Ghost Radio Read online

  He picked up his book and tried to read, but his mind wandered and he found himself becoming intrigued by the sound of the engine. What had been a mere background hum revealed deeper and more specific characteristics.

  He put down the book, cocked his head, and listened. Concentrating, he heard organic rhythms, almost like breathing, hidden within the blare. He looked around the cabin. The other passengers went about their business unaware: reading, chatting, drinking, and eating. Oblivious to the symphony surrounding them.

  Joaquin looked away, drawn in by the sound. It pulled him away from the mundane concerns of the moment into a universe where layers of meaning rested in bizarre and unknown places. Where overlooked details of life become a secret code embodying hitherto unimaginable mysteries. Dragging him deeper into this world was the increasing feeling that there was sentience coiled within the engine noise.

  He leaned his head against the window, pressing nearer to the vibrations. He hoped this closeness would not only allow him to hear more clearly, but bring him into communion with this awareness…make him part of it.

  With his ear to the window, he did pick up new layers. The pulsating rhythm under the hum shifted from merely organic to distinctly human. It became the labored breath of a human being: a person gasping for air. A person trying to speak.

  He mashed his ear harder against the window, and stilled his own breathing, willing himself to hear, willing the engine to speak.

  A part of his brain told him this wasn’t real, an aural illusion. But he quieted that voice and listened more intently.

  All the extraneous noise fell away and only the strange labored breathing remained. Joaquin heard the rasping of dry, cracked lips. The suggestion of a tongue sliding across the roof of a mouth. He almost saw the mouth. A mouth flecked with blood, the victim of some trauma. An act of violence that made speaking all but impossible. He held his breath and sent out calming, soothing thoughts, hoping to ease the being who owned this injured mouth. Ease its mind and help it speak.

  At first, he sent this request out as a feeling, just an amorphous suggestion. But his desire to hear more coalesced into words. Not spoken, but as real as if they had been. The sentence in his head began in a vague and rambling form:

  “C’mon, please speak! I want to hear your voice. C’mon, c’mon!”

  Then he pared it down, simplifying it into the essential request.

  “C’mon, talk.”

  Then it just became:

  “Talk.”

  He repeated the word over and over again in his head.

  “Talk…talk…talk…”

  He waited and listened. He heard the dry lips crack and the breath gasp in an elephantine struggle for speech.

  “Talk…talk…talk…”

  The gasps increased, a desperate attempt to fill lungs (which could not possibly exist) with air. Air so this hidden sentience could finally deliver its message to Joaquin. And he desperately wanted to know what that message was. He switched to a coaxing word:

  “Yes…yes…yes…”

  The gasping stopped. Joaquin’s skin prickled as he waited for the first word. The seconds ticked by.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  The moment expanded. The cloud of “now” hovered around Joaquin, embracing him with its large maternal hands. Thoughts of destiny and the buried mists of his painful past rose slowly to the surface, as he waited for a word.

  He closed his eyes willing himself deeper into the communion, deeper into this new world. Images flashed through his mind: faces contorted in pain, burned flesh, walls splashed with blood.

  Still the being did not speak.

  Joaquin felt his entire body tense, his eyelids jamming together, his hands clenching into fists.

  The plane shook, knocking his head against the window. The lights flickered. He sat back, rubbing the side of his head. His link with the being, the sentience was gone.

  The plane lurched again. Something skittered across the floor, knocking against his foot. He bent down and picked it up. It was an iPod. Through the headphones he could hear the words of a familiar song:

  “Kill, kill the poor.”

  chapter 9

  DEAD KENNEDYS IN AN AMBULANCE

  Gabriel felt himself being lifted into an ambulance. Through bleary eyes he saw another stretcher rolling in alongside him. On it lay another boy about his age. He looked battered and bruised. His eyes flickered open and closed. The boy seemed to be struggling for consciousness.

  Two paramedics got in and the ambulance took off, sirens wailing.

  Gabriel stared at the boy. He wondered if he looked as bad. The paramedics were working around him, putting some kind of needle in his arm. But it all seemed far away, as did his pain. He felt like he had a broken leg, but it was information from outside, like a telegram he’d received from a far-off land.

  The boy next to him began to hum as if his life depended upon it. Maybe it did.

  Over the blare of the siren, Gabriel recognized the lines from “Kill the Poor” by the Dead Kennedys. That song had been running through his head lately. An odd coincidence, he thought. He started humming as well. The other boy caught on and this seemed to energize him. Then they sang together:

  Jobless millions whisked away

  At last we have more room to play

  All systems go to kill the poor tonight

  Gonna Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor: Tonight

  Gabriel knew they weren’t quite capturing the spirit or energy of the song, but he found this punk anthem comforting. It was as though the song had been created for this moment, for this purpose. A giddiness swept over him, a joy unlike anything he’d felt in his short life. Sure, it might be the painkillers pumping through his veins, but he didn’t care. He embraced it.

  The paramedics laughed at the strange display. But Gabriel kept singing. Perhaps he subconsciously understood the darkness of this day. Perhaps, somewhere deep in his unconscious he knew of the pain and grief that lay ahead.

