Every day, the crack in the lookout window gets a little bit bigger. The rumble in the ground gets a little more violent. That light off in the forest, rising up into the sky from an endless pit into the earth, gets just a little bit brighter.
Things are changing, and all of this is just the start of it.
I spent two days in a hospital, then two days in bed. No one knew what was wrong with me or how to make it better, but the stomach pump didn’t hurt. They didn’t show me what came out of my body, but one of the nurses shrieked when she saw it, so I’m going out on a limb and assuming it wasn’t great. But, I was lucky I had the boys watching out for me. Finn and Daniel took turns running a tight ship at the broadcast tower without me, checking in every day and forcing me to eat even when I didn’t want to. More than once, they found me doubled-over in the bathroom, vomiting up some sort of dark, foul-smelling fluid with the consistency of wet tar. It was disgusting. It tasted like I had swallowed a dead bird…And I think I’d remember doing something like that.
Eventually, the vomiting ceased. The fever broke. The shakes were still shakin’, but more manageable than before. I spent my time bouncing between my own place and Dan’s, breaking into his intimidatingly clean apartment occasionally so that I could watch shitty daytime television. He’s still sleepwalking, by the way. I’ve started taking his apartment key at night and locking him in, but two nights ago, a neighbor saw him trying to jump out the window. So now, we’re locking that too.
I spent most of my days on the couch, bundling up in a heated blanket and two pairs of sweatpants at the same time. Finally, after purging my system of unexplained substances and sleeping more than I had in the last four years combined, I returned to work in the mid-afternoon when the sky was gray and snowy. It was a difficult decision. I still felt wrong, like the sickness had torn me apart from the inside out and my body was still trying to repair the damages, but I knew where I belonged.
When I got up the stairs and into the broadcast room, my lungs were aching from the long walk. I didn’t count, but I think those extra 17 steps are back.
All at once, I was greeted to the usual smell of burnt coffee and the sight of my two co-workers lazily going about their day. Finn was standing at the back of the room, having a cigarette next to the sink. I told him not to smoke in here, but he didn’t listen. His bandages were off, the twisted skin beneath still raw and pink and his face and hair shaved on one side to clean up the uneven mess. Believe it or not, burn scars kinda suited him. Daniel was at the desk, actually doing his job. Sort of. I could see he was already getting his collection of Christmas hats out, because on his head was a stupid little band with reindeer antlers on it.
“And great news!” He announced into his microphone. “Our very own Scrooge, Miss Evelyn McKinnon, has returned to Pinehaven Radio just in time for the holidays! And viewers, let me tell you, she looks like hot, stinky garbage~” Daniel gave a stupid, gap-toothed grin and started giggling when I kicked the base of his chair. Fucking goblin of a man.
“You’re not live, are you?” I groaned, tossing my coat to the side. Finn was there in less than ten seconds to put it on the coat rack where it belonged, giving me a disgruntled side-eye.
“Yep.” Dan answered, turning off his microphone with the push of a button. He cracked his knuckles proudly. “But don’t worry, no one’s listening, probably.”
Dan stuck one lanky leg out and kicked my chair back, away from the desk. “Welcome back, my little intestinal cramp. We missed you.”
I plopped down in my chair, headset around my neck and a tired scowl on my face. “I guess it’s kind of good to be back…You rat-bastard summabitch.”
“Won’t be for very long.” Finn said from the back of the room, putting out his cigarette in a makeshift ashtray he had fashioned from an old peanut butter lid. He was stirring a cup of coffee, which he put down in front of me. “Winter storms tonight and a fog day tomorrow. First one in a while.”
I groaned loudly, leaning back in my seat and slumping down as if all my bones had been sucked out of my body. “You know, I was enjoying the nice weather.” I said, gesturing out to the overcast, snowy sky and the frost that was collecting on the lookout window. The fog days were becoming more common than ever, happening once or twice a week on average. Most of the time, the radio did its job - that constant, quiet signal was enough to keep the various beasts at bay and stop the fog at the treeline.
But they were getting smarter. We all knew that. And if there was a way to get the radio tower down, they were sure as hell going to try at every single available opportunity.
