The Long Mile North - Chapter 1 — The Broadcast

In November of 1997, a radio station outside of Saskatoon abruptly vanished from public records.

No explanation. No fire. No bankruptcy. Just gone.

The station was called CKL-13, though nobody could ever agree what the letters stood for. It operated from an old transmission tower deep in a frozen patch of farmland north of the city. The signal was weak during the day but strangely powerful after midnight. Truckers used to joke that if you tuned in at exactly 3:13 a.m., you could hear voices whispering beneath the music.

Most people laughed it off.

Until the disappearances began.

I first heard about CKL-13 from my uncle Darren. He was a mechanic who fixed transport trucks along Highway 16. One night after too many beers, he told me he used to pick up the station during overnight repairs.

“It wasn’t normal radio,” he said quietly. “Sometimes the announcer knew things.”

I laughed.

Then he leaned closer.

“One night the voice said my name.”

That shut me up.

According to him, the station played old records from the 1940s and 50s. Static-filled jazz. Crooners. Big band music. But every so often the songs would stop abruptly, replaced by dead silence.

Then came the breathing.

Not human breathing either.

Slow. Wet. Ragged.

Listeners reported hearing footsteps in the background. Doors creaking. Crying. Once, somebody claimed they heard screaming buried underneath the static.

And then there were the announcements.

The announcer never introduced himself. His voice was deep and distorted, like someone speaking through water.

He would say things like:

“Don’t look outside tonight.”

Or:

“The fields are hungry again.”

Most disturbing of all, he sometimes read names.

Real names.

People from nearby towns.

A week later those people would disappear.

Nobody connected the dots at first. Rural police blamed the brutal winters, drunk driving, or people simply leaving town. But by 1998, twelve people were missing within a 60-kilometre radius of the tower.

Then came the final broadcast.

An amateur radio hobbyist recorded part of it before the signal died forever. The tape surfaced online years later, though copies tend to vanish mysteriously. I listened to it once.

Only once.

It began with static.

Then old piano music.

Then the announcer spoke.

“If you are hearing this,” he said, “you are already marked.”

For several seconds there was only crackling.

Then another voice whispered beneath his.

Not one voice.

Hundreds.

Whispering together.

The recording distorted violently after that. Metal screeching. A woman crying. Something pounding against a door.

Then the announcer returned.

“They opened the wrong field.”

At that exact moment, according to official reports, every power transformer within five kilometres of the tower exploded simultaneously.

The broadcast ended with a sound I still cannot explain.

Chewing.

Slow chewing.

The tape cuts out after eighteen seconds of it.

I wish that were the end of the story.

It isn’t.

Because last month, nearly thirty years later, I found the station again.

I was driving alone through northern Saskatchewan during a snowstorm. My phone had no signal. The highway was empty except for blowing snow and darkness.

Then the radio turned on by itself.

Soft jazz crackled through the speakers.

My stomach dropped instantly.

The display read:

CKL-13

I nearly drove into the ditch.

The announcer spoke almost immediately.

His voice had not changed.

“Good evening,” he whispered.

Static hissed loudly.

Then he said my full name.

I slammed the radio off.

Three seconds later it turned back on.

And the announcer began laughing.

Not loudly.

Not wildly.

Just softly.

Like he already knew something terrible was waiting for me further down the road.

And outside my windshield, standing in the middle of the snow-covered highway…

…was a man-shaped figure with no face.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model