Mark in the Dark

Mark in the Dark

W DSD was the sound of the Carolina coast. It said so in front of the broadcast booth. Inside the small studio, beside the booth, there was an old Senheiser microphone, and a digital clock telling anyone who might care that it was 3: 19. There were posters on the walls, and there was Mark Enright, disc jockey extraordinaire. Disc Jockey, like anyone even knew what a disc was anymore. And for Mark, he hadn't played any music since there were discs. His was a call-in show, the late shift, "Mark in the Dark. " Mark was only forty-three, but the late shift had already taken its toll. The dark circles under his eyes might as well have been tattooed there. They were never going away. The pale skin of a man who only saw the sun on his drive home made the dark circles stand out all the more prominently. In spite of their slogan, WDSD was a small station. And Mark answered his own calls, working the graveyard shift alone. His computer told him now that he had a call. He took a sip of a cold latte and answered. "This is Mark in the Dark. Talk to me. I'm here 'til dawn.

There was no answer, but when you'd done this for as long as Mark had, you could feel the presence of a caller getting ready to speak. Mark swore that he could tell a lot in the silence. Sex, age, sometimes even what the call would be about.

"Go ahead," he said. You're on the radio.

"Hello, Mark. "

Just what he'd thought. This caller was a woman and she sounded young.

"Hello," he answered. "What's on your mind?"

It's August nineteenth," the caller said.

It has been for hours."

"You know what that means?"

Summer's almost over?

"August nineteenth. Twenty-six years ago. Three twenty-two Mark straightened in his chair. If anyone had been there with him, they might have thought that his pale skin had just turned a shade or two paler.

It was in Cannon Beach, the Oregon Coast—the other side of the country. Lonely out there, just the wind and the surf for company; she was so young, barely twenty, and she wasn't at all ready to die."

Mark took another sip of his latte, looking around the little room as if he were trying to find a way out. "It's August," he said. "It's nowhere near Halloween.

"That's right, August nineteenth. Early in the morning. "Why are you telling me this?" Mark asked.

"She was awake, up in the middle of the night, thinking middle of the night thoughts. Too bad she didn't have someone like you, someone who stayed up late to talk to people like her."

"That's what I'm here for," Mark said. Then he waited, shifting nervously in his seat. Above him, the fluorescent lights flickered and dimmed.

"Then she heard it," the caller said. "Three steady knocks on her door. The wind? She wasn't about to go downstairs to find out. The knocks came again, and then again, and she knew that it wasn't the wind. She went to the window. She could see all three of them, down there in the moonlight." Mark looked uneasily around, as if he might see someone behind him in the room.

Does this story have a point?" he asked. "I've got calls stacking up here." The screen in front of him showed that there were no calls.

"Those boys came from good families," the caller went on. "They'd been drunk of course, and they didn't, the Judge said, really mean any harm. Just three boys on a summer night, looking to have a bit of fun."

Mark reached for his latte. His hands shook and he spilled a little on the table in front of him. He had nothing to clean it up with and he wiped at it with his hand, his movements a little too urgent for the simple task of dealing with a small amount of spilled coffee.

"She knew the one boy; his name was Mark, just like your name, Mark. "

"That's why we call our show 'Mark in the Dark."' "She told that Mark, she'd told him, no, she wouldn't walk out with him; she didn't want to walk out with him, so he and his drunken friends got it in their heads that she'd sure as certain walk out if they set her house on fire. " Mark's hand was sticky now from the latte. "We've really got to wrap this one up," he said. "Wrap it up and move on. "They siphoned some gasoline from Mark's car and that old house went up so fast, Jenny never had a chance. They say you could hear her in there, screaming, all the way from Astoria to Depoe Bay."

I want to thank you for sharing that with us, caller. That's quite a story.

"She stopped screaming at three twenty-two. Just one minute from now.

Mark glanced back at the clock. He was frightened and he wanted this to end.

I really don't see why you're telling me this story," he said, and he didn't sound like a late night talk show host anymore. He sounded like a frightened boy, "Who are you?" The caller didn't answer.

Please," Mark said. "Who is this?"

It took her another moment to answer. When she did, her voice seemed to come from far away.

"I'm ready now, Mark. I'm ready to walk out with you. The first minute digit on the clock facing Mark flipped from 1 to 2. It was 3:22. And it was then that Mark heard something at the studio door. Something that made him sit back in his chair, as if that would help him get away. What Mark heard were three slow, steady knocks.

A moment later, as he sat back in his chair, it came again— Louder.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Mark looked straight ahead. He was very frightened. The three knocks came a third time—very, Very, VERY loudly. Mark looked up, his face ashen with fear. The studio door, always locked, was being forced open. Mark in the Dark, a man never at a loss for words, could find nothing to say. Two men forced the door open and came into the studio. "What the hell are you doing in here, Mark?" the first man asked. "Are you drunk, or what? We've had nothing but dead air for three minutes. We've been out there, pounding on the door. Didn't you hear us? Mark? Mark? Mark!" It wasn't until the third time the man said Mark's name that he realized, "Jesus Christ. This guy's dead. "

"Dead?" the second man asked stupidly.

"As burnt toast.

"We should call somebody."

"Who. Who should we call?"

Doesn't he have any family?"

"Not down here, he doesn't. He's from way the hell out on the other side somewhere. Was it California?"

"I don't think it was California.

No, somewhere it rains all the time. Oregon," the first man said now, remembering. "Place on the coast, had a name like Gun, or Artillery. Cannon, that was it. He was from Cannon, Oregon.

"Well, wherever the hell he was from, he's gone now.