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Midnight In The Southland

By Todd Keisling

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“From the grim Ohio Valley to the mists of the Appalachian Plateau, this is Midnight in the Southland with your host Gus Guthrie. Now, here’s Gus…”

 

That’s how Midnight in the Southland always started. Back in the ‘90s and early aughts, if you were anywhere in Kentucky, Ohio, or either of the Virginias, you probably heard ole Gus. Ghosts, demons, aliens, government conspiracies—you name it, Gus talked about it. He played it straight, took every caller seriously and treated them with respect, and over the years, he built a reputation for being the “Fox Mulder” of radio. Gus wanted to believe, and the odds were good he’d believe you, too.

I grew up listening to him, usually on those late nights while camping with my dad. My old man would be conked out in his sleeping bag, and I’d still be awake, listening to the whispering trees, crackling fire, and the static-tinged yarns spun by guests on Gus’s show. “We’re all lonely travelers,” he used to say, “wandering empty roads under a weight of cosmic indifference.” I didn’t understand what he meant back then; I just knew I wanted to be a lonely traveler, a mysterious caller in the night, someone who saw or heard or felt something. That never happened. Not while I was a kid, and not while Gus was still alive and on the air.

He died sometime in 2002, just after I’d started college. The Lexington Herald gave him front page real estate. REMEMBERING GUS GUTHRIE, the headline read, and the online comments were filled with everyone’s favorite stories from his tenure at the microphone. They all expressed a similar feeling, one I had often felt while growing up, about Gus being a kind of beacon in the dark forest of the weird.

“What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?”

Another Gus Guthrie slogan, one that adorned T-shirts for a time after the show achieved cult status. I still have mine. A badge of honor, maybe, or perhaps a token of membership. An odd question to the average person, but to those in the know, an invitation to share something unconventional.

Most Southland fans were either truck drivers or conspiracy nuts, veterans of the Southland space, but sometimes you’d hear from the first timers, the uninitiated, the ones who took a wrong turn or talked to the wrong person. Tales of towns with labyrinthian roads, pallid smiling people, ghost hitchhikers, spectral locomotives, eerie blue lights in the sky, and awful chants coming from within the earth. The sort of stories they couldn’t tell their friends or family, the sort that would earn them a puzzled, if not cautious, reaction.

But they could tell their stories straight on Gus’s show. No judgment. Those stories were the best because they were real. Real wonder, real mystery, real fear—confessions of the confusing and unexplained, testaments to the region’s bizarre effect on the mind, the people, and space itself.

“The Southland’s a different place,” Gus said once, “with secret towns and secret highways, filled with secret people wearing secret smiles.”

While growing up, I always thought he was talking in metaphors.

Years later, long after college, I discovered I was wrong.

---

Night drives were something I started doing in school after a bad breakup. Late at night, when I couldn’t get away from my thoughts, with those incessant what-ifs infecting my mind like cancer, I took to the roads around campus and pretended to be someone else. I fantasized about leaving town, starting over, walking away from my life as if that would somehow magically cure the ache in my heart. And while I never did leave, the act of driving endlessly in the dark calmed me somehow, helped me find a kind of temporary solace so I could sleep.

Gus’s show was a soothing balm on those nights, and I often zoned out to the stories of strangers and their paranormal encounters, usually finding myself on some side-street or country road outside Lexington. I didn’t mind, though, because I wasn’t alone in the Southland. Somewhere out there, Gus was keeping watch over me, over all of us lonely travelers stumbling about in the darkness of our hearts.

I started driving at night about two months after Gus died. I’d worked my way through the grief of a failed relationship and had toyed with the idea of writing an email to Gus. Just a short note to say thanks for being there, for guiding another lonely traveler through the night, but classes got in the way. Life got in the way.

And then Gus was gone, and I had to move on just like everyone else.

So, I did. I graduated, got a job, fell in love, and got married. I forgot about Midnight in the Southland for a while, because that was a part of my old life, and I’d begun a new chapter with a new Me. That lasted for about twenty years, until the marriage fell apart, and I found myself back at square one, feeling like I did in college, like I had my whole life.

