When I was a child there was this rumour going around school about a ‘midnight channel.’ Supposedly it was a show you could only find by changing to the exact frequency at the exact time. The time was 12.01 am on a Saturday night. The frequency, however, was unknown. It was always changing. If you were lucky you picked the right frequency and found it. If you were unlucky you just got some white noise and another week without being able to brag to your friends.
One particular weekend I got lucky and found the channel.
I was about 10 at the time. A few of my friends claimed to have seen it but their stories never matched and the details changed over time. One of them claimed he saw dirty adult movies totally uncensored. Another said he saw people getting murdered, for real. I thought they were full of crap.
But every week I still tried, hoping to get lucky, and one week I did.
My parents were asleep upstairs. I snuck down just before midnight and turned the TV on. The white noise blared to life so loud I nearly crapped my pants. I quickly turned it down and waited in silence, hoping it didn’t wake my parents up. I held my breath, listening as hard as I could for any sign of life upstairs.
Nothing stirred.
I sighed in relief and turned back to the TV. It was one of those old ones with the manual dial you had to rotate to find the channels. My watch said 11.59pm. I prayed it was correct.
I held the dial, nervously waiting. I still had two minutes but I didn’t want to miss the chance. Not this time. This time I would find it. I would find the mysterious midnight channel and everyone would would hang off my every word for the next few weeks, if not months. I was about to become the most popular kid in school!
12.00 am. My hand was shaking. My arm was beginning to tire already but I refused to let go of the dial. The moment my watch ticked over to one I would be ready.
The wind howled outside. I remember it so clearly, even now. The curtains were closed but they ruffled slightly in the wind and out the corner of my eye I saw a shadow standing there. I turned to look directly at it but it was gone.
My fingers twitched on the dial. My heart raced in my chest. I felt a chill from the cold air yet a bead of sweat was building on my brow. I swallowed audibly. Here it was. It was coming.
12.01 am.
I turned the dial furiously, scrolling through the white noise. A channel appeared and my heart jumped into my throat… until I realised it was just the late night news. I kept turning. I had to find it. I would find it. It was here somewhere, tonight was my night!
Another channel, some old black and white movie like the ones my mother liked. That wasn’t it. I kept turning. White noise. More white noise. My hand began to shake even more. Time was running out. Why wasn’t it there?
My hand stopped. The curtain billowed and a cold breeze that couldn’t possibly have come through the closed windows blew over me.
This was it. I found it. I found the midnight channel.
I sat back down on my heels and watched, entranced. I never told anyone what I saw that night, not until now. I’m still not exactly sure of what I saw.
There was a man, standing in the corner. The camera panned out to reveal he was standing in a large room with several doors. He shuffled over to one like a caterpillar on many legs might and reached for the handle. The man hesitated, looked directly at the camera, and then went inside.
The room was dark except for a single light over an operating table on the far side of the room. The man tried to blend into the shadows, his expression fearful. A mannequin was lying on the table, the joints that connected its limbs to its torso visible from afar. Only it wasn’t a mannequin. It turned to look at the man and let out an ungodly silent scream. There was no sound and yet I felt it. I felt it in my head, in my throat, in my chest. The eyes were bleeding and then the head returned to its former position. The man quickly exited the room and ran to another door.
This room was bright. X-rays covered the walls from ceiling to floor but they weren’t x-rays of anything I’d ever seen before. Animal heads attached to human bodies. Several limbs where only one should be. Mutated fetuses and horrific creatures of the night. I felt just as much disgust as the man on the TV did.
He ran back to the main room and sat in the middle of the floor, panting. The doors around him began to bleed. The roof started to close in. The walls warped and shifted and he stumbled across uneven ground as he moved towards the door he had yet to go through.
This time he was outside, a large dark forest spread out before him. The man sighed and relief washed over his face. He took a step and the moment his foot touched the dirt he froze.
A chill ran through me. I realised I was now mere inches from the TV, enthralled with what was before me.
