My windshield wipers tried and failed to give me a clear line of sight as my tires plowed through the standing water on the road. I considered myself lucky that the dash only had a few lights on. The interior of my ‘99 Accord had a habit of lighting up like a Christmas tree whenever the road gave way under my tires. I was half surprised to see the interstate empty on a Saturday, but chalked it up to the storm keeping people home. After several minutes of driving in near silence, the radio went from the usual static to a talk radio show. At least I was fairly certain it was talk radio as the storm drowned out the host’s exact words in a scrambled mess. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror as I brushed a few errant dusty-blonde strands from my forehead. My laptop bag sat idly in the passenger seat next to me. I kept finding myself looking at it instead of attempting to look through the wall of slush on my windshield.
Because I was late registering for classes, I had two options for an English course. Dissecting Russian Literature or Literature of Horror. Neither sounded like an amazing option. But, I decided that despite my hatred of all things Horror; I would tough it out for a semester and take my course credit. For our final assignment, we were tasked with interviewing someone on The Closest Your Life Has Come To A Horror Story–Professor Sloan’s words, not mine–and turning their story into a narrative. Most people had chosen their roommates or friends for this assignment. I didn’t have that luxury. Annie had practically moved out of our house before the year started back. Leaving me to pay the rent myself while I looked for someone to take her still-decorated room. Looking back, I could have used someone else. I should have used someone else. But I didn’t. Instead, my car was aimed down I-75 back to the small corner of Tennessee where I had grown up. The small corner I promised myself to leave behind and never come back to.
However, when dreams fade, so do those oaths that went from set in stone to scribbled on scratch paper. In the back seat–as opposed to the water-logged trunk–sat an ancient and equally decrepit hardback clamshell suitcase I had found at Goodwill for a whopping four dollars. Inside I had packed a week of clothes, my best guess for how long I would be gone. I didn’t plan on spending my entire week at home, instead, I would take a few days to get the story I needed before taking the long way back to campus. Stretching a nine-hour drive into a four or five-day one.
I pulled onto the final dirt road at around three in the afternoon. Judging by the sky, it was near dark. The rain had let up enough on the last half hour of the drive to allow me to listen to the full articulation of the man on the radio.
“I am your host Chris Boyd, and you are listening to Ready Set Rock on 98.9.” He said in the most over-the-top voice he could muster, “This next one goes out to all of those who would rather spend this rainy day in Boston.” In less than a moment, Chris was gone, his voice replaced with the opening notes to More Than A Feeling.
Eventually, the slight haze broke through enough for me to see my father’s home. My home. The same small, one-story farmhouse that the McMurtry family had lived in since before the constitution was amended. I nosed the front of my car down the mile-long driveway and killed the headlights before pulling to a dead stop. Before stepping out, I pulled my hoodie over my head and cinched the drawstring. The front of the house was adorned with a wrap-around wooden porch stained a dark chestnut brown.
Before I raised my fist to knock, I heard the deadbolt unlatch before the ever-familiar sound of the hinges creeping open, revealing Josiah McMurtry on the drier side of the threshold.
“Hey Cass!” he reached out to hug me and I didn’t fight it. His warm welcome made me feel bad for not calling more often. It wasn’t his fault I left, he had done everything in his power to try and make things right, make things better.
“You’re soaked, come in and I’ll grab you a towel.” He said before disappearing behind the door frame. I stepped inside and was hit with the distinct smell of nostalgia. The one that hit me with a thousand different memories all somehow intangibly linked together by this one smell. One I couldn’t describe on its own. I stood looking around the entryway in silence. Staring at the framed family photos dotted across the eggshell white walls. All of them depicted a bright and happy family. It felt ironic to me how fake they seemed. There were only two people left who could ever tell you just how fake those smiles behind the glass were. How much arguing had led up to the click of the shudder? How many nights did I lay awake trying to ignore the shouting matches through the same paper-thin white walls these pictures now clung to?
“Here,” my father said, carrying a faded purple beach towel, “it’s the first one I grabbed.” I took it with a quiet thanks before unfolding it. Staring back at me was the unmistakable image of a cartoon Barbie standing in front of whatever the latest version of the Dreamhouse had been when it was first printed. I draped it over my head and began to scrub out as much water as possible while blindly charting the hallway as if I had just walked it yesterday and not three years ago.
