Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller (18 page)

Kenji slugged him playfully in the arm. “We're the good guys here. We have a chance to solve a crime, to put a restless spirit to rest. It would be wrong of us to just wash our hands of the evidence we've found and turn our backs on Agnes. This whole thing has been insane, I agree. But we're at the end of the road now and we're about to bring it to a close. Help me out tonight and I won't ask anything else of you. Aren't you at least a little curious, Dylan? Don't you want to know whether we're right about this whole thing? Don't you think we owe it to Agnes to do the right thing in this case? Am I right, Reggie?”

Reggie nodded firmly, trying to shift his legs in the crunched back seat. “Kenji's right, much as I hate to say it. I don't feel great about what we're doing, but it's necessary. We were all brought here to see this through, and Lord knows I won't ever sleep again if I don't. Let's have us a dig and see what we find. With any luck we'll help Agnes move on from this world. It's a good thing. We're doing good.” He grasped Dylan's shoulder and gave it a supportive squeeze.

Dylan nodded slowly. “I see what you mean. But Kenji...” He trailed off for a bit. When he finally started back up, his voice was frail. “I'm a little
too
curious. I'm so curious about what's happening here that I'm kind of afraid. Have you ever considered what might happen if we're
wrong
? What if we start digging in that field and we find...” Again, the words died on his lips. “
Something else
,” he finished feebly.

“No chance,” said Kenji. “You're being paranoid. Come on, let's go in there and buy a few supplies. The night's young.”

They made their way across the parking lot, passing through the automatic doors. The lights in the store were dimmed, and a handful of staff could be seen to amble through the aisles sleepily while still others stocked the shelves. Somewhere across the massive store a loud floor buffer could be heard to roar. Cutting past the registers, past the tall white racks loaded with magazines and candy, Kenji led the others to the rear of the store, where the sporting goods and hardware were kept. Selecting shovels equal the job was only a moment's work; the ground would surely be frozen and tough, which would require them to use a sharp, metal shovel with a sturdy handle. Three of them were plucked from the rack and placed in a rusty shopping cart. Wheeling out of the aisle, Kenji continued into the grocery section. Reggie and Dylan said little as they sauntered behind. They weren't nearly so excited at the prospect of solving this mystery as he was. Their moods were a somber contrast to his; as he pushed the cart past the freezer section, Kenji was practically whistling a tune.

His intense curiosity was about to be sated. For so long Kenji had wondered about the cryptic message he'd heard in the song-- the message that Agnes had transmitted. Now he was tantalizingly close to figuring out he meaning behind it. All that he needed to do was dig in the field; when the job was done, he'd have his answers, would know if his hypothesis held up. The digging would be rough, no doubt, but he felt a thrill coursing through him, adding an extra tension to his muscles.

Rounding another aisle where the bottled drinks were kept, Kenji tossed a 12-pack of Gatorade into the cart, and then snagged a couple bags of trail mix off of one of the end caps. They'd need some fuel if they were going to spend the night digging into the cold, hard ground. “You guys want anything else?” he asked, stopping just short of the registers.

Dylan glared at him balefully. “I'd love to head back to campus, actually. But that's not what you're offering, are you?” With a sigh, he grabbed a king-sized Snicker's bar from one of the racks near the registers and tossed it into the cart. “You're picking up the tab, I hope?”

Kenji laughed. “Yeah, I'll take care of it. You want anything Reggie?”

Reggie shook his head. “No. Let's hurry back. Time's wasting.”

The sleepy cashier rang up the cart-full of goods. With bloodshot eyes and scarcely a hello, she didn't seem to wonder in the least why two young guys and an old Vietnam veteran were stopping in after midnight to pick up a bunch of shovels. Kenji paid and hurriedly wheeled the cart out of the store, making a beeline for the Honda. When Dylan had popped the trunk, Kenji took to loading the shovels inside. Returning to the passenger seat, he sat down with a couple bottles of gatorade in hand and a sack of trail mix. “We should eat and drink; it's going to be hard-going, this dig.”

Dylan nibbled at his candy bar disinterestedly while he started the car. Reggie accepted a Gatorade but refused the rest, struggling to get comfortable and having to leave his left leg splayed to the side.

