The Signal from the Desert
My name is Rory Michaels. I run the graveyard shift at a lonely radio station deep in the Arizona desert. It’s not the scenic kind with painted cliffs and tour buses—this place is just heat, scrub brush, and an endless flat horizon. The town we supposedly serve is two hours away, and most nights I’m not even sure the signal reaches that far.
I didn’t take this job for the music. Half the time, it’s 70s soft rock or AM gold—stuff your uncle gets drunk to at Thanksgiving—and I doubt anyone’s listening except maybe half-asleep truckers or retirees who never figured out Spotify. I’m not here for the journalism either. I’m here because strange things happen out here. Lights in the sky. Unmarked roads that appear on no map. Old stories whispered by locals who’ve lived too long in the middle of nowhere. The kind of stories that don’t make it into newspapers because no one wants to sound crazy. That’s what I chase—the unknown.
Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed. I stayed up all night cataloging supernatural sightings in our county library. I memorized cryptid classifications instead of baseball stats. I convinced myself my house was haunted just so I had an excuse to camp out in the hallway with a tape recorder. My parents kept telling me I’d grow out of it. That I’d stop filling notebooks with blurry photographs and hearsay. But I never did. I just learned how to hide it better.
By high school, I made it look like a phase. I joined the yearbook team to sneak into the darkroom. I wrote essays on old buildings, visited condemned sites, and kept everything in spiral notebooks hidden under my mattress. My parents thought I was finally coming around, aiming me toward engineering or law. Instead, I told them I was majoring in journalism—what I really wanted was a mic, a quiet place to speak into the dark, hoping someone strange might speak back.
That’s how I found this station. I answered a listing with no company name, no salary, no contact info—just a P.O. box and four words: Late night radio host. I applied immediately. A week later, I got a badge, a set of keys, and a note: Start Monday. Don’t be late. Now, I sit behind the mic while the desert hums outside, flipping through my notebooks filled with rumors and sightings. When the moment feels right, I press the button, and I speak.
Most nights, it’s just me and Christian—my co-host. He’s about my age, a little nervous, always expecting someone to tell him he’s doing something wrong. We share a small control room, a crusty coffee machine, and a busted vending machine. Most nights, we’re just trying to stay awake, making the show sound halfway decent. Tonight, I’m wide awake, and I’ve got stories I’ve been collecting—things I’ve seen, heard, or read about that don’t belong in the daylight.
One night, I found an old photo album in a dusty storage closet behind the station. No label, just a battered cover. I sat on a crate and flipped through it. Most pictures were normal—people smiling in front of the station, holiday parties, mundane office stuff. But on the last page, I saw something strange. A photo of the station’s window—same kind as Studio B—and right in the middle was a bloody handprint. Not just a smear, but a smeared, smeared with what looked like a goat hoof, smeared across the glass like someone had pressed it there while moving.
I showed Christian, who looked pale when he saw it. “That’s not normal,” he said. “Who would do that?”
“Maybe some ritual,” I guessed. “The station’s near an old goat farm. Maybe they used it as an offering.”
Christian looked at me, wary. “You think it’s connected?”
I nodded. “Or maybe something else. Something that’s been here long before us.”
Over the next few nights, I kept watching the well behind the station. It’s an old, rusted metal cover, surrounded by weeds. Every night at exactly 3:11 a.m., the signal would crackle to life. Faint. Broken. Like a voice trying to speak through static. I recorded it, slowed it down, played it in reverse—nothing. Until one night, I heard it clearly.
A woman’s voice, distorted and waterlogged, whispering, “Feed the well. Feed the well.” Then, a series of soft knocks—three of them—like someone tapping on a wall or a microphone. I played it again, and again. The pattern was always the same.
Then, one night, the signal changed. It grew louder, clearer. The static was gone, replaced by a deep, muffled voice. It was not in English. It sounded like it was underwater, like someone speaking through water, slow and heavy. Then, suddenly, she switched languages. “Children… come home.”
The moment she spoke those words, the station’s lights flickered. Outside, I saw the old well’s metal cover buckle, then lift slightly—like something beneath was pressing upward, trying to escape. A loud clang echoed across the lot as the cover burst off, flying into the dirt with a deafening crash.
I froze, watching. From the well’s dark opening, I saw movement—small shapes pouring out, legions of spiders crawling over the gravel, flooding out like a swarm kicked loose from a nest. Dozens, then hundreds—long-legged, shiny black bodies, tumbling over each other, spilling into the yard, heading straight for us.
“Jesus,” I whispered, backing away from the window. Christian was already gone, rushing down the hall, grabbing a garden hose. He turned the tap wide open and sprayed water at the swarm, trying to wash them away. They scattered, then regrouped, moving in tangled waves, some slipping into cracks in the concrete, others still crawling.
The spiders kept pouring out, but then, unexpectedly, they started to retreat. The water seemed to push them back, forcing them into the weeds and under the building. The well remained open, dark and silent now. Still, I knew it wasn’t over.
That night, Christian and I stayed glued to the control room. We kept the blinds shut, avoided looking outside. The station’s signal stayed dead, the well closed and silent. But I knew what I saw—what I felt—was just the beginning.
In the days that followed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching us. The well was more than just a hole in the ground. It was a gateway. A beacon. A feeding ground for something ancient, hungry, and waiting.
I kept checking it every night, even when Christian begged me to stop. I couldn’t help myself. Something out there was calling, whispering, waiting for us to slip up.
And then, one night, the signal returned. Clearer than ever. The voice was still underwater, still distorted, but now it was saying something new: “Feed her seeds.”
I stared at the static, heart pounding. The words echoed in my mind. I knew it was a message. A command. Something was demanding we feed the well.
I told Christian, but he looked pale. “We shouldn’t mess with it,” he warned. “Whatever’s down there doesn’t want us to know. It’s not safe.”
But I couldn’t stop. I had to understand. I started digging into the station’s history, into old records and rumors. I found stories of a cult that once worshipped an entity they called the Mother—an ancient being hidden beneath the earth, living in the darkness of the well. They believed that feeding her seeds—offering her fruit, livestock, even people—kept her satisfied, kept her from rising.
The more I uncovered, the more I realized: the station wasn’t just a broadcast tower. It was a conduit. A place where the cult’s rituals had taken place. And the well? It was the mouth—the gateway to something far worse.
One night, I watched the well from the window. The water was still, but I felt it. Something was stirring beneath. I saw a faint ripple, a shadow moving just below the surface. I knew it was waiting.
And I knew, deep inside, that the voices I’d been hearing—those broken signals, that whispering—were not random. They were calling. Calling us to feed the darkness, to offer more than just seeds.
I don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t know if the thing beneath the well is awake, or if it ever truly sleeps. All I know is I can’t leave. Not yet. Because something out there is listening. And I fear it’s waiting for me to slip up again.
So I stay here, behind the microphone, speaking into the void. Hoping that someone out there is listening—and that they understand what’s happening in the middle of this desert. Because out in the silence, beneath the earth, something is hungry. And it’s always listening.
And I’m afraid it’s already heard me.
