Ghost Radio (10 page)
Authors: Leopoldo Gout
I sold my soul
to the devil.
That old cliché never felt more apt. I won't go into detail. When you're talking about business, the minutiae of contracts, unions, safety, and benefits bore me to tears. After all, it all boils down to one question: How much?
I know it might sound mercenary, even flat-out selfish, but what can I say? For the first time in my life, someone had managed to stir my ambition. It began, like so many other things, with an e-mail. The message was signed by a guy named Dan Foster and sent from an address at InterMedia Enterprises. I answered courteously, as I always do. Dan kept sending me messages for a few weeks, like he was just another fan commenting on the program and giving his opinion on my hosting. Then one day he traveled to Mexico to see me, and tossed out his proposal. He didn't waste time.
He offered me a nationally syndicated program, a fabulous salary, an apartment, and a car. But Dan Foster, who it turned out was president and CEO of the media conglomerate, presented all this as if it were a mission, an unprecedented adventure in social upheaval.
“We're going to break barriers in every sense of the termânot only because they'll be able to listen to you across the United States of America on the radio and around the whole world on the Internet, but because on top of crossing over into the afterlife, you're also going to be crossing linguistic and cultural barriers that no one's ever been able to penetrate. Can you imagine what this will mean to the Hispanic community?”
I could imagine and nodded my head, but it all seemed abstract to me.
Besides, I wasn't interested in being a pioneer in my field. My life wasn't what you would call chaotic, but I considered it well stocked. The way Foster was talking, this program was going to turn me into the general of a Hispanic broadcast revolution. I told him this.
“You're going to pave the way for your countrymen.”
“To be honest, I didn't get into radio to change the world.”
“You're gonna be a hero.”
I won't deny having ridiculous delusions, but becoming a hero wasn't one of them, and certainly not from a broadcasting booth.
“Dan, it's a little program about ghosts and horror stories; we're not writing declarations of independence here.”
“I know, but believe me, it'll be revolutionary anyways.”
It didn't make sense to argue; to him, a Mexican hosting a successful radio program was groundbreaking. To me, it didn't seem any more relevant than the fact that there were Mexican actors and directors like Salma Hayek, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro González Iñárritu in Hollywood. Apparently, to him, this was not only more important but more subversive.
Next, we talked about money.
I didn't go into radio for the money. What I earned allowed me to live well, but the InterMedia offer was very impressive. We're talking serious cash.
He did say I'd have to go through a “test period,” but suggested with their promotional backing I'd pass through that with flying colors. I wasn't so sure.
I originally developed an interest in radio after I accepted that I'd finally reached the inevitable age where I was too old for rock and roll, and too young to die. I played with lots of bands and recorded hundreds of tracks after the dissolution of Deathmuertoz, but I was never satisfied with the results. I had never been able to recapture the kind of sound I'd had with Gabriel. None of what I'd done afterward seemed like it was up to the standards of our music.
And Gabriel wasn't there.
Without him, making music felt like work.
For me, radio was a space for reflection. On the air, I submerged myself in music and literature. I listened along with my audience; I read to myself and to them, I discussed all kinds of ideas with total strangers. It was the perfect medium: intense, warm, interactive, and highly volatile. From my very first session in the broadcast studio, I felt like I was in a time capsule, a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was a protective bubble where nothing and no one could touch me. The semidarkness, the illuminated panel, and the on-air light combined to create a cozy, womblike environment, a sort of cosmic solitude. I had the sensation of floating in space, completely isolated from the real world. My only human contact was with the disembodied voices of callers. Everything seemed dusted with an etherealâyes, I'll say itâghostly quality. I could touch and hear the whole world, while no one could be sure of my existence; I was just one more voice in the teeming concert of hertzian waves. It was a land of the blind, where we were guided by sounds and voices, and space took the shape our words gave it. We transformed it with every description, comment, insult, or digression. It was almost like death, floating aimlessly at night, listening to spectral voices that in turn spoke about specters, indifferent to their own condition.
One day, I read a fragment from Edgar Allan Poe on the air: “The Telltale Heart.” My audience responded well. The calls poured in. Some, who already knew the story, praised me for “elevating the abysmal level of discourse on that pigsty you call a program.”
