The Field of Static

The old farmhouse had been converted into our school, but the red brick building still held the dust of a hundred years of hay and sweat. We were in the middle of a camp-out on the football oval, our sleeping bags spread out like a patchwork of nylon and fear, when Mia came sprinting down the slope, her face as pale as the moon. She grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the nearest classroom, the one we called the ‘cold room’ because the air-conditioner always rattled.

Through the window, we could see the chaos inside. The lights were strobing on and off in a frantic rhythm, the computer monitors flickering with static that seemed to form vague shapes, the CD player spinning in a disc that had no disc. The ceiling fans were whirring backwards, and the sound was a low hum that vibrated through the glass. Mia’s voice was a whisper, ‘I didn’t touch anything. The doors are locked.’ We pressed our noses to the cold pane, and in the static on the monitors, I could have sworn I saw a face—an old man with deep-set eyes, and another beside him, younger, with a grin that was too wide.

We tried the door, but it was bolted from the inside. The key was in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. The windows were sealed shut with layer of paint, and the security alarm was still armed, blinking a steady red. The principal arrived, brandishing a master key, but the lock mechanism was jammed, as if something had been shoved into the keyhole. We heard a crash inside—a bookshelf toppling, spilling old textbooks across the floor. A projector flickered on and off, casting ghostly images on the wall: a cow, a tractor, a barn. And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. The lights returned to a steady glow, the computers hummed normally, and the fans spun lazily to a halt.

We stood there, breathless, the only sound the beating of our hearts. The principal unlocked the door, but when we went inside, everything was in perfect order—not a single book displaced, not a single chair moved. The only anomaly was the faint smell of soil and manure, as if the floor had been freshly plowed. We checked the security cameras, but the footage for that hour was a solid block of white static, like an old television. The teachers called it a wiring malfunction, but I knew what I saw. In the static, I had seen the faces again, and they were not happy. They were hungry.

That night, we tried to sleep under the stars, but the air was too still, too warm. I lay in my sleeping bag, staring at the dark shape of the school building, and I saw a light flicker in the cold room. A silhouette moved across the window—a tall figure, stooped, as if carrying a heavy burden. And then another, shorter, skipping. I blinked, and they were gone, but the window was frosted over, even though it was the middle of summer. The next morning, we found the flower beds torn apart, the soil thrown up in great clods, and in the center of the oval, a single patch of dead grass in the shape of two overlapping rectangles. The caretaker said it was a prank, but the ground was hard as concrete, and the grass had been dead for years.

Now, I never look directly at the static on any screen. I always feel as if something else is looking back, waiting for us to lean too close, to listen to the hum of the fans, to find the field where the soil still remembers the hands that worked it. And sometimes, late at night, I swear I can hear the lowing of cattle, and the deep, gravelly voice of Mr Buckley calling out, ‘Time to come in, boys,’ and the laughter of Mr Pye echoing across the empty oval, where the grass has never grown quite right since.