JANUARY 2026: Sounds and Music
So sorry this is late! We have had some issues with our domain host and some scams coming in that wracked our brains. Plus, flu season caught us both by the scruffs of our necks. Better late than never, though!
-M. Anne Avera
“Echoes of the Summit” by Daniel Miltz
Before I saw the summit, I heard it.
A low, uneven hush slid through the trees, not quite wind, not quite silence. The path climbed crooked and timeworn, and each step landed with a dull, swallowed thud, as if the ground were learning my weight. My breathing fell into a rhythm I didn’t choose. It answered something ahead of me.
Small lakes dotted the slopes, mirrors of fallen sky. When the wind crossed them, they chimed, thin, glassy notes that lingered too long. I knelt at one and watched my reflection warp, ripple, blur, as if the sound itself were bending it. The stillness I wanted to carry with me hummed instead, tight and expectant.
Higher up, the mountain began to breathe aloud. Mist thickened and the greens darkened, softening into shadow. Whispers threaded through the air, overlapping, off tempo. I could almost understand them, the way you almost recognize a song heard through walls. No footprints marked the summit, yet the ground creaked and sighed like it remembered many feet, or none at all.
Birds wheeled above, but their calls arrived late, stretched thin, warped by distance. Time did not pause, it dragged, echoed, repeated. The summit held me in its rhythm, vast and enduring, and I realized the sound was not welcoming me forward. It was tuning itself to me.
“Marjorie“ by Maya Gardner
Originally published by Velchoir Lit
Marjorie knew to stay away from the fence line.
She had learned this from the stern, repeated warnings her father would send down the hall whenever she stepped outside the red door of the farmhouse. The rusty hinges would call out through the walls, signaling him to his cue.
Marjorie didn’t know what was so special about the tendons of barbed wire that divided their acre of land from the woods, but from the fear in her father's voice, she didn’t want to find out. She thought maybe it had to do with Uncle Vernon.
Uncle Vernon was a man who took up splotchy patches of Marjorie's memories. She thinks he was there at her brother's birth, maybe her fifth birthday, but she has no recollection of him beyond that. For her, he lives in the times she’d see her father quietly cry to himself at night, his thin frame caved in on itself by the fire. He never knew she saw these rare moments, her small feet padding softly through the hall, transfixed as the harshness of his voice softened into sobs.
She knew Uncle Vernon was her father’s twin. She knew he disappeared one day, around the time her mother died. And she knew that since that disappearance, her father hadn’t been the same. He was older, thinner, colder, and told the kids to stay away from the fence line.
Today, he didn't give that warning.
The sound had started just before sunrise: a loud, low, guttural moan from the side of the farm by the forest. The cows were screaming. Marjorie had been having a nightmare, the same one she always had, when the sound pulled her out of it and upright in her bed.
She needed her father to make it stop.
Marjorie padded down the hall to his room, an activity she took up frequently; on evenings when the nightmares were too much or she woke up surrounded by wet. Sometimes she’d slip in beside him, the scent of sweat and whiskey lulling her to sleep.
She peeked through the wooden door at an empty bed. Her father was gone. She ducked, peeking under the bed; sometimes when her doll was lost, she’d find her there, but she did not see her father, just a boot, caked with crackling mud from the corral.
Marjorie winced as the groan rattled her skull once more.
This time, the cows didn’t stop; the screaming was in chorus, one after the other, after the other, after the other. Marjorie wanted to cry, but remembered the time her grandmother told her crying made the spirits in the house angry.
Grandma, like her mother, had always been superstitious. Though her father laughed at them, he never broke one of grandma’s rules. Save for crying. Maybe that's why the cows were screaming, the ghosts were mad at him for breaking the rule.
Marjorie, unlike her father, believed in ghosts. To her, there was no explanation more logical for all of the bad fortune that they had been having.
The room grew very still, and Marjorie lifted her hands from her head. Silence. Her breaths grew quicker as her feet led her out of the room and down the hall to the front door.
She stood at the edge of the house, looking towards the woods. The cows were gathered together, staring off at the dark trees beyond the farm. One lifted its head, crying out once more, softer, weaker.
She waited for her father to warn her about the fenceline, but was met with silence as she stepped onto the splintered wooden porch. Her bare feet scraped on its old steps before hitting the soft prairie grasses below.
Marjorie liked the cows. Her father wouldn’t let her name them, but they were never around long enough for her to come up with a good name anyway. The first drop of sun had been spread into the sky, she could see it crawling out of its bed towards the city.
Marjorie had never been to the city before but knew it was a place of filth, where men were dangerous. Their only interactions with it were when her father rode into the bank or market or had to speak with the butcher. He always came back angry, saying the men in the city were thieves. He said the same of the men they’d sometimes hear on the radio, men representing states with names unfamiliar to Marjorie.
Kansas was the only state Marjorie had been to. In fact, she didn’t have many memories beyond the fenceline besides the short trek to the schoolhouse and the trips to the river her father would take her and her siblings on when the weather turned fair.
But now the riverbed was dry, and the air was cold. Ice filling Marjorie’s lungs with every breath. The dry grasses cut into Marjorie’s feet, freezing them as she crossed the field.
