A Voice That Summons Monsters Read online

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  Max broke the story that midnight with flair. Only, his broadcasted voice did not empathize with those natives’ plight for water. Instead, his voice broadcasted alarm and warned those families who irrigated their dry, suburban lawns that the natives were coming to conquer their homes.

  The natives were unprepared for the rage the rumors of their lawsuit aroused. They had not even yet discussed such a lawsuit with any attorney. They had only listened to a stranger’s suggestion, and those natives were not the kind of consistent Max Guardian Radio Program listeners who recognized that the disembodied voice that summoned anger against their reservation belonged to the man who had picked up their breakfast tab.

  “Oh, I agree with you caller,” Max’s voice oozed sympathy. “It is awful how low this great land has fallen. I don’t doubt that the federal government is going to side with those natives once the lawsuit is presented. It’s all this revisionist history. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see the National Guard rolling in by tomorrow morning, and I don’t believe they’re going to taking the streets to protect your homes.”

  The green phone line lights had seldom so sparkled. They had seldom so shrilled and chimed. Callers crowded to express their hurt and indignation, and Max assured them all that they were indeed victims, and that he, a faceless voice that floated through the heavens, understood every manifestation of their pains.

  Max opened his phone lines to his wounded audience. “It is a real shame indeed, caller, that our fine football team has already lost their native mascot. That was a real hurt those natives dealt to the esteem and talent of our youth. Oh, you see how it’s progressed. They told us that losing that mascot was no big deal, but look where it’s gone. Now they’re wanting to take our very homes. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Give them your sports mascots, and they will take your very home!”

  The fleshy fingers on Max's right hand pounded one flashing phone line after another.

  “I’ve been considering this dilemma all day,” Max’s voice seldom sounded so defiant. “And I’ve thought of a symbol for our defiance. Let us build walls around our suburban homes. Let us fill bags with this very desert’s sands and stack them to our roof tops. We’ll circle our wagons and turn our green lawns into fortresses. Let them try to take our homes!”

  Max’s voiced hummed through an army of glowing radios. Citizens from distant communities showed their solidarity with that besieged suburb and stacked sandbags around their homes as well, assured, as Max said, that those natives would not be content should they be granted their ancestral lands. None of those who built those sand walls realized that their emerging enemy only wanted a casino with which to raise funds for fresh water. Max shared none of that truth. Max denied not a single, ungrounded fear that blinked on his phone line.

  The momentum of the “Sandbag Defiance” broke with a killing.

  Fear thickened the radio airwaves throughout that week as the sand walls rose. A truckload of high school boys, who defiantly displayed their old native mascot on their letterman jackets no matter what the principal told them, roared through the desert, determined to protect the homes their parents claimed became threatened.

  The truck descended upon the first native desert dweller those boys thought they recognized, an unfortunate youth from south of the border, who had the misfortune of having nothing else to do that night other than kick a flat soccer ball down the street. No matter that his veins pulsed none of the native desert dweller blood, angry arms lifted him into the truck and tightened a band of cloth around his mouth before the boy could scream. A cotton sack fell over his eyes before he could see what people he had offended.

  They tied his hands in chain, and they ripped the clothing from his flesh. They dragged the boy from their truck’s rear bumpers for many miles while he was living. They dragged him for many miles more when he was dead. Those boys had not intended to kill the youth. They had only wished to deliver hurt and fear. And so panicked and scared, they dumped the body on the outskirts of that desert reservation, where the next morning, the desert dwellers sadly gazed upon the corpse and wondered what young stranger was dealt such pain.

  A mother and father lost a son. Those boys lost their most promising years to jail terms. The native desert dwellers never uttered a word about a lawsuit, and they never received a license for their casino, nor did they gain access to drinkable water.

  A backlash had struck the Max Guardian Radio Program, but its host was well versed in transforming negative publicity into effective marketing. Max said that he empathized with those parents who lost children. He promised that, truly, he shared in all of their sorrow and pain. But Max Jervis reminded his audience that his radio program could not be held responsible. Such blame threatened free speech and free thought, and with a magical twist of his tongue, Max convinced those who heard his words that the real danger resided in those who would seek to exploit tragedy to obtain silence.

  But not everyone agreed.

  “Go ahead, caller,” Max spoke into the microphone, “you’re next on air. Tell us what does you harm.”

  “An invisible voice has hurt me in the night.” The voice sounded like cracked parchment, and Max could not define the strange accent heard on the syllables. “I cannot see the tongue that shapes such a voice. I can build no wall to keep it out of my home.”

  Max nodded in the studio. “There are hurts surrounding us.”

  “It gives me no happiness to hear you agree,” replied the parchment voice. “My hands cannot strike at that voice that pains me. My teeth cannot bite the tongue that has given me such sorrow. It is a fleshless voice that haunts my mantle, so that there is no weapon I might wield against it to break bone or cleave flesh.”

  A pause and silence filled the studio.

  “Are you still there?” Max whispered to build the mystery. Market numbers argued that his listeners loved the suspense. “Are you still on the line?”

  “I have nothing but the voice to hate,” the voice snarled. “And so I curse that voice. Let that voice realize the doom it carries in the sky. Let that voice fall prey to the dangers it smokes into our eyes. Let that voice summon the flesh to give shape to the monsters it creates.”

  Max smiled as the call clicked to a close. Curses and magic roused his listeners. He did not believe he needed to fear prophecy. For Max Jervis knew, more than any of his listeners, that monsters were imaginary.