Once again, the young man stepped though a doorway of the only local store still in order. The glass door was almost opaque from all the dirt and sediment on the glass. A small bell started frantically ringing as soon as the door closed, probably trying to make up for its small size and attempting to desperately grab anyone's attention. But there was nobody to do it for. The radio on the shelf was playing old local music at a distortion-inducing volume. And it seemed as if the music was always the same. It wasn't just a looping playlist, it was as if all the times he had been to this store were a single event spiraling through space-time.
He looked about the interior of the store. Nothing had changed since his last visit here. The counters were still dirty and dusty, and under the glass there was a small museum of Soviet era and pre-war candy wrappers, as if to commemorate a past life of this location. Of course, the life that the old goods on dusty counters and shelves were calling to, had not gone anywhere, it was still here, in this place. It was just inaccessible, somehow parallel to everything and hidden out of plain sight. It’s own little pocket of existence, where it managed just fine being detached from the rest of the world.
His gaze fell on the drinks refrigerator in the corner. Rusty metal sides and the few red patches on it, which were probably the last specks of original color. The glass door of the refrigerator was also dirty, but the light inside it was still functional, revealing stacks and stacks of clear plastic containers with unknown contents. The newspaper stand under the window was empty, also covered in dust.
And only now did the young man notice the air itself in the store. Dust was everywhere. It was on everything. It was even hovering in stale air all around him. It was only visible because it diffused the external sunlight emitted by a row of narrow windows situated right under the ceiling on the opposite wall.
In the end, the young man managed to find something new as well. Virve had finally received some new jam, as there were many jars on the shelves behind the counter with the old mechanical cash register.
The bell attached to the front door started ringing once more. The young man turned around only to see that... nobody was there. The door was shut, the bell was dead still. But he had heard it ringing. He was certain that he had. He…
"And what would you like?"
The young man flinched from the words spoken behind him. He turned around to see Village Hag no 2 behind the counter. This old lady often helped Virve with her store. She was an interesting person. She was old, but it was impossible to know how old. It was also not evident on her face. She had already been an old village hag when both the young man and the girl had been little. And now, close to 20 years later, she was still around and did not look much older.
"I would like a jar of.."
He looked at the empty shelves behind the counter. Empty shelves. The jars that had just been there were gone. As if they had never been there.
"Is there no jam?" he asked.
"You can see there's none, can't you?" She pointed to the shelves. "Virve has not gotten any new shipments in the mean time. If you really want some jam, you're gonna have to go to the Market Hag. She probably has. And because everybody's already going to her, we get none here."
"And Virve is where?" he asked.
"No idea. She said that the slick suits from the city wanted to talk to her. I only saw her getting into that ZIL of those guys and being driven away. Have no idea where she would be now."
"ZIL of the suits from the North?" the young man asked.
"Yeah, definitely a ZIL, as it was the boxier-looking. You think I cannot tell the difference between a ZIL and a GAZ?"
He had noticed it as well. Recently, the town was full of all sorts of weird and foreign cars. Most of them were much bigger than the Zhigulis, Moskviches, Sapaks and Volgas the folks here were used to. But the only big cars the local knew from Soviet era were GAZes and ZILs, reserved for high ranking politicians and of course ranking members of the KGB. So when something else entirely turned up, perhaps with fins even, the local folk could only think and speak about those in language already familiar to them.
"Who?" a voice asked.
"Speak of the devil.." the Village Hag sighed. "I watched your store, this young man here was asking all sorts of questions about you."
"About what then?" Virve asked.
"For example, where you were. I explained that you went for a ride with the slick suits from the North."
"I went nowhere with them." Virve replied. "But the slick boys from the North are indeed on the prowl around the town. They're driving those huge cars, sometimes boxy, sometimes less so. You know, the likes of which you only see on May 9 parade pictures from the Red Square. They're asking question from the locals to which we have no business knowing the answers to. Asking about lights in the sky, the Substation, Train Depot. I's a wonder they are not asking about the forests."