Stripped of my identity. Lost in between the cracks of reality. Alone. Just me and the night once more. A lonely traveler after all.

That feeling is how I came to go for one more night drive. That, and a paring knife. I’d had a late dinner, and afterward I accidentally sliced open my thumb while doing the dishes. Boxes littered my apartment, still filled with the remnants of a broken life, and I didn’t have the energy to go sifting through them for a Band-Aid. Instead, I decided to go out for a drive, grab a pack of bandages from the nearest gas station. Maybe I’d clear my head in the process. Maybe I needed that more than the bandages.

I stepped out into the night and took a breath. The warm night air smelled of fresh cut grass and honeysuckle, and I thought of lying in a dark tent, listening to Gus while my old man sawed logs.

What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?

A need for bandages. A need to escape. Something to ease the numbness inside. A solitary yearning for something more, something I can’t define. To seek and experience something more than myself. To find my place in the Southland, maybe.

I climbed into my car and started the engine, lowered the windows and cranked the radio. My thumb had stopped bleeding, so I decided to skip the gas station. Instead, I’d go for a drive and get lost for a while. Maybe I’d find myself again—or figure out the Me I’m supposed to be.

 

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“Next caller, you’re on the air.”

“Hi, Gus. First time caller, longtime listener. Love your show.”

“Thank you, lonely traveler. What brings you out tonight?”

 

I was on a wooded backroad somewhere between Nicholasville and Richmond when I heard those familiar words. I’d switched on the radio scanner and let it cycle through the frequencies. Just a few seconds of each frequency, a sampling of voices and music to drown out the noises of the night. And there, in between the short intervals of pop music and Bible-thumping, was my old friend Gus. My heart lightened a bit, learning the recordings of his show were still in syndication, and I stopped the scan. The reception wasn’t great, not this far out in the woods, but I could still make out what the caller was saying:

 

“—an odd thing, Gus. I just passed by the Valley View Ferry and saw it was in operation. It’s after midnight. I thought they stopped service at 8 on weekends?”

“Huh, that is odd, traveler. Did you stop and see what’s happening?”

“Nah, man, I’m on the clock with pizzas to deliver. College kids gotta eat, y’know.”

“I hear that, traveler. Be safe out there. Anyone else in the area? Sounds like strange things are afoot at the ferry—”

 

The reception cut out, displaced by a garbled broadcast of a choir singing an old church hymn, and I sighed. I’d driven out of range. So much for Gus keeping me company. I was intrigued, though. It had been a long time since I’d listened to recordings of Southland, and while I still remembered a good portion of them, I couldn’t recall any incidents at the Valley View Ferry. Maybe it was an older episode from the show’s early days.

I’d always promised myself I would take a deep dive into the show’s archives, listen to Gus’s legacy from start to finish, but finding the time to seek them out had always been an issue. Occasionally, I searched for a podcast, hoping maybe someone had taken it upon themselves to make the show widely available, but no luck. Gus was a nonentity in the radio world these days, with one rare exception—a late night DJ out of a new rock station in Lexington mentioned Gus sometimes, usually in the context of weird shit that happens here. “Southland Sightings,” she called them. I tried her station, but all I got was more static.

Frustrated, I exchanged one road for another, pointing my car toward the Kentucky River. After hearing the caller’s brief exchange, I wanted to see the ferry for myself.

Night in the valley was alive with the lazy blinks of fireflies, the air filled with the mating cries of cicadas free from slumber, and a dim bluish glow just up ahead through the trees. I didn’t think much of it at first, figuring it was from an oncoming traveler, one of those vehicles with the annoying LED headlights. But I never saw another person on the road, hadn’t for at least an hour, and as I drove deeper into the woods, I realized no one knew where I was. I had my phone, it had a full battery, and my location could be tracked. I had no reason to worry—but why did I feel so goddamn uneasy?

