Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Weight of Solitude Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE WEIGHT OF SOLITUDE

Lee Henry sat behind the wheel of his gold, 1988 Ford Tempo tapping his finger against the outside wall of the driver’s door. The light hanging overhead was red. The song was a new tune from MC Hammer, and it really thumped, not that Lee’s no bells or whistles, factory installed speakers did it any justice. Around him, each automobile seemed to feature its own little world: families in argument, friends singing along to unheard songs, countless possibilities.

The light turned green as Hammer’s jam faded into something Lee didn’t recognize. A flavor of the month R&B girl band began a slow moan. He tried to nod along but the band was nothing special. Lee flipped the AM/FM switch. It was a pain to find the only good station once fiddling with the dials. Switching to AM kept the station tuned while giving him something else to hear; always better to wait out a bad track with talk radio.

Besides, there was something soothing about voices that might be a million miles away. Those lives might be relatable, and they might not, they might be totally bonkers, no matter what, though, it was humanity and humanity had great potential for interesting.

Now on the air, two men discussed the universe and the busy business of drumming up attention for NASA in a time after moonwalking and the space race.

“Good luck,” Lee said and got to thinking about the last time he’d heard anyone talk about space.

The voices seemed to echo his thought: people had lost interest, none of it was exciting. No interest, so it turned out, meant funding was apt to dry-up a touch quicker than normal.

Traffic slowed again. The weather had been off and on rain and was about to be on once more. Lee rolled up his window.

Through the damp streets, he made his way to the highway southbound. On-air, the men spoke of the good old days. The good old days were bad for too many people, but rather than dwelling, Lee thought of his grandfather. He’d ruffle Lee’s hair and sneak him mints. A smiling man who always wore blue suspenders, no matter the occasion. He had eyebrows so bushy they seemed poised to leap from his face. Lee didn’t have much contact with his grandfather in the normal way. The man was always on the move. Lee’s parents scoffed at this, as if a man of that age ought to have come to some settlement with life, drop anchor and hunker down until the cold winter took him.

Lee saw it differently. The man had it right. Even as a small boy Lee knew that. He fantasized about journeying the world, seeing all the crazy things people in all their shades got up to.

Like these voices on the airways, talking like their opinions really mattered, on subjects most people couldn’t relate to.

In a small way, Lee had been right there with his grandfather by standing against the norm and offering a silent thumbs up to the man’s itchy feet.

It hadn’t happened as often as the boy would’ve liked, but once every few weeks their times linked agreeably, and the winds blew right. The speaker on the ancient Grundig radio would shh-chuched and his grandfather would say, “Lee, you there boy?”

That Grundig radio was a forty-pound magic shoebox of steel components and glass tubes. Lee spun the wheel with the headphones on, simply listening.

It wasn’t only Lee’s grandfather out there. There were all kinds of people, from all over the world. He didn’t say much. Listening was the best part. There were also those strange pattern stations, blipping forever in repetition, old wartime conversations endlessly pinging the air with noise pollution.

Lee often imagined hiking in the woods not far from his home and stumbling upon the spot where a forgotten radio sent out its signals. What he’d do when he got there, that was never really part of it. Discovery was enough. He wouldn’t even need to plant a flag.

The topic on the radio shifted and brought Lee from reverie. Growing food in the city was something people talked about, sure, but it wasn’t something that particularly interested Lee. He flipped back to FM and an advertisement concerning mattresses.

The rain let up again and the sun streamed through the clouds like a kiss from up on high. The world around the highway was yellowy green, so it needed the rain more than the sun. Lee on the other hand, would almost always take the sun when he could get it.  It was a week into fall and out the driver’s window and from the corner of his eye, Lee saw his first faun of the season. Those skinny little legs doing something that looked impossible. Like a giraffe, miniaturized.

Lee was long past the darting animal and onto the ramp out of the city.

—

Tennessee Smith rolled a full minivan. The grandchildren sang and the wife sang. He’d tried to push the classics, but nothing beat the New Kids on the Block. It had been a good day up in the city. They’d gone shopping at the liquidation outlet, visited the Toys R’ Us, and stopped by the pier. Only one hundred feet out, they saw a pair of shooting splashes from a humpback pod. Pretty cool.

“Okay, sit down. Don’t need a ticket, do we?” the old man said, question posed, but all understood the rhetorical nature.

A gold Tempo passed on his right moments before orange cones shrank the three-lane highway to two lanes. Instinctively, his foot lifted, and the Aerostar slowed. In the back, the middle boy of the seven children put his hand to his mouth like a flap and shouted, “Cartoon Indians!”

The old man smiled and played along, tapping his hand over a yawning set of lips as he said awwww. TV had a way of getting everything screwy. At least the kids knew the difference between themselves and the feather and loincloth redskins on Bugs Bunny.

To the left of the Aerostar, a tanker truck barreled a couple clicks faster than they did. The TV Indian sounds ceased and for a breath, the only noise was the low radio and the wheeze of the cracked driver’s window. Hearing the hissing air reminded Tennessee that there was no time like the present to light a cigarette. He lifted his pack from his breast pocket and slipped a stick between his lips.

Netty held out her hand for the pack. The sound from the back perked up again. Tennessee used the dash lighter to ignite his smoke. As he lifted his eyes from the tip of the cigarette, a red Mazda Miata fired by, sneaking between the truck and the minivan. The truck blared its horn and Netty jumped in her seat. The children howled laughter, making honking noises.

