Episode 67: Do You Copy?

We investigate the story of Marc Henderson and the strange voice he heard on the end of his son's toy walkie talkie. Is it possible to contact parallel realities? Could you talk to your alternate self? And how bad would things have to get before you swapped places with your twin? We ask those very questions as we try to figure out what exactly happened to Marc Henderson.

Content Warning: strange voices, parallel realities, interdimensional travel, bargains, car accidents, accident death, accidental injury to children, strange occurances

Host: Chris Estes
Writers: Tom Wilson & Chris Estes
Senior Investigator: Tom Wilson
Sound Design: Chris Estes

Transcript

Malevolent Maine

Episode 67: Do You Copy?

Malevolent Maine is a horror podcast, and may contain material not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

INTRO: 

TOM: A mysterious illness possibly brought in off a sulfurous sea breeze. An artifact said to bring incredible luck…both good and bad. And an unusual storm that left one Maine town literally coraking. These are the stories and cases we’re working to bring you in the coming weeks.

Hey, it’s Tom. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our show. It means a lot to know you’re along for the ride with us. Keep listening and keep sharing. We’ve got some really dark stories coming up soon, and you’re not going to want to miss it. Don’t forget to follow us on social media, like and review the show wherever you listen, and consider joining our Malevolent Mob on Patreon for all kinds of extra content including side stories like The Black Tarot, Witch’s Mark, Crash Course, and Cardinal Sins. Thanks!

The night is quiet, almost silent, only the sound of the distant creak gurgles in the distance. The summer grass beneath your feet is cool to the touch. In your hand the brightly colored radio seems almost comical and you doubt yourself for just a minute. Could any of this be real? Could the voice just be in your head this whole time? And what about that offer? Could it possibly lead to a better life? Suddenly the radio sparks to life and the night’s silence is shattered by a voice that sounds eerily similar to your own.

This is Malevolent Maine.

Breaker, breaker 19, MMers. Our story today came to us last summer. At the time we were a little busy with all the King Beyond the Desert business, but it was one that stuck with us. We’ve done some follow up and we’re finally ready to share it with you.

The story starts with Marc Henderson, a thirty-six year old security guard at the Lincoln Hospital Damariscotta. He works mostly weekdays, but once a month he works overnights on the weekends. 

In the summer of 2024, his son, whose name we’ve decided not to release, was seven years old and loved spending time with his father. Marc’s wife, Kendra, worked as a waitress at a local bar  and grill in town, usually evenings, once Marc got off his shift. The Hendersons had wanted a second child, but it had never happened. They were a content, hardworking, middle class family doing the best they could.

But all of that started to change that June.

TOM: Marc’s son loved to play hide and seek. When school got out for the summer, Marc would often play a version of the popular game with him until the sun went down. It all started when Santa brought the boy a pair of walkie talkies for Christmas the previous year. They had Spider-Man and his friends on them, characters his son loved. They were basic, just one channel, push the button and talk, with very limited range. But the boy loved the walkie talkies and soon they began using them to play hide and seek.

In their version of the game, either Marc or his son would hide, taking one of the walkie talkies with him. They would give the seeker clues to where they were hiding. These were simple things like “Look where we wash the clothes” or “go past the crooked tree.” As the weather got warmer, they played outside more, and the directions and clues got more and more complex. Marc says his son got quite good at hiding and his ability to give intriguing but not obvious clues were nearly a match for Marc’s own.

The Hendersons lived on three acres of mostly wooded land. Over the years Marc and his wife had found or carved out little places on the property - small clearings, rock formations, just little places that seemed special in some way. This meant there were plenty of places to hide, and while the sun was still up and the boy was getting older, it meant more and more elaborate games.

One day, Marc said it was a Tuesday, his son went off to hide, while he counted with his head down on the kitchen table. When he got to a hundred, he thumbed the button on the Spidey radio and gave the traditional warning, “Ready or not, here I come.”

Marc said the radio stayed silent. This wasn’t uncommon, however. The father and son duo had established that the first few moments of the hunt should be a blind one, a desperate look for the person hiding, and that only after a few minutes of looking would the first clue be given. 

“Look past the yard,” the seven year old’s voice giggled from the red and blue walkie talkie.

