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"This place sucks," she said, picking dismally at her lunch. She'd ordered the chicken fried steak. It was overcooked.
"You're telling me." Her date chewed a hush puppy while glowering at his sad excuse for a pulled pork sandwich. "This is the last time I take a first date to a new restaurant."
"Especially at these prices." She sighed. "I dunno, do you wanna order dessert or go somewhere else for some real food."
He gave her a dubious look. "You wanna trust these guys with dessert?"
"It's hard to fuck up ice cream."
"Eh." He shrugged.
—the eyes had been upon us as dials and we were ignorant for the beast that laid inside the voices the voices—
The hair on the back of her neck prickled, as though there was static electricity in the air. There was something in the air. She swore she could hear static hissing under her breath. What was that? She tried not to breathe. Maybe she was imagining it.
Her date hissed, "Shit," and her stomach dropped.
Barely able to speak, she whispered, "What?"
Her date leaned halfway across the table to mutter, "Radio Demon's at the door."
"Oh." Her fingertips went numb; her fork slipped out of her grip.
"Maybe he won't come in," her date said. "He's still outside reading the menu. Maybe he won't find anything he likes."
She stared at her plate, trying to breathe. In the corners of her eyes she could see diners at other tables warily shifting to the edges of their seats.
Warily, her date asked, "Do you think the Radio Demon likes Southern food?"
She shrugged and shook her head cluelessly.
The bell over the door tinkled and the entire restaurant flinched. The inoffensive music drifting through the restaurant speakers stuttered, as if the speakers themselves had shuddered. Unable to stop herself, she turned to face the front of the restaurant.
Red and glowing eyes and red and fangs and claws and red and antlers, antlers like a knives, antlers like talons, antlers like an outstretched radio tower and red, red, red like so much blood—
Her heart hammered thunderously in her head. She tasted blood in the back of her throat. In front of her eyes, tattered red fabric fluttered like a bloody flag.
Her date distantly asked, "Are you alright?" and when she couldn't answer, he muttered, "Fuck you, you're on your own." He shoved his chair back and the chair legs squealed loudly.
Cars squeal in the street; one veers and crashes into a traffic light. If the pole wasn't there, it would have crashed into her. Chittering, gibbering little creatures poured out of the crashed car. One has the driver's eye in its mouth. Jubilant jazz pours out of the car radio—a trumpet wails so loud and high it cracks the windshield, but somehow it doesn't shred the radio's speaker.
—it was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals—
Under the wave of red-hot jazz, the front half of the car starts to melt. Before it can explode, she turns and runs the other way. A second car crashes in front of her. She chokes on the smoke and keeps running.
She heard other diners' footsteps pounding as they hastened toward any exit they could reach—the patio door, the kitchen, even the restrooms. She didn't move. She could only stare, clutching the seat of her chair for salvation; her muscles ached with tension from her fingers to her shoulders. The man at the door's glowing eyes swept over the restaurant. They swept over her.
As she runs, her hands are shaking, she's sweating so hard her clothes cling to her skin. So many fires reflect in so many windows that she can't tell what's really burning—everything is burning—and yet she's chilled to the bone. Even on its worst days, Hell is never like this.
Out in the street, she's exposed; but in any of these buildings she'd be trapped. All she knows is she needs to run and yet there's screaming down every street, screaming around every corner—where is there to run?
The news must say where it's safest to run, which streets provide escape routes. It always does during calamities and exterminations. She runs into the nearest store to listen to the radio on the counter.
The screaming is on the radio, too.
The man who was speaking with the maître d' tilted his head with a click and a murmur of overlapping voices as if flicking through stations. Her head pounded. Her skin crawled, like cold dead fingers gripping her ankles and climbing up and up toward her throat.
She is sweating so hard that her fingers slip as she turns the dial, searching for another station—someone must still be broadcasting through the madness. A dozen voices screaming. A hundred voices. One voice. Someone sobs helplessly. Someone begs for mercy and is cut off with a gurgle. Some madman sings jubilantly, backed by a full brass band.