"I don't know." The Village Hag no 2 mused. "Some people have really lost their marbles after speaking to them. Market Hag won't leave her home and Ivo, that child drunkard, went to the Substation last week to shoot at the lights hovering above the radio tower. He hasn't shown his face around here since last week's incident, when some guys went and took the rifle away from him. They also gave him a taste of his own butt stock, so maybe that's why. The last thing he reportedly said was that the sky people took his Wilhelm or somebody. Probably another alcohol-induced imaginary friend."
Both women fell silent after this. And due to some inexplicable reason, the radio on the high shelf had also fallen silent.
"So what do you want?" Village Hag No2 asked once more.
"Nothing." The young man said. "Goodbye."
He turned around and started towards the door, still hearing the Village Hag talk.
"...I just can't understand the youth these days… and this guy with his ZIL…"
This was all the young man could hear as the door closed behind him, and he was back on the front porch of the store, which was covered in slippery mud. But he already knew to take care, not only to not slip and end up in the mud, but also to not break a leg if he managed to step on a rotting floor board.
And the final word of the old woman had reminded him another curiosity of the old people here as well. They had only seen big V8 engines in cargo trucks, so any off roader or SUV with a massive engine was also identified as a ZIL or a GAZ, just by the sound of the engine.
As he walked around the nose of the green Jeep, he once again gazed at the store building. Wooden siding of faded red boards. In this age and with this weather it was more akin to grayish purple than red. Outside there were more dirty windows than he had noticed on the inside. There was a broken illuminated sign above the doorway. But it was so damaged that the original name of the store was no longer legible.
The young man opened the door to get into the Jeep, but then stopped. A vehicle was coming. He did not hear the engine, but he did hear the tires running through the pot holes in the broken streets, displacing water and flinging mud. He turned his head to look at something he was sure he had never seen before. A wide low-slung vehicle, abundant with chrome detailing. The black paint job was immaculate, as if not a drop of water and not a speck of dirt adhered to it, not even in this weather. All windows on the vehicle were tinted nigh opaque black.
He finally got into the car and then looked at the long vehicle slide past him, as if floating above the ground. It had two side doors and it ended with a long trunk and huge fins at the back, with two little horizontal lights on each fin.
He started his engine and then drove after the ominous looking soundless black limo. However at the next corner, two lights on one of the fins started blinking and in the end, the vehicle turned onto a narrow side street behind the store.
This allowed the young man to drive faster and finally reach the circular main road that enclosed the whole village, or the town, as the locals referred to it, in an almost perfect circle. This road was also old, but not as broken as the streets in the village. Perhaps it was something with the formulation, with kept this road intact, being mostly macadam, with crushed granite added to the mix. As for the direction, he had to go visit another old friend. He glanced into the rear view mirror and for a moment, his gaze remained on an analog compass in the corner of the mirror which was permanently pointing towards South.
*
Dark green off roader with golden wheels was slowly puttering along a grass-covered dirt road. In this kind of rainy weather with barely any wind, one just did not want to drive faster. It was rainy, it was cool, it was silent and almost lazy. And he too wanted to enjoy that. Despite that, the side of the vehicle were covered in specks of mud. That same mud covered both the grass as well as the woods at the sides of the dirt road, as passing vehicles had thrown it up from the road.
Once he had gotten by a log which had fallen on the road, the path got significantly harder. Apparently, nobody had driven here in years and now, the vehicle was bending and breaking all kinds of young trees which had sprung up in the past decade or so. The biggest of which were close to 2 inches in trunk diameter, but the vehicle still plowed through them effortlessly. Although the noises he heard from under the vehicle made him worry about tearing off something essential.
Beads of rainwater rolled down the side glass. On the fields it had started to rain again, hard. For weeks the Old Weatherman had teased people with cloudy skies. But now, the trap doors in the skies were open and everything would become soaked. But here in the woods it was relatively dry. Sure, there was mist and moisture in the air and on everything he could touch, from ground to tree trunks to berries and fungi. One could also hear the rain outside of tree cover. But under it, no rain. The forest was like a house. A home.
The vehicle continued on the road, which had now turned back into a dirt road. He was not coming into the forest, but rather, what was on the other side of it. This was not the Forbidden Forest which separated the local fields and a Southern cottage district from the secret military bases. This was elsewhere, this was safer. And he was almost where he wanted to be.