“So, what’s the plan?” Daniel asked, that cheery look on his face fading away and replaced with the all-familiar stress. Something about the big-eyed, worried expression mixed with the reindeer hat was just…so, so depressing.
Finn was already lighting up a second cigarette. “I think you had the right idea last time,” he commented, patting Dan on his shoulder. “Get the generator out tonight, get everything prepared for a winter storm. It takes less than five minutes for the fog to reach the town - that’s how long we’ll have to get the power back on if it goes out. But this time? No distractions. Keep your head screwed on.”
He was looking at Daniel specifically. He remembered that night just as clearly as the rest of us did, perhaps even more. Finn lived at the edge of the town, in an old farmhouse that was now standing on its last legs thanks to the damage the fog had done. It would take a long time to fix it back up, and even longer to fix this place’s rotten reputation. I still had nightmares about it.
It was no wonder Pinehaven was shrinking down to a microscopic level.
“Generator. Lockdown. No distractions. Got it.” I counted off the steps on my fingers. The snow was already starting to fall a little heavier, the wind whistling through the crack in the lookout window.
“…How long has that been there?” Finn pointed at the corner of the glass, where the spiderweb-shaped crack had been steadily growing.
“A while.” I shrugged, sipping my coffee and watching the nearest pines turn white. “It keeps getting bigger too, every time this place starts to shake and shimmy. Which, if you haven’t noticed, is all the time.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed.” Finn snapped impatiently. I could see his gaze fixed on the window, on that fragile corner just waiting to shatter. Cracks in the walls.
There was a silent, unsteady moment between the three of us. As the wind whistled through the trees and pushed against the stilts holding us up, the chill in the air was more than just the draft.
“I should, uh…I should put a tarp over my truck tonight. Just in case we need to mosey out. Ya think?” I was already standing up, putting my headset down and pushing in my chair. “Tarps still out in the shed?”
Finn nodded, but he never looked my way.
There’s one thing you’ve got to know about this place when it comes to winter time, and that’s this: when it snows, it really fucking snows. This garbage was coming down like it meant it, like it had a date with the ground that it just needed to keep. When I reached the bottom step, my ratty old boots didn’t stand a chance, and all at once I felt the immense discomfort of moisture against the toes of my socks. Great. I was going to think about that for the rest of the day.
I trudged through the freezing white bullshit, leaving a trail of grumpy footprints behind me.
Once I got to the shed, I squinted up at one of the security cameras. It was propped there on the side, right in one corner, where the guys in the station could certainly see me having a fantastic time.
The door was harder to open than usual, sticking in the snow. That issue came secondary, however, as I could see the broken fibers of something organic pulling apart as the door scraped open. At first, I thought it was just a thick spider web stuck in the crack. But then I heard the buzzing. As the dim light of an overcast sky pooled in through the dusty windows, I could see clustered shapes of giant wasp nests that were stuck to almost every surface of the shed: the walls, the shelves, even the generator itself was covered in the stuff. Sticky, disgusting goo dripped from the ceiling and larvae wriggled and inched across the floor like a living carpet.
My skin didn’t just crawl, it tried to turn itself inside-out. I fucking hate wasps.
“Ow! Shit!” I felt a sharp sting to my hand as one of the little pricks, big and angry, stung at my knuckles while I forced the door open. Another one got the side of my neck, a third got my thumb. There were tons of them, all clustered around the doorknob and furiously circling. I backed up, holding my stinging hand as the spot started to swell.
But I didn’t come all the way out here, getting my socks wet in the snow for nothing. The tarps weren’t very far. I stepped into the shed and reached for one, pulling it out and dragging it across the nasty, infested ground as my boots sank into the soft piles of larvae. The hornets were crowding me, buzzing in my face the whole time.
But before I left, I saw something in the corner of the shed, hidden in the shadows beneath an old wood-working table. Something large was moving around, skittering across the floor. Nope. No thanks. Absolutely not, to be precise.
I trudged my way back, but Finn apparently had other ideas. He was already on his way down the stairs, a green canister in his hand, before I managed to reach the parking lot.
“Saw you on the security cameras.” He called down from the middle of the stairs while I stood at the bottom, my pant legs wet from the snow and my skin itchy.
