Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller

by Ambrose Ibsen

  At that moment, someone else walked into the commons room, startling them both. It was Mike. “What's up, guys?” he said, sticking his head through the doorway and blinking at the pair with his large, bespectacled eyes.

  Mike was an incredibly awkward Geography major who lived in the private room four doors down from their own. He was the only other one still staying in the building that they'd seen since the winter break began, and both Kenji and Dylan did their best to avoid him whenever possible. It wasn't that Mike wasn't nice; rather, he was too nice. The guy never shut up, and his almost manic fashion of speaking was incredibly grating. The guy had no filter and couldn't seem to relate to other people very well. Dylan had theorized that he wasn't right in the head, or else suffered from near-debilitating social anxiety that he was hopeless to overcome. Kenji didn't usually have a whole lot of patience for him, and had been stopped in the hallway more than once to listen to some rambling anecdote or another. Mike wore entirely too much body spray, which cut through the air and assailed the nostrils of anyone unfortunate enough to walk past, and sometimes, very early in the morning, he'd blast show tunes from his stereo. His singing and dancing could be heard throughout the entire hall, much to the chagrin of the other students on the floor, who all hated him.

  At the very sight of him, Kenji suddenly found the idea of taking in a film with Dylan rather palatable.

  “N-not much,” muttered Kenji, collecting his papers and standing up. He pushed in the chair and made as if to leave, Dylan following close behind. But they weren't going to get off the hook so easily.

  “Isn't it crazy how empty the dorms are, guys? I mean, usually there's all the noise, and... what are you guys up to today?” His chubby, red cheeks were thrust into an expectant smile.

  Snickering, Dylan patted Kenji's shoulder with condescension. “Ol' Kenji here fancies himself a code-breaker.”

  “Shut up,” muttered Kenji, trying to bypass Mike, who remained stationed in the doorway.

  Mike got in his way, however. “What kind of codes?” He sometimes spit as he talked, and Kenji could feel a mist of spittle on his cheek as he tried to leave the room.

  “Just, uhh... you know, puzzles and stuff.” Kenji lied and tried to maneuver past him. “Gotta go, Mike.”

  Mike's hand came to rest on Kenji's shoulder. “Wait a minute now, I love brain teasers, Kenji. Will you let me have a look?” He glanced to Dylan and Kenji in turn, then tried to peek at the bundle of notes Kenji held to his breast.

  Thoroughly annoyed at his lack of progress and now at the meddling of this buffoon, Kenji hesitantly flashed the sequence of characters. “It's just a little code. I... I dunno what it means. It's probably nothing.”

  Mike craned his neck and hovered over the sheet of computer paper for some time, his expression narrowing all the while. He nodded to himself, then lowered the paper. “You know, I've seen this before.”

  Dylan and Kenji both were taken aback. “W-wait, what? Seriously?” came Dylan. “Where?”

  Mike, not used to having so much attention centered on himself, began to stammer. “W-well, I-I... It's not, y-you know, a code or anything like that. At least, n-not like what you're thinking, K-Kenji.”

  Kenji took the paper back from him and peered at it afresh. “Right, so what the heck is it, then?”

  “Well, they're Maidenhead Coordinates, I t-think.” He peered over at the characters again, then nodded with firmness. “Yeah, Maidenhead all right. We learned about Maidenhead coordinates during one of my geography classes this semester. Y-you have to use a grid map to use the coordinates, but it corresponds to a certain location. Y-you know, like longitude and latitude--”

  “So, where does this lead?” demanded Kenji, tapping the paper impatiently.

  Mike threw his hands up. “W-well, I'm not sure. But you can look it up online. If you search for a Maidenhead coordinate database, you can type it in, and--”

  Kenji was darting down the hall towards the stairwell before Mike could even finish. Dylan wasn't far behind, giving some half-assed excuse for their sudden flight.

