🕯 Echoes in the Static

Karen always felt that something was wrong with the radio.

She picked it up accidentally at a flea market.

The appearance was shabby, the silver shell was rusted, and the knob was loose,

but the stall owner patted his chest and guaranteed: "It still works, and the sound is very nice."

Karen didn't care too much, just liked the retro atmosphere.

She put the radio on the dressing table in the bedroom as a decoration.

That night, she turned the switch.

The radio immediately made a harsh noise.

She frowned and adjusted several frequency bands, but there was still only a rustling static sound.

Just as she was about to turn it off, suddenly, a sentence emerged intermittently from the noise:

-"Watching you."

Karen was stunned.

Listening carefully, there was only silence.

She smiled and told herself that it was just a trick of the brain.

In the static noise, everything can be heard as hallucinations.

In the next few days, the radio began to be a little unusual.

Every morning at two o'clock, it would turn on automatically,

even if the knob was turned off,

it would make a faint noise.

And among those noises, there was always a low murmur,

like someone was telling an extremely slow, broken story,

the voice was wet, cold, hoarse, and the content was unclear, but it gave people goose bumps.

Once, Karen heard in a half-awake state:

——"Don't turn your head."

She froze in bed,

her brain almost stopped.

I don't know if it was an auditory hallucination or a real existence.

But she did nothing, just lying stiffly until dawn.

One rainy night, the radio started again automatically.

Karen finally plucked up the courage and sat in front of the radio.

She planned to completely dismantle this thing and throw it away.

At the moment her hand touched the top of the radio,

a burst of rapid whispers emerged from the noise, as if countless people were talking in her ear at the same time,

the voices overlapped and twisted, and finally merged into a clear sentence:

——"Did you hear it?"

Karen suddenly withdrew her hand, and the radio seemed to respond to her action.

A violent electric current pierced the air, and the light bulb in the bedroom exploded instantly,

and the whole room fell into darkness.

In the darkness, the radio was still making a faint rustling sound.

It was as if something was slowly approaching the microphone.

The next morning, the neighbor knocked on Karen's door,

only to see the empty bedroom,

the radio on the table lying quietly,

the knob was broken,

the glass on the dial was broken into a spider web.

The house was filled with a burnt smell,

but there was no sign of fire.

As for Karen,

no one saw her again.