The Radio Cutout

The trailer park was quiet that summer, the kind of quiet that settles into your bones. We lived in a single-wide, my brother and I sharing the back room. His bed was against the far wall, mine against the other, and in the wall behind my head was a square cutout meant for a big radio. Dad had put it there, said it would let the music from the living room drift in. The cutout was open, just a dark square with a faint line of light from the living room seeping through the edges of a curtain Dad had hung over it. I remember the moon that night, a cold silver disc that painted the room in pale blue.

At three in the morning, I woke with a start. The room was too still, the air thick like before a storm. I lay there, my heart thudding, trying to pinpoint what was wrong. The cutout was on my side, and I could see it out of the corner of my eye, a black rectangle against the wall. I turned my head slowly, and that’s when I saw her.

She was kneeling on the floor beside my brother’s bed, her back to me, her long dark hair spilling over her shoulders and onto the floor. She was rocking gently, a motion so subtle I almost missed it. My first thought was that my brother had gotten up and was playing some trick. I whispered his name, ‘Danny? Danny, go back to sleep.’ But she didn’t move. I said it louder, my voice cracking with the effort to keep it low, ‘Danny, stop it! I’m not in the mood for games.’ Still nothing.

I sat up, my muscles tense. The moonlight caught her silhouette, and I could see she was the same size as Danny, but her clothes were wrong. Danny had been wearing his favorite blue pajamas, but this figure was in a dark, shapeless dress that seemed to absorb the light. A cold dread crawled up my spine. I called his name one more time, my voice a whisper now, ‘Danny?’ And then she turned her head.

Her face was hidden behind that curtain of hair, but I could see a pale glint of an eye through the strands, watching me. My breath caught in my throat. I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. I backed toward the door, never taking my eyes off her. The door to the living room was right there, but it was closed. I fumbled for the knob, my fingers slick with sweat.

As I threw the door open and stumbled into the living room, the light from the lamp Dad had left on was blinding. I blinked, turning back to the room. My brother was still in his bed, sleeping soundly, his chest rising and falling. The cutout was just a dark square again. I stood there, shaking, convinced I had seen something. I didn’t sleep that night, and the next day I told Dad about it. He laughed it off, said I had a nightmare, but he checked the cutout anyway. There was nothing there but a few old wires and a dusty speaker.

Weeks passed, and I tried to forget, but I started to notice things. The cutout began to feel like a presence, a watchful eye. Sometimes at night, I’d wake up and catch a flicker of shadow in the corner of my eye, gone when I turned. My brother started having nightmares too, waking up screaming about a woman with long hair standing at the foot of his bed. He couldn’t describe her face. I tried to convince myself it was just coincidence.

One night, about a month after the first incident, I woke to find the cutout glowing. A soft, sickly light spilled through the curtain, and the radio that had been dead for years was humming a low, static-laced tone. I couldn’t move. The curtain billowed, and a hand, pale and thin, reached through the cutout, its fingers long and impossibly slender. It was followed by an arm, then a head, the same girl from before, her hair hanging over her face. She crawled out of the cutout like she was moving through water, her movements fluid and unnatural.

She slid off the bed and stood before me, her head tilted, her face still hidden. A voice, soft and childlike, came from behind the hair, ‘You can see me now.’ I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. She reached out a hand, and I saw that her fingers were too long, her nails black. I closed my eyes, felt her cold touch on my cheek, and then everything went black.

When I woke, I was on the floor of the living room, dawn light streaming through the windows. The cutout was just a dark square again. But on my cheek, there was a faint bruise in the shape of a hand, and the radio was playing, softly, a lullaby I had never heard before. We moved out of that trailer park a month later. I never told anyone the full story, but sometimes, late at night, I can still hear that lullaby in my head, and I know the girl found another radio, another cutout, another place to crawl through.