During the games, both Marc and his son had free range of their home, at least for the most part. Marc and Kendra had explained the property lines to their son - old rock walls that hedge in their land nicely - and told him he could never go past the boundary of their home. The boy had been diligent about following orders.

When Marc got out to the edge of their meager back lawn, at the edge where the woods took over, he used the walkie talkie to tell his son he was there, and waited for his next clue. Marc said he heard some weird static and thought someone pressed the talk button on the other end, but he didn’t hear anything. 

He called for his son over the walkie again, but still heard nothing. He called out loud, thinking maybe the boy had accidentally turned off the radio or maybe the batteries had died. He heard only the silence of a summer evening. 

TOM: Suddenly Marc’s walkie talkie crackled to life, but it wasn’t his son’s voice coming through the tinny speaker of the walkie. It was deeper, gruffer; a man’s voice. 

Long time listeners probably have a feeling for where this story is going, but we assure you, what happened next was a complete shock. 

TOM: “Go to the place where you and your wife first thought about the boy,” the voice said.

The Henderson’s property dipped slightly behind their house. It wasn’t much of a descent, very gradual, that eventually worked its way down to Back Meadow Brook. There was a spot, towards the back of the property that was naturally clear of trees. A large boulder sat there and at just the right time, near dusk, the area was bathed in late day sun. Marc and Kendra used to go out there and would sit with their backs against the rock and watch the sun set over their small stream. It was here that they had first talked about starting a family.

Marc said he took off through the woods towards the small clearing. He expected the worst. Someone had done something to his son. All he knew was he had to get there and save his boy. Marc tore into the clearing, slightly out of breath, yelling and calling for his son, ready to attack whoever had hurt the child. 

Instead, he found the clearing empty and quiet. Nothing looked out of place. No sign that anyone had been there recently. He whirled around and called for his son, but there was no reply.

Marc said the air felt…different…somehow in the clearing. He said it felt like the asir was crawling over his skin on thousands of little legs. Something brushed against the back of his neck, but when he spun around there was nothing there. He felt like he was being pulled upward, somehow, like invisible ropes attached to his body were pulling him up.

The walkie talkie crackled once, a short burst of static that made Marc jump. Then he raced back to the house.

TOM: Halfway there the walkie crackled again, and this time Marc heard his son’s voice. “Dad?” the boy called into the radio. “Where are you, Dad? Can you find me?” As Marc sprinted to the home, his son suddenly burst out from behind a pile of wood. He was unharmed and seemed surprised his father hadn’t been able to find him.

The boy was fine. He had no idea about any other voice on the radio and hadn’t heard it all. He was confused with how worried his father was, and didn’t understand when his father scooped him up and ran him into the house, locking the door behind him. 

Marc said he was worried that someone was watching them, but when nothing happened, he began to think it was a prank. He nearly called the police, but decided against it. What had the voice on the other end actually done? Told him to go to a place that had been special to him and his wife? 

And how was Marc sure the message had actually been for him? Maybe the cheap toy walkies had picked up another nearby signal. Maybe in his confusion he had interpreted the message as something more than it was.

In the end, Marc did nothing. After a time he calmed down, and by the time his wife came home from her shift at the pub, he had put the entire episode behind him.

But that night, Marc said he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. A thought had crept into his brain while he had been asleep. It was one he couldn’t shake. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced. 

The voice on the other end of the walkie talkie had been his own.

He said he replayed the brief conversation again and again in his mind. He couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but he thought the voice had sounded exactly like his own. 

Everyone has an idea of how their voice sounds. In our heads, we sound the way we want to - stronger, more confident, whatever. One of the reasons people hate hearing their own voice recorded is because it forces them to accept that their voice doesn’t sound the same as they think. Trust us, working on a podcast you get really familiar with the concept that the way you sound “inside” and the way you sound in reality can be quite different.

So Marc lay awake the rest of the night, trying to figure out if the voice had somehow been his own. He whispered the words that had come over the radio again and again, feeling the way they formed in his mouth, comparing it to what he had heard.

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced. 

