It didn't feel like the first time, though.
Perhaps he was just being fanciful, however something of the woman's intensity and appearance had been transmitted into his mind previously, despite his only having heard her voice. Though it had been only a vague, unformed notion up to that moment when he'd first laid eyes upon her on the dusty television screen, he'd already glimpsed some aspect of her haunting presence, of her intense stare before. Perhaps it'd been in his dreams. More likely, he'd studied the audio recording so closely that a kernel of dread had been planted in his mind, and the figure of this woman had been fleshed out in full before he even knew it. There wasn't any good way for him to describe it, except to say that she looked precisely the way he'd expected.
Reggie shut off the television and then drooped back into his chair, staring at the floor. His leather shoes gleamed in the dull light, and he buried the tip of one into the floor, making little circles in the dust. “You two heard her in a song. I saw her in a video.” He pawed at his cleanly-shaven cheek. “I wonder where else she might turn up.”
It was a terrifying proposition, that this woman may be present in other media. Not that Kenji himself hadn't considered it. It was entirely possible that this mysterious woman's voice or image would not be limited solely to these two pieces of media. “But why?” asked Kenji aloud, more for his own benefit than anyone else's. “It doesn't make sense. Why was this woman pictured in the documentary. I mean, she obviously doesn't belong there. The camera guy didn't focus on her. And then she disappears at the end of the clip. It's like she was a particle of dust in the lens that blew away in the next instant. Same thing with the song. Her voice just kind of passed through at the end there, masked by other stuff. Like it was interference of some kind.”
Dylan was pacing around the room, looking up at the unfinished ceiling. The mess of wooden rafters was overgrown with dust and featured intricate clusters of cobwebs. “Never saw this coming,” he said. “Thought for sure we'd get some answers coming all this way. Instead, the plot thickens.”
Reggie sighed. “One thing for sure; this ain't all just a coincidence. We can agree on that much, right? All of us followed this little message out here to the-middle-of-nowhere, Minnesota. That's gotta mean something.”
“Yeah, but what?” asked Dylan.
Kenji grit his teeth. Every atom in his body seemed to be shouting the same thing at once. Run. Run far from here. You've walked into a trap.
“If we had any sense,” continued Reggie, “we wouldn't stick around to find out. We'd take off. Get the hell outta here before something happens. Because something about this entire thing just don't sit right. Know what I mean?”
Kenji agreed. There was something ominous about this entire thing. Certainly they hadn't been brought here for anything good. All of the evidence, scant and cryptic though it was, pointed to something uncertain but sinister. Nevertheless, they'd driven more than seven hours to this spot. They'd decided to follow the clues, to knock on this door. They'd had their fair share of chances to turn their backs on this, but they'd insisted on coming this far nevertheless. The time for running away was over, and Kenji knew it. They'd blown any chance they'd ever had of leaving this behind them. They were all-in. “I think we should hang out for a bit. You know, try and talk through this. Maybe we can figure out what this is all about.”
ELEVEN
They could all agree on one thing: No one had been in the shack for years. The utter filth of the spot was sufficient to confirm that. The building was in good repair. There were no leaks to be found, and the structure was sturdily built. It couldn't have been more than a decade old, by Reggie's estimation, but it seemed as though it'd sat vacant at least that long. Someone had built this little shack in the middle of nowhere and placed a couple of items inside. And then they'd never returned, by the looks of it.
Reggie discussed his arrival at the spot. His Buick LeSabre was parked on the other side of the shack, just out of view of the dirt driveway. He'd arrived nearly an hour before the two of them and had been unable to switch on the lights at first. It turned out there was a generator outside, and with a little doing he'd managed to restore power to the shack just a few minutes before the two of them had knocked. He'd had a look around the grounds, too. There was little to be found except for grass. The lawn immediately surrounding the shack was comprised of two types, one short, the other tall, and the nearest tree seemed to be half a mile away. There were no other buildings around that he'd been able to see, and both Kenji and Dylan agreed that they hadn't seen any for quite some distance. They were united in an extremely out-of-the-way place.
“You know,” began Reggie, stretching out in the chair, “ever since I got here I've felt like someone's watching me. Before that, too, but especially once I drove up to this spot. It never stops. It's like someone's looking down at me from above.”
Kenji knew this feeling all too well. The same sensation had haunted him since the first time he'd heard the woman's voice on the recording, back in his dorm room.
Dylan chuckled, trying to keep the mood light. He pointed through the window. “Well, at least you know it's all in your head. Nothing out there but grass. No place for a prowler to hide, you know? Everything's clear, in plain view.”
Kenji knew this was the case, but the feeling persisted nevertheless. He couldn't put his finger on its fountainhead, wasn't sure why it kept on despite the marked lack of a visible threat. But it did. While the three of them milled about in the shack, Kenji felt somehow convinced that there was an invisible fourth occupant among them. Of course, he didn't dare voice this feeling. Any acknowledgment, he feared, would only give the presence more power.
Dylan broke the contemplative silence once again, leaning against the wall and tapping the buttons on the radio at random. “So, who is this woman? I think that's where we should start.”
