“It’s early in the morning and I can’t get right. I had a little date with my baby last night.                                            Now it is early in the morning…..”

Nomax walked down 12th Street on one of those cold, Etch-a-Sketch kind of days. You know that toy where you try to make a picture with hundreds of tiny black lines? You move vertical and horizontal lines and wind up covering the gray screen in chaos? Well that’s what the world looked like to Nomax, except these lines were made by the driving rain on a gray autumn morning in New York City.

As Nomax turned west at the corner, the wind off the Hudson River gathered momentum and slapped his face.  A cold, wet, stinging slap. Were the Fates working nature and sending him a message from his lover? Somewhere in his spirit that thought came and went: “Must be instant karma for forgetting her birthday…yet again” he thought …. and other unspoken misdemeanours.

Life does move in mysterious ways. Sometimes it can appear to be talking to you, and only you. Whispering quietly, privately. It speaks  to you in moments like deja vu and in those weird coincidences that appear in all our lives. And If you listen, and listen intently, that’s when Life becomes a conversation. Needless to say, it can also be really spooky. Nomax’s slap in the face was a wakeup call and he hadn’t even realized he’d gone to sleep. Yes, It can get  real spooky when you wake up.

He tugged his collar up to his ears – earphones. The earphones were an invention of his dear Uncle Al, who, in the 1940s, took the speakers from two transistor radios and had his mother see them into some old ear muffs. Then, he soldered the tiny wires to a small transistor radio. As for an antenna, his mother sewed a long copper wire across the shoulder seam of his bomber jacket and into the inside pocket, which Al connected to the radio. Twenty years later, Al copied the design for his nephew, with a few modifications. Louis Jordan’s song, “Early in the Morning”, was playing on Nomax’s new portable cassette machine. It could easily have been the sound track to recent events:

“Stopped at Jenny Lou’s to get me something to eat,

The waitress looked at me and said you sho’ look beat.

It’s early in the morning, and I ain’t got nothing but the blues”.

“You can say that again’ he thought to himself, “nothin’ but the boo hoo blues”.

He stopped at an old rusted iron door. Huddled in the door’s frame sat Roscoe the cat, wet and whining. Roscoe immediately began to dry himself on Nomax’s trousers, rising up on his hind legs to reach the difficult bits, like a bear scratching itself against a tree.

Nomax wrestled keys out of his sodden trouser pocket, while at the same time offering Roscoe drier patches of the trouser leg to dry himself on. Now, to someone passing by, this might look like he was kicking the cat away. In fact, he was assisting his old friend; this was a practiced time-worn dance. Releasing his ears, he checked his pager for any messages. Sadly, there were none. The rain on his face might have been tears, or it might just have been the rain.

Once inside, he and the cat went up the narrow, dimly lit metal stairway. Pausing every few steps, Roscoe checked to see if Nomax was following – and he was, but only half-heartedly. Nomax was carrying a lot more than met the eye. A broken heart is a heavy burden to bear.

A neglected, beautiful, old fashioned wrought iron elevator cage occupied the center of the building. Although old and creaking and still working, it was much quicker to walk.

Three stories up, crowning the elevator shaft, was a dingy pyramid shaped skylight. The housing for the lifting mechanism was set on either side of the elevator cage so as not to obscure the view through the glass canopy as the elevator rose towards the heavens. The skylight canopy was filthy with years of city grime sticking to the outside panes. The inner side had the yellowish patina of decades of trapped cigarette and cigar smoke. Nomax remembered it being brighter when he was younger- when he first moved into the building more than twenty years ago.

Roscoe was waiting for him on the third floor. His tail slowly snaking back and forth, front paws kneading the ground, head cocked to the side, listening, waiting, then, Bam! Nomax was ready for the cat’s predictable ambush. He loosely rolled a page of the wet newspaper he’d used to cover his head into a ball. Bam!  Nomax had won this latest round and Roscoe took off like a shot.

