The Static Child

The night the power went out, I was twelve, not fourteen. We lived in a house that leaned slightly to one side, as if it were perpetually bracing against the wind. My room was at the top of the stairs, the smallest one, with a window that rattled in its frame and a closet door that never stayed shut. I had a swivel chair in the middle of the room, a hand-me-down from my uncle, its leather cracked and peeling. That night, the storm was so loud it felt like the house was breathing, inhaling the thunder and exhaling the rain. I woke up with a start, my heart pounding, but not because of the storm. I was on the floor, not my bed. My pillow was under my head, but my blanket was tangled around my legs, and the mattress was cold and hard against my back. I had rolled off the bed, or been pulled off, I couldn’t tell. The room was pitch black, but a flash of lightning illuminated it, and in that instant, I saw the swivel chair, right in the middle of the room, facing me. And behind it, a boy. He was small, maybe seven or eight, with dark hair plastered to his forehead. He wore a tattered white t-shirt that glowed faintly in the lightning, and he was moving. Not like a person, but like a film reel stuck on fast-forward, his arms jerking, his head twitching. He was biting his nails, but too quickly, his fingers a blur, his teeth gnashing. He looked around the room with frantic, darting eyes, as if he were being chased. But he seemed to look through me, not at me. I lay there, frozen, watching this violent, jerky performance. I didn’t feel scared, not yet. I felt detached, as if I were watching a documentary about possession. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the boy stopped. He turned his head slowly, and for the first time, his eyes met mine. They were not eyes, but empty sockets, black and deep, and they seemed to pull at me. I tried to scream, but my voice was a dry croak. I reached for the lamp on my nightstand, my hand trembling, and fumbled for the switch. The moment light flooded the room, the boy vanished. The chair was still there, empty, spinning slowly. I didn’t move for what felt like hours, just staring at that chair, my breath shallow. When my mother came in the next morning, she found me on the floor, my eyes wide, my fingers white-knuckled around the lamp cord. I couldn’t tell her what I had seen, because I didn’t believe it myself. I chalked it up to a night terror, a trick of the storm. But I couldn’t sleep in that room again. I moved to the couch, and eventually, we moved out of that house, but the image of that boy stayed with me, his frantic, static-like movements, his empty gaze. Years passed, and I forgot about him, until one night, during another storm, I woke up on the floor of my apartment, and the swivel chair I had bought from a thrift store was in the middle of the room, facing me. And behind it, the same boy, older now, but still moving in that jerky, glitchy way. He was biting his nails, looking around with panic. This time, he saw me, and he mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear it over the thunder. Then he vanished. And I realized, he wasn’t a ghost. He was a memory trapped in a loop, a loop that I was somehow part of. And now, every time the storm comes, I wake up on the floor, and I see him, and he sees me, and we both know, we are trapped in this moment, forever, waiting for each other to break the spell.