by Adam Golaski
He knew that what was in the sub-basement belonged to KADE, but decided to carry as much of his find out to his truck anyhow, figuring that the owner had no idea any of it existed, and that he could return it during the chaos of the move. The job took two hours, and was a lot of hard lifting. The transcription disks and the machine used to make them, were the crown jewel of his find, he knew it, but it cost him a lot of lower back pain and had it fallen on top of him, as he pushed it out of the sub-basement, it could’ve crushed bones. Again he pictured himself on the floor, unable to move, but this time, so deep in the basement, he might never be found.
At 4, the morning DJ came in, looking exhausted, strung out, thermos of coffee opened and steaming. An hour later, the receptionist came. By then, Craig was in his bedroom, everything hauled in from his truck and set down on the floor around his bed. He looked at the equipment he’d brought home and thought, “What possessed me to do that?” He laughed at himself: he thought of himself as daring when it came to ideas, but not as a man of action. Briefly, souring his amusement with himself, a panic came over him, a clammy mist which filled his head. Just for an instant. He slept soundly.
Craig worked at the bar that same night. After his show and before his shift he usually didn’t do too much other than sleep and have a late lunch. On that Monday, when he woke, he had a strong desire to set up the equipment he’d found and go through the boxes of records but decided, after some deliberation, that he’d rather wait until he had a solid block of time. He ate at his kitchen counter and walked to the bar a little early.
Johnson, a regular, was the only patron.
“Craig,” he said, when Craig emerged from the kitchen, tying a knot in the back of the apron he wore around his waist.
“Johnson.” Craig thought Johnson was okay. Johnson drove a delivery truck, usually at night, and liked to make fun of Craig’s show, which Johnson insisted he never listened to.
“I made it through ten minutes of your program last night.”
“Yeah?”
“But only because I thought it was the Emergency Broadcast, and the government would come on with important information.” Johnson laughed at his own joke. Craig forced a smile.
“How are you doing, Johnson?”
“I’m fine, fine. If I wasn’t married I’d be perfect.” Johnson laughed again. Wife jokes were also part of his routine with Craig. “You look dreadful, though. Always do on Mondays.”
“The show kind of messes with my schedule.”
“I bet. When’re you going to give that up? You don’t get paid, do you?”
“I like doing the show. I like radio.” Craig started drying the wet glasses the dishwasher had brought out. He had this same conversation week after week. “But, it looks as if I won’t be doing it much longer. Station’s moving and they won’t be taking me with them.”
“That’s a damned shame. But if we tune in at the same time as always, and nothin’s on, it’ll be like hearing your show.”
When Craig returned home from the bar he stripped off his clothes, which stank of cigarette smoke, showered and put on clean clothes. He brewed a pot of coffee, brought the pot into his room and set to sifting through his find, which, when Johnson wasn’t talking, was all he could think about at work. The first box was filled with 16-inch transcription disks, acetate coated glass. By Craig’s reckoning, they were in fine condition—no crystallization of the acetate. The basement room must have been very dry and cool. The next box contained metal disks and a few made on cardboard. He was extremely excited; terrified too that he was now responsible for these fragile recordings. He unlatched a suitcase-size box and was overjoyed to see that it was a transcription machine—possibly the very machine used to make the recordings. There was also a record player, capable of playing the transcription disks—able to switch from 80 to 70 RPMs, and an Ampex tape recorder—the earliest commercially available tape recorder. The third box he opened was filled with tape recordings, the fourth with more, and the fifth with another set of glass transcription disks. “Good Lord,” he thought, “If these machines still work, I’ll be able to listen to all of this.” He bit his fist to control his excitement. He wished there was someone he could tell, someone who wouldn’t spread the word all over Furka, resulting in Craig’s having to return everything to KADE. He uncoiled the wire, plugged the record player into a socket and clicked the power switch to the on position.
He fell asleep, on the floor of his bedroom, listening to a scratchy recording of a local news broadcast made in 1942.
