The Frequency of Missing Echoes

I had just turned twenty-four when I moved into the basement suite of an old house in the north end of Winnipeg. The owner was a retired radiologist who lived upstairs with his wife, and the basement smelled like mothballs and old paper. The walls were a sickly green, and the linoleum floor was the color of a faded bruise. I didn’t care. It was cheap, and I needed a place to lick my wounds after my relationship with Adrian ended. We’d only been together eight months, but his absence felt like a missing tooth I couldn’t stop tonguing.

I moved in during a heatwave in July. The air was thick, and the basement stayed cool. I spent my days unpacking boxes and trying not to think of Adrian. At night, the house settled with creaks and groans, but that’s just old house stuff. The first weird thing happened about a week in. I was lying in bed, scrolling through my phone, when I heard a soft, melodic chime from my nightstand. It was the same sound my phone made when I received a text message—a little three-note ping. I reached over, but the screen was dark, no notifications. I shrugged it off. Maybe it was a notification from a different app? No. It was the text tone, I was sure. It happened again a few days later while I was reading. And then again while I was making coffee. Each time, I’d check my phone and find nothing. It started to get under my skin, but I rationalized it as some audio glitch. After all, my phone was only a year old.

By October, the heat had broken, and the leaves were turning. I was still moping, so I decided I needed something alive in that place. I bought a pair of zebra finches from a pet store on Portage Avenue. They were tiny, gray-and-white things, and they made soft bleeping sounds, like background noise in a peaceful jungle. They loved Ella Fitzgerald and The Beatles; I could tell because they’d chirp and flutter around their cage whenever those records played. They hated Nirvana—maybe the distortion scared them. They’d huddle in a corner and puff up. I found it endearing.

It was a cold, grey afternoon in late November when the finches were out of their cage, hopping along the floor and fluttering onto my furniture. I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, electric guitar in hand, writing a song. It was a folk-ish thing I called ‘The Ghost in the Wall,’ a metaphor about a relationship that had ended before Adrian—a guy named Felix. I was picking the string pattern and humming, not really paying attention to the birds. Then I looked up. They were both perched on the footboard of my bed, their heads cocked, watching me. It was unusual; they’d never both been so still. They were like tiny feathered statues. I sang a line about echoes in the wall, and as the note faded, the finches opened their beaks but no sound came out. They just puffed their chests and looked at the wall behind me.

The wall was bare concrete, painted that same green. But in that moment, I saw something that made me stop strumming. There was a faint ripple in the paint, as if a wave had passed through the wall. I blinked, and it was gone. The finches let out a single, sharp chirp in unison, then flew back to their cage. I was alone, feeling silly. I set down the guitar and walked to the wall, running my fingers over it. It was smooth and cold. I told myself it was my imagination, a trick of the light. But that night, I heard the text tone again. Only this time, it sounded like it came from inside the wall.

A few days later, I was lying in bed, the room dark except for the glow of my laptop. The finches were asleep under their cage cover. I heard the text tone, clear as day, right next to my ear. I sat up, heart pounding, and checked my phone—nothing. Then I noticed that the finches were awake. They were both standing on their perch, feathers slicked down, making a low, clicking sound. I turned on the flashlight on my phone and swept it around the room. The beam caught something glinting in the corner by the baseboard. It was a sliver of metal, maybe an inch long, like a piece of jewelry or a key. I hadn’t noticed it before. But the room was small, and I’d cleaned it top to bottom when I moved in. There was no way I would have missed it.

I got out of bed and knelt down. The finches clicked faster. I picked it up. It was a small silver locket, tarnished, with a scratched surface. It was hinged, and I opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a tiny photograph, but the image was so faded I could barely make out a face. It was a woman’s face, soft and blurred, with dark hair. And behind her, I could see a wall—same green, same cracks. I snapped the locket shut. I felt a cold spot in the air, a chill spreading over my skin. I backed away and placed the locket on my nightstand, intending to ask the landlord about it in the morning. I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the text tone, and I could swear it was coming from the locket.

The next morning, the finches were dead. They were lying side by side at the bottom of the cage, their tiny bodies stiff, not a mark on them. I broke down. I shook the cage, but they didn’t move. I called the vet, but it was too late. I buried them in the backyard, under the birch tree, and I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe. I never had the heart to ask the landlord about the locket. I just put it in a drawer, wrapped in a sock.

But the sounds continued. The text tone, three perfect notes, would ring out at odd hours. Sometimes I’d hear it from different rooms, and once I heard it coming from the sock wrapped around the locket in the drawer. I started to feel like I was going mad. I began keeping a journal, logging every occurrence. There were times I’d be standing in the kitchen, and the tone would sound right behind me, so close I could feel a breath on my neck. I’d spin around, and nothing.

It was in late December, on a night so cold the windows were frosted, that something changed. I was sitting on the floor, trying to coax a tune from my guitar, but my hands were shaking. The text tone rang out. It was louder, more insistent. I followed it. It led me to the wall by the headboard of my bed. The sound seemed to emanate from a specific spot, just above where I kept a pile of books. I pressed my ear against the wall. I could hear it clearly: three notes, repeated, like a nervous signal. Then I heard something else. A faint, metallic tapping from within the wall. Tap. Tap. Tap. As if something were knocking, answering my call.

I ripped the locket from the drawer and threw it at the wall. It hit the concrete with a dull thud and fell to the floor. The tapping stopped. The text tone stopped. The room went silent, except for the hum of the fridge. I picked up the locket. It was warm to the touch, and when I opened it, the photograph was gone. Instead, there was a hairline crack running down the inside of the locket, as if it had been broken from the inside out.

I moved out of that basement suite two weeks later. I never returned, never asked for my security deposit. I rented a new place on the third floor of a brick apartment building, and I threw the locket into a dumpster three blocks away. But the sound never fully stopped. To this day, I hear that three-note text tone at the edge of my hearing, usually when I’m alone. And sometimes, when I’m in a quiet room, I feel a ripple in the air, and I can’t shake the feeling that something is in the wall, listening for the next person who hears a sound that isn’t there.