  The racing of his pulse filled his temples. Kenji's scalp itched something awful; he felt himself growing warm and couldn't stay still. His fingers fiddled with the edges of the paper as he raced up the stairs and made a beeline for their room. It seemed a long-shot, but if these really were navigational coordinates of some kind, then he'd be one step closer to figuring out the riddle that'd so plagued him. Provided that Mike was correct and these were Maidenhead coordinates, where did they lead? And why had such a thing been inserted into a song?

  Kenji threw open the door and nearly slammed it shut just as Dylan was trying to edge his way in.

  “Dude, calm down,” urged Dylan, sitting down in his chair. “You know Mike's a weirdo. You really think he knows what he's talking about? Guy is into all kinds of conspiracy theories and junk. And he listens to show tunes. Here's a tip: Don't ever take advice from someone who wakes up in the morning and blasts the soundtrack to The Sound Of Music.”

  Kenji was already stationed at his laptop, hammering the keys. “Uh-huh,” he replied, pulling up a Maidenhead coordinate database. Just as Mike had said, the thing could be found with a simple web search.

  Sucking in a deep breath, he clicked on the search box and slowly typed in the string of characters he'd recorded the night before. He'd looked them over so many times in the past twenty-four hours that he had them memorized.

  EN17DA43TU85

  His finger hovered for an instant over the ENTER button.

  It isn't too late to turn back, he thought to himself. No need to dive any deeper into this, you know.

  Kenji hit the enter button anyway, and the results slowly populated the page.

  FIVE

  I'll be damned,” said Dylan. “They really were coordinates, huh?” He crossed his arms and paced around the center of the room. “Guess even Mike knows what he's talking about some of the time.”

  Kenji didn't know what to make of this new find. Cluelessness was fast becoming his base setting in these matters. The string of characters had indeed been Maidenhead coordinates, just as Mike had claimed, and when entered into the database, they spit out what appeared to be a real location. The significance of this was still a mystery to him, however.

  The string of characters translated into the exact coordinates of a spot in Akeley, Minnesota. Pulling up the corresponding address on an online mapping service didn't really give them much to work with, however. This part of the map was a discolored splotch; no matter how they looked, this particular section of Akeley was masked by greenish pixels. There could have been anything there; a small forest, an empty field, a gaping hole in the Earth... Kenji tried again and again to refresh the map, but never once did it appear any more clearly.

  Another dead-end.

  Kenji gnawed on the end of his pencil, swiveling around in his chair to face Dylan. He worked through his confusion verbally for his own benefit, using Dylan as a sounding board. “So, this obscure song has a recording of a woman's voice in it. It's mixed in there, real hard to hear. We clean up the sound and get a very clear set of characters from it. A message, which turns out to be a bunch of coordinates. The coordinates lead to the-middle-of-nowhere, Minnesota.” His molars locked down on the pencil with such force that he could feel his teeth sinking into the wood.

  “Yeah, it's a real mind-fuck,” conceded Dylan. “I wonder what's out there. Why isn't the map clear? It's almost like it was intentionally blurred by the makers of the mapping software, you know?”

  Kenji chuckled. “Conspiracy theorist much? Stuff like this happens all the time, dude. Real rural spots like this one are often overlooked. More than likely it's just a bunch of trees or something, but... why did the coordinates in this song lead to this exact spot? It just doesn't make sense. Why were coordinates to this place included in the song at all?”

  Dylan stared at the screen for a moment, at the blurry m
ass of pixels, and then offered, “Why don't we go and find out?”

  Kenji was floored. Loosing a nervous laugh, he leaned back in his chair. “Whoa, what are you suggesting?”

  With more sincerity than he'd hitherto shown the matter, Dylan pressed on. “Listen, you've been obsessed with this thing. And I have to admit, I'm a little intrigued now. There might be something there, there may be nothing there at all, but... until we go and take a look for ourselves you aren't going to drop this. I'm sure of that much, at least. And what else do we have to do around here? The place is dead, empty. Short of going out to eat or taking in movies, there's nothing to do. Why not take a road trip, huh? I've got the car; if you help me out with the gas a little bit, we could probably make the drive out there within a day or so.” His gaze narrowed. “It's in Minnesota, right? That's not so far from here.”