Marjorie had reached the cows when she saw it, something black and white and twisted in the fence line. A calf was stuck in the barbed wire, its skin torn, turning the yellow grass below a bright, deep red. Its leg twisted backward, jagged bone sticking out in two pieces. Pure white mountains sticking out of a sea of ruby flesh.
It made no noise, but its mother groaned softly as she sniffed around its leg, gently licking the scarlet off its face before staring at Marjorie.
It was the look Marjorie would give her father when the arm fell off her doll. The mother needed Marjorie to fix it. To save her baby.
The calf’s chest heaved in sync with Marjorie’s; quick, sharp, as it looked deep inside her. It was dying. Marjorie knew from the bittersweet stink that wafted off the calf that there wasn’t much time.
Marjorie had never seen something die before, but recognized the smell from the room next to hers. Formerly belonging to Marjorie’s sister, it was now only known as the room her mother and grandmother had died in.
Marjorie’s mother didn’t want to risk spirits sneaking into the children, so they weren’t let in once their grandmother had gotten sick, and her sister moved into Marjorie’s room. But at night, the smell seeped through the walls as she heard her grandmother’s coughing growing louder and louder before cutting off completely. They carried her grandmother's body out in the morning, wrapped in her sister's pink sheets.
Her mother died in the room two weeks later, filling the air with the same taste of metal. The crimson dribbling down the fence brought her back to the early morning when her brother was born, filling her lungs with a moment that regularly shook her from sleep. A pool spilled from her mother as her father yelled at her to get out, his words rattling her mother's gentle face as he shook her in his arms.
Marjorie had not been in the room since. These deaths had been the start of their bad luck. Then Uncle Vernon.
Marjorie put her hand out towards the calf, gently touching its head. It winced below her touch.
She wished it would close its eyes. Or mouth. But both hung open in scared, desperate confusion, thick, bloody breath bubbling towards her. Its abdomen stretched, deep red marks on its skin rippling as the fresh sunlight touched them.
Something had attacked it and tried to pull it through the wire. Leaving the crumpled calf as its only evidence. No broken branches or footprints. No fur or scat. Just the deep claw marks, pulsing blood, and the screams of the cows.
The mother of the calf nuzzled Marjorie, which only made her more panicked. She couldn’t save it.
Marjorie knew what happened to creatures who had been torn up. Creatures with the dread and horror that filled the calf's eyes. Their dog, Bo, had been attacked by a wolf the summer before. Her father made Marjorie stand inside and face the wall as the gunshot rang outside. Her hands covered her brother's small ears as hers filled with the quick terror of the bullet. Her sister’s face turned pale white as she rocked herself on the floor beside them.
They buried Bo next to her mother and grandmother. Her father bought roses and let her and her sister plant them to separate the graves. Her brother was too confused about where Bo had gone to help them plant. Marjorie wondered if they’d bury this calf there, too.
The sounds of her father yelling cut through her thoughts as he gripped her arm firmly, lifting her off the ground as he became the divide between her and the fence. Marjorie stared through his legs as he yelled at
her. Too fixated on the blood-soaked ground to hear him. “House” “Danger” “You never listen”. The words came in and out.
Her father sank to her level, one hand gripping her arm tight, the other stabilizing his bad leg with his shotgun. Despite the harshness of his voice, the piercing blue of her father’s eyes calmed her down. Her dad was there, and it was all going to be okay.
“Get inside. Cover your ears.”
He waited for Marjorie to echo back with a nod before standing, already aiming the gun at the calf. The calf’s mother screamed again, the sound jutting through Marjorie as she ran off. She needed to get away from the gunshot, as far as possible. The thin clapboard walls of the house couldn’t smother the fear she was feeling. She did not want to hold her brother and sister when they inevitably woke up to the shot, the
blood, the screams. She wanted to be held herself.
The tall grass scraped against her bare legs as she ran across the field, her hands pressing into her skull as she tried to drown out the groaning of the herd. Marjorie did not stop as the soft pads of her feet began to bleed; she did not stop until she found herself at the opposite fenceline. The barbed wire caught the threads of her dress as she squeezed her eyes closed tighter.
The gunshot rang through her body, her muscles tense. The screaming finally stopped.
Marjorie froze, feeling the breeze against her legs, grass tickling her calves. The morning birds started to sing. Marjorie tried to think of a way to get inside the house without turning around, without seeing the calf’s body sinking into the barbed wire, the distressed eyes of its mother, whom Marjorie had failed.
Hesitantly, she uncovered her ears. Just the birds, the wind, the grass. Slowly, she let the early morning light shine in her eyes as she stared into the thick forest.
Her father was waiting on the other side of the fence, in front of her. The calf’s blood on his shirt. Marjorie hadn’t heard him approach and waited for him to continue his lecture about the danger of the fenceline. Instead, he smiled at her.
“It’s okay, Margie,” he stepped forward slowly, the forest floor crumpling below him. “It’s okay.”
He approached her slowly, reaching over the wire to gently lift her up and hold her to his chest. Marjorie’s tears started. Comfort at last. Her father’s arms dimmed the image of the calf, the tear, the blood, the thought of what lived in the woods. He soothed her, rubbing her back.