Tennessee smiled his final old man smile. He had six real teeth left on the bottom and nine on the top. He figured a few more ought to do it before he had them yanked and replaced with a Fixodent ready set of falsies.

Ahead, the gold Tempo switched lanes, nearly driving the Miata into the pylons. The Mazda broke hard and swung its wheels, skidding black streaks and loud rubbery squeals. The truck driver did not think through his actions and fought against the immediate trouble of crushing the Mazda.

The nose of the truck plowed into the rear of the Aerostar, sending it sideways. It tipped. The truck bounced, the heavy tank payload caught up and the thick trailer hitch twisted under the immense pressure. The hot tar within sloshed, aching for freedom. Three vehicles smashed into the tanker in short order.

The children had begun screaming. Tennessee had a single thought: hope everyone’s okay.

The scent of hot rubber filled the air, stinking like a road on fire. Flames sprouted around the freshly enlarged gaps in the hood. Oranges and blues and greens, all the colors of Satan’s brimstone rainbow. The fire leapt and danced up the spilled tar. Everywhere were sounds of pain and terror.

A quarter mile ahead, a gold Tempo pulled into the cordoned off right lane, safe and fine. A gold Tempo that had switched lanes without looking and caused this whole mess.

—

Lee Henry pleaded his case to the police in an interrogation room that reeked of old cigarettes and sweat. There had been a bear cub on the highway and that’s why he switched lanes. Besides, the Mazda was speeding.

The cops took it to the crown attorney. The crown attorney had received enough calls and demands to go with the flow. Lee would stand before a judge. The court found him not guilty while his ever-ringing telephone suggested the court of public opinion decided him a monstrous criminal that ought to pay, permanently, for his crime.

Days on days on days. Those cries of pain followed him from the scene. They were everywhere. He heard it when he slept. He heard it when he attempted sleep. He heard it in the voices of his accusers. He heard it from the beaks of birds. The clanging and crunching metals that had sang Death’s hymnal. The screams. Human voices expressed a terror beyond imagination.

I’m burning!

Hot, hot carnage.

The driver of the overturned transport had wrestled within his cab, screaming as he attempted to climb out his door window while bubbling tar spilled over him, cooking him, peeling him, consuming him in the excruciating liquid maw.

Help me!

There were other voices.

Save me, please!

Help! It burns! Help me!

Lee bore this memory, the only survivor witnessing the front end. Others saw it. Those who had stopped in time and therefore hadn’t become part of Lee’s kill-count.

Twelve died under the flaming tar. Seven children in total.

The messages on the answering machine tape were of pure loathing and anguish and loss. So many messages. And he listened to each, multiple times. It was penance as a survivor, as a man unwilling to run over a bear cub.

“Hello, you’ve reached Henry Lee, please leave a message.”

What you did to my family is unforgivable…

If only the old tales were true…

Who’s going to raise this child with me now?

We are small in life, but grow large in death…

Mary, she was six…

The telephone was incessant. Lee covered his head, never wanting to converse, in fact, unable to converse, but needing to hear.

The phone rang when he was in bed and Lee pushed to his feet. He stepped to the telephone table where he could hear the recording and bathe in its hatred.

“Lee, are you there? I know what happened. It’s me, Michelle.”

This was unexpected and still he didn’t move. The message was short, that evening Michelle called again. This time after the answering machine filled his home with her voice, he scooped up the receiver. Michelle was a friend and ex-girlfriend. She was a link to the old Lee who hadn’t killed by means of his reaction to a bear cub.

“Michelle?” he whispered.

“I heard. I heard and I’m so sorry,” she said.

A plug was pulled somewhere deep inside and he spilled. All the pain and terror, the hopeless state and the impossible future. He laid it out, all but admitting that he was the murderer the court of public opinion had deemed him.

Michelle was patient and quiet until Lee lulled. “I have a friend. I told him about you—he’d heard of you but really had no opinion, most people not attached to the accident don’t have an opinion. Anyway, he has an idea and a job connection. Way up north.”

“Oh?” Lee said. Leaving seemed like a spot of sun in an otherwise endless void.

“Get a pen,” Michelle said.

Lee did and the following morning, before he had a chance to fully sink anew into the sludge of guilt, he dialed the man at his office.

The remote posting was a chance for a new start. The further north one moved, the more jobs they immediately became qualified to attain. Fit based on willingness rather than experience, and still, with this particular post, Lee knew a little something. Thanks to his grandfather, he knew all about radios and transmissions. He knew more than enough to take an interest.

—

October 1992, Lee climbed out of a helicopter after multiple plane rides and began his new life at the small weather research station at Tip North on Ellesmere Island in Canada’s arctic, approximately 4,100 miles directly north of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He stood a moment in the great, vast nothingness and breathed deeply. There, looking at the blanket of tundra, nothing weighed upon his soul. He did not hear those cries, nor the recorded messages of loved ones. The air was so fresh and crisp. He’d never smelled such vacancy.

The pleasure was short-lived. The wind whistled and the screams trailed upon its coattails.

“Pretty simple, just like your training,” he’d been told just before he was dropped off. “Only thing is to keep in regular contact. Being alone this way, it can get heavy.”

Lee settled in quickly. The space had most of the modern comforts, though fewer of them and in ways that made him want to ration experiences.

