When WZTR, a tiny AM radio station in rural West Virginia, announced it was shutting down, no one in the town of Red Hollow seemed to care. The station had been running since the 1950s, mostly broadcasting grainy gospel music, town hall recordings, and weather updates. Its only real quirk was its midnight slot: a show called Voices from the Hollow, hosted by the reclusive Edgar Finch.
No one had seen Edgar in years. Most people thought he was dead or pre-recorded the segments. But at exactly midnight, every night, Edgar’s voice would come on—slow, deliberate, like someone reading from crumbling parchment.
He told stories.
Stories that weren’t quite fiction, weren’t quite fact. He’d describe things that never made the news: an old woman who hadn’t aged in eighty years, a screaming shadow in the coal mine, a boy who vanished in the fog behind the elementary school and returned with his mouth sewn shut. Nobody believed him. But people listened. The signal barely reached beyond the county lines, and that was how the town liked it.
Then came the final night.
October 31st, 2023. Midnight.
WZTR was scheduled to go dark at 12:30 AM. Edgar’s final broadcast.
I remember because I was in the control room. I was the night tech, hired just weeks before the shutdown. I never met Edgar in person. He had his own dusty studio in the basement and refused any assistance. We were told to leave him alone. “He’s sensitive to interference,” the station manager said, whatever that meant.
That night, a storm had rolled in from the hills, heavy and black, the kind of rain that turned the mountains into hungry things. Lightning forked in the distance. The signal flickered but held.
At 11:59 PM, I saw movement in the hallway—someone walking toward the basement stairs.
It was Edgar.
He was taller than I imagined, stooped and wrapped in a dark coat. His face was pale, slack, and his eyes looked… wrong. Too wide. Too dark. Like they were reflecting something I couldn’t see. He didn’t look at me as he passed.
I almost called out. But something in me whispered not to.
At exactly 12:00 AM, his voice came on.
“Good evening,” he said. “And goodbye.”
He sounded different. Tired. Hollow. Like someone whose lungs were full of dust.
He didn’t tell a story this time. Not really.
“This place… this town… was never meant to last. Not in the way people think of places. Red Hollow isn’t on most maps. Not really. It exists in the cracks. And tonight, the cracks open.”
I stared at the monitor. The signal was strong—clearer than it had ever been.
“I have kept the door closed for as long as I could,” Edgar said. “That was my job. My family’s job. The radio waves… they seal the space. Like a lock. Like a chant.”
He paused. I could hear him breathing.
“But I’m tired now. And the station dies tonight.”
The hairs on my arms stood up. I looked outside. There were shapes in the rain.
Not people. Not animals. Just… shapes. Moving too fast. Too smooth. As if the air bent around them.
“I can hear them now,” Edgar said, softer. “They’ve been waiting.”
The room got cold. I mean cold. I could see my breath.
And then I heard something through the headphones—not just Edgar’s voice, but another voice behind his. Whispering. Layered. Wrong.
“… hungry … return … let us … open …”
I ripped the headphones off, but the whisper kept going. It was in the speakers. In the walls.
I ran downstairs.
I should not have.
The basement door was open.
The studio glowed red, though no lights were on. The walls shimmered. Edgar sat at the mic, hands folded, staring straight ahead. But his mouth wasn’t moving.
The voice was still broadcasting.
“… let us through … the lock is broken … your voice is gone …”
And then he turned to look at me.
Not just his head—his whole body twisted, like a puppet yanked by invisible strings.
His mouth opened.
There was nothing inside. No tongue. No throat. Just black.
I ran. I made it outside.
The town was wrong. The sky was purple. Not like a sunset—like a bruise. The air shimmered, and the trees bent inward, like they were bowing.
I saw people. Standing still in the rain. Staring up. Eyes wide. Mouths open.
From the woods, the shapes came.
Tall. Thin. Crawling and gliding at the same time. Some had too many arms. Some had none. Their skin shimmered like oil in water.
And they began to sing. Not with mouths. With the air. With the wind. And I knew—knew—they had always been there. Just waiting.
Waiting for Edgar to stop speaking.
For the broadcast to end.
I don’t remember how I got home. I woke up the next morning in my bathtub, shivering, the radio playing static.
WZTR was gone. The building collapsed in the night, according to the local paper. “Storm damage,” they said.
But the signal wasn’t dead.
Sometimes, around midnight, if you tune to 1030 AM and turn the dial just right, you’ll hear it:
The whisper.
“… still hungry … more voices … yours will do …”
I don’t sleep much now.
I keep the radio off.
And I never, never, speak after midnight
React
