“Dead Air” (1988)

There’s not much information online about Gregory Nicoll, author of this longish story, which has intriguing points—namely, rock ‘n’ roll and Jack the Ripper—in a fast-moving tale set in an isolated broadcasting building late at night. The DJ, Mary Clark, is new to the job but seems to be pretty good at it. It’s a classic rock station, so she’s playing things like a Blue Oyster Cult “superset” (we’re told that means at least four songs). The DJ from the previous night was named Mary Kelly, which is close to Mary Jane Kelly, the last victim of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper connection is strained. Really, the whole thing barely hangs together. Time dilates and a lot can happen in the space of a minute or two. The DJ and indeed the story are busy with incident and motion, not entirely believable. It’s influenced by a lot of Stephen King tricks designed to scare or thrill, lots of action and anxious interior dialogue. On the rock ‘n’ roll side it’s attempting to bring in Screaming Lord Sutch, a self-consciously outrageous British rocker of the early ‘60s under direct influence of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Among other things Sutch wrote a song called “Jack the Ripper” and also adopted a stage persona as Jack the Ripper. Here the song is referred to as “The Hands of Jack the Ripper” and it’s nearly 10 minutes long, which does not appear to be factual. This is thus another story suggesting that Jack the Ripper is some kind of immortal being. It appears that the radio station manager, Bert, is him, even as the story reaches its screaming climax. I like a lot of the elements here, but somehow the whole misfires for me. I was distracted by its strange sense of time, which felt like Nicoll trying to pack too much action into too little time more than an intentional effect. I wasn’t convinced the story knew what it wanted from rock ‘n’ roll or Jack the Ripper, except to invoke them for effect. They are there not so much to scare as to give the story a modern-day gloss. But I might be complaining too much. The story has flaws, it may not all add up, but it’s still a fun one to read.

The Year's Best Horror Stories XVII, ed. Karl Edward Wagner
Story not available online.