He hadn’t spoken to his brother in 19 years.
Then one rainy morning, he found their childhood TV buried in the attic.
The screen was cracked, the knobs rusted — but he couldn’t throw it away.
He turned the dial and waited.
When the static finally cleared, the past came roaring back.
📖 Part 1 – The Sound of Snow
Harold Dunn crouched beneath the attic beam, dust curling in the cold light as he wrestled the old TV down from the far corner. It was heavier than he remembered. Boxy, black-and-white, rabbit ears bent like broken fingers. The kind they used to sit cross-legged in front of every Saturday morning, a bowl of cereal in one hand and their elbows bumping as they laughed.
Now the attic groaned under decades of silence.
Harold, 67, lived alone in a creaky farmhouse just outside Belfast, Maine. His wife, Marianne, had passed five winters ago. Since then, time had slipped into a gray rhythm — coffee at six, newspaper by seven, quiet by eight. Days were tidy. Predictable. Until the rainstorm two nights ago, when water leaked down through a cracked roof tile and dripped directly onto a cardboard box labeled “Garage Sale or Trash?”
Inside: a pair of roller skates, two broken G.I. Joe figures, and the TV.
He brought it downstairs that same night, wiped off the grime with an old T-shirt, and set it on a wobbly end table in the garage. That’s where he sat now, adjusting the antenna like a surgeon might reset a bone. He didn’t know what he hoped for — maybe just a flicker, a hum, some proof it hadn’t died altogether.
The first time he turned the knob, there was only silence.
The second time, it hissed — faint, but alive.
Harold leaned in, heart ticking fast. Static, yes. A low snowy fuzz. He recognized it instantly, like the sound of an old friend breathing.
“Channel 3,” he murmured.
It used to be their favorite. Bugs Bunny reruns. The Flintstones. But more than that — it was safe. It was the one time in the week when he and Tommy weren’t fighting, weren’t dodging Dad’s belt or Mom’s bitterness, just two boys with bedheads and peanut butter breath, giggling on the floor.
Tommy.
He hadn’t said the name out loud in years.
Not since the argument. Not since Mom’s funeral. Not since they’d stood on either side of the same grave and walked away like strangers.
Harold pushed the knob again. The screen flickered, lines twisting like ghost wires.
Then, just for a second, it sharpened — a burst of grayscale, a pair of cartoon eyes wide in surprise. Then gone again.
His breath caught. He looked around the garage like someone might’ve seen it too.
The next morning, he cleared out the living room.
Not just tidied — restored. He rolled up the modern rug, pushed the recliner to the garage, dug out old boxes from the crawl space. He pulled down the brown-and-orange afghan blanket Marianne had crocheted in ’78. Dusted off the coffee table with the gum still stuck underneath. He even found the battered plaid couch they used to wrestle on, the one with a cigarette burn stitched shut with red thread.
He put it all in place like a museum curator resurrecting 1972.
Then he carried the TV — reverently, carefully — into the room.
When he plugged it in again, the screen sparked, whined, then settled into its familiar snow.
And for a moment, Harold could almost hear it — the sound of laughter, the creak of wood as Tommy shifted beside him, the clink of cereal bowls, the echo of something they’d lost.
He sat cross-legged on the floor.
He turned the dial to Channel 3.
Then the phone rang.
He froze.
No one ever called at this hour.
The phone rang again — harsh, urgent, like something from the past trying to break through.
Harold stood slowly, heart heavy, and reached for the receiver.
“Hello?”
Silence. Then a click. Then nothing.
Only the soft hiss of static behind him.
📖 Part 2 – Milk Crates and Broken Promises
The phone didn’t ring again.
Harold stood there, the receiver still in his hand, eyes drifting back to the glowing TV screen — a dull hum of static that filled the room like fog. It wasn’t much, but it was company.
He set the phone down and shuffled back to the floor. His knees cracked as he knelt. He chuckled softly at the sound — once it was marbles in his pockets, now it was gravel in his bones.
He stared at the TV.
