pale shape passing through the darkness above.
    What pale shape, for God’s sake?
    ‘You’re spooking me, Tommy boy,’ he said. Then he laughed drily. ‘And now you’re even 
talking to yourself.’
    Of course, nothing sinister was shadowing him in the night sky above.
    He had always been too imaginative for his own good, which was why writing fiction 
came so naturally to him. Maybe he’d been born with a strong tendency to fantasize - or 
maybe his imagination had been encouraged to grow by the seemingly bottomless fund of 
folktales with which his mother had entertained him and soothed him to sleep when he had 
been a little boy during the war, back in the days when the communists had fought so 
fiercely to rule Vietnam, the fabled Land of Seagull and Dragon. When the warm humid 
nights in Southeast Asia had rattled with gunfire and reverberated with the distant boom 
of mortars and bombs, he’d seldom been afraid, because her gentle voice enraptured him 
with stories of spirits and gods and ghosts.
    Now, lowering his gaze from the sky to the highway, Tommy Phan thought of the tale of 
Le Loi, the fisherman who cast his nets into the sea and came up with a magical sword 
rather like King Arthur’s shining Excalibur. He recalled ‘The Raven’s Magic Gem,’ as 
well, and ‘The Search for the Land of Bliss,’ and ‘The Supernatural Crossbow,’ in which 
poor Princess My Chau betrayed her worthy father out of love for her sweet husband and 
paid a terrible price, and the ‘Da-Trang Crabs,’ and ‘The Child of Death,’ and dozens 
more.
    Usually, when something reminded him of one of the legends that he had learned from 
his mother, he could not help but smile, and a happy peace settled over him, as though 
she herself had just then appeared and embraced him. This time, however, those tales had 
no consoling effect. He remained deeply uneasy, and he was still chilled in spite of the 
flood of warm air from the car heater.
    Odd.
    He switched on the radio, hoping that some vintage rock-’n’-roll would brighten his 
mood. He must have nudged the selector off the station to which he had been listening 
earlier, because now there was nothing to be heard but a soft susurration, not ordinary 
static, but like distant water tumbling in considerable volume over a sloping palisade of 
rocks.
    Briefly glancing away from the road, Tommy pressed a selector button. At once, the 
numbers changed on the digital read-out, but no music came forth, just the sound of 
water, gushing and tumbling, growling yet whispery.
    He pressed another button. The numbers on the dis-play changed, but the sound did not.
    He tried a third button, without success.
    ‘Oh, wonderful. Terrific.’
    He had owned the car only a few hours, and already the radio was broken.
    Cursing under his breath, he fiddled with the controls as he drove, hoping to find 
the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Sam Cooke, the Isley Brothers, or even someone contem-porary 
like Julianna Hatfield or maybe Hootie and the Blowfish. Hell, he’d settle for a rousing 
polka.
    From one end of the radio band to the other, on both AM and FM, the watery noise had 
washed away all music, as if some cataclysmic tide had inundated broadcast studios the 
length of the West Coast.
    When he attempted to turn off the radio, the sound continued undiminished. He was 
certain that he had hit the correct button. He pressed it again, to no effect.
    Gradually, the character of the sound had changed. The splash-patter-gurgle-hiss-roar 
now seemed less like falling water than like a distant crowd, like the voices of 
multitudes raised in cheers or chants; or perhaps it was the faraway raging babble of an 
angry, destruc-tive mob.
    For reasons that he could not entirely define, Tommy Phan was disturbed by the new 
quality of this eerie and tuneless serenade. He jabbed at more buttons.
    Voices. Definitely voices. Hundreds or even thousands of them. Men, women, the 
fragile voices of children. He thought he could hear despairing wails, pleas for help, 
panicked cries, anguished groans - a monumental yet hushed sound, as though it was 
echoing across a vast gulf or rising out of a black abyss.
    The voices were creepy - but also curiously compel-ling, almost mesmerizing. He found 
himself staring at the radio too long, his attention dangerously diverted from the 
highway, yet each time that he looked up, he was able to focus on the traffic for only a 
few seconds before lowering his gaze once more to the softly glowing radio.
    And now behind the whispery muffled roar of the multitude rose the garbled bass voice 
of... someone else someone who sounded infinitely strange, imperial and demanding. It was 
a low wet voice that was less than human, spitting out not-quite-decipherable words as if 
they were wads of phlegm.
    No. Good God in Heaven, his imagination was running away with him. What issued from 
the stereo speakers was static, nothing but ordinary static, white noise, electronic 
slush.
    In spite of the chill that continued to plague him, Tommy felt a sudden prickle of 
perspiration on his scalp and forehead. His palms were damp too.
    Surely he had pressed every button on the control panel. Nevertheless, the ghostly 
chorus droned on.
    ‘Damn.’
    He made a tight fist of his right hand. He thumped the flat of it against the face of 
the radio, not hard enough to hurt himself, but punching three or four buttons 
simultaneously.
    Second by second, the guttural and distorted words spoken by the weird voice became 
clearer, but Tommy couldn’t quite understand them.
    He thumped his fist against the radio once more, and he was surprised to hear himself 
issue a half-stifled cry of desperation. After all, as annoying as the noise was, it 
represented no threat to him.
    Did it?
    Even as he posed that question to himself, he was overcome by the irrational 
conviction that he must not listen to the susurration coming from the stereo speakers, 
that he must clamp his hands over his ears, that somehow he would be in mortal danger if 
he understood even one word of what was being said to him. Yet, perversely, he strained 
to hear, to wring clarity from the muddle of sound.
    ‘... Phan...’
    That one word was irrefutably clear.
    ‘.	.. Phan Tran...‘
    The repulsive, mucus-clotted voice was speaking flaw-lessly accented Vietnamese.
    ‘.	.. Phan Tran Tuong..
    Tommy’s name. Before he had changed it. His name from the Land of Seagull and Fox.
    Phan Tran Tuong..
    Someone was calling to him. Far away at first but now drawing closer. Seeking 
contact. Connection. Something about the voice was... hungry.
    The chill, like scurrying spiders, worked deeper into him, weaving webs of ice in the 
hollows of his bones.
    He hammered the radio a third time, harder than before, and abruptly it went dead.