TOM: It’s impossible, of course. Well, at least in the way Marc was thinking about it. There was no way he could have sent a radio message to himself in real time. There are plenty of other explanations, of course. The easiest is that Marc was misremembering. That his mind was playing tricks on him and the voice was someone else’s entirely. It could have been a recording that someone got and played over the walkie. Heck, it could have all been in Marc’s mind. He could have imagined hearing the voice.

None of that deterred Marc from his belief he had heard his own voice, however. The next day, when he came home from work, exhausted from lack of sleep, Marc told his son they wouldn’t be playing hide and seek. Instead, they stayed inside. After the boy had gone to bed, Marc crept back into his room and grabbed the two Spider-Man walkie talkies off the shelf and went back out to the living room.

He sat on the couch, holding one of the radio in his hands, turning it over and over again. Finally, he rolled up the volume knob that also served as the power until it clicked, and the small red light came on. With a shaking hand, he pressed the talk button and brought the radio up to his mouth.

“Hello?” he half whispered into Spidey’s face. “Is anyone there?”

A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment. Marc was about to laugh the whole thing off and admonish himself for being so foolish.

But then the walkie talkie squawked to life.

“I’m here,” the voice said. 

It was Marc’s own voice. Horrified, he dropped the radio onto the table and collapsed back onto the couch. He stared at the toy in growing terror. Then it crackled again. 

“Are you still there, Marc?”

Marc panicked. He yanked the batteries out of both radios and threw them in a high cupboard in the kitchen. He paced the house, running his hands through his hair over and over again.

He didn’t know what was happening. He thought he was losing his mind. It couldn’t be himself on the other end of the walkie talkie. It didn’t make any sense. He pulled out his phone and recorded himself saying the exact same lines the voice had said to him: I’m here. Are you still there, Marc? When he played them back they sounded identical to the voice coming from his son’s walkie.

An hour later he pulled one of them out of the cupboard, rammed the batteries back into it, and thumbed it on.

“Who are you?” he asked, then let the button go.

The voice came back as if from a long distance. “I’m you. Go to the place, Marc. The one from before. The special place.”

It was full dark now, but still hours before his wife was due home. He knew he shouldn’t leave his son asleep in his room. But it was just outside. Not even half a mile away. If anything happened he’d be right back. Plus, he had to know who the voice was, what was happening.

In the end, Marc went back to the small clearing. Again, he said, the air felt electric. It felt like it was moving, writhing against his exposed skin. He felt that same pull, as if gravity were slowly releasing its grip on him.

“I’m here,” he spoke into the radio.

The voice on the other end told him it was thinner here. Maybe because it was such a special spot for them. It made the connection stronger, easier to communicate across the void. Marc asked again who the voice was, and again the voice said he was him. 

TOM: The Marc coming out of the walkie talkie said he was from a different world. A different reality. This alternate version of Marc told him things that only he would know, secrets and inner thoughts he had never shared with anyone before. Not even Kendra knew some of the things that the other Marc said. The other version said he was reaching out because something was coming, something he couldn’t talk about, and he wanted to make Marc an offer. He wanted to give him the chance to-

“Dad?”

The walkie talkie sounded unnaturally loud in the empty clearing. Marc nearly dropped his radio.

“Where are you dad?”

It was his son. The boy had woken up and found the other radio on the table. Not seeing his father, he had turned it on and tried to contact him. Marc promised he’d be right there. There was no sign of the alternate voice.

By the time Marc had calmed his son down and put him back to bed, it was nearly time for his wife to be home. He put the walkie talkies away for the night, but convinced himself he would need to speak with his other self again.

Fate, however, intervened.

Two days later Kendra and their son were involved in an accident coming back from the grocery store. A pickup truck blew through a stop sign and smashed into the side of Kendra’s SUV. Kendra was pronounced dead on the scene. Marc’s son suffered severe injuries to his left side including a broken arm, broken leg, and multiple lacerations. He slipped into a coma and doctors were unsure of his outlook.

Marc spent the next few days in a hospital in Portland, never once leaving his son’s side. He was frantic with grief, heartbroken, and felt completely useless as he watched his boy lie there in a hospital bed.

When the immediate concern subsided and it looked more and more likely that the seven year old would live, Marc eventually was convinced to go home for a night, while his family stayed by the boy’s bedside.

