The Frequency

My name is Elias Vance, and for five years, between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-seven, I was a walking antenna for the damned. It started on a Tuesday, in the canned-goods aisle of a grocery store in Duluth. I was reaching for a can of black beans when my skin prickled, and a low hum vibrated behind my ears, like a tuning fork struck against a skull. My vision narrowed, and I turned, as if pulled, to face a gaunt man in a beige trench coat at the end of the aisle. He was just standing there, holding a box of crackers, but his eyes – they were black, not dark, not brown, but truly black, like oil – and they were fixed on me with a hunger that made my breath catch. I dropped the beans, and he smiled, a thin, bloodless line, then turned and walked away. I stood there shaking, trying to convince myself it was a trick of the light.

But it wasn’t. Over the next months, it happened everywhere. In a crowded bar, a woman with too-red lips would stare at me from across the room, and I’d feel that same icy pull. At a gas station, a truck driver with a shaved head would watch me pump gas, and the air around him would shimmer like heat off asphalt. The worst was at my own birthday party, in my own apartment, when a friend of a friend – a quiet guy named Marcus – suddenly went rigid, his eyes rolling back, and his voice, when it came out, was not his own. It was a rasp, a growl that spoke directly into my skull: ‘We see you, little beacon.’ Then he blinked, shook his head, and asked if he’d missed something. I made an excuse and locked myself in my bathroom, pressing my hands against the cold porcelain, trying to still the trembling in my limbs.

I started researching, obsessively. I called it ‘the frequency’ – that internal alarm that never lied. I learned to trust it, to avoid the places where it blazed. I saw them everywhere, in crowds, in empty parking lots, on the subway. They were always just… watching. Never approaching, never touching. Just seeing me, locating me, like test subjects cataloging a specimen. I felt like a rare animal in a zoo, and they were the zookeepers, monitoring my every move. I tried to fight it, to ignore it, but the frequency would spike, and I’d feel a migraine blooming behind my eyes, a knife twisting in my gut. I became nocturnal, a ghost in my own life, jumping at shadows.

Then, on a gray November morning, I was walking through an abandoned industrial district, trying to clear my head, when the frequency hit harder than ever before. It was a physical blow, doubling me over. I looked up, and there was a man standing in the middle of the rutted road, a hundred yards away. He was tall, gaunt, wearing an old-fashioned black suit, and his face was a pale oval. But unlike the others, he didn’t just stare. He raised his hand and beckoned me forward. A single finger, curling, like he was calling a dog.

Something snapped in me. I was tired of running, tired of the constant vigilance. I walked toward him, my heart pounding, each step heavy. As I got closer, I saw that his eyes were the same black oil, but there was something else – a glimmer of intelligence, of age. He spoke, and though his lips moved, I heard his voice inside my skull, like a cold wind: ‘You’ve been running, little fly. But the web is everywhere.’ ‘Why me?’ I managed, my own voice a croak. He tilted his head, a parody of curiosity. ‘Because you can hear us. But you don’t know what you are.’ ‘And you’re going to tell me?’ I asked, a stupid, defiant hope in my chest. He laughed – a dry, rasping sound that echoed in my bones. ‘No. But we’re done with you. You’re coming with us now.’ He reached out, and his fingers were long, white, cold as stone. I tried to step back, but my feet were frozen, as if nailed to the ground.

I was about to be taken, to become another empty vessel in their legion, when the frequency screamed – not a pull, but a warning. I felt a sudden, violent surge of heat in my chest, and I gasped, clutching at the front of my coat. The man’s eyes widened in something like surprise. ‘What is that?’ he hissed. I didn’t know. But I looked down, and through my shirt, there was a faint, golden glow – coming from the locket my grandmother had given me, the one I’d never taken off. It was warm, pulsing against my skin. The man recoiled, his face contorting. ‘That can’t be,’ he said, and for the first time, his voice held a note of fear. The glow intensified, spreading down my arm, up my neck, until I was bathed in light. The man shrieked, a sound like tearing silk, and then he dissolved, his form unraveling like smoke. The frequency vanished, and I fell to my knees in the dirt, gasping.

I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what the locket is. But the frequency has been quiet since that day, and the dead-eyed people haven’t come back. I get a tingle now and then, a faint whispering at the edge of my perception, because I know they’re out there. But they’re afraid of me now. And I’m afraid of what I might become. I’ve started to keep a journal, to document every change in my body, every flicker of the light. Because if my grandmother’s locket was a key, I need to find the lock. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find out why I was born this way – why I’m the one who can see them, and why I’m the only one who can burn them.