A mass of pedestrians began crossing just then, and among the throng Reggie caught a flash of recognition in the gaze of a tall, pale woman with shoulder-length black hair. He had to do a double-take.
For a minute there, he could have sworn it was the woman in the tape.
Studying her more closely, he found she was, in fact, a complete stranger. The woman was on her cell phone, looked ten or more years younger than the woman on the tape had, and had barely spared him a passing glance.
Reggie sank into his seat with an enormous sigh. “Dear Lord, give me strength,” he said, shaking his head.
The group of pedestrians had crossed and the light had changed. Reggie didn't notice at once, and the honking of numerous horns sounded from behind.
The LeSabre lurched onward, its driver dabbing fresh sweat from his brow.
NINE
The egg yolk had pooled upon his plate and was very quickly becoming cold. He toyed with his fork and took a generous sip from his mimosa before handing the plate off to the waitress. He simply didn't have any appetite. Glancing around the restaurant, Reggie spotted some of the regulars. An old, retired couple who made brunch a daily ritual sat in their usual corner. A couple of young professionals in business casual had come by for an early lunch, and were paying more attention to their cell phones than they were to their food.
The windows to his back gave a great view of the small garden outside. It was well-manicured, filled with shapely trees and shrubs. At the center was a small fountain surrounded in flowers that hadn't yet succumbed to the winter. Even from inside the restaurant the dribbling of the fountain could be heard clearly, mingling with the instrumental jazz that came through the sound system.
Whenever Reggie focused on the sounds of the fountain he felt the skin on the back of his neck tingle. The sound reminded him of the fountain outside of the war memorial in the documentary. Though he turned and stole many a look outside those windows, Reggie saw nothing out of sorts. It didn't stop him from repeating the futile ritual numerous times over the course of his visit, though. He couldn't shake the feeling that someone was outside, looking at him intently. His training so many decades ago had taught him what it felt like to be preyed upon. He knew the gaze of another person, of a predator, when he felt it. Just because there was nothing to be seen outside didn't mean no one was staring at him. All it meant was that they had a well-hidden vantage point.
Chewing on his straw, Reggie tried in vain to shove the notion from his head. No, he thought, You're damn crazy, you know that? Ain't no vantage point... no one's staring at you out there. You're just bothered because of that ridiculous tape. Getting old, Reggie. Letting bullshit like this rile you up. You oughta know better.
The waitress came by once again, clearing his empty coffee mug. “You doing all right, hon?” she asked, eyeing him with evident concern. Her name was Karen, and she worked at the place almost daily. She and Reggie were on a first-name basis and she could tell when something was eating away at him. Usually Reggie was talkative, enthusiastic, relaxed. When she returned to the table to find him hunched, nervous, she knew something was wrong.
“Oh, I'm fine, Karen, thanks,” he lied, forcing a smile.
The waitress walked off. “Let me know if you need anything, all right?” Karen stopped at the next table, speaking to one of the young professionals and motioning to her coffee cup. She was probably asking whether the customer was in need of another refill, but the trouble was that Reggie couldn't hear her. Karen's voice was reduced to a murmur; the music, the sounds the other customers made, the gurgling of the fountain outside all came together in a single swell, masking the sound of Karen's voice until it was impossible to make out.
Reggie bit down harder on the straw.
No matter what he did he couldn't stop thinking about that goddamned tape. He checked the time on his phone. It was past noon.
Unable to stay put any longer he hurriedly settled the bill, left a tip beneath his half-finished mimosa and bid the staff farewell. Hopefully Steven would be finished editing the tape. The wait was slowly killing him and he found himself possessed of such an immense nervous energy that he felt he might burst if he didn't get out of the restaurant then.
As he made his way out the door, Karen stopped him. “You sure you're all right, Reg?”
Reggie grinned sheepishly but stopped short of saying yes.
If he was being honest, he wasn't really sure.
