Dead Air

Hospital Radio Life was facing hard times.

Advertising revenues were down and patients were migrating to streaming channels like rats off a sinking ship.

It was the the perfect storm to kill off a local infirmary station like Life, which was completely reliant on local community spirit to function.

Jess Greer the station manager was philosophical about it. Such was the way with small radio. 

Things rise and fall and technology waits for no woman. She was bothered though about her two volunteer staff, the aging widower and ex-leather worker Rasmus and her young intern, Star.

Both had been loyal and popular dj's on their four hour slots and since her third man Collier had just disappeared they often did five hours and covered his super-popular night time show about horror films and ghost stories. The restless patients adored it's grim content and Collier's dark nighttime wit as they dozed off in God's waiting room.

It had been really difficult when Collier just vanished. No one at the station or in the hospital had a clue where he was and the police were baffled. He'd just gone and became yet another missing person in Royal Fothering hospital, the fifth in so many years.

Everyone had been interviewed at the infirmary and radio and it turned out Rasmus was the last member of staff to see Collier as he clocked on for his horror film spot, known with a bit of hospital humour by the patients as the Graveyard Shift. The name had stuck.

Rasmus, in his late 70's and by far the longest-serving volunteer, was eliminated from police enquiries and that was that.

Collier had arrived to do his slot, turned on his mic, announced the show and that was it. Nothing after. No sign of him. Just dead air from Radio Life blowing over the wards.

The irony wasn't lost on Jess. She knew she had to cover the crucial Graveyard Shift somehow but after a year of overtime, herself and her two other staff were drained and the coffers almost empty.

Without Collier, his night audience withered. The others just weren't horror buffs and the show sadly ended. After a meeting with the hospital boss the hours were cut during the day too and the back foot now, the radio unit was moved to the old abandoned asylum building in the hospital grounds as the Director needed more space for his golf clubs and trophies.

Things looked bad at Life and a dark cloud descended over the beleaguered local enterprise, as it packed it's gear to take up residence in the neighboring empty nuthouse.

Jess was stoical and attempting to keep up her troops' morale. 

Star was her usual bubbly self, happy to be alive and keen to get back on the air. Rasmus on the other hand was nervous as hell about the move, as his wife had been a patient in the asylum, before she died horribly in their care.

"It's a disgrace sticking us in that place! A scandal and a personal insult to me! We might as well call it Radio Straightjacket from now on! I've a good mind to just walk Jess, I mean it!"

Jess understood Rasmus's outrage completely. His wife had been let down by the asylum's six corrupt staff.  They had supplied a new drug intravenously to the half-dozen residents except Rasmus's wife, who had been walking in the grounds that night. On her return the hallucinating lunatics thought she was the devil and tore her limb from limb, played soccer with her head and threw her remains in the chapel font. That had been thirty years ago and the asylum was immediately closed. The staff got off on a technicality, did a bit of community service and scattered into the wind. 

Jess, with her most understanding manner, placated Rasmus and after some further discussion and a tub of Quality Street she talked him into staying.

It was around this time that a sixth resident of Fothering vanished. Again there was no sign of hide nor hair of this latest one. The detective on the case was bewildered. Where had six local people got to for God's sake?

Patients at the hospital, like all the town's incumbents, were naturally uneasy about the disappearances. Nights became even more restless as they struggled with both their ailments and the vanishings. 

So it was with uncannily good timing that one of the patients congratulated Jess in reinstating the Graveyard Shift the night just passed. Jess was visiting management in the main offices.

"It was fabulous Miss Jess! We all loved it.  Just like the old days with tales of mental institutions, maniacs and dismemberments! Where on earth did you find Collier again? Make sure you give him a big thumbs up from all of us on the wards. We can't wait for tonight's gory shift!"

Jess was totally perplexed. Collier was still missing and the station was down at night. She didn't have a clue what the old dear was on about.

Her curiosity piqued, Jess decided to tune into their channel that night whilst lead in bed. The clock struck midnight and to her complete amazement the Graveyard Shift crackled into life. She'd recognize the intro anywhere, a sort of distorted Hammer Horror theme tune. 

When Collier's voice came in she shot up and listened intently, a feeling of growing unease coming over her.

