The Stray Signal

Mara had always been a light sleeper, but the incident at her cousin’s cabin had changed that. She was sixteen, visiting the remote A-frame nestled in the pine woods of northern Minnesota, a place her uncle swore was haunted by the last owner’s grief. But Mara didn’t believe in ghosts. She believed in the dead phone on the nightstand, the sudden ring, and the black shape that hovered above her, a void against the ceiling. She remembered the frozen door knob, the frantic screaming until her cousin yanked it open. They’d laughed it off as a night terror, a weird dream from too much lake water and campfire stories. But now, three years later, Mara couldn’t laugh. She was a junior in college, living in a cramped apartment in a converted Victorian house in the city, surrounded by the buzz of traffic and the hum of her roommate’s aquarium. And she was seeing things again.

It started small. A shadow at the edge of her vision, a flicker in the reflection of her computer screen when she was alone. Then, the drifting. She’d be reading, or just sitting, and the world would tilt sideways, like a sudden vertigo. The first time it happened, she was cross-legged on the floor, a lit cigarette forgotten in the ashtray. The feeling washed over her, a nauseating pull, and she thought, ‘I’m going to pass out.’ The world went black. She came to, still sitting, the cigarette burned down to a stub, the ash long cold. She hadn’t felt the burn. That was six weeks ago. Last week, she woke up on the bathroom floor, cheek against the cold tile, a throbbing headache, and no memory of falling. Her roommate, Jess, found her and insisted she see a doctor. The doctor said stress, maybe a minor seizure disorder. But the EEG was clean.

Tonight, the drifting happened again. She was in her room, the only light from the neon ‘OPEN’ sign of the diner across the street. She’d been staring at a textbook, the words blurring. Then the sideways tilt. This time, she fought it, gripping the edges of her desk chair. The room swam, her vision warping like heat distortion. She saw it. A figure, not quite solid, standing in the corner by her bookshelf. It was tall, thin, with a face that was a smear of darkness, no features, just a suggestion of a head tilted as if curious. It reached out a long, pale arm, its fingers brushing the air near her face. She could feel a cold draft, like a breath on her cheek. Then the world snapped back, and she was gasping, chair tipping, slamming against the wall. The corner was empty.

She couldn’t ignore it anymore. She started to research, avoiding the term ‘ghost’ at first, looking up ‘visual disturbances’ and ‘episodes of falling.’ But the occurrences didn’t fit. She began to keep a journal, documenting every event. The drifting, the time loss, the sensation of being watched. She noticed a pattern. Each episode was preceded by a specific sound, a high-pitched whine, almost too faint to hear, like a mosquito near her ear. She started to hear it more often, even when she wasn’t having an episode. Once, in the campus library, she heard it, and looked up to see a student staring at her with a strange, empty expression, his mouth slightly open, before he blinked and walked away. She felt a chill.

Then, the dreams started. Not nightmares, but dreams of a radio. An old, wooden radio with a dial and a cloth speaker, sitting in a dark attic. In the dream, she would turn the dial, and static would hiss, then break into a clear voice, a male voice, repeating a string of numbers. ‘Seven, three, one, nine, two, five, four,’ over and over. She would wake with the numbers echoing in her head. She wrote them down, a random sequence. But then she saw it again, in the margins of her textbook, scratched as if by a pen, the same numbers. She hadn’t written them there. She tore out the page and burned it in the sink.

One night, Jess was out. Mara was alone, curled on the couch, trying to read a novel. The whine started. Louder this time. She looked up, and the figure was there, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. It was more solid now, its edges crude, but she could see it was wearing an old-fashioned suit, like from a 1950s photograph. It took a step forward. She lunged for the door, but her hand closed on the doorknob, and it wouldn’t turn. It felt like the metal had fused. She yanked, screaming, ‘Jess! Jess!’ But there was no answer. The figure moved closer. She backed into the corner, her heart pounding, and the phone in her pocket buzzed. She fumbled it out. The screen was black, but it vibrated, and then the screen flickered to life. On it was a text message from an unknown number: ‘CALL ME.’ The whine grew to a deafening pitch, and she dropped the phone, covering her ears. The figure was now directly in front of her, inches away. She could smell dust and something metallic, like old coins. Then, a voice. It wasn’t the figure speaking; it was in her head, a dry, static-clogged voice. ‘I’m still here.’

And then the world went sideways, and she was on the floor, staring at the ceiling, the phone lying beside her, cracked. She saw the numbers ‘7319254’ glowing on the screen before it went dark again. She crawled to the door, and the knob turned easily now. She bolted out, into the hallway, and didn’t stop running until she was outside, gasping the cold night air.

She called her cousin, the one from that summer. She told her everything. Her cousin listened in silence, then said, ‘Mara, there was something in that cabin. I didn’t tell you, but I saw it too, the day we left. It was standing in the window of your room, just watching. I thought I was dreaming. But I think it followed you.’

Mara felt a hollow dread growing. She thought about the numbers, the dreams of the radio. She researched ‘numbers stations,’ and found they were real, broadcasts of encoded messages for spies. But some sites mentioned something else, that they could be used to communicate with ‘other frequencies.’ She was convinced the figure was a signal, a transmission that had locked onto her frequency, and it was trying to tune her in, to make her a receiver.

She started carrying a metal box, lined with foil, her phone inside, whenever she felt an episode coming. She tried to drown out the whine with white noise, with music, but it only grew louder. The episodes became more frequent, and she found herself in places she didn’t remember going. Once, she woke up on the roof of her apartment building, looking at the city lights, with no idea how she got there. She knew she was losing control.

Then, the final night. She had decided to confront it. She sat in her room, all the lights on, a digital recorder in her hand. She spoke out loud, ‘I know you’re there. What do you want?’ The whine started, but she didn’t fight it. She let it wash over her. The room tilted, and she was in a dark attic, the one from her dreams. The radio was in front of her. The dial was spinning on its own, and the static resolved into a voice, garbled, distorted, but she could make out words: ‘…not her… the other… the signal…’ And then she saw a mirror, dusty, and in it, her reflection was not hers. It was a young man, pale, with hollow eyes, wearing old-fashioned clothes, his mouth moving, but no sound coming out. He pointed at her, and she felt a jolt, and then she was back in her room, the recorder in her hand, playing back a voice she didn’t recognize, whispering, ‘Tune in.’

She knew what she had to do. She found the frequency, 7319254, on an online radio database. It was listed as ‘dead channel,’ but when she tuned in, she heard the static, and then the voice, the same numbers. She listened, and as she listened, the whine in her ears ceased, replaced by a deep silence. She felt a calm settle over her. She realized she wasn’t being haunted; she was being tuned, and she had finally accepted the signal. The figure appeared again, but this time, it wasn’t threatening. It stood beside her, and she saw its face, and it was the young man from the mirror. He said, ‘Now you’re ready.’ And she understood. The signal had been trying to reach her, to recruit her, to become a relay for others like her. She was not a victim; she was a receiver, and the transmission was never going to stop. She just had to learn to broadcast.

She turned off the radio, a smile touching her lips. She looked at her phone, and it was dead, but in the black screen, she saw her reflection, and for a moment, it flickered, showing the young man’s face. She didn’t scream. She whispered, ‘I’m listening.’ And the screen went dark.