Just like during his last visits, the first thing visible from behind the turns in the road was a neatly stacked pile of broken down military vehicles. Trucks of all kinds, smaller off-roaders, even a few eight-wheeled APCs with flat dry-rotted tires. But this was just a small taste. Moments later the car ran over several sets of hidden train tracks, and he ended up in a middle of what could be called either a hidden train yard, or a dumping ground for unsalvageable contaminated equipment. There were train tracks with train cars on and off the tracks, some overturned, there were wrecks of vehicles, there were huge concrete arches on top of which was soil, grass and even trees, hiding them perfectly from surveillance satellites.
There were also a few very notable wrecks of gigantic vehicles which had once been used as missile carriers and transporter-erectors. Like the MAZ-543. There was even a crane variant of it. The most notable item of all this junk however was a wheeled ICBM carrier with was similar to the 543, but much bigger and longer. It acted like a massive wall at the side of the property and seemed to have a total of 8 wheels on each side. The missile tube on top of it was gone however, replaced by a series of container-like super structures.
The young man stopped his vehicle in the middle of a clearing near an elevated concrete platform in the middle. All these vehicles around him dwarfed the car he was driving. Not only in size but also in purpose. His was a vehicle for soccer moms to take children to school. These all around him however were weapons of war. Machines built to carry around the end of the world on their backs. And when the command came, to release this end.
He stepped out of the car and only then he noticed how cold it had gotten. Or perhaps the heater in the car had been turned way to high. The driver's seat of the vehicle was like a comfy lounge chair to fall asleep in. While getting outside was like being roused from a deep sleep on said chair. For a moment his gaze focused on the hood of the car, as he noticed the faint wisps of steam rising from it, as the rainwater was evaporating. He walked towards the large truck opposite the 543s. This one was also destined to never move from this place. The tires were completely flat and the black rubber tires had faded to light gray, with cracks in the sidewall. Even the wheels were rusty. So much in fact that they were no longer round.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
He knelt down and ran his hand over the dry grass under the body of the vehicle. It seemed as if the ground under the frame of the truck was dry, dusty dry. He got up and sighed. Something in this place made him tired, tired of seemingly nothing. Or maybe it was due to what had been going on in these several past weeks. Or perhaps, winter was slowly creeping up on him? However with winter it was never certain, when it would come. Even if it would come, but nevertheless it was still creeping closer, ever so slightly each day. Forever.
He headed towards a large olive drab tent, which was seemingly erected around a short stovepipe. In front of the tent was a military style two axle trailer, which had once been a radio command center. This days it was just a tin can for keep all the toys to tinker with.
"Nobody expects that opposite the Forbidden Forest there is an abandoned military train depot hidden in the forest, acting as a terminal for the old supply railway. Nobody comes here. Nobody wants to come here. Everybody's afraid of the Forbidden Forest, as if all forests were forbidden."
This was how the person living here had once explained it.
He stepped into the tent, pushing away several tent flaps, including heat reflecting materials which kept the cold out and heat in. Inside the tent, it was quite spacious and warm. The floors were lined with tanned boar furs, the tent walls were mostly obscured by tall rows of firewood which were both stored here, as well as dried. In the middle of the tent stood a large cast iron stove, with the stovepipe reaching outside through a separate flap, insulated with a plenty of mineral wool tied around the pipe.
There was also a wire with several dark red incandescent bulbs tied around the mineral wool section, bathing everything within the tent in eerie red glow, only accented by the heat the stove was giving off.
The stove was actually big enough to completely obscure the workspace on the outside of it. A neat little corner where a few sturdy old schooldesks and lots of radio equipment was set up. And in front of all that tech, there was a person sitting there, wearing headphones.
"Welcome." The man in headphones had noticed him.
"Hi." The young man replied.
"Rheya is still laid down in bed?"
The young man only nodded, without saying anything.
"It has been a couple of interesting weeks for me." The man by the radio said. "The airwaves seem so empty, but yet they are not silent, there is an overwhelming amount of interference, all from different sources, almost as if competing with each other. There is something going on, but I have no idea, what."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you know that the last storm we had wiped out all our long distance phone connections, right? But it has been several months, and nobody has bothered to do anything about it. They either can't repair the lines, or don't want to repair them. Or perhaps they don't even know the lines are down."