Oh, sinner man was standing at the gates of Hell—oh, the sinner man standing at the gates of Hell—and the gates flew open and the sinner man fell! There's no hiding place down here—
She senses this isn't how the song should be sung. He sings about damnation as rapturously as a choir singing Hallelujah. Percussion clangs behind him like church bells.
There is no hiding place down here! There is no hiding place down here! I run to the rock to hide my face—the rock cried out, "No hiding place! There's no hiding place down here!"
She keeps searching.
There goes before him a host of men with trumpets and well-sounding cymbals, and all musical instruments. At the first he appears with a great cry and roaring—
God, why is there so much screaming?
—SCREAMING ACHING LYING SMILE HEED HIS CALL DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL—
The dial sticks between 600 and 700 kilocycles. She swears it's pointing at 666. A voice speaks, and she swears it's the same voice that was singing: "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for tuning in to the greatest show you'll ever hear! A live one-man show, broadcasting on all stations, all the way across Hell! We have thrills, we have chills, we have spillingblood on every corner—a veritable fountain of gory delights! An orgy of carnage, all captured by state-of-the-art audio equipment that makes the sounds so clear, you'll swear that you were there yourself! So don't touch that dial! You won't want to miss a single exciting second of—"
She wrenches the dial away from 666. She doesn't want to hear any more of this lunatic. Surely somebody else has managed to get on air? It can't be all him—
The dial twists by itself under her fingers. She gasps, jerking back. The radio gibbers madly as it flips through stations. It's as though the radio is speaking tongues—or possessed by a demon.
The dial settles back on 666. "I said, don't touch that dial."
She stumbles back from the radio.
"Or perhaps you're not content to listen?" the voice on the radio drones. It's like the buzzing of locusts. It seems to come from all around her. "We'd love to have more guests join the show!" The lights flicker. The corners of the room come apart at the seams. Dark tentacles, fluttering and unearthly, float in through the cracks. "I need more, more, more, MORE—"
She dashes outside.
Hell reeks of blood and fire. Her vision blurs with tears.
—amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes—
Everything's wrong. Raucous Mardi Gras party music howls down from the moon. Buildings twist and crack as if dancing under the direction of some unseen choreographer. She doesn't recognize the street. Has Hell changed that fast? Or has the thing on the radio turned in her direction, twisting the streets as it moves? Or has she been dropped somewhere worse than Hell?
The Radio has told us there it lives behind the moon something sleeps there and cares not for our affairs.
—immense ghosts dancing down the streets, something that should never be seen in Hell—how can you have a ghost in the land of the dead?—but there it is, towering white ghosts of stags, blood on their hooves and antlers, teeth like wolves—
Far away on the horizon, a radio tower walks.
Streets are all jammed. Noise in crowds like New Year's Eve in city. Wait a minute... Enemy now in sight... He stands watching, looking over the city. This is the end now. Smoke comes out... black smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They're running... thousands of them, dropping like rats. Now the smoke's spreading faster. People trying to run away from it, but it's no use. They're falling like flies....
—burning shapes twirling through the dark, rising and falling behind the smoke, like an enormous flaming Ferris wheel fallen off its supports, like a spindly cartwheeling scarecrow as tall as a radio tower dancing as it burned to death. A cacophonous caterwauling carnival careening down the streets—
—and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
"Well, would you look what the cats dragged in!" A thousand invisible felines yowl in agony around the monster, echoing through the warped streets. Nothing should echo like that between these buildings. The monster has a gaze that stares and spins like a lighthouse and a voice that whines like a siren; it is an amalgamation of every man-made signal ever devised to warn humans to stay away. It's pulling her closer. Its fingers crackle across her back like lightning. She can't run. There's nowhere to run from a hurricane. She's lucky to be in its eye.
