They always called me the midnight voice. Funny, isn’t it? The one you turn to when you can’t sleep, when silence presses too hard. I liked the idea of keeping lonely people company. I liked pretending I wasn’t one of them.
The studio was small, always too cold, with that faint smell of burnt coffee in the carpet. My producer went home hours before, so it was just me, the mic, and the red ON AIR light glowing like a bloodshot eye above my head.
“Good evening, insomniacs,” I said, slipping into the smiley patter I’d perfected over years. “It’s Clara, your lonely voice in the dark. Let’s keep each other company tonight.”
The phone line blinked. One caller. Then two. I leaned back in my chair, sipping lukewarm coffee. “Looks like I’ve got someone brave enough to start us off.”
The line clicked. Static hummed.
“Hello, you’re on the air.”
A voice answered. Calm. Too calm. Male, maybe middle-aged. “Do you remember the accident, Clara?”
My throat went dry. I tried to laugh it off. “You’ll have to be more specific. I’m clumsy, I’ve had a few accidents.”
“The one on Willow Creek Road,” the caller said. “When you were eight. The glass. The blood on your shoes.”
I froze. The headphones pressed tight around my ears, and for a second all I could hear was my own breath. No one knew about that. I never talked about it on the air.
“How—” I stopped myself. A host doesn’t let callers rattle them. That was Rule One. “That’s a cruel trick, friend. Not very funny.”
The line crackled, and the voice said one more thing before vanishing. “You shouldn’t have walked away.”
The call cut. Dead air hissed in my headphones.
I fumbled for the recording button, heart hammering, rewound the last few seconds. But when I played it back, there was nothing. No voice. No accident. Just silence.
I r steady, but my hands shook against the desk.
Then the phone line lit up again. Another caller.
“Midnight radio, you’re on with Clara,” I said, forcing brightness into my voice.
The sound was soft at first. Weeping. A woman. High-pitched, broken sobs that bled through the static.
“Ma’am?” I said gently. “Are you safe? Do you need help?”
No answer. Just those quiet sobs.
“Talk to me,” I urged. “You’re not alone tonight.”
Finally, the crying stopped. The silence stretched. Then, in a voice like shredded paper, she whispered:
“Clara.”
Hearing my name over the line chilled me deeper than the weeping. I felt my smile falter. “Yes… this is Clara. Do you want to—”
The caller whispered my full name. Not just “Clara.” My first name. My middle name. My last name.
I tore the headphones off, but the voice still buzzed through the monitor speaker, thin and electric. The weeping started again, faster, ragged. I cut the line.
The phone light went dark.
I sat in silence, every muscle buzzing. Then the line lit up again, immediately, before I could breathe.
I picked it up with a shaking hand. “This is Clara,” I croaked.
And then I heard it.
Not a stranger’s voice. Not sobbing.
My own voice.
“Don’t finish the show, Clara,” the line whispered. My exact tone, my exact cadence. “Please. Don’t.”
The connection dropped.
And I sat there, staring at the red ON AIR light, with the strangest thought clawing through my mind.
What if I wasn’t alone in the studio?
YOU ARE READING
The Last Broadcast
HorrorShe thought she was just talking to the night. But the night started talking back. Clara, a lonely midnight DJ, fills the silence with music and stories-until the calls begin. Voices that know her name. Secrets she's never spoken aloud. A version of...