The light ahead grew brighter, and I tried to ease my tension with quiet reassurances. A late-night road crew, maybe, doing some repairs on the road ahead. But all the way out here? After midnight? This road never experienced heavy traffic, certainly not on par with the interstate or even the suburban throughways, so what—

Static surged from the car speakers, and I nearly shot out of my seat. Gus’s voice filled the car, crystal clear this time, and when I glanced down at the screen, a chill crawled across my arms. It wasn’t the same frequency.

 

“—traveler, you say you’re in the area?”

“That’s right, Gus. The last guy wasn’t lyin’. Something weird’s happening down there on the water. The ferry keeps crossing back and forth, but there ain’t no cars, and there’s a weird sort of light.”

“A weird light?”

“Yeah, like, the boat’s glowing. Wait, I think I see a car coming on the other side—”

 

The radio signal diminished into a roiling current of interference as I rounded the bend. The Kentucky River lay just ahead, its waters lit in an eerie glow of faded blue light, and on the surface floated the old ferry. Waiting for its next passenger. For me, maybe.

A figure silhouetted against the light emerged from the ferry’s tiny cabin and approached the ramp. When the ferry captain stepped into my headlights, I saw he was a spindly old man in a pair of sagging overalls and a dusty ballcap. He nodded, waved me on ahead.

I sat there for a minute and questioned my sanity. The caller on the radio saw a car. A likely coincidence. Maybe he’d seen a car when the show was recorded more than two decades ago. But in the uneasiness of the moment, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was me he was talking about.

 

---

The old man crossed his arms and waited. Uncertain, I eased off the brake and inched closer until I was sure he could hear me.

“Didn’t think you guys worked so late out here.”

He looked at me and smiled but said nothing in return. Instead, he gestured toward the ferry, nodded.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

Nothing but a smile.

A chill worked its way down my back, but not one entirely born from fear. I admit I was curious. I’d grown up wanting to be one of those lonely travelers who experienced something here in the mysterious Southland, lost somewhere in those hours between awake and the dreaming, when anything seemed possible. My apprehension softened the longer I stared at the old man. He seemed harmless, was probably someone’s grandpa, working a late shift for beer money.

I thought about what waited for me back at my apartment. The grief of a failed relationship, the terror of starting over, all of it mounded atop a bed of anxiety made from a lack of identity. I’d wanted an escape. Maybe this was it.

I returned the smile and tapped the gas, guiding the car onto the ferry’s deck. Once I’d shifted to park, the old man closed the gate and returned to the cabin. A moment later, the ferry shuddered to life, and we slowly eased away from the dock. Looking out the window, I saw light pulsing from the water, somewhere beneath the hull. The whole river was alight with faded blue that dissipated from the surface, filling the air around us with a creeping impenetrable haze.

“What’s with the light show?”

Don’t know why I bothered. The old man only looked at me, half-smiling, like he knew the answer to a riddle but wouldn’t share. When I looked back toward the opposite side of the river, I discovered I couldn’t see it anymore. There was only the light, and it drowned out the world mere feet away. I checked my phone, hoping to check the GPS, but there was no signal. Not surprising. Kentucky’s full of dead zones, the cell towers not abundant enough to communicate a signal in the rural regions. Any other time the lack of connectivity would’ve worried me, but as we floated along the river, I felt at ease. Peaceful, almost.

After a few minutes of listening to the ferry’s gurgling motor, the old man left his cabin and leaned against the railing. He reached into his front pocket for a cigarette, and when he flicked his lighter, I saw a familiar phrase printed on his shirt and half-obscured by his overalls pocket. I’d recognize that lettering anywhere.

What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?

I smiled and leaned back in my seat. What, indeed.

---

“—tell you, Lonely Travelers, I had a heck of a dream the other night. I was driving along one of the old highways, Route 25. Runs north to south through a lot of old towns. Livingston, Landon, Stauford, and all the way down to Georgia and the Carolinas. And as I was driving, I came upon this town I didn’t recognize. It didn’t even have a name, but I felt like I’d been there before. Maybe like I’d lived there my whole life—”

 

Southland’s signal came in fits and starts as we made our way along the river. Gus’s voice was clearer, though, and the fuzziness had slowly dissipated. What I heard was more of the same ethereal quality, of callers talking about the river, the ferry lights, and of Gus waxing philosophical about the strange feeling in the air.

