The Remote That Remembered

The summer I turned fifteen, we lived in a house that breathed. Not in a poetic way, but literally—the floorboards would expand and contract with the heat, making the whole structure groan like a sleeping giant. My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hallway, a room that faced east, so the morning light came in harsh and yellow. But at night, it was a different place. The shadows in the corners seemed to have weight, and sometimes I’d catch movement from the corner of my eye—shapes that dissolved when I turned to look. My older brother Marcus refused to step inside, and my younger brother Leo would only come as far as the doorway. I claimed it was the old house’s plumbing, but I knew better. I slept with a nightlight, even at fifteen.

That Saturday, Leo burst in at dawn, his face flushed with excitement. He was off on a day-long scout trip, and he’d forgotten his Walkman batteries. He never came into my room, but that morning, his need trumped his fear. He asked for the batteries from my TV remote, and I, still half-asleep, told him to take them, just put them back when he got home. He nodded, grabbed them, and vanished.

The day passed in a haze. I read, I watched TV (using the buttons on the side), I did nothing much. The house was quiet, the sun baking the roof, the air thick with the smell of dust and old wood. At around eight, my parents pulled into the driveway with Leo. They dropped him off and immediately left for their nightly coffee, leaving me and Leo alone. Leo looked pale, his scout uniform rumpled, his hair sticking up.

‘Weird day,’ he said, flopping onto the living room couch. I asked what was weird. He shrugged. ‘Just… out in the woods. Everything was too quiet.’ I didn’t press. I was more concerned about the remote. I told him to put the batteries back, but he was too tired, said he’d do it tomorrow. I let it go.

I went up to my room around eleven. The house was dark except for the hallway light. I opened my door and stepped in, expecting the usual stillness. But the room felt wrong. The air was cold, and I could see my breath. The remote sat on my nightstand, the batteries back in place. That was odd—I hadn’t put them there. I picked it up. It was warm, almost hot. The power button was sticky.

The TV flickered on by itself, the screen a mess of static. I moved to turn it off, but the button depressed without a click. I pulled the remote away, but the static grew louder, a sound like a thousand needles. Then the static coalesced into an image—a forest at dusk, shot from a high angle. I recognized the clearing where my father took us camping the year before. In the image, a small figure in a scout uniform walked into the frame. It was Leo. He looked younger, maybe eight. He was crying, calling out for a dog we had to put down years ago.

The image shifted. Now it was daytime, and Leo was older, maybe twelve, standing in the same clearing, but surrounded by a circle of trees that were too tall, too black. Something moved between the trunks—a long limb, grey and thin, like a branch but jointed like an arm. The remote vibrated in my hand. I tried to drop it, but my fingers wouldn’t uncurl.

The static returned, then cleared to show my room from across the hall, the door ajar. I saw myself asleep on the bed, and next to the bed, a figure stood. It was tall, its skin like bark, its face a smooth, featureless oval. It looked straight at me through the screen, and its mouth opened—a dark hole—and a voice like rustling leaves filled my head. ‘You have my parts,’ it said. ‘I want them back.’

I finally threw the remote. It hit the wall and skittered under the dresser. The TV went black. I stood there shaking, my heart hammering. I ran downstairs, but Leo was gone. The front door was open, the night air seeping in. I called his name, but nothing answered. I stepped outside, and the porch light flickered, revealing the yard, the trees beyond. In the distance, I saw a figure at the treeline—the same grey shape from the screen. It held Leo’s hand. Leo wasn’t moving, his face slack, his eyes staring at nothing.

I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted. The figure turned to me, its featureless face tilting as if listening. The voice came again, not through my ears, but inside my skull: ‘The boy took the batteries. But you allowed it. You must return the energy to the source.’ The source was the TV? The remote? I didn’t understand.

Then the figure raised its other hand. In it was a small, black rectangle—a remote, but not mine. It was made of something organic, pulsing with a faint blue light. It pressed a button. The porch light went out. The yard went dark. I could hear a high-pitched whine, like an old TV left on too long.

I woke up in my bed the next morning. Sunlight streamed through the window. The remote was on the nightstand, cool to the touch. I checked the batteries—they were there. I looked out the window. Leo was in the yard, playing with a stick. He seemed normal, but when he looked up at me, his eyes were dark, like coffee without light. He smiled and waved. I waved back, but my hand trembled.

For weeks, I couldn’t watch TV without seeing that image of Leo in the clearing, or the figure at the treeline. I thought about the remote, about what it had shown me. I realized that maybe the room’s shadows weren’t the only thing wrong. Maybe the house had been built on a convergence of something—a quiet place where the world thinned. And I had given it a tool.

One night, I couldn’t sleep. I crept downstairs to get water. The living room TV was on, static crackling. The remote lay on the coffee table, facing up. I didn’t touch it. But as I passed, the screen flickered to life. A new image: my future self, old and alone, sitting in a dark room, surrounded by remotes—dozens of them, all shapes and sizes, all pointed at me. The voice returned, softer this time, almost regretful: ‘We all have a channel. Yours is just more tuned.’

I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t sleep for many nights. And to this day, I can’t pick up a TV remote without feeling a faint vibration, like the echo of a heartbeat that isn’t mine. Sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I see a grey figure standing at the edge of rooms, always with one arm extended, always holding a remote that points at me. I don’t turn on the TV anymore. I don’t know if it’s watching. But I know the batteries in my remote never need replacing, no matter how much I use them.

The summer I turned fifteen, I learned that some things you give away, you never get back. And some things you try to put back, they remember being taken. And they wait.

I still live in that house. I can’t leave. Every time I try to sell it, the realtor calls back, saying the phone lines cut out, and they hear a sound like static coming from my bedroom. But there’s no static in there. Only the remote on my nightstand, waiting. And soon, I think, it will want to be used again.

I just hope that next time, it’s not showing me myself.