“Let’s go for a walk, okay?” His voice hummed through his chest as she buried farther into it. Marjorie nodded against his linen shirt, her tears and sniffles coming to a halt as she squeezed his form. She lay against him like the calf in the fence. Suspended. She pulled away to look at the sky. At the forest canopy, the birds, the treehouse they had played in in the days before her mother died.
She watched the light on her father’s jaw. He was not as old as some of the other fathers she had seen at the schoolhouse, but he looked far older than he was before her brother was born. The past few years had aged him. The deaths, the disappearance, the bad crops, and stillborn calves. Marjorie had prayed each night to a God she didn’t know for a break to come.
She smiled at her father, wanting to give back some of the comfort that he had granted her. Marjorie’s smile faded as she realized. Those weren’t her father’s eyes.
“The Beating of a Hideous Heart” by AJ Sharpe
It took eight days for everyone in the world to finish digging their own graves.
-
Nobody admitted to hearing it at first—that steady thud coming from inside the earth. The thrum of life that pounded just outside the rhythm of your own heart, ever so slightly out of alignment. It was soft enough to ignore. Easy enough to blame it on the blood-rush in your ears.
thump thump thump
It got a little louder on the second day. People grew irritable—snappy. Worry lines etched deeper on their faces, but still nobody admitted to hearing the noise. Pedestrians passed each other in the street, distrustful and glowering. It was crazy. It was their imagination. It was not real.
The earth has no heart.
thump thump thump
The third day, it grew louder. Like the insistent knocking of a chamber door inside one’s head, the earth’s heartbeat begged for attention. People withdrew from those around them, still too scared to speak the truth.
thump thump thump
People began to crack on the fourth day. Breaking down, bodies wracked with guilt-ridden sobs as they knelt in the grass. Clumps of hair pulled from scalps by anxious fingers. Eyes ringed by sleepless dark circles. Teeth chattering as they begged for the sound to stop.
thump thump thump
Day five the digging started. It was in the mud; the heart, beating. Everyone could hear it, everyone knew. Frantic fingers burrowed into the dirt, scraping soil out from beneath themselves. Nails cracked and bleeding as they dragged filth up from the ground.
thump thump thump
All the time the beat grew louder—it was urgent, flurried. Six days into the world ending, and people did not stop. Everyone excavating, searching for the tell-tale heart. Hands red-raw and battered, bones broken but ignored.
thump thump thump
People began to fall on the seventh day, lay resting in their pits. Exhaustion settled into them, nesting in their bones, and so they went to sleep.
thump thump thump
No heart was ever found. All who heard the beat pounding in the back of their head had fallen by the eighth day. The buzzards feasted, sharp beaks digging into tired flesh and picking the knackered bones clean.
The heart beat still, steady, deep inside the earth.
“Bury, Rebury” by James Cannice
There were four soldiers: a captain and three privates. After the war, the captain told his three men that they were given an important mission: they were to transport a box across the country to their homeland.
It would take some time—they had to take backroads, cut through the forests. The box was not to be found. Not by the remnants of the enemy that still lingered. Not by any civilians. Not by any other fellow soldiers.
The box was large, wooden, heavy, locked, and only the captain knew what was inside. Every night they journeyed, the captain would tell the privates to bury the box.
“Why must we bury it?” asked Pyotr, the youngest of the soldiers.
“The enemy must never find it, even if we die in our sleep,” the captain would say every time the question was asked, which was often. He never changed his answer.
“Dig deeper,” he would always command his men, just as they thought they had dug a large enough hole. “Dig deeper.”
The other two privates, Mischa and Ilya, would roll their eyes and protest but the command never changed. So, each night, they dug a hole, until their bodies were halfway into the earth, and buried the box. And every next morning they would dig it back up, load it on the truck, and carry on.
“What do you think is inside the box?” Pyotr asked Mischa and Ilya once when the captain was away.
“Nothing worth all this effort,” said Mischa.
“Must be some sort of weapon,” said Ilya. “I think it’s a bomb.”
But Pyotr looked unsure.
“What, you don’t think so?” said Ilya.
Pyotr cast his eyes down and fidgeted with his thumbs. “I don’t know. Sometimes, when we bury it… I think I can hear something inside.”
“Probably just the weight of whatever is inside shifting.”
“No, it almost sounds like… it almost sounds like a voice. Very quiet.”
“A voice?”
“Or… something singing, very quietly.”
“It’s just the ringing in your ear. You’ll get used to it,” said Mischa.
The captain died the next day. An enemy soldier, for whom the war was not over, found the company and shot the captain through the eye. The privates shot the enemy until he was pulp then buried him and their captain.
Before sunset, the three took a vote on whether or not to continue burying the box. It had been weeks, and they were still hundreds of miles away from home. Still, Pyotr and Ilya voted to bury it. So, they dug a hole.
“Deeper,” Pyotr said when Mischa and Ilya set down their shovels. “It needs to be deeper.” But Mischa and Ilya did not listen. The hole did not need to be deeper.
“There is no voice. There is no singing,” said Mischa. So, they set the box in the shallow hole and made camp.
Pyotr tossed and turned in his sleep. His screams woke Mischa and Ilya once or twice through the night.
