I didn’t want to look at the radio. I didn’t want to hear it again. But when the soft hiss filled the room, there was no escaping it. Even with my hands pressed hard against my ears, the static seeped through—inside my skull, inside my bones.
The glow returned, faint but steady, spilling red across the walls.
At first, the voices blended together as they always had—threads of whispers woven into the hiss. But quickly, one voice cut above the rest. The same one that had spoken to me directly before. The Caller.
“Brian,” it said, smooth and certain, like it had been waiting all day to speak.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing my voice out through clenched teeth. “No. I’m not listening to you. I don’t want this.”
“But you’ve already answered,” it replied. “That’s why you hear us. That’s why we can see you.”
The words twisted my stomach. I wanted to scream, to smash the thing to splinters and bury it in the yard. But fear rooted me in place, and the voice went on.
“Samuel was the first in this house,” it said. “He didn’t understand. He fought it. He vanished into silence. But you—you’re stronger. You’ll last longer.”
“Last for what?” My voice cracked.
“For us,” the Caller said. “To keep the signal alive. To keep the channel open.”
The static swelled, rising like a storm tide. Dozens of other voices joined in, overlapping in strange harmony, chanting in soft, breathless waves:
“Join us… join us… join us…”
I pressed myself into the corner of the room, shaking my head. “No! I’m not—”
“You already are,” the Caller interrupted. “Every word you’ve heard, every breath you’ve taken since you tuned in—it binds you tighter. We don’t ask. We invite. And soon, you’ll accept.”
I shook with fury and terror, forcing myself to step forward. “Why me? Why this house?”
Silence, except for the hiss. Then, calmly:
“Because you’re here. Because you listened. Because we chose you.”
The red light flared brighter, pulsing with the words. The shadows in the room seemed to stretch, bending toward the nightstand like they were listening too.
I lunged at the cord, ready to rip it free again. But before my hand touched it, the voice hissed sharply:
“Pull it, and you’ll end up like Samuel.”
I froze.
The Caller’s tone softened. “You don’t want that. None of us want that. Stay tuned, Brian. Just a little longer. We’ll show you everything.”
The static dropped suddenly, falling into an uncanny silence. My ears rang with the absence. And then, faintly, from deep inside the machine, I heard something new.
A faint knock. Three soft raps.
But it wasn’t from the speaker.
It was from inside the walls.
The voices returned in a low chorus: “We’re closer than you think.”
My breath caught. The knocking came again, this time behind me. I spun, staring at the bedroom wall, knowing—knowing—that something stood just on the other side.
I wanted to run, but my body betrayed me. I stood rooted as the Caller whispered one last thing:
“We’ll come through soon. And when we do, you’ll open the door.”
The radio clicked off.
The light died.
The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was a promise.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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