Speaker 1: I hadn't been back to the house in almost two years,
not since I left for college. The siding was more
weather worn than I remembered, and the porch steps creaked
louder under my weight. Everything about it looked smaller, sun faded,
and tired. My parents didn't live there anymore after the divorce.
They held on to it out of some quiet mutual guilt,
neither one wanting to be the one to let it go.
But now that I was technically an adult, they said
it was time. I was only there to collect what
was mine. A few boxes, maybe a crate of old clothes,
some books, and whatever junk I had left behind in
the attic. The idea was simple, go in, pack, leave,
but nothing about stepping through that door felt simple. The
living room still had that hollow smell, a mix of
dust an old couch fabric. Most of the furniture was
already gone, but my feet still knew where to walk
when not to. I climbed the attic ladder slowly, not
because it was steep or broken, but because I didn't
want to see what was up there. The attic had
always felt stuck in time. Boxes were stacked along the
walls all of them labeled in my mom's handwriting winter clothes,
kitchen stuff. There was one that just said toys. The
marker had bled into the cardboard from years of moisture.
I peeled it open and sifted through it lazily. The
first thing I saw was an odd set of plastic binoculars,
bright green, with one cracked lins and a faded strap.
I remember using them in the backyard with Daniel calling out,
but ten sightings of exotic animals shouting through the brush
like we were explorers. Beneath them, I found a handful
of scratched hot wheel cars, still chipped in the exact
same places. I remembered a wooden puzzle with a few
pieces missing. Our old rubber snake, the one Daniel used
to hide under my pillow when he wanted to mess
with me. My throat caught for a second and I
smiled without meaning too. But then I saw it buried
under a pile of action figures and a plastic dinosaur.
Was the old walky talkie. My hand froze before I
even touched it. I didn't know why. It was just
a piece of scratched metal, dusty long since broken, but
my stomach twisted anyway. My mouth went dry. I hadn't
thought about it in years, not since Daniel. I picked
it up. It wasn't as heavy as it used to
be when we were kids, or maybe I'd just grown
that much. The antenna was bent sideways, and the entire
thing was a mess. But something in my chest folded
inward the second I held it. There was no reason
for the panic that came with it, no reason for
my hands to start sweating. I sat with the walkie
talkie for a long time, cross legged on the attic floor,
staring at it in my palm, A memory floating up
without warning, Daniel's voice coming through the static of foggy recollections.
This is Eagle too to base over. His voice was
all too excited for the game. I used to roll
my eyes at how seriously he took it, but I
never told him to stop. I'd play along, ducking behind
trees and whispering him to my own walkie talkie, pretending
I couldn't see him even when he was in plain sight.
Our games of pretend worked so well because we believed
each other. We spent hours out there in the woods
behind the fence, where the trees grew close and the
ground was soft with old leaves. There was never a
question of what to play. We always went straight for
the woods, always with walkie talkies. We were explorers and soldiers,
but most importantly we were brothers. I remember his laugh
carrying through the branches. Then came the accident. I don't
let myself think about it. Daniel snuck off into the
woods alone, maybe chasing a bird, maybe just playing by himself.
My parents always wondered why he'd go off on his own.
He slipped near the creek, fell into the water, and
couldn't get out. He died of hypothermia some time in
the early hours of the morning, before anyone noticed he
was missing. I say it the same way every time,
even though my voice gets tighter with each telling. My
parents were shattered. They held it together for me, but
it was never the same. After the funeral, everything felt quieter.
Nobody used the word haunted, but I felt it in
the way they looked at the woods, in how no
one ever stepped past the back fence again. I put
the one I found in my backpack and climbed back
down the ladder. I didn't look back at the box.
I didn't want to see anything else. The drive wasn't long,
but my head felt heavy the entire way. I kept
glancing at my backpack in the passenger seat, half expecting
to hear something from it. The walkie talkie hadn't left
my mind since I pulled it out of that attic box.
I couldn't explain why. I dropped the keys on the counter,
kicked off my shoes, and sat on the edge of
the couch with a walkie my hands. Again, it looked
even older under the apartment light. I flipped the switch
on out of habit. No power, it seemed at first,
but when I held the talk button down there was
a faint hiss of static. It buzzed for a second,
then cut off. I let go, pressed it again, same thing,
just the faint buzz. The batteries should have been dead,
that was the first thing I thought. I opened the
back panel and slid them out. The battery compartment was corroded.
