Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  At his feet were a soldering gun and the multimeter that one of the Elm Street Irregulars mailed me unprompted so I could test the station for “ghost EVP’s.” From the look of it, he must have been working on this all night.

  He perked up once he saw me walking over.

  “Hey.” I said. “How was your shift?”

  “Boring.”

  “Did we have many customers?”

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  I nodded at the wall of wires. “What’s all this folderol?”

  He thrust the Frankensteined Walkman into my hands, saying, “I thought you’d never ask! First off, how much do you know about electronic circuitry?”

  “I guess I know an average amount for a gas station clerk.”

  “So, next to nothing? Okay, perfect! I’ll give you the simplified version. You know how refrigerators use a disproportionate amount of electricity? And you know how most buildings in America use alternating current over direct current?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, turns out the live wire running to the refrigeration unit actually spans the entire border of the gas station. There are ground fault interrupters set up every few feet, because—get this—there’s a steady current running through the walls and doors and everything metal in the place. You’re probably thinking, that doesn’t sound right. And you would be correct! It’s not, unless the person who designed the building was trying to build some kind of Faraday cage, like they wanted to block all outgoing signals. Think about it.”

  He tapped the side of his head and looked at me like he had just pulled off a magic trick, but I genuinely didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Can you dumb that down for me by like, ninety percent?”

  “Sure. Gas station electronics are all wacky.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know this: something about the wiring in here turns the building into a perfect radio antenna. Check it out for yourself.” With that, he pulled a pair of headphones out of his jacket pocket, plugged them into the output jack of the Frankenradio, and placed them on my head.

  Suddenly, I could hear it.

  “...will die before he sees it… First grade teacher Beatrice Hope has contracted head lice…”

  A man. Speaking clear as day.

  “...Her class will experience eighty percent lice outbreak within thirty-two hours…”

  The voice was mature, but not too deep.

  “The temperature at the center of town is negative five degrees Celsius…”

  He spoke completely devoid of emotion or nuance.

  “There are forty-one residential vehicles currently operating on the town’s roads…”

  There was a robotic steadiness to it.

  “The time is seven hours and fifty-five minutes…”

  The accent was unfamiliar, but the way he rolled his r’s and hocked his h’s led me to believe that English was not his native tongue.

  “The natural gas valve in Muriel Krasnov’s home has been improperly closed…”

  He never paused to consider what he was going to say next. He never coughed, sighed, audibly breathed, or slowed down. He just spoke, unending, sentence after sentence. Seemingly random. Sometimes, one sentence led into the next. Most of the time, it was a jump. I listened to the words for way longer than I should have, but it only took a few seconds for me to understand that this frequency was not meant for our ears.

  I pointed at the earphones and mouthed the words, What is this?

  “Keep listening!”

  “Paul Morris has systolic blood pressure of one hundred and forty-four millimeter of mercury... His dog has been run over by minivan… Kelly Pratt is driver… She flees from scene of accident… ”

  I could feel something happening. My mind was humming. I was getting a slight buzz, and the longer I listened to the voice, the stronger it got. I took the headphones off and handed the whole thing back to Jerry. He took it and offered a big, dumb smile.

  “Eh?” he began, “Am I crazy, or is there a mysterious radio signal hidden below the audible wavelengths?”

  He’d definitely found something, and despite the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this was the kind of something that should not be found, I had started this day looking for a distraction, and my curiosity wouldn’t shut up.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. If the gas station is some kind of antenna, then how far away is the source of this signal?”

  Jerry scratched his chin, “Hard to say, exactly. But some simple math can give us a ballpark estimate. I’ve been working on this all day.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a folded sheet of graph paper, handing it to me as he continued his train of thought, “We start by calculating the decibel milliwatts we’re getting with the antenna attached directly, compare that to the reading without the attachment to get a baseline for EM white noise. Next we measure the amount of slack on the variable capacitor while staying in range of the frequency, then reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and boom! Bob’s your uncle! Take a look and tell me what you think.”

  I unfolded the graph paper. “Jerry, this is just a drawing of a penis.”

  “No, not that!” He shook his head. “It’s on the other side. Turn it around.”

  I flipped the paper over, took a look, and sighed. “Jerry, this is just another penis.”

  “No,” he corrected, “It’s a dick-butt. He’s one of the mascots of the internet.”

  Despite my better inclinations, I took a closer look at the illustration in front of me—a crude pencil drawing of an anthropomorphic penis, complete with its own face, limbs, enormous buttocks, and a tail that resembled a smaller penis.

  “Why are you—”

  “I’m thinking about getting him tattooed on my back to cover that annoying bullet wound scar. I wanted to know what you thought.”

  “Do you want my honest opinion?”

  He read my face, took out a cigarette, put it between his teeth and lit it before answering, “No, nevermind.”

  I handed the paper back to him, which he promptly crumpled into a ball and tossed on top of the drink case. As he did so, I felt an excruciating wave of itchiness surge across the top of my leg, from the area just above the knee all the way to where the cast ended near my thigh. I closed my eyes and focused on taking deep breaths, trying to wait it out until the itch became tolerable again, but it didn’t feel like this wave was subsiding any time soon.