  But now it was just about this odd duet. It was about dreaming himself into some dingy punk club. Standing on the stage, screaming into the microphone, while he looked down at the roiling mosh pit below. Giving voice to the pain and cynicism of a generation of lost youth. The crowd shouted and cheered.

  He was in that club, singing his heart out, until he finally lost consciousness.

  chapter 10

  ST. MICHAEL’S HOSPITAL

  When Joaquin opened his eyes, he was prostrate in a bed. He knew he was in a hospital, and realized that intense pain had awakened him. There was someone in his room, she was dressed in white. He asked her about his father. Without even turning to look at him, the nurse answered as she left the room.

  “Dead, just like your mother, both of them dead.”

  He didn’t see her face. He tried to yell and call her back, but no sound came out. He couldn’t move.

  He spent the next few hours suffering, immobilized, in profound silence, surrounded by blank white walls, sweating, shivering, every bone in his body hurting. When the doctor on call finally arrived, Joaquin told him what the nurse had said. The surgeon, visibly upset, left the room without another word.

  Joaquin heard raised voices in the hallway. Then deeper, more professional tones. Several moments later the doctor returned.

  “I want to apologize on behalf of the hospital. This is not how we do things. I’m profoundly sorry,” the doctor said.”

  That’s okay,” Joaquin said, not sure why he was so forgiving.

  “If it’s any consolation, they didn’t suffer. In these types of collisions, death is usually instantaneous.”

  Joaquin found himself wondering why a painless, instantaneous death should be thought of as comforting. It terrified him.

  “Son, you have some hard times ahead. You’re going to have to be very strong.”

  Across the hall, in another white room, Gabriel opened his eyes. Almost before he was fully conscious, he was yelling. Yelling for some
one to come. No one did. He found the call button and pressed it. Moments later, a nurse entered.

  “My parents are dead, aren’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know that, I wouldn’t know. You’ll have to talk to the doctor.”

  “Are they dead?” he asked, raising his voice.

  The nurse looked at him. The mixture of compassion and pity Gabriel saw in her eyes was all the answer he needed.

  He sank down into the bed. The notion of tears crossed his mind. None fell.

  Both boys were alone, wounded and scared. Their futures were suddenly completely unsure. Joaquin’s only relative in Houston was his grandmother, who’d undergone surgery a few hours after the accident. No one knew about the deaths until after the operation was over. They were waiting for her to be out of danger before giving her the terrible news. None of Gabriel’s relatives had been located yet.

  Several days passed before Gabriel and Joaquin met. They were both in wheelchairs. The nurses who were pushing them down the hallway gave them a moment alone. Joaquin recognized Gabriel as the person from the ambulance without knowing exactly how, since they’d never actually seen each other, and spoke to him:

  “You crashed into us, right?”

  “I what?”

  “You were in the Volvo that hit us.”

  “You were in the Ford? The nurses told me about you.”

  “Do you like the Dead Kennedys?” Joaquin asked a little anxiously, wanting to change the subject. He wasn’t ready to talk about the accident yet.

  “Yep. ‘Kill, kill the poor,’” Gabriel intoned, his voice off-key.

  Joaquin was relieved that Gabriel also remembered what had happened in the ambulance. This meant it hadn’t all been a hallucination. He raised his hand as best he could to give him a high five. Gabriel stretched out his arm and touched his palm.

  “It’d be nice to have some music in here,” he said.

  “There’s a TV in the room they put me in, but I don’t even get a stinkin’ radio. I love music. I need music.”

  “You play an instrument?”

  “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

  “I can just tell.”

  “Guitar and synthesizer. But I don’t know if I’ll ever play again. I can’t feel these fingers,” he said, lifting his right hand.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to jam together sometime.”

  At this point, as Gabriel’s nurse returned, both boys noticed her slim, athletic legs, which were barely veiled by a skirt that modestly covered her knees, and each suddenly got a hard-on. They realized that they had something else in common: a taste for women whose long legs were encased in uniforms.

  “See you around,” he said as he rolled away.

  “I’ll be here,” Joaquin said, thinking that neither of them had even asked about the other’s injuries, or mentioned his parents.

  Joaquin had been dreading an encounter with the van’s survivor, and he was surprised by what had just happened. He wasn’t able to truly comprehend his parents’ deaths until much later on; the famous stages of pain—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—were all jumbled together in his confused mind. In his darkest hours, he’d hated the driver of the other car and told himself he’d seek revenge against its survivor. He imagined cutting the bastard’s head off with a machete, and feeding it to the stray dogs of Tijuana.

  But when he saw the focus of his hatred that first time, his anger melted away. He had no desire for revenge. He just saw another sad, wounded boy. A kindred soul. He looked forward to speaking to him again and even, perhaps someday, playing music together. Something good had to come out of this horrible catastrophe.

