The air in the research lab was a cold, constant whirr, a sound as endless as the tides. It was a new kind of haunting, all whirring tape drives and blinking lights. The brackish water of the nearby estuary lapped against the foundation, its scent seeping through the vents — a familiar comfort in a world of stark, unfamiliar machines.
Aleya, a shimmering, phosphorescent haze, drifted lazily between rows of glowing vacuum tubes. Her form, once a blinding beacon, now flickered with the erratic pulses of electricity, as if struggling to exist. Her light, meant to lure fishermen to their doom, now only cast a faint rainbow oil slick on the polished concrete floor, its vibrant energy diffused and scattered by the humming machines. She watched a lone security guard, watching a cricket game on a small television in the corner, oblivious to the ancient presences around him. The static on his television felt familiar, a different kind of fire, but one that consumed them all the same. “Remember when they at least looked up from their nets?” she hummed, her voice a series of soft, resonant chimes.
Beside her, Mechho Bhoot’s colossal, monstrous shape was a faint smudge against the mainframe’s grey panels. The blinking red and green lights of the consoles distorted his hazy outline, making his form seem to glitch and flicker. He leaned forward to dip a spectral finger into a glass of water on a nearby desk, but his hand passed through it without a ripple, as if the water itself had become too dense for him. Frustration rumbled in his throat. “They didn’t have these infernal boxes, but fire pits they would sit around and tell our tales,” he grumbled, the sound a low, earthy churn. Suddenly, his form flickered violently, and for a heart-stopping second, he vanished completely. The space he occupied went cold, an empty, silent void. He shuddered back into a hazy existence, a little more transparent than before, his essence unravelling and pulling itself together with painful, ectoplasmic effort. “They were too busy praying we didn’t drag them into the depths.”
As Aleya’s shimmering light wavered, Funayūrei’s wispy silhouette moved closer to Mechho Bhoot. “Are you alright?” Funayūrei whispered, his voice laced with a genuine fear that echoed the panic on Mechho Bhoot’s face just moments before. Mechho Bhoot’s great shape, still trembling slightly, gave a dismissive grunt. “I am what I am,” he rumbled, though his voice was a little weaker than before. “Fading is the natural course of things.”
A Will-o’-the-Wisp, a flickering orange spark named Wispy, bobbed near a tape drive. “At least we’re still here,” he quipped, a laugh like static electricity, but his usual cheer was strained. Wispy, while wandering across the planet, had found a strange kinship with Draugen, the Norse sea spirit, whose ghostly silhouette — a faint outline of a drowned seaman — simply stood silently, his presence a heavy, cold draft. Draugen’s cold presence intensified, a bone-deep chill that made the air feel heavy. For a brief moment, the sterile hum of the mainframe was replaced by the roar of a furious storm. He saw the rolling, black waves, heard the splintering crack of a wooden hull, and felt the primal satisfaction of dragging an entire vessel into the crushing depths. The faces of the sailors, their panicked screams swallowed by the tempest, were a familiar warmth in his memory. Then, as quickly as it came, the vision vanished, leaving behind only the antiseptic chill of the lab and the whirr of the machines.
Aleya’s light dimmed, reflecting a deep sadness. She watched her own spectral fingers pass through a solid mainframe rack as if it were air. “They talk about us in the stories,” Aleya said, her voice dropping. “But the stories are different now. They’re no longer meant to be warnings. We’re just… folklore.”
Funayūrei, a wispy silhouette of a drowned sailor, finally spoke. His voice was a mournful whisper. “I remember the storm. I remember the waves.” He paused, a look of pure terror on his face. “I… I remember thinking, ‘If only I could have made it back to my wife.’ ” He looked down at his own hands, which were now flickering like an old film. “But what was her name? I can’t… I can’t remember her face.” The memory of her was a flickering, corrupted fragment in his mind, turning to static at the edges. His silhouette grew a little more solid, the fragmented memory pulsing through him. “It was a way to keep living. A way to not be forgotten.” His words hung in the air like a cold mist. “But then, I became something else. Something fun. A boat-dragger.” He sighed, the sound like wind through a ship’s rigging. “It was good.”
“I’d do it again,” Funayūrei whispered after a long pause, his words hanging in the air like a cold mist. Draugen, the massive, silent Norse spectre, nodded in slow agreement. His jaw, a faint outline of bone, opened and closed, the sound a low, grinding sigh. He gestured toward the security guard and his radio, a lazy, translucent arm sweeping toward the man’s ear.
