The Girl in the Static

Prologue: The Disappearance

October 17, 1989. The last time anyone saw Emily Carter alive.

She was sixteen, with sun-bleached curls and a habit of humming old rock songs under her breath. That night, she’d been babysitting the Thompson kids two blocks over. When the parents returned at midnight, the house was silent. The children were asleep in their beds.

Emily was gone.

The only trace of her? A small transistor radio left behind on the kitchen counter, its dial stuck between stations, spitting out white noise.

Chapter 1: The Static

Present Day

I never believed in ghosts.

But then again, I never believed a lot of things—until I started working the late shift at WZRT, the oldest radio station in Blackwood Falls. It was a relic of the ’80s, all cracked vinyl floors and equipment that hissed like a living thing. The kind of place where the air always smelled like dust and burnt coffee.

I was running the midnight request show when I first heard it.

A voice.

Faint, buried under layers of static, but unmistakable.

"Hello? Can anyone hear me?"

I froze, finger hovering over the kill switch. The voice was young. Female. And it was coming from inside the broadcast.

"Uh, hey," I said, adjusting the mic. "This is WZRT. You’re on air."

Silence. Then—

"It’s so dark here."

A shiver crawled up my spine. The voice wasn’t just young. It was familiar.

Because I’d heard it before.

On a true crime podcast.

On a grainy VHS of Emily Carter singing in a high school talent show.

Chapter 2: The Signal

I played back the recording the next morning.

The voice was clearer without the live feed distorting it.

"I can’t find the door," Emily—had to be Emily—whispered. "He said it would be over by now. He lied."

Then, the sound of something heavy dragging across concrete. A whimper.

The recording cut off.

I spent the next three nights waiting, listening, my fingers clenched around the studio’s ancient soundboard. The static always came first—a low, pulsing hiss that made my teeth ache. Then, her.

"The radio is the only thing that still works," she said on the second night. "He didn’t know that. He didn’t know I could still talk to you."

"Who?" I asked, my throat dry. "Who didn’t know?"

The static surged, swallowing her reply.

Chapter 3: The Basement

Old Mr. Thompson—the man whose kids Emily had been babysitting the night she vanished—still lived in the same house.

I found him on his porch, sipping lemonade like he hadn’t spent the last thirty years hiding something.

"The police cleared me," he said before I could even ask. "No evidence."

I played the recording.

His face went gray.

"You need to leave," he whispered.

But I’d already seen it—the way his eyes flicked toward the basement door.

The way the knob was wrapped in three layers of rusted chain.

Chapter 4: The Truth in the Static

I waited until midnight.

The basement door opened with a groan. The air inside was thick with the smell of wet earth and something sour—like old meat.

And there, in the far corner, sat a radio.

The same one from the police reports. The one Emily had left behind.

Its cord was cut.

But when I touched it, the speakers exploded to life.

"You found me," Emily’s voice sobbed through the static. "He put me here. The walls—they’re hungry. Can’t you hear them?"

Behind me, the door slammed shut.

The radio died.

And in the silence, I heard it—

The sound of something breathing in the dark.

Epilogue: Dead Air

They found my car parked outside WZRT the next morning.

The engine was still running.

The studio door was locked from the inside.

And on the soundboard, someone had left the mic live—broadcasting nothing but an endless, screaming static.