“Enjoy the show?” I asked dryly, scratching at my hand. “Ugh! Little assholes got me good.”
Finn was shaking the can in his hand with a sharp metallic rattle. “Well, this’ll be the end of ‘em. We had a few foggers in the cabinet. Give it a couple of hours and they’ll all be dead.”
I gave a grumpy whine as he passed by, off to take care of business while I protected my old truck from the impending storm. “That would have been great to know about waaaay earlier!” I shouted after him.
He laughed, simply yelling back: “You would have known if you checked, dumbass!”
The snow was already building up on the truck. I brushed it away with my hands, the icy cold sting feeling oddly soothing against my burning skin. I got the tarp draped over it well enough on my own, but all the while, I couldn’t shake the eerie chill I felt. It was like being naked and exposed in a crowd, watched by so many eyes.
They were out there, in the woods. They were hidden between the branches, watching from the tops of trees and the hazy blur of falling snow. I could hear the motion of dead leaves and the flutter of wings. A shrill screech rang out above me and I saw that ugly little mountain bird land at the borderline between safety and the wild horrors of the forest.
He didn’t always screech and chirp, but when he did, his voice sounded so strange…like the high-pitched yell of a man trapped in a tiny throat.
“What do you want?” I glared at Bartholemew, and he glared back. He shrieked again, like a piercing alarm cutting through the wind. It was so loud, so sharp that I put a hand up to my ear. It was then I noticed the way my skin was changing colors. Those large, violent welts where the wasps had stung were now starting to double in size, colored a horrible putrid black under the skin. I made the mistake of poking one - dear God, it was the worst thing I could have possibly done. The swollen wound burst, a spray of hot black ooze bubbling out of my skin and burning like hot grease. It dripped down between my fingers and into the snow, forming more welts as it went.
Disgust is not a strong enough word. I shrieked and shoved my hands down in the snow, gagging as the smell hit my nose. I couldn’t tell if that shit was from the wasps or if it was inside my bloodstream - one of those options was much more disturbing than the other.
I won’t describe in any vivid detail how Daniel and I managed to get all of that black ooze out of my skin, but let’s just say we both decided to skip lunch. I was covered in bandages, sealing up all of the open wounds as we tried to have a somewhat normal day. The station was acting up, as it were.
At noon, the snow started to go back up into the sky. For about fifteen minutes, all of the flakes paused in the air, hovered for a moment, and then began to rise. We watched from the window, staring at the spectacle as if watching a magic trick.
At one o’clock, another quake hit. The radio tower next to us started to shake and lean a little more than before, the blinking light at the top of its peak flickering slightly. We decided to report a wind advisory for the town, letting the remaining villagers know to prepare their homes for a storm.
At two o’clock, we got a call from someone in town. It was a man, talking about a strange dog that had been walking back and forth at the treeline just outside of his farmhouse. “It’s got backwards feet and a tongue that reaches the ground. Somethin’ about its face doesn’t sit right with me, no ma’am. I think it’s sick…So if someone’s out here missin’ an ugly dog, it’s on Berkley Street.”
At two-thirty, the man called back with a shaken voice, saying: “Nevermind. You don’t want this dog.” He hung up immediately after. We never figured out what he meant.
At three o’clock, we all made the mistake of leaving the room at the same time to shoo away a normal-sized buck with abnormal-sized antlers who was trying to attack one of our security cameras. When we got back up to the broadcast tower, the desk and chairs were stuck to the ceiling upside-down. It took way too long to delicately move everything back to the floor and put it all back together again without damaging the equipment.
And at four o’clock, the sun was already starting to set. It was time to get the generator out and prepare for that winter storm we had been thinking about all day.
The snow was coming down so hard now that it was difficult to see in front of our own faces. We marched out to the shed in a single-file line, preparing for a room full of dead insects and empty nests. At first glance, that was exactly what we got. We pulled open the door, kicking aside the remains of a wasp’s nest that had been partially shredded, no doubt by the hundreds of dead insects now clustered beneath it. Daniel stood at the back of the group - he didn’t do bugs. Fair enough, honestly, because these little freaks were not exactly ordinary.