“They’re not even a challenge,” Mechho Bhoot rumbled, a deep, mournful sound. “He’s not looking for a light in the dark. He’s looking at his own light. A screen. A different kind of fire.” He laughed, a humourless, rattling sound that made the mainframe tremble imperceptibly. “At least our fire was honest.”
Aleya shimmered, her light casting a faint, rainbow-like oil slick on the polished concrete floor. “They’re not the only ones to blame,” she chimed. “We became a comfort. We’re on their screens, in their books, their films. We are no longer the unknown. We’re a genre.”
“A genre,” Draugen’s voice boomed, the first time he had spoken, and it felt like a cold gust of wind in the humid room. “A ghost story. A bedtime tale. A way to feel brave in the dark. It’s what happened to all of us.” He turned his empty eye sockets toward Wispy. “Even your lantern, little flame. It is a symbol for a pumpkin.”
Wispy flickered, a tiny ember of hurt in the air. “I’m still a mischievous imp,” he defended weakly. He bobbed closer to a console and, with a silent surge of ectoplasmic will, managed to scramble a few punch cards. The transistor radio’s baseball game suddenly cut out, replaced by a blast of high-pitched static. “See?” he chittered. “We still have power. Just… smaller.”
Mechho Bhoot chuckled, the rattling sound a little more vibrant now. “Weak magic,” he muttered. “Interacting with electricity. We’re glorified gremlins now.”
Just then, they are distracted by an advertisement on the television — Narrator with an upbeat and bubbly voice “Are you ready to meet the things that go bump in the night? To gaze into the heart of the storm and find a new best friend waiting just beyond the spray? This October, from the deepest bogs and the darkest seas, a new family is born!” On the television there are quick, lighthearted flashes of the monster gang playing charades, a ghost trying to do chores, and the man from before accidentally giving his bucket of fish to a monster who hugs him happily. The narrator continues, “The ancient legends of folklore and monsters are no longer whispered tales around a campfire. They have been found, befriended, and brought to your very own living room! The wacky lights of the marshlands… the mischievous spirits of the ocean floor… We’ve given them all a fun new gig! Be there… for a laugh!”
Draugen took a heavy, silent step forward, his shape casting a momentary chill. “See?” he boomed, his voice like the grinding of ice. “It is over. We became a genre, and now we will be butt of all jokes. There will be no one afraid of us anymore. There is nothing left for us but to be forgotten entirely out of our existence.”
But Funayūrei’s form brightened, his earlier melancholy fading into a newfound excitement. “But what if we can use this to our advantage?” he asked, his voice filled with a desperate hope. “What if our weakness is our new strength? We’re ghosts. We’ve always been stories. We’ve always been a way for the living to remember the dead. We will not be forgotten.” His spectral finger pointed towards the Radio station nearby. “We can be a new kind of haunting. The modern world is our river, and their wires are our currents. We could get people to write new, scary stories!”
“A radio show for them… on the radio?” Aleya chimed, her light dancing with a new energy. “A contest for the scariest ghost stories from water bodies to be read out on the show ‘Witching Hour’!”
Mechho Bhoot’s shape solidified a little, his hazy teeth sharpening for a moment. A predatory gleam returned to his eyes. “Manipulate the station’s wires,” he growled. “Rework the transmitters. Change the programming. We don’t have to be the monsters in the dark anymore. We can be the monsters in their machines.”
Draugen was silent for a long moment, watching his friends. The fear in Funayūrei’s eyes and the desperate hope in Aleya’s light seemed to awaken something ancient within him. He took another step, a wave of cold energy radiating from him. He nodded his grim approval. The five of them, ancient terrors reduced to digital pranksters, began to focus their weak, collective will on the telex machine. It began to clatter violently on its own, its metal type bars striking the paper with a furious, unstoppable rhythm.
The telex’s lights flickered as its type bars clattered, spelling out an official-looking memo for the radio station. But the words weren’t a standard announcement. The message that appeared was stark, final, and compelling:
A Call from the Deep
Do you believe in ghosts? The sea has a story to tell. Send us your scariest encounters with marine spirits. Be there. The Witching Hour is listening. The scariest stories will be read out to our listeners!
As the lines were being typed, the hum of the lab suddenly felt different, less like a machine and more like a heart, beating to a new, shared purpose.
Dr. Suvajeet Duttagupta, a nanotechnology PhD from IIT Bombay (India), embarked on an unexpected journey into the world of art. For years, writing was a private pursuit, but he’s recently found the confidence to share his distinctive horror-adjacent stories. His work has appeared in various online magazines—Tasavvur Magazine, The Berlin Literary Review, Brown Hound Press, Twisted Tongue Press & Effy—with several new pieces forthcoming in multiple anthologies scheduled for 2026.
Published 8/7/26