Alone in his empty house, Marc paced. He went from room to room, turning on lights, before turning them off and leaving. He picked up items, studied them like he had never seen them before, then let them drop back to where they had sat. He couldn’t stand to see the sight of his own bedroom, the room he had shared with Kendra. In the end, he climbed into his son’s bed and tried to forget the world.

Sometime around midnight the walkie talkie on the shelf blared to life.

“Marc? Are you there Marc? Do you copy?”

Scared and alone, Marc reached for the radio. He told the voice - the him from another world - that he was there, and again, in the idle of the night made his way to the clearing.

Marc told the walkie talkie about everything that had happened - the accident, Kendra’s passing, his son’s coma. He cried into the small children’s radio that he was scared and alone, that he didn’t know what he could do, and that he was trying to be strong, but that he didn’t know how he could be.

For a time the walkie talkie was silent. Marc thought the voice was gone and was about to head back, when it came to life.

“It’s not like that here. It’s…different.”

The Marc from across the void explained how in his world Kendra was very much alive, that she was a lawyer, and how their son was getting ready to skip a grade. He said they were getting ready to welcome their second child, a little girl, in a few months. 

Marc said he broke down in the clearing, sobbing so loudly he was worried someone would hear and would send the police. Finally he managed to get it together and told the voice on the other end to cherish them, to hold his family tight, because it could be all taken away in an instant.

Again there was a lengthy silence.

“There… there is a way <cough cough>. A way to make it better. You…you could come here. We could swap places.”

Marc was dumbfounded. He couldn’t speak. Finally he found his words again. He explained that he couldn’t do that to the other version of himself. He couldn’t take away from him what he, himself, had already lost. He thanked his alternate self, but said he couldn’t make that trade.

Three weeks later, with all of his leave time used up and his son still languishing in a coma, Marc Henderson was forced to leave his job. The hospital where he worked wasn’t equipped to care for his son, and the long hours spent sitting by the boy’s bedside meant he couldn’t work. They did their best to help him, but in the end, he was let go.

Short term disability only lasts so long, and soon the bills began piling up. Not just the mortgage and the electric bill, but the growing medical bills for his son’s care - and insurance would only cover so much.

Again, Marc says, he spoke with his other self. Alone in the clearing, the place that had been so special to him and his wife, he poured his heart out to the only person he thought could understand him, the voice on the other end of the somehow magic Spider-Man walkie talkie.

Again the other Marc offered a swap. There was a way they could trade places, the voice told him. The other Marc could come here, and Marc could go there. He could have his wife and boy back, his job - an even better one, head of his own successful private security firm. 

Again Marc declined. 

“You have everything I ever wanted, ever dreamed of. I can’t take that life from you.”

Marc said that he thought he heard something in the other’s voice, a weariness he hadn’t heard before. A strain, he said he wasn’t sure had been there earlier in the summer. He dismissed it as worry for his counterpart. In fact he appreciated the concern his multiversal twin was showing him from across whatever gulf separated them.

TOM: As weeks stretched into months and the seasons changed again and again, Marc’s life seemed to be falling apart even more. The loss of his wife, his son’s sustained coma, the loss of his job, and the ever expanding debt all wore on him. He stopped eating, started drinking more. His truck was repossessed. His cell phone shut off. And then one day in early spring, Marc suffered a mild cardiac event. He was in the hospital, sitting next to his son when it happened. The doctors told him it was stress-induced, and that Marc needed to get his life back in order if he didn’t want a follow up episode.

Three nights later, recovering back at home, Marc went back to the clearing and brought the walkie talkie with him.

“Hello?” he said into the radio, not sure if he hoped to hear a reply or not. 

“Marc? <cough, cough> Is that you?” the voice of the other came to him.

Marc said he told his twin about what had happened to him since they had last spoken.How his life had somehow sunk even farther.

“Marc,” the voice on the other end said. “You can fix all of this <cough, cough>. All you have to do is say yes. <cough, cough> This place makes the transition easy. It’s painless, Marc. You can have my life. Everything is better here. Kendra is here. And the kids. Your job. Your health. All of it. All you have to do is say yes.”

Marc said he definitely thought the voice on the other side, his alternate self sounded sick. He thought there was an air of desperation in his voice. An almost greedy edge he hadn’t heard before.