The next day, they voted again. Pyotr and Ilya again voted to bury the box. And again, when Ilya and Mischa set down their shovels, Pyotr asked to dig deeper. “No,” said Mischa. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re already exhausted and it’s chewing at your mind and we shouldn’t be doing this anyway.”
Pyotr turned to Ilya, who only shook his head.
The quiet made Ilya and Mischa think they had learned to sleep through Pyotr’s screams, but the youngest private was not there when they woke the next morning.
“Deserter,” said Mischa.
That night, Ilya dug alone. Mischa would have no part in it. He told Ilya to stop, that Ilya would wear himself to the bone, but Ilya sweated and dug and dug and dug. Ilya was still digging when Mischa fell asleep.
Mischa woke sometime deep into the night. It was likely from his dream, but he thought he had heard a scream—Pyotr’s scream. He called out.
Pyotr, of course, did not reply.
Mischa took his lantern and looked around the camp and the woods that surrounded it. He saw the hole was only partially dug, not nearly deep enough to bury the box. Ilya must have finally given up.
But Mischa could not find Ilya—a bedroll had not been set for him. Mischa circled the camp, looked to the truck, and could still not find Ilya.
But he did find the box.
Unlocked and opened.
Empty.
He looked around himself and shouted for his fellow soldier. All was quiet in the woods, not even any of the animals of forest skittered through the brush or called out. It was silent, at least until he heard a rustle in the leaves somewhere behind him.
He turned on his heel and shone his lantern to where he thought the noise had come from. His light, unsteady in his trembling hand, revealed nothing but trees and the black beyond. He called out. “Ilya?”
He thought he glimpsed someone, a shadow behind a tree.
“Pyotr?” His voice broke.
Something stepped out from behind the tree and it was not Ilya, not Pyotr.
And Mischa did hear what sounded like very much like singing to his ears.
“Basement 13” by Justin Nicholes
Welcome to the World of Black Studded Fingerless Gloves.
Entrance fee: railroad spike through the hand.
This warning, Rule 1, had howled across the website’s hero box, a site Boris had dredged up from darknet sewers among hitman-for-hire boards and animal-debauchery SharePoint folders.
He had readied himself for the waiver-by-impalement that would X the dotted line. He’d also championed through self-cauterization. What he hadn’t bargained for was how fuckin deep Basement 13 sank. His kidney had reached failure territory the day before. No way he was climbing back up.
He had weeks to live, and he intended to. But would they sense the Stage 4 in his veins? Would they spit him out like spoiled durian?
At the pitch-black bottom, he blind-man palmed the stairwell. It dead-ended on a door. He shouldered through to a room glowing green. At one end, a Livvie bobbed black locks on a stage and clawed C-minor on a crypt-green guitar. Stage scrims, in tortured metal-thorn script, announced Casket Case.
He’d arrived. Reanimation, Immortality, Necro-Romancing. Was it all true? It’d only cost his soul.
Boris threw the unmarked hand horns-up. “Casket Caaase!” He’d seen them in Madison last summer, in Milwaukee opening for Cannibal Sacrifice the year before. Now, a haze machine hissed. Fog layered the packed-dirt floor at knee level.
The rest of the band materialized. Joining Nagash and his creepy Fendor was Melkior on bass, crimson hair sprouting in bundles from a balaclava. On drums, Hammer-Dentist Dave. Lady Styx, vocals, elevated from a trap door. Her gutturals scrambled guts.
As the music pealed to crescendo, worms wriggled from floorboards. The worms morphed to fingers. Fingers became excavating hands. Corpses, as promised, emerged. They shook sod from heads and bodies in shivers, calibrated pitted-olive eyes toward him in the green light, and closed in, stuttering through tics and death-rattle groans.
Black t-shirts, vests, and shredded jeans sagged off skin desiccated to loose leather. Pierced through nostrils and noses, dickheads and clitorises, they limped then skip-staggered in a pattern he knew. A mosh pit rotated, stomped, threw elbows.
A corpse in a leather mini-skirt and skull-boots, with a chain woven through nostrils and cheeks, clasped his wrist. He hissed at the pain (the spike-impalement fresh) and was yanked a step closer.
“It won’t work if you don’t move,” she said. “And if you fall …”
“Lie-n-die?”
Bloody-nosed, sharp-knuckled, chip-toothed death-metal moshing churned. He absorbed shots to the ear. His guide haymakered his bald crown, her other hand still handcuffing him in the throng. He vomited black Methotrexate.
Lady Styx false-corded toward the ceiling as the woman on his wrist buried jaws in his chest. The breastbone caved in like thistle. As a canine snagged tender viscera, he raked fingers of his impaled hand (pain numbed now) through her hair, entreating the devouring mouth through the other side of the blood-tacky pit tornado of Basement 13.
“I’m Listening” by Anndrais mac Choluim
WQRM 103.3FM — 1:43 a.m.
The record crackled softly as the final saxophone note of Midnight Reverie faded into its last, looping groove. For a moment, silence spread like mist in the booth—thin, weightless, and just a touch too long. Carter Venn reached for the fader and slid it down with the easy rhythm of someone who had done this a thousand times, though the silence still made his skin crawl. He told himself it was the cold air leaking through the cracked studio window, not anything deeper.
He cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone.
