My four-year-old son Eli has a friend who lives in his closet. He's been talking to this friend for six months. My wife thinks it's an imaginary friend — he's four, imaginary friends are developmentally normal, we shouldn't make a big deal of it.
I've heard the responses.
The first time was three months ago. Eli's door was cracked and I could hear him talking — the full one-sided animated conversation of a small child describing his day. I stopped in the hall to listen because it was cute. Then I heard, beneath his voice, a lower sound. Not his voice. Not a child's voice. A response.
I pushed the door open. Eli was at his closet, door open, talking into the dark. He turned and smiled at me. I checked the closet. Clothes, shoes, a box of toys. Nothing.
I told my wife. She said I'd heard him making a voice for his imaginary friend, the way kids do. This is plausible. I tried to believe it.
Last month I recorded it. I set my phone on the dresser and went to get a glass of water. When I came back, Eli was at the closet. I retrieved my phone.
In the recording, you can hear Eli clearly. You can hear, beneath his voice, something else. Lower. Rhythmic. The audio analyzer I ran it through picked it up as a separate voice track, distinct from Eli's frequency.
I couldn't make out words. My wife could. She listened with headphones and then sat very still for a moment and gave the phone back to me and said she didn't want to talk about it that night.
She hasn't told me what she heard.
I've started leaving the closet light on when Eli sleeps. He started sleeping with his head under the covers — not anxiously, the way a scared child sleeps, but deliberately, the way a child sleeps who knows exactly where they are and doesn't want to be seen.
Last night I asked him what his friend's name was.
He said: "He says you can call him whatever you want. He says you've been listening anyway."