Do you believe in ghosts?

The morning Aliyah met her old friend, Brent, down at the beach was marked by a cold fog. Her shoes crunched across the damp sand, the crisp, fishy scent of the ocean strong enough that she could almost taste it in the air.

Brent was a lone figure standing on dark, jagged rocks, the breeze tying strands of his brown hair into tiny knots.

“Don you believe in ghosts?” he asked Aliyah when she came close.

She stayed quiet, hoping he would continue on his own, but he didn’t. Instead, he held up a radio—one half of a walkie-talkie pair—and turned it on.

Static, as Aliyah expected. Then a burst of heavier static, rhythmic in its occurrence. It was the same sound she and her childhood friends used to make when they just breathed into a walkie-talkie.

Maybe she wasn’t close enough to hear what her friend heard. Raising one foot, Aliyah slipped a little before the treads on her shoes held her steady. Brent offered her his free hand, and then she found herself ten inches taller on top of that slick, black rock.

Standing toe to toe with him, Aliyah listened closely to the static. After a minute of nothing, she glanced at Brent, opened her mouth, and said—

“What am I supposed to be hearing?”

Aliyah snapped her mouth shut. That was her voice, but she hadn’t said anything. Her gaze, wielding an accusation, dropped to the walkie.

“Is that—” she started to ask, only for Brent’s tinny voice to interrupt.

“It’s us,” he said. “But a different ‘us,’ I think. Because whenever they press the talk button, I hear waves in the background.”

Brent’s mouth never moved. Her breath caught somewhere between her lips and her lungs.

“What have you been saying to these people?” she whispered. Brent’s expression remained stony as he shook his head.

“I haven’t pressed the talk button,” he told her. “Not once.”

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A/N: This little drabble was inspired by the game Oxenfree and the movie Coherence. I highly recommend both of them.