"Welcome to the show, darling—welcome, welcome, welcome!" A thousand fearful hands applaud. "It's a pleasure to meet you! The name is—" ringing in her ears and a stomach lurch like the floor dropping out beneath her. "And that's spelled with an O, not an—" A distant terrified voice shrieks "AAIII!" and she swears it's her own voice, "—you'd be amazed how many people spell it wrong." It leers down at her, its face surrounding her, breath reeking of death and eyes seemingly every way she turns. Its face is a cruel parody of a human, like a marionette carved by a demon who has forgotten what man's face looks like and filled in the gaps with a wolf's fangs. The jaws and teeth clatter and chatter. She sees bones and blood between its fangs. It could swallow her whole between words.
"I'm new around here," it says, winking at her; "I just flew in from Louisiana, and boy—" a hundred bony hands rip through the ground, clawing at her legs, snagging her ankles, "—are my arms tired! Ha ha ha!" A thousand mad voices laugh. The laughter is coming from below her. All she can do is stare at the teeth clattering open and shut like a marionette so close to her face.
"What's the matter?" it demands.
—I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES I TELL THEM TO SMILE AND THEY SCREAM THEY ALWAYS SCREAM—
"I know I said the cats dragged you in, but did they get your tongue, too?" She tastes blood in her mouth. The monster grins and jerks and sways to the throbbing, squealing music, bending over her, caging her with its body. It reaches for her mouth and a thousand voices buzz, "Let me see. I want to hear how you scream."
###
"I can't remember the last time we had some proper Southern cooking in this end of town," Alastor said chipperly, pretending he didn't notice that the maître d' was this close to wetting himself. He simply folded his hands behind his back and strolled leisurely along as he was led to his table. "Not since the extermination of '89, I think! When the angels took out Mrs. Pepper, bless her soul, what's left of it anyway."
By way of attempting to reply, the maître d' let out a strangled choke.
"Did you know her?" Alastor asked politely.
The maître d' frantically shook his head.
"Ah, well." The corners of his mouth drooped slightly at the sight of all the empty booths covered with half-eaten meals. All that business he'd driven away, just because he'd happened to get peckish, saw a new restaurant, and popped in on a whim. He ought to have waited until the lunch rush was over. If this place was any good, he'd have to recommend it to his friends. All two of them.
His gaze moved from the booths along the walls to the tables, and fell on one diner who'd stayed in her seat. His smile lit up hopefully. One person who wasn't too afraid to dine in the same room as the Radio Demon! It was one more than usual. He glanced over her table, noticed the abandoned half-eaten plate across from her, and paused next to her table, chuckling pityingly. "Oh, dear, you poor thing. Did some fellow run out on you? And leave you with the bill?" He tutted disapprovingly. "You don't mind if I pick up the tab on his behalf, do you? No favors in return, I simply prefer to have lunch with company!" He pulled the missing diner's chair back up to the table. "I can't remember the last time I had lunch with c—"
With a bloodcurdling shriek, the diner bolted from her seat and out the front door.
Alastor froze as he watched her go, momentarily speechless. Her chair clattered to the floor. Finally, he managed to say—he wasn't sure whether to himself or the maître d'—"Well, for goodness's sake. What the hell did I ever do to her."
The maître d' inched up to the table, cleared his throat twice, and croaked, "S-sir? Do you want to—to—to sit at this—? I mean, it's—it's fine if you do—"
"Oh... Sure." Alastor sank heavily down in the seat he'd pulled out. "Why not." He propped his chin a hand, shoulders sagging.
"Great!" the maître d' squeaked. "I'll get you a, a—uh—a menu—" he realized he was already carrying a menu like a shield, slapped it down on the table, wheezed, "a water," and ran.
All that, and now Alastor's appetite was spoiled. It was just as well. He doubted anybody would come by to take his order.
Heaving a staticky sigh, he considered the food on the table, magically tugged over the other diner's plate, and picked dismally at her chicken fried steak.