Don't Listen

I was just curious.

That’s all it ever was: a hobby born from my natural curiousity. I wasn’t looking for sins or secrets, wasn’t looking to pull tricks or cause trouble. I just wanted to listen, to connect, to feel the familiar burst of excitement that came from breaking through stations and stations of static and picking up the sounds of another new voice.

They were faces I would never see, names I may never know, but they were all kindred spirits to me, people with whom I felt a common ground I found nowhere else.

Every night was something different. Similar topics and themes - preachers, politics, pop music, opinion pieces from amateur hobbyists like me - but different discussions from around the globe. I didn’t ever really care what the topic was - for me, shortwave radio was a way to hear what the parts of the world that nobody else seemed to be listening to were saying.

It fascinated me, too, that something considered such an outdated and obsolete form of tech was able connect all those curious human beings as a listening collective.

I guess it was just my luck I found that frequency.

It was a regular night, as far as mine go: six-pack. Shortwave. Open window. Records. I expected to find the usual mix of politics and preachers and such, but, in going a bit slower down the dial, was able to get something from a frequency I couldn’t remember hearing anything from before.

It was mostly static, at first, but I could immediately tell there was something behind it that I could pick up if I was careful. And after a few seconds, a crisp, clear, female voice - it was almost robotic - broke through, as clearly as if she were standing next to me.

“...Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

A five second pause before it came again, from the top this time.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

Another pause. Another repeat.

I laughed out loud: a real numbers station! Grabbing my journal, I noted the frequency and time and wrote down what the woman’s voice was saying:

4… 9… 3… 7… 6… 5… 2… 8...

I continued to listen to see if the numbers or voice pitch and frequency changed at all - neither did - before I glanced at the clock again and saw it was well past 3 am: I had no idea. I hadn’t bothered to check the time since I wrote it down, which was often the case when I was tuned in so deeply: it was easy for me to get lost in this.

But the realization of the hour brought on a sudden exhaustion, and I decided to retire right then and there, snoozing as soon as my head hit the pillow.

“...Six. Five. Two. Eight."

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I slowly opened my eyes, adjusting to the darkness, wondering for a moment if I was hearing the voice in my head because of my fascination with the station from the night before. It took me several moments to realize it was playing in my room.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I blinked. Was my shortwave on? Had I left it on?

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I looked at my bedside alarm clock and saw that it was 7:15. My alarm should be going off, but…

The clock radio.

The voice was coming from the clock radio.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I blinked again, staring, watching the time change to 7:16 as the voice continued to recite the numbers in the exact same tone, pitch and pace of the station.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

Coming to my senses, I slammed my hand down on the snooze and sat bolt upright, heart hammering, trying to comprehend how that could have happened.

How the fuck did that happen?

I tried to go about my day that day, I remember: I tried. But the issue nagged at my mind like a letter from an old lover, and I simply couldn’t focus on anything else.

Going to sleep that night was difficult as well. Despite my tiredness, I was reluctant to wake up to that sound again. I decided to set my phone alarm instead, just in case.

And nothing happened for weeks. The clock radio incident seemed to be a freak occurrence: I turned it back on after a week or so - not without extreme trepidation - and when I woke up that first morning, it was to the sound of my normal alarm.

I tried to forget about it.

Vzzzt. Vzzzt.

I awoke with a slight start to the buzzing of my phone, glancing at the time on the bedside alarm clock and seeing it was a good deal past midnight. Fumbling for the source of the light, I squinted to see a co-worker’s name on the screen.

“'Lo?” I mumbled croakily.

“Hey. You okay to come in at 7? Larrison wants us all there bright-eyed by sunrise, apparently we’ve got an all-day thing so he wants an early start. He’ll probably call you in the next half an hour, too - if I were you I’d get a jump start on that, give him a shout and say you got the message from me so you can go back to sleep for a bit.”

I took all of this in with a simple, “Sure, okay, thanks man,” and hung up to find a voicemail waiting for me. Probably Larrison, I figured, dialling and entering the standard sequence to get to my messages.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I froze solid.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

I hung up, throwing the phone to the other side of the room and pulling my covers up to my chin, my heart racing like I had just run the radius of the planet. I was shaking, my eyes trying to part with their sockets, my ears straining in the dark as though expecting to hear the numbers recited from the thin air.

How had whoever operated this station found me? What did they want from me? Why were this doing this?

After a time, I retrieved my phone and turned it to silent, hoping against hope that my clock radio would be normal when it went off in a few hours and that I wouldn’t have any messages.

It was, and I didn’t.

I awoke and prepared for work, groggy as I’d ever been and unable to shake the disturbing feeling that I was being watched. Stepping out into the morning fog, my attention was immediately drawn to a small slip of paper tucked just under the welcome mat. Wondering - more hoping - if I had missed a package delivery or visit from a neighbour, I bent down to read the short message adorning the paper’s otherwise clean surface.

4 9 3 7 6 5 2 8

For weeks I didn’t go to work. I went to the police and told them the frequency of the station, but when I tried to show them on my shortwave, it was just static. I tried to play them the voicemail, but it had been deleted. I did show them the note, but in the end they simply took a statement with a good degree of wariness and annoyance, and I never heard back.

I see and hear the numbers everywhere now. In that exact same sequence, in the exact same tone and pitch, and always where nobody else seems to. I never tried to find the frequency after going to the police, but that didn’t stop this station from taking over almost every aspect of my life.

I still get the occasional voicemail, too. At completely random and unpredictable times, and never with a preceding call. Always the same. Same sequence, same tone, same pitch. Seemingly with no end. Sometimes I listen for hours and hours, waiting - hoping - that there will be an end to each message, but there never is.

It just goes on and on.

"Four. Nine. Three. Seven. Six. Five. Two. Eight."

So I implore you: no matter how curious you are about numbers stations, if you stumble across one on your shortwave radio and start to hear this sequence, don’t listen.

Don’t listen.