When I regained my vision, I was greeted with the sight of the family room. The same worn leather sofa that had sat against the wall, under the painting of the mountainscape, since before I was born. Pulled out from its normal position in the corner beside the couch, my father sat in his equally worn black leather recliner. He motioned for me to sit with the same grin on his face that hadn’t faded since the front door.
“This is for some project for school, right?” he said as I placed the towel onto the cushion next to me. Over the next few hours, I told him the premise of the assignment in exchange for a hot meal and the latest in his life. Once the rain died down, I grabbed my suitcase as well as my laptop from the now-musty Accord and lugged it up to my bedroom. Still painted the same disgusting yellow that my mother had painted when I was still too young to remember the ocean blue that stained the drywall. My shelves were still adorned with various childhood photos in handmade wooden frames. Also on the shelves were various medals and trophies ranging from soccer to dance competitions. I almost laughed to myself when I realized how few of them were first-place awards.
I sat the laptop on the particle board desk that was jutted against the wall just below the window that let the morning sun in to wake me up for school. It occurred to me that only a handful of years ago, the now barren desktop had been cluttered with projects and the family word processor I used to write my papers and stories on. The sight of it empty formed a small pit in my stomach. A pit that was small but screamed at me that I wasn’t taking in enough of every day. That time was slipping through the gaps between my fingers and I was too dumb to realize how much I had already lost despite the fact I was still only a junior in college. I shoved the thought aside and sat down at the desk and opened my laptop. I scrolled and clicked on a new project in Microsoft Word. When the window popped up, my mind seemed to walk away while staring at the blinking cursor. For one of the first times in my life, I could not come up with anything to write. Words refused to enter my conscious thought, and my fingers stayed frozen on the keys. I typed as many iterations of the same line over and over again. Hoping against hope that one of them would feel right. After the eighth or ninth version of:
“Josiah McMurtry dutifully served as an officer to the Cramer County police force.”
I stood up from the desk and turned around. I had read something once that said if you changed your physical point of view, you could beat writer’s block. I stood staring at my closet door only for no words to surface. I did my best to concentrate on the paint that was as old as myself. I tried to focus on the way the handle used to feel in my palms when I would get ready every morning for school. The way I refused to open it the day of the funeral. How heavy it had seemed that morning even though it was still just a door. I did the best I could to block out those thoughts and go back to focusing on my project but nothing. Words still failed me.
Ruling out staring at the same blank page for another hour, I pulled out my phone and double-tapped the screen. Instead of the familiar warm glow of my background, the screen stays black. I cursed when I realized the battery was dead before shoving it back into my pocket. After checking both my suitcase and laptop bag, I realized that I left my charger still plugged into the port next to my bed. I made a mental note to myself to buy one in the morning before turning back to the laptop on the desk. The screen still displayed the blank page punctuated with the blinking cursor. I rolled the idea of trying to brute-force my way through the opening, just picking a first line and going from there. Eventually I came to the decision that I would sooner or later trash the pages and closed the screen.
I walked to the bathroom just down the hall, grabbed a towel, and started the shower. When I stepped in, I let the water fall across my face and hair. Eyes closed and not moving. Enjoying a small amount of peace. Life hadn’t been chaotic, at least not recently. But something told me to enjoy this. Like something gently nudging against an unlocked door and I listened. I shut my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I may not have known it then, but that was the last peaceful moment I would have for a long time.
After my shower I shut the water off and stepped out, grabbing a towel to dry myself for the second time that night. When I walked back to my room, I dropped the towel on the floor and began to dig inside the still open suitcase on the bed. In less than a moment my head snapped up, my attention pulling my head along with an invisible string. My eyes met the closet door again. Only now, it was open. The dusty and inky blackness spilling out onto my bedroom floor. I froze, still hunched over with my hands encased in several different colors and textures of fabric.
I tried to rationalize with myself for what felt like hours when in reality it couldn’t have been more than a minute. I cautiously stepped closer to the closet, taking hold of the edge of the door when it was in reach. Now that I was closer, I could see the pull cord dangling from the ceiling. I grabbed it and with one swift motion the darkness was gone, replaced with a blinding light emanating from the same naked light bulb I hadn’t changed since middle school.