Nomax thought he could hear music drifting down from one flight above. It was in fact a radio searching for a channel. He reached the top of the stairs  just as that channel was being honed in on. His Uncle, Al, was looking for some of that ‘old time be-boogie-bop-jazz-woogie kinda-thing’, as Nomax liked to refer to it. Al always got a little “shirty” when Nomax referred to his music that way.

Just as Nomax’s hand touched the door’s nob “C’mon in Max” a voice called from behind the door.  He entered a dusty room stuffed with old electrical equipment in boxes and crates on shelves, reaching to the ceiling in some places.  Shelf upon shelf, box upon box, some labeled, most of them ancient. There were hundreds of old radios and televisions, turntables, Victorals and vintage record cylinders. Spools of  wire and boxes of tubes, some still in their original packaging. The whole building was full of this stuff. On one floor in the building, his uncle had somehow managed to stow a 200-foot ham radio antenna mast. Nomax called the place a ‘prison for ancient technology’.

In the midst of all this sat his Uncle Al, hunched over a disassembled radio, in a shaft of light. His glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, concentrating on yet another broken radio. A silhouette of the man in a pool of yellow light. The room was surrounded on three sides by large metal-framed industrial windows but not that much light was coming through that day.

“Hey Unc” said Max, dropping into his Uncle’s favorite leather armchair. “What are you up to now?”. 

“Oooh Nada! Nada goddamn thing. Jus’ trying to get this condenser to work…”  Studying Nomax over his glasses, “Looks like you’ve had a rough day and night” said Al checking his watch “…any luck with work?”

“Nooo”, came the response “… and…umm…”, Nomax was searching for something.

“I know that tone, what band are you broadcasting on?” said Al, trying to return to his nephew’s mood. A millisecond before Nomax opened his mouth to speak, Al appeared to have found the radio station he was searching for. “Ah, there it is!”

“Lorraine’s not talking to me”, came a dry, tinny voice. Clearing his throat, Nomax continued. “I think I fucked up”. Al raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, I mean I really messed up”.  He sat forward dropping his head into his hands and rocked forward and backwards with one of those, ‘Yeah I reeeally screwed up now’- kind of rhythms. He then whined like a baby, tears and all. “I forgot her birthday …again. I, I, yiii, yiii, yiii, Unc!”.

“Oh son, it seems to me that you done burnt that bridge one too many times to wanna rebuild it”, Al offered, with chiding sympathy. “May as well say good bye and keep on walking.”

“I don’t know what to do Unc. I do love her…and I don’t know what to do. I got nothing. Nothing to put in, nothing to build a future on. I got nothing to offer; I can’t support her, and I’ve got to admit, I’m a bit jealous she makes more money than me…I don’t know what… it’s the same ol’ shit, different day …I just don’t know what to…” Nomax petered out, exhausted.

Nomax was, and had been, for many months, looking after this cantankerous old man. As one should do for their only living relative.  And yet he was tired of doing so and felt guilty for feeling that way. Aside from, potentially, losing Lorraine, his inspiration and love of his life, he was, in all honesty, exhausted and beating himself up. He stepped out of his misery for a second and became aware of his uncle sitting there.  For a brief moment Unc appeared extremely frail and almost translucent.

Al sensed something, stopped what he was doing and quietly observed his nephew’s suffering.  “Nomax, son… I’m not long for this worl…” Al began saying when…

“Don’t start that” Max interjected, “every time I have some misery, you’ve got to find something to be more miserable about than me. Like we’re in a competition!”  But he knew Al was right, he was just afraid to hear it.

“Hear me out!” Al parried, “I know when I’m being lied to and those doctors are lying! It ain’t months, it ain’t even weeks! I can tell!”

To Al, the height of arrogance was doctors telling you what you already knew about yourself. As if they’d just discovered something new, they had all the answers. Al knew he’d had three mini heart attacks in as many weeks. Each time, he brewed up some herbal home brew to stave off the inevitable. He had shared, in confidence, and in pain of death all that was happening to him with Nomax. With the last of the vital ingredients gone, Al went on his final long-range reconnaissance. This was the shopping excursion that ended with the police calling Nomax to come get his uncle. Al had been found, waist high, in the river, looking north up the Hudson screaming, “Why’d you give it away?” Accusingly, “Why did you give it away? Don’t just give it away!” he admonished an apparition. Then crying a broken-hearted wail, “Why did you give it awaaay?”