“That's a good question,” replied Reggie. “Think this is her place?”
Kenji shrugged. They could stand around theorizing till the sun came up and they'd never draw any closer to an answer to their questions, at this rate. They needed to look beyond that; why had this woman, whoever she was, been captured in two disparate pieces of media in this way? What had been her intent in disseminating these coordinates? He cleared his throat. “OK, you saw this woman in that documentary. What was it called? Maybe, if we look it up, we'll find some sort of hint. Could she have worked in the cast and crew?” He was spitballing, but at that point any progress would have been welcome.
Reggie thought about it a moment. “It was called Segregation In The Second World War: A Visual History, I'm pretty sure.”
Kenji wrote down the title in his notebook. Then, toying with his phone, he searched for a reception.
There was no signal to be found.
“I already tried, dude,” said Dylan. “It's a dead zone out here.”
“Awesome.” Kenji was about to stuff the phone into his pocket when the slightest impression of a signal flashed across the status bar. “Wait a minute, I've got a real weak signal coming in here.” He held the phone over his head, hoping that the signal might hold, and when it did, he opened the browser.
Carefully, as though typing too quickly would scare the signal away, Kenji did a search for the documentary, Segregation In The Second World War: A Visual History. The results loaded very sluggishly, and for a while there, as the three of them huddled around Kenji's phone, they feared that they wouldn't load at all. Finally, however, after a wait of some minutes, the results populated the screen and some basic information about the documentary was made available to them.
Of particular interest was the date of its production, which was among the first facts to come up in the search. It'd been released on May 10th, 2006. That made it over ten years old.
Kenji pursed his lips, falling deep into thought. Something about that number, ten years, sent up a red flag for him. It didn't take him long to realize why.
�
��Wait a second...” Clearing the browser, Kenji typed something new into the search bar. Dreams in Black Static. That was the name of the album by Jackal Priest, which had included the voice of this woman in its opening track. Unless he was mistaken, it was also about ten years old. It was a tenuous link, but he was desperate for something, anything that might further his understanding of this matter.
Again, the three of them waited with held breath for the results to load. The information came very, very slowly, and more than once the signal was lost. Kenji stood near the window, waving his phone in the air and trying to recapture the single bar he'd locked onto. Finally, when the results had popped up, he looked at his screen and began reading.
What he found there stunned him.
At a loss for words, he held the phone out for Reggie and Dylan to see, and when they failed to notice what'd so impressed him, he began to explain. “The dates... the album we found her voice on, as well as the documentary, were both released on the same day, ten years ago. Both came out on May 10th, 2006.”
Reggie broke out in nervous laughter, pacing away from the other two and clapping his hands. “You're kidding me, right? That's... that's a hell of a coincidence there.”
But they were well past the point of writing things off as mere coincidence. This detail was more proof that something was going on here. “No coincidence,” muttered Kenji, massaging his jaw and pocketing his phone. “We need to look into this connection a little deeper. Gotta find some place with better cell service or WiFi.”
“We passed a Tim Horton's on our way here,” began Dylan. “It was outside the last town, on the highway, I think. Wanna go there? You've got your laptop in the car, right?”
Kenji was already marching out the door by the time Dylan finished.
Reggie followed, smirking. “He's a little headstrong, ain't he?”
Dylan shook his head, closing the door to the shack behind them and heading for the Honda. “Headstrong ain't the word. Obsessed is more like it.”
TWELVE
Kenji and Dylan drove in the Honda, while Reggie followed in his LeSabre. The trio arrived at the empty Tim Horton's along the highway nearly forty minutes later. Upon arrival, Kenji had raced inside, laptop bag in tow, and had set up at the table nearest the shop's only visible power outlet. Meanwhile, Reggie and Dylan placed an order for coffee and donuts. Dylan picked up a pair of Double-Doubles for himself and Kenji, and carried over a half dozen mixed donuts to the large table where Kenji was now stationed and typing away furiously.
Reggie sauntered over with a coffee and bagel, dropping into the nearest booth and taking a noisy sip. “So, what're you finding over there?” he asked, nudging Kenji's leg with his foot.
Kenji scarcely looked up from his screen. He'd pulled up the album, Dreams in Black Static, in one tab, and the war documentary in the other. With lightning fast speed he scanned websites dedicated to both, scouring them for any other similarities aside from the date of their release. He looked first at the listings discussing the album, of which there were precious few. The band members were the only listed personnel involved in its production, and he knew all of them had died in a plane crash. Dead end.
Next, he turned his fevered attention to the official website of the documentary. There was a list of cast and crew to be found there, and he was overjoyed to find that there were photos of the cast posted alongside the credits. Finding the pale woman in the video would be a simple thing if she was at all involved with the making of the documentary.
That was a big “if”, though. A scan of the numerous faces on the page, and then another, failed to yield anyone who looked even remotely like the woman he sought. Apparently she wasn't involved with the documentary after all.
Sighing, Kenji snatched the big red cup Dylan had offered him and sucked in a few mouthfuls of sweetened coffee. “Dead end,” he muttered.
