At twelve minutes past midnight, the radio told them not to look through the upstairs window.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the first strange thing it had said.
The radio belonged to Josh.
Or more accurately, it belonged to Josh's grandfather until he'd died, after which nobody else in the family wanted it.
It was a heavy wooden thing from the 1950s with a glass tuning display, two cream-coloured knobs and a fabric speaker grille that smelled faintly of dust whenever it warmed up.
Josh loved it.
His friends thought it was rubbish.
"Bluetooth?" Mia asked.
"No."
"USB?"
"No."
"Spotify?"
Josh stared at her.
"It has valves."
"So did the Titanic."
"Those were funnels."
"You know what I mean."
There were four of them in the house that Halloween night: Josh, Mia, Callum and Leah.
Josh's parents were away until Sunday.
They had spent the evening watching horror films, eating pizza and arguing about whether a person would really investigate a mysterious noise in a dark basement instead of simply moving to another country.
At eleven thirty, Callum suggested ghost stories.
At eleven forty, Mia switched off most of the lights.
At eleven forty-five, Josh turned on his grandfather's radio.
An oldies station drifted quietly from the speaker.
Outside, the final Halloween revellers disappeared from the street.
At midnight, the church clock somewhere across town struck twelve.
And at 12:03, the radio stopped playing music.
There was no static.
No fade.
The song simply stopped halfway through a word.
Then came three low tones.
Beeep.
Beeep.
Beeep.
Callum looked up.
"What's this?"
Josh reached for the tuning knob.
Before he touched it, a man's voice came through the speaker.
Mia smiled.
"Very funny."
"I didn't do anything."
"Of course you didn't."
The voice continued.
Callum laughed.
"That's actually quite creepy."
Josh turned the tuning knob.
Nothing happened.
The pointer moved across the glass display, but the voice remained.
He switched to another band.
Still there.
Then he turned the radio off.
The dial went dark.
The voice continued.
Nobody laughed.
Leah slowly looked toward the curtains.
They lived on Bell Street.
"Okay," Mia said. "Who's doing this?"
Nobody answered.
Josh unplugged the radio.
The plug fell onto the carpet.
The speaker crackled.
The announcer continued.
Callum stood.
"There's a battery in it."
"There isn't."
"Then how is it on?"
"I don't know."
Mia picked up her phone.
"No emergency alerts."
Leah checked hers.
"Nothing."
Callum opened a news app.
"No reports."
The radio hissed.
Mia looked at Josh.
"What individual?"
The answer came immediately.
Leah whispered, "Nope."
She got up and closed the living-room curtains more tightly.
Josh checked the front door.
Locked.
The back door.
Locked.
Every rational part of him insisted this was some elaborate prank.
The problem was that he couldn't work out who was performing it.
Or how.
At 12:07, the radio gave another announcement.
Josh stared at it.
His house was number fifty-two.
"Don't," Mia said.
"What?"
"Don't turn the light off."
"It literally just told us to."
"Exactly."
Callum gave a nervous laugh.
"We're taking instructions from a haunted radio now?"
Josh looked through the narrow glass panel beside the front door.
The porch light illuminated the empty path.
Beyond it, Bell Street was still.
Several houses still had glowing pumpkins outside.
Nothing looked unusual.
Then the porch light went out by itself.
Josh stepped backwards.
"Did you do that?" Callum asked.
"No."
A few seconds later, another porch light went dark across the road.
Then another.
Then another.
One by one, lights disappeared along Bell Street.
From the northern end.
Moving toward them.
Leah whispered, "Something's coming this way."
The four of them returned to the living room.
Nobody suggested another film.
Nobody touched the pizza.
The radio sat on the table with its plug still lying on the carpet.
At 12:09, the announcer returned.
Number fifty was next door.
They heard a dog barking through the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Then suddenly it stopped.
Callum reached for his coat.
"I'm leaving."
"Where are you going?" Mia asked.
"Home."
"The radio literally said stay indoors."
"You just said we shouldn't listen to it."
"That was before the streetlights started doing a horror-film countdown."
Callum stopped.
Nobody had noticed until he said it.
The streetlight directly outside number fifty had gone dark.
The one outside number fifty-two remained on.
For another five seconds.
Then it went out.
The room became very quiet.
The radio crackled.
Leah covered her mouth.
Something tapped against the front window.
Nobody moved.
Another tap.
Not a knock.
A fingernail against glass.
Slowly.
Tap.
A pause.
Tap.
Mia whispered, "Don't open the curtain."
Nobody intended to.
Then a voice came from outside.
"Josh?"
Josh went pale.
It sounded like his mother.
Callum stared at him.
"Your parents are away."
"I know."
"Josh?" the voice called again.
"Open the door."
Josh took out his phone and called his mother.
She answered after three rings.
"Hello?"
Her real voice came from his phone.
At exactly the same moment, her voice outside said:
"Josh, I know you're in there."
He ended the call without explaining.
The radio crackled.
The thing outside laughed.
Using his mother's voice.
At 12:11, the tapping stopped.
Footsteps moved along the side of the house.
Slowly.
Toward the back garden.
Callum whispered, "Kitchen."
They heard the garden gate move.
Then silence.
Leah looked toward the ceiling.
"What rooms are upstairs?"
"Bedrooms," Josh said.
"Which one faces the garden?"
"Mine."
The radio gave three tones.
Beeep.
Beeep.
Beeep.
The announcer sounded different now.
Closer somehow.
Callum stared at the radio.
Nobody spoke.
Mia looked at Josh.
"Nobody goes upstairs."