“Unc, why don’t you and I and maybe … Lorraine… do something together. Ya know, a picnic, or a movie or something” Said Max , trying to change the subject. He knew he would fail miserably at this task. He knew this man too  well.  For months Nomax had been cataloguing his Uncle’s inventory – as a way to ‘be available’ in case something happened to the old man. It wasn’t that his uncle was a danger to himself. But he was getting weirder.

He wanted to go on little walking excursions every now and again. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Sometimes he’d go to Coney Island for a day or Far Rockaway for two days. That’s a long way away from where they lived. Just when Nomax thought he had Uncle Al’s travel itinerary ‘sussed’, Al took off in an opposite direction. For several days he went to the most northern part of Manhattan island. To Nomax, this made sense for Al to be there: Al was found at the same spot he had released his brother’s and sisters’ ashes years earlier. That spot had become an unstated sanctuary for them both.  Nomax knew Al was a creature of habit; he would only go somewhere familiar. So when the. Police called, Nomax knew exactly where to go.

When alone and walking along the river’s edge, Al would balance on the rocks, skipping, light-footed from one stone to another, testing his dexterity in his old age. “You’ve got to keep pushing yourself Max” he had said, when Max first found him. “No one is gonna do it for you, son. One day there’ll be just you to look after, unless you’re lucky. So, you gotta push yourself. No one’s gonna do that for you, that’s for sure!”. That, really was the crux of it all: “One day, there’ll be just you to look after”. These words were echoing in Nomaxs head.

Al continued “…I’ve got no one to leave all this stuff to. You’re the only one… I got to tell you now, because I can’t just plan on when we can just sit down and chit chat. You’re always busy doin’ something or the other.” Al slowed down, “You say you got nothing? Well, for heaven sake boy. You got alll this.”

“Unc, I don’t want all this” Nomax protested. “I got no place to put all this stuff after you’re gone. Might as well sell it while you’re still here, and at least clear this museum out and make some money. I can’t afford to keep all of this…”

“If you’d stop talking, you’d hear that I’m about to address that very issue. Boy, no wonder your life’s a mess. You just don’t wanna listen! Talk, talk, talk your way right past the sweetest part of the poultry. Hence the word Poultri-tude. See what I’m sayin?” Al joked, knowing that Nomax couldn’t resist the bait. But he didn’t bite.

“Wha… Poultri ….!” Nomax screwed his face and let out an exasperated sigh. He was in a no joking mood and that was fine with Al because it was time to get serious.

“Max!, This ain’t about no money, it’s more than that. I own this building, and have done for some time. ‘Into perpetuity’ according to the covenant. The only person that we share in common is my mother, your grandmother. And whether you like it or not all this is yours when I die. I got no choice in the matter. Your Grandma set this in motion. It appears as though she brokered this deal before the Depression and somehow kept it under the radar. It only came to light during the reading of her Will.”

“Evidently she was one hell of a moonshine distributor in Brooklyn. She used your dad and I to distribute cases and bottles to the locals, on a daily basis. A very lucrative occupation for those times. She made these jackets with a dozen or so pockets sewn into the lining. They were just large enough to hold a pint of liquor. We’d walk the neighborhood delivering the bottles here and there. She was lucky  to be part of that little operation. A lot of people found themselves in hard times, those who survived and thrived were usually doing so outside the law and had their own economy.”

“Desperate times called for desperate measures. Some got so desperate they’d auction anything and everything on a black market to keep the Feds off their tails, stay out of jail, or to settle a debt. And people bartered; as was the case with your Grandma and her landlord. An old First World War veteran, he used the building for his textile business. Grandma looked after this old man from the time he landed at Ellis Island to his last breath. She wasn’t doing it for any other reason than to express her human kindness. But that grew into a real friendship. He left the building to her and ‘her children into perpetuity, to live and thrive in’. So there,” Al summed up, “it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me.”

