[#043] Pest Control

"Where do they go? Do they feel pain?"

I stared at her a moment, slowly pulling on my best impression of hurt. "Madam! Do they feel pain when they slam themselves against the walls of your home, rattling portraits off the wall and howling in the night while you sleep? Do you ever wonder if they ask themselves: 'Does the owner of this house feel pain when I smash the glass on her nightstand inches from her face or tear open cupboards and fling pots and pans across the room?'"

"But there must be a reason!" She was sobbing now, and the tears ran streaks down her dirty, haggard face. "I don't understand why he's doing this now! At the very least..."

She eyed me desperately and clasped her hands together, pleading. "At the very least, he should be moving on."

I glanced back at my partner and nodded. He extended the two antennae of the black box in his hand and set off down the hallway, sweeping the gadget back and forth as he went. Arcs of white energy surged between the two leads like tongues of lightning. Her anxious eyes, shot through with blood and worry, followed him down the corridor.

I could tell what she was thinking. "Mam, I'm sure he would move on if he could. Sometimes they just need a little push."

We sat at the tiny dinner table in the kitchen, her hand in mine when a quiet buzz warned me of a text from my partner. I slid the phone from my pocket and glanced at it where she couldn't see. "Found him," it said, and a snapshot of the ectoplasmic disperser's screen revealed what, exactly, my partner had found.

The disperser read the room in tones of green to black, a scale that grew brighter with the presence of psychic residue. A glowing glob of ghoulish color exactly the size of a twelve-year-old boy sat bubbling on the bed in its old room. The antennae also picked up a flurry of pulsing signals in the ambient air, which it decoded into rough English on a live ticker at the bottom.

At the time of the picture, the ticker read, "Socoldletmestaypleasemommysodark--"

My phone vibrated a second time, and another text popped up at the top. "It's done."

I looked up at the old woman weeping across from me and smiled. "As I said, mam. I'm sure your son will be fine. Now, about your invoice..."

[#042] Voices Carry

"-came alone, didn't you?" said the voice on the radio.

The poker in my hand hovered inches from the campfire as I froze and listened to the gentle static drifting through the only electronic device for miles. The steady stream of smooth jazz I'd been listening to on AM had fizzled out, leaving me alone with the night birds and the tiny clock radio with the blinking display I never bothered to set.

The automated program I listened to on these outings played from a tiny town just across the state line. It was programmed to run unassisted for hours every night, connecting the evening news to the sunrise sign-on around six. The voice sounded like the morning DJ, but his show wasn't starting for quite some time.

The radio repeated its question, and I legitimately thought for a moment it was speaking to me. Then a second voice chimed in, shrill and slow but dripping with authority. Its words buzzed, as though their own frequency distorted the transmission.

It said, in an plodding, emotionless tone, "You... Have... Failed..."

I set the poker down, my hands shaking as I drew my knees in and pulled the blanket around my shoulders. Here I sat with a rare opportunity: A glimpse behind the scenes at the smallest of small town radio stations, listening in on a discussion unintended for broadcast. A voyeuristic shiver ran down my spine. What juicy tidbits might I hear?

The DJ paused a moment before speaking again. "I don't... Where are you? Turn the lights back on."
Silence and static rang through the night around me for several minutes. The fire waned unattended, already vanishing to embers as I sat and stared at the blinking red clock on the radio box.

After some time, the buzzing returned. "You... Broke... Contract..."

"What, is this about the signal? I've been playing it all the time, I thought that was what you--" A choking noise erupted from the radio, so loud and sharp the speakers popped and sent me leaping from my perch.

"Too... Much... The test... Is Ruined..."

The red glow of the blinking display drowned out the dying firelight, and I could only sit and stare at the radio while the sounds of a violent struggle overtook the broadcast. A chair kicked over, glass smashed on a metal case, and a strangled scream rose to stopper it all before the sound of gentle static fell over the air once again.

Breath stuck in my throat as I waited for more. A noise like long nails fumbling with a button clicked out of the radio. Then the slow, dreadful voice returned.

"Sleep..." It said.

And I blacked out.

[#041] Broke the Night Song

The gentle hissing rose to a screech through the trees, knocking owls from their perches and stopping the night song dead.

I froze in my seat, rocking chair pushed way back on its curve while cold water beading on the side of my beer can dribbled through my fingers and threatened to slip. When the screeching ended and the crickets waited silent, I found myself waiting too. The looming house behind me stood dark and empty, the only light rising from the fire I'd built in the steel drum out front. My wife was gone. My kids were gone. Now even the dog was gone, and finally the screeching had come for me.

Shifting my weight forward inch-by-inch, I began to ease the chair back to neutral so I could climb out quietly. A smell like burning corn drifted in on the breeze from somewhere east, and the terror in my heart exploded into something worse.

The can spilled out along the planks and rolled off the edge of the porch as the piano-string tension in my chest snapped. I grit my teeth and screamed in pain while those two big eyes opened up like twin pale moons settled on my lawn. I lay helpless, my own body betraying me as the thing strode clicking and clacking up the steps and knelt before me, long snout hovering inches from my face and lit in only silhouette by the fire. It's tongue poured out and fell across the ground, its breath reeked like swamp water as the screeching sang again so loud my ear drums felt about to burst, and at last my soul gave out...

The night closed in around my senses as I took one last glimpse at the creature before me. I watched its rows of teeth chatter up and down inside its gaping maw, and the words it spoke rattled up my bones:

"I miss you, Daddy..."

[#040] Across the Street, It Rained

The storm fell sideways down the street, tearing off the chapel's sign and flipping cars through the windows of the corner drug as it rolled like an avalanche into the center of town. Children huddled in the library with their books, their lore a trifling bulwark against the whirling winds outside. When the wall tore open and the sky poured in, only one small girl survived.

She shivered in the grasp of Summer, as the tempest drank her up into the dark clouds and hung her there like an angel. She clutched the harmonica to her chest and prayed for the sun to break through. As she watched the school split apart beneath her and all the students scatter like leaves, the wind caressed her hair and whispered:

"Encore..."