Johnny America

 

Voic­es

by

Illustrration of a tape recorder

We de­cid­ed to make a ghost record­ing in the woods. It was my idea, though we all agreed to it.

You’ve prob­a­bly heard about stuff like this, maybe lis­tened to al­leged spec­tral voic­es on the In­ter­net. Pro­fes­sion­als— if that’s the prop­er term — go to places where they hope to cap­ture mes­sages from be­yond, set­ting up ul­tra-sen­si­tive au­dio equip­ment to do so. 

But we weren’t para­psy­chol­o­gists us­ing cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy. We were three teenage boys in a po­dunk town in Up­state New York in the sum­mer of 1979, and our equip­ment was a Re­al­is­tic CTR-43 portable cas­sette recorder. 

If you’re will­ing, come walk with me along the cor­ri­dors of mem­o­ry, and I’ll tell you of that at­tempt, and what be­came of it. 

There were three of us in this en­ter­prise: me, my old­er broth­er Mar­vin, and our neigh­bor Ronald. I was 13, Marv a year and a half old­er, and Ron 15. It was the start of sum­mer va­ca­tion, those three blessed months of free­dom: a cat­a­lyst for fun, for mis­chief, and for the weird no­tion soon to be plant­ed in my ado­les­cent mind.

Brows­ing in the town li­brary in the first week of June, I came across a vol­ume ti­tled The Di­ary and Sundry Ob­ser­va­tions of Thomas Al­va Edi­son. It needs a snap­pi­er ti­tle, I thought, gaz­ing up­on the mono­chrome pho­to of Edi­son in pro­file grac­ing the dust jacket. 

Open­ing it, I skimmed the ta­ble of con­tents: “War and Peace,” “Ed­u­ca­tion and Work,” “Man and Ma­chine.” Then the last chap­ter ti­tle caught my eye, and I felt some­thing course through me, like a tiny jolt of electricity.

VIII THE REALMS BEYOND

Life af­ter death

I bor­rowed the book, got on my bi­cy­cle, and went home. Sit­ting on my bed, I be­gan to read.

Thomas Edi­son want­ed to in­vent tech­nol­o­gy to con­tact the dead. He had a the­o­ry about mi­cro­scop­ic “life-units” which sur­vive phys­i­cal death and com­prise what we call the soul. It was vague, with no de­tails about how the de­vice would work. Still, this wasn’t the kind of stuff about Edi­son you learned in school. 

The next day, Marv and I went “ex­ca­vat­ing” with Ron. That was when the idea for the ghost record­ing hit me.

Our street and Ron’s in­ter­sect­ed on the east­ern edge of town. Each street had a dead end be­yond which were wood­land trails lead­ing to the Bat­ten Kill, flow­ing west un­til its wa­ters joined the Hud­son. With a bit of dig­ging in the woods just be­yond the end of Ron’s street, you could find emp­ty bot­tles from the turn of the cen­tu­ry: sar­sa­par­il­la, whiskey, patent med­i­cine, what have you. We trad­ed them like base­ball cards. 

So there we were, hav­ing cho­sen our re­spec­tive ex­ca­va­tion spots, search­ing with buck­ets and shov­els for bot­tles to add to our col­lec­tions. We’d lat­er wash them off with the hose in Ron’s back­yard and divvy them up.

My first find was a thin, blueish bot­tle that had once held “Ther­a­peu­tic Min­er­al Wa­ter of Sarato­ga Springs.” At least eighty years old, I thought, brush­ing the soil from it. Who­ev­er had bought and drunk this wa­ter was like­ly no longer alive. Who was it? I pic­tured a young man in a sack suit and bowler, sport­ing a han­dle­bar mus­tache, and a young la­dy in a long skirt, shirt­waist and elab­o­rate col­or­ful hat, sip­ping the min­er­al wa­ter of Sarato­ga from slen­der bot­tles. She is young and beau­ti­ful and a Tem­per­ance Union­ist, and he is court­ing her, and even though he en­joys a cold lager af­ter work, for the sake of her hand in mar­riage he will dis­avow the de­mon alcohol. 

Who bought this? What if I could talk to them and find out, like Edi­son want­ed to?

Lat­er, wash­ing dirt off the bot­tles with Ron’s gar­den hose, I said, “Guys, I’ve got an idea.”

There was rain that night, so we put off our self-ap­point­ed mis­sion un­til the next evening, agree­ing to ren­dezvous by Ron’s house at a quar­ter to mid­night and head for the en­trance to the woods.

