The Ceaseless Receiver

I live in a house that has stood for over a century, its bones creaking with memories it refuses to share. The previous owners left behind a tangle of copper wiring and a shortwave radio in the basement, a relic from a time when the world was smaller. We never used it, but it seemed to have a life of its own. On my twenty-eighth birthday, I invited a handful of friends over, and as the night deepened, we heard it crackle to life downstairs—static hissing, then fragments of voices, then silence. We had unplugged it earlier that evening, yet when I descended with my cousin, the plug lay coiled on the floor, the radio inert. The next morning, I found the wires had been chewed through, fresh copper gleaming as if newly cut.

But it was the piano that truly unsettled me. It sat in the foyer, a massive baby grand with ivories yellowed like old teeth. Whenever I played certain keys, a chorus of faint screams would rise from the soundboard, accompanied by murmured conversations in a language I didn’t recognize. My mother dismissed it as my imagination, but one afternoon, she stood beside me as I played a simple chord progression. Her face went pale, and she whispered, ‘Who are they?’ The air around the piano grew cold, and I felt a presence watching from the stairwell. We never touched that piano again.

Last week, my friend Alicia stayed over. We were lying on my bed, talking in the dark, when a soft thump echoed from the hallway. We froze. Through the crack in the door, a tall, black figure glided past, its form absorbing the dim light from the nightlight. It paused at my parents’ room, then vanished through the door without opening it. My father was away on business, and my mother was asleep in that very room. I bolted up, heart pounding, but when I reached the door, it was locked from inside. My mother opened it moments later, groggy, and swore she had seen nothing.

I’ve started sleeping with the lights on. The radio whispers to me in my dreams, its static forming words: ‘They are coming.’ The piano plays by itself in the early hours, a slow, mournful waltz. Last night, I found the plug from the radio under my pillow, its prongs bent as if forced into an outlet. But there is no outlet in my room—only a single picture of my great-grandmother, her smile frozen in a sepia frame. And behind her, reflected in the glass, a shape I’ve come to know too well: the black figure, standing in my doorway, waiting for me to fall asleep.