Sitting there, in the cooling afternoon sun, Marc told us that he considered the offer. If he could go back, undo everything awful that had happened to him, if he could just be happy again… 

“Why are you so willing to trade lives?” he asked with a voice that couldn’t hide its quaver.

There was a pregnant pause.

“It’s not fair that you should suffer so, Marc. <cough, cough>. If I can…share my good fortune with you…it only seems right.”

“But you have everything and I have…nothing.”

The voice on the other end chuckled. “Not everything is as it seems.”

Marc said a cold chill ran down his spine. He said he thought about saying something else, but didn’t know what. Something about the voice didn’t feel right to him. He said he snapped off the walkie and walked slowly back to the house. He placed the radio in the high kitchen cupboard and went to bed.

That night, Marc said, he had a horrible nightmare. In it he was in a darkened hall. He could barely see anything, but there was just enough light to see that the hallway stretched impossibly far in either direction. Marc didn’t know where it was, but he was sure that there was something behind him, hidden in the shadows shuffling towards him on wet, squishy steps. He couldn’t see it, but he somehow knew whatever lurched towards him was covered with red, oozing sores, and soft, melted wax-like features that had once resembled his own. Marc turned and ran, but as fast as he went, the shambling pestilent thing was right behind him. 

He said that he ran on, not daring to look back over his shoulder, but he knew, he just knew that the monstrosity that chased him was just a step behind, reaching out with clutching hands, ready to grasp Marc…and never let him go.

He woke with a scream on his lips and his body aching all over. 

Marc said after that he was determined not to use the walkie talkie again. He didn’t know how it had suddenly picked up transmissions from an alternate reality, but whatever pain and suffering he was going through, he wasn’t sure that whatever lay beyond that infinite gulf was any better.

Then his mother fell down trying to climb the stairs to her porch. She fractured her leg badly in the fall, and lay there crying in pain for several hours before a neighbor finally heard her and came to investigate. At her age, doctors weren’t sure she would ever walk again. 

That the walkie talkie sparked to life all on its own, still tucked away in the cupboard.

“Marc?” the thing from the other world croaked, hardly sounding at all like Marc anymore. “Maaarc? <cough, cough> Do you copy? Are you there, Marc? All you have to say is yes.”

Marc spent the night all alone in his empty house, curled up in his bathtub trying to drown out the sound of the warbling voice and its insidious offer.

TOM: That’s when Marc contacted us. He came into the office and laid out his entire story. He didn’t bring the walkie talkie with him. He said he was afraid to touch it. That it was still in the cupboard where he had left. He wanted to know if we would take it. If we could get rid of whatever was on the other side. He was desperate. 

Like Chris said earlier, we were pretty busy trying to find Mark and the Katie Clark stuff and all of that, so we didn’t have much time to investigate further. He did leave us an email address where we could contact him. He said he checked it as often as he could at the local library. Ahd he gave us his address. He told us to stop by any time.

That was the last we heard from Marc Henderson. By the time we were free to look into his story and things had settled down from our experience last fall, it was nearly Christmas. We sent a series of emails to Marc, but never got any reply.

We did some research and found out that near the end of July of last year, the bank finally foreclosed on Marc’s home. He was given two weeks to vacate the premises. By the time the bank returned, Marc was nowhere to be seen. It looked as if he had complied with the bank order.

All in all, nothing too suspicious. Unfortunately for someone in Marc’s position this was a natural conclusion. But when we looked into it even farther, we found some things that just didn’t sit well with us. 

For one thing, Marc hadn’t spoken to his mother, who was now in an assisted living home and mostly confined to a wheelchair,since July. No visits, no calls, nothing. 

None of his friends had seen him either.

And perhaps most tragically, Marc had stopped visiting his comatose son in the hospital right around the same time his house had been foreclosed on. 

It was as if Marc had completely disappeared.

TOM: Except we found him. We found Marc Henderson. He’s living in Pensacola, Florida. He popped up in a news story about a successful food truck in town. One Marc Henderson was interviewed as a regular to the food truck because his real estate firm is just down the street from where the truck parks. The story ran a picture of Henderson purchasing street tacos from the truck. It’s him. It’s one hundred percent him. But… he looks different than when we saw him.