Af­ter mak­ing sure our moth­er was asleep — our fa­ther was in Flori­da, as I re­call; he wasn’t home much — Marv and I qui­et­ly left the house and took our usu­al route to Ron’s house, squeez­ing through the cor­ner gap in the fence at the back of the yard to en­ter Ron’s property. 

Dew from the grass stirred about our feet as we walked. The fire­flies of ear­ly June, hap­py to be out among the still-damp fo­liage, float­ed like a myr­i­ad of fairies’ lanterns. I imag­ined, briefly, one of the fairies warn­ing us to go back, not to med­dle in things no mor­tal man or boy should know. I ig­nored this fan­cied ad­mo­ni­tion and trudged on be­hind my el­der broth­er. Ron was wait­ing for us by his house, sil­hou­et­ted against the street­lights. No one spoke as we ex­it­ed his front yard and pro­ceed­ed down the street.

We got to the dead end where as­phalt be­came dirt and grav­el, which in turn be­came the trail in­to the woods. The en­trance struck me as a black cav­ernous maw wait­ing to de­vour us, but I drew a lit­tle com­fort from the light of the fire­flies within.

Don’t! cried the float­ing, lantern-wield­ing fairy of my imag­i­na­tion. The for­est is wait­ing to con­sume you! To eat your soul! I sud­den­ly had to pee. I stopped walking. 

“You all right, Bruno?” Ron asked.

“Yeah. Just gonna take a whiz.”

“Sure.”

I stepped just in­side the canopy of trees and off to the right. Some­how, the pro­sa­ic act of emp­ty­ing my blad­der calmed me.

“OK,” I said, zip­ping up. 

“Did you bring it?” asked Ron.

“Right here,” I said, reach­ing back to slap my backpack.

“OK. Let’s go.”

We en­tered the woods, flash­lights on. Our des­ti­na­tion was In­di­an Rock.

I’d nev­er heard a def­i­nite leg­end of how In­di­an Rock got its name, oth­er than the ob­vi­ous al­lu­sion to in­dige­nous peo­ple. There were ru­mors that the site was haunt­ed. It was more or less what the name sug­gest­ed: a large rock jut­ting from the earth, a few yards from the riv­er bank. In the day­time we would oc­ca­sion­al­ly fish there.

When we got to the rock, I opened my back­pack and re­moved the tape recorder. There was a cas­sette in­side, 45 min­utes per side, re­wound on side A. 

Un­der the light of Ron and Marv’s flash­lights, I placed the recorder on the sur­face of In­di­an Rock and pressed the play and record but­tons simultaneously.

Plac­ing my mouth near the built-in mi­cro­phone, I asked:

“Is there any­one here who can speak to us?”

As agreed the day be­fore, we walked some dis­tance along the bank, down­riv­er, leav­ing the de­vice to record what­ev­er it could. Marv and I caught fire­flies with a cou­ple of emp­ty pick­le jars. Ron seemed to view mak­ing fire­fly lanterns as child­ish, and hadn’t brought a jar of his own.

Af­ter about an hour we went back to the rock. The cas­sette had played it­self out. I put it in my back­pack, and we went home. We agreed to meet at Ron’s house the next day to play the tape.

Ron’s par­ents were out vis­it­ing in-laws some­where, and his sis­ter was with her boyfriend at Lake George, so we had the house to our­selves. We sat in Ron’s kitchen, sip­ping glass­es of grape Kool-Aid. I re­moved the tape recorder from my back­pack and placed it on the table.

“OK, Mr. Flana­gan the younger,” said Ron. “As this was your idea, please do the honors.”

“And just in case the tape recorder is now cursed, I’d rather not touch it,” said Marv. “Just kid­ding,” he quick­ly added.

“Great,” I said. I re­wound side A, turned the vol­ume di­al all the way up, then pushed the play button.

From the speak­er came a back­ground hiss. We sat lis­ten­ing, all eyes on the ma­chine. I was tense, torn be­tween fear and anticipation. 

A sound came: a deep sigh. Then a whis­per, deep and male:

“Hear my message.”

Again, the deep sigh. The voice spoke again:

“Ron­nie Richter and the Flana­gan broth­ers are dum­b­ass dorks.” 

Muf­fled guf­faws, whis­pered mockery.

“Dorks.” 

“Geeks.”

“Freaks.” 

“Mo­rons.”

Ron pushed the stop but­ton and said, “Shit!”

“Steve Bar­rie,” I said. 

