Ghost Radio

by Leopoldo Gout

  “Hullo.”

  “Who’s speaking?”

  “Pastor Cuahtémoc Illuicamina, at your service.”

  “Pastor whatsit, what did you say your name was?”

  The voice on the telephone patiently repeated itself.

  “I believe you called me a moment ago,” Joaquin said, although he knew it wasn’t the same voice.

  “And you are…?”

  “Answer me this: Didn’t you just call me to tell me a story?”

  “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve got your number on my caller ID. ‘J. Cortez’; that’s you, right?”

  “I already told you, I’m Pastor Cuahtémoc Illuicamina, of the Temple of Christian and Toltec Redemption.”

  “Of what redemption?”

  The pastor repeated himself again.

  “Well, you won’t find redemption by making crank calls.”

  “I didn’t call you. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Then someone used your phone to call me. Who was it?”

  “No one’s used this telephone.”

  Joaquin didn’t want to argue. He had proof the call came from this number. He’d go there and show J. Cortez the proof. With a little luck, showing up in person would end the harassment. He’d confront the pastor and warn him not to mess with him anymore.

  Armed with both the name and telephone number, he easily found the address for the Temple of Christian and Toltec Redemption with a couple of quick Google searches. It was just an apartment, located in one of the slums at the edge of town.

  He dressed quickly, not waiting for Alondra to finish her shower, and in five minutes he was in his car, driving toward a rendezvous with Pastor Illuicamina.

  The building was in an enormous block of housing projects. Joaquin went up to the seventh floor in an elevator covered with graffiti and looked down a dark hallway for number 713. The apartment’s front door was ajar, and he heard voices coming from inside. As he approached, a small boy, maybe eight or nine, peeked out. Behind him, Joaquin saw two overweight women sitting at their kitchen table, listening to the radio. Joaquin smiled at the boy, but as he got closer, the boy slammed the door. It was strange; Joaquin felt sure he had heard Watt’s voice in the apartment, although there was no Ghost Radio broadcast at that time of day. He shrugged; he had bigger concerns at the moment.

  He knocked firmly on the door to the improvised temple. A short, portly man wrapped in an old bathrobe, who looked about fifty-five, opened the door.

  “Can I help you?” he said with the tone of a decadent mariachi.

  “I’m the guy who called a while ago.”

  “Uh-huh,” the man said skeptically.

  “I want to solve the mystery of the calls I received. I say mystery, because according to my caller ID, they came from your telephone, and since you say you didn’t make them, I’m going to help you find out who did. It’s for the good of both of us.”

  “But no one here is going around making obscene phone calls to people.”

  “Let’s talk,” Joaquin said, brusquely entering the temple-apartment without asking permission. Caught off guard, the man let him pass.

  Inside was a small, one-room apartment. Dusty furniture sat in odd places, and covering all available surfaces was a a strange array of objects: porcelain figurines, Kwik Kleen bottles filled with suspect liquids, dollhouses, plastic soldiers, blank paper, unsharpened pencils, myriad flashlights, old religious magazines from past decades, a partially disassembled radio, fruit, crucifixes, dried tortillas. As Joaquin took in the chaos, he thought to himself: What a pathetic and embarrassing place. Who could live here?

  However, he quickly realized that the paraphernalia and arrangement of the furniture followed a specific pattern. There was logic in the chaos. The bric-a-brac had been organized with maniacal, childlike precision, with the delirious fervor of one who supposes that objects have secret powers if you combine them correctly. And something else about it grabbed his attention. It reminded him of something. Something he could not name.

  “My friend, you’ve arrived at a bad time. As you can see, I was about to have a bath and then give a service.”

  “This won’t take much of your time. May I sit?”

  The call had put Joaquin into an implacable mood; he had never behaved like this with a stranger, much less a man of the cloth—even if in this case that cloth was Toltec-Christian.

  “I’ve no idea who might have called you,” said the pastor.