He marked big Xs on a calendar, taking over for whoever helmed the post prior. The daylight hours were close to normal yet, though getting shorter, quickly. Soon enough, he’d live in total night. He was equal parts intrigued and scared.

His downtime outweighed the tasks by a vast margin. Lee monitored equipment, righted any wrongs, brushed away blown ice particles, and kept watch that the local wildlife did nothing to harm the government’s property.

“Oh, wow,” Lee said the first time he spotted a polar bear through the compound’s fence. They quickly became old news because they never came all that close to the post.

Being so very alone was deeply cleansing. There was a world outside the world and if not for the voices on the radio and the face on the scratchy, fuzzy, satellite uplink, he was alone in a way that most human beings never experienced.

Lee smiled looking at his reflection in his coffee mug. “You’re a polar bear now. Grrr.” That smile was forced and flat. Joking was a stretch yet.

There were two rooms in the station. One housed his sleeping, bathing, and eating quarters while the other room had a large computer, the radios, the television, the VCR, and the stacks of books and video cassettes.

Five months and a million miles from nowhere. The seclusion had to be the perfect medicine. There was nothing else. He saw no other way to get over what had happened.

Routine helped. He worked and slept, had short conversations on the enormous shortwave radio. The anonymity was nice. Nobody knew he was that guy.

He didn’t like the satellite uplink. It was intrusive. Seeing a face in his space…it was not right. Out there was about being alone and mending his mind. The singularity was a blanket and he swaddled himself. Cocooned.

Some nights he dreamed of the cries, but not every night. After a few weeks, the dreams came but once or twice a week.

Books, movies, and music became his only contact with the real world outside the airwaves. These were controlled samples. The satellite uplink connected him to the Eureka station far to the south. Eureka remained well within the realm of the arctic, long from the real world.

The shortwave went so much farther. Using the big radio brought home the past, the forever calling numbers stations and the BBC music that never went away. It was as if he rebooted to before. This was good. This was necessary.

The winds had ceased screaming in agony and instead screamed only their motion. When he tried to punish himself for moving forward, the din of highway chaos refused his memory. It had become muddy as that spilled tar, the voices melding and depleting. Part of his being clung to the need for punishment, like a drunk finding new apologies to dole before reaching the next step.

“You will be okay,” he said one day and found it nearly made him cry. He repeated himself. Those four glorious words.

On agitated days, when the permafrost glaze riding over the tundra danced and lessened vision to nil beyond a few feet, Lee actually sought salvation from the big radio system. The white walls around the station pounded home the feelings of singularity and isolation in all the wrong ways on those days.

Lee sat in the padded chair at the desk and twisted the dials of the radio, seeking anything to prove that something remained beyond the squalling whiteness.

On the radio, the silence was nearly complete, only the whistle of the fence around the small compound and the fans built into his equipment blew audible pollution into his ears. The ghostly spy calls from wartimes did nothing for him and he spun in search of living, breathing humanity.

—

A storm whipped the white November into frenzy. Lee stared into the whitewash, his gaze reaching no more than a few feet beyond the port window. It was the first real winter storm to completely obliterate the world from his vantage. He’d come to relish the shortening periods of sunshine. The rays were a comrade to lose in the vastness of that white abyss.

Right then, coffee cup in hand, gawking into the whipping white, he’d never felt so claustrophobic and lonely. For a tick of the clock, he considered donning his thermal gear and stepping out, if only to shift perspective and widen the walls around him. That blown ice could hurt, but anything was an improvement over this sudden sensation that the walls had begun to retract.

As he pushed to his feet, there was a crackle from the radio. Rather than heading for the door, Lee stepped to the microphone.

“Tip North, hello?”

There was fuzz and static and then… “Anyone out there, come back?” a gruff, mannish voice asked.

Lee jumped. His insides melted with something like gratitude. He squeezed the steel microphone with the heavy square base and said, “Hello?”

“Oh geez, I finally found somebody. How’s it going?”

A thousand questions streamed into Lee’s mind. “Fine, who is this?”

“I’m Percy. So, what’s it like where you are. It’s stormy as hell here. I used to go all over, but I’ve never seen weather like this. Ever take a real vacation, like on a beach I mean?”

Lee said, “No. I went to Japan once. I don’t remember much. It was muggy. My name is Lee Henry, by the way.”

“Japan, makes sense, you got one of those names, but I guess Lee usually comes at the end. Or is that a coincidence? I’m a bit of a hick when it comes to that stuff.”

“Uh, no, I think that’s right, only surnames and I don’t know if it’s Japanese that have Lee—”

“Hey, no worries. It’s all Chinese to me. So where—You know what? No. Look, I’ve got a long stay and I don’t want to wear out conversation. I’ll call out to you later. I got your station now. You better write down mine. How did you find me?”

Lee looked at the radio as if for the first time. The dial was not where he left it in case of emergency contact. “I, uh, I thought you found me.”

“Ha, crazy. Talk to you later.”

Outside, the wind continued its endless whistle, like the ghost of a Confederate soldier, and Lee felt truly okay for the first time in several months. The accident was as far away in mind as it was in reality.

He sighed, even let a smile play on his face. He then looked out the porthole window and took a deep breath—he smelled himself, like taking a whiff from a gym bag.

—

The days grew shorter, and night ate the world. The mounting aloneness and abandonment of humanity wore on him. He thinned as his appetite shrank.

