Ghost Radio (23 page)

One thing's for sure
in this country: the highways, even the most remote ones, don't just melt away into the desert, Joaquin thought as the car bumped along the rutted scrubland. On the radio Alondra was subtly teasing a woman who thought she saw her father's ghost appear every night.

Joaquin couldn't pay attention. He needed to find the highway again, and he was totally disoriented. He should have just been able to retrace his route, but he suspected that things weren't going to work that way. This labyrinth wouldn't let him out. He made a U-turn and accelerated, craning his neck out of the driver's-side window. The moment he looked ahead again, he had to slam on the brakes. Standing a few feet in front of the car was Barry, the shaman's assistant: a trembling figure dressed in rags.

Joaquin stared from behind the glare of the headlights, unable to believe his eyes. He opened the car door and approached Barry slowly, not knowing whether to ask “What are you doing here?” or “What happened to you?” After what seemed like an eternity, he found himself standing in front of the young man. He didn't know what he had asked, or even if he had said anything at all.

“It's cold,” said Barry dully.

“You need to bundle up,” Joaquin answered, even though he had no blankets to offer.

“Where are we?”

“I don't know, I'm lost too. Do you recognize me?” asked Joaquin, suddenly realizing that Barry hadn't seemed surprised at meeting him in this strange place.

“I'm here because of you. Since you appeared in my life, everything has fallen apart,” Barry said finally, raising his eyes from the ground.

“I don't understand.”

“Why am I here? Let me go.”

“I had nothing to do with this.”

“I never recovered from that infection I picked up in Guerrero. You're an incubus from hell.”

“Get into the car. In a few minutes, we'll be in a Starbucks drinking coffee.”

“Let me go. If I'm dead, let me go.”

“Hop in,” Joaquin said. “I'll take you home. C'mon, it's cold out here.”

Barry looked at the car as if it had just materialized.

“What makes you think we'll get anywhere in that thing? Look around you. Where are you going to go?”

“Climb aboard. If this car got me here, it'll get us out again.”

“No, I can't go back. Look what I've got now.”

He unzipped his pants and let them fall to the ground. He wasn't wearing any underwear. He stood before Joaquin, naked from the waist down. That, however, was less surprising than the fact that there was a face where his genitals should have been. Joaquin saw a large, aquiline nose with small, inexpressive, bestial eyes on either side. Below it, a lipless mouth opened and closed over and over again, like a fish struggling to breathe. Joaquin felt the bile rising in his throat.

“What is that shit?” He gagged.

Then he saw another face on Barry's knee, more repulsive than the first. Its tiny mouth drooled and moaned.

“You tell me. What's happening to me? If the master were here, he would have protected me from you.”

“Barry, Cortez is alive. I just saw him. He was working as a bellboy at a motel. I have nothing to do with what's happening to you.”

“Go to hell.”

“Let me take you to a hospital.”

“What, you think they're going to prescribe an antibiotic and cure me of
this
?” He gestured at his extra faces.

“I don't know. Will you just get in the car?”

“Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone.”

He turned and walked back into the darkened desert, pulling up his pants as he went. Joaquin shouted after him but he didn't stop, and Joaquin watched helplessly as he disappeared into the blackness.

Joaquin saw flashes of himself in Barry—a broken, fragmented man, a walking cadaver.

No, he told himself, I'm not that! I won't become that.

He got back into the car and drove. The landscape became more treacherous with each passing second. He had the nasty feeling that each bump and divot would be the vehicle's last. Finally, he saw the lights of a house in the distance. Rocks and huge cactuses made driving impossible. Without a second thought, he stopped the car and walked, almost ran, toward it, hoping to find something or someone. An answer? Some respite? Even a battle. Hell, he thought, even something frightening and horrific would be better than being lost any longer, gradually transforming into what Barry had become.

Joaquin looked down at his joints, searched his skin for unfamiliar markings, touching his penis now and again just to make sure it was still there. By the time he reached the house, he was out of breath. It turned out that it wasn't a house, but a country store. The only thing barring entry was a battered screen door. He pulled it open and called out:

“Hello, is anyone there? Can I come in?”

No answer.

