Chapter 2: The Wrong Frequency

Chapter 2: The Wrong Frequency

The morning after felt like a hangover from a dream Jax couldn't quite remember. The sky was an infuriatingly normal, washed-out blue. The memory of crystalline spires and thread-like beings felt absurd in the harsh light of day. He’d almost convinced himself it was a shared hallucination, a trick of the storm, until he turned the key in the Bronco’s ignition.

The radio crackled to life, and the song began.

It was the same three-note sequence from the drive-in, but now it was… complete. A full melody had been built around it, an eerily serene tune played on what sounded like glass flutes and shimmering chimes. It was simple, repetitive, and deeply, fundamentally wrong. It was playing on 93.5 The Rock. He twisted the dial. It was on the pop station. The country station. Even the AM talk radio station was broadcasting the same placid, empty melody.

A cold knot formed in his stomach. He drove to school with the radio off, the silence somehow more menacing than the song.

The hallways of Havenwood High were a low-key madhouse of the mundane. Lockers slammed, sneakers squeaked on linoleum, chatter echoed off the concrete walls. But underneath it all was a new, horrifying soundtrack. Students, teachers, janitors—dozens of them were humming. Not loudly, but unconsciously, their lips pursed as they went about their business, all whistling the same chillingly perfect tune.

Jax found the others by his locker, their faces tight with the same dread he felt.

“It’s everywhere,” Maya said, her voice a low, tense whisper. She clutched her books to her chest like a shield. “Every clock radio, every store speaker. My dad was humming it while he was shaving. He looked… vacant.”

Chloe nodded, her stylishly oversized sweater doing little to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. “My mom too. She just stood at the kitchen window, staring at the garden with this weird, dreamy smile, humming that… that thing.” The memory of the cold, predatory hunger she’d felt from the sky-glimpse returned, and she recognized a pale, diluted echo of it in the adults’ placid expressions. It was a satisfaction that wasn’t their own.

“It has to be some kind of prank,” Jax insisted, slamming his locker shut with more force than necessary. The clang made a few nearby students turn, their humming briefly interrupted before they resumed, their eyes unfocused. “Some pirate radio station hijacking the airwaves.”

“A signal powerful enough to override every frequency in town?” Maya countered, shaking her head. “The FCC would be all over it. There’s no panic. No investigation. No one else even thinks it’s strange.”

They were an island of four in an ocean of serene acceptance. The humming was the tide, and they were the only ones who knew it was pulling the entire town out to sea.

Leo was the quietest of all. He hadn't said a word, his gaze darting around the hallway, his sketchbook held in a white-knuckled grip. His eyes kept flicking to the reflections in the glass of the trophy case nearby.

“Leo? You okay?” Chloe asked, her voice soft with concern.

“Their faces…” Leo whispered, his voice cracking. “In the glass… they’re not right.”

Before anyone could ask what he meant, the bell shrieked, its familiar, grating sound a welcome intrusion. The spell of the hallway was broken, and they were forced to separate, each carrying their shared secret into classrooms filled with the enemy's music.

For Leo, art class had always been a sanctuary. Today, it was a torture chamber. Mr. Garrison, a portly man with a kind smile and chalk dust on his elbows, was droning on about perspective, all while humming the melody under his breath. The sound grated on Leo’s nerves, a constant, abrasive friction against his sanity.

He tried to focus on his charcoal still-life of a ceramic pitcher, but his eyes kept drifting to the large window that looked out onto the schoolyard. He could see Mr. Garrison’s reflection in the dark glass, distorted slightly by the angle.

And it wasn't Mr. Garrison.

Leo’s breath hitched. He blinked, rubbing his eyes, but the image remained. Where the reflection of his kind, balding art teacher should have been, there was something else. It was tall and spindly, its limbs bent at impossible angles like a praying mantis. Its head was a smooth, chitinous bulb with no discernible features save for two shimmering, multi-faceted eyes. The thing in the glass wore Mr. Garrison’s tweed jacket like a loose, ill-fitting skin. It moved when he moved, its too-many-jointed limbs mimicking his teacher's placid gestures.

