The Static Between Waves

The Fisher-Price radio sat on the kitchen windowsill, its orange plastic cracked and yellowed with age. It had been my grandmother’s, though I never saw her use it. It was just there, a relic from a childhood I barely remembered, until the summer I inherited the house by the salt marshes.

My name is Edie, and unlike the others in my family, I never had the ‘sight.’ My mother dreamed of plane crashes before they happened. My cousin saw a man in a hat standing behind every mirror. But I was stubbornly, blissfully ordinary. I worked in a library, I liked routine, and I kept my feet firmly on the ground. When my husband Sam died, I grieved, but I didn’t expect any ghostly visits. I’d have laughed at the idea.

Three months after the funeral, I moved into Gran’s old house to clear it out. It was a cramped, salt-washed cottage with a fog-bell that rang every forty seconds from the channel buoy. The first night, I unpacked boxes in the kitchen, and the radio crackled to life. A voice, thin and distant, muttered between stations. I turned it off. It clicked back on. I unplugged it. The static continued, a soft hiss that seemed to come from the walls themselves.

I told myself it was the wiring, the damp, the wind. But then the calls started. My friend Cora, who was as psychic as a brick, called to say she’d dreamed of Sam. He was standing on a gray beach, waving at her, and he said, ‘Tell Edie I’m okay. And tell her it’s not time yet.’ When I asked why he didn’t come to me, she laughed, ‘He said you’d just unplug the radio.’

I should have laughed too. Instead, I found myself staring at the hallway that led to the bedroom. It was dim, even with the lights on, and there was a cold spot that smelled faintly of my late husband’s cologne, the one he wore only on special occasions. I whispered, ‘Sam?’ The radio in the kitchen snapped on, playing a song from our wedding. I felt a breeze that wasn’t there, and then the hallway was empty again.

I didn’t call a medium. I didn’t believe in them. But three days later, I found a business card in the mailbox for a woman named Dr. Amara Voss, a parapsychologist from the mainland. The card was wet, as if it had been dipped in the marsh, and it read: ‘For the woman with the static.’ I called her, mostly out of spite.

She arrived in a battered Volvo, wearing a raincoat despite the clear sky. She walked through the house without asking permission, her fingers tracing the woodwork. Finally, she stopped in the hallway, closed her eyes, and said, ‘He’s here. He’s saying he’s sorry. He didn’t mean to scare you. He just wanted you to know he’s still watching. And he says to tell you that the radio isn’t the only thing that works in this house.’

I stood in the kitchen, arms crossed. ‘That’s not a message. That’s a greeting card.’ Dr. Voss opened her eyes, and they were wet, though she hadn’t been crying. ‘He also says: ‘The marsh is hungry tonight.’ Do you know what that means?’ I didn’t. I had never been out to the marsh at night. But that evening, I took the radio down to the water.

The fog was thick, and the buoy bell seemed to ring from every direction. I set the radio on a cracked rock, and the static morphed into a low groan. Then a clear voice broke through: ‘Edie, you’re closer than you think.’ It was Sam’s voice, but distorted, as if he was speaking through water. ‘Come to the old dock. I need to show you something.’

I shouldn’t have gone. But grief does strange things to logic. I followed the sound of the bell, and the marsh path was steeper than I remembered. The dock was a skeleton of rotten planks, and at the end, a figure stood, wrapped in a blanket of fog. My heart hammered, and I called out, ‘Sam?’ The figure beckoned. I took a step forward, and the plank beneath me gave way.

I crashed into black water, the cold stealing my breath. As I flailed, I heard Sam’s voice again, but this time, it wasn’t gentle. It was frantic. ‘Edie, run! It’s not me! It’s the thing that wears my voice!’ I tried to scream, but water filled my mouth. I felt something brush my leg, something cold and sinewy, and then hands—human hands—gripped my shoulders and pulled me up.

I woke on the bank, coughing, with the radio hissing beside me. A woman was kneeling over me, her face obscured by the fog. ‘You’re safe,’ she said, but her voice was layered, like two speaking at once. ‘I told you, it’s not time yet.’ When the fog cleared, she was gone. Back at the house, the radio was silent, but the hallway was ice cold, and I saw a faint outline of a man in a raincoat, watching me from the shadows. He raised a hand, as if to say ‘shh,’ and then he faded.

Now, the radio sits on the windowsill, and I never unplug it. Because some frequencies are only audible when you stop trying to turn them off. And in the static, I sometimes hear Sam’s voice, but I no longer answer. The marsh is hungry, but I’m learning to let it wait.