On Friday, after sitting at Manny’s in case a car actually came, Craig went home and put on one of the cardboard transcription disks. In tinny mono, he heard what sounded like some of the ambient music he played on his show. This had him; he wondered if he was about to hear a very old experimental record. Perhaps he had discovered a lost composer. After a few grooves of the disk, though, the music faded, and a man introduced himself.
WEIRD FURKA
TRANSCRIPT NUMBER ONE
Broadcast July, 1947
MUSIC INTRO: Pipes being tapped, individually and faintly at first, then all at once, firmly, louder and faster. Once a cacophony of sound has been created, tapping ceases, and sound fades.
ANNOUNCER: [A deep voice] Greetings, listeners. I wish to welcome you to a new kind of weird radio show. The strange stories you are about to hear are true, and told by the people who lived them. If you scoff at the idea that there is a world outside of our common perception, another world beyond our own, [whispered] the supernatural world [no longer whispered], then prepare to have your assumptions challenged; if you already believe such a world exists, then prepare to have your beliefs confirmed. [In a booming, reverberating voice] Welcome to Weird Furka!
HOST: Thank you for tuning in. Tonight, on our first in what I hope to be a long-lasting series of broadcasts documenting the weird happening in our own Furka, I have a peculiar tale told by a housewife, Mrs. Buzzard, who lives in a well-kept house on Broad Street. In an effort to distance this show from dramatic shows, and because the modern American housewife is busy all day long, I took KADE’s top of the line portable recording device to Mrs. Buzzard’s kitchen to capture her weird story. What you’re listening to is a live recording.
[Sounds from the street] Mrs. Buzzard, is it all right if we close the windows? It’ll be better for the recording.
MRS. BUZZARD: Certainly. It’ll get pretty stuffy in here, though. I’m baking.
HOST: And it smells wonderful. But the noise from outside. [Sound of windows being closed. Sound of an oven door opened and closed] Thank you. You answered a letter I sent out saying that you had a strange story to tell. Is this something that happened to you?
MRS. BUZZARD: [Sounding distant] I wrote it on the card that it happened to my sister.
HOST: I know, but for our listeners. And please speak in the direction of the microphone. So, this weird event happened to your sister?
MRS. BUZZARD: Yes.
HOST: Please tell our listeners what happened, just like you told me on the card you sent. And please speak toward the microphone.
MRS. BUZZARD: Is this better?
HOST: Much.
MRS. BUZZARD: Well, my sister—her name’s Clara—is it okay to use her name, or is this like “Dragnet”?
HOST: It’s okay to use her name.
MRS. BUZZARD: My sister Clara lost her husband, Sam, to a heart attack. A terrible thing. Of course we were all upset but especially Clara and her son. She was very depressed and cried a lot and had a hard time doing anything. I’d come over and our brother, Francis, would come over too. He fixed up her sink and made sure there was enough coal in the basement, the things Sam would normally do. Sometimes Francis would take Clara’s son out to watch a ball game, too.
Now, this may seem a little unusual, but Clara had two phones, one for the upstairs and one downstairs. You see, they had a very big house, so that way, if Clara was cleaning upstairs and a call came through, she didn’t h
ave to run down to the living room.
HOST: Sure.
MRS. BUZZARD: One day the upstairs phone rings. She told me she ran up the stairs without thinking about it and answered it. The person on the other line says that he’s her husband, and wanted to let her know he was okay. Though the man on the other end of the line sounded like her husband, she was furious, of course, and in tears, and hung up.
Soon after Francis came by the house and found her at the kitchen table, crying. When he asked what was the matter she told him that she answered the phone upstairs and a prankster said he was her husband. She asked Francis, “Just how cruel can you get?” Well Francis looked at her in a funny way and reminded her that the upstairs phone didn’t work. You see, a little before Sam died, he’d started on a project in the upstairs hall and had taken out the phone jack.
HOST: Amazing. A call from the dead.