“Gonna be real’ pretty soon,” he said into the mirror as he brushed his teeth for a fourth time in twenty-four hours. “Supermodel skinny.” He stretched back his lips and showed himself a bloody set of gums.

 By the end of November, he wondered if he’d made a mistake, or if someone played a trick on him. Was Michelle in on it? Was this part of some payback scheme? To get him out here and leave him to lose his mind?

Lee then thought: Percy. He longed for contact and that was absurd. He knew nothing of Percy. Percy was only a voice…granted one who didn’t know him, didn’t know what he’d done.

—

On December first, he’d finished his morning duties and the sun had nearly set. Outside the small, fenced compound, two bears wrestled in the final glimpses of gold. They were getting close lately, closer than they’d come at first.

Lee watched the bears and sometimes they watched him. Their eyes were obsidian in the white everything, like floating jewels.

“Lee, Tip North, Lee, come in.”

“Tip North, I’m here,” Lee said, relieved that contact came, but annoyed that it was not the contact he wanted.

“How are the Eskimo wanderers, see any lately?”

“Ha-ha,” Lee said.

“Did you take a peek at the linkups for the video yet? It says it’s receiving, but it’s black.”

This was Bradley Terrier; the Francophone accent was a giveaway. Terrier came from Northern New Brunswick, used to hard conditions and radio communication. He considered regular chatter necessary, audio and visual. He was also an asshole with a decidedly unfunny way about him. Having Bradley as his only regular contact made the situation that much more distasteful.

Even in the nothingness and loneliness, it was incredible how quickly the man bored Lee.

“Have to check that video link. You Orientals are ‘sposed to be good at that stuff, ain’t ya?”

“I’ll check it,” Lee said.

He had placed a piece of foil tape over the camera lens and left his monitor powered down. On their second video call—choppy and fuzzy as it was—Terrier had thought it funny to bend over with his ass out.

“It’s important.”

Lee shrugged. “I don’t see a fix to the problem. I’m not too worried.”

“Come on. All that little stuff. I thought you were ‘sposed to be good with the electronics and ping pong, those two things.”

“That’s what you tell me,” Lee said.

“You tune around the shortwave? You do any of that? On clear nights, I bet you can find folks in the real world,” Terrier said.

“Sure.” Lee wasn’t in the mood to discuss the others on the radio. Besides, on clear nights he found only numbers stations and music. It was during a storm that he met the mysterious Percy.

“Well, I gots to big Pow-Wow with Ottawa here, so I better jet…”

Static overtook Terrier’s voice and then, “Help-shh-shit-shh-shh-me!”

Lee’s heart jumped at the high, tormented voice.

“…hey big shitty boy,” Terrier’s voice came back.

Lee said, “Did you hear that? There was a woman.”

“Interference? That happens sometimes, usually a radio play of some sort. It’s crazy, radio signals keep going on forever.”

“Right.”

“Talk later, over and out,” Terrier said.

Lee leaned back from his desk and stepped to one of the porthole windows. There was a fence and there was winter, permanent winter. Days of silence. Darkening skies.

Lee began to wonder if he hadn’t imagined Percy.

—

“Come in, Mr. Henry! What’s happening, Mr. Henry?”

Lee broke from the window. Some days he stood there for hours. Outside the weather was up to winter business and the moon was gone. Overhead greens and blues dashed and swayed.

He picked up the microphone. So little happened, Lee answered truthfully without thought. “Hi. The bears fight a lot. It’s pretty neat to see them.”

“Neat! Ten-four, good buddy. We got them here too, fighting like crazy. I remember when I was a kid, we had bears come and get into our trash all the time. Those bears are nothing on these guys, holy crow! I’ve never seen so many bears as I do in the north. Neat is the word for it.”

“Where are—?” Lee began, cut off.

“Oh, dang. Sorry, buddy. Talk to you later.”

The communication died.

—

Lee straightened overturned radars and meters, cleared away ice and snow, and watched the bears watch him. He wore a black parka, a balaclava beneath the heavy parka hood, thermal pants, and thermal boots. It was thirty-seven below centigrade and the sun shined somewhere, but no longer onto Tip North.

“The sun isn’t dead,” he told himself. “The sun’s on vacation to warmer climes.”

Stationed near a coast, the animal activity was busy. In the dark, it only got busier. Big and intimidating. Bears sat beyond the fence, their eyes glinting in the gloom, now and then catching the yard light glow when the moon hid behind clouds.

Days mounted. Terrier was regular and annoying. Percy was allusive and mysterious.

“What?” Lee asked, rising from reverie—pondering Percy.

“I was saying, it’s important to keep in contact, hold the reins. You know what I mean? The mind can play some freaky games when you’re alone out here.”

“Right, I was…there was a bear rattling a fence outside,” Lee said, covering.

“Better hope Nanook isn’t out there.” Terrier laughed his high asshole laugh.

“Nanook?”

“God and master of the polar bears. If Nanook decides to, he’ll send the troops for you. Some think he’s good, but many know the truth. Dun-dun-dun.” He laughed higher, louder. “I had a grandma that chummed with some Inuits, they had old stories about all the animal gods and how the greatest gods watched over all the tribes and souls in the sky. Not all the tribes knew about the Great Bear God in life, but Nanook knew them and watched over all those living of the earth.”

“Right,” Lee said, bored.

“I don’t believe none of that shit myself, don’t let my ponytail fool ya!”