He repeated the question. Again, nothing. He entered cautiously and heard someone talking inside. He called out again as he stepped across the threshold. The floorboards squeaked, and there was a monotonous voice…chanting? When he got closer, he saw an old radio sitting on the table. It was tuned to a religious station. The voice was an evangelist sermonizing about glorytogod, and the salvation only achievable by accepting ourlordjesuschrist as youronlysavior.

“Do you accept him as your savior?” he asked, his words tinged with a slight Asian accent.

He recited prayers, threatened his listeners' souls with perdition, and then wrapped up the whole thing with an offer: “To be saved, call 1-900-SALVATN! To make a donation, dial 1-900-GODGOLD!” According to the announcement that followed, the pastor's name was Yoong-Go Chung. Unfortunately for Pastor Chung, thought Joaquin, there's no one but me around, no loyal followers to hear his message of redemption. Nothing more appropriate in this desert than a redeemer preaching in solitude.

He passed the radio and knocked at a closed door on the other side of the room. There was no answer. He twisted the doorknob. It turned. He crossed the threshold into the next room, then stopped short, flabbergasted. He was in the lobby of his motel. He quickly retreated back into the store. But now it wasn't a store. It was an office. He dashed toward the exit, went outside, and found himself in a parking lot with two huge garbage bins and a wall covered with graffiti. One of the tags read
KILL KILL KILL THE POOR
.
His car rested in the exact spot where he'd left it. He went back to the lobby and walked up to the reception desk.

“Good evening, sir. Everything all right in your room?” asked the clerk enthusiastically.

“Yes, I believe everything's fine,” Joaquin answered.

“You have a message, from a Miss…Algebra.”

“Algebra?”

The front-desk clerk pulled out a slip of paper from under the desk.

“No, sorry, Al-on-dra. The person who left the message is named Alondra.”

Joaquin took the piece of paper and headed toward his room.

His room looked
completely different from the way Joaquin remembered it. He tried to determine how much time had passed since Gabriel's call. Fifteen minutes at most. Maybe less. Even though it was likely he had gone no farther than the motel parking lot, he felt a curious, mute euphoria at having returned, at not having turned into something like Barry, at no longer being lost in the desert. He wanted to believe it had been a dream. In fact, he wanted to believe that about much of his life. Who wouldn't? Joaquin welcomed this pleasant thought. It eased his mind. But it changed nothing.

His life was still in chaos. Questions remained unanswered. And this moment of calm, like all of the others in the last few days, quickly evaporated.

What had happened? What was happening? Perhaps he'd wandered through an intermediate realm between dreams and wakefulness. An intermediate realm between dreams and wakefulness? What did that mean? Every puzzle turned into another puzzle. How much longer could he cope? Could he handle a life where reality possessed the transience of dreams? He was exhausted, but he had to call Alondra.

“Hi, I heard you called.”

“Finally. I've been waiting to hear from you.”

“How'd you know where I was?”

“Telepathy, long-distance vision, spy satellites. Or, more likely, from your message.”

“My message.”

“The text message you sent me.”

“No…are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. I got the message from your cell phone a couple of hours ago.”

“From my cell phone, but not the one I'm calling with. The other one. Right?”

“Yeah, the old one. Did you find it?”

“I found it.”

Joaquin knew who'd given her the information, but he didn't want to explain it over the phone.

“I dialed both numbers lots of times, but no luck.”

“Yeah. Where I was, there's practically no reception.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“What I was looking for?”

“Joaquin, are you awake? Are you listening to me?”

“Sure, sure, I'm just very tired.”

“Okay, let's give it a rest, we'll talk tomorrow. It's late.”

“No, don't hang up yet. I didn't find what I wanted…” Joaquin started to say, but just then he stuck his hand in his pocket and took out the tape he'd stolen from Winkler. It was the closest thing to evidence he had. “Actually, I did find something. I'm not too sure what good it will do me, but the trip wasn't a total washout.”

“Well, that's good.”

“I heard the program. Listening to your voice was the best thing that happened to me all day,” he said, making an effort to sound affectionate.

“We weren't on the air today. It must have been a repeat. But I thought no one broadcast us Sundays. You know, religious shit. I'll check it out. When are you coming back?”

“On the first available flight.”

“Fine.”

He listened to her breathing. He sensed she wanted to say more.