The Marc Henderson that came into our offices was haggard, worn down by a life that had been cruel to him. He was overweight, with a patchy beard, and unkempt hair that was starting to gray. He walked with a slight limp and seemed far older and frailer than his almost 40 years.

The man in the picture was anything but. He looked young, hale and hearty. The pot belly that had been beginning to protrude over his belt when we spoke to him was nowhere in sight and there was a light, energetic air about him, all conveyed by the simple picture. Gone was the weight of the world. This wasn’t the look of a man who had suffered at all.

To be clear this wasn’t a man who looked like Marc Henderson. It wasn’t a different man with the same name. This was Marc Henderson. Just… a seemingly different version of him than we had met. 

We were able to discover a phone number for Marc and left him several voicemails. He never returned them. Then finally, one day we got lucky and he picked up. He told us to stop calling him. That he had nothing to say to us, and that he’d report us for harassment if we didn’t stop. We tried to ask him about the walkie talkie, about why he had abandoned his old life, his son, but he told us there never was a magic walkie talkie; he made the whole thing up. He told us to never call him again, then hung up.

TOM: Is it possible that out of desperation, finally broken by all the bad luck that seemed to come his way, that Marc Henderson finally took the deal the voice on the other end of his son’s walkie talkie offered him? Could he have actually switched places with his alternate counterpart?

But what of Marc’s belief that the voice coming from the radio was…not quite right? He thought the voice had sounded greedy and sick. And what of the dream he had of the monstrous thing wearing a warped version of his own face chasing after him?

So Tom and I decided to take a ride up to Damariscotta, to the address Marc left with us before… before whatever happened. It was a long shot, we knew, but… we had to see for ourselves.

The house had been sold and a nice couple were living there. They were in their young twenties, getting ready to start a family. They told us they couldn’t believe they had gotten such a good deal on the place. They loved the property and all of the little spaces and areas. They felt they could relax here.

We asked them if the previous owner had left anything behind, specifically a set of Spider-Man walkie talkies. The husband gave us an odd look, but his wife grew serious for a moment. She excused herself to the basement and came back up a few minutes later with two red and blue radios in her hand. She said she had found them in a cabinet over the fridge when they had moved in. She was going to throw them away, but she thought they were so cute. She had decided to keep them just in case they had a young son someday. 

We asked if we could see them and take a walk around the property. The couple was a little hesitant, but they agreed to let us. It took a little bit, but we found the clearing towards the back of the property, the place Marc said he went to talk to the voice on the other end.

There was no electricity in the air. No sense of being lifted or pulled. No rising sensation. It felt like anywhere else in mid-March. We looked at each other, suddenly doubting all of Marc’s story.

Was it really possible that his walkie talkie, the one we held in our hands, had contacted another world, an alternate reality? Did Marc actually make a deal with his interdimensional doppelganger and somehow swap places with his twin? And could that deal have been a proverbial deal with the devil? Was the world where this other Marc said he was from not the rosy paradise he had painted, but something sick and twisted? Was this other Marc a grotesque prisoner not offering salvation, but seeking escape? Standing there in the brisk late winter weather, it didn’t seem likely.

Then Tom kicked aside some leaves that had recently been revealed by the retreating snow. It wasn’t a deliberate act, just a kind of foot shuffling motion you do when you’re bored or waiting for something to happen. Beneath the dead leaves was a patch of grass that had been scorched or burned to a crisp black. We quickly moved more of the leaves and found a perfect ring of blackened grass, about three feet in diameter. Not a circle, like something had been set on fire there, but a ring, about four inches thick. Inside the grass was dead from the winter months, but still perfectly intact.

Could this have been the spot? The spot where Marc Henderson left this world for another?

[LIVE]

TOM: Okay. Are we going to do this?

CHRIS: I think we have to.

TOM: [deep breath] Okay. Here goes. 

[click of walkie talkie turning on]

TOM: Marc? Marc Henderson? Are you there? Can you hear me?

[silence. Then the hiss of static. THe click of the talk button being pressed]

MARC: H-h-help. Help me. Please God, help me. Help me…Do you copy?

Stay safe out there, Maine.