Nomax sat dumbstruck listening to this fantastic history. It sounded too fantastic in fact. Has Al shifted into some altered reality? He looked normal enough, Nomax thought.

Al was the last of four children. It seems that his wily old Bajan mother had left her mystery trove of treasures dotted across three boroughs amongst her four children. Each one not knowing what the others had. As they passed on, they bequeathed whatever to whomever they wanted, as long as it was on their mother’s line. So, things came to Al,whether he wanted to or not, and he was now responsible for all these treasures. This building was a surprise to Al and came to him through his sister. By selling and renting properties left to him, Al was able to pay the heavy liens his sister left on the building. He was so shrewd, he had his lawyers secure the airspace above his building and, something rarely heard of, the footprint to the center of the earth. Once all that was in order he set up his radio repair shop in one of the vacant offices.

For a while he collected payment from the rented office spaces: a law firm, a tailor, an import-export company, an accountant, a print shop,and a few other transient endeavors. Everything was ticking over smoothly until Al’s radio collection started to grow. It got too big to keep on one floor. Then, one by one, the radios, TVs and other electrical curios took over the building.

“We own every brick and girder and wire and pipe. Lot, stock and barrel. And have done so for the past twenty-eight years. Did you see my lips?’’ Al asked.

There was a long silence. Nomax had to let this new info settle in. Then mumbled, “I thought you were payin’ rent…actually I was wondering how you kept this place, …even why you kept it. Ain’t like you got a passing trade. People don’t even have radios these days…not like the ones you got. Wait, twenty-eight years?” Max settled down. “Yeah, right. You own this. OK, I’m listening and I’m hearing you. You Own This Prime Piece of New York Property into perpetuity. I’m listening”.

Al started slowly and deliberately “I know people don’t listen to these things like they used to, but as long as there’s a frequency, a wave to ride, people searching for a station? Someone’s always gonna tune into something wonderful…I kept this place for you and everything in it. These radios here, they hear sounds from the turn of the century – wind-up gramophones, cylinder recorders.”

“I’ve Got All Kinds Of Treasures Here, Max.” Al raised himself up.”I’ve been able to keep this place because some of these treasures are priceless to real collectors. And they bid top dollar for some of these old radios. They’re treasures and they’re very, very valuable.’’

Again a long pause…then…“Get outta here, Unc. Priceless?” Nomax said.

Al continued, “In this room alone there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of antiques. We’ve got three floors of this stuff. That’s twenty rooms filled with what most folk call junk.”

Al moved from behind his workstation. As he crossed the small room he picked a dusty box off the shelf. He blew the dust off and settled on a stool opposite Max. His eyes were shining and there was mischief in his smile. He quickly unwrapped the box and threw its contents to Nomax who caught it upright with ease.

“What’s that?” Al quizzed.

Nomax came back with the correct make, date, power wattage and serial number with which this limited edition of the first Bakelite radios were identified. “That’s an Addison Five Catalin. Why do you ask, testing me again?”

“How much do you think that thing is worth?” Al questioned

“Haven’t a clue, Unc…I dunno … 200…?” Nomax shrugged, but was intrigued.

“Not bad, I’m impressed. Really. I never thought you would think…I mean you’re always so, you know, tight, with your earnings… What made you pick that number?” Al queried, scrutinizing Nomax.

“Well, to begin with it’s got this cheap plastic that feels like it might break easily, and it’s heavy. People don’t go in for that inlaid shit these days, but the work is good for the period, I guess. I mean two hundred would be tops I actually think, 125 to 150 if you marketed it right. You got seventeen boxes, if I remember from the last inventory.”

He carefully handed the radio back to his Uncle. Al paused, looking at the radio. Turning it over and over in his hands. Al spoke in a day-dreamy way, and began to tell Max about an extraordinary night, way back in the early thirties. “It was right around this time of year that that storm started up’’ Al almost whispered.