***
By the time Reggie walked in, Steven was through with the tape. He met Reggie in the main room and handed over both the original and the edited copy. “All done,” he said, hands in his pockets.
“What do I owe ya?” asked Reggie.
“Not a thing,” replied Steven. “It was simple. Only took me about a half hour. Trouble is, though, that I couldn't make heads or tails of what that woman was saying.” Steven frowned. “I must've watched it a dozen times after I cleaned up the audio, but it sounds like straight gibberish to me. Anyway, I hope it's helpful. Won't be able to clear it up much more than that.”
Reggie placed the tapes in his bag, both the unmarked original and the edited version, which bore a red sticker on the edge, and shook Steven's hand. “Appreciate it a great deal, Steve. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do-- this weekend, what say you and I meet for lunch? My treat.”
Steve laughed. “Sounds good, but I'm not a cheap date, Reg.”
The two bantered back and forth for a time, but for Reggie the usual joy he found in such an interaction was missing. He was simply going through the motions, his mind given over wholly to burning curiosity. He wanted nothing more than to race home and watch the tape. Perhaps it would yield some answers. Steven had gleaned nothing of note from it, but perhaps it would be different for him. Maybe there was, just as he'd fancied the night before when first watching the thing, some message intended for him and him alone.
Firing up the LeSabre, Reggie sped home. He drove quickly, ran all of the yellows and sailed into his garage a short while later. Leaping out of the car with bag in tow, he entered the house and headed straight for the living room.
Upon entering he found the room unseasonably cold. Though it was winter, the weather out was rather fair. It shouldn't have been nearly so cold as this. Moreover, despite the sunlight coming in from between the curtains, the room was draped in a dense, uncharacteristic shadow. Thoroughly unnerved, he removed the edited tape from his bag and paced around the living room for some time, simply glaring down at it.
When finally he found the courage to throw it into the VCR, he didn't bother taking a seat. He stood in front of the television, bumped up the volume and buried his hands in the pockets of his slacks, waiting for the clip to begin.
Steven had pared the thing down to the scene at the war memorial. Its total duration was just over thirty seconds, and from the very first Reggie could tell it was edited. All of the sounds he'd heard on his previous viewings were completely muted, or at least substantially minimized, and when the pale woman entered into view some seconds later, her speech proved chillingly clear.
Without all of the other noise interference in the way, the impression that this woman was addressing Reggie specifically was effectively redoubled.
Reggie was a man who'd traversed the jungles of Vietnam once upon a time, who'd killed men during his years of service and who'd weathered the flashbacks that his tours had saddled him with. He was neither a man of weak nor impressionable mind, and had known, first-hand, the darkest niches of his species.
So, why then did he shake as he listened to this strange woman speaking on the television? His reaction wasn't something he could control. His legs went weak, his pulse skyrocketed and his chest grew tight.
The message was a simple one, and to anyone other than Reggie, it may well have seemed like nothing more than a pointless mess. She was listing off a series of letters and numbers, and the exact same sequence was repeated a total of three times before she sudd
enly vanished off the screen and the edited recording ended.
The message had gone thusly: EN17DA43TU85
When the tape was through, Reggie was left stunned, and he didn't move from the spot in front of his television for some time. What he'd just heard, he felt reasonably sure, were coordinates of some kind. He searched in his mind, trying to recall just where he'd heard such codes in the past. It wasn't during his military service... the coordinates used by the US military had been different.
No, it'd been during his days as an amateur radio operator that he'd heard such coordinates with regularity. “The Maidenhead Locator System”, it was called, and amateur HAM radio enthusiasts often used them in their transmissions. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, Reggie had taken up amateur radio. As a child he'd been fascinated with radios, and the chance to connect with other enthusiasts had been exciting for him. This was in the days before the internet, and for years he'd engaged in the hobby as a kind of social experiment, communicating with other operators in far-off places he'd never been. That was where he'd become acquainted with Maidenhead coordinates.
