Mostly, since the antenna was broken, radio broadcasts would be barely audible, combined with indecipherable static, fusing with other stations and sounding like jumbled nonsense. Sometimes the transmissions came in so low I had to sit with my ear right at the speaker to catch what was coming through.

  The sounds I hear in my head, those other sounds, the voices, are just like that and they come through with the best reception at night.

  It’s not remotely scary or creepy.

  For the most part, it’s just nonsense and in a weird way, it’s comforting.

  The same way one might find comfort in white noise, a running fan, a humidifier; the constant murmur lulls me to sleep. Sometimes I pick up what the voices are saying and for the most part, it’s like eavesdropping in on a conversation that you’re not a part of and know nothing about.

  Like a game of broken telephone.

  I always go to bed before Sarah. She stays downstairs, a night owl.

  We are that couple who goes to bed at different times. It sounds dysfunctional, but it works. After eleven years together, you need to develop a routine that works, and this is ours.

  I head upstairs to bed around 10 p.m. She stays up online, reading news, watching TV.

  A night person.

  Every night it’s mostly the same thing.

  I slip into bed, turn the bedroom and upstairs hall light off with the app on my phone, and roll over onto my side.

  I close my eyes and begin the gentle drift into sleep.

  And while sleep creeps up slowly, I listen.

  The silence and stillness and maybe even the darkness helps with reception.

  It’s always so random. Just snippets. Conversation fragments.

  Tonight, as I drift into sleep, I’m tuned in.

  And they are in full chatter.

  “…if she could just focus she’d be fine, but she doesn’t want to, so I don’t know what to do!”

  “…wouldn’t have to tell me twice, hell, I’d be out the door if I were you…”

  “…you don’t know her like I know her though, it’s not that easy to just leave…and I can’t just send her somewhere else…”

  It sounded, from what I could gather, like two women talking about …a daughter? A sister? Perhaps a mother? Maybe a lover or spouse? I have no idea and I never will. That’s the thing about any conversations I hear. They are never resolved. I never fully know what they’re about.

  They just float in, already in session, and fade out never to return, like a storm cloud forming and dissipating.

  Are they dead people? Are they someone else’s thoughts? Am I some kind of mutant with super-hearing, and I’m over-hearing the neighbours? I honestly have no idea.

  I feel my body relax as sleep creeps up on me.

  I listen some more. Different voices now. An older man.

  “…all this used to be grapes. I was growing grapes here and would make wine. Wasn’t any good as a wine maker though. Used to give it to the mailman. Not even sure if he liked it or not. I’d drink it, but I drink anything. He could use it to clean his drain for all I know! But the grapes are gone now. Stopped growing them…”

  Sleep tugs on me gently, pulling me deeper. The closer I get to sleep, the clearer the voices become.

  A younger voice now. Not sure if it’s male or female.

  “…broke some dishes trying to make breakfast for my mom and blamed it on my dad…he told me not to try to climb up on the countertop unless I asked him first…stupid dishes…”

  Nonsense.

  And then sleep takes me.

  I awoke suddenly in the night to the sound of the front door downstairs violently slamming shut.

  I froze. My first thought was that Sarah went out for a cigarette, but then I felt her weight, heard her breathing beside me.

  Wait a minute, I thought to myself.

  Who the fuck just shut the front door? Was someone leaving? Were we just robbed in our sleep and that was the intruder, shutting the door on their way out?

  Or is someone still here, downstairs?

  I held my breath, straining to listen for anything. A creak on the floor, shuffling around, whispering downstairs.

  Nothing but a thick silence.

  A small snap. The house settling? Too small a noise to be someone moving around.

  I reached for my phone on the charger on the night table and pulled up the app that controls the lights and turned on all the downstairs lamps.

  As the lamps switched on downstairs, some of the light trickled up the stairs into the hallway outside our bedroom door.

  I listened.

  More silence.

  If someone was down there, they would have reacted to the lights suddenly turning on. They’d have jumped. Shouted out. Scurried and run out, realizing they were caught.

  Something.

  But I already knew there was no one down there.

  I listened longer, for anything.

  Sarah’s breathing beside me.

  3:43 a.m.

  It was sinking in now: The door did not slam shut. That unmistakeable sound of our heavy door closing was another noise in my head. It was a dream, it was my imagination.

  I knew without worrying too much about it that if I went downstairs right now to check things out, (like they do in horror movies and it never ends well) our door would be bolted shut just as Sarah had left it when she came in after her final smoke of the night.

  There was no need to worry. I’ve had this dream before.

  In fact, I hear that exact sound of the door slamming shut (it’s not actually “slamming” at all, it just sounds like a slam the way the noise carries up the stairs) every single night before Sarah comes to bed. I hear it whether I’m awake in bed or not. It’s the last thing she does before coming up. She shuts the door and locks it. The noise is ground into my psyche, so naturally I had a dream about it.

  That’s all this was.

  I flicked the downstairs lights off with the app, put my phone back on the charger on the night table and rolled over onto my side.