Joaquin needed something more intimate than just good-bye. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened. He wanted to share what he'd seen and warn her about what might lie ahead. But what did lie ahead? He had no idea. The fact that they hadn't been broadcasting that
day didn't even surprise him. Reality had become a puzzle whose pieces had deformed and didn't fit together anymore.

“See you soon.”

“Yes. Tomorrow. Good-bye.”

They hung up.

The dry farewell deepened Joaquin's somber mood. He was hurting and tired. He took off his clothes, turned on the television, and got into bed. He needed sleep, but anxiety got the better of him; he surfed channels, leaning back against the headrest. One channel featured Pastor Yoong-Go Chung, the televangelist who still intoned glorytogod and ourlordjesuschrist and youronlysavior. He flipped channels, and J. Cortez appeared on the screen. When he saw him, Joaquin leaped out of bed. Would this nightmare ever end? Cortez sat in a generic office chair; the only scenery was a cheap-looking backdrop decorated with Aztec, Mayan, and other pre-Hispanic symbols, all mixed together in no particular order. Under his face in red letters it said
PASTOR CUAHTÉMOC ILLUICAMINA: 1-900-CHAMANI
. He was in the middle of a sermon about the path of the Toltec warrior.

“Reality was just an illusion,” he preached, “a collage of perceptions, emotions, and mirages.”

Under other circumstances, Joaquin would have found this incoherent nonsense amusing. He would have dismissed Cortez as just another phony preacher, getting rich by exploiting insomniacs and lonely hearts—the depressed and the desperate.

But today he found it soothing.

He listened intently as the pastor continued:

“The fabric of reality is held in place by the tension that exists between the domains of the living and the dead. These two act as the poles of a universal dynamo, generating the energy that keeps the world in balance. Although they are separate, they can be traversed through portals, disruptions in the order of things caused by a variety of different factors, Joaquin.”

What? Did the pastor just say his name?

“Factors such as people on their deathbeds, for example, highly mor
bid necrophiles, or those who have undergone near-death experiences.”

Near-death experiences? Is that what incited all this?

“If there's one thing that the living and the dead do share, it's radio. The radio can be heard in the other dominion, just as it can in ours.”

“They already explained that to me,” Joaquin said sarcastically. The television was addressing him, why shouldn't he talk back?

“What they didn't explain to you,” the TV shaman said, “is that under certain circumstances, radio stations themselves can also open up portals between the two dominions.”

Joaquin didn't need him to draw a map. He knew what had happened that night at the radio station, or at least he thought he did. The signs were scattered everywhere. Even if he didn't quite get the mechanics of it, he knew he'd crossed a threshold that night. Crossed the thin veil into the other world.

“But in order to fully understand what happened,” Cortez said without looking into the camera, as if he were reading, “you ought to go over to 123 Nyqvist Drive and pick up some souvenirs you lost along the way. You shouldn't have any trouble recognizing the place.”

Joaquin knew what the man on TV was talking about. There was an old industrial building at that address where he and Gabriel had lived as squatters just before the incident at the radio station. He could never, ever forget such a peculiar address. After the accident, he never went back. What for? It was practically impossible there'd be anything left. Even if the other squatters hadn't stolen everything, the building probably had legal tenants by now.

“And, if you want to continue on the path of the Toltec warrior, call now and make a donation to the Temple of Christian and Toltec Redemption. Come on, Joaquin, don't be a cheap bastard. Make the call.”

Joaquin stood up. It was late, but he had to go see what awaited him at 123 Nyqvist Drive. He dressed quickly, gathered his belongings, and left the room. He needed sleep, but he would get no rest until he solved this puzzle.

No rest at all.

Old memories and unknown images bounced around in his head at dizzying speeds as he walked toward the parking lot. He drove like someone possessed, arriving at his destination without being aware of the trip. The two-story ocher-brick building with black bars looked just as he remembered, unchanged in more than twenty years.

He knocked on the door, not knowing what he'd say if someone answered. Was that even likely? At this time of night? Who'd take the risk? They might find a crazy man standing on their porch. Tonight they
would
find a crazy man standing on their porch.

Then he remembered how Gabriel picked the lock when they'd absentmindedly left their key somewhere. He climbed down from the porch and surveyed the ground. He needed a piece of wire, thin but sturdy. He looked around. Nothing. He walked over to the sidewalk, the gutter.