A wave of vertigo and nausea washed over Leo. He shot out of his chair, knocking his stool over with a clatter.

“Mr. Martinez? Is there a problem?” Mr. Garrison asked, his voice full of bland concern.

Leo couldn't speak. He could only stare at the window, at the horrifying, insect-like creature superimposed over his teacher's form. He stumbled backward, grabbing his sketchbook, and fled the room, the sound of his own ragged breathing drowning out the teacher's humming.

He didn't stop running until he was outside, hidden behind the bleachers, his heart hammering against his ribs. He flipped open his sketchbook and his hands, slick with sweat, began to draw, trying to exorcise the image from his mind by pinning it to the page.

Meanwhile, Maya found refuge in the school library. The librarian, Mrs. Gable, was also humming, but at least here it was quiet enough to think. The song wasn't just a song. It had to be a signal, a carrier wave. She pulled out her Walkman and a mixtape she’d made of The Cure, popping the headphones over her ears to block out the ambient humming. It didn't work. The alien melody was still there, a phantom sound bleeding through the melancholic guitars.

Frustrated, she took the headphones off and rewound a blank tape. Pressing record, she held the Walkman up, capturing the faint humming from the front desk. She played it back, cranking the volume.

There it was. Cold. Pure. Perfect.

She closed her eyes, letting her perfect pitch do what it did best: deconstruct sound. She filtered out the simple, overt melody, the part everyone was humming. She pushed past the shimmering chime-like harmonies. She listened for the gaps, for the acoustic space between the notes.

And that’s when she heard it.

Hidden beneath the serene music, woven into its very fabric, was something else. A discordant, guttural whisper. It was a language, harsh and clicking, structured in sharp, rhythmic bursts. It wasn't melodic. It was functional. It was a series of commands.

She couldn't understand the words, but she could feel their intent. A short, sharp command. The humming in the library grew marginally more content. A longer, flatter phrase. Mrs. Gable straightened a stack of books with robotic precision. It was a language of control.

Maya’s blood ran cold. She fumbled in her bag for a pen and scribbled on a napkin, trying to phonetically represent the patterns. She played the tape again and again, and one word, one command, repeated more than any other. It was a soft, sibilant hiss that seemed to smooth over the edges of reality itself.

Forget.

That evening, they met in the alley behind the diner, the greasy smell of fried onions mixing with the twilight air. The song still trickled from the diner's radio, a constant, mocking reminder.

Leo, still trembling, showed them the drawing. The creature was terrifyingly real on the page, its spindly limbs and bulbous head a thing of pure nightmare.

“I saw it in the window,” he choked out. “It was wearing Mr. Garrison’s face. It was inside him.”

Jax stared at the drawing, his skepticism finally crumbling into raw, furious belief. This was beyond a prank. This was an invasion.

Then Maya spoke, her voice devoid of emotion, which was somehow more terrifying. “It’s the song. It’s giving them orders.” She held up the napkin with her frantic scribbles. “I can’t translate it, but I can hear it. Commands. Smile. Work. Listen. And this one…” She pointed to the hissing phrase. “This one tells them to forget. Forget they saw anything strange. Forget they feel anything is wrong. Forget who they are.”

Chloe wrapped her arms around herself, the pieces clicking into place with sickening finality. The vacant looks. The mindless humming. The soulless contentment she could feel rolling off them in waves. They weren’t just being influenced. Their minds were being overwritten, hollowed out to make room for the monsters Leo could see. The humming resonance in her bones from the night before now felt like a receiver, tuned to a frequency of horror.

“My God,” she whispered, looking from the monstrous drawing to Maya’s chilling words. “The change isn’t coming.”

Jax finished her thought, his voice grim as he looked out at the street, at the townspeople walking by with their dreamy smiles, humming their new favorite song. “It’s already here.”