The Third Dial

The antique shop was the kind of place where dust didn't just settle; it seemed to hold the furniture together. Silas, a man whose life was measured in clicks and notifications, found the object in a corner shadowed by a headless mannequin.

​It was a radio—or at least, it looked like one. It was encased in polished obsidian, cold to the touch, with three silver dials. The first two were standard: Volume and Frequency. The third was blank. No numbers, no markings, just a needle pointing straight up into a void.

​"That one’s a gift," Old Man Thorne whispered, his voice like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "But remember: sound is a spectrum. Just because you can’t hear it doesn't mean it isn't screaming."

​Silas laughed, paid a pittance, and took it home.

​The First Turn

​That night, in the sterile silence of his apartment, Silas turned the radio on. Static hissed—a comforting, white-noise ocean. He turned the Frequency dial. He caught bits of jazz, a weather report from two towns over, and a talk show host arguing about the death of print media.

​Then, he touched the Third Dial.

​He nudged it a fraction of a millimeter to the right. The jazz didn't stop, but the texture of the room changed. The air felt heavy, like the moments before a thunderstorm. The static on the radio didn't get louder, but it became rhythmic.

​Thump. Thump. Thump.

​It sounded like a heartbeat. Silas chuckled. "Sub-bass frequencies," he muttered. "Clever bit of engineering."

​The Second Turn

​Over the next week, the radio became an obsession. Silas stopped watching TV. He stopped scrolling. He just sat in the dark, exploring the Third Dial.

​He discovered that the dial didn't change the station; it changed the depth.

​At a quarter-turn, he could hear the internal mechanics of his apartment. Not just the pipes, but the microscopic grinding of the floorboards under the weight of the building. He could hear the neighbors' hushed breathing through the walls as if they were lying next to him.

​At a half-turn, the sounds became... impossible.

​He heard the sound of the sun hitting the windowpane—a high-pitched, crystalline ring. He heard the vibration of the dust motes dancing in the air. It was beautiful, until it wasn't.

​One evening, he heard a sound like wet leather being dragged across glass. It was coming from the radio, but it was also coming from the hallway. He checked the peep-hole. The hallway was empty. Yet, through the speakers, he heard the distinct click-clack of long fingernails tapping on his door.

​"The spectrum is wider than your eyes can see," Thorne’s voice echoed in his memory.

​The Final Rotation

​Silas hadn't slept in three days. The "heartbeat" from the radio was now a deafening roar that shook his ribcage. He looked in the mirror and didn't recognize himself. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin the color of wet parchment.

​He realized the radio wasn't just receiving signals. It was a bridge.

​The Third Dial was now at the three-quarter mark. The sounds coming through were no longer earthly. He heard choirs of voices screaming in languages that sounded like grinding metal. He heard the sound of stars dying.

​He knew he should turn it off. He reached for the obsidian box, but his hand trembled. He felt a presence in the room—a cold, vacuum-like pressure. Something was standing in the center of his living room. He couldn't see it, but the radio could hear it.

​The speakers emitted a low, wet growl. Then, a voice—distorted and layered like a thousand people speaking at once—whispered his name.

​"Silas."

​The sound didn't come from the air. It came from inside his own skull.

​Driven by a manic need to end the tension, Silas gripped the Third Dial. "Let's see what’s at the end," he hissed.

​He twisted the dial all the way to the right.

​The Silence

​The sound didn't get louder. It stopped.

​The silence was absolute. It was a vacuum that sucked the air out of Silas’s lungs. He looked around. The apartment was gone. Not destroyed—just... gone. He was standing in a gray expanse that stretched infinitely in every direction.

​He looked down at the radio. The obsidian casing had cracked. The needle on the Third Dial wasn't pointing to a mark; it had spun 360 degrees and snapped off.

​Silas tried to scream, but he had no voice. He tried to clap his hands, but there was no impact. He was in the frequency of the Nothing.

​Then, he heard it.

​The click of a dial.

​Somewhere, in a dimension far above his own, a hand reached down. A thumb and forefinger gripped a silver knob. Silas felt his entire being vibrate as the "Frequency" was adjusted.

​He wasn't the listener anymore. He was the signal.

​And someone was about to turn him down.