Lee huffed. “Right, well. I’ll talk to you later. I think I might take a siesta.”

“Good idea. Keep cool, Mr. Big Shitty. Over and out.”

It was such an odd thing to focus on, being from a city. Then again, any difference would do when sticking a name to a man.

“Keep cool…you shithead,” Lee said, the microphone button no longer pressed.

Keeping cool was not an issue, nor were polar bear gods. Lee lay down, a Slick Rick cassette rolling in the machine. Noise helped him nap, helped his mind stay blank. Falling asleep hadn’t been much of a problem lately. He’d never been so tired.

Lee awoke to darkness around him and a scratching sound outside the door. He rose and stumbled for a light he didn’t recall switching off. Through the porthole window was the darkness and the long shadows cast by the yard lamp. Overhead, bright greens and purples waged war across the sky.

The scratching was loud, and it had nothing to do with the Northern Lights. Lee stepped across the room and to another porthole window. Snow had blown over the glass and he tapped to knock it free.

“Go on, now,” he said to the clinging snow.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The white blanket clumped away. Lee gasped. Out in the vast forever night, through a tiny gap in the snow cover, a humanistic silhouette stood beyond the fence in the big moon’s light.

“How the hell?”

The silhouette turned, blueish eyes flashing amid the gloom.

“Dear god—”

A giant paw slammed against the glass and Lee fell to the cold floor. The paw came down again. The sound was drum heavy. Lee crab-slid backward a full body length. Adrenaline stiffened his muscles.

“Can’t be. Can’t be.”

He was the only man out here.

Minutes passed and Lee crept to the window and peered out. The moon was high behind thin cloud cover. The barren landscape was void of life. The image before him shifted further into normalcy.

“Trick of shadow,” he said, calming, though not totally.

At noon, the quality of the black had changed, and the dim cast of the southern sun travelled to Tip North like a tease.

“How long have I—?” Lee began to ask when the radio crackled.

Terrier’s voice carried. “Are you there? Lee, Tip North, are you there?”

Lee raced to the microphone and yanked it up by the base. “I’m here, I’m here.”

“You didn’t log last night’s readings.”

“Huh?

“The readings.”

Damn. Shirking duty was unprofessional and not in character. Right then, Lee nearly vocalized an incredible and incredibly stupid notion that the mythical bear god was at fault. He managed to reel back the insane notion before it became words.

“I did them, guess I had a glitch, or I didn’t hit save or something.” His voice was hoarse.

 “No worries, one missed night isn’t going to change much. How’re the bears?”

“Bears? No trouble with bears.”

“I should hope not, you so much as break a leg out there and you’re a gon…”

“Shh-me!-shh-shh-burning!” a voice cut in.

Lee’s breath caught in his throat. He knew that voice and he’d gone north to erase it. It wasn’t how it had been when he writhed on his apartment floor, knowing the guilt they accused him of. But, then, when the guilt feasted, he’d always understood sounds coming from within rather than those from without.

This was a voice in the world.

Terrier came back on a wave of shouting voices and radio hisses. “…better. Over and out…”

“Oh, okay.”

“Shh-shh-my daughter-shh-shh-burning!”

“You’re breaking up,” Lee said, knowing well that it wasn’t that. If he could fool himself then maybe he’d be all right.

“Jesus, man, I said, Eureka out.”

“No, but I heard…” he muttered, microphone at an arm’s length.

—

Lee fiddled with the dials searching for the voices. Nothing, back and forth, nothing. He straightened his spine. The clock on the corner of the computer monitor suggested several hours had disappeared.

“Damn, damn,” he said and took the readings from each of the monitors. He was late and a day after he’d missed reports altogether. “They fire you and then where will you be? Back in Vancouver, back…”

He couldn’t say it.

Back in a world that hungered for his blood.

“Shh-shh-back from-shh,” the radio squawked, rock show loud.

Shaken, he yanked the volume dial to zero. Outside, the scratching had returned. Shocked and terrified, Lee rose and then fell, crumpled under the weight of his body. He cried out and bore a fantastic hunger and thirst. There was no explanation.

Above, the volume rose and fell, swooping voices in and out. Fragments of angry callers, burned victims, Bradley Terrier, before then settling a moment on Percy.

“Come in, buddy, Mr. Henry. Just checking in. It’s a cold one, gets the bears a movin’! Talk to you later. Over and out.”

The radio ceased and Lee crawled toward the kitchenette in his living space. The door that led into the frozen forever quivered and bulged inward like tin siding facing off with a pitching machine loaded with hardballs. The scratching gouged at the steel like a junkyard crusher, growing faster and thicker by the second before becoming a thrumming, thumping vibration. The door had a paddle release on the inside. A pin dangled by a chain. There had never been a reason to lock it before.

“Not happening,” Lee whispered as he slid to the fridge.

Above him, the windowed door bulged and shook. The fridge mimicked. He closed his eyes and bet on the most logical situation. It wasn’t an intruder. It was hunger and thirst. He’d almost killed himself with fatigue, losing time sitting at the radio trying to escape the loneliness around him.

Blindly, he swung open the fridge and dug for sustenance. Obtained, chewed, and swallowed. Replenished, Lee leaned away from everything that had moved, despite its now natural stillness. He remained on the floor. Afraid that if he moved, it would start all over again.

—

“Nanook, you’re not real. There are no Arctic gods,” he said as he rinsed silverware. It felt good to voice a truth that seemed to be thinning.

