The Static Between Us

I’ve always been able to see them, the ones who linger. It’s not a gift I asked for, just a broken frequency my brain picks up, like a radio stuck between stations. I’d be in our cramped apartment, the flicker of the old TV the only light, and I’d hear a soft, high-pitched voice, ‘Do you want to play?’ I’d turn, and there she’d be, a small girl in a yellow raincoat, standing in the corner, her face a blur of static. I never told anyone, not even my mom. She’d only appear when I called for her, which I did sometimes, out of loneliness.

It was a Tuesday, and the rain was hammering the windows. My sister, Cara, burst into the living room, her face twisted with the casual cruelty of a teenager. She pointed at the horror movie I was watching, a cheap found-footage thing. ‘This is so fake! It’s all garbage!’ She spat the words like they were acid.

I felt the heat rise in my chest. ‘It’s not fake!’ I yelled back, my voice cracking. ‘You don’t know anything!’ I called for my mom, who came in, took one look at Cara’s defiant face, and sent her to our shared room. ‘Leave your brother alone,’ she said, her voice tired. Cara stormed off, slamming the door so hard the walls shook.

My mom stood there, her hand on the doorframe. ‘Why did you giggle just now?’ she asked, her brow furrowed.

I blinked. ‘I didn’t giggle,’ I said. But then I heard it, a small, muffled laugh from behind the couch. I felt the cold dread creep up my spine. I know that sound. It wasn’t mine.

I shook my head, trying to convince her. ‘Maybe it was the TV.’

She didn’t believe me, I could tell. She gave me a long, uncertain look, then went back to the kitchen. The TV was playing static now, the movie over. I stared at the gray noise, and I saw her reflection in the glass of the window. The girl in the yellow raincoat, standing behind my mother, her hand reaching out as if to touch her shoulder. But my mom walked away, oblivious.

That’s when I saw it clearly, the thing she had done. She had been with me when I was angry, that day I had screamed at Cara for touching my things. I had shouted, ‘I wish you were never born!’ And the girl had smiled, her face becoming clear for just a moment. Then I saw Cara, in our room, tripping over her own feet, falling into the sharp edge of her desk. I heard a thud, and then Cara’s scream, but it was muffled, as if from far away. I saw her hand bleeding, and I saw the girl in the raincoat standing over her, giggling.

I ran to our room. Cara was on the floor, cradling her hand, blood seeping through her fingers. Her eyes were wide with pain and fear. She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw no anger, only confusion. ‘It… it pushed me,’ she stammered.

I didn’t say anything. I just looked at the corner of the room, and there she was, the girl, watching me. She tilted her head, and I heard that voice again, but this time it was not a question. ‘I helped you.’

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. I realized then that she was not a playmate. She was a servant of my darkest wishes, a silent manifestation of every petty, angry thought I had ever had. And I had called her, every time I felt rage, every time I wished harm on others. The gift was not a gift; it was a curse, and I was its keeper.

I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall, staring at the girl. She was smiling now, her face still too blurry to see clearly. And I knew, with a sickening certainty, that as long as I lived, she would be there, waiting for the next time I lost control, waiting to ‘play’.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, and the static on the TV seemed to grow louder, filling my ears with a low hiss. The girl in the yellow raincoat began to hum a tune, a children’s song I didn’t recognize. And I knew, in that moment, that the horror was not her, but the part of me that had brought her into existence. I was the monster, and she was my shadow, given shape.

Cara’s sobs were the only sound besides the rain, and I didn’t know how to comfort her. Because the only truth I had left was that the world was not the safe place I had thought. It was filled with things that existed on the periphery, and I was one of them, a bridge between the living and the dead, a conduit for the static that hums between us.

And in the corner, the girl was still humming, waiting.

I closed my eyes, and I could see her even then, a faint shimmer of yellow behind my lids. She would never leave. She was a part of me now.

And that was the most terrifying thing of all.