The Cable Swap

Since my old hound, Jasper, passed, I’ve been restless. Nights are the worst, so I’ve taken to watching old DVDs on the big telly in the living room. The telly’s ancient, with those red, white, and yellow jacks on the back, and I’ve got two sets of cables: one for the satellite box, one for my game console. Usually, I swap them out depending on what I want to do.

A few weeks ago, I noticed something odd. I’d plug in the console, watch a film, and then go to bed. But the next evening, when I’d go to switch on the telly, the satellite would be on, not the console. I’d check the back, and the cables had been switched. I figured I must have done it in a daze, but it kept happening. Every single night, the cables were swapped. I started to feel like the house was playing tricks on me.

One night, I decided to catch the culprit. Instead of swapping the cables for the console, I left the satellite ones in and pretended to go to bed. I hid behind the sofa, peeking through the curtain. Hours passed, and then, just after midnight, I heard a faint scratching behind the telly. Then I saw it: a thin, grey hand, barely visible in the dim light, reached out and began to unplug the satellite cables. It moved with a precise, deliberate motion, the fingers twisting and pulling. A moment later, the console cables were plugged in instead. The hand withdrew, and the telly flickered on, showing the frozen menu of a DVD I’d watched days ago.

My breath caught. I couldn’t move. The hand had belonged to something small, child-sized, but the skin was like old paper. I must have made a sound, because the hand whipped back, and a small head peeked out from behind the telly. Its eyes were black, like a deep well, and its mouth was a thin line. It stared at me, unblinking, for a long, silent moment. Then it whispered, in a voice like dry leaves, ‘He misses the old shows. I have to change it for him.’ It vanished, and the telly went dark.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the kitchen, chain-smoking, trying to make sense of it. Was it a ghost? A demon? I thought about Jasper, and how he loved to curl up by the telly when the old Westerns were on. But Jasper was gone. I buried him in the back yard, near the rose bush.

The next day, I called a priest. He came, and I told him everything. He blessed the house, but when he saw the telly, he turned pale. He said there was a presence in the room, something old and attached to the telly. He gave me a vial of holy water and told me to sprinkle it around the jacks. I did, that night, and said a prayer.

But the swaps continued. Only now, the hand is more brazen. It doesn’t wait for darkness. I’ve seen it during the day, a flicker of grey behind the screen. And last night, when I went to unplug the console, I felt a cold pinch on my ankle. I looked down, and there was a faint, grey handprint on my skin.

I’ve started to wonder if Jasper’s ghost is angry because I stopped watching his shows. I’ve started leaving the satellite on, playing old reruns of Bonanza, hoping that’ll satisfy the thing. But the other night, I woke to find the telly on, static hissing, and in the static, a shape. It was Jasper, but wrong. His fur was matted, his eyes were hollow, and he was staring at me. His mouth moved, forming words I couldn’t hear, and then the telly went black.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t throw the telly away—it was my grandfather’s, and I’m too attached. But every time I walk into the living room, I feel eyes on me. And the cables—they keep swapping, no matter what I do. I’ve taken to watching things on my laptop in the bedroom, but last night, I heard the telly turn on by itself, and the sound of static filling the house. I crept down, and the screen was filled with an old episode of a show I used to watch as a kid, but the audio was reversed, playing backwards. And behind the telly, I swear I saw the outline of a small figure, humming a tune I recognized—the lullaby my mother used to sing to me.

I’m scared to sleep. I’m scared to even turn off the lights. Because I know that when I do, the hand will come, and the cables will swap, and I’ll hear that whisper again, saying, ‘He’s waiting for you.’ And I’ll have to go and see what’s on the other side of the screen.