Trembling With Fear 09/15/2019

Don’t Change the Station

The tune drifted and waned, the guitar riffs splayed, the rhythm of the drums staggered, the bass tones grew distant, the vocals broke up. The static invaded. He stopped singing along, just before Bruce Springsteen could ask if there was anybody alive out there.

Aimee looked across from the shotgun seat at Bryan, only the car’s headlights, refracted through the windscreen, showed him the shadow of the smile on her face. Full lips, a strawberry pout with pearly whites. “Don’t,” he said, laughter at the back of his voice.

“I didn’t,” Aimee answered, her hand going to her mouth to cover her smile. The static played through the radio, the car’s tires rumbled on the dirt road, and still he heard her muffled laughter. “You were enjoying that though,” Aimee said, and Bryan noticed he was still thrumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Even though the song he’d been tapping them to had since been interrupted, replaced with a grey noise. He looked out, the world was so dark, the car’s headlights seemed feeble, broken even, the high beams struggled to part the solidity of the midnight hue. They sped past a road sign, momentarily illuminated by the headlights, the sign read: Dockery.

“Just say it,” he said, casting his eyes to the clock on the dashboard, it was nearly midnight. Aimee giggled. When she wouldn’t ‘say it’, Bryan put on an exaggerated imitation of her, “You don’t need an old car like that. Get one with a GPS built-in, one with an aux cable, hell, even a CD tray, we can buy some for the drive. Some honeymoon it’ll be, Route 66 and rock ‘n roll, and us lost somewhere in the great wide open of the United States.”

Aimee mimicked him, “There’s nothing to worry about, hon, this is good old American Muscle,” she patted the dashboard in mock affection. “This car’s got soul. Besides, we won’t be driving through the badlands, it’s all straight-shootin’. A long stretch of road, there’s no way we’ll get lost and if we do, at least I’ll be lost with you.”

He was just about to respond when he saw her reaching for the radio’s dial, he heard something new but with an old sound, something muffled by the static but growing – like a drowned voice escaping through bubbles popping on the crackling surface. Musically, it was a hunk of stone, what others saw before the sculptor began chiseling; a sculptor never saw just a hunk of stone and Bryan didn’t just hear fuzzy airwaves.

“Don’t change the station,” he said. Aimee’s fingers perched on the dial.

They stayed like that, Bryan’s foot on the pedal, wheels churning dust and pebbles, his eyes on her hand, the same as hers were. He thought she must be hearing it too. The music was still soft, but not distant, muted but not far. It was like someone was playing for them, right there in the back seat, so softly – like all the musician wanted was to be background music, like he didn’t want to disturb the couple.

“Don’t change the station,

Don’t you do that my dear.

The music’s a playin’,

And the Guitar Man’s near.”

Steely chords strummed to a pentatonic scale, twanging acoustic melodies rode out, frantic fingers fidgeted and frolicked along the fretboard, caressed by a bottleneck slide, and Bryan was almost certain a whiff of smoke had just been blown from the backseat. Tendrils of nicotine, silver streamers of tar, wafted across his vision.

“Don’t change the station,

While the music’s so clear.

Ain’t heard this before,

But there’s nothing to fear.”

The clarity was perfect but raw, no polish, the pitch hypnotic. Aimee’s fingers had drawn back ever so slightly from the radio, but the volume was steadily increasing. Bryan thought it was backcountry music, early blues, jazz; the first stones laid in the foundation to the temple of Rock. His fingers drummed out the tune on the steering wheel, even though he’d never heard this song. His foot still pressed the pedal down, motoring the car through the liquid night.

“Don’t change the station,

Baby, we’re nearly here.

Motor’s a runnin’

And the Night’s shifting g –”

“BRYAN! STOP!”

Aimee was right next to him, but she sounded further away than the Guitar Man in the backseat. Bryan was still fixated with the radio and its eerie song, barely aware that Aimee had reached over and grabbed the wheel. The rental car spun about on the dirt tract, skidding and grinding on the hard-packed gravel. Tires screeched and wailed. The vehicle teetered, one side off the ground, before it crunched back down on all four wheels. The headlights made the swirling cloud of dust opaque, a rubber-induced sandstorm corralled about the car like ghostly dancers in an empty juke joint. For a second, Bryan believed he could make them out, actually see them. The music had stopped, and all Bryan heard was Aimee sobbing.

He was about to reel on her for what she had done, how stupid and reckless it was, but one look at her in the darkness, her eyes bulging out of the shadows dancing across her face stopped him.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she murmured, as if scared of the answer. He didn’t reply to her, feeling goosebumps rise on his skin. Hear her? All he’d heard had been the song, she had been as frozen by it as he, hadn’t she?

She grabbed his arms, nails digging in, panicked, and asked, “Didn’t you see the tree? You were going straight at it!”

“Tree?” he asked slowly, his mind working like a cirrhosis infected liver did on a bad hangover.

“The tree!” Aimee insisted, one arm flashing backwards to point it out. “The one right in the middle of the road!” She turned to look out the rear window and gasped. Bryan, didn’t want to turn around, thinking there might be a man in the backseat with a guitar on his lap and a cigarette drooping from his lips. Instead, Bryan looked out the side mirror.

Behind the car, painted in red from the brake lights – his foot was pressing down on that pedal now, his thigh and calf jittering in spasms – was a crossroads. There was no tree at the middle of the four-way intersection, but if Aimee hadn’t taken the wheel, Bryan would have run over a man sitting in a chair at the crossing.

In the crimson glow, reflected in the mirror, Bryan could make out a guitar on the man’s knees, and a cursive trail of smoke rising from the man’s lips, up past the brim of the hat that obscured the man’s face.

“Don’t go out there, Bryan, please. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing there. Please, let’s just go.”

“I thought you said it was a tree,” he mumbled as he got out the car. With his foot off the pedal, the man in his chair at the crossroads was swallowed up by the night. The man’s head was bowed, the red eye of his cigarette the only light. As the shadowy figure began to strum on his guitar, Bryan heard that same song come through the radio again. He took a step closer to the man, the music from the car sounded a little further away now, but Bryan didn’t hear any notes floating towards him from the man in the chair.

Another step closer and Bryan froze as the man raised his head. The glowing ember of the cigarette wasn’t the only red eye Bryan saw. The man stopped with his guitar, and raised his hat from his head, as if acknowledging Bryan as his solitary audience. Noticing two bony stubs that grew out of the man’s head, Bryan spun about as fast as the car had before, and ran back to the driver’s seat, slamming the door and shifting the gears. His quivering leg struggling to catch the clutch.

Forcing his foot against the accelerator, wheels churning up more dust and skidding as the car lurched forward, Bryan didn’t look in the rearview mirror as they raced off in the direction they’d come from. He kept his eyes straight ahead and moved his hand to squeeze Aimee’s. The radio came to life as they sped away, and no matter how many times Aimee hit the button to turn it off, the music kept playing.

Bryan was too frightened to check the rearview mirror, not sure if he was more terrified at the notion of seeing the Guitar Man there in the backseat or still sitting at the crossroads.

“Don’t change the station,

Was a pleasure my friend,

I’ll keep a playin’

The crossroads ain’t the end…”