I picked one up, holding it by the wings and squinting at its curled-up body. It was huge, first of all. It was about the size of my thumb. The worst part of it all, though? This stupid little sucker had teeth. It had two big black eyes and a crooked set of antennae, but below that was a mouth with tiny, razor-sharp teeth on display in a permanent grimace of death.
“Wow! I hate it.” I said, tossing the wasp over my shoulder into the snow. Apparently it got a little too close to Daniel, who shrieked and jumped out of the way. “Let’s get the generator out of here and then burn this place to the ground. I’ll buy us a new shed.”
It was easier said than done. The nests had encased the generator over time, curling around it like a big cocoon. I kicked at it a few times, shaking it loose, getting my heel stuck inside it more than once. The fact that all the wasps were dead didn’t decrease the primal panic that I felt every time my foot would sink into the mess of plant fiber and various gooey secretions. Were they…supposed to be filled with goo?
“Danny, get in here.” I called out the door. “We need help pushing this thing.”
I heard a shuffle behind us, back in the corner of the room. Something was moving around in the darkness, digging through the junk and toppling over a couple of old cardboard boxes.
“I’m good, actually.” Dan finally responded, peeking from around the door. “I’ll just pull it once you—”
“Shh!” Finn hushed him. Now we were both staring at that corner, waiting for something to show itself. It was quiet, the sounds of movement silenced and nothing visible to the naked eye. I crept forward just a step or two, squinting in the darkness to try getting a better look.
Something hissed, angry and agitated. I gave a snort of laughter. “Probably a racoon. Sounds like he’s pissed off, poor widdle baby–”
We all heard it. A loud and sinister buzzing came from the corner, followed by the scuttle of many legs against the floor. It was so fast that I barely saw a glimpse of the thing before it flew out of the shadows and straight towards me.
A wasp the size of a fat house cat came flying out from the shadows, wrapping all of its terrible, sticky legs around my head and trying to sting at my face. I put my arms up, smacking it away as best I could. The sound it made was impossibly bad to the ears, like a buzzing mixed with the shriek of an angry possum. I screamed and flailed my arms, spinning around in a circle to try escaping it. It was biting me, digging little needle teeth into my arms and my hands, scratching at the top of my head and getting its legs stuck in my hair.
Finn was quick to spring into action. He grabbed it by its delicate wings and tossed it to the ground, lifting his boot up and stomping down with one sudden step that burst the thing’s insides into a flood of disgusting, gooey liquid. It got everywhere - all over my pants, his boots, the floor, the generator. I was still clutching at the top of my head, hoping none of its little children were floating around in my hair somewhere.
“What did I tell you?!” Daniel called out, still standing outside in the snow like a chicken-shit. I hope he freezes. “All bugs belong in hell!”
“You’ll be joinin’ ‘em if you don’t get your ass in here and help us move this generator.” Finn told him with an intimidating glare before he turned to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, pulling a trace of black goo out of my hair. Gross. “I’m just hoping that thing didn’t lay eggs inside my skull.”
The ground was wrapped in a blanket of heavy snow. The layer of ice beneath it was slippery against our feet. We pushed the generator along, trying to get it as close to the broadcast tower as possible, all while racing the night sky. The wind was violent now, burning against our faces as a spinning vortex of snow blinded us from the view ahead. We got the machine underneath the stairs, enough to protect it from the worst of winter’s fury.
From down below, we could hear the creak of the wooden stilts and the metal steps. The radio tower, reaching high up into the dark and cloudy sky, was shivering like an old and brittle tree.
When we got to the top, the draft was worse. It was colder. That crack in the window had grown just a little bit more.
“I’ll stay the night, keep an eye on things.” I said, slipping off my coat.
Daniel was shaking the snow out of his curls like a wet dog. When he straightened back up, he looked out the window into the dusk sky with a frown of distrust. “I think we should both stay. Just in case.”
“Let’s make it three.” Finn added. So, that’s how it was gonna be - three knuckleheads snowed in at a cursed radio station, waiting for the end. If this storm took us all out, it seemed like the way we’d all go, right?