  Kenji tightened his grip around the legs of the chair. He was looking up at the ceiling, trying to work out the logistics of such a trip, but all the while something in the back of his head was urging him not to go, to turn away from this new information forthwith and to never look back. It was becoming all too clear that they were getting deeply invested in this thing, whatever it was. There was simply no telling what they'd find when they got out there, and Kenji was unable to rid himself of the impression that the two of them were being somehow lured to the spot. Not all of this could be explained away by simply calling it “coincidence”. Coincidence a good deal of it may have been, but this latest twist, the string of characters corresponding to a particular location, was too unnerving for words.

  And yet, Kenji still weighed the possibility of making a day trip out of it.

  Reluctantly he ran the numbers, figuring out the distance between this spot in Akeley, Minnesota and the UW-Madison campus. The drive would take them roughly seven hours. It'd make for a long car ride, but the two of them could pass the time easily enough. If they broke it up by stopping for lunch on the way, it might even be fun. More fun, at least, than wasting away in their quiet room.

  “C'mon,” continued Dylan. “The clubs are all going to be dead tonight. It's still early; if we set out now we can probably get there before sundown. Aren't you at least a little curious about what might be out there?”

  Kenji was more than just a little curious, but couldn't altogether silence the voice in his head that tried to talk him out of it. “Are you sure your car will hold up? And what about the weather?”

  Dylan blew off these concerns with ease. “A little snow or ice is no big deal. I've driven through worse, I guarantee it. And the car? She's a workhorse. Got her tuned up last time I was home; all she needs is gas.”

  Unable to think of any other excuses to keep them in the dorms, and his curiosity getting the better of him, Kenji agreed. “All right. Why not? Let's do it.”

  ***

  The pair packed a few changes of clothes and toiletries in their book bags. Kenji also brought along his laptop, some notebooks and pens, and a charger they could both use for their phones. After they finished packing, they left the quiet dormitory and sought out Dylan's car in the student lot-- an ancient Honda Civic. It'd once been a bright silver color, but the years had seen it fade something closer to gunmetal, and it sounded like crap whenever it started up. Approaching two-hundred-thousand miles, the little car refused to quit, however. It was a manual transmission, and Dylan rather enjoyed driving it despite its dinginess.

  Dylan hopped into the driver's seat and revved up the engine, shaking his head as it roared to life. “How 'bout it, old girl? Ready to make the drive?”

  Kenji sat down in the passenger's seat and shut his door. He was still searching for a reason to back out, to keep from diving deeper into this strange riddle that was drawing them into the middle of nowhere. “What about lodging? By the time we get out there we'll probably be exhausted. We don't have anywhere to stay and I don't think I can afford a hotel.”

  “That's why God invented gas station coffee, Kenji,” was Dylan's rejoinder. Then, he added, “Plus, if need be, we can crash in the car. Put the seat back and it's about as comfortable as any bed you'll find in a Motel 8.”

  Peeling out of the university parking lot, Kenji and Dylan paid a visit to the gas station. They filled the tank and procured a few sacks' worth of snacks and drinks, which they housed in the back seat with their packed bags. Chewing on a strip of beef jerky, Dylan then maneuvered out of the gas station and started onto Washington Avenue, which led to a highway entrance ramp. As he did so, he fished an old dash-mounted GPS system from the glove compartment. Plugging the cord into the lighter socket, he tossed it into Kenji's lap. “Put the address into that thing.”

  Kenji glared at the fossil in his lap. The touchscreen on it scarcely functioned, and by the time he got the destination entered into it, they were already on the highway. “You need a new GPS,” he muttered, straining as he pressed the suction cup mount onto the dash.

  Dylan straightened out so that he could see it better and stuck another strip of jerky into his mouth. “Here we go! If it's buried treasure, what say we split it sixty-forty? I mean, since I'm the one ferrying us to the spot and all...”

  Kenji rolled his eyes. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” he asked. “Doesn't it seem a little bit silly? There may not be anything there, and the fact that those characters in the recording matched the coordinates to this spot may just be...”

