Lost Signals Read online

  Then his voice jumped up a few octaves, became that of a chirpy commercial voice-over girl, “There was a girl on my road named Dirty Meg. A dark . . .”

  Without warning, Rob popped the kid in the jaw. The thud of fist on flesh got everyone’s attention, and they began to hoot and bang their fists on the seats. “FIGHT . . . FIGHT . . . FIGHT !”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa !” Finn said, grabbing Rob by the shoulders and putting him in a loose headlock. Rob struggled a little bit, half-heartedly, glowering at the kid, batting at Finn’s arms. Tears gathered on the kid’s lower eyelids. A splotch had blossomed bright red on his cheek.

  “What the fuck was that, Robbie ?” Finn said. “Really, what the fuck ?”

  The driver jerked the bus to the side of the road, threw it into park, and stormed down the aisle, belly bouncing under her blue sweater vest, face bright red under a sheath of dyed blonde hair. The other kids stopped chanting, but murmured excitedly, jostling each other, vying for a good view.

  “Up,” she said.

  Rob and Finn got up.

  “You’re sitting up front the rest of the way. C’mon. Rob ? Rob Chappell ? I know your mother. Come on now, right now, and she won’t hear a word about this.”

  Among cat-calls and jeers they followed her to the front. Finn spared a glance back at the kid. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face from under the radio. When the bus stopped, Finn and Rob were among the first to exit. Rob hustled off to class, but Finn waited. He wanted to look at the kid’s radio, to see if that dial sat down in the low numbers, to brace the kid and steal his damned radio and listen for himself. But the kid must have slipped by him somehow. Finn never saw him get off the bus.

  ***

  That evening, Finn and his father sat across from each other in the dimly lit dining room, eating dinner in silence. Tom Groomer demanded that Finn have dinner with him every weeknight, though Finn could not fathom why, as the television was always on, and they barely spoke to one another. Finn was volatile, agitated. He had searched for the kid all day, looked for him in the halls between classes, in the cafeteria. He was nowhere to be found. He didn’t even show up for the bus home.

  “Miss O’Connell says Leeds has more missing kids than any Massachusetts city of this size and population count,” Finn said, trying to force eye contact.

  Tom Groomer looked at a spot about a foot over Finn’s head. He tore off a piece of garlic bread and his brow furrowed as he dabbed the bread in sauce. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’ve been ten years on the force, I know cops in every city in Christendom. Miss O’Connell should stick to Physics.”

  “Do you know three kids were pulled out of school last year so their parents could home-school them ? And they were never heard from again.”

  His father burst into derisive laughter. “Never heard from again !”

  “It’s true. Kelly Kitter.”

  “Finny, I know the Kitters. Do you want me to call Carol right now ? Kelly left school, what, junior year ? Carol home-schooled her, and she got accepted at Oberlin College. Full ride, housing and all. As far as I know, that’s where she is right now. Now, that’s the last I want to hear of it.”

  Finn nodded, jabbed his fork at a piece of ravioli, shoving it around the plate. Kelly’s best friend Margot hadn’t seen nor heard from Kelly since the day her mom pulled her out of school. When she called, Mrs. Kitter said Kelly had gone out. Or was studying. Or asleep. Asleep at seven in the evening ! Kelly hadn’t just moved to Ohio without calling Margot, without saying goodbye. Tom Groomer stared blankly at the television, where the long smoke trail from the space shuttle explosion billowed across the screen for the umpteenth time. He was lying, Finn decided. His father was lying to his face.

  ***

  Finn dreamed that night, nightmares strung together like grotesque garland, an anthology of abominations. He would remember only one, the last, ultimately interrupted by the insistent screech of the clock radio alarm. He stood in the midst of a vast, noisy carnival under a sky of dirt. Rocks tumbled above, in defiance of gravity, making a noise like thunder. Lightning spiked down from the dirt, lightning made of long, wriggling glowworms. A mad barker bellowed inanities into a megaphone from a warped seat at the apex of the rusted out Ferris Wheel, the voice echoing throughout the fairgrounds. The air smelled of popcorn, charred meat, wet animal fur. Finn walked over to a metal gate, beyond which a colorful Chair-O-Plane spun, its angled column lined with lights, cadavers lolling in the basket chairs as they swung sidelong through the fragrant fry-o-later air. A ragged skull tumbled to the hard-packed earth and bounced along toward Finn, coming to rest at the base of the gate. It bore patches of skin, wisps of hair. Maggots orgied in its eye sockets and feasted on its putrefying tongue. Finn backed up, circled the ride, headed toward the Ferris Wheel. The voice of the barker sounded familiar.