Replaying the video and jotting down the string of characters the woman relayed, he felt certain now that they were, in fact, coordinates.
EN17DA43TU85
But where did they lead?
Shutting off the television, he walked back to his bedroom, moving a number of books off of his desk and unearthing the dusty desktop computer he seldom used. It was about ten years old, ran on a discontinued operating system and rarely saw any action these days. Reggie preferred to see his friends in-person, rather than keeping up with them over the computer. Now and then he still found a use for the thing however, and so kept it in working order. When it'd finally started up, he loaded the browser and started searching for a database of Maidenhead coordinates.
When he'd finally pulled up the site, he copied the string of characters slowly into the search bar and hit enter. The old computer whirred as it thought over the inquiry, and then slowly spit out an answer.
The address given was in his home state of Minnesota. A little town called Akeley, which he'd never heard of. The map provided showed it to be a rather rural area, dotted in small lakes. What could possibly be the meaning of this? Pawing at his forehead and fighting off the growing dread that rippled through his stomach, Reggie tried to make sense of this find.
A woman had appeared in the documentary he'd taped, in the background of an early scene. She'd lingered on screen for about a minute before suddenly vanishing, and had spoken quietly all the while. Her message, it seemed, was a collection of characters, a set of Maidenhead Locator coordinates that, when applied, pointed to a remote spot in rural Minnesota. But why? Was it just sheer, dumb luck that the woman's ramblings corresponded to this particular location?
He wanted to say it was so, but his intuition told him otherwise.
This could not be mere coincidence. He felt sure of it. And this certainty inspired yet greater dread than anything that'd come before it.
Scanning the map, he found that Akeley was about three hours away from his home in St. Paul. If he was willing to take a three-hour drive to this spot, whose finer characteristics were unclear and pixellated, it was possible he'd get his answers.
But did he really want to know what this was all about?
Reggie stared at the flickering computer screen and massaged his temples. He wasn't sure what to do with this new information. “Dear Lord, give me strength,” he muttered for the second time that day.
TEN
The door to the shack flew open, and both Kenji and Dylan jumped backward.
Staring out at them narrowly from within the shack was a tall black man with broad shoulders. He looked older, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, and wore his greyish hair in a closely-shaven style. “What are you doing here?” demanded the man, looming in the doorway, fists balled.
Dylan fell back a couple of paces. “I'm sorry, there must have been some kind of mistake. We're... we're actually leaving now.”
Kenji, too, took the hint and glanced back at the Honda, wondering if they hadn't just trespassed onto this man's private property. “Sorry,” he uttered.
The man in the doorway didn't budge, however. Looking down at the two of them, he repeated, “What are you doing here?” Then, he continued. “How did you kids find this place?”
Kenji and Dylan looked to one another, exchanging nervous glances, and realized there was no telling this guy the truth without sounding utterly insane. What were they supposed to say in such an instance? That they'd stumbled upon a secret message in some obscure song and followed a set of coordinates all the way here on a whim? When he thought about everything that'd preceded their arrival, even Kenji had trouble believing it all.
“Well...” began Dylan, “we were just, uh...”
The man stepped out, cocking his head to the side. There was a shift in his expression; a bit of ferocity ebbed away and curiosity came to replace it. His dark lips were pursed for a time as he appraised the students before him. Then, he actually cracked a slight grin. “Don't... don't tell me you two got the coordinates, too.”
Kenji's heart very nearly stopped. “W-what?” he gasped, staggering forward. “You know about the coordinates?”
The man began to laugh, holding onto the inside of the doorway to support himself. “This... this shit is getting out of hand. Insane, just completely insane!” he proclaimed, his voice echoing through the night.
Dylan sidled up to Kenji and leaned in for a whisper. “Y-you mean we aren't the only ones who followed the message in the song?” Looking to the older man before them, he shook his head. “This guy doesn't look like he listens to dark ambient music, though.”