  “Try to think. If I can’t figure this out, I’m going to have to go to the police,” Joaquin replied, picking up a disgusting headdress covered with ketchup stains. Ketchup stains…or blood.

  “Might have been the boy, but I don’t think so. Doesn’t do such things.”

  “Boy?”

  “One of the members of my congregation. Sometimes lends a hand with administrative matters.”

  “There. We already have a clue. What’s this boy’s name, and where can I find him?”

  “Barry. He’ll be here soon.”

  “How soon? Maybe we should to go get him,” Joaquin said, continuing to pick up and fidget with the items on the table, chairs, and floor.

  Even as he kept touching them, he felt certain that he should leave them alone—not just because his hands were getting dirty, but because by intervening in the order-disorder that presided over them, Joaquin thought he might unleash something he couldn’t fully comprehend: something evil. Why would he have such a thought? It seemed crazy.

  Joaquin wasn’t prone to credulousness or fear of charlatans, but as he spoke to this pastor, he got the distinct impression that very strange things could happen in this place.

  “I have no idea where he might be.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to find him.”

  At this point, the preacher’s tone of voice changed. He took on a mournful expression and said:

  “You’ve come to kill me. I’ve seen this in my visions.”

  Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he recited what sounded like a prayer.

  “I didn’t come here to kill anyone; I just want to be left alone.”

  The man raised his head and continued his strange prayer, incantation, or whatever it was.

  “Sholotl, xelatl, dominum budadl…”

  “Enough already. I haven’t come here to hurt anyone.”

  The man ignored Joaquin, raising his voice and repeating a mantra of strange words that sounded vaguely familiar. Joaquin went over to him. When he was only a step away, the preacher sprang up onto his toes and punched him in the face.

  Joaquin moved, but not quickly enough. The man’s fist glanced off his cheekbone with enough force to knock him off balance. He fell back, slamming hard into a drawer filled with broken toys, and pain shot through his spine.

  As he stood up, the preacher kicked him; first in the ribs, then in the gut. This guy’s done this before, Joaquin thought as he curled away from another blow. Then age and weight caught up with the pastor. He stopped kicking, and took a short wheezing breath. This might be Joaquin’s only chance.

  He leaped to his feet and charged, throwing his right shoulder into the pastor’s abdomen. The pastor hardly budged, raining a series of blows on Joaquin…mostly to the gut and kidneys. Joaquin reeled.

  Where the fuck did this guy learn to fight? he thought. And why is he fighting with me?

  These thoughts running through his mind, Joaquin dodged and blocked the blows—looking for a way in. A knee to the balls. A forearm to the throat. Something to stop the pastor in his tracks.

  Finally, he found it. Ducking under a hail of fists, Joaquin grabbed the pastor around the waist, tightening his grip. Not what he hoped for. But it did the job.

  The pastor wriggled and twisted, trying to break free. No luck. Joaquin held tight, increasing his viselike hold. The smell of the pastor’s cheap soap and aftershave wafted into Joaquin’s nose, and he wondered how he’d gotten himself into thi
s situation: a mysterious phone call, and less than an hour later, he’s wrestling with a reverend of Toltec Christianity.

  Life takes some odd turns.

  At that thought, the pastor broke free, pushing himself away from Joaquin, clasping his hands together, and bringing them down hard on the top of Joaquin’s head.

  Joaquin reeled, watching the floor wobble and turn to Jell-O. It looked so inviting: soft, gentle, and welcoming. He wanted to collapse into it.

  The door swung open. Joaquin righted himself and glanced toward the door. His blurry vision could just make out a rough shape.

  “Maestro, I couldn’t find—”

  The pastor turned toward the voice, and Joaquin sent a right cross speeding toward his jaw—hoping his hazy vision could be trusted. A sharp crack and a thud as the pastor’s body hit the floor told him it could.

  “What the fuck?” exclaimed the blur at the door.

