The Static Between Tracks

In the autumn of my seventeenth year, I spent most nights at a basement apartment in the industrial part of town, a place that smelled of mildew and stale beer. My best friend, Mira, was the assistant manager at a twenty-four-hour diner, and her boyfriend, Cass, worked the fryer. They lived above a shuttered print shop, and their flat was the epicenter of every bad idea we had. I had been drifting through that season in a haze of cheap pills and reckless talk, my parents’ divorce still a fresh scab I picked at with every petty rebellion.

The apartment had a single high window that looked out at a brick wall, and the only color in the place came from a lava lamp that bubbled like a dying animal. On the night I remember most, it was just the three of us. The radio was on low, but the DJ was playing a block of obscure industrial rock, something with a heavy, grinding riff that made the floorboards vibrate. Mira had a bottle of something amber, and Cass rolled a joint with shaking hands. We had been up for almost two days, our laughter too loud, our words too loose.

Then the music changed. A track started that we all knew, a song full of dark, hypnotic rhythms and a vocalist who seemed to sing from the bottom of a well. It wasn’t a band we usually listened to, but that night it felt like it was speaking directly to us. Mira started moving her head in time, her eyes unfocused. Cass leaned forward, his knuckles white around his beer. I felt a static tingle at the back of my neck, like the air pressure had dropped.

The song ended, but the silence after was wrong. The radio hummed, but the DJ never came back on. Instead, there was a low, rhythmic pulse, almost like a heartbeat, coming from the speaker. It synced with my own pulse, or maybe my pulse synced with it. I looked at Mira, and she was staring at the radio with a terrified grin. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered. ‘It said my name.’

I hadn’t heard any words, just the pulse. But then Cass pointed at the far corner of the room, where the shadows were deepest. There was a shape there, a darker patch against the dark, the suggestion of a figure standing just beyond the reach of the lava lamp’s glow. It was perfectly still, but I felt it watching us. My heart hammered, and I tried to laugh, to break the spell. ‘It’s just the drugs,’ I said, but my voice came out thin and reedy.

The figure took a step forward, and the room temperature plummeted. I could see my breath. Mira scrambled to her feet, knocking over the bottle, but she didn’t run. She walked toward the shadow, her arms outsretched, like she was in a trance. ‘Mira, don’t,’ I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the pulse, which had grown louder, filling my skull. Cass was on his knees, covering his ears, rocking back and forth. ‘Make it stop,’ he moaned, his voice cracking.

The shape extended a hand, and I saw that its fingers were too long, too jointed. It touched Mira’s cheek, and she smiled, a beautiful, horrible smile that showed her teeth too perfectly. Then the radio crackled, and a voice came through, not the DJ, but a dry, rasping voice that seemed to come from all around us. ‘You danced with my rhythm,’ it said. ‘Now you belong to the static.’

The lights died. The pulse stopped. The silence was absolute, and I was alone in the dark. I fumbled for my phone, the screen casting a weak glow, and the room was empty. No Mira, no Cass. Just the radio, its dial glowing a faint red, and a low hum, like a distant transmission. I ran out of the apartment, up the stairs, into the cold night air, and I didn’t stop running until I reached my own front door.

The police found Cass three days later, wandering the rail yards, his eardrums burst, muttering about the ‘frequency.’ They never found Mira. The apartment was sealed off, and I moved away with my father. But even now, eight years later, whenever music hits a certain rhythm, or a speaker emits that low hum between songs, I feel that pulse in my chest, and I see that shape in the corner of my eye. And sometimes, in the dead of night, the radio in my bedroom clicks on by itself, and I hear that rasping voice, flat and patient: ‘We are still dancing.’ I never turn it off. I just lie still, waiting for the day it decides to finish the song.