Page 44 was missing. In its place, someone had taped a photograph. It was Leo, thirty years younger, standing in front of a gutted TV console. He looked terrified. Scrawled on the back of the photo in Leo’s handwriting: “It works. But I saw myself watching me. Do not use the Elfunk Banshee after midnight.”
The Last Page of the Elfunk Manual
The first pages were normal: safety warnings (“Do not touch the anode cap while the chassis is open unless you wish to meet God personally”), schematics, parts lists (Model 2200 “Goblin Chassis,” Model 4400 “Sprite Deflection Yoke”). But by page 23, the language shifted. “To calibrate the vertical hold on a Model 8800 ‘Banshee,’ one must first listen. A healthy set hums in B-flat minor. A failing set will whisper the name of the last person who repaired it.” Arthur chuckled. A joke. Repairman humor. Elfunk Tv Manual
Arthur almost threw it away. But the word “television” snagged a memory. His brother, Leo, had been obsessed with old TVs. In the basement of their childhood home, Leo had built a fortress of cathode-ray tubes. And Leo had loved the strange, failed companies—the ones that made parts for a year and then vanished. Elfunk was one of them.
Arthur Finch did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in bad wiring. That’s why, at seventy-three, he was flat on his back under the dashboard of a 1978 Winnebago, tasting dust and regret. The RV had been his late brother’s pride, and now it was Arthur’s problem. Page 44 was missing
The paper burned. The flames were blue. And as the last corner of the cover curled into ash, Arthur heard a faint, clear knock.
He found the manual wedged behind the fuse box. It was a thin, stained booklet, the size of a passport, with a curling plastic spiral binding. On the cover, a crude cartoon elf in a hard hat held a soldering iron like a sword. Above him, in a cheerful, 1970s font, it read: Elfunk: Television & Electronic Repair – Manual No. 7. He looked terrified
He never turned it on again.
Page 31: “If the picture rolls backward in time (e.g., showing last Tuesday’s news), reverse the polarity of the horizontal oscillator and do not, under any circumstances, look directly into the screen. The images look back.”