Let there be light.
I was almost shocked when I saw absolutely nothing. I almost wanted there to be something lurking within the shadows. Instead, I was met with a face full of clothes that I hadn’t seen since I left and boxes of things I had grown out of over the years sitting on the closet floor. From toys to clothes to phones, all of it was stored in sixteen-by-twelve moving boxes. Looking down at the corrugated cardboard flaps, I was hit by, and subsequently swept away with a wave of nostalgia. I knelt down and opened the closest box to me.
Again, I almost wanted something to jump out at me. I almost wanted something to prove my fears were justified, something to tell me that I’m not crazy and that I hadn’t left the door open and just forgotten. But I found none of that. Instead, sitting on top of a mountain of miscellaneous items from fabric to childhood toys, sat a small handheld gray radio. Almost like clockwork, more memories came flooding in. I believe that everyone is hit with an almost deja vu level of nostalgia every once in a while. Almost like the morning alarm you forget you set the night before, rudely ripping you from sleep. But since I had first set foot inside the front door, it had happened at least three times now. The radio I now tossed between my fingers was the same one my mother had gifted me when I asked for an iPod. The same radio I took on every family trip and listened to every St. Louis game I could with my dad. Mike Claiborne’s voice is still etched into my memory. It only occurred to me at that moment, that so many memories and dreams can be tangentially linked to one small object. I stood to my feet, radio in hand. I flipped it over and popped off the battery cover to reveal the empty chamber. Two double-A slots. I grabbed the electric toothbrush from my bag and took out the two matching batteries before placing them into the slots and sliding the cover back of the radio. I took a deep breath, extended the antenna, and flipped the power switch.
When the radio crackled to life, it gave me the same emotion as the first time I had turned it on. All of it still feels like yesterday. Even now. I turned the dial until I hit 98.9. Chris Boyd was in the middle of a segment called how many questions. A Who Wants To Be A Millionaire style game where Chris asks questions of varying difficulty to “one lucky caller” as he dubbed them. They could choose the next song for every one they got right.
“Alright, Julie, to break the station record of nine consecutive questions; What was the name of the bassist on the Foo Fighters first album? You have ten seconds starting now.” Chris said. It had been so long since I had heard his voice, it was almost calming. You never know how much you miss someone until some piece of them slithers back into your life.
“Oh! I know this one!” Julie shouted, “It was the Nirvana guy!”
“Need you to be a little more specific on that,” you could hear the smile forming on his face, “Five seconds, Julie.”
“Novoselic!” she proudly shouted into the phone. Only to call it back less than a second later with a wait no!
“I’m sorry Julie but that is not correct. The answer we were looking for was Dave Grohl.”
“Dammit I knew it when I said it.”
“That’s okay though, Julie. Because you just tied the station record for nine questions! I will patch you through to my producer so you can make your selections.” With a thanks and the click of a button just in range for the microphone to pick up, Julie was gone. I placed the radio on the nightstand and laid on the bed with my eyes shut. I let the music become background noise as my thoughts began to take over the active portion of my brain. Questions I either couldn’t answer or didn’t want to answer. Questions I had been routinely pushing out of my head since the day we buried my mother’s empty casket. I opened my eyes and shut the radio off.
Easier to get to sleep, I rationalized whilst standing up to turn off the lights. I shut the closet door and climbed back into bed. In less than 2 minutes, a blanket of darkness grabbed me and pulled me under into unconsciousness. I saw flashes of memories, some I had no recollection of. Almost as if they had been pushed away so I couldn’t see them. But I wasn’t in them. First it was a faceless woman, suspended in the air by a rope with one end tied around her wrists and the other wrapped around the branch of a large oak tree deep in the forest. I didn’t recognize any of this. I was a passive observer in my own dreams. The next flash was similar. The same faceless woman tied down to a large rock, wrists and ankles bound together with seven formless figures standing over her. The flashes continued in this pattern until I was ripped from these reveries by the sound of my radio going off in the darkness.