Dylan was on his third donut by that point, and his cheeks bulged out as though he were a rodent hoarding food. “What do you mean?” he asked around a bolus of fried dough. A blue sprinkle escaped his mouth, dropping down onto the tabletop. “Nothing?”
Kenji shook his head. The woman wasn't involved with the production of either the documentary or the album, as best he could tell. “Not a thing.”
Dylan frowned, choking down his food. “OK, what if it's something about the three of us... like, what if there's something that links all of us together and that's why we ended up meeting at this spot?” He turned to Reggie. “What's your story, Reggie?”
Drawing in a deep breath, Reggie shrugged. “Well, I dunno what you want me to say here. I've never seen that woman before watching the tape. I recorded that documentary because I wanted to see if my father's unit was featured in it-- he was a World War Two vet. I fought in Vietnam, myself. Retired now, living in St. Paul. Once upon a time I played around with HAM radios-- that was how I knew those letters and numbers she repeated were Maidenhead coordinates. And you two?”
Dylan went first while Kenji worked on his coffee. “I'm a chemistry major. Still have two years left before I graduate, same as Kenji. He studies linguistics, though. We both go to UW-Madison. We're roommates, in fact. He downloaded that album off of an illegal pirate website and brought it to my attention just last night. I was the one who suggested we follow the coordinates and come out here, though. Some guy in our dorm filled us in and explained the Maidenhead thing. At first, Kenji thought it was some sort of secret code.”
Discussing their lives any further was beyond pointless. He and Dylan were as different from this man as could be. “This is getting us nowhere,” interrupted Kenji. “I don't think this has anything to do with us, in particular. We were just the ones who noticed it. Around the same time, no less. Something... maybe this date, May 10th, has some significance, but...”
Reggie slurped up more coffee and meditated a moment. He was working over his bagel when something suddenly dawned on him. “Well, both these things came out the same day, right? Maybe look it up online. May 10th, 2006.”
“That's a long-shot. We're going to get a ton of hits,” replied Kenji, typing the date into the search bar and reluctantly tapping Enter. As expected, thousands of results were returned. He stifled a groan. He could sift through this mess for days and never stumble upon anything of use.
“Whatcha got?” asked Reggie, leaning in and looking at the screen.
Kenji read off the results in a dispirited monotone. “First three hits all deal with a comet that was passing by Earth on that day. I guess there was a big meteor shower afterward. Second link has something to do with people in South America acting weird afterward, but I'm not going to bother reading that. Oh, this one talks about some political assassination in Africa.” He scrolled further.
“You think anyone else will end up at that shack? Like, you think anyone else out there has picked up on this? What if more people get in on... whatever this is?” mused Dylan, cleaning his mouth off with a napkin. His glasses, usually so neat and clean, were marked up with frosted fingerprints. A red sprinkle clung to the white rims.
Kenji ignored him. It was possible that other people had heard the voice, however neither the album nor the documentary were especially well-known, and it occurred to him that only certain kinds of people would ever care enough about such a thing to investigate further. How many people out there would really bother to isolate certain sounds on an MP3 like he and Dylan had done? How many people out there would pay such close attention to a documentary that they'd zero in on the anomalous, mumbling woman in the background of a single scene? If anything united the three of them, it was a tendency towards neuroticism or OCD.
“Next one is a missing person's notice.” Kenji very nearly scrolled past it, but something he glimpsed in the preview made him pause. It was a new listing, led to a public social media group centered around missing person's cases in the State of Minnesota. “That's weird,” he said. “Think this could be something?” He pointed to the li
nk, and both Dylan and Reggie glanced at it. “It looks like someone put out a missing person's report on this social media site, trying to find some old friend of theirs. They were last seen on May 10th, 2006.”
Reggie nodded. “Why not? Click on it.”
Kenji did so. This was a small social media site, not particularly popular, but he was familiar enough with it to navigate it with ease. He scrolled down the newer posts on the page and singled out the one that'd drew him there, posted just four days previously.
And then, the three of them loosed a collective gasp.
The listing was brief. A woman with the username MARA_ANTALL had made the post, and in it she wrote only the most salient details. She was seeking any information that might help her find her friend, a woman by the name of Agnes Pasztor, a fellow Hungarian immigrant, who'd last been seen on May 10th, 2006, in rural Minnesota. A contact phone number for user MARA_ANTALL was listed.
But it was not these details that shocked the three of them into a momentary silence.
Offered beneath these few lines of text was a photo of the missing woman, allegedly taken shortly before her disappearance ten years ago, and it was this that stunned the trio. Kenji stared at the photo long and hard. Suddenly his gums began to itch and he had to clench his jaw to ease them.
The woman staring back at the three of them in the photograph was the very same woman who'd been in the documentary.
Kenji whispered the name under his breath, trying it on for size. “Agnes Pasztor...”
Reggie loosed a shudder and sank back down into his seat at hearing it. “Ah, hell no,” he mumbled into his coffee cup.
THIRTEEN
Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller Page 6