Lee imagined somehow chartering a helicopter and flying down to Eureka Station to punch Terrier for putting the idea in his head. All that Nanook stuff, he hadn’t brought it with him. It had never been in his head before Terrier.

“Nanook, you’re a fraud. I am the master of the north, not you!” Lee shouted with a goofy grin. “Nanook, you’re a bitch—”

The scratching at the far side of the door returned. Words failed the only man on the planet that far north. He slunk away from the sink and dropped into the chair at the small dining table.

The radios sat silent, the wind howled far into the distance, the scratching had ceased, and again there was nothingness so pure and thick it was as if his ears had quit functioning.

Through the night and into the morning, nothing.

Without the voices stealing time, he counted each second twice. The loneliness was everything. No other choice, he put his face down and focused. Vigilant, Lee worked, two days in a row without issue.

—

Evening, December eighth, outside was a palm blue plane where the yard light touched and black beyond. High up, the sky danced a green display. Lee was okay and the world was good, the world was—

Long and loud, the steel on the outside of the building creaked as if torn at by the claws of an abominable snowman. A screech erupted from within, and Lee forewent any promise of logic and sensibility. As he would when he was a small boy who slept under glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling while tuning into his Grundig, Lee rushed across the room and slid under his bed covers and the sleeping bag. Above him, the station lights flickered and sputtered before dowsing as if sucked dry.

“Not happening,” he said and further buried himself in the warm cocoon. “Cabin fever. It’s all in your head. Think about it.”

Time shifted and he laughed at himself. Fear was stupid. There was no pounding. And if there was, hiding under a cotton wall did nothing to prevent it. Stupid. Childish.

He poked from his sleeping bag. Above him, the neon stars brought home safe familiarity and comfort. It was a good place, at home in bed, his parents just down the hall…Wait. He exhaled a long-held breath and watched a cloud puff out from his lips. Green light danced the sky’s ballroom floor. His body cried out in surprise and numb ache at the sudden cold. This was all wrong.

“No! Not happening!” he screamed and leapt to his feet. Flaming pins stabbed into his frozen toes as he ran the dozen steps to the station door. The handle shook under his grip. It wouldn’t open. Frozen. Lee tugged and wailed, tears iced his cheeks while the moisture in his lungs crystalized. “Please, please,” he moaned. Behind him, a polar bear roared, charging toward him, gaining all too quickly. “Please,” he begged again and pulled back with a great tug, the door swung outward and the confused man dove, clipping his toe on the frame.

Over his shoulder and long beyond the door, the bears remained outside the fence. The memory screamed defiantly, one slammed a window, they scratch at the door, and you know it! There’s one inside the fence!

Sleeping bag yanked within, the door wheezed closed, and warmth stung his thawing body. He fell into a puddle.

“How…? Why…?”

He squeezed his knees tight to his chest and shook, rubbing his feet. His toe ached long after the rest of him had warmed and quit stinging.

10:00, according to the clock. Lee needed a friend. He called out to Eureka on the radio and heard only static. Sniffing and damp, he spun the dial to where Percy existed. More static.

“Damn you,” he said and returned the dial to the station’s common frequency. Terrier’s voice boomed over the tiny space. The volume jacked to jarring.

“…ee!”

“Ah!” Lee screeched in alarm.

“There you…stormy here…gain later, ov…” Terrier said.

Heart thumping like a war drum, Lee glanced to the door and back to the large radio face before him.

—

He limped for a week, keeping his movements to a minimum. No storms took him outside to fix damaged equipment. Clear weather kept Percy away as well.

On December twentieth, Lee ate oatmeal in a plastic dish.

“Shh-I’m burning! Help me! Shh-shh-shh-where you come-shh!”

“No!” Lee shouted.

He dropped his bowl. He stomped across the room, pain roaring from his sore toe, and turned the volume down on the radio. It had climbed to maximum once again, somehow.

“You’re losing it, Lee Henry. Get it togeth—”

The radio barked. “Unforgivable. Shh-we-shh-are-shh-shh-life, but strong-shh-shh-shh-death.”

“Not happening,” he said.

Fresh air got no fresher than the Arctic. He dressed to escape the radio and his imagination. Minus forty, not counting the wind chill. The weather bit through the layers. Lee walked the perimeter. There were no bears beyond the fence, none that he saw. That helped his grey matter ease.

Walking circles had a calming effect. For hours Lee stomped over the icy surface until sweat began to trickle. The warm drip broke him from his reverie. He looked through the fence at thirty-four polar bears. One bear approached and then leaned up against the fence. Another followed. Lee stumbled away, his heavy boots slipping on the glassy permafrost floor.

More bears leaned on the chain links. It bowed inward. Beyond the yard light, the Aurora Borealis made art of the cosmos, abstract until it wasn’t. Not as one likens the clouds to shapes, but solid and certain, the greens, pinks, purples, and blues formed a bear’s head. The head in the sky growled silently. The leaning bears cried to their master in a deafening symphony.

“Not happening,” Lee said as he forced his eyes away. The fence creaked and the bears growled again. “You’re calling to Eureka and getting out.”

He reached for the door and utter silence enveloped the universe as if pulled into a cosmic vacuum. Reason battled within. Conquer your hallucination. It’s simple. Do it. There were no bears on the fence, none in the sky. Couldn’t be.

