Worse Than Myself

by Adam Golaski

  In the morning, over breakfast, my brother grinned at us and asked which one of us was it, breaking our diet and sneaking down to the kitchen? We both denied having gone down. He accused us again and my husband asked him why he was so sure. He told us that he heard footsteps in the kitchen. He said that, with all the activity in the kitchen, he figured one of us was preparing quite a feast. He also added that he was sure he was going to be invited to join, because his door opened, though no one came in.

  Well I looked at my husband, and he nodded, and I said to my brother, “You’re so lucky. One of the reasons we bought this house was because it is rumored to be haunted by the first homeowner’s butler. The guest room, in fact, was the butler’s room. We haven’t heard or seen anything ourselves, you’re the first.” Unfortunately, this story really bothered my brother. I didn’t see him again until my husband and I moved out here.

  HOST: That’s quite a story, Mrs. Drummond. Did you or your husband ever see or hear the ghost?

  MRS. DRUMMOND: No, we never did. We were very disappointed. I guess we’re heavy sleepers.

  HOST: Thank you very much Mrs. Drummond.

  [Sound changes, back in studio] I find it really quite amazing just how many people have had supernatural experiences in Furka. Until I sent out my letters asking for such stories—and if you didn’t get a letter, feel free to write me directly at the station—I never would have guessed. There are enough interesting stories for this show to go on quite a while.

  I’ve been wondering, these past weeks, if Furka is for some reason a place where the supernatural and the natural cross, an intersection to other dimensions, perhaps, and that people—sensitive people—are occasionally granted glimpses. Alternatively, I’ve wondered if Furka isn’t exceptional at all. That if I were to go into any town in Montana, or anywhere in the country for that matter, and ask people to share with me their supernatural tales, that just as many would have stories to tell. Perhaps if we recorded enough of these stories, we would gain an understanding of the mysterious, and perhaps a way to make contact with the other side. This is Frank Shokler, signing off.

  ANNOUNCER: And that takes care of another episode of Weird Furka, 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

  With a little inventive wiring, Craig found that he could digitize the reel to reels, and burn them onto a CD. This made it a lot easier to bring the shows to the station.

  Johnson caught Craig’s eye from the barroom door. For a moment, Craig thought Johnson was going to charge the bar. Craig backed up a little, wringing has washcloth through his hands.

  “Why do you insist on playing that nonsense?” Johnson demanded.

  “I thought you didn’t listen.”

  “Shut it, Craig. I keep my radio on KADE for country. But I hear what’s on. And I know when Shokler’s on the air. I can sense it. And I don’t like it.”

  “Look, Johnson, what’re you drinking?”

  “What do you think?”

  Craig poured out a glass of the local brew Johnson drank. Craig said, “It’s a harmless little show, Johnson. It’s quaint.”

  “Frank Shokler wasn’t harmless. The show reminds me of bad times.”

  “He wasn’t harmless?”

  “I thought his show was gone. That he was gone. You’ll stop airing it, right? Go back to that trash-compactor stuff you used to play, right?”

  Craig grinned. “I still play that trash-compactor stuff.”

  “Well play it all the time.”

  “I don’t understand why you care.”

  “You’ll take it off, won’t you?”

  Craig felt courage swell up inside of him, the same feeling of courage that had him crawling around the station’s dark basement two weeks before. “No, Johnson. I don’t think that I will.”

  “Then damn you, Craig.” Johnson left, his glass more than half full.

  Craig found, among the reel-to-reels, thirty recordings of “Weird Furka,” in addition to the three cardboard transcription disks. He didn’t want to hear them all at once, he decided. He wanted to make them last as long as he could. So, he listened to a few episodes over and over, laying on his bed or on the floor of his room. Sometimes he listened to one of the other recordings. He started to reuse plates rather than take the time to wash them. Sometimes he urinated into a cup instead of leaving his room to go to the bathroom.

  He did a little more research into the media the shows were recorded on, and learned that it was extraordinary for the recordings to have survived the way they did. The acetate coating on the cardboard disk typically became brittle, the petroleum separated out of it, or crystals formed on the surface. The reel-to-reels also should have become brittle, or, if conditions were different, turned into a sort of glue. Recordings made as recently as the 1980s in professional recording studios were unstable. The media “Weird Furka” were recorded on, and the shows stored with it, were all like new. Burning what he could onto CD comforted him, guaranteeing, he believed, the longevity of the show; in the back of his mind, though, he was fairly sure that he didn’t have to worry.

  In the middle of the night he woke up. He sat up in bed and shouted, “Who?” and he looked around quickly, trying to figure out where he was and—once that was established—why his room was in the state it was in. He recognized, barely, the recording equipment, but he didn’t recall bringing in the dishes or the mugs or the hot plate. He was a neat person. He was disturbed by the smell—an unfamiliar, stale smell. And then, a metal corner of the transcription machine glinted, and caught Craig’s eye, and he was lost, and then asleep again.