"Well hello Graveyard Shifters, Collier your ghostly host here again after my sudden journey across the Styx. Well, I paid the Ferryman his royalties and here I am ready to tell you more about the sins of mad men and their terrible fate at the hands of a homicidal monster with a needle. Yes, I'll have you in stitches when I tell you about my fatal tryst with a murderer who lives to sever all relationships ... Literally! Ha ha! Yes, Graveyarders, I'm in pieces about how you had to suffer dead air this past six months but after last night and tonight I've pulled myself together and I'm holding my nerves. There's one hanging out right now, my optic nerve! Ha ha. Well, here's some gruelling melodies to help you stave off that Hadean slumber. From the the stiffs in the asylum's basement, farewell!"

Jess was stunned. No, she was frightened. It sounded like her old friend Collier but his voice was echoey, whispery, as though speaking through a fog. Unable to sleep she got dressed and drove to the radio station. 

There was no-one there. No Collier. Nobody. It was silent, unchanged save for a slight whiff of rotting meat coming through the floorboards, which she dismissed as a rat.

When Rasmus and Star arrived that morning to do their reduced slots, Jess explained what had happened during the night.

"How can that be Jess? The place was locked up wasn't it?" Said Star.

"It was. I can't think of any other explanation. Collier is back and letting himself in at night to do the Graveyard Shift. What do you think Rasmus?"

The old DJ looked nervous and mumbled something before entering his booth to do his show, a sort of craftsman's magazine. Today's topic, a whistle-stop look at cutting up leather and stitching pieces together.

"What's up with him?"

"I dunno. He's been acting weird since we got here. Yesterday he blocked up the basement door, because it was dangerous down there"

"Oh, that's odd. How would Rasmus know?"

" He said he'd done a health and safety tour the day we moved in"

"Right"

That night Jess, along with the whole hospital, tuned into the Graveyard Shift.

"It's the witching hour Graveyarders, no need to shut your eyes just yet. It's Collier here, your host with the ghosts. Six of them to be exact. All like me, desperate to tell our grisly tales and free ourselves of our earthly gyres. Like the great Van Helsing we are truly fighting evil and hope to drive a stake straight through the necrotic heart of our wicked keeper, the embroiderer behind the door, the soul stitcher in the cellars. Our severance package! And so, here's a dreadful carve-up of gruesome toons to keep you awake and give you nightmares"

Jess was once again shocked. Star too. Only the patients saw nothing untoward in it. Collier had come back and they could again enjoy creeps during the long lights-out.

That morning the Police turned up at the main hospital to search the outhouses and garages in their town-wide dragnet to locate the missing people.

When they reached the old asylum Rasmus met the detective and explained that he'd already checked everywhere and there was nothing to find.

"Out of my way Sir. I'll be the judge of that!"

Rasmus then physically barred them from entering the basement.

"Step aside Sir!"

Two constables removed Rasmus and the detective, Jess and Star descended into the Basement.

What they found, a horror once seen could not be unseen and the charnel house they found would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

In the centre of the large cellar was a ring of of six seated figures. In the middle of the this ring was a seated woman in a state of extreme decay.

It became clear to the three visitors that the figures in the seats were all dead. 

The corpses, all naked, had been completely dismembered and stitched back together. The joints were all ragged.

They also had their lips threaded together. Except for one male. His mouth had been stretched open by his own hand and the loose stitching dangled like nerve ends. 

On his lap was a radio mic.

Jess gasped.

"Collier! Oh, Collier! You were trying to tell us in the only way you knew how!"

She and Star sobbed for their former colleague, who, like the others, had been terribly disfigured by his murderer.

"Do not touch my wife! Don't go near her!"

Suddenly Rasmus ran down the steps and propelled himself towards the decomposed woman in the centre and hugged her tightly, the white and black liquids of putrefaction oozing over his hands and face.

"I have a avenged you my love! All six of the hateful nurses who abandoned you to the mob have been vanquished in the same terrible way you were. They sit around you pronounced guilty, especially that horror nut on the radio. How lucky I was when he joined the station! The penultimate part of the jigsaw and now with the six all here it's done my love!"

Rasmus clutched his wife's disintegrating body and sprang onto a large rotten board lying the floor and both figures suddenly descended into the stygian black of a secret and ancient well.

The Detective, Jess and Star looked over the edge and in the unfathomable depths heard a distant splash.

"Christ in Heaven, he must have rescued his wife's body parts from the font, sewn her back together and kept her down here years ago" concluded the policeman.

"Thank God Collier couldn't stand dead air or else we'd have never have found Rasmus's massacre" said Star. 

Jess kissed Collier's wobbling head.

"Thanks my friend. Put your mic down now and rest in peace"