 

“—and I had this bizarre epiphany, folks. Y’all know dream logic is a strange thing, where you can be aware of impossible things. You can be yourself and be someone else at the same time, or like you’re watching everything from outside your normal point of view. Disassociation, you might call it, but in the dream world it’s just the nature of things. And I swear, I was someone else while I was driving. I wasn’t in a car but on a small ship of some kind, and I was listening to my own show—”

 

This revelation should have startled me. It should’ve triggered every warning signal in my brain that things weren’t right tonight. Was this a dream? A hallucination?

There I am, floating on a ferry at an impossible hour, listening to the reveries of a dead man on a show that ended twenty years ago. Any other person would be questioning their sanity, or at the very least, questioning who arranged this elaborate prank.

But after a lifetime of listening to the weird goings-on here in the Southland, I found myself oddly at ease with this, as though I’d almost expected it. Why wouldn’t this be happening, on a night like tonight? Tonight was textbook Southland material, and I was finally one of the lonely travelers I’d always dreamed of being. This was my “something” moment, and I was both melancholic and nostalgic over the fact because there was no show to take my call. I’d arrived too late, too jaded, too old.

Then again, after considering what I’d heard over the radio, maybe I didn’t have to. Gus was still out there, broadcasting from somewhere else, dreaming my life or maybe I’m living his dream. Which made absolutely no sense, but here it’s after midnight in the Southland, and the fabric between Kentucky and Elsewhere is thin. Sometimes, Gus used to say, the seams pop open and let us have a glimpse.

 

“—while we’re floating along, I begin to realize this is something I’ve dreamed before, except I was me when I did. Crazy, right? But y’all know how things are out there on the road after dark. Or, in this case, out there on river—”

 

I used to think of the Southland as a metaphor for other things. Loneliness, for one, or maybe a reflection of the minds of those who travel the area after dark. A curtain through which one can pass in the right time or space. I’ve dreamed about places beyond the reach of most, towns with names I can’t pronounce, whole cities of people who are too tall and too thin, and the funny thing is I felt more like myself there than I ever have here in the now. Is that even possible? To dream of one’s place that’s so far out of reach in the waking?

Gus seemed to think so. Floating along the river, lost in a deep haze of blue, I felt my connection to the old Me slipping away. All the worries, the anxiety, the stress—those haunting shadows all melted away on the waves, stripping me of burdens I feared I could no longer carry. All that’s left is someone else, someone I no longer recognize but with whom I feel at home.

The ferry began to slow, and the haze finally cleared ahead of us. Where I expected to see trees and a steep road leading away from the river was a straight stone path adjoined to the dock. The old man emerged from his cabin and tied off the boat. When he was finished, he tapped the hood of my car and waved me on. I leaned out the window again, asked him where we are, and for the first time, he spoke.

“Home,” he said, and lit up another cigarette.

Home. Maybe he was right.

I started the engine and drove on down the road.

---

“—here’s the thing, travelers. I’ve been to some strange places in the Southland. Empty towns, forgotten towns, towns with people who always smile and wave no matter who you are, towns full of folks who never want to see you again—and I gotta say, this place in my dream, it’s like nothing I’ve ever visited before or since. A-framed houses, miles of sidewalk lit by lanterns overhead, an eerie blue light in the sky above, and the tall people. Impossibly tall, you know? Like all of them pushing seven feet. They bent over to squeeze through their doors. Some crawled. These people left their homes as I drove on by—I was back in my car, you see—and stared at me like I’d been expected—”

 

A clearer reception reached my radio the further I drove, to the point there was no static or interference, and I heard Gus’s voice clearly. It was him, or maybe it was me, I don’t know, but I knew that voice and it was talking of my experience as it happened. I was in that strange town, and there were people leaving their homes to witness my arrival. Their houses and lawns were perfect, each surrounded by a white fence with red flowers, and I wondered if I’d ever seen such an immaculate place. I’d certainly dreamed of it before, and of them.

