Entry 038 - Back the way I came

 I wasn't planning to go back to Nebraska.

I know how that sounds, but I swear I thought I was done. I went there once, I got the tape from Eleanor, I listened to it, and posted about it. That was supposed to be it; you don't keep going back to the place that freaked you out unless you're an idiot or you're looking for something. I think I'm both

The first time I went I was shown the Static on the Line. That tape Eleanor had been playing every night for like 70 years. She told me it was her husband singing to her. A recording that he had made from abroad. She wasn't lying, but she also wasn't telling me the whole truth.

I had said what was on the tape, the UAK-KILO signal my grandpa kept writing about. And I know Russell didn't die in some accident like the Navy wants us all to believe. He slowly got worse, lesions on his skin, headaches, lost time, and Eleanor just watched it happen, and then years later she's listening to the same tape and goes nothing is wrong with her.

Russell deteriorated in front of her. Slowly and visibly. And then, years later, the same signal is played in her bedroom every single night, and her body treats it as nothing more than radio.

After I left Nebraska the first time, things started to line up in ways I couldn't just ignore. Intake logs where outcomes failed to match exposure. Notes from GABRIEL phycisians circling the word nonresponsive. And a handful of cases where long-term proximity produced absolutely nothing at all.

Eleanor's name never appears in those files, but her shape surely does. A negative space in their data. A person who SHOULD have folded and didn't.I kept replaying our conversation in my head, the way she described the Static as something familiar and even paternal. The way she said it, she could still feel Russell "out there somewhere." And I won't lie, at the time I thought it was just grief.

But the second time I drove back, the decision felt a lot less like a choice and more like following something I needed to. Nebraska sat where it always had, of course; flat. A good place to hide something.

Eleanor recognized my car from the window before I could reach the porch.

She didn't seem all too surprised to see me. She said she wondered how long it would take. We sat at the kitchen table again, and I noticed that the tape recorder wasn't on the nightstand anymore. She had said she put it up after I left and that the house was quieter once it stopped playing every night.

I asked her when she first noticed the change.

She said the Static used to feel far away, and over the years, it grew closer. She told me Russell changed before he ever got sick. He grew attentive in a way she hadn't seen before. He started listening to empty rooms and finishing her sentences. He would wake up knowing who had called before the phone rang.

The night he disappeared, he left the tape playing. She said the house has never gone fully quiet since.

I asked her about the dreams.

She said they all take place in the same place. A long corridor without walls, and no floor she can see, but she stands lifted anyway. There's a light above her that's always the same distance away. It never moves closer, but it never leaves either.

She said she doesn't feel afraid there.

Before I left, she asked me something she'd clearly been holding onto.

She wanted to know whether Russell was gone, or whether whatever followed him home simply overtook him.

I told her the truth as I understand it now. That what happened to him was because he followed the rules, and it wasn't random. That she survived because something about her didn't line up the way the others did.

She said she'd always suspected that. She walked me to the door and asked me where I was going next. I told her the truth and said West. She smiled at that.

I'm back on the road now. Nebraska didn't really give me closure, but it did give me context. Eleanor was never sick, and she isn't some host, but she is immuned and aligned in some way. And that if the Static learned her house and her routine, then it probably didn't stop there.

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