  Joaquin glanced toward the blur, shaking his head. The shape resolved itself into a blond boy holding packages. Just as the image became clear, the boy dropped the packages and ran off.

  “Get back here!” yelled Joaquin.

  Pulled by strings that seemed beyond his control, he went after the young man. He remembered what the pastor had called him.

  “Barry, hold up. I just want to ask you something.”

  But the young man kept on running. He took the stairs, jumping down, sliding, and bouncing hard off the walls. Joaquin followed him at top speed, losing contact with the ground, stumbling and leaping as he went.

  On the ground floor, he almost caught up with the young man in the foyer, but Barry made it into the street, expanding his lead. Joaquin wasn’t thinking, he was only running, possessed by a force he’d never felt before. His feet seemed to float above the sidewalk; he dodged people as if they were moving in slow motion.

  The fresh air and intensity of the pursuit cleared his head. It filled him with energy. It felt almost as if he were playing tag with Barry, whom he knew he’d reach any moment now. Meanwhile, Barry kept bumping into pedestrians, struggling to give Joaquin the slip, until finally on one corner he tripped, lost his balance, and fell to the ground. Joaquin came to a stop over him and stuck out his arm to help him up, but with enough force so he’d understand that there was no escape. Barry’s knee was bleeding. When he saw Joaquin leaning over him, he covered his face.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions,” Joaquin said, out of breath from the chase.

  chapter 39

  DRAINS AND LADDERS

  The speed wasn’t working. The coffee wasn’t working. I was a ghoul, plunged into the land of ghosts. Nothing felt real. Maybe it never had.

  I did the only thing I could.

  “Caller, you’re on the air.”

  My voice sounded odd, echoing distantly in my headphones.

  “They’re in the pipes, you know.”

  “What?” I asked. The echoing intensified.

  “Well, it’s one of their hiding places. One of the places you can corner them.”

  “Caller, what exactly—”

  “I think they’re there all the time. But we don’t see them. They’re too quick for us. Too smart.”

  The walls of the studio began to shimmer and bend. It’s happening again, I thought.

  “You have to be quiet. Patient. I was special ops back in ’Nam. So I can be quiet. And patient. Very quiet. And very patient.”

  Silence and patience. I wished I had some of that. The studio walls shifted toward translucence. The only thing that connected me to reality was the sound of the caller’s voice.

  “Last night I sat on the top rung of a ladder in my kitchen. About six feet from the kitchen sink. But I was high enough that I could see down into it…into the drain. I sat there for hours. ‘Becoming one with the night,’ as the top kick in basic used to call it.”

  I saw the bottom rung of the ladder in front of me. Splatters of white paint dried to the tread.

  “Your body disappears. The limbs, trunk, neck…everything…somewhere else. You’re only eyes…looking…waiting.”

  I looked up. The caller perched at the top of the ladder. His body impossibly still. It barely seemed three-dimensional: a shadow in black military clothes. I put a foot on the first tread, and pulled myself onto the ladder.

  “And there I rested. Still. Eyes on the sink…on the drain…waiting.”

  Reaching the top of the ladder, I looked over the caller’s left shoulder and down at the drain: a black abyss in a sea of burnished aluminum.

  “I was there for hours. But I don’t mind it. It reminds me of happier times: steamy nights in the Mekong.”

  His breath shallowed beneath me. It was unlike any breathing I’d ever heard. An autonomic function camouflaged by years of practice. Had I not known it was breathing, I might have confused it with a summer breeze, or the flap of a dragonfly’s wings.

  “Sometime around three, I began to hear something: something struggling to move through the pipes.”

  I heard it too. It reminded me of one Gabriel’s more bizarre recordings: the amplified sound of two slugs mating. A sound suggesting viscous undulations and the faltering demands of an alien sexuality.

  “Then I saw it.”

  Something glinted in the drain, catching the pale moonlight that lapped into the kitchen from the window over my right shoulder. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was impossible.

  “A single limpid eye stared back at me from the drain.”