This is it
, thought Kenji.
You were meant to do this. The three of you were led here for a reason. What began as a mere sound on a song you downloaded has led to this shack, where a woman may have been buried a decade ago. It's no accident; fate brought you into the fold so that you could solve this mystery and find justice for Agnes
. He washed down a handful of peanuts and M&M's with a swig of his sport's drink. His energy was high. He felt committed to this path, felt as though he'd stumbled upon his life's calling.

Dylan shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat, tonguing his molars and swallowing the last of his Snicker's. “You know, I'm going to sound like a broken record, guys, but should we really be doing this? Is this something we ought to concern ourselves with? You keep saying it's a good thing, that it's for the best. But is it, really? What if whoever killed Agnes did it for a reason?”

Kenji scoffed. “Dude, whatever. Of course it's a good thing. Doesn't matter what books she owned or what she believed in-- no one deserves to get murdered and buried out in the middle of nowhere. Whoever did this to her probably thought they were being really clever by burying her in a remote field, but they never counted on her reaching out to the world from the other side.” He nodded. “I'm still having trouble believing that part... the EVP stuff. But I guess crazier things have happened.”

Reggie sipped on his Gatorade and looked out the window as they rolled back onto the main road and started for Akeley. “I'd still feel more comfortable having the cops with us. We could always tell them we heard she was buried there from someone. It just doesn't sit right, this digging around for a corpse. We're in over our heads, fellas.”

“Hey, I'd love to call the police myself, but the only proof we have is this cryptic, phantom shit. They'd never believe us.” Kenji straightened out his seatbelt and turned his gaze to the dark shoulder of the road. The further they drove from town, the closer they got to the shack, the taller the grass on the side of the road seemed to become.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Kenji,” added Dylan, giving the car a bit more gas. “I wonder if you won't regret it when it's all over.”

Kenji shook his head with firmness. “I'll regret it if we
don't
go through with it.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

They pulled up to the shack, guided by the beacon that was its single, dimly-lit window. Following the ghostly light, Dylan pulled up onto the gravel drive and parked the Honda beside Reggie's car. The three of them stepped out into the chill, stretching and shivering. Kenji took to unloading the trunk, distributing the shovels and heading straight out into the field. When he'd singled out the patch of shorter grass, he lifted the shovel up high and thrust the tip into the icy ground with a grunt.

He wasn't interested in waiting for the others. Every moment he hesitated was just another moment he'd have to spend wondering. He needed, more than anything, to know whether his suspicions were correct. The narrative he'd put together was a simple one; Agnes had been murdered, possibly by the Hungarian immigrants who'd shunned her for her esoteric beliefs, and was buried in this exact spot. Agnes had subsequently reached out to the world of the living in the hopes of disclosing her final resting place and perhaps seeking revenge against her killers.

All that was left was to dig.

The ground was rather tough, though the soil proved easier to work with the deeper he went. Propelled by a wave of adrenaline, Kenji barreled through an inch or two of soil before the others walked over and joined in. Together they widened the aperture till they were working on the entire spot, somewhat round, where the grass was incongruously short. When the grass had been dug up, they pressed on through the lower layers, falling into a sort of rhythm. Heaving and panting, the trio wielded their shovels with all the force they could muster.

Dylan worked with a nervous energy, more than once dropping his shovel and cursing. His hands and upper arms shook; both due to tension and the strain of the job. Reggie fared better; though older than the two college students, his service in Vietnam had highlighted for him the importance in maintaining physical strength. Most mornings he went for a short run around his neighborhood and did several sets of push-ups. When time allowed he'd visit the gym and lift weights with friends. As a result, he managed to keep pace with Kenji even as Dylan fell behind and complained.

The night sky was densely packed with clouds. Now and then the sliver of moon overhead would completely disappear behind them, leaving them to work in almost total darkness. The shack's solitary window glowed eerily behind them as they toiled, but did little to further light up their surroundings. The cold wind buffeted them constantly, cutting through their jackets and cooling the sweat they wore till they felt frozen to their very cores. Not only was the work brutal, but the conditions they were forced to work under bordered on hostile.

Kenji didn't care.