MRS. BUZZARD: Well that isn’t all. The next morning she was in the kitchen washing the dishes and a man walked by the house and she was sure it was her husband. Absolutely certain. She dropped a dish in the sink and chipped it. Before she could go outside to see if he really was her husband—after the call the night before she didn’t know what might be true—her son ran into the kitchen. He looked extremely happy and in a rush—you know how children talk when they’re excited—he told her that he was just outside playing and his dad walked up to him and smiled and told him that he was okay.
And that’s the story.
HOST: Thank you very much Mrs. Buzzard, for sharing with our audience that weird but true ghost story.
[The sound quality changes a bit. The HOST is back in the studio] Thank you very much for tuning in. Tune in next week for another weird but true story.
ANNOUNCER: Weird Furka is a new kind of show, in which listeners hear the bizarre stories of their neighbors. If you’ve had a weird encounter with the supernatural, please contact KADE, Weird Furka [address]. Tune in next week for another story that will shake you free of the everyday.
MUSIC EXTRO: Same as introductory music, but cut off by the recording.
By Sunday, Craig had found two other episodes of “Weird Furka,” all on the cardboard transcription disks. He decided that at some point during his show, he would air all three episodes. He put on a long modern classical piece, one with sounds similar to the intro music for “Weird Furka.” Sure that everyone was out of the station, he ran out to his car and carried the disks and the machine he needed to play it up into the studio. Unable to dub the show successfully, he decided he’d just lower the studio microphone and air the show that way; it was short, he would sit silently and listen. He faded out the classical piece as he started the record. The pipe-sounds came up, and then the announcer. There was something about the show that he found utterly compelling. He promised himself he’d do a little library research when he got the time; for now, he listened to the familiar broadcast: the sounds in Mrs. Buzzard’s kitchen, the announcer, who Craig was beginning to suspect was the host. He could smell what she was baking, feel the heat in her kitchen. He sat and watched the disk spin. He didn’t move at all.
On Monday night, the bar was nearly empty, except for a few regulars. Craig was stacking glasses. He jumped at the large smack of an open hand on the bar, and at the barking of his name.
“What the hell was that?” Johnson demanded.
“What the hell was what?” Craig ran a towel over a dry glass, as if he were polishing a stone.
“I turn on the radio and I hear a voice I thought I’d never hear again. I know the man’s dead, so I could only assume my radio’d fell into another dimension or I was tuning in Hell.”
“You listened to my show last night?”
“Hell no. I never listen to your show. When I’m driving at that hour I turn the station to something that doesn’t sound like a room full of children with busted musical instruments. But last night… were you responsible for bringing Frank Shokler back from the dead?”
“Frank Shokler?”
“The guy who did that show.”
“‘Weird Furka.’”
“That’s the show. ‘Weird Furka.’ Damn weird all right. Worse ‘n weird.”
“You know about the show?” Craig put down the glass and the towel and leaned forward.
“Give me a draft and I’ll tell you if I know the show.”
Craig poured a draft, all the while looking at Johnson, waiting for the story. Johnson waited until he’d had a drink before he spoke.
“I used to listen to that show when it first came on. They used it for filler between Benny and ‘Gunsmoke.’ I liked those shows so I heard a few episodes of Frank’s show.” He took another swig of his beer, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and proceeded. “I didn’t like that man at all. I tolerated that show for a while, but when it got really weird—when he got really weird—I tuned out. I’d turn off my radio for twenty minutes rather than listen. And I like a good creepy story from time to time. Hell, back then I probably had a Vault of Evil or some nonsense stuffed in my glove compartment. But Frank was a bastard and then he got to be a frightening bastard and I was done with him. Where’d you find that shit?”
“I just dug it out of a library.”
“Oh yeah?” Johnson didn’t look like he believed Craig, but didn’t seem to care. “What possessed you to play it on the air?”
“I thought… it’s interesting. It’s local. I thought my listeners might like it.”
“You ain’t got listeners.”
Craig knew that was likely. That was one of the reasons why “Songs of Degrees” wasn’t going to move with the station. “What do you know about Frank Shokler?”