  I heard a car drive by outside. The whispery whoosh as it passed by our house and faded away out of earshot.

  And quiet. I listened as I closed my eyes.

  There was no one downstairs.

  “…love what you did with the paint colour in here, it’s gorgeous…”

  The chatter was still going. And it melted into the quiet of the house and the small, normal noises that a house makes in the middle of the night. That’s all there was.

  Nothing more.

  “Jim, you gotta get up. Jim? Your alarm is going off…”

  Not sure if it was Sarah or my alarm that woke me, but I was up.

  7 a.m. always came so fast.

  I grabbed my phone and hit the dismiss button, killing the alarm. Sarah didn’t work until 10 a.m. so she had a few more merciful hours of sleep than me. I got up and started the routine.

  Into the bathroom.

  Down the stairs, noted casually that the front door was bolted as I knew it would be, through the living room and into the kitchen.

  Handful of vitamins. Big glass of water. Hit the button on the coffee machine. Went upstairs to take a shower.

  Then off to work. Normal day.

  I started to put together a mental “to do list” of things I needed to get done at work today and I heard a wee bit more of the chatter as the shower hit my face.

  “…doesn’t even know what he’s doing…”

  “…oh my god… that’s terrifying…”

  “…he’s going to die…”

  Who is going to die? Unsettling. Like the door slamming shut last night.

  I corrected myself: the dream of the door slamming shut last night.

  Just nonsense in the brain.

  Turned the shower off. Time to get dressed and start the day.

  I got home from work at about 4:45, a time of day I was never a fan of. Even worse in late winter, when it still wouldn’t be spring for another month or so.

  The light always bothered me around this time. I was so much more of a morning person.

  Morning light is fresh and crisp. Hopeful, cheerful and bright. Energizing.

  The light this time of day was different.

  The mood is always uncomfortable in the late afternoon before dusk.

  The sun is getting ready to begin its descent. Cold, dying daylight pours in at a strange angle from the west, casting ugly light and tall shadows. Wasn’t very motivating.

  I was tired from work, seven hours of sitting in front of a computer all day and coming home to a sun that’s equally tired of being out. It feels like the day is basically over.

  Sarah would be home about an hour after me.

  I always found it unsettling, coming home to an empty house. Never liked it. Feels so cold.

  I opened the curtains wide, letting that sour winter afternoon light in.

  I plopped on the couch and grabbed the book I was reading, but kept it on my lap.

  Chatter. Voices. Conversations in progress. They came through loud and clear in the quiet house during these lonely afternoons.

  “…gotta clean all the gutters out and it’s a mess…”

  “…well I know the streets better than anyone, I’ve been navigating this city since the fifties…”

  I coughed loudly and sneezed. A slight headache was forming. I was just about to get up to grab an allergy pill or a cold med in case it was an oncoming bug, and then the tone changed:

  “…Jim, you there? …Jim?”

  Loud and clear. Clearer than the others. And it felt…pointed. Aside from the voice saying my name – it felt stronger, directed at me. Direct broadcast for my ears.

  It was a woman’s voice, familiar, but no one I could put a name or face to.

  I listened. Faded scraps of conversations, nothing I could make out well. I was trying to hear that voice again.

  The quiet was heavy in the house. Almost tense.

  I listened.

  “…hi Jim…”

  I held my breath.

  There she was. I tried not to overthink it, tried not to listen too hard. You know those magic eye puzzles that used to come in the paper, in the comic section? To properly see whatever picture was hidden in the puzzle, you almost had to let your eyes go out of focus and not stare at any one specific spot? That’s what it’s like listening. You can’t home in too closely. You must listen in general and let whatever comes through, come through.

  I responded back with my own internal voice, even though I felt a bit ridiculous. Hearing voices is one thing. Talking back to them is another.

  “…are you talking to me?” I asked.

  Immediately the voice responded.

  “…be careful and don’t make any mistakes, Jim…”

  Was I imagining this? It sure didn’t feel like it. This felt like another party, another person dialing in and messaging me directly.

  “…not sure what you mean…” I thought back at them.

  Nothing. A car drove by outside. The furnace came on.

  “…hello? Are you there…” I asked into my own thoughts.

  Nothing but the thick silence of a winter afternoon.

  Be careful and don’t make any mistakes. I chuckled to myself.

  Okay. I’ll try not to. Weird.

  Decided to nap until Sarah got home. My head was pounding. Could be the pressure change. Could be that seasonal headache that everyone gets this time of year. My Dad used to say it felt like he was wearing a hat that was too tight, the pressure got so bad. For my mom and sister it was all in the chest.

  My dad and I, it always got to our heads. A nap would help.

  But first, I had to grab that sinus pill.

  You must stay ahead of these winter bugs.

  It was a typical evening. We watched mindless TV, flipped around for a movie, and found nothing as usual and ended up half-reading news and scrolling through social media.