All he wanted was to dig deeper, to find what he knew must be buried in this patch of land. Reggie and Dylan retired briefly to warm up and rest their muscles, but Kenji would hear nothing of stopping. Though his palms and fingers ached, he pressed on, plowing deeper and deeper. Over the course of three hours, wherein they'd worked almost without surcease, the three of them had managed to dig to an admirable depth. Simply eyeballing the spot, Kenji theorized that they'd gone just over a foot deep. The soil at this point was a bit more workable than the stuff on the surface, and he was encouraged by its softness.

How deeply would the killers have buried Agnes' body? Two feet? Six? It was hard to say. He hoped that they wouldn't have to dig for much longer, but Kenji knew he'd have dug for a hundred or more feet to find what he sought. He was a man possessed by his goal, and with every jab of the shovel his curiosity only grew.

Reggie and Dylan returned from their break. Reggie half-heartedly began to dig, but Dylan simply leaned on his shovel, staring out across the field. His pale face was made to glow in the light of the moon, and his wide eyes shimmered like puddles of bluish water.

“Why aren't you digging?” asked Kenji, barely bothering to look up from the end of his shovel.

Dylan shook his head, sniffing at the breeze and playing with his glasses. “Don't you guys feel it? Ever since we've been out here, digging around, I've felt like someone's watching me. Watching
us
.” He looked over his shoulder, then turned back to the shack, shuddering.

Kenji grunted, heaving a shovel's worth of soil over his shoulder. “It's always been that way. This place just has that effect. We've always felt like we're being watched here. Just keep digging, man. We're almost done with all of this.”

Fidgeting, Dylan muttered something under his breath. Then, burying the shovel in the ground, he walked off and sat on the hood of his Honda, arms crossed.

“Dude, where are you going?” asked Kenji.

Reggie paused, looking at the two of them in turn. “Maybe he just needs a longer rest,” he offered, nodding at Kenji. “About time you took a rest too, I think.”

“Bullshit. Come on out here, Dylan. Dig. We need to keep going. We've got a ways to go yet.”

Dylan scowled. “No. Fuck this. I never signed up for this, Kenji. Do what you want, but I'm staying right here.”

Gritting his teeth, Kenji returned to the hole. “Suit yourself.” He took firm hold of the handle and pushed as deeply into the ground as his tired muscles would allow, clearing away another shovel's worth of dirt. Then again. And again. Reggie whistled weakly as he joined Kenji in plugging along.

Kenji raised the shovel and jabbed it into the earth, his mind consumed only by his goal.

The blow made the bones in his arm rattle. He felt the impact in his teeth, and promptly dropped the shovel, startled.

He'd hit something solid.

“I think... I think I found something,” he said, his voice cracking in excitement.

Reggie walked over and felt out the spot with his own shovel. “Sure it isn't just another rock?” They'd found a handful of large, dark stones in the spot over the course of their dig. That Kenji had simply happened upon another seemed probable.

This, however, hadn't felt like a stone.

Picking up his shovel, Kenji began to dig afresh, this time more carefully. Then, dropping onto one knee, he clawed a few handfuls of soil away to reveal what looked to be the chipped edge of a wooden vessel. “Holy shit,” he uttered. Looking up at Reggie, he laughed. “It's... it's a box.”

Dylan, hearing the commotion, hopped off of the car hood and walked to the edge of the aperture, arms crossed. “What is it?” he asked, his expression still firm.

“I found something! I think it may be the edge of a box... a coffin, maybe.”

At hearing the words, Dylan's features crumpled into panic. “C-coffin?” He dropped his hands to his sides and paced around the cusp of the hole, shaking his head. “Fuck, there's a
coffin
? Is this real?”

Reggie traced out the edge of the box with his shovel and then cleared away a bit more of the soil with his hands. “Sure is. That's an old coffin if I ever saw one. I think we've found our girl.”

Possessed by an animalistic energy, Kenji cast his shovel aside and began pawing at the ground like a dog, his sore fingers carving away the soil and leaving the long wooden vessel in sharp relief. Minutes passed, and the first signs of a crooked lid entered into view. He walked around its perimeter, trying to feel for the edge of the lid. He pressed his fingers into the weathered wood and tried to loose it. To his surprise, it gave without much difficulty, weighed down only by a bit of soil. “Doesn't look like the lid's been nailed down. We should be able to open it easily enough.” Kenji turned to the other two, who were now huddled beside him. “Will one of you help me get the lid off?”