A bewildered NOMAX sat stunned by the non sequitur

Al seemed to be doing this more often these days – picking bits and pieces of past memories out of the air and sharing them with Nomax. And Nomax reluctantly went along with them.

Nomax thought he’d heard all of his father and Uncle’s escapades as kids in Brooklyn. They were sewn into the fabric of all his own story-telling, when the spirit for a good story telling session was on. But Al’s odd behavior made the already fidgety Nomax pay particular attention to this introduction.

Al struggled a bit to get his feet on a higher rung of the stool. After finding just the right position, he rested his elbows on his bony knees and let his head slip into his shoulders. Al’s younger brother, Marty, Nomax’s father, always had some role to play in a story.

“Marty was just as beguiled by this new sensation – ‘electronics’ – as I was”, said Al, “until one fateful night.” He looked at the radio, studied it for a moment, pensively turning the radio around a few times, then began to re-wrap it.

“You know, I always loved radios, loved making radios and stuff.” Al began his tale.  “I always had an innate basic understanding of transformers and receivers, even from the very beginning… We had these metal model kits that had little battery-operated motors. Well, once I figured out how to turn those motors off and on using the transmitter/receiver theory… I would make robots, all kinds of shit, and intercoms. It would drive your Grandma to despair….but that’s not important. We made all kinds of wonderful things to play with your Dad and I….” Al sat in that memory for a while …

”Oookaaay Unc, I’m comfortable now. Let it rip!” That said, Nomax still fidgeted, trying to hunker down comfortably into his uncle’s favorite chair. Preparing for another long walk down Uncle Al’s Memory Lane. It was also a welcome distraction from his present predicament. It wasn’t that he was lazy, he really had had a bad run in job opportunities. It was tough all over, but right now he was happy to be the little nephew listening to his uncle’s heroic tales. “I’m all yours”, Nomax offered.

“This is serious, Max.” Al said.

“I can see that its going be, Unc” said an already bored Nomax.

 “I’ve never told anyone about this. I’m not sure I should be telling you now.  But I live in eternal hope. Hope that you might find some answers that have eluded me for all these years.” He began to wrestle the radio into the box. “I’ve taught you all I know about electronics and …you’ve been a good apprentice. You know every piece of equipment here, and how to use it. Even those tools I’ve invented….”

“Uh huh” said Nomax, watching his uncle. He could see how earnest his uncle was. With the radio carefully back in its box, it looked like it had never been opened. Al let it linger in his hand a long while before saying anything. As Al slowly turned, Max could see that what might be coming was going to be more than just a distraction from his own woes.

Unc’s body language and breathing had changed, a quiet stillness, profound and pensive like a cape draped over his shoulders. His vertebrae were visible through the shirt clinging to his bent back. For a moment all the moisture had left Al’s face, leaving his skin looking papery. His eyes appeared deeper in their sockets than when Nomax had first arrived. Al looked at his nephew with a piercing hawk-like gaze.

Nomax finally stopped fidgeting. “Thank you.” Al said. He was already way into his nineties, but you would never know it to look at his strong wiry body. Until these last few days.

“It’s like, when I’m around all this electricity something changes me.” Al said and paused for another long moment.

Clearing his throat and hoping to break the spell Max said. “I remember when you told me about you and Dad rigging that home-made low-voltage generator to a metal chair”,  A thin sly smile did appear on Unc’s mouth. Nomax continued “… and how you got someone to sit in it to see who could take the heat.” Seeing the smile Max continued “Can’t believe you guys charged kids a penny to sit on it.”

Breaking his silence, Al whispered “For some people it’s a once in a lifetime experience.”, he chuckled. “I couldn’t believe your Dad was charging some other kids a couple of cents, just to watch!”

This memory sent Al again into a laughing and coughing fit. When he recovered, he continued, coughing intermittently. “Back in those days we had to make our own entertainment.” cough! “Kids would gather on the stoops and play jacks, dice,” cough! “dominoes, or stand around on the street corners and harmonize. Like, King Jack & the Jesters.” Al cleared his throat, spat into a tissue and chucked it into a trash can “The Ink Spots, one of those kind-of groups.”

