see the streets. Why, they are filled with people
 
! The lights are coming closer. They are all around me. I am enveloped. I . . .

***

The message stopped abruptly. The wire to Xebico was dead. Beneath my eyes in the narrow circle of light from under the green lamp-shade, the black printing no longer spun itself, letter by letter, across the page.

The room seemed filled with a solemn quiet, a silence vaguely impressive, powerful.

I looked down at Morgan. His hands had dropped nervelessly at his sides, while his body had hunched over peculiarly. I turned the lamp-shade back, throwing light squarely in his face. His eyes were staring, fixed.

***

Filled with a sudden foreboding, I stepped beside him and called Chicago on the wire. After a second the sounder clicked its answer.

Why
 
? But there was something wrong. Chicago was reporting that Wire Two had not been used throughout the evening.

“Morgan
 
!” I shouted. “Morgan
 
! Wake up, it isn’t true. Some one has been hoaxing us. Why . . . ” In my eagerness I grasped him by the shoulder.

His body was quite cold. Morgan had been dead for hours. Could it be that his sensitized brain and automatic fingers had continued to record impressions even after the end
 
?

I shall never know, for I shall never again handle the night shift. Search in a world atlas discloses no town of Xebico. Whatever it was that killed John Morgan will forever remain a mystery.

You like to
listen to other people’s business, Mick
 
? Of course you do, it’s your fuckin’ job. You like to know things. But you, you Irish prick, you don’t know shit. You don’t know what they say about listening at keyholes. About what happens to guys like you.”

***

“Two minutes
 
!” The bus driver pushed through the milling passengers and banged out the doors, letting in a rush of frigid air. It looked like townsfolk escaping a rising river or something from an old newsreel about European refugees.

All because there would be no dawn tomorrow.

But I could feel the approach of night in my marrow even as I saw it in the wide eyes around me. Already the light outside was the orange of glowing embers.

I closed the accordion doors of the phone booth to block out the chaos, people buffeting the glass in their passage.
Vera, answer the damned phone
.

Ringing in an empty apartment three thousand miles away. How many rings meant
I care
 
? At what point did that become
I panic
 
? At nineteen rings I replaced the receiver in the cradle, resting my head against the cold metal of the payphone as it regurgitated my silver. The splinted fingers on my left hand made gathering the coins awkward, but I managed.

A palm slapped against the glass and I looked into wet eyes glaring from an explosion of whiskers and wild hair. The man waved at me to follow and walked away without waiting.

I fought down an urge to try one more call and crossed the station floor, avoiding the eyes of those who remained. Big men with sloped shoulders and narrow eyes. Razors did not play much of a role in this place.

“All aboard,” an announcement crackled over the antiquated public address system.

The bus belched a black cloud and took its people south.

I went north.

***

The maddening light of a plummeting sun. Snow fields transformed into molten seas of blood, the trees into black ink etchings. Alien. Not Chicago. Not even the planet Earth.

I kept waiting for a comment on my black eye or the purple bruise on my jaw but my driver didn’t seem to notice. He pulled in at a log house calling itself a saloon and led me to a waiting Jeep with threadbare tires. A map of Alaska was unfolded on the hood and he rested a boot on the running board, showering the ground below with flakes of rust.

“You push towards Wainright.” His words came in a series of grunts and I wondered how often he spoke to other people. A fingernail twice the thickness of a nickel traced the road until it reached a river. “You want this turnoff before Kuik and you’ll get a guide in, they’re expecting you. Give them this.”

I took a wrapped, rectangular package. Cash. He gave me a grin as brief thoughts of flight crossed my mind.

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

I worked my bruised jaw and ignored the implication.

“You miss it, you hit Wainright. You miss Wainright, you hit the sea.”

“I won’t miss,” I said and he grunted again, plonking a rag-wrapped bundle on top of the map. I unwrapped the checked flannel and found a greasy .38 revolver, Smith & Wesson stamped into the metal of the barrel. A box double the size of a deck of cards was filled with bullets and held an envelope in place against the rising wind. Fuck, I hated guns. Never carried one in all my years as a private dick. My camera and a tape recorder did enough damage.