The Blue-Ribbon Errand

The last Saturday of every September, our small town of Harrow Creek held its Harvest Festival. My aunt Geraldine always insisted on entering her infamous blue-ribbon pickles, and this year was no exception. I was tasked with watching her house while she went to the church hall to drop off her entry, a task that usually involved nothing more than sitting on her porch and enjoying the crisp autumn air. But this year, something was different.

It was late morning, and the house was quiet except for the ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the hallway. My cousin Emma was upstairs taking a nap, while I was downstairs making sure my younger brother had turned off the kitchen radio before he left for soccer practice. The radio was a stubborn thing, prone to static, and my aunt had a thing about not leaving it on. Once I confirmed it was off, I settled into the overstuffed armchair in the front parlor with a book on local folklore. I was about ten minutes into a chapter about the old mill that used to stand by the river when the radio suddenly blared to life, playing a jaunty tune that I didn’t recognize.

I froze. The radio was off. I had just checked it. My first thought was that Emma had come down and turned it on, but I would have heard her on the stairs, and the staircase was right next to the parlor. When I called out to her, she answered from her room, sounding groggy and annoyed that I had woken her. I headed back to the kitchen, my heart thumping a little faster than I’d like to admit. The radio was indeed on, and it was tuned to a station playing old-timey music, not the local country station my aunt preferred. I turned it off, wondering if maybe the wiring was faulty, or if a ghost had a taste for polkas.

Later that afternoon, I began preparing a simple dinner of stew for my aunt’s return. The house felt colder than it should, and I kept glancing at the radio, which remained silent. As I chopped vegetables, I heard a faint scratching sound from the pantry. I opened the door, but everything was in order. I shrugged it off, blaming the wind or an old house’s settling.

When Aunt Geraldine came home, she was beaming, holding a third-place ribbon. She regaled me with tales of the festival while I served the stew. As we ate, the radio suddenly turned on again, blasting the same polka. My aunt’s face went pale. She dropped her spoon. ‘That’s the tune they played at the mill dance the night of the fire,’ she whispered.

I looked at her, confused. She explained that in 1952, a fire had broken out at the mill during a dance, killing dozens. The mill was never rebuilt, and it was said that the victims’ spirits were restless. The radio, an old model my aunt had inherited from her mother, had belonged to a man who died in that fire. Since then, weird things had happened, but never like this.

The polka continued, and the lights flickered. I felt a cold draft rush through the room, and the radio’s volume grew louder. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The silence that followed was oppressive.

Aunt Geraldine looked at me, her eyes wide. ‘You need to leave,’ she said. ‘Take the back roads, don’t stop for anything.’ But as I grabbed my coat, I saw the radio’s dial slowly turning by itself, and the tune began again, this time slower, like a dirge. The pantry door creaked open, and from within, a voice, soft and distorted, said, ‘Stay.’

I didn’t stay. I ran out the back door, leaving my aunt behind. I never learned what happened to her, but I know this: the radio never turned on again, and I haven’t touched a pickle since.