I bolted upright in my bed. The lyrics of the song on full blast almost physically cut through the darkness. I groped my hand across the sheets for my phone, when I found it I frantically tapped on the screen for some sort of light to protect me but it was still dead. With this reminder, I was able to focus on what the radio was playing and who was singing. Roy Orbison was in the middle of telling me about a girl he couldn’t get out of his head.
I close my eyes, and then I drift away, He sang. His words echoing across the still room. I could see a silver fragment of the moon poking through the linen curtains. It gave me enough light to not break my shins as I inched toward the open closet that the sound was emanating from.
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you, Orbison continued.
My fingers curled around the crown molding of the door frame like they were solely responsible for me not flying away. I reluctantly stretched my free hand into the darkness. Letting my blind fingers wrap around the painted plastic case of my radio, feeling the buzzing in my fingertips as my grip tightened around the grill of the speaker. I pulled it back to my chest as fast as I could out of an innate and child-like fear that something was waiting to reach out and grab me. I fumbled the radio in my hands until I finally found the power switch. I clicked it into the off position and my room fell silent again. The only noise that filled my ears was the erratic sound of myself hyperventilating. Still standing in front of the open closet, the radio still being held by my paper-white knuckles, I began to retrace everything I could remember before falling asleep.
I went through the box
I pulled out the radio
I shut the door and listened to “How Many Questions”
I shut the radio off and went to sleep.
None of it made any rational sense and I began to think that something may have actually been in the closet waiting for me. I began to feel a pit forming in my stomach as a wave of nausea passed over me. I needed to get out of this house. At least for a few hours and let my brain rack for some sort of rational explanation. I backed away slowly and cautiously closed the closet door. Dropping the radio on the bed, I pulled on the same jeans and hoodie I had been wearing, I grabbed my keys and was down the stairs and out of the front door in less than a heartbeat. The rain had subsided to a slight drizzle by now. It wasn’t until the gaudy green LED’s of my car’s dashboard sputtered to life in tandem with the engine did I know what time it was.
12:24 AM
By my math I had gotten two or so hours of sleep. Maybe more, maybe less. I put the car in reverse and carefully backed out of the driveway, watching the shadows that lay just beyond the reach of the car lights for movement. I reached the end of the driveway and spun the front tires out onto the road before shifting back into drive. My eyes darted back and forth from the radio to the road as I fiddled with the dial. I always enjoyed driving in silence from time to time, but now just the thought of it seemed physically painful.
“And that is the end of my broadcast night, Kemp Creek.” Chris was saying, the static finally having given way to actual sound, “Coming up next is the early morning host, Peyton Bryant. I will see you all tomorrow night.” Chris’s voice clicked away as a small, copyright free, filler track took his place. I could imagine him standing up from his chair and handing over the headphones to the next host with some remarks before leaving the booth. It was a little after one when I pulled into the lot of the only building I could find with the lights still on. The illuminated pylon sign in the parking lot proudly proclaimed that the diner was open twenty-four hours a day.
The worn bell at the top of the doorframe chimed as I stepped inside. None of the three workers inside acknowledged my presence as I took a seat at the counter. Immediately I was handed a menu without a word from the sole waitress in the restaurant before she walked away to finish what she had been doing. I ran my fingers across the glossy laminated cover before catching a glimpse of my reflection from the incandescent light. I looked like I had seen a ghost. My hair unkempt with several clumps jutting out from my head, the look almost reminding me of puppets without strings. I stood up from the counter and made my way to the back of the restaurant. As I walked underneath the bright red RESTROOM sign, I heard the bell chime at the front door.
The bathroom was dark when I first opened the door, I felt my heart leap up in my chest. I had gotten rid of my nightlight when I was a child but seeing the dark bathroom made me wish I still had it with me. My fingers found the switch on the wall and popped it upwards. The grimey bulb above flickered on and after a second or two, the room was filled with a formerly white light. The dirt and germs that have caked onto the exposed bulb over the years has given everything a dirty yellow tint. I let the door slam shut behind me and stepped up to the mirror. Taking a few deep breaths to steady myself, I grabbed the handle for the cold water and pulled it towards my stomach. The sink sputtered as air was forced out of the line. I let the water pool in my cupped hands before shutting my eyes and pressing my hands to my face. My eyes stayed glued shut as my lungs filled with air. I slowly let the breath out through pursed lips.
