The Last Voice on Channel 9
The first distress call came at 2:17 in the morning.
Elias Voss was half asleep when the radio on the desk crackled to life.
He had been working alone at the fire lookout for eleven days.
The tower sat near the top of Black Elk Mountain, surrounded by miles of pine forest and nothing else. There was no cell service. No electricity except for the solar batteries. The nearest paved road was more than twenty miles away.
The radio was supposed to be silent.
Instead, a woman's voice whispered through the static.
"Please."
Elias opened his eyes.
The radio hissed.
"Please, somebody answer."
He sat up.
"Station Black Elk. Identify yourself."
Nothing.
Then:
"He's behind us."
A burst of static swallowed the transmission.
Elias reached for the microphone.
"Repeat your location."
The answer came immediately.
"Don't let him see you."
Then the channel went dead.
Elias stared at the radio for several seconds.
There were explanations.
There were always explanations.
Someone could have been using an unauthorized transmitter. A hunter could have gotten lost. Atmospheric conditions could carry radio signals over extraordinary distances.
He wrote the incident in the station log and went back to bed.
The following night, at exactly 2:17 a.m., the radio activated again.
This time it was a man's voice.
"Mayday. Mayday. We're trapped near the river."
Elias grabbed the microphone.
"Station Black Elk receiving. Identify yourself."
The man began crying.
"We can't see it."
"See what?"
A long silence.
Then the man whispered:
"The trees are moving."
The transmission ended.
Elias didn't sleep afterward.
In the morning, he contacted the ranger station.
They checked their records.
There had been no emergency calls.
No hikers were missing.
No hunters were registered in the area.
The ranger told him not to worry about it.
Elias did.
The third night, the voice returned.
Then the fourth.
Then the fifth.
Every transmission came at precisely 2:17 a.m.
Different voices.
Different circumstances.
Always the same terrified tone.
A woman begging someone to turn off the headlights.
A child crying for his mother.
A man whispering that something was walking around his tent.
A group of people screaming simultaneously.
Elias began recording the transmissions.
He also started searching whenever he had enough signal to connect to the ranger station's old satellite terminal.
Eventually, he discovered something.
The voices weren't random.
They belonged to missing people.
The woman from the first transmission was identified as Margaret Hale.
She had disappeared in 1986 while hiking in the Black Elk region.
The man who had called about the river was Daniel Price.
Missing since 1974.
The child belonged to a family of three who vanished in 1992.
The radio calls weren't coming from people currently in danger.
They were coming from people who had already disappeared.
Elias printed everything he could find.
The disappearances stretched back nearly seventy years.
Different decades.
Different circumstances.
The same mountain.
And in almost every case, investigators had found no bodies.
Elias began listening differently.
He noticed something he hadn't heard before.
Background noise.
Beneath the voices, there was always something else.
A low rhythmic sound.
Like footsteps.
He isolated one recording and played it repeatedly.
The footsteps were unmistakable.
Crunch.
Pause.
Crunch.
Pause.
Crunch.
Something was walking behind whoever was speaking.
Then Elias noticed something worse.
The footsteps were getting closer.
He stopped sleeping.
On the eleventh night, he sat beside the radio with a shotgun across his knees.
2:16 a.m.
Nothing.
2:16:30.
Nothing.
2:16:45.
Nothing.
Then the clock changed.
2:17.
The radio clicked.
Static filled the room.
Elias leaned toward it.
A man's voice came through.
"Station Black Elk."
Elias froze.
It was his voice.
Exactly.
Same tone.
Same cadence.
Same slight rasp.
His own voice continued.
"If anyone can hear this, please answer."
Elias dropped the microphone.
The recording continued.
"I'm at the tower."
He looked toward the window.
The forest outside was completely still.
His voice on the radio whispered:
"Something is climbing the stairs."
Elias slowly turned toward the door.
The tower staircase was outside.
He could hear nothing.
Then came a metallic creak.
One step.
Then another.
The radio spoke again.
"It's almost here."
Elias grabbed the flashlight.
The footsteps continued.
Upward.
Slow.
Deliberate.
He moved toward the window and looked down.
Nothing.
The staircase was empty.
Then something moved between the trees.
A figure.
Tall.
Too tall.
It stood at the edge of the clearing, looking directly at the tower.
Elias couldn't see its face.
The radio whispered:
"Don't let it see you."
Elias backed away from the window.
The footsteps stopped.
The radio went silent.
For nearly a minute, there was nothing.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Three times.
Elias raised the shotgun.
Another knock.
Three times.
He didn't move.
A voice came from the other side.
His voice.
"Station Black Elk."
Elias stared at the door.
The voice whispered:
"Identify yourself."
The radio behind him suddenly crackled.
A woman's voice screamed:
"RUN."
The door handle began turning.
Elias fired.
The blast shook the tower.
The door flew open.
There was nothing outside.
Only the empty staircase.
The figure was gone.
The radio had stopped.
Elias remained in the tower until sunrise.
When the ranger helicopter arrived later that morning, they found the door shattered and the shotgun on the floor.
Elias was gone.
No footprints were found around the tower.
No blood.
No body.
The only thing left was the radio.
It was still functioning.
According to the ranger who recovered it, the radio activated that night at exactly 2:17 a.m.
A voice came through.
Elias Voss.
"Station Black Elk."
There was a pause.
Then:
"Please."
Another pause.
"Somebody answer."
Some voices are not asking for help.
They're warning you that it's already too late.