Eyes blinked in the distance. The trees shuddered. He turned to me and said, “You can’t escape. They’re coming for you too now.”
The scene faded. The eyes lingered for just a few seconds too long and then were gone. The familiar white noise of late night TV returned.
Silence. I looked at my watch. It read 2.13 am. Huh? The show couldn’t have been longer than two minutes, how had more than two hours passed? I turned the TV off and snuck back up to bed. I never told my parents about what happened. I never told my friends, either. I saw something I didn’t understand. I felt guilty. I felt scared.
The next day it began. I couldn’t place my finger on it exactly but I felt like I was being watched. Somewhere those eyes were looking at me. They were waiting for me. They were coming for me. They were in the back of the classroom. They were in the trees behind the playground. They were in the car behind me. They were in the roof as I went to sleep at night.
But years passed and nothing ever happened. I forgot about the eyes, I forgot about the midnight channel and the night I was lucky enough to find it. I forgot about everything until a few months ago.
Someone’s watching me. This time for real.
I was fixing the rear view mirror in my car as I was getting ready to return home from work when I saw something in the distance. It was the shape of a person but unclear. A standing shadow. I turned around to look with my naked eye but nothing was there. I looked in the mirror again and there it was. Standing. Watching me. I turned the key and drove off.
Every time I looked in the mirror it was still there. I stepped on the accelerator and floored it, running a red light in the process. Cars honked their horns and a driver leaned out his window to yell some choice words at me but it was nothing but a blur.
No matter how fast I went it was still there. Watching me. Waiting. Those words from my childhood kept repeating over and over in my head. “You can’t escape. They’re coming for you too now.”
I went to the bathroom to wash my face and clear my head. I looked up, my heart already sitting in my throat. I slowly opened my eyes and let out a sigh. Nothing was there. I laughed to myself. Too much overtime lately. I’d have to ask for a few days off sometime soon, maybe hit the beach for a bit and unwind.
As I got in my car the next morning I started. It was still there, standing in the distance. I turned around but again could see nothing. It was only in the reflection of the mirror. I drove to work, doing my best not to look in the mirror the whole way there. But I could feel it. It was back there somewhere.
“You can’t escape. They’re coming for you too now.”
On my lunch break I went to the city to grab some lunch. As I passed the store windows it was there. Standing at a fixed point somewhere in the distance. I turned around but was just met with a large crowd of people going about their business.
I was starting to think I was actually going insane.
However over the next few days I noticed something. It wasn’t just there in the distance watching me. Waiting for me. No, not just waiting.
It was getting closer.
It was difficult to see at first but after a week or two it became very apparent. The shadow was closing in. Slowly, but surely, it was getting closer. It was almost close enough to make out its features. Almost.
Last week I saw it in my bathroom mirror for the first time. I fell through the shower curtain and tried to scale the wall in my fear to escape. But it wasn’t there. I couldn’t see it. But it was there.
That night as I lay down to sleep I heard it. Faint at first, but it’s getting louder. White noise. At first I thought it was just a ringing in my ears but it’s also getting louder by the day.
It’s in the backseat of my car as I drive to work. It’s behind me in the line as I order lunch. It’s in my room, watching me as I sleep. How much longer until I wake up and it’s directly over me, ready to take me back to its midnight channel?
A few days ago I tried to look up the midnight channel on a few urban legend websites. Maybe see if there was a way to get rid of the thing haunting me. I couldn’t find anything. I sent a message to one of my elementary school friends for the first time in years asking him if he remembered the rumours when we were kids. The reply came back, “What are you talking about? What’s a midnight channel? Why are you bringing this up now?”
I can almost see it behind me now. Sometimes when I wake up during the night and my eyes have yet to adjust to the dark I can see it. Eyes. Eyes like those in the forest that time when I was 10 years old. Eyes surrounded by a faint shadow. A faint shadow like that one I saw in the corner of the room before I stumbled on the midnight channel at 12.01am on a Saturday morning.
Somewhere the show still exists, waiting for its next viewer.
And I’m its next star.