The Lullaby in the Static

The rain was a constant, drumming hiss against the tin roof of the old farmhouse, a sound that usually felt like a blanket over the world. But that night, the power was out, and the silence between the raindrops was thick, pressing in on us. We sat at the kitchen table, a half-melted candle between us, casting our faces in flickering amber. My brothers, Ellis and Marco, and my sister, Lena, were laughing about a time our father had tried to fix the tractor and ended up covered in grease and cursing at the sky. I was smiling, but my mind was elsewhere, on the hum of the refrigerator that had gone silent, on the way the darkness seemed to lean in through the windows.

My parents had always taught us a strange remedy for fear. ‘When the world feels too big and too dark, sing,’ our mother would say. ‘Sing till the song becomes a bridge.’ So we drifted into the old hymns our father loved, the ones he’d belt out while working in the barn, his voice rough as gravel. We sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ our voices weaving together in the candlelight. It felt good, like a shield. But I had to use the bathroom, and the thought of leaving that small pool of light made my stomach clench.

The hallway was a cave. I walked with one hand on the wall, feeling the rough wood, the dampness from the storm. The bathroom door was ajar, and I pushed it open, the cold tile stinging my bare feet. I closed the door, and the sound of the rain became muffled, distant. I stood there, in the dark, waiting for my eyes to adjust. And then I heard it.

A low, mumbling sound. Not from the storm, but from the corner of the room, near the old clawfoot tub. I froze, my heart hammering. It was a voice, a man’s voice, but not one I recognized. It was the cadence of my father’s singing, but the words were wrong, slurred, like they were being spoken from the bottom of a well. I made out a phrase: ‘Doo-jie Ree-Jie.’ That was my nickname, the one my father used in his lullaby, a nonsense phrase he’d string together in different pitches to make me smile. But this voice didn’t have my father’s warmth. It was flat, wrong, like a recording with the music stripped away.

I should have called out. I should have run back to my siblings. But I was rooted to the spot, and the voice started to change. It was no longer mumbling; it was singing. Singing the exact tune of my father’s lullaby, but with a new urgency, a kind of grinding insistence. And the words were no longer just ‘Doo-jie Ree-Jie.’ They were my name, over and over, but each repetition was sloppier, more distorted, until it sounded like ‘Dooo-jay… reee-jah…’ And then, a whisper in the static of the rain: ‘Come closer.’

I can’t explain why I obeyed. I took a step toward the tub. The porcelain was chipped, the faucet dripping. The voice grew clearer, more directed. It was coming from the drain. I bent over, my hair falling into the basin, and I listened. The voice was soothing, in a way, like the lullaby was meant to be. But it wasn’t my father. It was something that knew the lullaby, that had been waiting for me to sing it. And in that moment, I understood: this was not a memory. This was a trap.

I didn’t hum. I didn’t sing. I clamped my mouth shut, but the voice didn’t stop. It grew louder, angrier, and the drain began to gurgle, as if something was trying to push through. I stumbled backward, hit the door, and fumbled for the knob. The voice was a shout now, a cacophony of my name and the nonsense syllables, but twisted, full of a hunger that made me scream.

I burst into the hallway, slammed the door behind me, and ran back to the kitchen. My siblings fell silent when they saw my face. ‘What is it?’ Lena asked. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Because I realized that the singing in the bathroom had never stopped. It had just moved into my head. I could hear it in the space between my thoughts, a low, unending hum that knew my name.

We sat in silence, the candle flickering, the rain pounding. And then Ellis said, ‘Did you hear it too? In the walls.’ Marco nodded. ‘It’s singing our names.’ We all knew what it was. It wasn’t the storm. It was the lullaby, and it had found us. We were never alone again, no matter how loud we sang. And sometimes, when the power went out, and the rain kept falling, I would hear it in the static of my own breathing, waiting for me to open my mouth and let it in.