The Static in the Rain

Seven years ago, I was seventeen and the world was still soft at the edges. My parents had split when I was twelve, and I split my time between my dad’s apartment and my mom’s house in the hills, where she lived with her new husband, Carl, and my little brother, Toby, who was only three. Mom and I had a good thing going—she was more like a friend than a parent. We’d laugh at stupid videos, drink cheap wine, and watch movies into the small hours.

That night, a storm rolled in, heavy and angry. Rain hammered the windows, and thunder cracked so close it rattled the pictures on the walls. The TV, an old boxy thing with rabbit ears, started losing signal. The picture would fracture into static and then snap back, over and over, until we gave up and turned it off. Mom suggested music instead, so I put on my playlist—something indie, with lots of guitars and soft harmonies. We were on the couch, sharing a blanket, when Toby, who’d been asleep in his room, padded out in his footie pajamas. He stood in the doorway, rubbing his eyes, and said, ‘The lady is singing too loud.’ We told him it was just the music, he was having a bad dream, and sent him back to bed. He went, but I noticed he didn’t look sleepy. He looked scared.

We laughed it off and poured another glass of wine. But then the music changed. The volume dipped and swelled, like someone was riding the knob. At first, we blamed the storm, the power flickering. But the lights never even flickered. Then the smell hit us—smoke, but not cigarette smoke or wood smoke from a chimney. It was sharp and acrid, like burning plastic, but also sweet, like incense. It filled the living room so thick we started coughing. Mom went to open a window, but the rain was coming in sideways, and the smell didn’t leave. It clung to the curtains, our clothes, our hair.

We tried to ignore it, but the music kept misbehaving. A song would cut out mid-chord, and then a sound would come through—like a voice, but not human. It was like a radio station with a frequency that didn’t exist, full of hiss and garbled words, as if someone was speaking in a language we almost knew. Mom laughed it off, said it was the old wiring, but I saw her knuckles go white around her glass. I wanted to change the song, but the remote was on the table, and as I reached for it, the music stopped on its own. The room went dead silent, except for the rain and the sound of our breathing. And then, from the speakers, came a single clear voice—a woman’s voice, singing a lullaby I’d never heard before. It was soft and sweet, but the melody was wrong, slightly off-key, and it sent ice up my spine.

We both froze. Mom whispered, ‘That’s not from my playlist.’ She got up and yanked the power cord from the wall, but the singing continued, coming from the speakers, even though they were unplugged. It got louder, more insistent, until it was a shout, and then it stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was worse. I looked at Mom, and she was pale, her lips pressed thin. ‘We should check on Toby,’ she said, and we both rushed to his room.

We opened his door, and the room was freezing, like a meat locker. The window was open, and the rain was misting in, but the screen was still in place. Toby was standing on his bed, facing the window, his little arms out, as if he was reaching for something. He was whispering, but I couldn’t make out the words. Mom rushed to him, pulling him away from the window, and he started to cry, big gulping sobs. ‘The lady,’ he whimpered. ‘She said come play.’ I looked out the window, expecting to see nothing but the dark yard, but for a split second, I saw a figure—tall and thin, with hair that moved like it was underwater, even though there was no wind. Then it was gone.

We spent the rest of the night huddled in Mom’s room, Toby between us, with all the lights on. The porch light flickered all night, and the smell of smoke never left. When dawn came, and the storm broke, we all pretended it was just the storm, just our imagination, just a weird night. But the next morning, when Carl came home, he found the stereo’s power cord wrapped around the knob of the front door, tied in a knot, like someone had tried to keep something out. Or maybe in. We never listened to music in that house again, and Mom never mentioned the lullaby. But to this day, if I hear static—like from a dead channel or a bad tooth filling—I think I hear that woman’s voice, just under the air, singing a song that doesn’t exist. And I wonder what would have happened if Toby had gone to the window that night. Because sometimes, I think I see her still, standing at the edge of the yard, waiting for him to come back.