“That was Ellis Granger, pulling another ghost from the WQRM vault,” he said, voice low and easy, the cadence of a man pretending not to hear the darkness pressing at the walls. “For all the insomniacs, truckers, third-shifters, and... anyone else listening in tonight.”
The red light on Line One blinked—once, twice, then steadied.
Carter sighed. Late-night calls were always the same: drunks, conspiracy theorists, or the occasional weeping divorcee who thought the airwaves might still carry something like comfort.
He flipped the switch. “You’re live on WQRM,” he said, slipping on the voice, all velvet and shrug.
The reply came slow, slurred, and thick with static.
“You ever notice the space between the songs, Carter?” The voice paused. “That’s where it lives.”
Carter’s stomach did a slow turn.
“Evening, Frank,” he said. “Still chasing shadows in the FM spectrum?”
A breath crackled through the line, close and damp.
“It waits,” Frank whispered. “For ears. For attention. Every time someone listens… it remembers how to get through.”
The line went dead. Carter stared at the receiver, one hand still hovering above the switch. He gave a short, brittle laugh.
“Well, still better than the ads,” he muttered, then scrawled a note on the log sheet: 1:42 a.m. — Frank. Something in the static?
Out of habit—or unease—he rewound the recording and replayed the last five seconds. White hiss. Then, just before the disconnect: a faint pulse, barely audible, like a heartbeat slowed to a crawl. It could’ve been a glitch. Could’ve been nothing. But it didn’t sound like nothing.
He shook his head and dropped the next vinyl on the deck. The needle found its groove, and Moonlight Maples fluttered out in delicate, melancholic tones.
But as the music played, Carter kept glancing at the monitor. Listening. Watching the quiet between words stretch just a little too long—like something behind the sound was holding its breath, waiting for him to speak again.
WQRM 103.3FM — 3:19 a.m.
The studio phone lit up again—Line Two this time. The amber bulb blinked steadily in the half-dark like a tired eye refusing to close. Outside, the rain had started to fall, gentle and constant, tapping against the windows with the insistence of a thought you couldn’t shake.
Carter rubbed at his eyes. Second call of the night. He considered letting it ring out, but something about the quiet between tracks—it was too full. Like a held breath.
He flicked the switch, voice slipping into its usual sardonic drawl.
“Alright, night creatures, you’re on with Carter. Make it weird.”
There was a pause. Then a voice—female, soft and tremulous—filtered in through the static.
“I... I don’t know if you can hear it too,” she said. “Behind your voice. There’s... something else.”
Carter’s brow furrowed. The meters were clean. Nothing strange on the readouts.
“You mean static?” he offered, aiming for levity. “This place is practically analogue necromancy. A little hiss is part of the charm.”
“No,” she said. Her voice dropped, as though afraid the sound might overhear. “Not static. It’s... rhythmic. Like breathing. But it’s inside the sound.”
A chill skated along Carter’s spine. He glanced again at the console—still nothing unusual. But her voice didn’t sound confused or stoned. It sounded measured. Cautious.
He reached out and flicked on the backup reel-to-reel, the old machine groaning as it spooled into motion.
“What’s your name, caller?”
Another pause.
“Riley,” she said. “I didn’t used to hear it. But now it’s everywhere. Even when the radio’s off.”
The words landed heavier than he expected. Something about her tone—it wasn’t fear exactly. It was familiarity. Like someone describing a scar they no longer looked at in the mirror.
“Riley, can you describe it?” he asked. “The sound, I mean.”
“It’s like... the noise your teeth make when you clench. But longer. Drawn out. Like it’s... watching me. Like it wants me to notice it.”
Carter didn’t answer. He watched the signal meter—no spikes, no anomalies—but still he felt it: that same low hum pressing at the back of his neck, like the air itself had changed frequency.
“I think that’s all the time we’ve got tonight, Riley,” he said quietly, reaching for the cutoff switch. “You stay safe out there.”
Click. The line went dead.
Carter didn’t move for a while. The record had finished. No music played. The silence had a shape now, like a mouth, a silent scream.
Finally, he rewound the reel-to-reel a few seconds and replayed her voice. He listened. Nothing. Just Riley. Then—maybe—something beneath her words. A low, syncopated thrum, too regular to be random, too soft to be imagined.
He scribbled in the logbook: 3:19 a.m. – Riley. Breathing behind her voice?
Then, trying to shake off the crawl beneath his skin, he dropped the next track into place and cued it up. Music returned to the booth.
But for the rest of the hour, Carter found himself glancing not at the phone, but at the playback monitor—watching the waves ripple across the screen, like something beneath them might rise.
WQRM 103.3FM — 4:12 a.m.
A sudden hiss of dead air spilled from the speakers. Carter glanced at the console and realised the song had finished—he’d let the silence stretch too long. With a sigh, he cued the next track, but his attention wasn’t on the music.
Riley’s voice echoed in his mind, not the words themselves but the cadence, the phrasing. Even when the radio’s off. It tugged at something buried deep in his memory—like a faint echo of a long-forgotten nightmare.
Curious, Carter leaned forward and tapped at the archive terminal. Fingers flying, he typed: Keywords: ‘radio off’ + ‘breathing’ + ‘signal’.
A single result flickered onto the screen.
July 13th, 1997. Caller ID: Unlisted.