Lee turned to prove his stance against the faults of his mind. “Not real!” he screamed at the crowded forms that stood only a few feet away, the perimeter breached.

Belief in logic mattered none now. The bears roared, many standing on hind legs, paws with claws reaching for man meat. Their breaths were a thick and fish stinking fog. Lee jumped, stunned.

“Go away, go,” he mumbled as if shooing a cat.

He turned to step around the steel as the latch let. A heavy paw came down on his back and sent his face into the door, slamming it shut.

“No please, you can’t be.” He sobbed.

The pain in his face was incredible, strengthened by the cold. The bears roared around him and he curled into a ball. Ice crystals melted on his cheek. Permafrost burned at his exposed hands. The bears had gone quiet.

Frozen tears created clear humps beneath and beside Lee’s eyes, drifting toward his ear. The bears were gone. The fence stood as it always had. Exhausted and sweaty and yet cold, Lee got inside, slamming the door in his wake. He stripped and crawled into bed. The door blew open a crack and he pushed to his feet, shuffling to the door. He closed it and locked it behind him.

There was clarity when Lee awoke. His pillow was wet with thawed terror. Bradley Terrier had done this to him. The man had planted the seed and needled him with fake radio communications.

He knows about the accident.

Lee radioed out to Eureka but got no answer. It happened sometimes. He loaded a cassette into the stereo and went to the kitchen. After a short meal, he returned to the radio, he’d hand out a mighty verbal thrashing yet. Damn that sonofabitch.

“Eureka Station, come back,” he said and then for the first time since, Lee heard himself bark aloud. “It was an accident!”

“Uh, Eureka here, what’s an accident? Am I doing this right? Can you hear me?” The accent was minimal, not a trace of French.

“I hear you. Where’s Terrier?”

There was an audible wheeze through the microphone. “Brad’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Brad’s gone, we were collecting samples a week ago and,” there was a click and a pause, “a bear attacked us. We shot the bear, but it got Brad in a bad way. The thing came out of nowhere.”

Lee gulped back an irrational bubble. “Is he—A week ago?”

“Yeah, a week ago. He’s still under. I guess, they’ll keep him that way until,” as the man spoke, Lee roved his mouse and awoke the computer, “they bring him home from, well, from death.”

The calendar on the toolbar stated December twenty-seventh. “Impossible.” He looked to the paper calendar. He’d stopped crossing out days sometime in October.

But?

“Yeah, but while I have you, I can’t find your reports. I figured you and Brad had some other file set-up or something.”

“I…” Lee trailed.

“Oh, and Merry Christmas, if you’re that type.”

“How many days?” Lee gasped, not asking about the reports, but over the number of days since he’d crawled into bed afraid of shadows he’d surely imagined.

“A bunch anyway. Umm, if you resubmit the last eight or nine days that will do. Maybe to another inbox somewhere we have access.”

“I can have those out by tonight, I suppose.”

“You mean tomorrow night?”

Lee roved the mouse back over the clock and calendar. First thing, he rose and radioed Eureka Station. First thing! The clock read: 21:22. It was only minutes after 11:00 the first time he’d radioed. When he finally got through it was no later than lunch.

“I don’t…yeah, okay.”

“Talk to you later, Tip North. Over and out.”

Lee put his head on his arms and closed his eyes as he leaned forward on the desk. The radio screeched and hissed.

“Shh-Strong and big-shh-death. Shh-shh-shh.”

The door quaked and rattled. Steel screamed as cold claws tore through its brittle surface. Lee shook his head on his arms, the scent coming from his armpits was enough to make his eyes water.

“Shh-unforgiveable, do you hear me, Mr. Lee?” Percy’s voice rose higher and higher until squealing. “Small in life! Shh-strong and big in death. Shh-shh.”

“Not happening!”

“Lee, you—!”

He lifted his head. That voice was familiar.

Steel screeched and freezing wind filled the room, stealing his attention. Lee looked away. He was hungry again, that’s all. The kitchen was full of food, and it was only steps away. He’d missed meals and slept too much and it—

“You can’t wish us away, buddy.” Percy’s voice had returned to normal.

“Food, you need to eat,” Lee said.

He opened the familiar cupboards, blindly tapping for a nutrient rich, chocolate meal replacement. With greedy swallows, Lee finished one packet and grabbed for another. He closed his eyes and waited before opening them. Nothing had changed when he again gazed at his all too familiar quarters.

 With a third protein pack in hand, the filthy, odorous man stumbled toward his computer. His toe oozed a green pearl. The spreadsheet figures jumbled and ran. He put his head down again.

The radio crackled.

“Hello?”

Lee rolled his shoulders, his back ached terribly, slobber dangled from his sticky lips. He stared at the radio trying to comprehend the voice.

“Hello.”

He picked up the microphone.

“Michelle?”

“Are you okay?”

“I wanna go home.” He sobbed. “Please tell them to take me home.”

“It’s not a good time. People know you’re a murderer, even if the courts decided you weren’t. You can’t come back, not now. Not ever is my guess.”

“Please, Michelle.”

“Sorry, buddy.”

“What?” Lee turned up the volume. “Michelle, come back! Where—come on!”

He fiddled with dials and knobs. Lee leaned back on his chair and wailed to the ceiling.

“Lee, you there, boy?”