Again, Al looked off into the distance. This time there was a little glow of excitement in his eyes. “I was, ummm, experimenting with recording, I remember. And this one night there was a group of boys singing in the back yard, next to ours. Boy, they sounded sweet… I could listen to those guys all day. Angels… I got your Dad to …ummm… climb out the bedroom window with a microphone I’d made.  It had a long wire…lead …you see… I wanted to see if I could capture these boys’ voices… they sang like angels… angels…” Al’s eyes began to fill with tears.

The ground shifted a little, as if in an earth tremor, “You alright? “Max asked.

“Yeah. Im good” said Unc as he rose to his feet and went to his desk. ”Yes, I’m okay.” On the desk was an old photo album that Max had never seen before. In it were newspaper clippings turning brown and brittle. After a moment of searching gingerly through the fragile papers, Al found what he was looking for and handed it to Max.

“What’s this? “Max asked, taking the disintegrating paper in his hand

“Read it… read it out loud” Al ordered.

“Mysterious disappearance of 5 young men during freak electrical storm” read Max. “What’s this?”

 “Those are the five boys Marty and I were recording that night.” Al continued.” They searched everywhere for their bodies but they were never found.” Tears were now flowing down Al’s cheeks by this point. Tears he didn’t even bother to wipe away. “Their mothers cried for years. No one ever found out what happened to them. And after a long time, people just stop looking.” his voice trailing off… “…they sung like angels.”

“So, why are you telling me this Unc? Do you know what happened to them?” enquired a very nervous and curious Nomax.

“Yeah, I do” said Al. “Get up, let me sit there.” Nomax stood to allow his uncle the seat. Moving like a man carrying the world on his shoulders, Al moved the big leather armchair to a better position. Moving the chair revealed another piece of furniture hidden under a dust cover. As he fell back into the armchair his hand grabbed and pulled off the dust sheet. There stood an old upright radio. It was made of rosewood, with shiny brass edging around a Bakelite dial. Crescent-shaped and inlaid with mother-of-pearl display, the dial had an ebony needle which pointed to the different stations. Below was a brass grill, behind which were speakers. “I made this in the 50s,” said Unc proudly. “It was the first radio I ever made. Looks good, huh?”

“Damn, Unc! You made this?” Nomax said.

“Sure did. On the inside is the recording device I used the night your Dad and I taped those boys. I put it in there soz I could hear them” Again he paused, staring at the radio for a few moments, like he was trying to see into it with X-ray vision.

“Hear who?” asked Max

“Them boys,” came the reply. “…them boys’ in there. They have been in there ever since.”

“Ever since when?” a confused and bewildered Max ventured. “You mean the recording of them is what… what …you’ve been listening to?”

“Nope,” Al said, “the boys are right in there. That’s who I listen to.”

 “Yeah riiight!”, came Nomax’s response. He reached for a box of kleenex to pass to his uncle. The tears, mixed with the drops of snot on the tip of his nose, were not a pretty sight.

“Yeah, you’re right” said Al. “Why do you think they could never find those boys?” Al settled back into his chair as Max stood with his hand outstretched, offering tissues and staring at his uncle, questioning him with his eyes. Ignoring the silent interrogation, Al continued. “The boys were singing along to a song on a radio somewhere and I had a radio in my room tuned to the same station. I sent your Dad out the second-floor window with the mic.

I had been experimenting with building speakers that would give a true sound. Like the music was live and in the room with you. This is long before they came up with stereo, and equalizers, and all that stuff. I had a kind of quadrophonic set-up in the bedroom. Each speaker broadcast the different audible frequencies. Bass, treble, midrange, ultra-sonic…” Al took the tissues from Nomax.

“Wait, wait, …time out, …hol’ time! Ultra-sonic? “, interrupted Max.