“Not much. He was in my high school. Didn’t play sports. Built a crystal set we’d listen to in shop. I wasn’t friends with him. He went away after high school. When he came back, it wasn’t long until he was recording interviews with every nutty housewife and derelict in town. Then he was gone again.”
When Johnson was finished with his beer, Craig poured another. “On the house,” he said.
During the next week Craig set up the Ampex and started listening to the reel-to-reels. Again, local news, a few field recordings of live Jazz shows and an on-the-scene broadcast of a major forest fire. He also found what he had hoped he might: more episodes of “Weird Furka.” Since bringing home the recordings, Craig ate all his meals in his bedroom. Dirty plates and bowls had accumulated around the equipment in his room. He brought a hot plate in to heat soup. The rest of his house seemed large and silent, seemed to press down on Craig, so he shut the door of his bedroom when he listened.
He searched unsuccessfully online for any mention of the show or of Frank Shokler. Furka hadn’t had a library for over a decade, so after a few hours at Manny’s—during which he did nothing more than raise the gas prices on the marquee and sweep out the shack that he sat in—Craig drove to the library in the next town over. He didn’t find much there, either. On microfiche were radio listings which provided him a way to date the episodes. He carefully copied out all the dates, then realized no episode titles were given, and there were no titles on the recordings he’d found; some of them were numbered; but he wasn’t sure the radio listings started with the first episode. The show was on the air for less than a year. He uncovered a small article from an issue of the Furka Weekly, which talked about “Weird Furka” and Frank Shokler’s death—in rather flip terms, Craig thought. The central theme of the piece being that Shokler’s death was as strange as an episode of his own show. After making that comment, the article was vague about how he died, stating that, “It may have been a heart condition,” and mentioning that he was found at the station. As an extension of the joke the article basically was, the reporter had tracked down two of the women Shokler had interviewed on the show: Mrs. Buzzard and Mrs. Drummond. Mrs. Buzzard talked about how he was still around, “in the air.” Mrs. Drummond said about Shokler, “He was a polite fellow. He was skinny. And when we talked—which was really only t
he once but I remember it like yesterday—he was very intense, as if he were trying to see around me. Or around what I was saying.”
WEIRD FURKA
TRANSCRIPT NUMBER FOUR
Broadcast August, 1947
MUSIC INTRO
ANNOUNCER: Greetings once again, dear listeners. The strange stories you are about to hear are true, and told by the people who lived them. If you scoff at the idea that there is a world outside of our common perception, another world beyond our own, the supernatural world, then prepare to have your assumptions challenged; if you already believe such a world exists, then prepare to have your beliefs confirmed. Welcome to Weird Furka!
HOST: Thank you for tuning in. I’m your host, Frank Shokler. Tonight’s mysterious story is told to us by Mrs. Drummond, who kindly invited me into her homey living room. As I’ve said before, in an effort to distance this show from dramatic shows, I took KADE’s top of the line portable recording device out of the studio and into the supernatural fire, so to speak. Nothing is scripted. What you’re listening to, as always, is a live recording.
Mrs. Drummond, you wrote to me and shared with me a most fascinating story. Will you be kind enough to enlighten our listening audience?
MRS. DRUMMOND: [Nervously] Yes. Should I start?
HOST: Yes, Mrs. Drummond, please begin.
MRS. DRUMMOND: For a time, I lived in a house that was haunted. This was the first house my husband and I bought. We bought it for a song and I suppose that was in part due to the rumors. We liked the idea that there were ghosts and hoped to see one.
At least until we invited my brother to the house for a night. My brother was a serviceman in the first war and on leave, and was driving to see a girl—he married her, in ‘19. Anyway, at the time, my husband was on a strict medical diet and to support him I went on it too. We served my brother a meal we couldn’t eat—I don’t think my brother ever saw a meal without a potato! [laughs] We told him about our diet and then moved to the living room and spent a quiet evening chatting. Around eleven, we all retired. We put my brother in the downstairs guest room.