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Steven Bar­rie was the school’s star quar­ter­back, an able ath­lete and mediocre schol­ar about to start his se­nior year. His ad­mis­sion to one of the bet­ter North­east­ern col­leges on a sports schol­ar­ship was con­sid­ered more or less a done thing. That, and be­ing the son of the Su­per­in­ten­dent of Schools, made him more than a lit­tle ar­ro­gant. It was his voice and those of three friends, his en­tourage of fel­low jocks, that had mocked us. (And not for the first time. We weren’t ex­act­ly the cool kids at school.) 

“How the hell did they find out we were do­ing this?” asked Marv. “We nev­er men­tioned it to any­one.” He paused, look­ing from me to Ron and back again. “Did we?”

“Hell, no,” I said.

“Me nei­ther,” said Ron. “They must have been smok­ing weed some­where up­riv­er and spot­ted our flash­light beams. In­di­an Rock’s sup­posed to be haunt­ed. They saw the tape recorder. Not hard to fig­ure out.”

“Right,” I said. “Well…”

“Shit!” shout­ed Ron, grab­bing his head with both hands. “We’re nev­er gonna live this down!”

“Ron,” I said. “Re­lax. It’s not —”

“Re­lax! Christ, man, how am I sup­posed to re­lax? This is gonna be all over town by the end of to­day. We’re gonna of­fi­cial­ly be the freaks of the school when we go back in Sep­tem­ber. Shit! This is worse than that stu­pid sur­vey you did in the fifth grade.” I’d made a ques­tion­naire to learn what per­cent­age of stu­dents in my class be­lieved UFOs were re­al. I thought of it as a kind of so­cial ex­per­i­ment, but it didn’t go over well.

There was no calm­ing down Ron as he then be­gan rant­i­ng — al­beit in an in­di­rect way — that be­ing la­beled such an odd­i­ty would like­ly pre­vent him from ever los­ing his vir­gin­i­ty. Marv and I took the tape recorder and went home.

We drank lemon­ade in the kitchen. Our moth­er was in the liv­ing room, watch­ing an af­ter­noon re­run of The Love Boat. Marv, seem­ing­ly undis­tract­ed by Cap­tain Steuben’s ad­vice to a lovelorn pas­sen­ger, sat read­ing a col­lec­tion of sto­ries by H.P. Love­craft. (I briefly imag­ined green­ish ten­ta­cles emerg­ing from the sea to creep to­ward the good cap­tain.) The tape recorder lay on the ta­ble be­tween us. I stared at it, arms crossed, in silent turmoil.

I re­al­ized Ron was right. We would all be la­beled cer­ti­fied freaks who hunt­ed ghosts in the wee hours. The mock­ery would be in­stant, mer­ci­less, and un­re­lent­ing. Marv seemed cool­ly de­tached about the whole thing. He wore his out­sider sta­tus as a badge of honor.

I was far less equani­mous than my broth­er. Silent­ly, I be­gan for­mu­lat­ing ways to ex­act re­venge up­on Steve Bar­rie and his Ne­an­derthal un­der­lings: key­ing their cars, putting sug­ar in their gas tanks, hav­ing hard­core porn sent to their homes, in their names but ad­dressed in care of their moth­ers. Then a new thought struck me.

“We haven’t lis­tened to the rest of the tape,” I said.

“Yeah,” an­swered Marv. “Maybe a voice will say, ‘You fool, War­ren is dead!’”

“Huh? Who’s Warren?”

“It’s a line from Love­craft.” He point­ed to the book he was hold­ing. “‘The State­ment of Ran­dolph Carter.’”

“Oh.”

“You ought to read it.”

“Yeah.” 

“All right,” he said, get­ting up. “But I think The Love Boat’s go­ing to in­ter­fere with our lis­ten­ing. Let’s play it in my room.”

Marv’s room had a book­case lined with vol­umes he’d told me about, but I’d nev­er read. Not yet. Books by or about oc­cultists such as Aleis­ter Crow­ley and Eliphas Levi, fic­tion by Love­craft, Poe, and Al­ger­non Black­wood. I was the more con­ven­tion­al Flana­gan broth­er, though Marv’s in­ter­ests had be­gun to rub off on me.

“Look, this whole thing,” he said as we sat on a cou­ple of bean­bag chairs, “about us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to lis­ten to ghosts. It’s noth­ing new. You read about Edison’s idea, right?”

“Yeah.” I’d shown him the book from the library.

He got up, pulled a book from the top shelf, and hand­ed it to me. “Well, check this out.” 