A sort of green white crust fell out of the
battery compartment. I let the batteries out, but out of
some weird curiosity, I pressed the talque button again. Static.
It was quiet and broken, but it was there. My
thumb hovered over the button again, but I didn't push it.
I just set the thing down on the edge of
my desk and rubbed my eyes. Maybe the walking was
damaged in some way, feeding on leftover static from nearby frequencies.
I didn't want to think about it too much. I
didn't know. I didn't care to dig deep into it.
It was just a ghost of a toy, nothing more.
I left it on the shelf near the window. That night,
I brushed my teeth, plugged in my phone, and got
into bed. The room was quiet, except for the occasional
cars outside and the hum of the fridge in the kitchenette.
I was drifting when I heard it, a low crackle,
just for a second. I sat up, listened. Nothing followed it.
I didn't even press the talk button this time. Still,
I laid back down and tried to sleep. I told
myself not to overthink it. I wo cup to static,
not loud, but enough to stir me. I turned my
head and saw the walky talkie still on the shelf,
right where i'd left it, A thin, shallow hiss. Again
I hadn't touched it. I sat up and stared at
it for a minute, thought about unplugging it, even though
it wasn't plugged into anything. I laughed to myself as
I reached over and dropped it into the top drawer
of my desk, closed it gently, out of sight, out
of mind. I tried to start my day. Classes were fine.
I half listened to lectures and nodded in the right places.
I didn't want to admit it, but the sorrow of
losing Daniel was hitting me all over again. I met
up with friends in the afternoon, hung around campus, grabbed
drinks at a place near the Quad. I laughed at
jokes I didn't fully hear. By the time we were
stuffing our faces with greasy sandwiches from a cart that
only opened after dark, I'd nearly forgotten about the walkie
talkie altogether. I stumbled back into my apartment just before midnight.
I dropped my bag, kicked the door close to my heel,
and leaned against the wall to get my balance. Everything
felt hazy, in that warm way that comes with drinking.
Then before I could even get my thoughts straight, I
heard it again. The drawer was closed, but I heard
the crackle this time. It wasn't soft. It had an
edge to it, a sharpness, like something was trying to
come through. I stood there and listened with a focus
I didn't know I could have. While inebriated. The sound shifted,
the static dipped and broke apart, like wind through a microphone.
There was something else under it, just a murmur, something
too soft to make out, but too exact to just ignore.
I practically ran over to it, opened the drawer and
stared down at it. The walky talkie was cold in
my hand. The noise didn't stop. It might have even
gotten louder. It whispered under my fingers. I gripped it tighter,
waiting for something more, but it just kept crackling. I
put it back in the drawer and went to the
bathroom to splash water my face. I tried my face
with a towel and leaned against the bathroom sink. My
head was but not from the drinks. Something about that
sound from the drawer had stuck with me. I hesitated
before stepping back into the main room. The apartment was
so quiet it felt loud. I closed the bathroom door
behind me and walked back toward the desk. The drawer
was still shut. I stared at it for a long second,
then turned away to grab a bottle of water from
the kitchen. That was when I heard it, clearer than
anything before. Jackie, my heart stopped. It came from the
drawer through the static. A child's voice, soft but watery,
froze in the middle of the room. Bottles still in
my hand. My name. No one called me that anymore,
not since I was a kid. I took one slow
step toward the desk. The voice didn't repeat itself. The
crackle faded, but the echo of the word was still
alive in my mind. I opened the drawer and stared
down at the walkie talkie. It hadn't moved, obviously, and
even the static was not present anymore. But I swear
the air around it felt different. I reached in, picked
it up, and almost immediately dropped it. It wasn't hot,
but it felt wrong in my hand, off like it
remembered something I didn't. I sat down and just stared
at it on the floor. My pulled was hammering now,
and I still gave myself a million excuses. Old electronics
did weird things. It was probably feeding off static interference
or some forgotten frequency band, maybe even a neighbor's baby
monitor somehow I put the walkie talkie back in the drawer,
but it didn't stop. Every time I was alone, the
sound came back. Sometimes it was faint static, barely audible
unless the room was silent. Sometimes it was louder, the
crackle building into a voice, just at the edge of understanding.
