The Last Broadcast

The last time I saw my father, he was standing in the doorway of our apartment, holding a small transistor radio that my mother had given him for his birthday. He was a night-shift security guard at the old Meridian Transit Mall, a sprawling, half-abandoned shopping complex on the edge of town. The radio was his companion during those long, silent hours, and he used to tune it to late-night talk shows and static-laced music. But in the weeks before he died, he stopped talking about the shows. Instead, he talked about the ‘broadcast’ that came in between frequencies, a voice that spoke only to him.

I was seven when my father passed, after a long illness that hollowed his cheeks and dimmed his eyes. I remember the day he told me about the voice. It was a Sunday, and he was sitting in his worn armchair by the window, the radio on his lap. The sun cast a pale rectangle on the floor, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring at the radio as if it were a living thing. ‘It’s a woman, Lily,’ he said, his voice raspy. ‘She speaks to me in a language I almost understand. She tells me things about the mall, things that haven’t happened yet.’ I didn’t understand, but I nodded, because he smiled when I did. That was the last time I saw him truly smile.

After he died, my mother packed away his things, including the radio. It sat in a cardboard box in the closet for years, until I moved into the small house I inherited from her when she passed. The house was on Fernwood Street, a quiet, tree-lined lane that dead-ended at a cul-de-sac. It was a modest bungalow with a cracked driveway and a rhododendron bush that had grown wild, blocking the front window. I moved in after a divorce, seeking solitude, and I found it. But the solitude was not empty.

The first night I slept in the house, I heard a faint static coming from my bedroom closet. I thought it was a faulty wire, but when I opened the closet, the radio was there, sitting on a shelf as if it had never been moved. It was covered in dust, but the dial was turned to a blank spot between stations. I clicked it off, but the static persisted. It wasn’t until I pressed my ear to the speaker that I heard the voice: a woman’s voice, soft and melodic, speaking in a language that sounded like Portuguese but with a strange, guttural undertone. She was saying something about a ‘silver light’ and a ‘door that opens beneath.’ I shut the radio and didn’t sleep that night.

The next day, I decided to investigate the mall. My father had worked there, and I remembered visiting him sometimes, watching him patrol the empty corridors. The mall had been shut down years ago, after a fire in the east wing, but the shell remained, its windows boarded up, its parking lot cracked and weed-choked. I drove there, and as I stood in front of the main entrance, I felt a pull, a sense that the voice was coming from inside. I forced open a side door and stepped into the dim, musty interior.

The air was cold, and the floor was littered with debris. I walked past the old department store, past the stalled escalators, toward the food court, where the skylights let in a haunting gray light. And there, in the center of the food court, I saw a pool of silver liquid on the floor, reflecting the light as if it were a mirror. The voice grew louder in my head, and I realized it was coming from the pool itself. I knelt down and looked into it. The surface rippled, and I saw not my reflection, but a vision of my father, standing in a dark corridor, holding the radio. He was looking at me, his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear him. The voice said clearly, ‘He is waiting, but he is not alone.’

I stumbled back and fled the mall. But the radio followed me home—I found it on my nightstand that evening, its dial still in the same position. That night, the voice spoke again, this time in English, but with a broken cadence. ‘You must come back,’ it said. ‘You must open the door. The silver light is the key.’ I tried to ignore it, but the static grew louder, and I felt a pressure in my ears, a terrible ringing that wouldn’t stop.

I called my mother’s friend, a medium named Marguerite, who had known my father. She came over and listened to the radio, and her face went pale. ‘That’s not a woman,’ she said. ‘That’s a thing that copies the voices of the dead. It’s using your father’s memories to lure you.’ She warned me not to return to the mall, but the voice grew more insistent, and I began to see my father in my dreams, standing in the food court, his face gaunt, his eyes pleading. He would point to the silver pool and then vanish.

On the third night, I couldn’t resist any longer. I drove back to the mall, the radio crackling in the passenger seat. The voice was singing now, a lullaby I half-recognized from my childhood. As I entered the food court, the pool was larger, shining like mercury. The voice said, ‘Finally. You are here.’ And from the pool, a shape began to rise—not a woman, but something made of silver ribbons, coalescing into a human form. It wore my father’s face, but its eyes were devoid of warmth. ‘I have kept him,’ it said. ‘He was a conduit. Now you will be his replacement.’

I backed away, but my hand touched the radio, and the static exploded into a deafening crescendo. The silver thing lunged, and I felt a cold grip on my arm. But my father’s voice, faint and desperate, cut through the noise: ‘Lily, run!’ I pulled free, and as I ran through the mall, the silver light chased me, but I found the door and threw myself into the night.

I drove home, shaking, the radio silent on the passenger seat. When I got home, I looked at the radio, and the dial had moved to a new position—a station with a name I didn’t recognize: ‘KTKX, The Hollow.’ I smashed the radio with a hammer, but as the pieces scattered, the voice spoke one last time from the broken speaker: ‘I will find you again.’

Now, whenever I turn on any electronic device—my phone, my TV, the car stereo—I hear a faint static between channels. And sometimes, when the house is quiet, I catch a whiff of silver, a metallic scent, and I know the door is still open somewhere. My father is not at rest, and neither am I. But I left the mall that night, and I never went back. I can only hope that the broadcast will fade, like a signal carried away by the wind, and that one day, I will hear only silence.