  The eye darted back and forth, moving from the caller to me. Then it stopped, blinked, and started scanning again.

  “There’s an intelligence in the eye.”

  The caller may have seen intelligence. I didn’t. It appeared vaguely human, but its gaze suggested experiences vast and nameless. No, not intelligence, something much more frightening: knowledge.

  “And as quickly as it came, it was gone. I would think that it was a dream or a hallucination had I not seen it so often.”

  As the studio began reappearing around me, I heard Alondra’s voice.

  “Caller,” she said, “you never told us what these things were. Do you know? Do you have any idea?”

  “Some think they died out. Or left to return to some forgotten homeland in the stars. But I think it’s them, they’re in the pipes.”

  “Caller, who are they?” Alondra asked again insistently.

  “The Toltecs.”

  chapter 40

  WHERE’D EVERYBODY GO?

  Barry was an optimist, or at least that’s how he saw himself. He was a political science major deeply committed to Latin American causes. He was a tireless seeker of spiritual stimulation.

  For a year he lived in a tiny, poverty-stricken community in the Guerrero Mountains. There he caught a brutal stomach infection that had nearly cost him his life; he worked in sugarcane fields in the Dominican Republic, where he experienced the near-slavery conditions of the plantation workers; in Peru, he joined an association of workers and university students in their struggle against a local Ayacucho despot.

  However, Barry always tried to take time out from his social crusades to spend the summers at his family’s home in the Hamptons. His parents set up a trust fund for him so that he’d have everything he needed during his college years; but now he believed that using any of this money was immoral, and he opted to support himself by other means. He took odd jobs doing construction work; as a salesclerk in a pet shop; as a waiter. His main source of income, though, was “cultural commerce.” Almost every day he stole a dozen books: bestsellers, art books, high-priced first editions, illuminated manuscripts, and other gems that he later auctioned on eBay or sold on Amazon.com. Under his complex system of religious logic, this was an act of justice, reparations for centuries of oppression. Unsurprisingly, Barry led a fairly paranoid existence. He kept an eye out for the authorities, alert to anything suspicious, anything out to end the logic and order of his life.

  That was why, when Barry saw
Joaquin fighting with the preacher, he assumed that he was Joaquin’s real target.

  Once Joaquin assured him that he wasn’t a police officer, bookstore security guard, or library agent, Barry stopped trembling and started to relax.

  Looking down at Barry, still catching his breath, Joaquin explained that he’d received a bizarre and especially undesirable phone call from the pastor’s telephone.

  “Although, like I said, the voice on the telephone definitely wasn’t his,” Joaquin concluded.

  “Of course it wasn’t. The pastor has much more important, vital things to do than make crank calls. But if you know it wasn’t him, then how come you two were slugging it out?”

  “I don’t know; I told him my problem and he said that I’d actually come there to kill him.” Joaquin’s voice was colored with sarcasm.

  “And is that what you came to do?”

  “Please. Do I look like a murderer? I was only trying to defend myself because he attacked me.”

  “I know Pastor J. Cortez very well, and he is not an aggressive man.”

  “Let’s go back there and clear up this whole misunderstanding. Maybe there was an error in the caller ID.”

  Joaquin didn’t really want to return; he didn’t think it was possible to get anywhere with these two. However, he did want to apologize for having imposed so aggressively. Clearly he’d made a mistake. He thought about giving Alondra a quick ring to fill her in on where he was and what had happened, but when he checked his pocket, he realized his cell phone was gone. He’d probably lost it in the fight or during the chase. The cell phone was extremely valuable to him. It went beyond possession and loss. Beyond the fact that he depended on it. This small electronic device was a necessity for him. He really did believe in the microchip.

  Suddenly he wasn’t sure of his own telephone number, the number at the station, even Alondra’s cell phone. He always used his stored numbers and now he felt cut off, handicapped, lost.

  “I lost my phone,” he said

  “Not surprised, you probably dropped it while you were in ‘hot pursuit.’”