The ti­tle was Elec­tron­ic Voice Phe­nom­e­na: Seek­ing the Voic­es of the Dead. It was kind of like a man­u­al, with no au­thor credited.

“Peo­ple have been try­ing this stuff for decades,” said Marv, “us­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy. Ul­tra-sen­si­tive au­dio equip­ment. Re­ceivers that can pick up sig­nals from any ra­dio frequency.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. And the ev­i­dence so far has been vague at best. It’s not as if a few kids with a Ra­dio Shack cas­sette recorder are go­ing to pick up mes­sages from be­yond the grave.” He had this lec­tur­ing way of speak­ing at times like this, like a 50-year-old pro­fes­sor trapped in a 14-year-old body. It was annoying.

“Then why didn’t you say any­thing about this before?” 

“Even if I had, you would’ve done it anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But you seemed just as hyped about it as me and Ron.”

He shrugged. “I had my hopes, I guess.”

“So, odds are…”

“There’s noth­ing else on the tape ex­cept back­ground hiss. Un­less Bar­rie and his boys came back to in­sult us some more. I can take it if you can.”

“OK.” I pressed the play but­ton, and the tape’s hiss filled the room.

Marv passed me a thin vol­ume ti­tled Flat­land. “This is a good one,” he said, set­tling in­to the bean­bag chair to read his Love­craft. I was in no mood to read. I held the book closed, star­ing at the recorder, keep­ing my ears at­tuned to the slight­est sound from the tape.

There was noth­ing but back­ground hiss. 

That same evening, we learned that Steve Bar­rie and his three friends had been killed the night be­fore near Lake George when Steve’s car crashed head-on in­to a light pole at high speed. They’d ap­par­ent­ly been drink­ing. Word was that the para­medics had to lit­er­al­ly pick up the pieces. It hap­pened around 11:00 P.M., about an hour be­fore we’d start­ed record­ing at In­di­an Rock.

Our feel­ings were a strange mix­ture. We hat­ed Bar­rie and his bud­dies, but they were class­mates who had died a hor­ri­ble death. We al­so felt re­lieved that our mid­night mis­sion at In­di­an Rock would re­main a se­cret. And then there was the ap­par­ent ev­i­dence for life af­ter death.

The next day, the three of us sat on In­di­an Rock in the af­ter­noon sun, talk­ing it over. We agreed to tell no one. Ana­log cas­sette record­ings had no date & time dis­play. It would sim­ply be as­sumed the record­ing had been made by the liv­ing, phys­i­cal jocks at some point be­fore the car ac­ci­dent, and that we were ly­ing. I could pic­ture the be­reaved par­ents ac­cus­ing us of ex­ploit­ing the deaths of their sons for the sake of pub­lic at­ten­tion. No, thank you.

“Maybe that was the point,” said Ron. “To give us proof of a ghost au­dio, yet not re­al­ly proof.” 

“A fi­nal act of mock­ery,” said Marv.

“Those dick­heads,” said I.

Ron was pret­ty handy with elec­tron­ics. With Marv’s as­sis­tance, he took the recorder apart, took Po­laroids of every­thing, and some­how man­aged to put it all back to­geth­er so that it worked. There seemed noth­ing strange about its com­po­nents, nor the cas­sette. We de­cid­ed I should keep them, along with the pho­tos, taped up in a box in my clos­et. I was ap­point­ed Keep­er of the Para­nor­mal Tech­nol­o­gy, if that’s what it was. 

Maybe there was some­thing about In­di­an Rock that at­tract­ed Bar­rie and his friends, and any tape recorder would have worked. Or maybe it was both In­di­an Rock and the recorder, a su­per­nat­ur­al com­bi­na­tion of lo­ca­tion and equip­ment. But if that’s true, who or what made the recorder able to do what it did? 

We agreed to try again, to fig­ure out how this had hap­pened: to ex­per­i­ment by us­ing the same recorder at a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion, and a dif­fer­ent, more sen­si­tive recorder at In­di­an Rock. But we nev­er did, and nei­ther Marv nor Ron has men­tioned it to me since. 

I still have that sealed box, which to this day I have nev­er opened. On the rare oc­ca­sions I am re­mind­ed of it, I feel the urge to throw it in­to a blast fur­nace, or sink it to the bot­tom of the sea. And yet there is al­so the thought, un­ac­count­able, that I may need to use it again someday. 

I have no idea why. It scares me a little.

Filed under Fiction on October 18th, 2024

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