The Voice at 3 O’Clock

Beth’s life had become a repetitive blur of caretaking. At 35, she was single and dedicated most of her time to her older brother, Steven. Ever since his second stroke, Steven had become someone else — a man trapped in a deteriorating body with eyes rolled back, revealing only the whites, and a long, unkempt beard that seemed to grow despite his weakening state.

They lived in an isolated country house, with the nearest neighbor five miles away. Steven had once been a large man, but after his strokes, his body began wasting away. Beth had trouble taking care of him — he was still too big for her to easily move — but it wasn’t just the physical difficulties that weighed on her.

Steven didn’t speak much, but when he did, it was always the same phrase. “The light bends wrong here.” Over and over, he would mutter those haunting words. No one — neither the doctors nor the specialists — could explain it. They all said the same thing: “It’s just a symptom of his condition.” But Beth knew better. There was something deeper — something off.

Steven would spend most of his days in front of the old TV, the screen constantly flickering with static. For some reason, it was always stuck on channel 3, even though they only had antenna TV and the signal barely reached the house. Static or not, the TV stayed on.

Every day at exactly 3 PM, without fail, Steven would get up from his chair, shuffle over to the window, point outside, and repeat “the light bends wrong here.” Beth would look, hoping to see something, someone, anything — but the fields were always empty. Just snow, the endless tree line, and the faintest ripple of wind through the tall grass.

Beth wasn’t the only one who had noticed. She had invited neighbors over once, explaining Steven’s condition, but they were unsettled by the way he would rise at 3 PM, point, and say his words “The light bends wrong here.” No matter who was in the room, Steven never missed his cue.

It wasn’t just neighbors. Family members would visit, their concern etched on their faces, but they too were greeted by the same eerie routine. “It’s just what he does,” Beth would say, her voice growing tired, defeated by the strangeness of it all.

Beth had even reached the point of calling in a priest, hoping that maybe there was something spiritual going on, something beyond the realm of medical explanation. The priest had been patient, understanding, and curious — but no one could make sense of it.

And, like clockwork, 3 PM hit. Steven stood up, pointed, and said it.

Beth sighed. “This is what he does,” she muttered. But then, Steven did something he had never done before.

He stopped, turned his head toward her, and asked, “Beth… who’s that?”

Her heart froze. The priest, startled, stood up. They both rushed to the window and peered outside. Nothing. Just the same barren fields. Then, a ripple moved across the landscape — a figure at the edge of the property.

It was humanoid, but its proportions were all wrong. Its head was triangular, and its eyes were darker than anything Beth had ever seen. They didn’t reflect light — they seemed to consume it.

Beth gasped, feeling her stomach drop as the figure pointed at them with a long, thin arm. The priest muttered something under his breath, stepping backward, his face pale. And then, as if things couldn’t get worse, the figure spoke.

Its voice was cold, metallic, yet hauntingly familiar. It echoed Steven’s phrase exactly — the words he’d been saying all along.

Beth felt a cold rush of panic. She had seen strange things in her life, but this was beyond explanation. Her mind couldn’t grasp what was happening. And then she noticed something else — the way the light seemed to warp around the figure, almost as if it was struggling to exist in this reality.

“The light bends wrong here,” she whispered, the realization chilling her to the bone.

The triangle-headed figure didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t blink. It just pointed, repeating Steven’s words, staring at them through those blacker-than-black eyes.

Suddenly, the air grew heavy, like the atmosphere itself was pressing in on them. Beth could feel her heart racing, her skin tingling with dread. She turned to Steven, hoping for a sign — some clue — but his face was as empty as ever, his lips still whispering that same old sentence.

It was then that Beth understood. Steven hadn’t been suffering from a stroke. He had been seeing something all along, something waiting outside their house every day at 3 PM. And now, it was finally making itself known.

The priest, visibly shaken, clutched his cross and took a step back. “We need to leave this place,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

But Beth couldn’t move. She was rooted in place, staring out the window as the figure slowly began to advance toward the house, its shape twisting unnaturally, warping the space around it.

And for the first time in a long while, Beth found herself repeating Steven’s words, the same words the creature had been saying all along.

The End

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