Morris Brown took the overnight security job at Lysander Fields gated community, not because he needed money, but to avoid further suffocation by retirement. After thirty years on the force, he couldn’t transition to leisure. He never liked golf, despised bars, lacked faith, and had no hobbies. Mostly, Morris hated feeling useless, so he answered the ad, interviewed, and got hired on the spot.

The residents of Lysander Fields were friendly, upper class folk. Even the kids were nice, though he caught the occasional trouble-maker after curfew. Soon, he acclimated to quiet, Midwestern winter nights, rarely finding the need to step outside his cozy security shack. He just raised the orange gate for residents and phoned confirmation for guests.

While the houses were barely ten years old, equipped with modern conveniences, Morris’s security shack remained bare bones, sporting a toasty space heater and fifteen-inch TV with digital antenna. Morris cut his cable years ago at the insistence of his tech-savvy nephew, so when he first settled into the slow, easy evenings, he found the idea of live broadcasts quaint, like reconnecting with a familiar friend. There were late night local news broadcasts, game shows, comfort movies, and re-runs, re-runs, re-runs!

However, on January 31 at midnight, as fat flurries swirled his security shack, Morris discovered a channel between channels: 29.9—The Shadow Network. It aired a game show called Buzzer, seemingly from the late 1970s given its grainy film quality, giant gold stars adorning the set, and the powder blue suit of a gray-haired host named Chap Steadman. He struggled to recall if he’d seen the show back in the day, as a non-descript thirty-something man named Herb and a woman named Judy answered trivia and vied for points.

“What's Muhammad Ali’s real name?”

“Snow White received help from seven what?”

“What revolutionary helped William Dawes spread word that ‘The British are coming?’”

The questions were easy, and it seemed more a game of speed as Herb and Judy struggled to out-buzz each other. Their pace quickened until Herb buzzed before Chap Steadman had a chance to finish the question. Steadman glared. “Allow me a chance to finish, Herb. You may not know the answer.” Herb stuttered an apology, but Steadman talked over him: “Who is the only person on Earth watching our program right now?”

The contestants sat stunned, shook their heads.

“Herb, I advise you to take a guess,” said Steadman. “You buzzed in and wagered points. The only human watching this show, currently.”

Herb shook his head. “John Smith? I don’t know.” Herb chuckled and the audience tittered.

Chap Steadman scowled as a red “X” sliced the screen. “Judy, care to wager?” She shook her head. Then Steadman looked right into the camera, and the program flickered for a moment before he said, “The only person watching our program this evening is Morris Brown.”

Morris’s jaw dropped. He rubbed his eyes, glanced out at the swirling blizzard. He couldn’t have heard right.

“Morris Brown,” Chap Steadman repeated. “Nobody else watches this show. In fact, it’s his first time tuning in, and this is the one and only time our program will ever air. Mr. Morris Brown is the singular person who will ever see it.”

Herb gave a solemn nod. His points flicked down to zero.

“That makes Judy tonight’s survivor.” From beneath his podium, Chap Steadman hefted a hand-held buzz saw into the air. The serrated edge gleamed in studio lights. “I’m afraid that’s all the time you have tonight on Buzzer, Herb.”

Herb gave a solemn nod. “I understand.”

The saw shrieked to life. The host lurched forward. The audience screamed. Blood sprayed. Morris glimpsed Steadman’s twisted grin before the broadcast flickered to an infomercial on channel thirty.

Morris steadied his hand against the freezing windowpane. Could he have nodded off? He was used to this shift and wouldn’t be tired until he got home at 6am. He tried to get back to channel 29.9, but it didn’t seem to exist anymore. He Googled the show Buzzer and its host Chap Steadman but found nothing about it or The Shadow Network.

As much as he tried to put it out of his mind, he couldn’t shake those horrendous seconds of footage—sawblade eating into Herb’s torso, Chap’s hideous grin, and the splatter of red. He saw it while he dug his car out of five inches of snow, while he drove home in sparkling white dawn, and as he lay to sleep in the tomb of his blackout-blinded bedroom.

For weeks, The Shadow Network appeared in sporadic, unexpected moments during his witching hour shifts. Once he caught part of an old 1990s sitcom called No Foolin’! in which a sassy boy inventor trapped his neighbors in their garage and burned it down with a laser. The family’s screams etched into Morris’s mind as the wacky child character shrugged and chimed “Oopsie Whoopsie!”[Ma1]  Another time, he caught the tail end of something called Space Quest, where the captain convulsed and gasped for oxygen in a zero gravity chamber. His face darkened to purple while his crew applauded his demise.

The broadcasts never lasted more than a few minutes. Morris attempted to film them with his smartphone to prove that he wasn’t hallucinating the disturbing episodes, but his videos always appeared as bright smears, the sound always a garbled mess. Because of this, he decided to keep the incidents to himself, but the glimpses of horror festered in his thoughts, and to leave the TV off only invited them to resurface during dark, cold hours.

One night in late February, 29.9 reappeared with the jazzy bumper of an old noir movie called Mean Streets starring Nelson Bradley. On the screen, a dour black and white character hunched behind stacks of paperwork and empty liquor bottles. In walked a clean cut officer, who attempted to yank the detective from behind his desk. “You can’t give up, Barnacle! You can’t sink to the level of the scum in this city!”

“This city doesn’t deserve people like you and me, Mac! This city—” He stuttered, shook his head. “Anyway, it’s too late. Crime won.”

“Crime didn’t win, Barnacle. There are good cops out there! Guys like Brown!”

Morris’s spine shuddered.

“Morris Brown?” The detective whistled low and held his fedora over his heart. “They know where Brown is. Got their hooks in him.”

“Good lord, Barnacle. We gotta protect him!”

“We’ll never make it in time.” The detective gazed glassy-eyed into the camera. “Brown’s stationed at Lysander Fields, nested in that shack like a sitting duck.” Morris’s heart pounded. He glanced up, wiped the condensation off the windowpane, and scoured the empty street. “He’ll be dead in minutes,” the detective added.

“Barnacle, give the guy a warning!”

Barnacle shouted into the camera, “This is your warning, Brown! You won’t see them coming. They’ll just get ya!” The digital feed flickered, and The Shadow Network vanished.

Morris turned off the TV. The silence was deafening. He gripped his flashlight, rested his other hand on his nightstick, and headed outside. His breath puffed, boots crunched snow. He took a long look in every direction. The streets remained empty, the homes of Lysander Fields dark and sleepy.

Then, a faint crackle sounded. It chattered louder, not just behind him, but in every direction. Snowfall flickered gray, like old TV static. The noise expanded—louder, angrier—to a slow, sizzling roar. Morris felt it creeping in from all sides, loud and electric and larger than life. The hairs on his body stood on end. The air snapped and popped. His teeth whined with pain. Wavelengths of force pushed against him, compressing him like a raging current.

His mind stretched like rubber across airwaves. The dark silent night collapsed, crushed him to a tiny fading dot. Then, the entire world tuned out.