075 - Seventy-Five

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So I…I followed the feeling this morning.

Somehow, I managed to fall back asleep last night. I didn’t sleep well—I don’t remember any of my dreams, but I think they were nightmares. They must have been. Because I woke up and that feeling wasn’t gone.

That feeling of dread. Of something standing, just off to the side. And it still doesn’t feel like mine which—that doesn’t even make any sense to me so I can’t even imagine what it sounds like.

I keep a little running calendar in a pocket notebook—not that dates are important, but it’s helped me feel a little more sane over the last six years. Today is Halloween. I’m sure there’s some kind of joke in there, but I don’t know what it is.

[click, static]

Why did you tell me to stay out of Denver, Birdie? Does it have something to do with what’s happening to me now? I don’t believe in ghosts, or hauntings but—

[click, static]

Room 217. That’s where the feeling took me. That’s where I am now. I’ve been walking around with the CB and—

I wish I could tell you how this worked. But I left my room on the top floor and just started walking. It was like playing a game of hot and cold. Stepping slowly down long hallways, waiting for the dread to get worse. Following the dread all the way down, the feeling growing stronger and stronger like a screeching sound that gets so loud it almost buckles your knees.

Like tuning a radio. Searching through the static to find a frequency you can click into.

The CB is still on. It—it doesn’t make any sense. I’m holding it, completely detached from any source of power and it seems to be—I mean, it’s working. The light is on, all the frequencies seem to be receiving, even if it’s just static. I don’t know if it’s sending any signals out but—

How is this happening? Someone explain this to me.

And it…it changed. As I walked, the static changed in time with that feeling in my gut. Like my hand was on the dial, turning, turning, except it wasn’t. It wasn’t picking anything up—just static—but the static changed. Like it’s responding to something here. Like it was waiting to be in the right place.

Room 217. That’s where the static cleared. That’s where the feeling led me and it’s—

[click, static]

It’s just a room. An ordinary room.

There’s nothing here.

[click, static]

I thought—for a moment, I thought—

[click, static]

When I walked in—all the curtains were drawn, it was dark. Hard to see anything beyond what was illuminated by me opening the door.

I saw a man. Dark hair, beard. Packing a suitcase. As ordinary as the room he stood in. 
The door swung shut behind me and he vanished. But I could have sworn that, before he did, he looked at me. Like he was surprised by the sound of the door. Like he could hear it.

I checked the whole room. Threw open the curtains, checked every channel on the radio.

But no, there’s nothing here.

There’s—

[sudden dead air]