Relaxing a great deal, the man waved them over and returned to the shack. “I'm sorry about that,” he said. “I've been a little on edge since I arrived. Things have been... strange for me recently. Ever since I got into this mess, I haven't been feeling right.”
Kenji slowly entered the tiny building and Dylan followed. He could certainly relate to the man. Ever since hearing the woman's voice in that song, Kenji hadn't been able to shake a nebulous dread. The fact that someone else had been drawn out to this remote location should have been a comfort to him, however as he entered the small shack and had a look around, comfort proved fleeting.
The shack was possessed of a single room. One window opened out onto the field, giving them a near-limitless view of the vast plains beyond. There were two metal folding chairs to be found within, both of them pushed up behind a wooden desk. Sitting on this desk was a television, VCR and radio. There was nothing else to be seen. Every surface was coated in a dense, mostly undisturbed-layer of dust, except where this man had very recently tread. The light fixture above their heads was a very simple one, a pair of exposed sockets bearing two light bulbs. It appeared that no one had been in this place for a long time. Perhaps several years.
“The name's Reggie. Reggie Cash,” said the man, extending a large hand and shaking theirs with gusto. His grip was formidable for a man of his years. “And you two are?”
Dylan introduced them both as Kenji's gaze scoured the tiny room. “My name's Dylan Hudson. This is my friend, Kenji Ando. We're students at UW--Madison.”
“Students, eh?” replied Reggie. “So, I take it the two of you caught the documentary on TV and followed the coordinates all the way here?”
Kenji was yanked from his trance. “Documentary?” He paused, working over the word on his lips as though it were alien to him. “No, we heard a woman speaking in a song... What's this about a documentary?”
“A song?” Reggie's eyes grew wide and he glanced at the two of them in apparent disbelief. He pulled out one of the dusty folding chairs and slumped down into it, a cloud of hazy dirt rising off of it in his wake. “You mean to tell me you heard that woman speaking in a song? That's where you got the coordinates?”
Kenji nodded, fishin
g his phone from his pocket. “That's right. You can hear it for yourself if you want.” He found the song in question, entitled “Cannibalism”, and skipped ahead to the part where he and Dylan had heard the woman speaking. When he hit play, the crowd noise started. There was the barking of a dog. The sounds filled the little room and seemed amplified a thousand times, burdening the rarified air with extra weight.
And then the woman began to speak. It was muffled, of course, but Reggie understood at once what was being said.
“We cleaned up the audio. That's how we got ahold of the coordinates,” explained Dylan. “It was too hard to hear in the original track, but once we isolated her voice, it was easy to make the message out.”
Reggie understood exactly, and rose from his seat, picking up a leather bag from the floor. He pulled a videotape from it and walked over to the VCR on the desk. Palming away a thick layer of dust, he cleared the television screen and switched on both machines. They buzzed to life and glowed sluggishly, their components grinding and clicking for the years of apparent disuse. When the VCR had warmed up, Reggie slipped the tape in and hit the Play button, pointing to the screen. “Watch this. I recorded it off of TV a few nights back. It's from a documentary on World War Two, but this woman caught my eye.”
It was a short clip, obviously edited for the muted nature of all the other noises. A large slab of stone, perhaps a war memorial, entered into view. Just behind it, hovering in frame unsteadily, was a pale woman with long, black hair. The dress she wore was the same shade of deep black, and her lips were moving. The breathy voice of this woman was the same as that which they'd found on the MP3 file. The message, too, was exactly the same. She repeated the coordinates, EN17DA43TU85, three times, before she suddenly vanished from the screen. One minute she was there. Then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, as if plucked away by an invisible hand.
Kenji stared at the television a long while, unable to shake the intense stare of the woman in the video. He'd listened to her voice countless times over the past day, had reviewed the contents of her message until he'd memorized them, but this was the first time he'd seen the speaker.
Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller Page 5
