The Static Between Stations - Chapter 2: The Whispers

The second night, I told myself I’d be ready.

I left the radio unplugged again, certain that would be the end of it. But a pit sat heavy in my stomach as I climbed into bed, like a part of me already knew what was coming.

Sleep came in fits, broken by half-dreams of static that seemed to buzz just behind my eyelids. And then, like the night before, I was pulled from restless slumber by a low hiss crawling through the room.

My eyes snapped open.

The red glow of the radio’s light cut faintly through the darkness. The cord dangled innocently from the wall, but somehow the thing was on again, humming steadily, the speaker spilling out its endless tide of noise.

I didn’t move this time. I just listened.

At first, it was only static—the kind you’d expect from an old machine straining to find a signal. But the longer I listened, the more I realised there was something underneath it. A rhythm. A cadence. Like voices just out of earshot, blending with the hiss.

I leaned forward, heart pounding, straining to separate sound from sound.

And then it happened.

A whisper, unmistakable, threading through the static like a needle:

“Can you hear me?”

My skin went cold. The voice was low, almost delicate, but clear enough that it couldn’t have been imagined.

I pressed a hand to my mouth, afraid even to breathe too loudly.

The static shifted, waves rising and falling, and more voices slipped through—faint, broken, like overlapping conversations bleeding from one channel into another.

One voice said, “He’s awake now.”

Another muttered, “Don’t… don’t scare him yet.”

A third chuckled softly, though it came out warped, bending with the interference.

Every instinct screamed at me to turn it off. But I couldn’t move. It felt like the air itself had thickened, pressing me into stillness.

And then—my name.

Not guessed. Not mistaken. My full name, whispered as though the voice leaned close to my ear:

“Brian…”

The sound jolted me. My chest tightened so badly I thought I might faint. The hair on my arms rose, a cold sweat prickling across my skin.

I forced myself up, nearly tripping as I lunged toward the nightstand. The closer I got, the clearer the voices became.

“Don’t leave us.”

“Stay tuned.”

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

I slammed the dial with my palm, twisting it furiously from one end to the other. All it did was change the flavour of the noise—higher hisses, lower rumbles, faint fragments of speech that never quite became words. No matter where I turned it, they were there.

Finally, I grabbed the cord and yanked.

Silence swallowed the room instantly. The light winked out.

I stood there, panting, staring at the lifeless box. My reflection caught faintly in the dusty dial window, pale and wide-eyed.

This wasn’t possible. Radios don’t talk. Radios don’t say your name.

I left it unplugged, tossing the cord behind the stand like it might keep it at bay. For the rest of the night, I lay awake, the silence heavier than any static.

By morning, I’d convinced myself again. Stress. Lack of sleep. A trick of the mind. The human brain is good at finding patterns where none exist. I told myself all of it was just my imagination.

But then I checked the clock.

2:14 a.m. Every time.

And when I passed by the nightstand later that day, I could swear the dial had shifted just a fraction, as though the needle had crawled a little further toward the centre.

I didn’t touch it.

I didn’t dare.

That night, though, I would learn that the voices weren’t content with whispers anymore. They wanted more. They wanted me to listen.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model