At nine o’clock, the snow was so heavy we couldn’t see the forest anymore. At ten, the wind picked up and the power began to flicker. By eleven, the generator was running and I was sending out the final broadcast of the night: “This is Evelyn from 104.6FM Pinehaven Radio. A winter storm warning is in effect. A severe winter storm warning is in effect. Please do not try to travel the mountain path and do not leave your homes. Everything is under control.”
By midnight, Daniel had fallen asleep. I don’t know how he did it. The way this place rocked and swayed in the wind, it was like being on a ship at sea. I sat at the window, a blanket on my lap to chase away the chill of the drafty glass, just watching the snow fall.
“Mind if I sit?” I heard Finn’s voice from behind me. Before I could answer, he was already plopping down next to me, crossing his legs and joining me on my tireless watch. “View sucks, don’t it?” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, taking a puff or two.
“Yeah, it’s shitty.” I agreed. I was tired and sore, my head pounding and my stomach queasy from the wind and the rocking of the tower. “I wish I could see what’s going on out there.”
Finn shrugged. “Probably nothing good,” he said. “I think you’re better off not thinking about it, gingerbread.”
I snickered, rolling my eye. “You’re getting as bad as Daniel with the stupid pet names.”
“Don’t think I could ever be that bad.” He said, turning his head to glance at the man behind us, sleeping soundly on the hard floor. Dan was lying there like a starfish on his stomach, face shoved into his makeshift pillow he had fashioned from a bundled-up empty backpack. “You know, while you were sick, he wouldn’t stop fussing about you. It was kind of obnoxious. …He really loves you, in case you didn’t know. And he was real worried, not so much about the whole…black goo coming out of all your orifices, but the alcohol part.”
“It wasn’t all of my orifices.” I corrected him, earning a shitty grin in response.
“Not the point.” Finn said. “The point is, he said you got pretty emotional out there in the woods, talking about what you saw a long time ago. What you still see. Now that we have a moment, I wondered if you wanted to talk about it.”
I fidgeted uncomfortably on the spot, sticking my cold hands into my sleeves. Finn was kind of like a cool uncle: usually easy to talk to, but I always felt like I was about to get in trouble. “I dunno, man.” I said with a whine. “I don’t think I want to bring it up, it’s just–”
Finn interrupted me with a heavy sigh. “Lyn. Listen. I’m not going to make you talk, but can I say something?”
“You’re gonna say it anyways.”
“Sure, I am.” He continued. “It’s been years, right? And all this time, you’ve refused to have a real conversation about what you saw - the thing that started all of this. Now, you know as well as I do that it hasn’t helped one goddamn bit. So maybe, it’s time to try a new approach. Get it off your chest so you can stop carrying it everywhere.”
I sat there and stared at him for the longest time. I absolutely could not stand that look on his face, the one he wore so often that said, ‘I’m right and you know it’. I felt the question hanging in the air, waiting for him to finally ask.
“Who did you see at the graduation party?”
‘Who’, he asked. Not ‘what’, but ‘who’. That was my first indication of the possibility that he already knew the answer. I got the distinct feeling that this question was not from a place of curiosity, but an attempt to do the impossible: to get me to admit to something I had been avoiding for a long, long time.
I felt my chest ache, my stomach twisting into knots as I thought about it again. That face…I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life. I still see him in dreams, I still see him when I close my eye and think about the autumn treeline. It comes back whenever I smell burning wood or the scent of gasoline.
“It was my dad.” I murmured quietly, staring at the frosted glass in front of us, brows scrunched together in the center. “He died in the woods, before I knew something was wrong with it. Closed-casket funeral, no answer as to what really happened…Only that they were performing a controlled burn and something went very, very wrong. The casket was empty, I think.”
I thought of the Hydra again, of the burn pile in the forest with all those bodies hanging around it. In my memory, I knew they were wearing green uniforms…But my mind wanted to imagine yellow and orange.
“He was trying to talk to me. He was in pain, a-and I didn’t know what to do about it. The look on his face was so pathetic and so desperate, it was like he was begging me for help and there was nothing I could offer him.” I felt my eye stinging, threatening to shed a tear but it just wouldn’t come. “I think the worst part is that he seemed to recognize me. I…I don’t think it would have hurt so much if he wasn’t still himself, you know? It was like he…he was trying to say goodbye. And all I did was run away.”
