Harlan Ellison - Shatterday

And they were off. Theresa barely had time to get in the live commercials required by the log and the FCC. She had to run them in clusters, knowing her listeners were pounding furiously on the busy telephone lines. Jake and the Brother went at it fiercely, with Jake trying to hold a line of logic and sanity against the ferocious dynamics of Brother Darkness’s statements.

The first of the calls came in at twenty after the hour.

“Okay, let’s take a break from this for a moment,” Theresa said. “Wheeew! You two make my head spin. Let’s hear what our listeners have to say. Dr. Theiss, Brother Darkness, if you’ll use those headsets you’ll be able to hear the caller. Okay. Hello, this is Theresa Ketchum and you’re on KDID talk radio. Who’s this?”

The voice that came across the line was strangely unisexual, neither male nor female, identifiable neither as young nor old. It seemed to be corning from a great distance, though it was clear and precise. “This is someone all of Los Angeles wants to know,” the voice said. “I’m responsible for the razorblade cleansings. You call them slayings, but I assure you, they’re cleansings.”

Through the glass, Millie’s face filled with horror.

She grabbed for the private line and dialed. Theresa saw her frantic movement and knew at once she was dialing the police emergency number, 9-1-1. Thank God Millie was on tonight, and not Charlie, who was so slow on the uptake that he often patched through rambling dingbats.

“Come on, whoever you are,” Theresa said, stalling for time so the police could trace back across the phone company’s machinery to the line on which this self-proclaimed killer was speaking, “we know there are enough cuckoos out there who like to confess to crimes to fill The Forum. Why should we believe you’re the razorblade killer?”

“It isn’t necessary that you believe. But here’s a bit of information the police have been holding back: when I perform my cleansing operations, I always cut a pentacle into the sole of the left foot of my sacrifices.”

He went on speaking, but Theresa saw Jake signaling her frantically. She hit the green button killing the live mike, and Jake gasped, “It’s him! Or her! I can’t tell which! But that’s even been kept out of the coroner’s reports.”

“How do you know?”

“For God’s sake, Terri, I’m working with the LAPD on this! It’s the killer, I tell you!”

She punched the mike to life. “Why are you calling us?”

The voice went on carefully, very steadily, “I just wanted to say it would serve you to listen to what Brother Darkness is saying. He’s right, you know.”

The most violent reaction came from Brother Michael Darkness. He grabbed the boom on the mike and pulled the instrument to him. “Whoever you are.., you’ve got to stop this… it’s awful… it’s not right… you’re a sick person…”

But the line went dead. The dial tone came over the open mike.

They sat there in silence, knowing that all over Los Angeles pandemonium was gripping the thousands of listeners to this program; knowing that if the station management was listening they were already calling in on the private lines to find out why the four-and-a-half second time-delay intercept hadn’t been used; knowing that the police were on their way to the station; knowing that out there somewhere a lunatic was being primed to kill again. Surely that was what this portended. Another slaughter.

She didn’t know what to say. For the first time in seven years she was too terrified and too stunned to let her sense of theatrics override her shock. But Jake had already jumped in.

“Brother Michael, do you know that person?”

“I swear to you, I have never heard that voice. I don’t want you to think that my beliefs or the sect I represent have anything to do with murder.”

“But that person, male or female I can’t tell which, that person says your doctrine is correct. That speaker was an adherent of what you profess. Now do you see what your insane, your profane doctrine leads to? Chaos! Lunacy! It makes it all right for madmen to kill innocent people!”

And Millie was waving frantically from the other side of the glass, signaling Theresa to pick up line three.

She punched up line three and started to say, “You’re on KDID talk radio…” but the voice from the night came once again. “Don’t try to trace me; you’ll have no luck. I just want you to know that it all begins and ends tonight.”

Theresa heard herself gasp, and then she barely managed to say, “What do you mean?”

And the voice said, “It’s all coming together tonight. Have you looked out at the moon? It’s full tonight. And everything you people believe, all the mad things, all the terrible things, all the things Brother Darkness calls ‘the irrational’ come together. Belief in the dark things, the ancient fears, the crazy things you all believe in your souls really move the universe… all of it has become strong enough for the end of my cleansing labors… and the beginning of the Apocalypse.”

And the mike went dead again.

Theresa cut in Millie’s intercom. “Where did that come from?”

Millie was crying. “That was line three, from Orange County. But the first one was an L. A. line. It can’t be!”

Jake’s face was white with fear. “Oh, my God,” he said, very quietly, the words trembling with terror.

Brother Michael was babbling, saying over and over, “I had nothing to do with it, nothing… I don’t know him… I swear I didn’t mean any harm…”

And as the hour wore to a close, there were two more calls. One on a line from Long Beach, the other on a line originating in Glendale. It was impossible for anyone to get from one of those far areas to another in the space of minutes; yet it was the same voice, and it happened.

And when the police came they took Brother Michael away. And Jake went with them, to help coordinate the mobilization of every available cop in the city. And when the hour ended Theresa was left sitting in the booth, shaking with terror.

Party tonight? No, not possible. No party tonight. Perhaps no party any night. That voice, the calm in the words, the certainty. Tonight: the Apocalypse. And one word from the razorblade killer’s last message: Armageddon. The final battle between good and evil, the last battle between the forces of the Creator and the dark demons who had been banished before man walked the Earth.

“Terri, I’m going home now. Will you be okay?”

It was Millie’s voice from the other side of the glass. The control room was empty. Jerry had gone. Theresa looked up dazedly, nodded once, and tried to rise. She found she had lost the strength to leave this terrible little box, at least for the moment. “Go ahead, Millie; I’ll see you tomorrow.” She let her hand lie on the console after releasing the toggle. Millie left.

She knew there were other people in the building. In other studios, KDID was carrying on; even in the face of what had gone out over the air tonight. She found that she was too frightened to leave, to go out through the corridors, past the security desk, into the parking lot with its high wire fence, to get into her car all alone, and to drive across town to her apartment. No. She would stay here. Safe in the booth. Locked away from whatever might happen tonight.

There was a faint light in the empty control room.

She looked through the glass, strained forward to see what it was, moving toward her. A faint purple light, soft and blurred, like a fading bruise on battered flesh. And now another light, in the glass of the waiting room on the other side of the studio. She stared from one to another, watching them moving slowly toward the glass partitions. Now another light in the control room. And another. Two more in the waiting room.