  In the back of my head was the message I heard earlier. It felt like a warning, but what intrigued me even more was the clarity with which it came through.

  “…be careful and don’t make any mistakes, Jim…”

  Crystal clear. Strong.

  I’ve heard these voices and this chatter my whole life, but never before directly to me. This no longer felt like listening in on a conversation in progress. This felt like a direct call.

  What did I have to lose? I decided to humour myself and do a search online.

  Searching the words “Hearing Voices” leads to all kinds of sites about mental health. They say it’s not necessarily mental illness and that it’s a common thing for many people to experience what professionals call “auditory hallucinations.”

  I thought of the sound of the door slamming last night. I have those all the time.

  But the voices. Those are something else.

  I changed my search.

  “Hearing+Voices+Mediums+Psychics.”

  My thoughts turned to the psychic, the clairvoyant who I saw on that talk show when I was a kid.

  I typed the word “clairvoyant” into the search bar.

  Turns out that’s not the correct word I was looking for when it comes to a person who can hear voices, like a psychic. Clairvoyant is seeing things.

  Amazing what you learn when you consult the great and powerful internet.

  The proper term, I learned, is clairaudient.

  Clairaudience is the ability to hear psychic messages. According to the site these may be external, coming from a source outside your head, or may be internal a voice in your head.

  I searched “How to develop clairaudience.”

  Skimming through lots of the new age talk, I found a few suggestions on how to better tune in to these voices.

  The article suggested listening. I already knew that.

  But the article stressed to make an effort to try to gently tune into sounds you normally don’t focus on – leaves rustling, distant wind chimes, traffic – and see if you can isolate each one and focus on it for a few moments.

  “At first, this may be hard, but when you practice doing this more often, you will expand your range of hearing and it will be easier for you to pick up sounds from the spirit world.”

  I chuckled to myself.

  The spirit world.

  The second suggestion in the article was to ask questions.

  “Ask into the beyond for an auditory message. Are you pondering a specific question? Focus on it and ask about it. You must call out to the beyond. Invite them in, tell them they are welcome, that you are listening, that you are receptive.”

  It echoed part of what the talk show psychic had said to the kid:

  “If you can make anything out, pay attention to what they’re telling you.”

  I wasn’t specifically looking for guidance on anything, but I decided to give it a try that night in bed.

  “Invite them in…”

  I was on my side, eyes closed, the faint light from Sarah watching TV creeping up the stairs.

  I focused on the sound of the furnace. The odd car that would drive by. The wind.

  The small ticking of the blinds against the window from the furnace air coming through the vent.

  And I did what the site suggested and “called out to the beyond” so to speak.

  Alright… if you’re there, whoever you are. Come through. This is my invite to you. Tell me what you want. Tell me who you are. Come in and talk to me. This is your invitation. Show me what you’ve got.

  I internally eye-rolled myself. But I listened, eyes closed. Murmurs. Noise.

  Come in. Show me.

  I want to know who you are.

  And then:

  “Jim.”

  That same voice I heard earlier said my name. Again.

  Not a question. A notification.

  It was telling me it was here.

  Who is this? I asked in my head.

  “Jim…” it said again. Silence. And then, eerily low, taut, cautious: “Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle. Jim. Listen to me. Jim. There’s a little boy in the corner of your room right now. Far corner. By the window, in the shadows. He has no head, Jim. He doesn’t have a head. And he wants to hurt you.”

  The words came in crystal clear as if I was wearing an earpiece.

  What the hell was happening? Was this real? Was I projecting it, scaring myself with an overactive imagination that wants to hear something, so my mind invented it?

  I froze. I kept my eyes shut. Afraid to look.

  Chills ran over my body like rain, like crawling fingers, bugs, like flurries of static.

  I felt my stomach drop, I felt my heart rate increase. Anxiety.

  Why am I so terrified? This is NONSENSE!

  By the window, in the shadows.

  He has no head, Jim. He doesn’t have a head. And he wants to hurt you.

  If I rolled over, I’d be facing that exact corner where the voice told me the headless little boy was, but my gut said not to do it.

  I sensed something in the room, like I was being watched. I felt anxiety building.

  My heart pounded. My ears throbbed. I felt lightheaded. Dizzy. The throb in my head came back. My neck tense, taut. I could feel the tendons tight like wire, ready.

  Fight or flight kicking in.

  My eyes were wide.

  It seemed somehow darker in the room. The darkness seemed different. Usually light from the streets coming in from the window and from the TV downstairs cast a glow on the room, but not tonight.

  Tonight the darkness was thick. Blinding. Like a shadow over the entire room, painting the walls and air pitch black.

  I felt like how I felt when I was a kid, when I used to be afraid in my room at night. Paralyzed with terror. Every noise sounded larger, bigger. Close up.

  He has no head, Jim. He doesn’t have a head. And he wants to hurt you.

  I also couldn’t help but think this was ridiculous, and that I could prove this whole thing was just my imagination if I simply looked in the corner and saw exactly what was there waiting for me: Nothing.