The Last Broadcast

It was the autumn of 1998, and I was seventeen, a senior at Hollow Creek High, a school so small that the entire senior class could fit in one homeroom. My best friend was Lena, a year younger, whose older sister Mira had just left for art school in the city. The three of us had been inseparable the summer before, bound by our love for old horror movies, thrift-store fashion, and the forbidden thrill of the Ouija board we’d found in Mira’s grandmother’s attic. We’d spent countless nights in Mira’s basement, candles flickering, fingers resting on the planchette, summoning anything that would answer. We thought we were careful, always saying goodbye, but looking back, we were reckless children playing with a door we didn’t understand. That summer, the board had spoken in whispers and cryptic phrases, but we’d always laughed it off. It wasn’t until the night Lena and I decided to explore the abandoned radio station that I began to suspect we had opened something more than just a game.

Hollow Creek was the kind of town where nothing ever happened, and the old KDRC radio tower stood on a hill just outside the limits, a rusted skeleton against the sky. The station had been dead for years, but the building remained, its windows boarded, its antenna still reaching for the heavens like a broken finger. On a cool, damp evening in late September, Lena and I drove out there in her beat-up Ford Escort, the gravel crunching under the tires as we parked by the chain-link fence. We’d brought flashlights and a cheap tape recorder, thinking we could capture some spooky sounds for fun. The fence had a gap we’d heard about from the older kids, and we slipped through, our breaths fogging in the chill air.

The building was a squat, rectangular structure with peeling paint and a heavy steel door that creaked open when we pushed. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the smell of mold. We walked through the old lobby, where faded posters for long-gone rock bands still clung to the walls. The main studio was a chaos of overturned chairs, shattered glass, and a mixing board covered in cobwebs. In the corner, a large reel-to-reel tape machine sat on a cart, seemingly untouched by time. I felt a strange pull toward it, as if it were waiting for us. Lena must have felt it too, because she whispered, ‘Do you think it still works?’ I didn’t answer, but I walked over and pressed the power button. To our shock, the machine hummed to life, the reels starting to spin, and a faint static filled the room.

We looked at each other, eyes wide, and I reached for the tape recorder in my pocket. Just as I was about to turn it on, a voice cut through the static, clear and cold, like a whisper meant only for us. It said, ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ The hair on my arms stood up. Lena grabbed my arm, and I saw her face drain of color. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It spoke again, ‘Don’t you remember me? You called me.’ My blood turned to ice. It was the voice from the Ouija board, the one that had answered our silly questions with unsettling accuracy last summer. It had called itself ‘The Listener.’

We stumbled backward, but the voice followed us, now coming from the building’s old intercom system, echoing through the halls. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come home,’ it said. ‘This place is mine now.’ We ran for the door, but it slammed shut before we could reach it, the lock clicking with a finality that made my heart jump. We were trapped. The lights flickered, casting long shadows, and the temperature dropped until I could see my breath. Lena was crying, shaking her head, whispering, ‘We didn’t say goodbye that night. We never said goodbye.’

I remembered that last session, when we had been so scared by a sudden bang on the window that we’d yanked our hands away and never said goodbye. We’d left the board out, and Mira had thrown it in the trash the next morning. But something had followed us. Now it had found us here, in this dead place, and it wasn’t going to let us leave. The voice began to speak in a language I didn’t know, but I could feel the meaning: it was singing a song of loss, of something that had been trapped here long before we were born, and had latched onto our youthful energy like a leech. It told us that it had waited for years for new voices to fill the silent airwaves, and we were perfect.

I shoved against the door, but it was immovable, as if held by a great weight. Lena grabbed my hand, and together we rushed to the window, smashing the glass with a chair. The night air rushed in, but the voice only laughed, a hollow sound that seemed to come from everywhere. ‘You can’t escape. You’re mine now.’ As we climbed through the broken window, I looked back for a second and saw the reel-to-reel machine spinning faster, the tape unreeling onto the floor like black entrails. The voice said, ‘I will find you. I will always find you.’ We ran through the fence gap, jumped into the car, and sped away, our hearts pounding. We never told anyone about that night.

Weeks passed, and I tried to convince myself it was just a prank, some old wiring, our overactive imaginations. But then the phone calls started. Silent at first, then a static-laden whisper that sounded like it was being transmitted from a great distance: ‘You’re on the air.’ Every night, at exactly 2:33 AM, the phone in my room would ring. When I picked up, I’d hear the same voice, repeating, ‘This is your last broadcast. Tune in next time.’ I would unplug the phone, but it would still ring, the sound coming from the receiver even when disconnected. Lena said she saw a figure standing at the end of her bed, its face static, its mouth moving in silent words.

We tried to burn the notes of our Ouija sessions, but the fire would not consume them. We tried to cleanse the house with sage, but the smoke would curl away from the corners, as if being pushed. We were losing our minds, and we knew it. I started to see the static in the air, a faint flicker at the edges of my vision. And then the dreams came. Dreams of being on a stage, a microphone before me, and a vast, empty auditorium filled with shadowy figures, all whispering, ‘You’re next.’

It was on a cold November morning that I woke to find Lena standing at my window, her face pale as death. She pointed outside. The radio tower on the hill was glowing with a sickly orange light, and I could swear I heard a hum, low and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. ‘It’s calling us,’ she said, her voice empty. I knew she was right. The thing that had attached itself to us was drawing us back, and there was only one way it would stop. We drove out there at dusk, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. We walked into the station, and the reel-to-reel was still spinning, the tape now endless, a loop of static and whispers. The voice greeted us, ‘Welcome home, broadcasters. Ready for the final show?’

I looked at Lena, and she nodded. We knew what we had to do. We found an old microphone in the debris, and I held it to Lena’s lips. She took a deep breath and said, ‘We’re ready to say goodbye.’ The static around us seemed to intensify, and the voice screamed, ‘No! You cannot leave!’ But we had learned from our mistake. We held hands, and together we spoke the words of closing that we had forgotten so long ago: ‘Goodbye to you. We sever this connection. You are released.’ The room shook, the lights exploded, and the sound of a thousand voices cried out in fury and despair. Then silence. When we opened our eyes, the tape machine had stopped, and the building felt empty, truly empty for the first time.

We walked out into the cool night, the tower dark above us. We never spoke of it again, but I know that something left us that night, something that had been waiting in the static since the summer we played with the board. To this day, I cannot listen to white noise without feeling a shiver down my spine, and I always say goodbye when I end a conversation. But sometimes, when the house is quiet and my phone rings at 2:33 AM, I hesitate to answer, because I’m afraid I’ll hear that voice again, whispering, ‘You’re on the air.’