Whispers in the Static: Part 6

Part 6 – The Chorus of the Lost

Arthur had grown accustomed to the rhythm of it.
Night after night, Helen’s voice drifted through the static like a tide returning to shore. Sometimes soft, sometimes broken, but always hers. His father’s voice now mingled there as well — steady, reassuring, a comfort he had never expected to hear again. Between them, the nights no longer seemed hollow.

But on the sixth night, the static carried more.

It began with Helen, as it always did.

“…Arthur… my love…”

He closed his eyes, smiling faintly in the dark. The red glow of the radio painted the room with its dull warmth. Then came his father, firm yet gentle.

“…proud of you, son.”

Arthur whispered back, his voice trembling, “I can hear you. I’m here.”

The static bent, cracked, and another voice slid in — faint, wavering, but known.

“…remember the summer by the lake?”

Arthur’s eyes shot open. That voice — it was his mother, long gone, the sound of her lullabies still haunting the corners of his childhood.

“Mom?” The word caught in his throat.

“…yes, sweetheart… I’m with you.”

The air in the room grew thick. He sat upright, clutching the edge of the sheets as more whispers trickled through. His mother’s lullabies surfaced first, gentle as ever, and Arthur nearly wept at the sound.

Then another voice joined — one he hadn’t thought of in years.

“…Arthur, remember when we stole the rowboat?”

Arthur froze. It was his cousin Michael — mischievous, sharp-tongued, a boyhood companion whose grin had often meant trouble. He’d drowned in the river the summer they were seventeen.

Arthur’s chest tightened. Why Michael? Why now?

Still, the static carried his laughter, weaving with his mother’s softness, with his father’s steadiness, with Helen’s love.

One by one, they emerged.
A chorus of the lost.

The voices overlapped, tangled, speaking over one another in bursts and fragments.

“…Arthur, I miss you…”
“…so proud…”
“…the lighthouse, remember…”
“…the lake, the boat, the gardenias…”

Arthur pressed closer to the radio, his breath ragged, tears spilling down his cheeks. All of them, gathered together, filling the silence that had once threatened to bury him.

And yet, beneath the flood of voices, something stirred in him — not doubt, not fear, but a small, unsteady hesitation. The sound was too full, too crowded, the words tumbling over one another like stones in a rushing river.

Still, he clung to it. He could not let go.

For the first time in years, he had them all.

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(To be continued in Part 7 – The Bargain in Static)