Lost Signals Read Free Page B

summon His herd. Join me on the riverbank. We’ll pull down the sky. We’ll pull down the sun and we’ll pull down the trees. We’ll pull down the shade of— a rising wave of static overtook the voice. Eric pulled back the radio, frowned down at its face, fiddling with the dial and extending the antenna between two pinched fingers, pointing it this way and that. The voice went on somewhere back there, straining to be heard, calling out, but the static won. For just a moment, his face distorted, Eric looked considerably older than a high school kid. Older . . . or harder. Finn couldn’t decide. Maybe both.
    “You can get way better reception out at my place in the woods. Will you come to the woods with me   ?”
    Finn grimaced. “I don’t know. I have English, like right now. I’m probably already late.”
    “If you’re already late, what’s the harm   ? Follow me.”
    He walked into the woods. Finn followed.
    ***
    “Is this where you live   ?” Finn said. Yellow tents, ten or twelve of them, stood here and there among the clearing in the woods, a space ringed by tall oaks and red spruce, a space not that much larger than the Groomers’ modest backyard. Along the easternmost border stood a row of thin trees, evenly spaced like the rungs of a crib, beyond which the forest devolved into a jungle-like tangle of deadfalls and vines and profusely thorned thicket, dotted with virgin’s bower and jack-in-the-pulpit. At the sound of Finn’s voice, the wind kicked up, rustling the trees and the tents, which shivered as though cold.
    “They’re down at the river, praying,” Eric said, answering a question Finn hadn’t asked.
    “Who   ?”
    “Let’s listen awhile. Close your eyes.”
    “How come   ?”
    “Close them.”
    Eric turned on the radio and cranked the volume as high as it would go.
    The notes of a flute meander, climbing, faltering, climbing again. A male voice mutters and chuckles, sniffs. Please don’t, says a small voice, a toddler’s voice, trembling with fear. Flames crackle and far off voices rise and fall in an insistent cadence, no stopping for breath. A cheering crowd, now ecstatic, now raging. A female voice, husky and insinuating, emanates from the center of the clearing. “Masks and mirrors, gentlemen,” the voice says. “Mirrors and masks. Flesh on marble. Fountains of blood, carriages of carrion. Mister Ben will eat your worries, slurp them up like stew. Mister Ben’s boarding house has beds to spare, clean linens, perfumed halls, nurses on call with hands softer than silk.”
    Mom   ?
    “Oh, darling, I’m talking to the boys, the sweet boys. See them   ? Such handsome young men.”
    Mom   ? I’m hungry.
    “Darling, shush.”
    I want tongues. Tongues and lips. Sweat in my cup. Piss mug, dog’s water, gristle to chew.
    “Soon, sweetie, soon.”
    Dog mug, piss water, blood under my tongue. Sweetbreads and sputum . A savage giggle, deepening in pitch, bending and warping.
    Again the flute, fleeing, shrieking as something pounds the low keys of a piano with violent force. A tuneless whistle, and then a stomp, a shriek. More stomps, splatter and crunch. A bow moves across the strings of a violin, is yanked away. The howl of space. Whimpers and pleadings, zippers unzipping, rustling clothes. A child gags and retches. A bird says CHUR chattle CHUR chattle CHUR. A pipe organ, brazen and fierce, spedupsuperfastchipmunkfast. Calliope and callithump, wheeze and whine, high-pitched, a crying dog, bereft and disconsolate. Night falls like a shade, with it that familiar roar of static. Finn drops away . . .
    ***
    . . . and Finn awoke. He lay face up, staring at the ceiling of a tent, which glowed an alien green. He was clothed, save his shoes, which sat at his side in a chaste soixante-neuf . He wanted to know what time it was, and he wanted to drift back into blackness. Something shifted, a rustle of clothing, a sniffle. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and saw Eric