Signal Bleed

The heater clicked once, then died.

Cal Redding exhaled and watched his breath drift across the windshield, fogging it in slow, ghostlike plumes. The van’s windows were rimed with frost from the chill autumn night, with veins that caught the red light pulsing from the transmitter sitting beside him. On the passenger side floor sat a silent deep-cycle battery stewing in its own acids, and a receiver balanced precariously on the dash. An antenna rigged to the roof creaked in a battle against the wind.

Cal rubbed his thumb over the brass tag that hung from the rearview mirror: Redding Radio & Repair - Est. 1967. His father’s logo. The edges were worn smooth from years of habit, Cal’s fingers looking for comfort, closure.

“Still running on your junk, old man,” he muttered.

The tag spun lazily, glinting against the low glow of the dash bulbs. The transmitter gave a tiny pop beside him and static folded in and out like waves against a midnight shore.

Cal twisted the dial with clunky movement. He’d done this dozens of times now, but every night felt like starting over, his cold fingers fumbling over the cracked and greasy knobs. He picked up the microphone and hesitated. He suddenly wasn’t twenty-nine anymore, with a gaunt face and tired eyes, but twelve again and trembling slightly from the nerves of operating his dad’s equipment.

“Testing…” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard and tried again.

“This is… uh-” He stopped. Cal… Caleb. The name rose uninvited, heavy as a sermon, but that was not his name tonight. He cleared his throat. “This is The Wireman. Broadcasting from somewhere outside town, and you’re tuned to a frequency they don’t want you to find. You might be hearing some things tonight. Strange power surges, flickers on your radios. If this is your first time tuning in, don’t worry. I’ll explain.”

He leaned back and exhaled. The signal hummed through the van as a low, constant throb. Outside, the naked branches of nearby trees swayed in the wind, resembling a moving wall of shadowy static. Inside the van, Cal Redding disappeared into the noise, and The Wireman began to speak.

***

The hum deepened. The transmitter’s SWR needle trembled, creeping toward the red as Cal keyed the mic. He eyed the cable that ran out and up the van’s window and adjusted the tuner knob until the signal calmed to a faint, droning warmth that filled the space.

“They’ve been saying the power surges are just the cold,” he continued. “Transformers freezing overnight. But I’ve been tracking them all week. Same time, same direction. Every night, it crawls closer.”

He paused, but heard only the hiss of the open line. He nudged the gain. Static cracked and revealed a faint pulse underneath, rhythmic and deliberate, almost like a heartbeat. Cal pressed on.

“Last night whole blocks blacked out. I received multiple reports of something heard moving under the relay towers. Something that wasn’t wind. It made a sound like…” He leaned closer to the mic, searching for the word. “…like current crawling through sheet metal.”

He stopped himself. Too much too soon. He needed to pace his message.

The memory came uninvited then: his father’s hand smacking the back of his head when he’d hastily miswired a set. Slow down, Caleb. Feel the current before you touch it.

That name again. Caleb… threading through the static like a whisper.

A flicker of interference cut through the receiver. It was faint, layered, maybe a voice or maybe just static, whispering in time with the antenna creaking against the roof. Cal’s dad used to say the air was full of voices, if you know how to listen. Maybe he was right. Cal twisted the tuning knob, chasing the whisper. It vanished.

Cal keyed the mic. “This is all part of the pattern we’ve seen for months. Here’s what we know.”

Cal adjusted the gain. The static flattened out into a thin hiss, like a breath taken through teeth. He flipped open the pages of his weathered composition book, the sound of paper brushing against the still-hot mic.

“Tuesday night, power went out along Route 9. Streetlights dropped one by one, heading north like something moving under the lines. Dan Keller from the county garage said he watched it happen from his porch. Said the air got heavy right before it hit.”

He paused, listening to the faint hum in the background. Listening for voices.

“Out by the water tower, Nora Cates says her house lights have been humming again. Not buzzing, but humming, low and steady, like someone breathing through the wires. She shut off her breakers, but the sound kept going.”

The static swelled, then faded. Cal kept his tone even.

“Truckers on 19 are reporting bleed-through on their CBs. One guy, Russel Pike, said he heard his own voice talking back at him. Repeating what he said, but slower. He pulled over near the grain elevators and wouldn’t get back in his cab for half an hour.”

He took a breath, steadying himself.

“Flocks of starlings have been hitting the silos of the sugar factory again. Folks said the ground’s littered with them, and staff have been picking them up every morning. Animal control’s blaming cold shock.”

