Chapter 4: The Voice in the Static

Chapter 4: The Voice in the Static

The image was burned onto the back of Jebediah’s eyelids. The silent, black triangle. The sickly green glow. The placid, horrifying ascent of his steer into the belly of the void.

He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He moved through the motions of the dawn, a ghost on his own land. He fed the dogs, who ate with a nervous, watchful energy. He checked the herd, which had finally scattered, though a palpable tension still hung over them like a shroud. The world looked the same, but it was a lie. A thin veneer of normalcy stretched taut over a chasm of impossible horror.

He felt the crushing weight of isolation settle on him, heavier than any physical burden. Who could he tell? The sheriff? They’d lock him in a padded room. His neighbors? They’d think grief for his late wife had finally cracked his mind. He walked into the kitchen and saw the stark white business card Agent Thorne had left on the porch railing, now sitting on his counter. For a moment, a desperate urge to call them welled up in him. They knew. They could explain it.

But he crushed the thought as quickly as it came. He remembered Thorne’s cold, emotionless face, the way his sunglasses reflected the world without letting anything in. They weren't here to help him; they were here to manage a problem. And he was part of that problem. Calling them would be like a mouse asking a cat for help with an owl. He was caught between predators, and choosing one over the other felt like choosing a different way to be devoured.

He was alone. Utterly, terrifyingly alone. The thought was a physical pain, a hollow ache in his chest. He was a castaway on an island of sanity in a sea of madness, and the tide was rising.

The desperation drove him to the barn. Not to work, but to flee. In the back corner of the dusty, hay-scented space, under a greasy canvas tarp, was a relic from another time: his father’s old Hallicrafters shortwave radio. It was a heavy, metal beast, with a big, glowing dial and a collection of Bakelite knobs that clicked with satisfying solidity. His father had used it to listen to broadcasts from around the world, a connection to a life beyond the endless plains.

For Jeb, it was a Hail Mary. A desperate shout into the void, hoping for an echo.

He heaved it onto the workbench, wiped a thick layer of dust from its face, and plugged it in. The tubes inside warmed with a low hum, and the dial glowed a soft, amber orange. It smelled of hot dust and ozone, the scent of his childhood. He attached the long wire antenna, running it out the barn door and clipping it to the fence line.

He didn't know what he was looking for. He just started turning the main dial, slowly sweeping through the frequencies. The speaker crackled and hissed, a universe of static punctuated by bursts of Morse code, snippets of foreign languages, the faint, ghostly strains of music. It was the sound of a million distant conversations, a million lives he would never know. It only made him feel more alone.

He picked up the microphone, its metal cool against his palm. His thumb pressed the transmit button. What could he even say? There are silent triangles in the sky stealing my cattle. He would sound like a lunatic.

He had to be smarter. He had to speak in a language that only another person in his situation would understand.

“Calling any station, calling any station,” he began, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. “This is… this is a rancher in West Texas. Looking for anyone experiencing… unusual predator activity.” He paused, the word ‘predator’ feeling laughably inadequate. “Seeing signs I can’t explain. A very specific brand.” He thought of the sigil in his pasture. “They’re silent. And they leave… cauterized wounds. Three of them.”

He released the button. The static roared back at him, indifferent. He tried again, shifting the frequency slightly.

“Calling any station. Have you seen the lights? Three points of light that move too fast. Leaving patterns on the ground.”

He repeated the message for an hour, a lonely voice swallowed by the electronic ocean. The sun climbed higher, beating down on the tin roof of the barn. Hope began to curdle into despair. It was a stupid idea. He was just a crazy old man talking to himself. He was about to switch the machine off when a voice cut through the static, so clear and sudden it made him jolt.

“I hear you, Texas. I read you.”

The voice was a woman’s. It was weary, strained, but steady. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

His hand trembled as he keyed the microphone. “I… I copy that. Who is this?”

“My name is Sarah Rourke. I’m on a sheep ranch in Montana. And I think we’re seeing the same predator.”

Montana. The distance was staggering. A wave of vertigo washed over Jeb. This wasn’t local. He slumped against the workbench, the relief so profound it almost buckled his knees. He wasn’t crazy.

“Sarah,” he said, the name a prayer. “I saw them last night. A black triangle. It… it took one of my steers.”

The static hissed for a moment before she replied. “I know. They took three of my ewes last week. Did you find what was left of the others?”

“One heifer,” Jeb said, his voice thick. “With holes. Burned clean through. No blood.”

“Same here,” she replied, a grim confirmation that forged an immediate, unbreakable bond between them. “Perfect circles, seared black. Our sheriff thinks it’s some kind of cult.” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “I wish it were that simple.”

They talked for nearly an hour, trading details of their shared nightmare. She had seen the lights, the impossible maneuvers. She had found a smaller, less intricate pattern in her high pasture. She described the same oppressive, unnatural silence that preceded their arrival. Every word she spoke was a validation, a brick laid in the foundation of his sanity. He wasn't alone in the asylum; he had found another inmate.

But as they spoke, a darker edge crept into Sarah’s voice. She had seen something he hadn’t.

“It’s worse than that, Jebediah,” she said, her voice dropping lower. “It’s not just that they take them.”

“What do you mean?” Jeb asked, a new kind of cold seeping into the warm barn air.

There was a long pause, filled only by the whisper of static across a thousand miles. When she spoke again, her voice was tight with remembered fear. “Sometimes… they bring them back.”

Jeb frowned. “Bring them back? Why? What’s the point in that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Two weeks ago, I was missing a ewe for a full day. The next morning, I found her. Just standing out in the middle of a field, perfectly still. She wasn’t grazing. She wasn’t even blinking. Her eyes…” Sarah’s voice faltered. “Her eyes were all wrong. Milky, opaque white, like boiled eggs. And there was a brand on her flank, a symbol like the one you saw in your field, glowing under the skin.”

Jeb’s blood ran cold. He thought of the intricate symbol woven into his pasture, a brand for a herd of stolen souls.

“I tried to approach her,” Sarah continued, her breathing audible over the radio. “I got within twenty feet, and she just… looked at me. But it wasn’t her. The thing wearing her skin looked at me. Then she opened her mouth, and she didn’t make a sound. Not a bleat. The air just started to shimmer around her, and there was this high-pitched whine that made my fillings ache. My other sheep, a hundred yards away, they just dropped like they’d been shot.”

Jeb gripped the edge of the workbench, his knuckles white.

“I ran,” Sarah said, her voice barely a whisper. “I got my rifle and I ran back. By the time I got there… she was gone. All that was left was a patch of scorched earth and a pile of fine, gray dust.”

The static hissed in the silence that followed. The barn, which had felt like a sanctuary, now felt like a tomb. Jebediah looked out the open door at his own herd, grazing peacefully under the Texas sun. He was no longer just a man whose livestock was being stolen. He was a man waiting for a Trojan horse to be delivered to his doorstep. The horror had a new name. Not abduction. Not mutilation.

Return.