  He walked alongside a row of trailers, between which laundry sagged from greasy clotheslines : massive brassieres, a gape-mouthed bear costume, long johns, garters and frills and feather boas. One of the trailer doors hung open, and a face popped out, all bushy eyebrows and matted hair. The man’s face loomed swollen, squirrel-cheeked. “Kid,” the man whispered. Finn turned to look. The man’s belly lolled over the belt of his bathrobe. At his feet a slack-haired woman slithered, her eyes dead, her tongue tasting the mud-caked floor. Her body was that of a snake, diamond-patterned, scaled, draped in a feces-stained slip. “Come in ! Test your strength !”

  Finn gave the door a wide berth, just catching the edge of a miasma of shit and rum and body odor. As he reached the end of the line of trailers and approached the Ferris Wheel, the barker, silhouetted, leapt from his seat. Black wings bloomed behind him, curving upward, forming a parachute. He sailed to the ground, turned, and walked into the mist. For just a moment, in the light of a Fried Dough stand, Finn had recognized the destroyed features of Bentley Langschultz, his blond head split eight ways and smoking like a spent firecracker, face peeled down in flaps, long shredded tongue dangling obscenely. Finn followed Bentley. Beyond the borders of the fairgrounds sprawled a moldering marsh, swarming will-o’-the-wisps illuminating the brackish, moss-strewn water. Bentley walked in, was wading away. The sound of sloshing water overtook the carnival music until it was the only sound. By now, only the ruined back of Bentley’s blonde head could be seen. Then he turned, and he wore the face of an antique radio : large, mesh-covered eyes, a knob for a nose, and a wide, rectangular mouth that glowed yellow. At its left-most end a withered red tongue slid back and forth, as though searching for that elusive signal.

  ***

  Finn saw the kid the next day after lunch when he stepped outside to get a gulp or two of fresh air, as if saving it up to last him two more interminable hours in the stuffy classroom. The kid stood at the edge of the woods beyond the football field, not far from where Bentley Langschultz had blown his brains out. He held the radio down by his side, his head tilted as though listening to something in the sky. Finn walked toward the kid. As he approached, the wind kicked up and the image of the kid shimmied, briefly blurring, separating into a boy-shaped stack of horizontal lines. Finn felt dizzy, off-kilter. It seemed as though it was taking a very long time to cover a short distance, as though the kid and the edge of the wood retreated imperceptibly with each step Finn took. The afternoon stretched, tinted blue with overtones of dusk. Had the bell rung to signal the resumption of classes ? If so, he hadn’t heard it.

  At length, after picking up his pace, almost jogging, he began to close the distance. He cleared his throat to alert the kid to his presence. The kid turned.

  “What’s your name ?” Finn asked.

  “Eric.”

  “Eric, I’m Finn.” He spoke quickly, fearing that Eric would dismiss him, or walk away. “Listen, I’m sorry about the bus. Rob can be a wicked asshole sometimes. Can you tell me what you were listening to on the radio ? I’ve been thinking about it non-stop.”


  Eric shrugged. Then he lifted the radio and extended his arm so that the speaker hovered a few inches from Finn’s face. A tinny voice spoke : Through gore-clotted conduits He makes His way, slithering, flattening himself like a cat, going liquid, slender snake, wriggling worm. He comes to summon His herd. Join me on the riverbank. We’ll pull down the sky. We’ll pull down the sun and we’ll pull down the trees. We’ll pull down the shade of—a rising wave of static overtook the voice. Eric pulled back the radio, frowned down at its face, fiddling with the dial and extending the antenna between two pinched fingers, pointing it this way and that. The voice went on somewhere back there, straining to be heard, calling out, but the static won. For just a moment, his face distorted, Eric looked considerably older than a high school kid. Older . . . or harder. Finn couldn’t decide. Maybe both.

  “You can get way better reception out at my place in the woods. Will you come to the woods with me ?”

  Finn grimaced. “I don’t know. I have English, like right now. I’m probably already late.”