Finn didn’t say anything for a long time. He didn’t try to comfort me, he didn’t move. He just let me say what I needed to say, and I guess I can appreciate that. With a stressed sigh, I reached over, grabbing the cigarette out of his hand and taking a puff from it. It was gross and slightly wet at the end, and it tickled the back of my throat in a way I didn’t like…so I gave it back. Finally, after a long moment of solemn quiet between the two of us, Finn spoke up again.
“I never told you about my folks.” He said.
I chuckled, sniffling a little. “You never tell us shit, to be fair.”
Even he had to laugh. “You’re not wrong,” he said. “…But your story reminds me of my mom a little bit. She passed away ten years ago - not from the forest, mind you. She just got sick. I never got to say goodbye to her, either.” He paused, staring out into the swirling snow, his eyes off in some distant thought. “I was at work, too busy to answer the phone. She left me a voicemail telling me that it was almost time for her to go. But I…I didn’t answer. I promised I’d never ignore a call for help, but I left her hanging on the line until she wasn’t here anymore.”
Finn wasn’t a cryer. Even now, he didn’t shed a single tear, but that far-off look in his eyes and the tired frown on his face said it all. As strong as he was, I think his heart was exhausted. I was starting to understand now why he was still here, why he didn’t give up on us, why he was always fixing other peoples’ mistakes. I don’t think he’s capable of not helping.
“Shit, man. I’m sorry.” I tried to offer some sympathy. I wasn’t very good at being encouraging or comforting, but he knew that.
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Finn said with a shake of his head. One big hand came down and clapped onto my knee, giving it a pat. “Just…do me a favor. Call your mom once in a while, okay?”
You know, I got the feeling my mom didn’t want to hear from me. She wasn’t a big fan after what I did, how I acted, where I ended up…She didn’t offer her home when I lost mine, she didn’t visit me in rehab. But looking out the window at the snow, imagining what might happen if this place wasn’t even standing here tomorrow? Maybe that was a loose end worth tying up.
“If we survive the night, I’ll think about it.” I said. It seemed to be good enough for Finn. He just smiled at me, lapsing back into silence, then turned and looked out the window again. The wind was moving like a cyclone now, pushing us in all directions slowly one way and then another. I got up onto my feet, stretching my aching back. But before I walked away, I looked down at Finn one more time. “Hey, uh…thanks, bud. Thanks for telling me all that.”
He nodded his head, taking another deep inhale from the end of his cigarette. “Give me three more years and I might tell you one more fact about myself.”
I grinned at him and walked over to one of the storage cabinets, pulling out one of our emergency blankets - the kind paramedics keep on hand. I knelt down next to Daniel and spread it over him, tucking in his arms while he continued to sleep like a fuckin’ rock. Even sprawled out on the floor, he looked peaceful. It was kinda sweet.
The peace was interrupted by a scream of feedback from one of the abandoned headsets on the desk. I winced as I got up, rushing over to make sure the broadcast was still playing. It was, only the audio on the screen wasn’t a song from the lineup anymore. It was something different - a file simply labeled ‘F.M. 1”.
I knew it was stupid to put the headphones over my ears, but I still did it. At first, all I heard was white noise and a whistle of wind.
Then, a voice began to come through. Gruff, with that familiar Virginia accent.
“Don’t you worry now, my little gingersnap.” He said, his voice taking on a malicious rasp. “Papa’s on his way home…”
The floor beneath us rumbled. Daniel was shocked awake from his sleep, disoriented as if jolted from a bad dream. Through the swirling confusion of snow that covered our view, all we could see was the faint glow of that purple light coming from deep in the forest, pulsating bright enough to break through the frost.
I heard a scratch. It was the crack in the window glass, spreading out further like a web that covered the entirety of the lookout. We all watched with horror and anticipation as the first shards began to fall out onto the floor, cold air rushing in.
This is Evelyn McKinnon at 104.6 F.M. And I just realized something. In this blinding blizzard, I’m not sure we’ll know when the fog gets here. I’m not sure it isn’t here already.