Others, younger or more ignorant, wanted to know more about Poe. Did he teach at a local university or sign autographs at shopping malls? The surprising thing was that a few, inspired by my reading, started calling in with anecdotes, stories that seemed to them mysterious or inexplicable.
“Hello, my name's Manuel. I work as a security guard at a building downtown that's under construction. I couldn't resist the temptation to call, because I really liked what you read. I already wrote down the author; I'm going to buy the book. But what I really wanted to tell you is something that happened to me.
I'm forty-two years old, and about twenty years ago I worked in construction, you know, as a builder. Anyways, one night I was working overtime with my uncle at a site. I had to push wheelbarrows full of mixed cement up to the third floor on top of some wooden planks. One night my uncle, who got me the job, showed me a bottle of tequila. “How âbout it, nephew, want some? It'll warm you up!” I said no, it was a bad idea. I could get into trouble or even fall. He said: “Don't worry, just take it easy. We aren't getting drunk, we're getting warm.”
Back then I drank. Not anymore.
The last time I had one was about five years ago and I don't intend to fall off the wagon. But back then I thought my uncle might be right. Besides, he was almost as important as the foreman, so I figured nothing would happen. I took a drink and started up with a load. When I got back down, I walked past my uncle again. He told me to take another shot, and I did. By the fifth round, I was real tipsy, singing and talking shit. And then I fell. I fell into the wheelbarrow, rolled a few yards, and then dropped about six feet. I was covered in liquid concrete. Everything hurt; I thought I'd never be able to move again. Then I heard my uncle's booming laugh. His guffaws echoed on the naked walls of the construction site. He finally stopped laughing and came down to see if I was still alive. He wiped the cement off of me and helped me up.
“What a fuckin' idiot you turned out to be, nephew,” he said over and over again.
I'd had enough and I was really hurting, so I told him a few times to knock it off, but he'd have none of it. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world, me falling like that. He kept making fun of me as we climbed out, but then he slipped, hit his head, and landed in the same place where I'd fallen. I limped down there to take a look. He wasn't moving. His eyes were open but it looked like he wasn't breathing.
“How 'bout that, motherfucker, who's got the last laugh now!” I shouted at the old bastard.
I was so angry I threw the wheelbarrow down after him. But it wasn't long before I sobered up and realized that this was serious business and I could end up in jail. I brought more cement and poured it over my uncle. By the second full wheelbarrow, though, he started moving. Terrified, I ran for another full wheelbarrow and threw it on him. Then I carefully smoothed it over. By the next morning, the cement was dry and the floor looked pretty good, maybe a little higher than it was supposed to be. Luckily, it was hardly noticeable. When the architect arrived that day he asked me why we'd poured that floor already. I got nervous. I said my uncle had told me that it had to be done so they could put in the stairway. He looked at me curiously, and asked how my uncle was doing.
“I don't know, last night he went home by himself,” I answered.
“When you see him, tell him to please come and see me.”
“What, the floor isn't good enough?” I asked him.
“It's fine, but I need him to hurry up with the stairs.”
No one ever saw my uncle again. Some thought he'd run off with a woman. His wife couldn't understand it, because he'd never been a Don Juan and he always checked in. After some months, she accepted that he'd either gone up north or been killed during a mugging.
I continued working at the site. One night, I woke up tasting blood and tequila. I washed out my mouth several times, but it wouldn't go away; on the contrary, every time I passed the place where my uncle was buried, the taste grew stronger. Sometimes, I thought it was going to choke me; sometimes it even made me throw up. I went to see several doctors, even a healer. No one found anything. I chewed mints all day long. I ate raw onions and garlic, but the tang of blood covered everything. I became
desperate; I had all my teeth extracted, thinking that would cure me. Nothing. It pursued me long after we finished that building. The people living there now would never imagine that they walk over my uncle every time they climb the stairs. Yesterday, in fact, I almost went over there to yell to the whole world that my dead uncle is buried in the cement down below. My nerve failed me. But when I heard that story just now, I knew it was a sign. Finally, I must confess.
“Well, thanks for sharing your story on the air, although I don't really know how to handle a case like this. Are you going to turn yourself in to the police?”
“No. Why should I?”
“You murdered your uncle.”