Label: Call #38 — 03:12 a.m.
Host’s note scrawled beneath:
Disturbed woman. Mentions presence in the airwaves.
His pulse quickened. The timestamp was almost identical to Riley’s call.
“Okay,” Carter muttered, pulling the dusty headphones over his ears. “Let’s see what scared the late ‘90s.”
The tape hissed to life. Static buzzed before a woman’s voice broke through.
“I keep hearing it when I’m alone. Even when the radio’s off. It hums—like it’s inside the walls.”
Carter’s skin prickled. The words weren’t just similar—they were the same. He rewound and listened again, heart hammering beneath the cheap cotton of his shirt.
He grabbed a pen and opened a fresh page in the logbook, fingers moving swiftly as he transcribed.
The woman’s voice grew more desperate. “It said my name. Not aloud—through the sound. Like it knew I was listening.”
His breath caught. The small studio suddenly felt cramped beneath the fluorescent glare. The meters held steady, but the tape felt alive—possessed.
“This is a prank,” Carter whispered to himself, though the conviction in his voice was threadbare.
The tape neared its end. The former host’s voice, warm and steady, offered comfort.
“You’re not alone, okay? Maybe get some rest.”
Then, beneath the fading static, something else surfaced—a whisper, faint and chilling, layered beneath both voices: I see you, too.
Carter ripped off the headphones. His chest rose and fell in a slow, ragged rhythm. His eyes fixed on the waveform dancing across the screen—too precise, too deliberate.
He rewound and slowed playback to half speed. The whisper persisted, clear as a ghost’s breath: I see you, too.
His hand trembled as he locked the reel-to-reel cabinet with a sharp snap.
The studio phone blinked again. Line One.
He stared, unmoving. The amber light pulsed in the dimness, a silent heartbeat with no caller ID.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he reached for the microphone, voice low and steady, the cold settling in his bones.
“This is Carter at WQRM. If you’re still listening... I think I just heard you, too.
WQRM 103.3FM — 4:45 a.m.
The shrill ring of the studio phone cut through the heavy silence like a knife. Line Three blinked insistently, red and unforgiving. Carter’s breath hitched. Another caller—another puzzle.
He hesitated, heart pounding against his ribs. Then, with a steadying exhale, he flipped the switch.
“You’re live on WQRM. What’s your name?”
A shaky voice came through the crackle—young, ragged with fear.
“Ben. It’s Ben.” The words stumbled out, rushed, uncertain. “I don’t know what’s happening. Ever since I heard your show... I hear it. Inside my head.”
Carter frowned, leaning closer to the microphone. This wasn’t a prank. There was no hint of jest or bravado, only raw panic.
“What exactly do you hear, Ben?”
The voice dropped to a whisper, trembling as if the very act of speaking might summon whatever haunted him.
“Whispers. Not words. Just noise that feels alive. Like it’s watching me. Sometimes it repeats what I’m thinking.”
Cold sweat prickled along Carter’s forehead. The studio suddenly felt stifling, the walls drawing nearer with every breath.
“Has it done anything else? Anything you can describe?”
Ben swallowed audibly.
“It’s changing me. My dreams, my thoughts... I can’t switch it off.”
Carter’s fingers trembled on the console. His voice cracked despite himself.
“That sounds serious, Ben. Maybe you should see someone—a professional.”
A hollow laugh rattled the line, fragile as glass.
“They can’t hear it. But it’s real.”
Then—silence. The line went dead. Only a faint, low hum remained, barely audible, like slow, measured breathing.
Carter stared at the console, stunned, his fingers pressing buttons that yielded nothing.
“Ben? Are you there?”
Then, through the speakers, a strange noise emerged—a warped, guttural whisper layered beneath the static. The signal meters flickered wildly, dancing like a flame in the wind.
Panic surged through Carter’s veins. The broadcast wasn’t just interference anymore—it was alive, invasive.
His hand slammed the mic button, voice trembling, urgent.
“If you’re out there... stop. Please.”
WQRM 103.3FM — 5:10 a.m.
Carter sat hunched before the bank of monitors, eyes scanning the scrolling logs for any clue to the source of the interference. His fingers drummed impatiently on the desk, frustration mounting as each reading blinked back inconclusive. The signal was a ghost—nowhere and everywhere all at once.
With a grunt, he pushed back his chair and rose. Grabbing his flashlight, he headed for the transmitter room, its door creaking open into stale, humming darkness.
The air was heavy. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered uncertainly, casting jittery shadows that writhed across the walls. A low, persistent hum vibrated beneath his feet.
An icy chill snaked down Carter’s spine. His skin prickled, and he felt the unmistakable weight of eyes watching him from the gloom.
He swallowed hard, flipping on the main console. The dials glowed faintly under his trembling hands as he began scanning the frequencies, adjusting knobs with careful precision.
Suddenly, the lights cut out entirely. Darkness swallowed the room in a suffocating wave. The hum escalated into a high-pitched shriek that pierced his ears, sending a jolt of panic racing through his nerves.
Heart pounding wildly, Carter fumbled for his flashlight. The beam cut a narrow path through the blackness, illuminating twisted cables coiled like serpents, their shadows writhing as if alive.
