Whispers in the Static: Part 3

Part 3 – Voices of the Departed

The next night, Arthur didn’t drift so easily.
He lay stiff on the mattress, the covers drawn high, eyes fixed on the radio’s red glow. The static filled the room as it always did — that endless tide, swelling and receding, the ocean he had once found so soothing. But now it was different. Now he was listening, not for the comfort of noise, but for something beneath it.

The hours stretched thin. He began to doubt himself, to wonder if exhaustion had simply played tricks on him. He had almost surrendered to sleep when the sound came.

The static bent.
The waves parted.
And through the crackle, a voice pressed close:

“Arthur.”

He gasped, but before fear could drive him to silence the machine, another word slipped through. Two words. A phrase. His heart lurched.

“It’s me.”

The sound was broken, scattered by the roar of static, but there was no mistaking it. He knew that voice. He had known it better than his own.

It was Helen.

Arthur’s throat tightened. For a moment he could only stare into the dark, the old photograph on the dresser catching the faint moonlight. Her smile frozen there, her eyes alive in memory. He had not spoken her name aloud in months, not since the funeral. And yet, here she was.

The static rippled, carrying fragments of her voice like driftwood on a current. Words half-lost, then found again. Little things — “love”… “missed you”… “still here”. Each syllable was like the warmth of a hand he thought he would never feel again.

Arthur’s body trembled. He pressed closer to the radio, the cracked plastic cool beneath his fingertips. “Helen?” he whispered into the noise, his own voice foreign to his ears.

The answer came — broken, halting, but real.

“Yes.”

Arthur closed his eyes, a sob caught between joy and disbelief. He didn’t care how or why. All that mattered was that the static had carried her back to him.

And for the first time in years, he welcomed the night.

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(To be continued in Part 4 – The Nights of Helen)