Blowing his nose, Al spoke “ …and subsonic… It must have been some sort of frequency feedback loop that caused it…It must have been the feedback”. Al was still trying to piece together the events of that night and whispered to himself. Squinting his eyes as if to see into the past, he continued “It must have been the feedback. The boys were singing. I was getting a level reading. Your Dad was lowering the mic above them but the boys didn’t know we were recording them. I began to hear them in my headset and I realized they were singing along with the radio. They sounded that good.”

“Suddenly a thunder clap exploded and it started to rain. I had your Dad out there on a tree limb with the microphone. Knowing that electricity and water don’t really mix well, I went to the window and called him back in. He didn’t hear me, but the boys did. They kept on singing like there was no rain. They didn’t know who I was talking to, nor did they see your Dad above them. It was then that my speakers started to hum in the same key as the boys were singing. It sounded kind of nice. I went over to my receiver to uncouple the lead when another thunder clap came. This one was close and the lightning lit up the whole room. The air was so charged the hairs on my arms were standing on end.

I ran back to the window to call Marty without taking out the lead. I saw that the mic had slipped from his hands and was now caught on a branch below him. He was trying to pull it up with no luck. I yelled to him to forget about it. That’s when the boys saw him. They saw the mic dangling above their heads and tried to help. I yelled as loud as I could, above the roar of the thunder, to not touch anything.”

“Unc, you’re not going to tell me those boys were electrocuted.  And you and Dad buried their bodies somewhere?” Max asked worriedly.

“Don’t be a damn fool!” chastised Al “I’m tryin’ to tell you something here, son! It’s important that somebody knows.” Al fussed. “The boys made a pyramid, climbing on each other to reach the microphone. They didn’t know it was a mic, but figured if Marty was risking his life for it, it must be something important. Anyway, I could hear them talking while they were climbing and I could also hear the radio in their house… and another one across the back fence. I was wondering how I could hear all this so clearly when I realized the mic was still live.

The storm got louder, not so much the heavy rain as the claps of thunder. I told the boys to forget it, but they couldn’t hear me. One of them was about to reach the mic when a condenser blew in my amplifier, causing a short circuit. At the same time lightning hit a tree in the garden behind ours. When I looked back to see if Marty was okay, his eyes were as wide as dinner plates. ‘Marty!’ I yelled. Marty didn’t move, he just lay stretched along the branch staring. I saw him staring in the direction of the boys.

 I followed his eyeline and the boys… the boys…were frozen. No, I don’t mean frozen. They were …almost still, moving very slowly, with a glow around them, reaching up. I could still hear them in my headset as they reached for the mic. But I could see that they were not moving normally…. and then…just as sure as I’m sitting here, right before our eyes… they faded.”

“Get outta here, Unc. This is some bull. You’ve been smoking some of that wacky t’baccy or something?” blurted a frightened Max. “What do you mean, they faded?”

“Like I said”, Al carried on, unfazed by the interruption. “…they faded. I could see through them, frozen and …and fading. Then a wisp of smoke. They became like smoke. I could still hear them in my headset. They didn’t know what was happening to them. They were carrying on. Talking to Marty and me like nothing had happened. Then… they got scared… because they couldn’t feel the microphone. I could hear them saying it was like it was a ghost…one said his hand went right through it!”

“I hadn’t been recording this before, but thought that since I could hear them perhaps I could record them.” Al shuddered, like someone had walked over his grave. “I flicked the switch on the amplifier.” Miming what he had done over seventy years ago, Al reached his hand out and began flicking switches and turning unseen dials and knobs. Max sat transfixed at what he was seeing and hearing.

Max noticed beads of perspiration forming on his Uncle’s brow and asked “You alright, Unc?”

Al continued his charade while explaining, “I tried to turn down the volume because the feedback was growing louder. I even tried to pull the mic plug out but it had fused with the surge… Mama called up for us to “Turn that damn radio down!”. The boys were getting more and more frightened, I could hear it in their voices.”