The main console sparked violently, showering him with brief, harsh sparks. The signal meter jumped erratically, spiking far beyond the normal scale.
Fear surged like ice through his veins. The presence was no longer a whisper—no longer a trick of static. It was here. Tangible. Close.
With a sharp breath, he yanked the main power switch. Instantly, the shrieking stopped, plunging the room into oppressive silence.
Leaning heavily against the wall, Carter’s body shook as his heart thundered in his chest. Relief flooded him, fierce and raw.
“Not tonight,” he whispered fiercely into the void. “Not here.”
WQRM 103.3FM — 5:30 a.m.
Carter sank into his chair, every muscle aching, his breath shallow and uneven. The studio felt colder somehow, as if the shadows had deepened while he was gone. He rubbed his face with both hands, trying to wipe away the fatigue—and the unease that clung to his skin like damp.
With a trembling hand, he reached for the archive audio, loading the recording of the earlier call. The crackling voice of Ben filled the headphones, distorted and strained, but unmistakably desperate.
Carter’s eyes narrowed. There was something different this time, something urgent beneath the static, a pleading he hadn’t noticed before.
“What are you trying to tell me?” he muttered, leaning forward, fingers clutching the headphones as if to hold onto the fragile thread of meaning.
The studio phone shattered the fragile silence with a shrill ring. Carter froze, heart hammering, a cold shiver trailing down his spine. He stared at the blinking line, then slowly lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
Only a faint, distorted whisper answered. Repeating. “I see you... I see you...”
His breath caught. Fear clenched tight in his chest, sharp and sudden.
He dropped the receiver, stumbling back as his voice trembled through the stillness. “Who’s there? What do you want?”
Then—the lights snapped off. Darkness swallowed the room. The whispering ceased, leaving an oppressive silence that pressed against his ears like a physical weight.
His breath echoed loud in the black void.
“This isn’t over,” he whispered, voice cracking, alone in the dark.
The abandoned radio tower loomed against the pale pre-dawn sky, its skeletal frame stark and silent. Carter stood at the rusted gate, a wave of unease rolling over him. The place felt wrong—empty yet charged, as though it breathed beneath the decay.
He pushed the gate open, the metal groaning in protest, and stepped inside cautiously. The ground was littered with fallen leaves.
From the base of the tower, a faint crackle of static whispered through the cool air. Carter knelt beside a tangled mess of cables snaking from a rusted junction box half-buried in dirt and roots.
His heart quickened. There was something unnatural here, a pulsing energy beneath the surface decay that set his skin prickling.
Fumbling for his phone, he switched on the recorder and whispered into the microphone, documenting his findings. The faint hum seemed to resonate beneath the earth, a low vibration that unsettled the senses.
Suddenly, a cold wind swept through the clearing, carrying with it an eerie, almost human sigh. Carter shivered, eyes darting through the shadows as the first light began to stretch across the horizon.
He rose slowly, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the dimness. From the tower’s upper platform, a faint glow flickered—a rhythmical pulse of unnatural light that seemed to beckon him.
Fear tangled with curiosity, tightening in his chest like a vice. Against every instinct, he climbed the rusted ladder, each creak echoing loudly in the still air.
At the top, the source of the light revealed itself: a small, ancient device, humming softly with a strange energy. It was both alien and hauntingly familiar, as though it had been waiting for him all along.
Carter’s breath caught. “What are you?” he murmured, reaching out with a hesitant hand.
His fingers brushed the device’s surface. To his surprise, it was warm—almost alive—despite the morning’s chill.
A sudden surge of energy shot through his arm, a buzzing electric current that prickled his skin and sent a shiver racing down his spine. He jerked his hand back instinctively, but the device flared brighter, bathing the platform in an unnatural, pulsating light.
A low chant rose from the device, rhythmic and unintelligible, filling the air with a sound that felt almost sentient. Carter’s heart hammered in his chest. It was more than noise—it was communication, something ancient and alien speaking beyond words.
Squinting against the glow, he shielded his eyes, struggling to make sense of the phenomenon unfolding around him.
The very air seemed to warp and ripple, thickening as though reality itself was bending and twisting. Dread flooded his mind, sharp and all-consuming. He felt as though he teetered on the edge of an abyss, staring down into a vast unknown.
He stumbled backward, nearly losing his footing on the rusted platform.
Then, a voice echoed inside his mind—clear, commanding, and insistent—repeating a single word: Listen.
Fear and fascination warred within him. He stood frozen, caught between flight and an overwhelming compulsion to stay.
“Who… who are you?” he whispered, voice trembling into the silent dawn.
The device pulsed once more, then snapped off, plunging the tower into an eerie stillness.
Carter’s breath caught as his mind raced to grasp the meaning of what he had just experienced. Slowly, deliberately, he began his descent down the ladder, a new and unshakable resolve settling deep within his chest.
Carter stepped back into the quiet studio, the familiar hum of equipment greeting him like a reluctant welcome. The faint morning light filtered through the dusty windows, casting long shadows over the cluttered console.
A heavy mix of exhaustion and confusion settled deep in his chest, but beneath it all, a stubborn determination began to take root. He ran a hand through his tangled hair, taking a slow, steadying breath.
The console lights blinked steadily, patient and expectant, as if waiting for him to take the next step. He felt the weight of responsibility press down—he had to unravel the truth behind the signal, no matter the cost.
