A flash fiction horror story for the season.

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My grandfather on my mother’s side died about a year ago. They were close, and she was pretty broken up. It wasn’t a mysterious illness or anything. He hadn’t been taking care of himself for a long time, and eventually his body just gave up.

When he died, she didn’t feel like she could get rid of any of his stuff. So she hired me and my brother to move all his things into a big storage unit. Needless to say, we did not keep track of what was in there. Now a week before Halloween, she suddenly decides she wants to know what he had.

But instead of facing the music herself, she asks me to start going through it. I’m like, sure, but only if I can keep his tools and stuff, cause he had some nice ones — if I remember correctly. She agrees.

So I go after work to start cleaning out this storage unit. It’s early evening, and I haven’t eaten much. I figure I’ll only be there an hour and see what I can get done.

I start cleaning it all out. There’s a lot of trash, and I feel like I’m making good progress when I find an old beaten up ouiji board. I laugh and set up the board. I can’t believe my grandfather even had one of these because he was supposedly so religious. I snap a picture with my phone to prove it to my mother.

Then I think, “It’s almost Halloween. I’ve never used one of these. Why not be a little silly.” I close my eyes to focus. I let my mind wander, to consider my grandfather. And a memory of him strumming his old guitar and singing the Beatles’ Blackbird to me as a boy comes to mind. I grin and pretend that something tugs on the toy indicator.

First it jumps to “a” and then “r.” I dramatically finsh tracing out the final word of the song: “arise.” Then I sigh, feeling a little stupid. I stuff the game back into its box and prepare to continue my work.

Which is when his old radio turns itself on.

I freeze. I’m like: holy shit, the radio just turned on. And immediately after I played with a ouiji board. A cold sweat tickles the back of my neck. But it’s still light out, and I’m not especially superstitious, so I force myelf to stay calm and to search for this radio.

It’s lodged behind a few plastic bins on a metal shelf. Even before I get a good look at it though, I realize that something about it sounds familiar. By the time I clear the boxes out of the way, I realize the radio is much newer than I expected, and it’s playing what I know to be my grandfather’s favorite talk radio station. I breathe a sigh of relief because obviously he’d just set the radio to turn on at this time every night.

So it’s all good, and I go back to cleaning. In fact, it’s kind of nice and cathartic in a way, listening to something that I know he would have if he’d been there. A bit of time goes by, and I get ready to leave. I go to shut off the radio, and I realize the power cord is just hanging loose behind the shelf.

My body kind of freezes up again as I blink a few times at this cord, trying not to think about the fact that the radio is playing without being plugged into an outlet. The creepy crawly feeling returns, and I take a deep breath to comfort myself.

I’m like: it’s probably fine. It has batteries, right? It must still be going because of that. I turn the radio around to check and audibly sigh because there’s a big battery box on the back.

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I decide I want to take a look at the batteries. I mean, it’s been sitting here for 12 months. What kind of batteries keep a radio like this going, right? So I have to go find a screwdriver. And as I’m looking for the screwdriver, the talk show ends, and an accoustic guitar starts to play. It’s an old song, but I recognize the tune instantly: the Beatles’ Blackbird.

That’s weird, I think. That song does not get played on the radio anymore. But again, the whole evening has been weird, so I ignore it. I find the screwdriver. I open the battery case. And there are no batteries.

It’s at this point that the vocals start to come on strong, and I panic. I throw the radio to the floor. I grab a hammer, and I smash the thing into a hundred little pieces. It stutters, squeals, and goes silent.

I’m left there — shaking — with this hammer in my hand. I put it down carefully, close up the storage unit, and retreat to my car. I sit back, close my eyes, and just breath.

I know I must have imagined something, right? These kinds of things don’t really happen, I tell myself, but my heart races in disagrement. Another deep breath. And another.

When I’m feeling a bit calmer, I start the car and turn on the radio.

And you will never believe what song starts to play.