The voices were creepy – but also curiously compel-ling, almost mesmerizing. He found himself staring at the radio too long, his attention dangerously diverted from the highway, yet each time that he looked up, he was able to focus on the traffic for only a few seconds before lowering his gaze once more to the softly glowing radio.
And now behind the whispery muffled roar of the multitude rose the garbled bass voice of. . . someone else someone who sounded infinitely strange, imperial and demanding. It was a low wet voice that was less than human, spitting out not-quite-decipherable words as if they were wads of phlegm.
No. Good God in Heaven, his imagination was running away with him. What issued from the stereo speakers was static, nothing but ordinary static, white noise, electronic slush.
In spite of the chill that continued to plague him, Tommy felt a sudden prickle of perspiration on his scalp and forehead. His palms were damp too.
Surely he had pressed every button on the control panel. Nevertheless, the ghostly chorus droned on.
‘Damn.’
He made a tight fist of his right hand. He thumped the flat of it against the face of the radio, not hard enough to hurt himself, but punching three or four buttons simultaneously.
Second by second, the guttural and distorted words spoken by the weird voice became clearer, but Tommy couldn’t quite understand them.
He thumped his fist against the radio once more, and he was surprised to hear himself issue a half-stifled cry of desperation. After all, as annoying as the noise was, it represented no threat to him.
Did it?
Even as he posed that question to himself, he was overcome by the irrational conviction that he must not listen to the susurration coming from the stereo speakers, that he must clamp his hands over his ears, that somehow he would be in mortal danger if he understood even one word of what was being said to him. Yet, perversely, he strained to hear, to wring clarity from the muddle of sound.
‘…Phan…’
That one word was irrefutably clear.
‘.. . Phan Tran. . .‘
The repulsive, mucus-clotted voice was speaking flawlessly accented Vietnamese.
‘.. . Phan Tran Tuong. .
Tommy’s name. Before he had changed it. His name from the Land of Seagull and Fox.
Phan Tran Tuong. .
Someone was calling to him. Far away at first but now drawing closer. Seeking contact. Connection. Something about the voice was . . . hungry.
The chill, like scurrying spiders, worked deeper into him, weaving webs of ice in the hollows of his bones.
He hammered the radio a third time, harder than before, and abruptly it went dead. The only sounds were the rumble of the engine, the hum of the tires, his ragged breathing, and the hard pounding of his heart.
His left hand, slick with sweat, slipped on the steering wheel, and he snapped his head up as the Corvette angled off the pavement. The right front tire – then the right rear – stuttered onto the rough shoulder of the highway. Sprays of gravel pinged and rattled against the undercarriage. A drainage swale, bristling with weeds, loomed in the headlights, and dry brush scraped along the passenger side of the car.
Tommy grabbed the wheel with both slippery hands and pulled to the left. With a jolt and a shudder, the car arced back onto the pavement.
Brakes shrieked behind him, and he glanced at the rear-view mirror as headlights flared bright enough to sting his eyes. Horn blaring, a black Ford Explorer swerved around him, avoiding a rear end collision with only a few inches to spare, so close that he expected to hear the squeal of tortured sheet steel. But then it was safely past, taillights dwindling in the darkness.
In control of the Corvette again, Tommy blinked sweat out of his eyes and swallowed hard. His vision blurred. A sour taste filled his mouth. He felt disoriented, as if he had awakened from a fever dream.
Although the phlegm-choked voice on the radio had terrified him only moments ago, he was already less than certain that his name had actually been spoken on the airwaves. As his vision rapidly cleared, he wondered if his mind also had been temporarily clouded. It was easier to entertain the possibility that he had suffered something akin to a minor epileptic episode than to believe that a supernatural entity had reached out to touch him through the prosaic medium of a sports-car radio. Perhaps he’d even endured a transient ischemic cerebral attack, an inexplicable but mercifully brief reduction in circulation to the brain, similar to the one that had afflicted Sal Delano, a friend and fellow reporter, last spring.