Flicking the main console back to life, Carter’s voice was quiet but resolute. “Time to find the truth.”
Static hissed through the speakers, but beneath it, faint fragments of the earlier chant echoed, haunting and persistent. A chill traced his spine.
He adjusted the frequency carefully, fingers steady despite the turmoil inside, preparing the equipment for another broadcast.
Then, cutting through the crackle, a new message came through—clearer, more urgent than before.
Hope flickered in Carter’s eyes, mingled with a cautious fear. Leaning forward, he whispered into the silence, “I’m listening.”
The signal stabilised. No longer wild bursts of static or fragmented whispers—it pulsed now, measured and clear, a rhythmic sequence threading through the speakers with eerie precision. Carter leaned in still closer, eyes narrowing. It was a pattern.
His stomach clenched as recognition dawned. It wasn’t random. It never had been.
He hit RECORD and began to scribble on the back of an old playlist sheet, each pulse and pause translating into something he couldn’t quite name—until syllables emerged. Not English. Not any language he knew. But they sounded like a name. Or a calling.
A deeper chill settled into him. This wasn’t a warning. It was an invitation.
He tore through old recordings, fast-forwarding and overlaying waveforms, aligning frequencies. The transmissions—weeks of them—snapped into perfect sync, as if together they completed a ritual.
The studio lights flickered. Shadows bled across the walls, stretching longer than they should, moving without a source. They slid along the edges of the soundproof glass, curling like fingers.
Carter’s breath hitched. Panic clawed at the base of his throat. He wasn’t alone anymore.
Grabbing the mic, he keyed it live. His voice trembled.
“If you’re listening… stop. Do not reply. Do not repeat this. Do not—”
The speakers groaned.
Not feedback—something speaking. A low, inhuman hum vibrated through the equipment, as if something enormous were trying to form words using broken machinery. Behind the glass, a shape began to coalesce in the dim light. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t even solid. Just the impression of a presence, watching.
He stumbled back from the mic, eyes locked on the shifting silhouette. The signal pulsed faster now, its rhythm like a heartbeat. Like breath.
Then it came again. Not through the speakers this time, but directly into his mind.
Open, the voice said. Calm. Final.
And Carter understood. The broadcasts were never about discovery. He had been the message. The anchor. The mouthpiece. The ritual wasn’t something he had uncovered. It was something he had completed.
“What have I done?” he whispered, his voice a ghost in the charged silence.
The studio dimmed to black. And behind him, the heavy door creaked slowly open.
One week later. 2:13 a.m.
The radio came on by itself.
No click of a switch. No hand reaching out. Just a soft crackle as the old tabletop set lit up with a dull amber glow, its dial twitching faintly in the dark.
At the kitchen table, a young woman looked up from her sketchbook. Her brow furrowed. She hadn’t touched it since the power cut last week. It wasn’t even plugged in.
Static hissed for a moment, then shifted—moulding itself into shape. A voice broke through.
“If you’re listening…” the man said, warped and distant, “stop. Do not reply…”
She stood slowly, drawn toward the sound. The voice was thin, layered in distortion, like it had been buried under sand.
Her hand brushed the dial. The voice faded, replaced by something else—low chanting, rhythmic and steady, like breath through broken reeds.
The kitchen light above her flickered once. She paused, one hand hovering over the switch. Every instinct told her to turn it off.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she sat back down, eyes fixed on the pulsing orange glow of the dial. The chanting settled deep in her chest, not frightening exactly—just… inevitable. Like the tide.
Then, from within the static, a new voice emerged. Not the man’s. Not human.
Just one word, murmured like a promise: “Open.”
She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. But a moment later, she whispered into the hush, barely aware of her own voice.
“I’m listening.”
The radio’s light pulsed once, then again, syncing with her breath.
Outside the window, the night held its breath. Somewhere far off, something heard her.
And answered.
Author Bios
A (Poet/Writer/Artist) at heart since his formative, bohemian years in California, Daniel draws enduring inspiration from the raw energy and spontaneous voice of the Beat Generation. His poetic journey has garnered over 1,600 accolades across international poetry forums, and his work has appeared in more than 300 anthologies worldwide.
A. J. Sharpe has always enjoyed the morbid and the gross. Armed with a MA degree in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University, she hopes to use her skills to horrify and nauseate. Originally from England, Sharpe currently resides in Wales and lets the stunning landscape inspire her. You can find out more about her writing at: ajsharpe.co.uk
James Cannice is a writer from California. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Allegory, Tales to Terrify, Crow and Cross Keys, and in other venues. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
Justin Nicholes’ stories have appeared in Flash Boulevard, Call Me [Brackets], Suddenly, And Without Warning, *82 Review, Cleaver Magazine, The Summerset Review, Stickman Review, and elsewhere. Justin did an MFA in Creative Writing at Wichita State and currently teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
I go by the Gaelic name of Anndrais mac Choluim. I live under the dark skies of Galloway, in south-west Scotland, and there's a link to my Substack below. I used to be a poet, until about ten years ago, when my poems became a bit 'samey', and I turned to fiction instead. I'm currently working on a gothic novel, provisionally entitled The Deathly Bride.