Call‑Waves from the Dark Bay

The drizzle had been falling since afternoon, dark‑grey clouds covering the coastal sky. Sea wind carried a salty, damp scent into Arthur’s old pickup truck. He drove along the dirt road up the slope until he spotted the outline of the lone transmission tower standing atop the hill.

It was a two‑storey concrete building, its faded yellow paint peeling, long streaks of rainwater running down the walls. Some sections had begun to crack, and the tall steel antenna swayed in the wind. Below lay the dark bay, shrouded in rain mist so thick the edge of the sea could not be seen.

Arthur was a communications repair technician, assigned to inspect the long‑abandoned tower — left untouched for more than forty years — before it was scheduled for demolition in two days’ time. Before setting off, his supervisor had sent him a short note to read:

«When you are at the tower, do not tune to unknown low‑frequency channels. If you hear singing, switch off all equipment, and do not look toward the sea.»

He had not paid it much mind, thinking it was only an old warning passed down to keep workers from being startled by interference from the ageing machinery. Villagers nearby spoke of “the singing woman beneath the waves” that came on rainy nights — yet Arthur had never believed such coastal tales.

He picked up his toolbag and flashlight, then pushed open the rusted steel door, its screech echoing all around. The ground floor was thick with dust and rotting leaves, the floor damp from rain seeping inside. He climbed the slippery concrete stairs to the upper control room — the heart of the transmission tower.

Large transmitter‑receiver units lined the walls, their yellow switches faded, some screens cracked, wires hanging loose from the ceiling. A salty‑damp smell mixed with rust filled the air. Arthur shone his flashlight around before starting his main inspection, and noticed one frequency dial set far from the official standard — as if someone had adjusted it long before.

As dusk fell, the rain grew heavier, drumming steadily against the metal roof. According to his work order, he had to stay overnight to monitor signals through the dark hours. He set up his folding bed beside the large window, where all he could see was grey mist and the distant crash of waves.

He had cut the main power to the transmission system, thinking he could rest — but at midnight…

A faint static hum rose from the direction of the receiver.

Arthur jolted awake. He was certain he had shut all power off; there was no way the machine should be running. Yet the static lingered — not only from the speaker, but seeming to drift from every corner of the room. Slowly, a long‑drawn singing sound blended in — soft and sweet, rhythmic like a fisher‑folk’s chant, though with no clear words, drifting on the rain‑wind from the dark bay below.

He sat up, shining his flashlight toward the equipment — yet everything stood silent. Still the singing rang in his ears. He covered them with his hands, but the sound would not fade. He pulled out the warning note to read again, and spotted small handwriting at the very bottom he had missed before:

«It tunes the frequency to match our minds.»

The rain beat harder against the roof, and the singing from the sea kept drifting in through the dark…

Pale grey morning light seeped through the windows as the rain faded into thick mist, shrouding the dark bay until no shoreline could be seen. Arthur woke with a heavy weight in his head; the singing from the night before lingered in his memory as if he had heard it only moments ago. He rose to check all wires and switches once more, to make sure the main power had been fully cut — yet he found nothing wrong with the equipment.

He began searching the old drawers of the worktable and found a faded brown leather‑bound notebook, the logbook of the tower’s keeper from 1983. The first pages held only routine signal‑check records, but as he read on, the words slowly changed. He spotted a sketch of a woman with a fish‑tail drawn along the page edge, alongside a short warning note:

«What sends the sound is the siren of the dark bay. It lies beneath the deep waves. It does not send its call only on the wind — it uses radio waves as loudspeakers to carry its summons far onto land.»

Arthur read it over and over, unwilling to believe — yet the memory of last night’s song grew clearer. He played back the audio recording he had set up the night before: static mixed with light rain, then the soft drifting singing — and what made him freeze was the frequency reading on the screen: it came from deep within the bay, not from any registered radio station or ship.

By afternoon, the mist thickened further. Arthur felt his mind beginning to shift. He kept turning toward the window without thinking, staring down into the bay’s darkness. A thought crept in again and again — that if he went down to the shore for a while, he might understand what the sound was. He tried to push the thought away, yet the harder he fought it, the more it returned.

When night fell once more, the rain poured heavily again, and the singing grew louder than the night before. This time it was not just soft chanting — it called his name, growing clearer little by little: «Ar‑thur… come… come to us…» He looked down toward the shore through the window; far away beneath the mist, silver‑green lights flickered up and down in time with the waves — as if something was watching him from the water’s edge.

Arthur stepped back from the window, gripping the table‑edge tight to stop his feet from moving on their own. He understood now: the siren had not come for him for just one night — it was pulling at his mind, slowly drawing him toward the sea, bit by bit…

Thick mist swallowed the sky, hiding every trace of the moon — it seemed as though the whole bay lay wrapped in darkness. Arthur stood by the window, his breathing growing faster. He began to understand the hidden truth: humans had not stumbled upon this strange signal by chance. They had built the transmission tower — like a giant loudspeaker — to carry the siren’s call farther ashore.

He ran toward the transceiver, determined to destroy the frequency‑setting that had been tuned to catch its song. But as he brought the screwdriver near the dials, the singing swelled suddenly. It seeped into his head, clouding his thoughts. The urge to go down to the shore pulled him toward the door instead of toward the machine.

«Just go and see for a moment… just go meet them…» a whisper rang in his ears.

Arthur fought to resist, dragging himself back to the table and grabbing a pen to write a warning report for anyone who would come after him. Yet his head grew dizzy, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold the pen. Then he heard a soft scrape‑scrape coming from the concrete stairs below — not footsteps, but something crawling up the stone surface, scales grating against the floor.

He dared not look toward the control‑room door. The siren’s song blended with the creeping sound, drawing nearer every second. Silver‑green glimmers seeped through the cracks beneath the door, and the darkness seemed to creep closer to his table.

The next morning, the inspection team arrived at the tower as scheduled. They called Arthur’s name again and again, yet there was no reply. The steel door that had been locked stood open from the inside.

Inside the control room, they found no trace of him — only the audio recorder still running, playing the soft drifting song from the sea. Scattered across the tabletop and window‑ledge were tiny silver‑green scales, as if something had passed through only moments before. On the paper he had begun to write, only one final legible line remained:

«It does not come through the radio… it waits for us to hear it.»

The team shut down all equipment, locked the door, and prepared to leave — yet none of them knew that this low‑frequency signal still spread beneath the waves. On rainy nights when the mist hangs thick, it waits for new listeners to hear its call once more…