I'd be brushing my teeth or pouring coffee, and I'd
hear it behind the door, a soft, rising hiss, then
sometimes words. Why that one came through clear. I stood
frozen in my kitchen when I heard it. The voice
didn't sound angry, it didn't even sound confused, just hurt.
After that, I moved it to the hall closet. I
didn't want it near me when I slept after it
sobbed quiet and fragile. I stood outside the closet and
listened to the sound of a child crying through lays
of static. Not sure if I wanted to open the
door or run, I didn't do either. I just pressed
my hand to the wood and stayed there. One night,
I walked past the closet to get to the bathroom
and heard it again, soft and unmistakable. I'm scared. I
didn't go back to sleep after that. I needed to
shut it out. I picked up extra shifts of the
coffee shop. I went out whenever I could. I stayed
in motion, worked through lunch, met up with friends in
the evenings, smoked when I was alone, drank when I wasn't.
I told jokes, I laughed harder than I felt. I
hooked up with some one I didn't really want to
see again, just so I wouldn't be alone in bed.
But every time I came home, the apartment felt heavier.
I would avoid the hallway, wouldn't even glance at the
closet when I walked by. It was now constantly mumbling.
I could hear it through my front door before I
even entered. Not loud enough to make out, but constant,
always there. I couldn't even tell anyone about it. What
would I tell them I was hearing children through a
walkie talkie. I wanted to throw it out. I wanted
to drive to the edge of town and leave it
in a ditch. But I couldn't because it was ours.
Because no matter how broken it is, no matter how
wrong it felt, it still held pieces of him. We
loved those walkie talkies. I remembered him carrying his everywhere.
I remembered the look in his face when we got them.
I still loved him, I always would. So I left
it there, even though I knew something was wrong, even
though I could feel it getting worse. The dreams started
again without warning. I hadn't dreamt about the forest in years,
but now every night it pulled me back there. The
trees were always tall and imposing. They leaned inward, bending
in ways that made the sky vanish. I heard rushing water,
constant and fast, but I could never see the creak.
At first, I would just wonder aimlessly until it came
into view. Daniel lay in the middle of it, face down, motionless.
The water moved around his legs, dark and fast, tugging
at the hem of his soaked shirt. His arms hung
stiff at his side, elbows slightly bent, fingers bent in
unnatural ways. The skin on his hands looked swollen, loose
around the knuckles. Eventually he would lift his head. His
face was pale and sunken in strange places, as if
parts of it had softened and slipped beneath the surface.
His cheeks bulged around the edges, pockets of water pressing
under the skin. His eyes were clouded, no light in them,
just a dull, gray sheen with no focus. His lips
were split, stretched back from the gums, teeth showing through
like they hadn't been clenched for hours. Small pieces of
hair clung to his forehead in wet clumps, plastered flat
against his skin. Sometimes his jaw would shift slightly, twitching
as if he was trying to speak but couldn't remember how.
Other times he would scream, the sound didn't match the motion.
His mouth would be barely move yet the noise came
out loud and sharp, tearing through the forest. One night,
when he finally did speak, it was a whisper pressed
against my ears. It's not funny anymore. I woke up gasping,
drenched in sweat. My sheets were damp. My hands were
clenched into fists so tight I had to pry them open.
I left the lights on for the rest of the night.
Still I could hear the water sometimes, not just in
my dreams. The thing that would forever change me happened
after a long night out, not long after the dream started.
I'd stayed at a friend's place too late, drank too much,
and talked to people I barely remembered. By the next morning.
I wanted to feel normal again. I wanted to laugh
and pretend things were fine. That night, I almost pulled
it off, but when I got back to the apartment,
something felt off worse than usual. The hallway light was on,
though I couldn't remember leaving it that way. I walked
past the closet and paused, half expecting to hear the
usual quiet mumbling. Instead, the walky talkie started screaming. Not
a voice, not words, just screaming, raw and wet. It
sounded full of water, full of pain, stretched thin across static.
My knees buckled. I opened the closet, reached in and
grabbed it without thinking. The sound poured out of it,
too loud for something that small. I slammed it against
the wall. The screaming stopped. I stood in the middle
of the hall with my chest heaving. I felt sober
in a way that made my skin itch. Bits of
plastic and wire scattered across the floor. The casing was
cracked into one half, still buzzing faintly. I couldn't sleep.
