The Static Sermon

The old farmhouse sat alone at the edge of a withered cornfield, its dry stalks rustling like brittle whispers. I’d come to stay with my grandmother while my parents were abroad, and the long summer evenings stretched into a heavy silence. My usual companions, Mara and Leo, were away at a summer camp, so I found myself alone with the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of a grandfather clock that had stopped years ago.

To keep the quiet at bay, I’d turn on the ancient television in the parlor. Its screen flickered with static between channels, but I kept it on, finding comfort in the white noise. One night, as I sat wrapped in a patchwork quilt, I felt an unmistakable prickling at the back of my neck. Someone was watching me. I spun around, but the room was empty. The feeling persisted, so I shifted my position, pressing my back against the couch, the blanket pulled tight around my shoulders like armor.

Hours crawled by. The television droned on, but my eyelids grew heavy. Just as I was about to surrender to sleep, I switched it off, plunging the room into an even deeper blackness. The silence that followed was oppressive, and soon I heard it: soft footsteps padding across the floorboards above. They were slow, deliberate, as if someone was pacing in the upstairs hallway. My heart hammered in my chest. I tried to rationalize it—old houses settle, wind creaks the beams—but the footsteps had a rhythm, a weight that seemed to know I was listening.

By three in the morning, I was exhausted but wired. I lay on the couch, eyes fixed on the staircase, straining to hear anything beyond the creaking. The footsteps stopped. Then, from the top of the stairs, a voice drifted down. It wasn’t my grandmother’s voice, nor any human voice I’d ever heard. It was like a radio caught between stations, fragments of words buried in a hiss of static. And it was speaking to me.

‘I see you,’ the static hissed, ‘hiding under your blanket.’ The voice sounded wrong, layered, as if several voices were speaking at once. My blood ran cold. I yanked the blanket over my head, squeezing my eyes shut. I tried to convince myself it was just my imagination, a trick of the empty house. But then the footsteps began again, this time on the stairs, each step accompanied by a burst of static that grew louder as it approached.

The static filled my ears, a cacophony of broken syllables. It was no longer a voice but a sermon, a garbled prophecy that I couldn’t understand, yet it filled me with a primal dread. The footsteps stopped just behind the couch. I felt a cold draft, as if a door had opened, and then the static died. In the silence, I heard my grandmother’s voice, soft and distant, calling my name from upstairs. But it was wrong—it was too clear, too precise, as if it were being played back on a recorder.

I peeked from under the blanket. The room was exactly as I had left it, except the television was on, displaying nothing but static. The glow cast dancing shadows on the walls. And there, in the reflection of the screen, I saw a figure standing behind me—a tall, gaunt shape with hollow eyes, its mouth open in a silent scream. As I watched, its lips moved, and the static returned, but now it formed words I could understand.

‘You shouldn’t have turned me off,’ it said. ‘I was just getting comfortable.’

I scrambled to my feet, knocking over a lamp, and bolted for the front door. But the door wouldn’t budge. The knob was cold and slick, like wet clay. I turned to see the figure advance, its footsteps leaving no sound now, only a trail of static in the air. I ran to the windows, but they were painted shut. The static grew louder, enveloping me, and I felt a pressure in my head, as if my thoughts were being scrambled.

I collapsed to my knees, covering my ears, but the static was inside my skull. The voice spoke one last time, its words clear and malevolent.

‘There’s no signal to save you out here, child. This is my frequency now.’

I woke up in the morning, sprawled on the parlor floor, the television still hissing. My grandmother was in the kitchen, humming an old tune. When I told her about the voice, she just smiled and said, ‘Oh, that’s just the old radio in the attic. It turns on by itself sometimes. Don’t you worry.’ But as she said it, the tune she hummed began to waver, and for a moment, I could have sworn it was accompanied by a faint static, whispering in a language I didn’t know.

I never slept in that house again. But sometimes, when I’m surrounded by silence, I still hear that voice, calling from somewhere between stations, waiting for me to turn it back on.