  He sought the good on those dark and painful days. Days he spent silently crying in his room, avoiding the looks of compassion and pity in his roommates’ eyes. And there were the whispers: “He lost both of his parents.” “He’ll never walk again.” “They’re sending him to an orphanage.” Joaquin pretended not to hear, wishing for his music, something, anything to shut out their voices. But his prized Walkman, which he’d had for years, was lost, pulverized on the highway. So he lay there with only the TV for distraction, stoically bearing the soap operas, talk shows, and entertainment programs his roommates watched.

  The days passed and he slowly healed.

  chapter 11

  HELICOPTER WISHES

  “I hate hospitals,” Joaquin said, tossing his suitcase on the bed.

  “You mean hotels.”

  “Why? What did I say?”

  “You said ‘hospitals.’”

  “Jeez,” Joaquin said, shaking his head.

  Alondra walked over to him, and rubbed his shoulders and the back of his neck.

  “You’ve been in a mood since we landed. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  Joaquin pulled away, unzipped his suitcase, took out a manila folder, and leafed through the papers it contained. He couldn’t find the paper he needed, and tossed the folder across the room in disgust.

  He walked over to the window and drew back the curtains. The Dallas skyline spread out before him, glittering in the night sky. Whenever he thought of America, this was the image that sprang to mind, gleaming skyscrapers against a night sky. But looking at them now, he felt removed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be in America. Wasn’t sure he could tolerate the shimmering newness of Dallas.

  He’d expected this to be a sort of homecoming. The prodigal son returns to show he “made good” in the great wide world. But he didn’t feel like a prodigal son. Not in the slightest. He felt like a child: a sad, lonely child crying in the night for his parents.

  And Alondra wasn’t helping. She thought he needed to share his feelings about Gabriel and those painful and glorious days so long ago. But talking wouldn’t ease his feelings. It would only make them more intense.

  And then there was this other thing. The strange being that sought communion with him. He’d sensed it back in Mexico. Sensed it at some deep and transcendent level. Back there he thought it held answers, answers to the deepest and greatest questions of his life. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Perhaps it was a dark force, drawing him in. A spider perched on its web, waiting. Spiderwebs are seductive; he couldn’t pull himself away even if it meant ruin, even if it meant death.

  Some distance away, a helicopter was circling a skyscraper. Its lights flashed as it dipped and turned. A part of Joaquin wished he was inside that helicopter, flying through the Dallas night.

  As he watched the helicopter he noticed something strange. The flashing lights didn’t strobe; they pulsated. And it was a type of pulsation he was familiar with.

  It was Morse code.

  Almost unconsciously he translated the code, thinking it was probably a humorous whim on the part of the pilot. But halfway into his translation, he realized that wasn’t the case.

  He backed away from the window, gooseflesh rising on his arms and legs.

  “Are you okay?”

  He spun around, focusing on Alondra.

  “This is going to be intense.”

  “What is?”

  “Everything.”

  Alondra demanded that Joaquin explain. But he couldn’t even formulate a sentence. Other words filled his head, the words from that helicopter’s pulsating light.

  He moved back toward the window, almost tiptoeing. He looked for the helicopter. It wasn’t there. No, wait. There it was. And the light was still pulsating, repeating its ominous message.

  He watched it carefully, making sure it said what he thought and wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He was correct. And it was even more shocking, seeing it a second time.

  “Joaquin, we’ll be talking soon.”

  The casual, mundane nature of the message made it especially frightening, like a demon wearing a T-shirt.

  Joaquin stared at the helicopter as the message repeated over and over again. Each time, he shivered.

  Then the light flashed “break,” and Joaquin steeled himself for
another shock. But again he was met with banality:

  “Good-bye and best wishes.”

  It sent this message only once. Then the light returned to its normal strobe, and the helicopter veered away, disappearing into a cloud.

  chapter 12

  A DARK HAPPINESS

  It felt Joaquin’s fear. And it liked it. It also liked the new words it was learning: airplane, engine, iPod, helicopter, and Morse code. It liked the taste of these words. They possessed a crisp tang, as did the first moment of communion with Joaquin, which it cherished.

  Although it could not see Joaquin, it felt him. It felt his confusion and his seeking heart. These feelings gave it sustenance and purpose.

  When it knew Joaquin had received its message, these sensations intensified. In its vast somewhere, it reeled and spun with joy. It knew in another time, another place, it had felt this revelry before. It had marveled at accomplishment. It had spun and leaped in another shape, another form. But it pushed away such concepts, and plunged itself into the moment.

  As it felt Joaquin receiving the words again, it drank in his fear; gobbled up every morsel. And once again it whirled and whirled, marveling in its supreme majesty.

  Abruptly, this jubilation stopped.

  Joaquin was gone.

  It was alone. Alone? This too was a new word. But this one tasted sour. After swallowing the word, it felt empty inside.

  Emptiness.

  Another distasteful word. This further emptied it. It became so hollow it couldn’t move, so it drifted down into the dark valleys of its someplace.

  It felt dissipated. It wanted to give up.

  Then a power coiled deep inside sprang open. Filling it with energy. It couldn’t immediately identify this new energy, but it welcomed and embraced it.