I felt guilty, and so with shaking hands, I picked
up the pieces and brought them back to my bedroom.
I taped the body back together, wrapped the antennae with
duct tape, did whatever I could to make it whole again.
It didn't take much. The second had held shape, even loosely.
The speaker crackled. Then came the voice, Come back, Jackie,
and the screaming started again. It blared through the speaker
so loud I nearly dropped it. Not words, just the wet,
broken scream stretched until it didn't sound human. It tore
through the room and pushed into my skull, the sound
of someone drowning with her mouth open. I tried to
turn the knob, nothing happened. I flipped the switch off
and on again. No change. It kept screaming. I stumbled backward,
clutching the thing like it might burn me. The scream
dipped for a moment, then shifted. It didn't stop, but
it changed into something worse. Where are you Danny? The
voice was sharp, now, a child's voice trying to speak
through water. The speaker gurgled with every syllable. My hands
were shaking so badly I could barely hold the walkie.
I set it down on the desk, but the noise
didn't stop. I'm scared, it said, again. I'm scared. Again,
I'm scared. I packed away, My shoulders hit the edge
of the door frame. My chest felt tight. I could
hear my own breathing rising over the static, but the
voice kept going. Then everything stopped silence. Three slow knocks
against my bedroom door, my bedroom, just inches from where
I stood. The knocks came again, slower this time. Then
came the dripping, A soft, steady tap tapping on the
floorboards right outside the door. I couldn't see it, but
I could hear it, and somehow that was worse. I
imagined bare feet standing on soaked wood. I imagined water
running down the other side of the door. I stared
at the handle, convinced it would start turning, And right
before I felt it would, the memories all came back
in a rush, not as a clean memory or a
full scene, but as a sinking way to my chest,
a sharp crack in the middle of my thoughts that
forced everything else to fall through. We had snuck out
that night. I was the one who planned it, the
one who whispered the idea across the room while her
parents slept behind the wall. Daniel had been hesitant, always
more careful than I was, but when I showed him
the flashlights and told him it would just be a
few minutes, just a quick game in the woods, he
nodded and smiled and followed me without asking any questions.
He always followed me, even when he shouldn't have. We
went through the back fence the way we always had,
through the loose panel near the shed, and stepped into
the woods with our lights flicking ahead of us, our
sneakers pushed through wet grass, and the sound of night
pressing in from all sides. I remember the way his
laugh bounced between the trees, how it made everything feel
safe for a little while. He and I loved the
idea of sneaking out being mischievous. He kept his walkie
talkie pressed to his mouth, calling out dumb nicknames, trying
to sound official, trying to make it into a real mission.
I teased him for it, tell him he needed to
stop acting like a baby. He just laughed again. At
some point I told him we should play hide and seek,
that he'd counter thirty and he had to find me,
and that we wouldn't leave until he did. I promised
I wouldn't make it too hard for him. He grinned
at the idea and bolted into the underbrush with his flashlight,
swinging side to side, shouting I'm going to start counting now.
As his voice disappeared behind the trees, I turned off
my flashlight and walked in the opposite direction, not into
the woods, but out through the fence, across the yard
and straight into the house. I wanted to mess with
him just a little. I wanted to scare him, let
him call through the walkie talkie and get no resk,
let him think I was hiding from him while I
lay warm in my bed. At the time, it felt harmless,
funny even I remember thinking I was teaching him something
that he needed to toughen up. I left him out there.
I climbed into bed, pulled the covers over my head,
and waited for him to break character. I expected to
hear the door creak open, hearing come stomping in with
fake anger in his voice. I thought i'd hear the
walkie talkie chirp with one of his goofy catchphrases, some
dramatic line about how he'd survived the mission. Instead, I
heard static. The walkie talkie was in my hands, turned
to his frequency. It was just fuzz at first, cutting
in and out, but then something else pushed through. I
couldn't make out the words. Then it didn't sound clear,
just wet and broken, full of wind and distance, her
voice trying to climb through a storm. I fell asleep
listening to it. I don't remember when the sound stopped,
only that I was holding the radio when the sun
came through the blinds now standing in my room with
a dripping still faintly echoing from the other side of
the door, and the walky talkie pulsing with heat in
my hand, I understood exactly what it had been saying.