“I didn't murder anybody. He fell by accident.”
“Well, you covered him with cement.”
“He wasn't dead at the time.”
“I know, but the cement killed him. How do I know you're not pulling my leg?”
“That's your problem,” said the man. I imagined the taste of tequila and blood in his mouth as he hung up.
This definitely wasn't the kind of response I'd expected from the public when I decided to read Poe on the air. I never thought it would turn my audience into “radio witnesses” to a crime.
“But while we're researching that, keep those calls coming,” I said.
The calls didn't stop. At first, we only got a few each night, but it quickly became a deluge. Thousands of people wanted to talk about their experiences or put in their two cents about the stories of other callers. Soon I couldn't keep up with all the calls pouring in. This piqued the interest of the radio station; first, they assigned me a permanent sound engineer (up to that point, I'd worked with whoever was on the clock), and then they started adding assistants to take calls and attend to the growing needs of the program. Most remarkable of all, I gained the respect of my
colleagues and bosses. My placid oasis of calm, the pitch-black ocean of tranquillity where I had floated aimlessly, became a frenetic anthill of activity. There were still dead hours, and slow days, but
Ghost Radio
, as we started calling the program, consistently registered the best ratings in both its genre and its time slot. Calls flooded in from across the nation and other parts of the world; Latinos residing in the United States bombarded me night after night with their stories, but soon they were also calling in from as far away as Australia and Namibia. My bosses were happy, and so was I. I wouldn't have changed a thing, but change came anywayâ¦with a vengeance.
The new show
with InterMedia was certainly different from those early days. The office was nicer, the coffee was better, and the paychecks substantially larger. But one thing was the same: the callers. They were the same mix of bizarre, sincere, and ridiculous.
Joaquin liked this mixture. His fears about being in America slowly disappeared. But they would return one night when a peculiar caller lit up line two.
Â
“We're here with a caller who won't give his name,” said Joaquin, pushing the button for line two. “Go ahead, anonymous friend, you're on the air.”
The silence seemed endless.
Usually in situations like this, Joaquin would jump in, yelling: “Caller, are you there?” If the caller didn't respond instantly, he'd be cut off. This time, though, Joaquin sat quietly. He didn't rush the caller and didn't check to see if the line was still active.
“Dead air!” hissed Watt.
Joaquin didn't respond. Alondra opened her mouth to say something. Joaquin signaled her to wait.
Silence.
The seconds passed.
Tickâ¦tickâ¦tickâ¦
A raspy voice resonated through the speakers.
“Joaquin. I'm glad we can speak to each other again.”
“Speak again?”
“We're old friends.”
“I usually recognize my friends.”
“I saw death.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“Just what I told you. I saw death. Nothing happened to me; I wasn't pulled from death's grip; I didn't lose my will to live. I simply saw death's face, its poisonous snout squealing a few inches from my own.”
“Like
Alien 3
?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“The first
Alien
film?” Joaquin said, suppressing a laugh.
“You've seen him too, Joaquin. He remembers you.”
Joaquin was intrigued.
“And how do you explain this apparition?” asked Alondra.
“Let's just say at this point I wouldn't consider it to be a solitary apparition, but rather a recurring event.”
“So you see death often?” asked Joaquin.
“Often.”
Joaquin felt a chill run down his spine. This call was making him very uncomfortable. It wasn't the usual. It demanded attention. He looked at Watt, who had stopped eating and was motionless, staring at the monitor. Like a cat thinking it's heard a mouse.
“I am something special. Unlike anyone you've ever talked to before. I am
Ghost Radio
's beginning and end, its alpha and omega. I am a transformed and transfigured being, waiting for you in the night.”
Joaquin's arms felt numb. He wanted to stretch or maybe stand up, but he could barely move. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a change in the shadow that the table cast on the wall. It looked different, as if it were illuminated by another source of light. For a moment it seemed to transform intoâ¦a tombstone. He blinked, and it was the table again. But now he was aware of the shadows playing tricks with his peripheral vision. Before his eyes, matter transformed into shadow and shadow into matter.
Meanwhile, the anonymous caller continued.
“It's a privilege to be in this position: between life and deathâ¦heaven and hell.”
“Purgatory,” said Alondra.
