The Red Rock House

I used to drive freight through Arizona back in the late seventies. Long hauls, mostly between Phoenix and the California border. Empty highways, desert on both sides, not much else. The kind of driving where you're alone with your thoughts for hours at a time. This was summer of '78, I remember because my daughter had just started kindergarten that fall. I'd been doing the same route for three years by then, knew every mile marker, every rest stop, every place where you could get decent coffee. The radio kept me company most nights. AM stations, whatever I could pick up. Talk shows, mostly. Sometimes music if I was lucky. My truck was a '72 Kenworth. Good truck, reliable. The radio worked fine, never gave me any trouble. I kept it on even when there was nothing but static, just for the background noise. Better than complete silence, you know? I don't know how else to say it, but the quiet out there could get to you after a while.

The first time I heard it was on a Thursday night. I was coming through a stretch of desert about forty miles east of Wickenburg. Middle of nowhere. Just me and the highway and the dark pressing in on all sides. The radio was picking up mostly static at that point. I was too far from any major station. But then I heard it. A voice. A child's voice, cutting through all that white noise. It was a little girl. Maybe seven or eight years old, hard to say. She sounded scared. Not crying, but scared. And she kept saying the same thing over and over. 'Please help us find the red rock house. We can't find the red rock house. Please help us.' I turned the volume up. The static got louder but so did her voice. Crystal clear, even though I was in the middle of a canyon with reception that should have been terrible. She just kept repeating it. Same words, same frightened tone. 'Please help us find the red rock house.' Then it was gone. Just static again. I sat there for a good minute waiting for it to come back, but it didn't. I figured maybe it was some kind of emergency broadcast, some lost kid somewhere. But it felt wrong. The way she said 'us.' Like there were more of them.

Three nights later, same stretch of highway. Same time, around two in the morning. It happened again. This time it was a boy. Younger, maybe five or six. Same scared voice, same message. 'We need to find the red rock house. Can you help us find it? The red rock house.' Over and over through the static. I pulled over. I don't know why. Maybe I thought I could respond somehow, I don't know. But I sat there on the shoulder with my hazards on, listening to this kid's voice coming through my radio, and I felt cold despite the heat. It was probably still ninety degrees outside but I had goosebumps. I tried changing stations. Every frequency I turned to, there he was. Same voice, same words, cutting through the static no matter where I tuned. 'The red rock house. We can't find the red rock house. Please help.' Then silence. Complete silence. Not even static. Just dead air. I don't know how else to say it, but that silence was worse than the voice.