Men, women, children—all slim, all tall, with blurry faces but for their smiles. One by one, they raised their hands to wave as I drove the car down the stone path, welcoming me to their strange town. And like my dreams before, I felt like I knew them somehow, knew them intimately, their secret histories and dreams. A village of the unknown, filled with the known, and I among them the stranger. Fellow lonely travelers across the Southland, the lost who’ve made a place for themselves here in between the seams of awake and dreaming.

 

“—but the strangest thing to me, travelers, is the sense of familiarity and belonging. This impossible place was like somewhere I’d always been, would always visit, and would always long to return. When I woke up, I felt like I’d tapped into some part of my mind I’d never been able to reach before. I know, very New Age thinking, but I can’t think of a better way to explain it. This town was my home, on another plane of existence. A nothing place in a nothing space for all the lonely travelers out there—”

 

Gus was speaking my thoughts, or I was thinking his. The line between us had blurred somehow, and as I traveled through town, my thoughts and his words grew more in synch until the street transformed into a cul-de-sac. I’d reached the end of my road, and before me was the source of the voice that had guided me here. A small flat-roofed building with a massive radio tower at its side. Red lights blinked slowly at the tower’s zenith. Affixed to its middle were the letters WNIL.

A new station dedicated to the Southland, from within the Southland. All Southland all the time.

I parked my car in front of the building, eager to meet the man who’d been the voice of my life for as long as I could remember, terrified to meet the ghost whose mind I inhabited. The lights were on inside, and when I approached the door, I saw the reception desk was empty. Beyond, a glass window to the recording booth, and there a figure sat with his back to me, the microphone pulled close to his head. Muffled words filled the lobby from a pair of wall-mounted speakers.

Heart racing, I opened the door and stepped inside. Gus’s words—or were they my words—met my ears—

 

“—and I stared at the figure in the studio, afraid to disturb him, afraid not to. I’d traveled all this way and somehow the Southland saw fit to deliver me at this doorstep, in a town I knew and did not know, with people familiar and foreign to me, where everything converged into a new existence of the impossible and uncanny.

I forced myself to walk the ten steps across the lobby, every one of them heavy with the gravity of a reckoning I could not fathom. The figure in the studio never moved, only remained hunched forward, the headphones slightly askew—”

 

—and as I drew closer, I saw his skin was dry and pale and shriveled, like wet paper left to dry. Was he dead? Had I come all this way to meet a dead man? And then he twitched, moved like he’d heard me, like my words—

 

“—his words—”

 

—were the snap he needed to wake up. I reached out, slowly pushed open the studio door, and the desiccated figure turned to greet me. An old face met my stare, a tell-tale glimpse of the one and only Gus Guthrie, with his iconic goatee and aviators. He removed his headphones and pushed his chair back from the desk.

“Gus?” I asked, my voice cracked and torn, almost unrecognizable to my ears—

 

“—and yet familiar, a voice I’d always known, one I’d always spirited away down the lonely backroads of my heart—”

 

—I watched the skeletal man rise to greet me. He held out bony arms for an embrace, and I fell into him like a child to his father, eager for the comfort, the safety. Eager for reassurance that I was still me, that we were still us, and that all would be well in this space between our dreams and our waking.

We held each other for a time, our words merged into one voice, and I closed my eyes to soak in the sensation. Lonely travelers, the both of us, but now united at last. Lonely no longer. Gus’s body shrank in my arms, slowly disintegrated into flakes of skin and ash and moth-eaten fabric. When I opened my eyes, I saw his remains piled at my feet, and I knew his time at the microphone had truly come to an end. His passing in the waking world was but a transition into this one, a world of dreams, the real Southland he’d always talked about.

And now it was my turn to guide home my fellow lonely travelers out there.

I sat at the desk, slipped on the headphones, and cleared my throat. I pulled the microphone close and spoke.

The words were already in my head, my heart. Bold and bright words lit against that faded blue haze between life and the dreaming, drowned in a burst of static from a dying radio.

“First caller, you’re on the air. What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?”