‘’The youngest one began to hum to himself for comfort, they knew something was wrong because they couldn’t move from where they were. I heard them saying it was getting darker and then they saw the smoke too. By then your father had made his way back through the window. He was really shaken up. Now that I’d unplugged my headset, he was hearing the boys with a slight delay. We could barely make out their images now, they had faded so much. But their voices were getting stronger. I tried to get a better level because the volume was fluctuating.

“Flip that switch, Marty” I told your Dad. He turned on the recording machine. I flipped another switch to start recording…when…

“What… when, Unc?” Max blurted “When. What?  Awww man, don’t do this to me. You’re messin’ with my head, right? Why do you wanna mess with my head like this, Unc? Are you feeling alright? Cause you’re really spookin’ me now”, Nomax conceded.

“When we heard this almighty screech, it sounded like a cross between an eagle and someone being skinned alive. I will never forget that sound. Never heard it before, haven’t heard it since. It was all around us. Not just us but over the whole of the neighborhood. Everyone talked about it for months, and years …after the boys disappeared. When I heard the sound, I went to the window. I’m the only one who saw this. Not your Dad or anyone else…. It’s not my intention to spook you. I need to share this stuff.”

“What… Saw…What?” whispered Max

“The wisp of smoke was being sucked into the microphone like a… like a vacuum scooping up dust. I saw them travel along the wire to the recording machine. I knew what was happening but couldn’t explain it. We could hear their voices in the speakers. Your Dad was rooted to the spot, not being able to make heads nor tails of what was happening.  And yet… I don’t know how, he also suspected the boys were inside the recording equipment…” said Al.

“Unc, either you’ve been smoking that whacky t’baccy” Max started, “…or you’ve snuck in a drink or two. If you don’t straighten up and fly right, I’m gonna call the men in the white suits. I think you’ve really lost the plot, Unc.”,  Max chided. “I’m going to go down the hall to my little hovel and forget this story you’ve made up. You must be mixing up some movie you’ve seen or some news item. Are you sure you’re okay?” queried Max.

“I built this radio to put them boys in…” Unc was calmly saying when Max, standing his ground, shouted, “Alright!!!  That’s Enough, Unc. It’s your medicine, I’m sure of it. What’s up with you today, huh?” Max began to pace the room again, agitated and excited.

“Sit your skinny ass down. Don’t you think I know how crazy this shit sounds? Sit down!” commanded Al, catching his breath and trying not to lose his temper,and balance. This last outburst had all but exhausted him.

Max stood still, staring through tears at his Uncle trying to decide if this was an episode of senility or a case of real madness.

“Sit. Down. For better or for worst I’ve got to unload this” pleaded Al. “There really are things between heaven and earth that no one can explain. So, I ain’t gonna try to figure out how or why it happened. I’m just telling you, it did.”

Max could see that Al was serious and went with it. Waiting, and secretly wanting, to hear what the old man had to say next, Max relaxed his pacing and sat down.

“Thank you” said Al. He continued, “It has to do with vibrations, and sound. That much, I’ve read about over the years. Every-Thing has its own frequency: every atom, every molecule, every compound. Every ‘thing’. That’s common scientific knowledge. My theory is that somehow, someway, on that night…” Al paused again, trying to find the right words. “The vibration of the boys’ harmonies… the radio broadcast …and the lightning.”

“The vibrations mixed up the frequencies…then the molecules at the vortex? Those boys are here and not here. You hear? Their voices are the only vibration left of them, the molecular side. Fully understanding that stuff is beyond me. Voices from another dimension. Trapped somehow now. In this radio.” Al turned to look at his work. “Plug it in” he ordered Max. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’d rather not, Unc” declined Nomax. “I’ve got to mull over what I’ve just heard”.

“Too much for you, huh? I understand. Okay, I’ll leave you to think it over for a while”, appeased Al. “That won’t change the past.  When you’ve plucked up some courage to prove how crazy I am, you’ll plug it in. You’ll see, them boys will be there longer than I’ll be walking this earth. I needed to share that secret with someone, and now I’ve done that. …so now there’s two… me an’ you. Just me.  And, you…”

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