  The next Sunday, when he pulled up to the station, he stopped before getting out of his truck, because there was a large black dog standing near the station door. He watched it, illuminated in his headlights. The dog didn’t move. He got out of the truck slowly, gathered his CDs from the passenger seat, and walked toward the front door. The dog followed Craig with a slow turn of its head. At the front door, Craig and the dog were side by side. He tried to suppress the terror he felt, sure the dog would pick up on his fear and jump at him; he didn’t think he could bear it if the dog barked. Once inside, the door shut behind him, he looked out at the dog. In turn, it watched him.

  Up in the studio, Craig warned the DJ about the dog.

  “Thanks for the heads up, Craig.”

  “It was the strangest thing.”

  “Dogs are like that, sometimes. Nothing to worry about, I’d imagine. He’ll probably be gone by the time I leave.” The DJ sniffed at the air. “Maybe he smelled food on you.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Craig hadn’t done any laundry in the past week. His clothes either smelled like cigarettes from the bar, or like the peanut butter sandwiches he’d been eating almost nightly.

  “Don’t sweat it. You got your first song ready?”

  Craig handed him a CD. “It’s track seven.”

  “OK.” The DJ cued it up. “What is it?”

  Craig described the piece; the DJ clearly wasn’t interested.

  “I’ve been listening to your show on my drive home. You gonna play any of those shows?”

  Craig brightened. “Yes, yes I am.”

  “Where the hell’d they come from?”

  “Oh, ah, a friend of mine.”

  “He found ‘em? They sound really old.”

  “No, no, he makes them. He makes them sound old. It’s amazing what you can do with a computer.”

  The DJ nodded, but didn’t appear to believe Craig’s story at all. The DJ swung the microphone in front of his face, faded out his song, and said, “That wraps it up for me, folks. Next up, “Songs of Degrees,” with your host, Craig Watson. I don’t know about you, but I find those little shows he plays to be more peculiar than the music he likes. Hope none of it gives
y’all nightmares.” The DJ started up Craig’s CD, and wished Craig a goodnight.

  Craig could hardly stand listening to the music; he desperately wanted to get to “Weird Furka,” to hear Frank’s voice. He knew he needed to space the shows out, though; they were very short, he’d only brought three, and he was on the air until 4 AM.

  When Craig left the studio, the dog was still outside. As Craig climbed into the cab of his truck he said to the dog, “Goodnight, Harold.” The dog nodded, and walked off. What he had done didn’t strike Craig as peculiar until he was in bed. When he remembered what he’d done, what he’d said, though, he opened his eyes wide in his dark room, and covered his open mouth. Before questions could emerge, such as why his room was in the state it was in, or why he felt so driven to play “Weird Furka” during his own show, a wet feeling came into his body.

  Craig found that his desire to hear the “Weird Furka” shows he hadn’t listened to yet was greater than his wish to extend his pleasure. On Tuesday night he listened to every episode he had. The shows being as short as they were—ranging from five minutes to ten, he was able to listen to them all in a couple of hours. He left his house when he had to work at the bar, arriving a little late. When he got back home, he listened to them all once more. Three of the episodes, not including the first, featured stories told by Mrs. Buzzard, who became less and less nervous with each show. At first Craig dismissed Mrs. Buzzard as a crackpot and a ditz, but gradually he grew to love her voice, and the way she told a story, and the smells of her home, which he imagined he smelled while he listened. These smells covered the rotten, sweaty smell of his bedroom. One episode struck Craig as a sort of turning point, a moment when “Weird Furka” changed and became something more than just a collection of local legends and personal anecdotes.

  WEIRD FURKA

  TRANSCRIPT NUMBER SEVENTEEN

  Broadcast October, 1947

  MUSIC INTRO

  HOST: Greetings once again. I’m your host, Frank Shokler. 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 I hope to challenge your assumptions; if you already believe such a world exists, then I hope to confirm your beliefs; I hope to be welcomed into your brotherhood. This is Weird Furka!

  Until now, I have presented the stories of your neighbors. I have recorded the stories in their homes, at their invitation. I think these stories have all been compelling. I considered myself to be among the unfortunate who had not directly experienced anything supernatural.

  Perhaps being in the presence of those who have, perhaps because of my recent steady contemplation of unusual phenomena, or a combination of the both, I have recalled a story from my youth, an episode I had quite forgotten until earlier this week. The story came to my memory so vividly, and so suddenly, I doubted it was anything more than a dream. I thought about it, and thought about it, and realized that no, it wasn’t a dream at all, but a memory that had been lost to me for some reason. Perhaps suppressed because of what it hinted at, suppressed by my own self in a misguided attempt to keep me grounded in the reality of the day-to-day. Hopefully you will extend to me the same faith you extend to those I’ve interviewed these past few months. Hopefully you will not chalk this up as a radio stunt or as filler. I assure you, I have many other stories from your neighbors that I will broadcast for you in the upcoming weeks. Please indulge me: upon rediscovering this episode of my youth, I felt an urgency to share it with you.

  When I was a boy I used to take long walks in the woods. My parents didn’t like that I did it, because they were afraid I’d be mauled by a bear or shot by a hunter. Still, I went. There were trails I knew and loved, because of particular trees or rocks or tiny pools of water in the stream that frogs and fish lived in.