"How could that be? There have to be at least a few people who have tried making calls to places outside the village."
"I've heard of some, but usually nobody does. Nobody really needs to contact the outside world, and that is strange in itself. It has also been several years since we had any wireless phone service. Nobody cares about that either. There hasn't even been any good or strong radio stations to cut through all this noise, either from within or without. So in short, the airwaves should be dry as a bone, but instead, it is like a stormy sea.
“This noise, it floats around, it leaves behind other signals, patterns and footprints. It remains in one’s mind, burnt onto the screens by electron guns, even seared into the aether, into the airwaves themselves. The signal in its infinite complexity, from one perspective looking like one thing, and after being filtered looking like something completely different. Something new and exciting, as if it had acquired a new mysterious vibe simply by passing though the aether, turning into magic itself. Turning into something much more than was at first intended and transmitted. As if it has gained some sentience as soon as it was released, as if it has gained something similar to a soul, becoming a being of its own, present in the world."
"What?" The young man asked in confusion.
"I said the airwaves should be dry as a bone, but they are not."
"You also said something else. About signals and the airwaves and filtering, that's why I am asking."
"No, I did not."
The young man in an undershirt said. He turned his head slightly, still looking at the radio dials, and the young man could see that the other person had weeks or months of unkempt beard on his face.
"I may have been sitting here awake for over 70 hours now, and my eyes may glow from all the coffee flowing in my veins, but I am still aware of what I do and do not say."
"Then perhaps I imagined it."
"Correct." The bearded man said.
"Did you check out the signal that Rheya recorded?"
"I did."
The bearded young man moved his chair slightly, and started manipulating the dials and buttons on his radio equipment, forming a spell of a pattern only he himself could understand.
"It is one of those more interesting signals, which I have never even heard decoded. Only as it is repeating on the airwaves. Or to make it so you could understand, as undecoded noise. But this waveform I have certainly heard before. But you see, there is one interesting aspect. It is not an analog signal. It is digital. A highly encrypted digital signal being masked as analog, with the encrypted form taking on the form of this snippet of conversation."
"I have no idea, what you just said, but it would seem wasteful, for a digital signal?"
"Yes, extremely so. Therefore, there must be some other hidden considerations for it. Never mind that this signal is also part of the interference pattern, beamed across all frequencies at different power levels, modulation forms as well as time signatures. Only returning to its audible form after a certain period. I have been picking it up as long as I've been into monitoring the airwaves, but only recently has it become this intense."
"What does all this mean?"
"Have no idea. Yet."
"You said 'one of the more interesting signals.' Are there more than one?"
"Wow, so you are actually listening." The bearded unkempt man said. "Yes, there are more than one."
He once a gain turned some knobs and soon, the loudspeakers were producing a barely intelligible fast-paced ringside commenting of an ongoing boxing match. In Finnish.
"Just a radio." The young man said.
"Just a radio, huh?" the unkempt man asked, smelling his armpit for a second. "After months of listening to it and recording it, I am still not sure, what it is, but most certainly it is not a regular radio show. The talking never stops. It never repeats either. It is like a weird numbers station. Also it does not have a fixed frequency. I have also not managed to narrow it down to a program, or a station, or even a source. The only thing I do know is that it is not from Finland, or anywhere far away. It is local, very near here. One might think it is from Center Station, or anywhere else this near. I am also almost certain, it is another digital signal masking as analog transmission.
“Curiously, so is almost all of the music that the locals listen to on the radio. And it too never repeats, despite the locals who call to the radio station keep requesting the same songs. Well, the songs are played, the radio DJ says the names of the artists and titles, but it never fixed, the songs always change."
"And the stuff from outside?"
There is nothing from outside. Nothing gets in. As if there is no longer any ‘outside’. Only strong local signals and barely audible weaker ones. The stronger ones get constant interference by some weird patterns, while the weaker ones are left untouched, but barely there, as if they are apparitions in one's mind, rather than on the actual airwaves."
"You haven't seen Them, have you?" The younger man asked.
