90.4 FM

I generally prefer driving at night. Years of working second/third shift jobs have given me little tolerance for traffic, so any opportunity to be on the road when nobody else is around is one that I'm happy to take. This applies doubly-so for road trips - if I'm going to be spending hours straight in the car, I want to make sure that time is spent driving rather than parking. I leave after rush hour, arrive well into the night, and catch up on sleep as rush hour is in full swing the next day.

A couple of weekends ago, I made a trip down to Houston to visit with some friends, pick up some furniture, and haul it back to my place. The further from Dallas I got, the fewer and fewer radio stations I was able to pick up in my truck, the selections slowly dwindling to a single Spanish channel, a couple of gospel stations, conservative talk radio, and more country stations than I could pay attention to. From just south of Corsicana to just north of Houston, the only source of entertainment the radio could provide was testing my memory on the gaps between stations.

"One on 88, two on 89, one on 91, 92, 93...."

Thrilling.

My trip was enjoyable, and as I headed back on Sunday night, I hoped in vain that the radio gulf wouldn't be quite as dull as when I'd left. Driving north of Madisonville I slipped back into my game, checking the display as I scanned.

"99, country, 100, country, 103, talk, 105, Spanish, back to the beginning. 89, Spanish, 90...?"

I paused, the greenish display reading 90.4. I didn't remember a station in the 90 range. It was supposed to go from a spanish station in the 89 range to a religious station in 91. I was too far north to be picking up anything from Huntsville, but too far south to be getting Dallas stations. Even more odd was the even frequency - FM stations are assigned in intervals. Even frequencies shouldn't exist. Intrigued, I stopped scanning and listened.

The broadcast carried a strong religious theme as the voices of two men and one woman, role-playing "Biblical time travelers," talked through different scenarios in which they visited popular stories in the New Testament, with the occasional interruption by a deeper voice who seemed set on disrupting their plans. Despite the relatively low production value, the voice actors put on a fairly convincing performance, showing compassion for the soldier's servant, grieving with the disciples at the crucifixion, and so on. The disconcerting thing, however, was the deeper voice; it carried a completely different sound quality, lacking the crackle and fuzz of the poor FM signal, and the dialogue of the other actors conveyed distress that seemed authentic. It mocked them, saying things like, "OH, BUT CAN YOUR FAITH SAVE YOU?" "IF SUCH A RIGHTEOUS MAN WAS BEHEADED, WHAT HOPE HAVE YOU FOR YOUR OWN?" "THIS CUP SHALL NOT PASS FROM YOUR HANDS!" The voice actors generally responded with a pause, occasionally offering up a brief prayer which was met with laughter from the deep voice before the show continued.

Near the end of the hour, the "Biblical time travelers" were in the final steps of the ascention of Jesus when the pace of the broadcast slowed down and the voice actors' tones grew hushed and hesitant. For several seconds there was a pause, nothing coming through the speakers but the faint FM buzz.

"CONTINUE."

I jumped in my seat. The voice that had been bothering the others was louder now, much louder than the others on the radio. Muffled sobs interrupted the lines of the woman, and one of the men tentatively spoke.

"We didn't thi-"

"CONTINUE!"

Silence.

Slowly, the man who had not been cut off finished the book of Matthew.

"...lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Please, we've finished, we're done, please, you don't ha-"

Laughter interrupted his protests, and the sound of metal scraping on something hard rang out. The deep voice spoke.

"THEN THEY WILL GO FORTH AND LOOK ON THE CORPSES OF THE MEN WHO HAVE TRANSGRESSED, FOR THEIR WORM WILL NOT DIE AND THEIR FIRE WILL NOT BE QUENCHED. OUTSIDE ARE THE DOGS AND SEXUALLY IMMORAL AND MURDERERS AND IDOLATERS. THE COWARDLY AND UNBELIEVING AND ABOMINABLE AND MURDERERS AND IMMORAL PERSONS AND SORCERERS AND IDOLATERS AND ALL LIARS, THEIR PART WILL BE IN THE LAKE THAT BURNS WITH FIRE AND BRIMSTONE, WHICH IS THE SECOND DEATH. OR DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT THE UNRIGHTEOUS WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD?"

The distinct sound of chains rattling joined a slowly-increasing chorus of noises in the background, and the metallic scraping noise grew louder. One of the men began praying - a rushed, almost whispered prayer, but the deep voice sounded again.

"BUT YOUR INIQUITIES HAVE MADE A SEPARATION BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR GOD, AND YOUR SINS HAVE HIDDEN HIS FACE FROM YOU SO THAT HE DOES NOT HEAR. WE KNOW THAT GOD DOES NOT HEAR SINNERS."

"Oh God plea-"

There was a sickening squelch as one of the voices was cut off mid-sentence. Chains rattled fiercely, and the other two actors cried aloud, begging for mercy, being met only with the deep, cruel laughter of the voice. An outpouring of confessions was made - adultery, theft, laziness, wrath, but the laughter just increased, growing to the point where the other voices were no longer even discernable beneath the power of the other.

"THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES!"

The laughter stopped, leaving only the sound of weeping as the distinct crackle of flames took over the broadcast. When the sobs shifted to screams, I could no longer stomach the broadcast and turned the radio off, the slow drone of road noise beneath my tires doing nothing to keep my mind from racing.

I've spent some time since then looking up quotes that I can recall from the broadcast, searching for radio stations in that area, and have come up with nothing. 90.4 FM doesn't exist in the US. No program like this has ever been aired on public radio, as far as I could determine. God willing, it will stay that way.