  One late afternoon I was climbing on a rock and I saw what I thought must be a firefly. It was a light which flashed for a moment a few feet off the ground. I looked for the light and in a moment I saw it again. I realized then that it wasn’t a flashing light, like the light of a firefly, but only appeared to be, as my view of it was obscured intermittently by trees. The sky grew dimmer, the light seemed to grow brighter, and I was sure that it was moving closer to me.

  Once I got close to the light—it was a fireball, hanging in the sky, like a Biblical sign—I felt no heat from it, but it was a flame just the same—once I got close, it started moving away from me. I followed it. At times it was difficult, and had I been an adult I don’t think I could have gotten through the brambles and dense shrubbery it led me through.

  The fireball and I came out of the woods to a field. Along the field ran a dirt road. A mile down was a tall house. The fireball rose and rose and then vanished. I stared at the spot in the sky where I’d last seen it for a while before I looked back at the house. I thought maybe the fireball had wanted me to go to the house, but seeing that tall house out there, having been lead there by a fireball—it terrified me. When I thought about what might be inside that house—

  I didn’t think I’d ever see that house again. But I realize now, now that that memory has come back to me, that that house was KADE, a good fifteen years before there were radio stations in Montana.

  It probably sounds as if I’m just making this up, taking up radio time because I don’t have a real show, but I ask that you believe me, and I assume some of you good listeners will. This memory came to me like that fireball did when I was a boy, it emerged from behind a thicket of trees in my mind and made itself known as a bright, burning point. I am really unsure what this all means. Is it Furka? Could it be this converted house that I’m broadcasting from? What draws the supernatural world out of its invisible place and into our sphere, where our perceptions are so dominated by five drab senses? I leave you to think on that.

  Next week Weird Furka will return in its customary format—I will be interviewing a Furka resident who has had a supernatural experience. What will make next week’s episode unusual, is that that Furka resident is a twelve-year-old boy! Goodnight.

  MUSIC EXTRO

  Craig didn’t do anything for a while after listening to episode seventeen for the third time in a row. He let the tape’s leader flap as the reels spun around. He was on his back, surrounded by bowls and plates. Upon hearing episode seventeen the second time something had grown in his memory—just a little bit, enough for Craig to detect it. When he played the show again, the memory moved forward, just as the fireball had in Frank’s story. That memory of Craig’s—that moved forward in his mind—was of the same fireball, and how it had led Craig to the Furkabick Hotel. Sure, the owner’s girlfriend, one night at the bar, had listened to Craig talk about his love of radio and had said she would speak with the owner about finding time for Craig to do his own show; sure she had given him directions to the station and told him when to go. But overlapping those truths, was the truth that Craig had followed a cold fireball to KADE that had left him standing in front of that tall house wondering how he’d gotten there.

  When Craig couldn’t stand the enormous roar of his own circulatory system, he carefully put on the next reel, to listen to episode eighteen again. He was not excited to hear it, because it struck him as a step back from episode seventeen; he knew later episodes were more like episode seventeen, so his inclination was to skip ahead. Yet—he felt as if that would be disrespectful.

  WEIRD FURKA

  TRANSCRIPT NUMBER EIGHTEEN

  Broadcast October, 1947

  MUSIC INTRO

  ANNOUNCER: Greetings dedicated 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 hope last week’s episode was not too off-putting. To
night, we have a peculiar tale for you told—with permission from his parents—by a twelve-year-old boy named Jimmy.

  [transitional sounds] How are you today, Jimmy?

  JIMMY: I’m fine, Mr. Shokler.

  HOST: Well, now, Jimmy, you and your parents sent me a very interesting letter about a mysterious experience you had. Would you care to tell our audience your story? And please speak into the microphone, son.

  JIMMY: [Too close to the microphone] My parents and I just moved out here.

  JIMMY’S MOTHER: [In the background] We moved to Cedar Grove less than a year ago.

  JIMMY: [facing away from the microphone] Mom!

  JIMMY’S MOTHER: Sorry.

  HOST: No, it’s okay. Jimmy, if your mother can add details to the story, our listeners will certainly appreciate it. That gives weight to the story.

  JIMMY: Okay.

  HOST: Please continue.

  JIMMY: The neighborhood is still being built, and it goes for blocks and blocks, and in some places, on the outermost points of the neighborhood, the houses haven’t been finished or aren’t even built, they’re just grassy lots. I like to play down there, even though my mom doesn’t like me to go so far.

  JIMMY’S MOTHER: I worry about animals coming out of the woods.

  JIMMY: There are no animals. Except skunks and raccoons and deer.

  JIMMY’S MOTHER: Well, I don’t need my son getting sprayed by a skunk.

  JIMMY: [laughs at this suggestion. His mother giggles] Anyway, I was down there among the unfinished houses—I like to play in them because you can climb on the frames and see out where the roof hasn’t been put on yet. One of the houses, that a week earlier was totally unfinished and open, now looked finished. But I could see that the door was wide open, so I kind of thought maybe the house wasn’t done yet, and I wanted to see the inside.