  “Hey, you okay bro?” I opened my eyes to see Jerry giving me a look of confurnsion as he puffed at his cigarette. “You look like you’re about to climax.”

  “Sorry, I just… it’s this stupid cast. It itches like hell and there’s nothing I can do about it.” I tried scratching furiously through the layers of jeans and plaster, but all that did was annoy me. I took a deep breath, then decided that I’d had enough. “Hey, do you mind watching the register for a minute longer?”

  I was already on my way back to the counter before he finished saying, “Sure, buddy.” I made a quick stop to grab a metal ruler from behind the counter, then I headed straight to the bathroom.

  ***

  As soon as the door was locked behind me, I got to work removing the safety pins and pulling the pants free from the cast, then I slipped the cold, metal ruler into the space between the leg skin and plaster. It provided momentary relief, but then the itching spread in waves, deeper down my leg. I dug the ruler as far as it would go and chased the itch, scratching hard and carelessly, ignoring the pain and basking in the merciful relief until finally, the itching had abated. I relaxed on the toilet stall and took a deep breath, then I pulled the ruler back out.

  As I did, a line of tiny orange roaches poured out of the space between my skin and cast. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Skittering, crawling over one another in every direction. I screamed and swatted at them and tried to jump away, but there was nowhere to go. I fell into the space between the to
ilet and wall as the insects ran up the stall and across my stomach. I slapped and scratched and convulsed until I heard a loud knock on the bathroom door, followed by Jerry’s voice asking “You okay in there, dude?”

  I snapped out of it.

  There was nothing there. No bugs anymore. But no bug bodies either. Just a sober realization that they were never there to begin with. I struggled to free myself from the disgusting space next to the toilet.

  “I’m okay,” I called out, not entirely sure I believed myself.

  “You hallucinating or something?”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  I managed to right myself on the toilet again. The itchiness was gone, for now. I reapplied the safety pins as fast as I could before getting the hell out of there.

  ***

  Jerry couldn’t wait to get home before calling it a day and crashing. So, just like old times, he camped out in the supply closet, sleeping it off in the hammock while I counted down his till. I wasn’t fully sure what to make of the fact that he was nearly four hundred dollars over, but having too much money wasn’t something I was going to get worked up over. I put the surplus cash in an envelope in the safe with the words “Emergency Fund” written on the side.

  I made a fresh pot of coffee, cleaned up the mess around the drink case, took the photo from Karl’s place out of my wallet, and compared the writing on the back to the “Case Closed” sign that Jerry had made. Despite some similarities, his handwriting was clearly not a match for my mystery stalker.

  I almost felt guilty for checking.

  ***

  The day chugged along like a rusty train engine. Customers came and went. Garbage appeared out of thin air. A truck dropped off our monthly supply of dry goods, and the delivery man stacked the boxes under and around the unconscious guy in the hammock. I read a book about a kaiju that falls in love with a giant robot and attacks cities just to get his attention. A man without any shoes came into the store, demanded to use the phone, then left after I told him it would cost twenty-five cents a minute (pay in advance, no exceptions). All in all, it was just an ordinary day at the gas station, and it stayed that way until just before sundown.

  Jerry woke up sometime in the afternoon and went right back to work on what we were now calling the “Russian radio.” His newest upgrade was a longer antenna wire and a set of external speakers so we could set the radio on the counter and listen to the mysterious voice while we “worked.” Much like the lovelorn monster from my novel, I could sense that what we were doing was wrong and possibly dangerous, but I didn’t do anything to stop it. After all, it was just a voice on a radio. What harm could possibly come from listening?

  Jerry was standing on a stepladder, tacking the extension wire across the wall to keep it from becoming another tripping hazard when he spotted the truck parked outside.

  “Hey, Jack. What do you suppose those guys are doing?”

  I put down my book, picked up my crutches, and came around the counter for a better look.

  At the entrance of our lot, a solid black truck was parked in such a way that no traffic could fit past it. The headlights were off, the windows were tinted too dark to see inside, the grill was coated in mud and bug pepper, and somebody was standing upright in the bed, looking our way over the cab. He was too far away to recognize, but that might have been the point. One thing I could clearly see was the green paint on his face, camo to match the rest of his clothes.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “I’ll go see if they need some help.” Jerry dropped his tools onto the booth table, but before he could march outside, I grabbed him by the shirtsleeve.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I think we should lock the door and call O’Brien.”

  It was almost like the truck was listening. Like it wasn’t even a vehicle, but a creature, and it knew the moment its cover was blown. The headlights flicked on, the engine roared to life, and the truck lurched forward, speeding right at us. For a moment, I was certain they were about to kamikaze through the front wall and kill us, but at the last second, the truck screeched into a sharp turn, clearing the parking stones by inches. The man in camo released a crazy battle cry and lobbed something at the front door. Before I could see what it was, it had already collided and exploded in a red mist, turning the door into another web of fractured glass.