He shook his head. His dead grandfather was even less likely than his ex-girlfriend. He’d lost it. There was no choice. He had to leave, be anywhere else. Eureka Station: he had to call and have them send help. Lee picked up the microphone.

The cord broke a foot prematurely.

“Who…? How…?” he rambled as he gawked at the frayed tendrils of ruined cord.

A high-pitched voice came through the speakers, increasing in volume by the syllable. “Strong in death! Nanook controls all! Nanook is the master of all!”

The voices echoed the sentiment like a barbershop quartet. Crunching metal and flaming wreckage sounds filled in the background. A memorized and plaguing cacophony shook the universe within that room.

“Not happening,” Lee whined defiantly into the crook of his elbow.

“You’re gonna burn, cunt!”

“You killed my…”

“You’ll die how they…”

“It’s all your fault…”

“It was an accident!” Lee screamed and yanked the 63-pound radio receiver from his desk. “An accident!”

He lifted the box over his head to smash it on the floor. From the speaker came a steady hiss after collision.

With the accident din chorus faded, the bears began growling, tinny on the airwaves. Full and rich beyond the door.

“No, you’re—!”

Lee grabbed at his computer monitor and launched it across the room next. The voices continued to sing their taunts.

“It was an accident! A mistake!”

The smashed radio, the smashed monitor, they were not the source of the sounds. Lee scanned the room.

“Where’s it coming from? There’s nothing el—!” His chest pounded and his legs weakened. “Not possible!” On the shelf next to the door was the answering machine he’d left in Vancouver, cord dangling, unplugged, tiny speaker blaring at stadium crowd decibels.

“Nanook is the god of the bears! Nanook is the god of retribution!”

He charged over and smashed the plastic box, sending the cassette spiraling, shooting its spool in a brown streamer.

There was a new crackle.

New but old.

The Grundig his grandfather gave him was on the bed.

“Lee, you there, boy?”

“Stop!” Lee screamed and ran to the washroom, slamming the door behind him. He slid to the floor and rammed his fingers into his ears. Rational safety lived on the tip of a nail and those nails’ effectiveness teetered on resumed silence. For minutes, the man kept his fingers deep in his ear canals. The pain was horrid and wonderful. The ringing was a symphony of logical ache.

Fingers fell away after an uncountable time, tips bloodied beneath the long nails. Lee drank from the sink. Terrified the sounds would return as soon as he opened the washroom door.

Lee inched the door wider, creeping like a cat. Quiet. A mess.

I’m insane.

He swallowed four Tylenol tablets as he looked out a window at the great black Arctic. If nothing else, without communication or readings from Lee, the Eureka Station operators were due to come. The thought warmed and chilled him simultaneously.

Only time now, he thought above the ringing sensation in his ears.

Out there in the sky, the Northern Lights danced without forming maleficent images or glowing monstrosities. It was the visual miracle it always was and nothing more.

The scent from his body claimed his attention and Lee stepped away from the window and headed to the shower.

“Only time, soon enough.”

He stood under the cool stream and drank as he bathed. His infected toe oozed.

Finished and dry, he swept up glass and steel, put the broken machines back where they belonged, and sat down feeling fortunate that he didn’t destroy the television. Unsmiling, he watched bootleg VHS comedies. One after another, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Candy, Hanks, Chase, Hawn.

—

Dangerfield dove from the highest plank on the screen and suddenly bright lights filled the world beyond the yard around the station. Lee stopped the movie and watched the door as he dressed, refusing to take his eyes off the porthole and the light breaking through.

He listened to his heartbeat, letting it lull him with its soothing promise of life. At his calmest moment in weeks, the door whooshed open. The noise of helicopter propellers sliced the quiet to pieces. A figure emerged from a shadow, bringing with him a great Arctic gust. The man dropped to fours and his parka became fur.

Lee shook his head and closed his eyes.

“Hello, Lee Henry?”

Lee smiled. He opened his eyes. A man, not a bear.

“Time to go, buddy.”

Lee nodded, relieved, and followed the figure outside, quietly wishing he could convey the relief without exposing how far gone he’d fallen. No matter. The new face was fine, sturdy. That trouble was gone, had been all in his head—what a mess.

The helicopter was a little further than Lee originally thought, and the chill nipped at his throat. Still, it was nothing. The mess was over and he was safe. Soon he’d be away from it all, well at least to Eureka until his replacement came.

Soon…Geez, this is a long walk.

He tugged on the pilot’s jacket. The man stopped and turned.

“Why’d you park so far?” Lee shouted to be heard over the whipping blades.

The man leaned in, smelling of fish and decay, and whispered, “Nanook.”

“What?”

“Nanook!”

“I don’t—”

The man disappeared. As did the lights. The whipping blades were nothing more than normal winds. Lee spun, terrified. So far into the distance was a pinhead of light.

The station compound.

Pain climbed on his bones like vine on brick. His naked body shined underneath the moonlight. He opened his mouth to speak, air so cold prickles rushed into his throat and lungs. The wind sang loudly above the damage he’d done to his ears. There were no more words or accusations. Only weather.

 Lee dropped to his knees. The Arctic floor was rough glass that burned against his skin. Everywhere, all around him, the fishy scent reigned like fresh-cut grass during suburban summer; reigned like spread cow manure in the countryside. Bears circled and sat in wait for their next meal to cease movement.

Lee wheezed and cried into his palms.

The wind spoke like an echo: “Nanook. Nanook. Nanook.”

XX