The Static in the Cattails

When my brother Levi died in the spring of 2018, the world became a dull, gray place. He had lived with our younger brother, Ethan, and Ethan’s wife, Dana, on their farm in the Missouri bottoms, a flat expanse of soybeans and silence that seemed to swallow sound. I lived in Chicago, and the distance had been a comfort, a barrier against the slow, agonizing unraveling I’d watched over the phone. But after his death, the silence became a weight, and the city’s noise felt like a mockery.

Four months after the funeral, a week before we were to gather for a proper memorial in the small Texas town where we’d grown up, my phone buzzed with a call from Ethan. The screen lit up with his name, and I picked up with a sense of dread, expecting another administrative detail about the service. But there was no voice, only a faint, crackling static that seemed to hold a rhythm, like breath. I pressed the phone to my ear, waiting, but the line went dead. I checked the call log: there was the call from Ethan, and next to it, a number I didn’t recognize, but which seemed familiar, like a word on the tip of my tongue.

I called the unfamiliar number, and a young woman answered. Her voice was light, almost childish, and she said her name was April. She insisted she hadn’t called anyone, and I apologized, feeling foolish. But as I hung up, a chill traced my spine. I called Ethan back, and he answered on the second ring, his voice thick with sleep. ‘Did you just call me?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, and there was a pause. ‘I was about to call you. Something happened out in the field.’

The next morning, I drove the eight hours to Missouri, the highway a gray ribbon through the flat land. Ethan met me at the farmhouse door, his face haggard, dirt under his nails. He led me out past the barn, through a patch of Queen Anne’s lace and thistle, to the edge of a drainage ditch choked with cattails. The air was thick with the smell of mud and decay. ‘I found this out here,’ Ethan said, pointing. In the mud, half-submerged, was Levi’s old flip phone, its screen cracked and waterlogged. We’d buried him with his phone, in his pocket, in the casket that had been cremated. I stared at it, my mind refusing to process.

Ethan said he’d been driving the combine when he spotted something glinting in the ditch. He’d waded in and pulled it out, shocked to see it was Levi’s phone, the one we’d put in his hands, the one that had been reduced to ash. I took it from him, and it was cold, heavy with water. I pressed the power button, and it flickered to life, the screen a pale blue glow. The phone was dead, but the memory card inside was intact. I pried it out and put it in my own phone, and as it loaded, a single file appeared: a voice memo, recorded in April 2018, a few days before Levi died.

I played it in the barn, the sound tinny and distant. Levi’s voice came through, low and tired. ‘I don’t know who will find this,’ he said. ‘Maybe no one. But I need to say it. There’s a girl, in the cattails. She comes at dusk, when the light turns green and the frogs start to sing. She’s not a ghost, not exactly. She’s more like the static between stations. She asked me to stay. I wanted to stay. But I was afraid of what I’d become. I’m sorry. I should have told you. But she’s still there. Waiting.’ The recording cut off, and the barn fell silent. I looked at Ethan, and his face was pale. ‘I’ve seen her,’ he whispered. ‘At the edge of the field, just last night. She looks like April.’

The name hit me like a blow. The girl on the phone had said her name was April. I pulled out my phone and searched for the call log entry, and there it was, the number I had called, with a name I hadn’t recognized because it was so old: ‘Sally.’ Sally was the name of a girl we’d grown up with, a girl who had died in a car accident when we were in high school. She had been Levi’s first girlfriend. I had forgotten her number, but Levi had kept it, and someone, or something, had used it to call me from beyond the grave.

Ethan and I went back to the ditch as dusk settled, the sky a bruise of purple and orange. The cattails rustled, though there was no wind. A low hum filled the air, like a tuning fork, and then a shape began to materialize among the reeds. It was a girl, thin and pale, her hair like wet straw. She had Sally’s face, but her eyes were empty, like two holes leading to a void. She opened her mouth, and a thin, high-pitched sound came out, the same static I’d heard on the phone. ‘Levi,’ she said, but the name came out in layers, like she was speaking from underwater. ‘He promised he’d stay. But he left me. He left me here, in the static, between the worlds. I need a new vessel. I need a body.’

I backed away, my heart pounding, but Ethan stood frozen. The girl turned her head toward him, and her mouth curved into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘You came back,’ she said, and I realized she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to the memory of Levi, who had once stood in this same spot, torn between the living and the dead. But Ethan, in his grief, had become a mirror. She reached out a hand, fingers like twigs, and touched his cheek. ‘Stay with me,’ she said, and for a moment, I saw something flicker in his eyes, a desire to give in.

I grabbed Ethan’s arm and yanked him back. The girl’s face contorted, and the static grew louder, filling my head. ‘You cannot run,’ she shrieked, and the world warped, the farmhouse, the barn, the fields, all seemed to bend inward, as if we were being pulled into a drain. I dragged Ethan toward the house, the door slamming shut behind us. The static continued, but it was muffled now, like it was coming from inside the walls. I looked at Ethan, gasping, his eyes wide with horror. ‘It’s still here,’ he said. ‘It’s in the house.’

We left that night, driving without speaking until we hit the highway. I never went back to that farm. I sold it, at a loss, to a man who wanted to turn it into a hunting lodge. The phone with the memory card went into the Missouri River, the water swallowing it like mute darkness. But sometimes, on clear nights, I’ll hear a faint static on my phone line, and a girl’s voice saying my name. I never answer. I know that whatever is out there, in the cattails, in the static, it’s not done with us. It’s patient, and it waits, for the next restless soul to wander too close to the edge.