The Station That Still Answers
2 min read · Original fiction — a story, not a true account
Marnie had inherited her uncle's ham radio setup along with his house, and she kept it running mostly out of sentiment, scanning the dial some nights the way other people scroll through old photographs.
The first time she found WKLR, it was playing a big-band number she didn't recognize, followed by a smooth announcer's voice giving the time as 11:47 and the temperature as fifty-one degrees — reasonable enough, except that when she checked, it was well past two in the morning and considerably colder.
She looked the call sign up out of curiosity and found a single archived newspaper clipping: WKLR had broadcast from a station three counties over until a fire took the transmitter building in 1958, killing the night announcer, a man named Walter Kessler, who by all accounts had been devoted to his overnight shift and had, in fact, died still holding the mic.
She told herself it was some strange atmospheric fluke, a phantom signal bouncing off the ionosphere from decades ago, and she might have left it at that if the broadcast hadn't started, three nights later, addressing her directly. "For the young lady on the receiving end out past Miller's Creek," the announcer said warmly, between songs, "thank you for keeping me company. It gets lonesome out here after the fire."
Marnie did not respond that night, or the next, though she kept listening, unable to make herself turn the dial away. The announcer never seemed offended by her silence. He simply talked to her as though she were an old friend stopping by the studio, describing songs, weather that hadn't existed in sixty years, and once, unprompted, the exact shape of the scorch marks on the ceiling above the mixing board the night the fire started.
On the anniversary of the fire, the broadcast changed. The music stopped mid-song, and Walter's voice, quieter now, said only: "I'd like to sign off properly this time, if someone's willing to say it back to me. That's all it takes."
Marnie keyed her mic for the first time in weeks and said, quietly, "Goodnight, Walter. Thank you for the company." The signal cut to static, clean and total, and WKLR has never come through her radio again, though she still checks that frequency every October, just in case loneliness of that particular kind ever needs company twice.
"It wasn't playing to an audience anymore. It was playing to her, specifically, and it wanted her to answer."
