Scary Stories --- The Fixer

Ash Variety Channel

5 months ago

Scary Campfire Story

Transcript

00:00I

00:30It starts with the hiss, the sound of nothing, filling the space between worlds.

00:37In my line of work, silence is a commodity, a brief, fragile peace between one crisis and the next.

00:44I was deep in a dead zone, miles from the nearest signal, trying to breathe.

00:51The only thing I was trying to fix was a broken shortwave receiver, an analog relic from a forgotten time.

00:59I thought a little solder, and a lot of patience, was all it would take.

01:04I was wrong. My name is Mark Ash. I'm a fixer.

01:09When systems fail and people are caught in the gears, I'm the one they call.

01:14I operate in the shadows, guided by a personal code, forged in a past I've spent my life trying to outrun.

01:23But some ghosts don't stay buried. Some find a way to broadcast.

01:28That's when I first heard her.

01:30A voice, clawing its way through thirty years of silence, carried on a wave of static.

01:38The receiver was a stubborn beast, a Kenwood from the early nineties, built like a tank.

01:45I'd been tinkering with it for hours, chasing a loose connection.

01:49I was about to give up, when a whisper cut through the noise.

01:53Faint! Distorted.

01:56A girl's voice, laced with a terror so raw it felt present, immediate.

02:02Mayday! Is anyone there?

02:04Please!

02:06I'm on Route 9. He's chasing me.

02:09My first thought was a hoax.

02:11A pre-recorded ghost story, broadcast by some college kid with too much time on his hands.

02:19The airwaves are full of them.

02:21But this was different.

02:23The signal was weak, localized, and shouldn't have been reaching me here,

02:28in a place deliberately chosen for its electronic void.

02:33I fine-tuned the dial, my fingers tracing the cold metal.

02:38The voice sharpened.

02:39He ran me off the road.

02:42My car? It's in the ravine.

02:44I'm hurt, Pete. I'm hurt.

02:48And then, a burst of clarity that froze the blood in my veins.

02:52A digital time-stamp, glitched but legible on the receiver's tiny screen,

02:58crackled through the speaker.

02:59October 17, 1992.

03:02Logic fought instinct.

03:04It was impossible.

03:06A temporal echo?

03:08A sophisticated prank?

03:10My mind, trained to dismantle problems into their component parts,

03:14couldn't process it.

03:15But my gut, the part of me that survived the streets,

03:19the fighting pits, the betrayals,

03:21told me to listen.

03:23So I did.

03:24For three days.

03:26I sat with that radio,

03:28tracing the signal's faint signature,

03:31amplifying it,

03:33cleaning it.

03:34And she kept talking.

03:36She sobbed out a name between panic breaths,

03:39Sarah Jenkins.

03:40I left the dead zone and went to work.

03:43Public records,

03:44old newspaper archives.

03:46It didn't take long to find her.

03:48Sarah Jenkins, age 19,

03:51died in a single-vehicle accident on Route 9, October 17, 1992.

03:57The official report was clean clinical.

04:01Lost control on a wet road.

04:03A tragic, simple end.

04:06But the ghost of Sarah Jenkins told a different story.

04:09She spoke of a black sedan with no lights.

04:13A pursuit.

04:14A deliberate act.

04:16Then the transmissions changed.

04:18The fear was still there,

04:20but it was mixed with something else.

04:22A strange clarity.

04:25She started giving me coordinates,

04:27not for her crash site,

04:28but for other places.

04:30An abandoned warehouse on the industrial west side.

04:33A loading dock down by the river.

04:36A steel truss bridge on the outskirts of the city.

04:39Each coordinate was a jolt.

04:42A key turning a lock I'd sealed shut decades ago.

04:45These weren't random locations.

04:48They weren't her memories.

04:50They were mine.

04:52The warehouse was where a rival syndicate leader

04:55had disappeared in 93.

04:57The docks were where an informant was silenced in 95.

05:01The bridge.

05:02The bridge was where the betrayal

05:04that sent me underground for years

05:06had its bloody finale.

05:08These weren't just dark chapters in the city's history.

05:12They were my work.

05:13Contracts I'd taken when I was a younger man,

05:16a different man.

05:18A blunt instrument for hire

05:19before I forged my own code.

05:22Before I started trying to balance the scales,

05:26the realization hit me like a physical blow.

05:29The radio wasn't haunted by a random spirit.

05:33Sarah Jenkins wasn't just a voice from the past.

05:37She was a map.

05:39A ghost cartographer.

05:41Charting a course through my own sins.

05:44Each call, each coordinate,

05:46was another skeleton being dragged from my closet.

05:49I had built my new life,

05:51this persona of the righteous fixer,

05:54the guardian for the overlooked,

05:56on a foundation of carefully buried bodies

05:59and convenient lies.

06:02I told myself I was dismantling

06:04the corrupt systems that created me.

06:08But her voice was a constant crackling reminder.

06:11I was one of their tools.

06:13The final transmission came last night.

06:17The signal was perfect.

06:20No static, no hiss.

06:22Just her voice, calm now.

06:24Resigned.

06:25As if she'd finally reached her destination.

06:28She didn't talk about the crash or the chase.

06:31She talked about the man

06:33who was driving the black sedan.

06:35The man who ordered her death

06:37because she'd found something

06:39she wasn't supposed to find.

06:41And then she gave me his name.

06:44It wasn't a stranger.

06:46It was a name I knew well.

06:48A pillar of the community.

06:50A philanthropist.

06:52A man whose corrupt empire

06:53I had been methodically targeting

06:55for the last two years.

06:57The man who sat at the very top of the system

07:00I'd sworn to destroy.

07:02And the man who,

07:03all those years ago,

07:05had signed my paychecks.

07:07He hired me for the warehouse.

07:09He hired me for the docks.

07:12He orchestrated everything.

07:15Exposing him would be the culmination

07:17of my life's work.

07:19It would bring down the entire rotten structure.

07:22But it would also expose me.

07:25The world would see the evidence,

07:26the connections, the coordinates.

07:29The fixer would be revealed

07:30as the accomplice.

07:32The guardian, a killer.

07:34Everything I've built,

07:38the trust, the network,

07:40the slim chance at redemption

07:42would turn to ash.

07:44The radio hummed,

07:45waiting for my response.

07:47Her voice echoed in my head

07:49a final, terrible offer.

07:52You can make him pay, Mark.

07:55You know where he is.

07:56You know what to do.

07:58Or you can turn the radio off.

08:00You can bury me all over again.

08:03The choice isn't about

08:05bringing justice for a ghost anymore.

08:08It's about who I am now.

08:10Do I silence the truth

08:12to save the life I've constructed?

08:14Or do I burn my own world

08:16to the ground

08:17to finally, truly,

08:20let her rest?

08:21The static is gone.

08:23And the silence is louder

08:26than any scream.

08:28The silence is louder from the wall.

08:37I'm more than right now.

08:39I have no aggressor.

08:40I'm not peaceful.

08:41But I've been heaven to racing.

08:42In a voice,

08:43I am the former

08:44Jugendster

08:53to pursue the gathering,

08:55and the joyous

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended