The Phantom Pulse #1 | May 2026
John K. Peck
I shimmered into a summer afternoon, summoned by the smell of cut grass and the roar of machines revving in the warm, still air: a good day to sing.
I crossed palatial suburban gardens with cement fountains and meticulous lawns until I came to a wilder place, where a buzzing sounded from beyond the line of hedges. I stepped through the hedges and into a sunny meadow, grass soft beneath my feet. At the center of the meadow was a man, facing away from me, swinging a machine in wide arcs over the ground and walking slowly forward as he did.
I opened my mouths to sing with the spinning whirr of the machine, and as I grew louder and closer, I reached out a finger to touch the man’s neck; I knew I shouldn’t, but the beads of sweat on the surface of his skin were so round and perfect. He had a shimmer about him, too, and I admired him. My eyes glistened with nascent tears at the first notes of contrapuntal harmony, so beautiful did I find them, and I felt the acid sweat of anticipation glistening on my skin.
He turned around and we harmonized for a bit, all our mouths agape, sun dappling the leaves as they shook lightly in the breeze. But then he stopped his singing and fell onto the newly cut grass. His machine went silent, and so did I, no longer confident in my fledgling voice. A line of ants emerged from the grass and crawled up one of his bare arms, and I took my leave, stepping back into the bushes at the edge of the yard.
My feet are small and step quietly. Children, one called me. She seemed to have eyes that did not work and could only hear footsteps passing her door. Children, I hear your little feet, she said. I tried forming the word, littlefeet, but teeth and tongues and larynges were so far from each other, and the sound that came out was like the chug of a motor half-buried in mud, and it made me sad. I snatched the piece of hard candy she held over the threshold, retreated into the shadows, and sucked on it until I was happy again.
Decades or days, all the same, and I was ready to sing once more. It was late in the cold season, dawn, and the mud crept across yards and sidewalk-strips, leaving dark streaks on the pavement.
In the narrow space between two buildings, sounds beckoned from a door that had been left slightly ajar. I accepted the invitation, and once inside I climbed the stairs to where the sound was louder. Then the source of the lovely noise revealed itself: a woman holding a long shiny tube attached to a deafeningly loud machine, running it gently over the carpet. It was louder than it should have been, and also less effective, both of which pleased me as it meant her dance could go on for longer. I’m much too shy to dance on my own but love to accompany, so I matched her movements. Mouths open, harmonizing with the rasping soprano timbre of the machine, mouths and eyes wide, staring, eyes wider, wider than ever, smiling, ready to sing and smile and be seen. Then she sway-stepped unexpectedly onto my foot, the long wormy one, and the singing truly began, both of us reaching registers I never imagined, soaring into the highest falsettos until she, like the grass-man, folded and fell.
Unlike the grass-man’s machine, which had silenced itself in sympathy, hers continued its rasping whine, and I stood there, shutting all my eyes at once, which took a tremendous effort and which I almost never did, harmonizing ecstatically with the exuberant little machine in the dim dawn light.
They called it something else. But if my voice and the voice of another, for as long as we could hold our notes, remained in harmony, then who was to say whether it was singing or not?
You have a shimmer about you, my mother said countless years ago, and a beautiful voice.
Summer returned, and I was summoned incessantly to the sun-drenched morning fields where feet ran back and forth and mouths made glorious noises, to the late-afternoons of slanted sunlight and the quieter harmonies of insects, to the humid nighttime gatherings with lights and noises big enough to fill the darkened sky.
At night, from a grove of trees, I looked out over an expanse of fearsome brightness and noise. A building-sized wheel slowly turned, lit up in all the colors, people rising into the sky in swinging seats, then descending. No singing there, so my eyes moved yet higher to where carts roared along tracks and people raised their arms though the dips and curves, singing as they flew through the night. Louder and closer, a spinning disc with flashing lights, people pressed to the sides, singing, singing when it tilted. I scaled the insignificant fence in the dark and dropped onto the grass.
From a nearby building resounded an especially heavenly chorus. Carts carried people two at a time, and though the carts moved slowly, the singing was loud and immediate. Ghost Manor, a voice boomed from crackling speakers each time a new cart entered. I tried to repeat the phrase but it was all sibilance and groan. No matter; I would save my voice. I slunk beneath the tracks, slipping into the dark hole from which the carts emerged, and took my stage between a suit of armor and a hanging skeleton, illuminated in faint blue and red light. Though the singing was closer and more beautiful, I desired louder and stronger, something truly worthy of accompaniment. A cart approached, a boy and girl sitting close, and I stepped out, smiling, arms spread as I hit a note higher than I had ever reached.
My hearts leapt as the two joined in, singing along as few had ever done before, stumbling from their seats into the blue-lit darkness and sweet-smelling fog. Others sang, abandoning their carts as well, and then the tracks juddered to a halt and the lights went on, and the singers multiplied, madrigals of oh christ and what the hell sounding forth.
We all spilled out into the night, where a celebratory display of some sort lit up the sky, flowers of beautiful sound and light exploding and sending bright embers earthward, and I raised several eyes to behold it. As I moved triumphantly through the chorus of voices I had inspired, they fled and fell and clawed one another, and I rose to my full height with countless arms aloft, no longer a harmonist but a conductor, leading a choir with sufficient mouths to match my own.
About the Author
John K. Peck is a Berlin-based writer and musician. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Cold Signal, Dark Horses, Glasgow Review of Books, and various anthologies, and his novelette “Evergreen” was published in 2025 as part of the Split Scream series from Tenebrous Press. Read more at johnkpeck.com.