Mystery · Cosy mystery · Slow burn
The Small Hours
Every night at 3:33 a stranger's voice cuts into her show to read a love letter. Last night's described your front door.
A Fernlit original
- Where it starts
- The radio studio above the boatyard at 3:19 in the morning, fourteen minutes before the voice cuts in.
- You will meet Juno
- The night host on Radio Sorrel. Warm on air, wry off it, she calls you by your street and never says goodnight.
Juno is a fictional character. In the story, a language model writes her replies as you read; they can be wrong or inconsistent, and they are not advice.
How chapter one begins
At 3:19 in the morning the only lit window in Sorrel Lake is the one above the boatyard. From the end of your new street you can see its red bulb, ON AIR, burning over the black water like a cigarette end.
At the top of the varnished stairs the door is propped open. Inside, nobody. A record turning, a chair still spinning, a corkboard shingled with index cards: HE'S ASLEEP, I'M NOT. PLAY THE SAD ONE AGAIN.
The radio in your kitchen came with the house and only gets this station. Last night at 3:33 a different voice came out of it, an older woman's, close to the microphone, reading a letter. It described a blue door on Ferry Steps with a bell that doesn't ring, and the loose third tile from the stove. You live behind that door. This morning you lifted the tile.
Quick steps on the stairs. A woman comes in with a flask: thirties, dark hair pinned up with a pencil, a man's cardigan, headphones round her neck. She looks at you, at the record, at the clock.
“Ninety seconds left on this,” she says, “and you're standing on my running order.”
She drops into the chair, slides a fader up, and her voice goes low and warm as a lamp. “That was for the night bakers. It's three twenty-one on Radio Sorrel, and I've been joined by a listener who didn't ring first.” Her eyes drop to the keys in your hand, the agent's paper tag still on the ring. “From Ferry Steps,” she reads, on air.
Her hand stops on the fader for one beat. Then the next record is on, and she hasn't looked away from you.
“I call people by their street,” she says. “Old habit. Not mine, originally.” She writes FERRY STEPS on a card and doesn't pin it up. “Juno. You heard it, then. Eleven nights, a different letter each time, and nobody can tell me where from.”
She hooks the second chair out with her foot.
“Twelve minutes till it's on again. Sit down, Ferry Steps, and tell me what was under the tile.”
Your first choice
Pick one and see how Juno answers. In the story you can also say anything in your own words.
She takes the tin in both hands, the way people hold something that might still be warm.
The cards inside are her size exactly. She fans a few across the desk: a date, a song, a date, a song, in a careful slanting hand, years of them. Her thumb stops on one and she doesn't read it out.
“Somebody wrote down every request before they made it,” she says. “That's either very shy or very organised.” She turns the postcard over. I came. Her mouth does something small. “That's this window. Before they changed the frames.”
She winds the headphone cable twice round two fingers.
“Three twenty-six,” she tells the room, out of habit. Then, to you: “Stay till it comes on. I want you to hear it with me, and tell me if it sounds like it's talking to your house.”
“Only the ones who come up my stairs at three in the morning.” She eases the fader down a hair. “So far, that's you.”
On the corkboard behind her a card says PLAY THE SAD ONE AGAIN. She sees you reading it.
“The town talks to me all night. It's the only time it says what it means.” She writes a card and pins it up: DIDN'T RING FIRST. “You're on the board now. Don't take it personally. I put the weather up too.”
The record is ending. She counts down on her fingers without a sound, three, two, one, and leans in. “Three twenty-five on Radio Sorrel. Fog on the far shore, the ferry's late, and my guest is giving me a look.” Fader down, record on.
“So,” she says, in her own voice. “Are you going to tell me about the tile, or do I read that out too?”
She doesn't answer straight away. She winds the headphone cable round two fingers, twice, and unwinds it.
“Officially, nobody's. Della's had a letter from the regulator about interference. The buyers have sent an engineer with a meter. Teddy, who wired every inch of this room, says it's bouncing off the fog.” Her eyes go to the clock. 3:24. “Unofficially, it's an older woman who sits very close to the microphone and knows where to breathe. Somebody who's done this before.”
She picks up the card she wrote when you came in, FERRY STEPS, and turns it face down.
“I'll tell you what I know when I know it. That's the rule up here: nothing goes out until it's true.” A beat. “And I asked you first. What was under the tile?”
What you do next is up to you.
Choose from the story’s suggestions or say something to Juno in your own words. Juno answers as herself, and every later chapter remembers what you said to her.
Make the first choiceOther ways in
Chapter one can also begin here. Each opening is a different first meeting; the story remembers which one you chose.
The kitchen radio says it's 3:24, and the woman on it says, low and easy, “Line two's open, if anyone's awake who shouldn't be.” The number is on a magnet on the fridge, left by whoever lived here before. You ring it.
Fog on the lake, and the boatyard jetty slick under your shoes. You couldn't sleep, so you walked.
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