The Midnight Test

Nia was the first to speak. Her voice was almost a whisper. “You heard it too, right?” Nobody answered. They had all heard the same worst part. There were five voices in the future broadcast. But after the line about only four making it to thirty years later, something in all of them had gone still. It wasn’t just that the recording didn’t call a name. It felt like one of them had already been deleted before the tape was ever made. None of them slept well after that. Mara got home to find her father at the kitchen table, repairing the cash register from the lakefront market. Ben Quinn used to run the projection booth at the drive-in, back when Bluestone Bay still had one.