  “If you’re already late, what’s the harm ? Follow me.”

  He walked into the woods. Finn followed.

  ***

  “Is this where you live ?” Finn said. Yellow tents, ten or twelve of them, stood here and there among the clearing in the woods, a space ringed by tall oaks and red spruce, a space not that much larger than the Groomers’ modest backyard. Along the easternmost border stood a row of thin trees, evenly spaced like the rungs of a crib, beyond which the forest devolved into a jungle-like tangle of deadfalls and vines and profusely thorned thicket, dotted with virgin’s bower and jack-in-the-pulpit. At the sound of Finn’s voice, the wind kicked up, rustling the trees and the tents, which shivered as though cold.

  “They’re down at the river, praying,” Eric said, answering a question Finn hadn’t asked.

  “Who ?”

  “Let’s listen awhile. Close your eyes.”

  “How come ?”

  “Close them.”

  Eric turned on the radio and cranked the volume as high as it would go.

  The notes of a flute meander, climbing, faltering, climbing again. A male voice mutters and chuckles, sniffs. Please don’t, says a small voice, a toddler’s voice, trembling with fear. Flames crackle and far off voices rise and fall in an insistent cadence, no stopping for breath. A cheering crowd, now ecstatic, now raging. A female voice, husky and insinuating, emanates from the center of the clearing. “Masks and mirrors, gentlemen,” the voice says. “Mirrors and masks. Flesh on marble. Fountains of blood, carriages of carrion. Mister Ben will eat your worries, slurp them up like stew. Mister Ben’s boarding house has beds to spare, clean linens, perfumed halls, nurses on call with hands softer than silk.”

  Mom ?

  “Oh, darling, I’m talking to the boys, the sweet boys. See them ? Such handsome young men.”

  Mom ? I’m hungry.

  “Darling, shush.”

  I want tongues. Tongues and lips. Sweat in my cup. Piss mug, dog’s water, gristle to chew.

  “Soon, sweetie, soon.”

  Dog mug, piss water, blood under my tongue. Sweetbreads and sputum. A savage giggle, deepening in pitch, bending and warping.

  Again the flute, fleeing, shrieking as something pounds the low keys of a piano with violent force. A tuneless whistle, and then a stomp, a shriek. More stomps, splatter and crunch. A bow moves across the strings of a violin, is yanked away. The howl of space. Whimpers and pleadings, zippers unzipping, rustling clothes. A child gags and retches. A bird says CHUR chattle CHUR chattle CHUR. A pipe organ, brazen and fierce, spedupsuperfastchipmunkfast. Calliope and callithump, wheeze and whine, high-pitched, a crying dog, bereft and disconsolate. Night falls like a shade, with it that familiar roar of static. Finn drops away . . .

  ***

  . . . and Finn awoke. He lay face up, staring at the ceiling of a tent, which glowed an alien green. He was clothed, save his shoes, which sat at his side in a chaste soixante-neuf. He wanted to know what time it was, and he wanted to drift back into blackness. Something shifted, a rustle of clothing, a sniffle. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and saw Eric sitting Indian-style at his feet, the transistor in his lap, its dial glowing green. From the speaker a voice whispered a phrase in some unknown language. A chorus of young voices sounded just outside the tent in surround-sound, repeated the phrase, and the voice resumed.

  Finn opened his mouth to speak and Eric leapt from his crouching position, his legs trailing behind him like those of a frog. He landed on Finn’s stomach. Finn bellowed out all the air in his lungs, and then Eric pushed the radio into his chest. Finn punched at Eric, landing blows on his shoulders and neck and chin, but Eric pulled back his head to avoid the blows. His arms elongated, snaking out from his sleeves. Finn heard cracking that he first mistook for thunder, or a tree breaking open. As pain radiated from his chest into his arms and neck and nausea grew in his stomach, he realized that he was hearing the cracking of his ribs.

  Eric began to sing in a high, clear voice.

  Mary sit with me by the river

  Cymbals hissed and whispered from the speaker.

  We’ll pull down the stars from the sky

  The kids outside the tent ooohed and snapped their fingers.

  We’ll pull down the moon and we’ll pull down the sun

  Their shadows slithered like serpents on the green glowing walls of the tent.

  We’ll pull down the shade of the eye.