Callum nodded.
Leah nodded.
Josh nodded.
Then they heard footsteps above them.
One step.
Then another.
Directly overhead.
Josh's bedroom.
Callum whispered, "How did it get inside?"
Josh didn't answer.
The footsteps crossed the ceiling.
Toward the rear window.
Then stopped.
Something scratched the glass upstairs.
From inside the room.
Leah began crying.
"Call the police."
Mia already had.
The phone displayed:
CALL FAILED.
Callum tried his.
The same.
Josh's phone had no signal.
The radio hissed.
Then came a loud bang from Josh's bedroom.
Callum jumped.
"What was that?"
Another bang.
Then something heavy dragged across the floor.
Josh stood.
Mia grabbed his arm.
"No."
"My grandfather's photographs are up there."
"I don't care if the Crown Jewels are up there."
Another crash.
Josh pulled away.
"I'm just checking the stairs."
"That's how everyone dies in horror films."
"I'm not going into the room."
He reached the hallway.
Then stopped.
Someone was standing at the top of the stairs.
The landing was dark.
Josh couldn't see a face.
Only a human-shaped silhouette.
Tall.
Motionless.
"Who's there?"
The radio shouted from the living room.
Josh stepped backwards.
The figure moved.
Not down the stairs.
Backwards.
Into his bedroom.
His door slowly closed.
Josh returned to the others.
"What did you see?" Mia asked.
"I don't know."
"Was it a person?"
"I don't know."
The radio crackled.
A cold draught moved through the house.
They could hear the curtains upstairs flapping.
Then Callum did exactly what everyone had agreed not to do.
He ran upstairs.
"Callum!"
Josh followed him to the bottom of the stairs.
Callum reached the landing.
"There's nobody here."
He opened Josh's bedroom door.
"Callum, come back!"
The room was dark.
The window stood wide open.
Callum walked toward it.
The radio began screaming static.
Mia shouted from downstairs.
"CALLUM!"
He reached the window.
And looked out.
For several seconds, Callum didn't move.
Josh stood in the doorway.
"What is it?"
Callum whispered something.
"What?"
Callum turned around.
His face had lost all colour.
"It's us."
"What?"
"In the garden."
Josh didn't approach the window.
Callum pointed behind him.
"All four of us."
Mia and Leah reached the landing.
"Get away from there," Mia said.
Callum shook his head.
"They're just standing there."
"Who?"
"Us."
Then Callum's expression changed.
"They're looking up."
The radio downstairs went silent.
A new voice came through the speaker.
Callum's voice.
Everyone stared at him.
Callum whispered, "That wasn't me."
The voice repeated:
Behind Callum, something rose slowly into view outside the window.
Josh saw only the top of a head.
Then two eyes.
Looking in from the darkness.
They were on the first floor.
Josh grabbed Callum and pulled him away from the window.
The four of them ran downstairs.
Nobody looked back.
The radio was speaking rapidly now.
A knock came from the cupboard beneath the stairs.
Three times.
They ignored it.
Another knock came from the kitchen cupboard.
Then the bathroom.
Then Josh's bedroom door upstairs.
The entire house seemed to be knocking.
The radio continued.
Josh looked at the clock.
12:16.
"One minute."
Nobody moved.
The knocking became louder.
Thirty seconds.
The lights flickered.
Twenty seconds.
Something ran across the landing.
Ten.
The front door handle began turning.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Silence.
Every light in the house came back on.
The radio went dark.
Outside, the streetlights returned.
Their phones regained signal.
Nothing stood in the garden.
Nothing was upstairs.
The bedroom window was closed.
They stayed together until sunrise anyway.
At eight the next morning, Callum examined the radio.
"It can't work unplugged."
Josh looked exhausted.
"We established that."
"No. I mean it can't work at all."
He turned the radio around.
The rear panel was missing.
Inside was an empty wooden cabinet.
No valves.
No speaker.
No wiring.
Nothing.
Josh stared into it.
"My grandfather removed everything years ago."
Mia looked at him.
"Why?"
Josh remembered something.
A story his grandfather used to tell.
Something Josh had always assumed was a joke.
He went to the drawer beneath the cabinet and searched through a pile of old papers.
At the bottom was a folded newspaper clipping.
Dated November 1st, 1956.
The headline read:
UNEXPLAINED RADIO WARNING REPORTED ACROSS TOWN
Josh read silently.
Several residents had claimed that their radios interrupted normal programming shortly after midnight on Halloween.
Most had heard only static.
A few reported hearing addresses.
One family had heard their own.
At the bottom of the article, his grandfather had written something in pencil.
It isn't warning us about what is outside.
Beneath it:
It is warning us about what gets in.
Josh threw the radio away that afternoon.
Not into the bin.
He drove it to the recycling centre himself.
He watched an employee carry it away.
Then he went home.
For the next year, nothing happened.
Callum refused to discuss what he had seen in the garden.
Mia stopped making jokes about the radio.
Leah never visited the house after dark again.
Josh moved away the following summer.
By the next Halloween, number fifty-two Bell Street belonged to a young couple.
They knew nothing about the radio.
Nothing about Josh.
Nothing about the previous Halloween.
At 12:03 a.m., their television interrupted the film they were watching.
The screen went black.
Three low tones sounded.
Beeep.
Beeep.
Beeep.
Then a man's voice spoke.
The couple stared at the television.
The man reached for the remote.
Before he could press anything, the voice continued.
The couple looked at each other.
There were only two of them.
The television hissed.
Then the announcer spoke one final sentence.