  “What, a coincidence?” Dylan chortled. “Maybe so. But we're only doing this because your dumb ass is obsessed. Don't you worry-- if we get out there and nothing comes of it, or if it's just a bunch of cows eating grass, I'll never let you live it down.”

  Kenji wasn't worried about that. The thought that something might come of this journey was what had him worked up. He could deal with Dylan's jabs, no problem. But what would happen if they made the drive and something did come of this?

  Kenji cracked open a Mountain Dew and leaned back against the seat, watching the scenery dart by as Dylan approached seventy miles per hour.

  SIX

  The old Honda lurched and groaned. With every passing mile Kenji felt sure they'd end up breaking down. The car never quit, however. No matter how dire the sounds the engine made, or how much they bounced whenever they encountered bumps, the vehicle didn't falter. They were making good time if the readout on the GPS was to be believed. Kenji had made his way through his twenty ounce bottle of soda and snacked on some gummy bears by the time they crossed State lines. Once they were into Minnesota, they decided to stop at a highway rest station for a late lunch.

  The pair took their time in eating. They'd talked a bit during their drive; girls, classes, family drama had all been subjects of interest. However as they returned to the car, their stomachs full, the true weight of their journey seemed to hit them all at once and they resumed the drive in near-silence. Rolling back onto the highway, they pushed into yet more rural settings than they'd seen in Minnesota so far, leaving tiny towns in the rearview that appeared unpeopled and empty.

  The further they went, the more Kenji's apprehension grew. Dylan appeared stone-faced, simply focused on the drive. If he was at all unnerved, then there was no way to know it. Kenji, though, squirmed in his seat without surcease, the dimming sky only adding to the terror he felt. Where were these feelings of dread coming from? Was it simply fear of the unknown? He leaned back his seat a bit and chewed on his thumbnail, his eyes growing a bit heavy. The meal in his gut sat like a brick, refusing to be digested. Up ahead was a barn, set deep into a nest of trees. They passed it in the next instant and it faded from view.

  If it'd been up to him, Kenji would've turned back. They'd already made it this far, though, and despite his apprehensions, his curiosity still bubbled beneath the surface. He tried to reassure himself, to remind himself that there was no danger to be found here. He and his friend were simply on a short road trip to a spot they'd heard about in a song. Frankly, there was nothing even remotely sinister on the fac
e of it, and it was because of this that his fearful mindset was all the more distressing to Kenji.

  “How much you wanna bet that this is where the members of Jackal Priest are living now?” said Dylan, trying to break the silence.

  “The group died in a plane crash years ago,” replied Kenji. “Doubt that's what we'll find there.”

  Dylan shrugged. “Yeah, well, maybe they're not actually dead, but just living in hiding. Incognito, or something, and they left little clues in their songs. Like Elvis.”

  “Oh, for God's sake.”

  With the dimming of the sun a light snow began to fall. The windshield was covered in a thin layer of flakes, and the rickety wipers were called into action, clearing away the wintery mess with a relentless clicking. Kenji sat up, watching the road. The snow was very light, not accumulating in any appreciable way, but he wanted to make sure they didn't roll into a patch of black ice. “You should slow down, just in case,” he said, wiping the heaviness from his eyes.

  Dylan motioned to the GPS. “Nah, we'll be all right. And anyway, we're almost there.”

  Looking to the display, Kenji realized they were on the very threshold of Akeley. They'd made the drive in just over eight hours. Considering the fact that they'd stopped for lunch and gas, that was quite a marvel. Traffic had been good and Dylan had never let up on the accelerator, so it looked as though they would arrive at their destination just as the sun was fully set. The thought made Kenji tense up a little. He wished that they'd had the foresight to plan their trip in such a way that their arrival would take place during the daylight hours. Instead, they'd just dropped what they were doing and rushed off at once.

  The GPS had taken them off of the highway and they were now thrust onto a series of winding and unmarked roads. The way the old display flickered and seemed to second-guess itself made Kenji, already uneasy, still more nervous. Every few minutes the GPS had to stop and recalibrate, searching for the satellites that fed it.