  Eric bore down on the radio as Finn’s chest caved in like a sinkhole. Finn could not gather enough air to scream.

  ***

  He awoke again, hours later, this time in muted daylight. The shadows of leaves cavorted on the tent walls. It was hard to breathe. His chest and arms ached as though he’d been in a fight, but he hadn’t been, not that he could remember. He’d been listening to the radio with Eric, and then . . . and then he’d awakened. He’d never lost time like that before . . . and he didn’t remember having had anything to drink. He ran his hands through his hair, wincing, and ducked out of the tent. The worshippers had returned, apparently. A bunch of them—all teenagers—stood here and there, looking up at the sky. A few tended to a makeshift grill where flames danced up among a grid of soaked sticks suspended over a circle of rocks. A battered frying pan sang a song of spattering bacon ; another bore eggs, the yolks orange as the ascending sun. “Good morning,” said a girl with big eyes and purple hair, dressed in cartoon character pajamas. “How do you want your eggs ?”

  The other kids looked at him. There was something about them . . . something he didn’t see in any of the kids at school. It was as though his classmates were a cable television station to which he didn’t subscribe : he only saw glimpses of them swimming through wavering distortion. The kids in the woods were a local station, beamed in from a close-by antenna, clear and unbroken. Their eyes hummed with life. He felt impatient to befriend them. But he detected a note of caution in their eyes, or suspicion. Maybe just a wariness. Except for the purple-haired girl, whose face bore a vague resemblance to that of his mother ; narrow, aquiline nose, small eyes, dimples—a face he’d seen only in old photographs, trapped under transparent photo-album plastic. The girl’s eyes were bright and welcoming, interested, even.

  “Scrambled ?” he said.

  “Was that a question or a statement ?” She pulled a large, rusted metal spoon from a wire basket near the fire pit.

  “Scrambled.”

  She stirred the eggs, keeping her eyes fixed on Finn’s. She salted and peppered the eggs and slid them from the pan onto a Styrofoam plate.

  Finn sat cross-legged, eating with his hands, watching the denizens of the makeshift city as they dressed themselves, sat reading, or gathered soap and towels to wash at the brook just over the hillock. Just as he was scraping the last bit of egg from the plate, Eric emerged from a tent at the far end of the clearing. He threw down his backpack—stuffed to the point of straining at the
seams, and began dismantling the tent from which he’d just emerged. “You’re really going,” said the purple-haired girl.

  “It won’t be just me in the end.” Eric folded the tent, his voice a reassuring purr. “I’ll tell them all about you guys, I promise. I’m good with words. I know I can get them to accept you. Maybe not all of you, but some of you.”

  The purple-haired girl bounced on her heels, while a greasy-haired kid in a jean jacket shook his head. “They won’t take me. I have anxiety.”

  “Danny, I’ll tell them about how good you are with, like, sleight of hand,” Eric said. “I’m sure they’ll find a use for you.”

  Danny scoffed. He spit in the dirt and muttered.

  “Where are you going ?” Finn said. “Who’s ‘them’ ?”

  The kids tittered. A secret flitted among them like static electricity. “The people in the deep woods,” Danny said, hooking his thumb toward the dark tangle of thicket-choked trees. “They’re . . . they’re kind of like church leaders, or priests, but not all strict, not worried about morals and shit. Finn . . . is this life enough for you ? Do you feel like you’re part of anything ? Like there’s any real purpose ? With them, it’s different. All we have is questions. They have answers. And a mission.”

  Eric frowned, spoke up. “Have you ever seen the Real Leeds ? In dreams, or in your thoughts ? It’s a place between here and . . . it’s where they came in through. It’s like where we live, but better . . . there are skyscrapers, and these sort of . . . community centers, let’s call them . . . and a fair that runs year-round.

  (Test your strength.)

  “It’s always October, Finn, always. And what they can give you . . .”

  He paused. The kids all looked at him. Their eyes blazed a warning. A beatific look passed over his face.

  “Ecstasy. Exaltation. Transformation.”

  “In exchange for what ?” Finn said.

  Eric shrugged. “Nothing big, I don’t think. Nothing important. Nothing you’ll miss.”

  Without further ceremony, Eric hauled up his pack, nodded to the group, and walked through the line of trees into the tangled wood. Everyone stood, watching him go, until they couldn’t see nor hear him. No one spoke.