“Come on,” he whispered, as if coaxing it through sheer memory. “One more time. Give me one cartoon. Just one.”
Nothing but snow.
But still, he stayed. Something had shifted. That phone call — or whatever it was — lit a fuse in his chest. Old restlessness. Old regrets.
He pulled out a plastic milk crate from under the coffee table, the same kind Tommy used to sit on when the couch was taken. Inside it now were records, magazines, a crumpled baseball glove. And folded neatly at the bottom — a photo album.
He hadn’t opened it in years.
The spine crackled like dry leaves as he peeled it back. Polaroids. A few square Kodaks. Harold and Tommy on Christmas morning with matching cowboy hats. Tommy holding a frog out in the yard, his grin all teeth and dirt. A rare photo of their father in a flannel shirt, not smiling, but not angry either. And then — their last summer together. 1974. Before Tommy left for college in Ohio.
Before things went wrong.
Harold sighed and ran a calloused thumb across the edge of the photo. That summer, they built a treehouse in the big maple behind the barn. They spent days hauling wood, hammering nails, arguing about who got the top bunk. It wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs.
Then Tommy left, and the letters stopped, and Dad got sick, and everything fell into silence.
Harold blinked hard and closed the album.
He glanced again at the TV. Still just static.
A knock on the door made him jump.
It wasn’t loud. Just two soft raps — like a neighbor with a pie or a kid selling something. Harold shuffled to the door, rubbing the small of his back.
But when he opened it, no one was there.
Just mist.
The yard sloped into fog, thick as soup. The only thing he could see was the outline of the barn and the swing set, still standing after all these years. The same one where Tommy broke his wrist trying to jump off mid-swing.
Harold closed the door.
He turned back toward the living room, but the light was different now. The static had dimmed. The screen buzzed — not louder, but… fuller. More alive. And then — a flash.
Cartoon shapes. Two seconds. Maybe less.
He stepped forward slowly.
“I saw that,” he whispered. “Don’t mess with me.”
He adjusted the antenna. Then again. Then kicked the carpet in frustration.
Nothing.
Until he heard a voice.
Not from the TV. From behind him.
“You really brought it all back, huh?”
Harold spun around.
No one was there.
He stood perfectly still, the room suddenly colder than before. The TV hissed. The photo album lay open again on the floor, a picture of the two boys waving at the camera. A tear had crept its way to the edge of the page.
Harold sat down slowly on the crate.
For the first time in decades, he said the name like it still meant something.
“Tommy.”
The word landed with weight.
He reached for the phone again and stared at it. Then — slowly, awkwardly — he pulled out an old directory from the drawer. His fingers trembled. He didn’t even know if Tommy still lived in Ohio. Didn’t know if the number was still good.
But he turned the pages anyway.
When he found the name, he stared at it for a long time. Thomas E. Dunn. Akron, Ohio.
He picked up the receiver.
Then set it down.
Then picked it up again.
And dialed.
Rings.
One.
Two.
Three—
“Hello?”
Harold froze.
That voice. Older, rougher, but still there underneath.
“…Tommy?”
A long silence.
Then:
“…Harold?”
Neither spoke for a moment.
Then Tommy exhaled — like someone coming up from deep water.
“I saw your number,” he said quietly. “On my caller ID yesterday. I… I didn’t pick up. Didn’t think you’d ever call.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Harold admitted. “But… the TV. The one from the attic. It still works.”
A soft laugh on the other end. “Channel 3?”
“Yeah. Still there.”
Another pause.
Then Tommy said, “You still remember the cereal song?”
Harold smiled despite himself.
“Of course I do. ‘Snap goes the crackle, pop goes the cheer, breakfast with brothers is the best time of year.’”
Both men laughed — small, sad, real.
Then Harold asked the question that had lived behind his ribs for two decades:
“Why’d you stop writing?”
The line went quiet.
Then Tommy’s voice came back low.
“Because I was ashamed.”
Harold leaned forward.
“Of what?”
The answer never came.
Only a soft click.
Then the line went dead.
Only the static remained.