"Them? Oh, them Them. No, I have not, but they say in the village that some have been seen hanging above my forest, much like they hang above the Substation. Sometimes even above the Train Depot. Have no idea, honestly, why they would even go there. I can understand them being attracted to sources of radio waves and that would make Substation a logical target. I have been trying to transmit messages outside using the mobile radars that the old missile defense forces used, that may have attracted them here."
"You're not afraid?"
"What's to fear? They come here, we'll have a man to man talk, and they leave. Or take me with them. Both are acceptable outcomes."
"Ivo said something similar a few weeks back."
"Ivo? Yeah, I am not surprised, not surprised the least. He has his own bone to pick with them."
"What do you mean?"
"Precisely under which rock have you been living?"
"In the Nurga farm, Why?"
"Ivo has been going around for days now, telling everybody who would listen how They kidnapped his precious Wilhelmina. He also swears hellish revenge at them. He got his ass drunk one night, got an old rifle and went to Substation at night. Started shooting at the ufos. Finally some local men came, took the gun away from him and let him have a taste of the buttstock of said rifle. Nobody has seen him since."
"Virve and the Village Hag already told me."
"Then you must know other news as well?" the bearded man finally found something of more interest than his equipment.
"Not much. Virve and the Hag said that those guys in black had visited Ivo as well as the Market Hag after she had seen Them."
"Interesting. I myself heard that Ivo was still yelling into the nights the particulars of his story, how some gray six-eyed figures with no discernible neck had come and twisted his head off, leaving him helpless and immobile to see men in black suits take away his Wilhelmina. Later those six-eyed things twisted his head back on again and left, leaving not a mark on him. Market Hag however was taking out the trash and discovered herself, also taking out the trash."
"I was thinking of going to the Train Depot next."
"You should, if you dare." The bearded man said. "You might find something interesting. It is yet another place people have started to talk about, but nobody dares to say anything overtly. The Substation is locked. But the Train Depot should have nothing strange besides huge pile of steel which nobody has yet stolen and sold for scrap. Maybe you can come across something interesting. Or you could also try leaving the town and visiting some neighboring villages to see if weird stuff is going on there too. At the very least you could find out when the telephone lines will be fixed.
“Frankly, I don't really care, I like this peace and quiet. And since nobody else is inquiring about the lines, the others may like this slow life as well.”
"You know your car is rusting, right?"
"Haven't noticed. Haven't moved it for a few months now. I guess it also has somebody living in there, if the noises are anything to go by. I may have to move it soon though, maybe visit Silver and see if we can fix it up some."
They both stopped talking. The bearded unkempt man in his undershirt again focused on his radio equipment.
"I'll be going now, taking a look at that Train Depot."
"Should you find anything interesting, come back and tell me about it."
The young man turned around and left the tent, immediately feeling the bite of the cold. The cold drizzle, the dampness, the gray sky and the wind. And the rain as well. It had finally caught up with him and was now again starting to pour down. He got to his car, got in, turn on the engine and then turned heat to maximum. Minutes later he was back driving on the old trail. First came the branches scratching the sides of his car, then came that big log and finally potholed road.
Soon, he reached the main road of crushed granite and asphalt forming the macadam, or tarmac. He turned onto the main road, heading to what the compass was telling him was South. However, even before he had reached the next blind curve, a car appeared. That exact car with sweeping curves, glistening chrome and huge fins at the tail of the vehicle. It rode low to the ground, barely making any noise, not even tire noise.
And when they passed each other on the road, he could not see anything through the tinted car glass. All the windows were tinted, not just the side glass but also front and rear windshields. And it wasn't just tinted, it also barely reflected anything. He was not sure, it could have been the weather, but it was as if the inside surfaces of all the windows on the car were covered not in window tinting, but simply black paper.
Also, there was a small orange light blinking under the front windscreen in the corner. Despite the seemingly opaque tinting, he could clearly see as the incandescent bulb was blinking on and off.
He then stopped for a moment, something else was weird as well. The road surface was dry. As if the rain had never reached here. But yet it had been raining when he reached the forest, even when he got back onto the road. The sky was not sunny, it was still covered with dark and heavy rain clouds. He looked into the rear view mirrors to see that behind him the road was also dry. He could also see the black finned vehicle slowly disappearing into the distance.