“No, sweetheart, that's a bedtime story for religious freaks. From where I am, I can make phone calls, watch TV, eat junk food.”
“Some would say that's the best of both worlds,” remarked Alondra.
“And the worst, of course,” added the voice.
Joaquin saw a cadaverous face: flesh hanging from bone, muscles exposed. He winced.
“Try to imagine an animal is eating you alive, chewing on your head. You're conscious. You feel its fangs dig into your scalp, feel strips of flesh pulled from your skull. For the past ten years, I've lived with that sensation.”
Joaquin was startled. His palms were sweaty. He glanced around, half expecting to find somebody watching him.
“Now, are you interested in listening to me, Joaquin?” asked the caller.
“Completely,” he answered. “But I think you're lying.”
“Just think what it would feel like to burn in an ocean of fire forever, to be cooked alive for eternity, suffering every instant as if it were the first moment you felt the flames touch your skin, without the slightest possibility of growing accustomed to the pain.”
Before the voice had finished speaking, Joaquin saw the shadows in the studio become a window looking out on an infernal landscape, one worthy of a famous illustration by Gustav Doré for the
Divine Comedy
that had given him childhood nightmares. He couldn't understand what was happening. Blinking nervously, he looked around trying to gauge whether he was the only one tormented by these images. A sense of anguish overwhelmed himâhe had never seen or felt anything like this. It was true that after his parents' deaths, extremely vivid nightmares had caused him years of sleepless nights. But he had overcome these long ago. One day he decided that he wouldn't be afraid again, that he wouldn't
allow it, that instead he would respond coldly to everything. The worst thing that could happen to him already had, and so he unshouldered his emotional burden.
At that moment, however, flanked by his girlfriend, Alondra, and his friend Watt, the old fear returned.
“Did you hear my question?” Joaquin asked, trying to regain his composure.
“What do you think I'm lying about?”
“I don't think you can watch TV, I don't think you can eat junk food, I think you're lucky to even make this call.”
The caller was silent. But this time Watt didn't warn Joaquin about dead air. Finally, the caller spoke.
“What do you think of this fairy tale? Once upon a time, there was a young man, barely past childhood, who lived in a perfect world of privilege, a world where his sexual awakening was experienced with the most beautiful girls, where he only needed to wish for something and it would come true, and where everything indicated that his talent and intellect would take him to the top of whatever mountain he chose to climb. Then his universe fell apart; he was left abandoned and alone in a world of shadows and danger, at the mercy of criminals and depraved minds. The young man, no longer a child, was transformed into a swan, saving him from that bleak world.”
“A swan, huh? Like in Andersen's story âThe Wild Swans.'” Joaquin recollected it vaguely.
“Exactly.”
“Why don't you just cut off this asshole,” whispered Alondra in his ear. She was covering the microphone, but it was obvious she would have preferred to scream it out on the air.
Joaquin shook his head.
“For our listeners who don't know it, this is yet another children's tale, so of course it's macabre, sadistic, and sordid. As it should be.
“In this one, the king's eleven impeccable and well-behaved sons were the victims of their evil stepmother's jealousy. She forced the king
to expel them from the palace. It was through some strange magic that they were transformed into swans,” explained Joaquin.
“That's right, the swan is a symbol of the ethereal state of salvation. What appears to be a horrible punishment is, in fact, redemption.
“At night, the swans once again took on human form. In the end, their only sister made the sacrifice of sewing linen nightshirts for them, woven from nettles taken from a cemetery. When the swans were draped with these nightshirts, the spell was broken and her brothers were set free. I don't care what it is; I find this story sinister, a sad tale of injustice with an absurd moral.”
Watt and Alondra were making frantic signals, drawing their index fingers across their necks as if slashing their throats. Alondra slipped him a piece of paper:
“You have to cut him off. Now!”
Joaquin again gestured for them to leave him alone.
“Well, my friend Joaquin, since you're having some sort of rebellion among your staff, I'm going to let you go for now. But before I leave, let me just say this: Joaquin, we'll talk soon. Best wishes.”
And then everything fell silent.
Once again, they had dead air.
Joaquin shivered just as he had that night, months earlier, when he received the same message flashed in Morse code by a helicopter. But strangely, he also tripped back to another night. A night of destiny.