The Static in the Walls

Six months have passed since we left that house in San Mateo, but the memory of it clings to me like damp air. My family moved to a coastal town in Batangas after my father’s retirement, but the incident in that rented four-story house near the old market still haunts my dreams. It was just my mother, my younger brother, and me, since my father was often at sea.

The house itself was charming in a decrepit way, with wooden floorboards that creaked underfoot and windows that rattled in the wind. My room was on the second floor, while my mother and brother stayed on the fourth, he being the solitary sort. Two weeks before we were set to leave, strange occurrences began. The living room lights would flicker on by themselves, even when the switches were off. One evening, the ancient television in the corner, a bulky relic with a sliding wooden door and dials for nine channels, clicked on by itself. The screen glowed with static, the volume hissing, despite the fact that it wasn’t even plugged in.

I dismissed it as faulty wiring, old appliances, my brother’s pranks. But one afternoon, I returned from school to find my mother pale and trembling in the kitchen. She said the television had turned on again, and this time, she saw a figure in the static, a tall, gaunt man with hollow eyes. She turned it off, but the image remained burned in her mind. That night, I lay in bed, listening to the hum of the house. A faint radio signal, a garbled voice, seemed to emanate from the walls. I pressed my ear to the plaster, and heard my own name whispered, as if from a great distance.

The next day, while my mother was out, I decided to investigate the television. I opened the back panel, expecting to find dust and dead circuits, but instead found a tangle of wires that connected to nothing, and a small, hand-carved wooden box tucked inside, with a tiny speaker and a battery. On the box was etched a name: ‘Elias.’ I pressed the play button, and a low, gravelly voice came through, speaking in a dialect I barely understood, ‘I am still here.’ The television flickered to life behind me, and in the static, I saw the face from my mother’s description.

The box was a makeshift receiver, I realized, for something that had been waiting in the house for decades. The previous tenants, an old couple, had moved to a home for the elderly, but their son had died in the house years ago, in a fire that started in the living room. They had kept his belongings, including that television, as a way to remember him. But he wasn’t resting. He had found a way to speak through the static, to reach out to the living. As I held the box, the air grew cold, and the lights flickered. My brother appeared at the top of the stairs, his face pale, and said, ‘He wants us to stay.’

That evening, we gathered our essentials and drove to a nearby inn, leaving the house behind. But the whisper followed us, now in the car radio, in the hum of the air conditioner. My mother said it was the grief of that mother, that she couldn’t let go. But I knew the truth. The son was not trapped in the house, but in the box. And when we left, we took him with us. Even now, as I write this in our new home, the static in the walls has returned. And I know, one day, I will hear my name again, and that television will flicker to life, no matter how many times we throw it away.