Those broken phrases, the things I had been hearing for weeks.
They weren't new. I had heard them that night. I
had just chosen to forget. I didn't realize was crying
until my voice cracked so hard it collapsed in my throat.
I dropped to the floor with the walk He pressed
against my mouth and shouted into it. I screamed until
spit filled the corners of my mouth and my voice
came out hoarse and shaking. I screamed his name over
and over, told him I was sorry, told him I
was a coward, told him he didn't deserve what I did.
Told him I never stopped thinking about him, even when
I tried to forget. I told him I was wrong,
that I knew I was wrong, that I left him
there because I thought I was better, thought I was clever,
thought it was just a joke. My face was soaked,
my cheeks, my chin, my neck. Snot ran from my
nose without stopping, and I didn't wipe it away. My
chest ached, my stomach folded in on itself, and I
kept crying until I couldn't breathe. I clutched the walkie
like you could hear me better if I held it tighter.
I held it and to my knuckles were pale, and
to my palms started to cramp. Every apology came out
heavier than the last, every word spilling through clenched teeth,
my body shaking under the weight of it. The walkie
talkie went quiet, and outside the door, the drippings stopped.
I sat there in that silence, gasping for air, pulling
it in through teeth, as if oxygen could push down
the gilt, as if saying sorry one more time could
rewind anything. I don't know how long I stayed like that, minutes.
Maybe ours time didn't move the same. I didn't notice
when the world went still. I only knew I hadn't
moved and didn't want to. But I kept speaking. I
kept whispering into the walkie even after the sound died.
I whispered apologies until my throat gave out. I said
his name until the word didn't sound real any more.
I begged him not to hate me. I begged him
to believe I didn't mean it, even though I had
walked away on purpose. The tears kept coming until I
had nothing left, Until the words stopped forming, My lips
moved without sound, my head slumped forward against the floor,
and somewhere in that endless, awful stillness, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, my eyes were crusted shot, and
the light bleeding through the window was cold and gray.
My mouth was dry, my back stiff, and the walky
talkie was still pressed between my fingers. I sat up, slowly,
wiped my nose with a sleeve from my shirt, and
stared at the bedroom door. I didn't want to open it,
but I did. Right outside the threshold, the wood floor
was soaked. A single puddle stretched across the boards, no trail,
no sauce, just water, clear still and shining faintly under
the morning light. I wiped the morning from my eyes
and finally decided to confront it all. I went back
to our family house one more time. I didn't turn
any light on. When I stepped inside. The air was stale,
and the carpet still held a scent of whatever candles
my mom used to burn near the holidays. I walked
through the quiet halls, past the photos on the wall,
past the coathogs that held nothing, and into the living room.
Whether furniture had already been taken out. The only thing
left was the echo of what used to be there.
I sat down on the hardwood floor, my legs ached
from the walk my chest heavier than it had been
in days. I set the walky, talking on the floor
in front of me. I'm sorry, Danny, I was a fool.
I walked out into the woods. The next morning. The
fence behind the shed was still loose, the boards still
slightly detached where we used to sneak through. It hadn't changed,
though the yard behind me had turned brown from neglect.
I slipped between the trees with the walkie in my
coat pocket, stepping over fallen branches and patches of soft,
sun choked moss. I found the spot easily. I pulled
the walkie out and held it for a while without
saying anything. The plastic had softened from the cracks the
tape holding it together, beginning to peel at the edges.
I looked down at it and said his name. Then
I said I was sorry, one last time, as if
he heard me. The static finally stopped, and it felt
like it had stopped for good. I knelt and dug
a small hole beneath the root of a tree, not deep,
just enough to place the walky inside. I covered it
with soil, pressed the dirt down with my hands, and
sat there with my back against the tree trunk. There
were no prayers or closure, only silence. The wind moved
through the branches, the leaves overhead swayed gently, the sound
brushing the top of the trees. I sat there until
I couldn't feel the weight in my chest anymore, and
everything inside of me emptied out. I go back there, sometimes,
not for guilt or out of fear. I sit with
the tree and the dirt, the same ground where we
once played, and I talked to him and when I do,
I imagine he's somewhere close by, listening,