The Static Lullaby

It was late July, the tail end of a sweltering summer, and I was lying in bed in my cramped studio apartment in the city. The air conditioner hummed in the window, fighting a losing battle against the heat that clung to the walls like a second skin. I had been reading a collection of obscure folk tales, the kind with woodcut illustrations that seemed to move in the corner of your eye. My phone lay on the floor by the bed, its battery drained hours ago, a useless slab of glass and metal. I had been reading for a while, lost in the stories, when my eyes began to sting with exhaustion. I closed the book, switched off the lamp, and settled into the sticky sheets, pulling the thin cover up to my chin. The city noise filtered in—traffic, distant sirens, the occasional shout—but it was a lullaby I knew well. I was just drifting off when I heard it: a faint, tinny melody coming from the floor. It was my phone, but that was impossible. The battery was dead. I hadn’t touched it in hours. The song was a soft, melancholic tune, something I didn’t recognize at first, but it had a strange familiarity, like a half-remembered dream. I reached down, my fingers brushing the cool surface of the phone. The screen was black, as dead as before, but the music continued, clear and steady, as if it were playing from inside the device itself. The moment I picked it up, the sound stopped. I pressed the power button, but the screen remained dark. I put it back on the floor, the room now silent except for the hum of the air conditioner. I told myself I was hearing things, that the heat was getting to me. But as I lay back down, the melody started again, this time louder, and it was followed by a voice—a woman’s voice, soft and soothing, singing words I couldn’t quite make out. The voice seemed to be calling to me, not in a threatening way, but with a gentle insistence, as if it knew I was listening and wanted me to respond. I froze, my heart pounding. I didn’t dare reach for the phone again. I just lay there, listening, until the song faded into static, and then silence. The next morning, I woke to find my phone fully charged, the screen lit with a notification: ‘New voicemail.’ I didn’t have voicemail set up. The message was a 30-second recording of that same melody, but this time, the woman’s voice was clearer. She was singing a lullaby, a song I had never heard before, but one that felt ancient, like a forgotten nursery rhyme. At the end, she whispered a single word: ‘wait.’ I deleted the message, but the unease lingered. Over the next few days, I noticed things changing. My television would turn on by itself in the middle of the night, displaying static, and from the static, that same song would emerge, faint but unmistakable. My laptop would play it through the speakers when I opened it, even though the volume was muted. And every time, the woman’s voice would whisper that word: ‘wait.’ I began to avoid my devices, fearing the sound, but it followed me. I would hear it in the hum of the refrigerator, in the drone of the ceiling fan, in the rhythm of my own footsteps. It was as if the song had seeped into the very fabric of my apartment, into the air I breathed. One evening, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat on my bed, my hands over my ears, but the melody was inside my head now. The woman’s voice was no longer a whisper; it was a full-throated hum, rising and falling like a tide. And then I understood. The song was a lullaby, but it wasn’t meant to soothe. It was a summons. I felt a cold presence in the room, a weight on the edge of the bed, as if someone was sitting there, watching me. I looked up, and the air shimmered. A figure began to form, translucent at first, then more solid. It was a woman, her face gaunt, her eyes hollow, her hair hanging in wet strands. She was wearing a white dress that seemed to absorb the light. She opened her mouth, and the song poured out, no longer a distant melody but a torrent of sound that filled every corner of the room. Her voice was beautiful and terrible, and it spoke to a part of me that had no words. She reached out a hand, her fingers ghostly, and touched my cheek. Her touch was cold, like ice water, and I felt a deep, profound sadness wash over me, as if I were mourning a loss I couldn’t name. And then she whispered, ‘wait for me,’ and she dissolved into the air, leaving behind only the lingering hum of the song. I haven’t heard it since. My devices are normal, my apartment is quiet. But sometimes, when I’m about to fall asleep, I hear that melody in the space between wakefulness and dreaming, and I see her face, patient and waiting. She is waiting for me to join her, and I am afraid that one day, I will.