There he found it. A thin piece of copper wire: just the right thickness. Just the right density. Had it been placed here just for him?

Then he grabbed a rock, and headed back to the door. He slid the wire into the keyhole, and banged on it with a rock. He struggled a little trying to twist the knob, but on the third try the door gave and swung open. Before he could step inside, a frying pan crashed against the doorframe, missing his face by inches.

A woman was screaming, and Joaquin saw a man charge the door, trying to slam it shut. Joaquin took the blow and pushed the door as hard as he could, throwing it wide open and sending the man, a short, stocky guy with blond dreadlocks, rolling on the ground. The woman, still screaming, threw a kitchen knife at Joaquin, which hit him on the arm—fortunately with the handle end, not the blade.

“Easy! I don't want to hurt you,” Joaquin yelled.

“Kill him, Dash. Kill him!” the woman screamed.

Actually, Dash could barely get up off the floor.

“Out of my house!” he yelled, not too convincingly.

Joaquin picked the knife up off the floor, brandishing it.

“Easy, I'm not going to do anything to you. I just want to ask you something.”

The woman threw everything within reach at him. He evaded the onslaught with varying degrees of success, until finally he leaned down and pressed the point of the knife blade against Dash's neck.

“Stop it, or I'll cut Dash's fucking head off!”

The woman froze. Dash moaned something along the lines of, “No, please, don't.”

“I didn't come here to hurt anybody, I'm just looking for my stuff. I lived here a long time ago, and I left everything behind.”

He looked around the living room, pointing out different items:

“Those bookcases, that table, those paintings, the graffiti on that wall, they were all mine. All I want are some souvenirs, things that wouldn't have any value to you.”

What exactly was he looking for? He had no idea.

When he saw that he had their full attention, he lowered the knife and helped Dash to his feet.

“I'll be out of here soon. Please, just let me look for my stuff.”

“Yeah, it's him, Lizzy,” Dash said to the woman.

“I already recognized him,” she answered.

“What are you talking about?” asked Joaquin. Were they fans of
Ghost Radio
?

“There's a box of photos and crap. We kept it in case someone came around looking for it. You're in most of the photos. I recognized you right away. Well, right after I realized you weren't a murdering psychopath.”

“That's what I want.”

“Let me go get it,” Lizzy said.

“Sorry for barging in like this. But I just really needed that stuff back.”

“We thought you were from the city. They've come by a few times to try and evict us.”

The woman presented him with a shoe box crammed full of photos, papers, envelopes, and various other objects.

It wouldn't be long before daybreak.

Joaquin took out a fistful of old, fading Polaroids. Gabriel's memories, the testimonies to his experiences and adventures, were being in
exorably erased. Among the dusty papers was an envelope that looked recent. He took it out of the box. It was addressed to him; he recognized Gabriel's handwriting.

“That's the only thing that's new,” Dash said.

“Yeah, your friend brought it a few days ago.”

“What friend?”

“That guy,” he said, pointing out one of the photos that Gabriel had taken of himself.

“What did he do?”

“I found him sitting outside on the sidewalk. He told me the same thing as you, that he'd lived here and left a lot of stuff behind. I thought he'd want it all back, so I told him that when we got here the place was empty. But he starting listing all the shit we'd inherited from you guys. Then he reassured me there was nothing to worry about, that I could keep it. But he asked me to give you this envelope, along with everything else in that box, whenever you showed up.”

Joaquin took Gabriel's latest appearance in stride. His capacity for surprise had vanished. Under the curious gaze of Dash and Lizzy, he emptied the contents of the envelope out onto the table.

He smiled at the items arrayed before him. A blast from the past: photos, diagrams, and notes, all relating to Gabriel's last day on earth. He gazed for a time at the floor plan of the radio station, remembering the day Gabriel first showed it to him. His eyes wide and clear, speaking of becoming pirate-radio legends.

But then his smile faded. One item on the table didn't make sense. A photo. He picked it up slowly, his fingers trembling, and an eerie chill coursing through his body.

No, he told himself, this is impossible. It just can't be.

His hands were paralyzed. The photo slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his knees buckled. He grasped a chair to keep from falling.

In the photo, Joaquin and Gabriel stood arm in arm, smiling. And on Joaquin's right slouched a very serious-looking Alondra.