The Volume War

I was six when we moved into the old farmhouse on Thornapple Road. The place had been empty for years, and the previous owners had left behind a peculiar contraption in my new bedroom: a small, wooden box with a brass dial and a single speaker grille. My father, always tinkering, cleaned it up and declared it a vintage ‘white noise generator.’ Mom was skeptical, but I loved the soft sound of rain it produced. It became my lullaby.

The first week was peaceful. Then, on a Tuesday, I woke to the sound of a deafening, piercing shriek. It wasn’t static; it was a raw, electronic wail that seemed to drill into my ears. My parents burst into the room, my father shouting over the noise, fumbling with the dial. He turned it all the way down, and it stopped abruptly, leaving a ringing silence.

We thought it was a malfunction. My father took it apart, but found nothing wrong. The next night, it happened again, but this time the volume knob spun by itself, oscillating from a faint whisper to the same ear-splitting shriek, as if some unseen hand was playing with it. My mother unplugged the device, and we slept in the living room.

The next day, without telling my parents, I crept back into my room. The box sat on the nightstand, unplugged, but the dial was now set to maximum. I reached to turn it, and the moment my fingers touched the brass, the box spoke in a voice that was not mine, not my mother’s, not my father’s. It was a low, gravelly growl that said, ‘I remember you.’

I screamed, and my parents came running. They saw the fear in my eyes, and my father, without a word, took the box outside and smashed it with a hammer. He buried the remains under the old oak tree. That night, I slept in my room, the silence a relief.

But at 3 AM, I woke to a sound from the nightstand. It was a faint, rhythmic dripping, like water. I turned on my lamp, and there, in the place where the box had been, was a small puddle of clear liquid. It wasn’t water; it had an odd, metallic smell. And as I watched, the puddle began to expand, spreading across the wood, forming patterns that looked like letters. They were a name: ‘Alice.’ My mother’s name.

I called out, and my mother came. When she saw the liquid, she froze. She whispered, ‘That’s the name I heard in my sleep before we moved here.’ We never went back to that room. My father boarded it up, and we moved out a week later, leaving everything behind.

But to this day, when I hear water dripping at night, I feel a cold presence watching me, and I know the voice from the box is still here, waiting to turn up the volume once more.