He glanced at his reel-to-reel recorder’s light. Still running. Still recording. He sat back and rubbed a hand across his jaw. The mic picked up the rasp of his stubble. The hum deepened a little, the line breathing with him.

“And if you’re listening from the north side of town, if your phone rings after midnight, don’t answer. They’ve been going off every night at 12:15 sharp. Just one ring. No one on the other end. The phone company has no record of the calls.”

He let that hang for a moment, and a gust of wind trembled his van.

“This is The Wireman with your nightly report, signing off. If you’ve seen or heard anything unusual, anything that doesn’t fit the story the county’s pushing, spread the word. I’ll hear about it. In the meantime, keep your sets warm. Keep your lights low.”

The static swelled then faded, and the van settled into quiet hums and breathing. Cal unzipped his coat and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the console. His coffee had gone cold hours ago. He checked the time: 12:07 a.m. He’d been broadcasting for only a few minutes, though it felt longer and more labored, like the air itself compressed around him when he was on air.

He stopped the recorder and played back a small section. It was his father’s old reel-to-reel spinning in uneven rhythm, but what came through wasn’t Cal’s own voice. It was layered. Thick. With a whisper just behind his last sentence, speaking with him.

“…keep your sets warm…” spoke the voice.
“…keep your lights low… Caleb…”

He froze. Rewound it. Played it again. Same result.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “No, no, that’s just bleed. Old tape hiss, that’s all.”

He shut it off, but the whisper seemed to linger in the cabin. He looked out the windshield. Straight ahead, the copse of trees he was parked against looked writhing and angry. To the side, across the county road, cornfields stretched black and endless, ghostly stalks rattling in the wind. The sugar factory lurked in the distance.

He thought about his father again, about the shop that used to hum with radios, the smell of solder and coffee, the soft drone of AM chatter filling the air like prayer. When the old man died, Cal hadn’t gone to the funeral. He couldn’t face the pity in everyone’s eyes, the whispers about “the Redding boy who never made it out.”

But he’d taken the tools. The van. The brass tag. The transmitter.

Everything else had rotted away.

***

At 12:10, the hum returned.

He noticed it first as a subtle and deep vibration through the floor. His receiver was still on, sitting precariously on the dash, and its dials began to quiver. The frequency meter drifted upward without him touching it.

“What the hell…” He adjusted its tuner but it fought back, like the signal was pushing against him. The static sharpened into a rising whine. Then, a voice. Not a whisper this time, but a loud and clear voice.

“…Caleb…”

The van’s lights flickered. Cal felt every hair on his arm stand on end. Cal flipped on his transmitter, checked the receiver’s frequency and dialed it in. “Who’s on this channel?” he said, keying the mic. “Identify yourself.”

No answer. Only the rising hum. The aluminum roof creaked as the antenna swayed against the gusts. The speaker hissed, then cleared.

“…keep your sets warm…” came the voice.

That voice… it was identical to his, only older. Hoarser. He swallowed. “Who is this?”

“…keep your lights low…”

Cal flipped the receiver’s power switch. Its light dimmed and then winked out, but the interference didn’t die. It was spreading, crawling through the circuits, riding the copper like a living thing. The signal shifted, climbing in pitch, stretching out into something between a tone and a scream. The van filled with noise and its frame groaned. Static, distortion, and underneath it crawling something he couldn’t name. And the voice came again.

“…You should have come to my funeral, Caleb…”

Then, just as quickly as it started, it cut out. Something clicked, and warm air began to waft from the heater in his dash.

Cal sat there, frozen but thawing, staring at the dead equipment. The only sound was the soft rush of air from his vents and the tick of warming metal. He leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the radio’s casing, as if to feel for a pulse. “Talk to me,” he whispered.

He waited five seconds, maybe ten, before finally sitting back. His ears still rang from the interference, an invisible hum that refused to fade. Against the wall of the van, a hollow banging cut through the static still buzzing in his skull, and another voice called to him.

“County police! Open up!”

Cal froze. A wash of blue and red light reflected through the window. For a moment, he couldn’t move. For one impossible second, the voices in his head bled together with the residual hum in his ears until he couldn’t tell which was memory and which was real.

Sharon Halder’s face and officer’s uniform appeared through his window. “Cal Redding? Is that you?”

He reached toward the receiver again, hesitated, then pulled his hand back.

The heater clicked once, then died.

*** End of Transmission ***