Whilst making eye contact with the mirror, I wet my fingertips and ran them through my hair to regain some semblance of physical composure. After another quick breath, I left the room, hesitating a moment to debate turning the light off again before I left. In either a moment of anxiety or some other emotion I cannot name, I let the door close on the still bright room. When I turned the corner and the counter came back into view, I was partially surprised to see a man sitting only a few seats down from where I had been, idly sipping coffee from a ceramic mug while scrolling on his phone. It was almost surprising to see someone who wasn’t being forced to work the night-shift here, but then again, I was there too. I took back my perch atop the spinning stool decorated to keep up with the faux-fifties aesthetic that continued to fade with each passing day. Every storm chipping away at the painted exterior that no one will get around to repairing. The ripped upholstery of the booths that look more like a free couch on craigslist than something people pay to sit on. When the waitress circled back around, I flagged her down and ordered a coffee of my own. Cream, two sugars, same as always. After the waitress walked away, I could feel the man next to me glancing in my direction, trying to figure out if he should say something or go back to scrolling on his phone.
“Cassie?” he said, his voice accented with recent familiarity. I couldn’t place him until I looked over. I finally connected the dots when I saw his full face rather than the obscured version in my peripherals. Chris Boyd stared back at me, but not the one I had remembered. He looked like he had aged ten years over the course of three. His face had thinned out, hair had gotten fuller and it looks like he is finally able to grow the beard he always wanted.
“When did you get back?” he asked, cutting through both the silence and useless small talk he knew was coming if he didn’t.
“Today. Or yesterday, I guess.” What do you say to someone with whom you’ve imagined this exact scenario at least a hundred times? The waitress brought back my coffee and asked if I was going to order anything. Out of college instinct, I patted for my wallet to see how much I could splurge. Nothing. All of my pockets were empty. Shit. I told her that I didn’t know yet and she was off again to wipe down the same tables as before. I didn’t know if this was to look busy or if the vinyl-topped tables really needed that much attention.
We went back and forth trading stories filled with half truths to make us look better than we actually did. I filled him in on my current roommate and rent problems and he told me about life at the radio station and how he came into it. After dropping out after his second semester at Western Kentucky, he had found himself living on his parents couch not doing much.
“I tried to get Jason and Sam back together to try and get an actual record out. But by now they couldn’t give less of a shit.” he said, forcing a chuckle through a possibly equally forced smile. “Once they shot me down, I figured I could get rid of my guitar and CDs. Make a little extra cash to live on until I could find a cheap place to stay for the time being, you know?”
That was it.
My mind began to flutter in and out. Sparks of colorful memories in which I didn’t know what was happening. It was almost a mirror of my dream, only now I was watching the current moment through a haze. Completely detached. My breathing quickened as the flashes became less and less frequent. In the interim, my body was numbed and floating in a sea of ink. Both present and not. Somewhere between living and dead.
In less than a heartbeat, the ink was gone. Replaced by pure white as if I were stuck in a snowstorm. I tried to clench my eyes shut but it did nothing. In fact it may have intensified it as ringing started in my ears. Small at first. Barely recognizable as a whisper until it grew in volume exponentially by the second. Eventually I did my best to put my hands over my ears even though I couldn’t feel it. Eventually it all crescendoed into one large symphony of pain and noise until it all snapped back to that inky blackness. Only now I could feel my hands pressed firmly against my ears as my eyes clenched tight enough to cause my face to ache. But I could still hear noise, not ringing. scraping. Tires. Tires scraping and rolling atop pavement as an engine hummed along with them. I snapped my eyes open and found myself behind the wheel of my Accord. Unable to remember ever stepping foot off of my stool at the counter.
My chest tightened as I began to lose control of my breathing again. I swerved the car onto the shoulder of the desolate road and began to do the breathing exercises taught to me by Dr. Fleming.
In and out, one…two…three.
When I regained control of myself and was able to slowly open my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the sun rising just beyond the horizon. My eyes snapped to the LED clock in the dash, I almost lost control of myself again and let the panic re-consume me as I read the time.
6:02 AM