I’m here to tell you about our town’s radio station.

Now our little civic sprawl on the edge of nowhere actually has three different radio stations. There’s the normal one that plays mostly 90s alt-rock and grunge, which is stationed right next to the town hall in a nice little brick building that is partially run by college students from the nearby city that want to major in broadcasting. There’s also the talk show by the grocery store that will often predict when celebrities and people of status are going to die about three hours before they actually do.

Then there’s 106.6 WKYM.

This radio station is far out of the way, nearly fifteen minutes away from the town center. If you were to drive up Route 61 towards my entrance to the state park where that goddamn phone booth used to lie, you’d pass that and take the next left up a winding dirt road that would eventually lead you to the top of Cressy Hill, where this radio station lies.

This place is decked out. I’ve been up there a few times, as Toby is known to help out up there every once in a while. If you’ve ever seen the movie Contact, think the SETI lab but modernized. That’s what this radio station looks like.

Of course, like everything else in this goddamn town, this radio station has had a history of strange events. In the late summer of 2006, the radio station began broadcasting strange strings of numbers over the course of about eighty minutes. Turns out it was the social security numbers of everyone who lived in a town about forty minutes south of us. 

However, this was easily the most terrifying thing to ever come out of 106.6 WKYM.

It was August of 2015. I got my driver’s license a lot later than most of my friends did. In fact, I was almost seventeen already by the time I was able to successfully pass the state driving test. I was going on one of my first drives ever completely solo (which I quickly discovered was amazingly cathartic) and listening to the radio. Toby’s older brother, Damien, was playing some classics like “Enter Sandman” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.”

It was almost sunset, and the sky was just beginning to show a hint of color change. I was coming around a bend on Route 61 that would take you over to the road that Tommy lived on. I figured we could go to the movies in the nearby city and go sneak into either Harbinger Down or The Gift. Both of us were die-hard horror movie fanatics, so we were very much looking forward to these movies.

Suddenly, the radio went dead silent.

Now, this scared the shit out of me. I’ve heard a lot of shit over that radio, everything from people reciting mantras to summon a three-headed bear ghost that would murder pedophiles to detailed retellings of famous murders (the Sharon Tate murder was unnecessarily graphic). Hell, need I remind you that the entirety of the NBC broadcast of the events of 9/11 was played for the radio listeners.

But the radio had never once gone dead silent. NEVER.

Next Chapter: 06