He could not contemplate the situation for long, as at that moment another vehicle passed him by at quite a high speed. He watched as it disappeared behind the curve with some significant body roll, paying no attention to having fallen into the opposite lane. It was the same car he had. That same boxy green Jeep with a rumbling V8, even the license plates were…
He mashed the pedal and gunned the engine. After that curve there was a long and wide straight, perhaps and old emergency air field doubling as a roadway. And these jeeps were never that good beyond some 120kph, so he should be able to catch up in no time.
At least he should have been. Because as he passed that curve, there was nothing, just a long stretch of smooth blacktop, at least 7 lanes wide. As that stretch was about 2.5 kilometers long, he still kept accelerating to about 180kph before backing down again. There was still nothing, he could see the road pass the fields at a slightly lower elevation, and even that stretch was empty. No cars on the main road, or on the dirt roads leading to fields and farm houses. It was impossible for the other vehicle to have disappeared, and yet it had.
He let his speed drop to about 85 kph, as he started to look for a place where he could turn around. As he finally settled on a dirt road to do that, he noticed his fuel light coming on. That was a problem. It was too little to get to the Train Depot and back. It was also too little to go and find a fuel station near the village. His on option was to continue on this road towards Valgatabalve or Valgepalõ as it was locally known, and hope that he would either reach it, or find a gas station on the road that had unleaded fuels.
He got his speed back up to about 85 and after some 12 kilometers finally found an old gas station. He pulled up to the 40 cubic meter tank next to the pumps. This station only had two grades of gasoline available, leaded A76 and unleaded E95. He got out of the car and tried to fuel it, only then noticing that the pump was locked.
"There is no fuel for you!" A gruff voice could be heard.
This voice made the young man flinch. He could have sworn he was alone. Sure, there was a small half-length container unit not far from the tanks supposedly housing the store, but it had no windows and he could not see any cameras either.
But now the door was open and on stood and old man in his 70s. Curiously, his eyes were carefully bandaged up, so there was little chance that he could see, but the way he came down the stairs and walked toward the young man, made him seem as if having perfectly usable sight.
"Stop! There is no fuel for you!" the man repeated again.
"Do you have any fuel?" he asked.
"Yes. But this is not a public gas station."
"I only need a little. No more than 10 liters to get back to town."
The blind old man sighed.
"Fine. I will open the pump for ten liters."
"How much do you want for the fuel?"
"Nothing." The old man replied. "Your money is no good here anyway."
The young man put the nozzle back in the filler hole, and soon he could hear the electric pump on the massive vat turn on. It did not take long for the 10 liters to reach the tank, while the sweet smell of gasoline reached his nose. Then suddenly, the pump shut down and locked up again.
He pulled the nozzle from the tank and an eerie feeling came over him once more. A dreamlike feeling. An unreal feeling.
He turned around to put the nozzle back onto the receptacle on the pump, but there was no pump. There was no 40 cubic meter tank he had seen when driving up, there was no off-white steel container for the store. There was only a large area of concrete slabs with bolts anchored into the material, signifying where the massive tank, the pumps and the container had once stood.
But he was still holding a nozzle. With a length of ripped dry-rotted hose attached to it. A faint smell of stale gasoline was still on the nozzle. Or perhaps lighter fluid?
He dropped the old nozzle and walked around the car. The engine started right up, there was no fuel light and he had an eighth of a tank left.
He sat in the car, going over the events in his mind, the whole series of events which had led him here. But he could not find the discontinuity, sure there were strange events, but there was no sense of missing time. Although he could not get a particular detail out of his mind. That black car from the 1950s, with huge fins, running silently on whitewall tires. With all windows blacked out and a blinking orange incandescent light.
He shook his head, to get rid of the image and put the car in drive, taking his foot off the brake.
Then his put his foot back on the brake. Something was wrong. Again. He knew how he had got here, he knew he stood beside the road in what used to be a gas station long ago. But he was not here anymore. The "here" now, and the "here", when he had turned into the gas station were not the same.
He had no idea where he was. Ha had planned to turn left, back onto the main road which would eventually lead to Valgepalõ, where he could find another gas station. But now, the road, the nature around him looked all different. And he had no idea which way to go. No idea at all.