  With a mad howl from the man in the back of the truck, the vehicle sped away.

  I stood still and waited to see if there was going to be an encore performance. Around the ten second mark, Jerry walked over to the door, pushed it open, and jumped back as the curtain of shattered glass fragments crashed to the ground. Some of it fell inside, but most got caught in the pool of blood and gore on the concrete just outside the front door.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Looks like a severed head,” he answered just a little too casually.

  “What?”

  “It’s okay. I’m pretty sure it’s just a deer head.”

  “How is that okay?”

  I came a little closer, careful to stay clear of the glass pieces. From here I could see that Jerry was right. It was the head of a young deer with two nubs of antlers. A button buck.

  For those of you not familiar with my town’s main pastime, allow me to explain. Button bucks are young deer, one step above a yearling and one step below a spike. Around here, killing a button buck is greatly frowned upon. It would be like beating your wife in most other places. Most of the time, if a hunter kills one by mistake, thinking it’s a doe, they leave it in the woods where it fell. Button bucks are considered bad luck. Garbage animals. Someone apparently found a better use for this one, and whoever it was took the time to nail an envelope into the animal’s skull, right between the eyes.

  Jerry crouched down and grabbed the envelope attached to the makeshift projectile and pulled it free with a disgusting snick!

  “Dude, don’t touch that. It could be evidence.”

  “Too late,” he said, opening the red drenched paper and pulling out the note stuffed inside. He unfolded the inner page, read it, then offered it to me.

  Well, I thought, he’s already tampered with it. What’s one more set of fingerprints? I took the page and read what somebody had written in sloppy brown handwriting big enough to fill the entire sheet. A cryptic message. Just two words:

  “YOUR NEXT.”

  “What does this mean?” I asked.

  Jerry gave a shrug and answered, “Beats me.”

  “Where’s the rest of the message?”

  He looked around the deer head, but came up blank. “I don’t know. That’s all it says.”

  I flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back. “What were they trying to say? My next... what? You think there was supposed to be another page or something?”

  Jerry lit a cigarette and said, “Who knows? These guys are idiots. What did you do to piss off the redneck godfather?”

  I took a quick moment to compare the handwriting to that of the picture in my wallet. Again, no match. Probably for the best.

  “We need to call O’Brien, then get this mess cleaned up. If any customers show up, we’re not going to be able to—” I froze mid-sentence.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Where’d the head go?”

  It wasn’t there anymore. The only thing on the ground outside was a puddle of glass and blood and a smeared trail leading off to the side. I know I’ve seen some weird things in my career. I’ve witnessed more than a few death fake-outs, but if I was about to see that deer head running away with nothing but its tongue, I was ready to call it and nope out of there for good.

  I stepped outside through the new opening in the door and followed the trail of blood until I saw the scarred-up raccoon, gripping the deer head by the ears and dragging it into the thick cover of the tree line.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  He froze and looked back with blood red eyes and a feverish sm
ile. As soon as I took another step forward, that son of a bitch lifted the head, winked at me, and disappeared into the overgrowth.

  ***

  I stayed at work until the glass repairman arrived around noon the next day. He gave me a friendly, “Heya, Jack. Which ones this time?”

  I pointed out the window, drink case, and front door, then left him to it. Once O’Brien showed up to give me a ride home, I went into the supply closet and woke Jerry up. He fell out of the hammock, landed on a pile of empty cans, and asked, “Wha-where am I? What day is it?”

  “It’s your turn to watch the store. Put on a shirt. I’ll see you in nine hours.”

  Ten minutes later, I was back at home.

  I emptied my backpack and refilled it with a few books I hadn’t read and a couple I didn’t mind rereading, then went and cleaned myself up. After a quick shower, I made some eggs, picked out a graphic novel about a crime-fighting octopus, scratched the skin below my cast with a wire hanger for thirty minutes, then sat on the couch and started reading. This was how I planned to pass the time until my shift started that night.

  I know how it sounds. Here I was with all this extra time, knowing that my days on this earth were running out, and not doing anything productive. But what exactly was I supposed to do? I didn’t have any skills to speak of. I wasn’t going to use my waking hours solving world hunger or helping NASA get to Mars. I wasn’t going to leave a cultural impact. The only instrument I could play was the recorder, and I couldn’t even remember where I’d left it. The truth was that the value of my legacy would be measured only after the dissection of my brain and journal, once I was finally done filling both with nonsense.

  I was destined to be forgotten. But in the grand scheme, aren’t we all? In a cosmic time scale, what’s the difference between being mourned for a minute or an eon? Five billion years from now, the earth will be gone. If humanity manages to escape in some shape or form, it will carry no memory of me. Nobody will hold a grudge that Jack Townsend didn’t do more with his free time. I mean, it’s not like I was going to end up being solely responsible for a series of events that would eventually summon an all-powerful pain deity to our world to enslave and torture humanity for the rest of eternity. I mean, that would be absolutely crazy, and who could blame me for not seeing something like that coming?