He’s never taken a single lesson. Barely even taps pencils on the table. But when Arlen pulled the tarp off that old drum kit, something shifted in him—like he already knew where every piece went. He said it felt “familiar but not in a memory way.”

The kit had been buried in our garage since before we moved in. Bright red, spotless, not a single spiderweb. No one in our family plays. And yet, when he sat behind it, he didn’t ask how to set it up. Just adjusted the stool and started tapping this strange, uneven rhythm with his fingers. Like a countdown, but crooked.

There’s a name painted on the kick drum: Borg. Not a brand we’ve ever heard of. I googled it—nothing. No company, no listings, no eBay hits. Just one grainy forum post in Finnish, and it was deleted five minutes after I clicked it.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Arlen was still in the garage, drumming away. I’d peeked out the window and saw the soft red glow of our old garage lamp flickering with each hit. It was like the beats were shaping the light.

By 2 a.m., I had to check on him. I walked down, barefoot and annoyed, ready to tell him to knock it off. But when I opened the door, he wasn’t drumming anymore.

He was just sitting there. Staring straight ahead. The sticks rested on his lap. The air felt heavy, like something had just been said—but without words.

“You okay?” I asked.

He turned slowly, like he had just come back from a long trip. His eyes were glazed over. But he smiled. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I remembered a part of it.”

“Of what?”

“The song.”

I wanted to laugh, maybe tell him he was being weird. But something about the way he said it—it didn’t feel like a joke. I didn’t push.

Over the next few days, Arlen became obsessed. Every free minute, he was in the garage. No sheet music, no YouTube tutorials. Just him and the drums. He started skipping his after-school group, forgot his math homework. Mom thought he was going through a phase.

But I noticed something else. The rhythm he played kept changing—growing. The song he was “remembering” was starting to sound like a real composition. Complex, layered, almost… tribal. But not from any culture I knew. It had this eerie rise and fall, like waves crashing in a pattern no one else could hear.

One afternoon, I sat with him and recorded a few minutes on my phone. I uploaded it to Reddit’s “r/drums” board, asking if anyone recognized the style.

Three hours later, I got a private message: “Take that post down. You don’t understand what you’re playing with.”

The account was new. Zero karma. I clicked to reply—it was already deleted.

At dinner, Arlen barely touched his food. His fingers were tapping the table. Not nervously—rhythmically. I couldn’t unhear the drumbeat in everything around me. The ticking clock, the hum of the fridge, the creak of the ceiling fan—it all fell into the same strange rhythm.

I confronted him later. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”

He looked up, startled. “You hear it too?”

“Hear what?”

“The others.”

That freaked me out. I asked what he meant, and he just shrugged. “They’re teaching me the rest of the song. I hear them at night.”

I thought maybe he was dreaming. Or having some kind of auditory hallucination. But then he said something that chilled me.

“They’re stuck. That’s why they need me.”

I told our mom. She laughed it off. Said Arlen had always had a wild imagination. But that night, I went online and looked up anything I could about “Borg” drums. Nothing. Except one archived article in Swedish that mentioned an avant-garde musician named Elias Borg.

He vanished in 1977 after a final performance in a village near the Finnish border. People at the show claimed the rhythm of his drums “changed the weather,” made birds fall silent, made people cry without reason. Then he was just… gone.

I didn’t tell Arlen. But he started sleepwalking that week. I found him standing in front of the garage door at 3 a.m., just staring at the wood, whispering.

“It’s almost complete.”

When I told him in the morning, he had no memory of it. But he wasn’t surprised.

“I figured,” he said. “They get closer every night.”

“What do they want?” I asked.

He paused. “To go home.”

I didn’t know what that meant. But I started sleeping with my bedroom light on.

Then, one night, everything escalated.

It was storming hard. Wind slapping the windows, thunder so loud it made the dog bark nonstop. But in the garage? Silence. I crept down to check on Arlen and found the door open. The tarp was gone. The red drums were glowing faintly, like coals.

And Arlen wasn’t alone.

There were… shapes. Human, maybe. Pale and long. Not solid. Like shadows without light. Standing around the kit. Watching him. One of them raised what looked like a hand, and Arlen’s sticks moved faster. The rhythm grew urgent—almost panicked.

I was frozen. Then something snapped—the lights in the garage burst, and all the shadows vanished. Arlen fell forward, unconscious.

We took him to the hospital. They found nothing wrong. Just exhaustion.

He didn’t drum for three days. Barely spoke. But on the fourth morning, he told me, “It’s done. I finished the song.”

And just like that, he went back to normal.

Sort of.

He returned to school, joined the soccer team again. The drums stayed in the garage, untouched. But I noticed the air felt… lighter. Like a pressure had been lifted.

A few months later, during spring cleaning, Mom decided to throw the kit away. Arlen didn’t protest. But when we wheeled it to the curb, the kick drum cracked open.

Inside, sealed behind a false panel, was an old reel-to-reel tape.

We brought it inside. Dad dug out his old player from college. We threaded the tape.

Static at first. Then the rhythm. That same, crooked countdown Arlen had started with. Followed by the full song—exactly as he’d played it.

Then a voice.

Low. Measured. Scandinavian accent.

“To those who find this: the song was never mine. It came from below. It binds and binds, until one can no longer be free. Play it only once. Then bury it.”

We stared at each other.

Without a word, Arlen took the tape, walked into the backyard, and buried it under the oak tree.

We didn’t talk about it again.

Years passed. Arlen never played drums again. He became a mechanical engineer. Married, moved away. Sometimes, when we’re both home for the holidays, I ask him if he remembers the song.

He always smiles. “Bits and pieces. But I don’t want to.”

I respect that.

Last summer, I was cleaning out the attic and found an old box of my stuff. At the bottom—my phone from high school. I charged it up. Found the recording I’d made that first week.

I pressed play.

And for a second—just a second—I swore I saw a shape standing in the corner of the room.

I deleted the file.

Some songs aren’t meant to be remembered.

But here’s the twist. A few months after that, Arlen called me in a rush.

“You won’t believe this,” he said. “I met this guy at a conference in Oslo. His grandfather was from Lapland. Guess what his last name is?”

“Borg?”

“Yeah. And get this—his granddad vanished in the 70s. No trace.”

I asked if he told the guy about the drums.

“No,” he said. “But… I think I’m supposed to give him something.”

He flew out the next week. Took the cracked kick drum with him. Said it felt right. Said maybe it was finally time to return it.

And after that? Nothing strange has happened. No shadows. No whispering.

Sometimes, all something—or someone—wants… is to go home.

The lesson? Not everything that finds you is meant to stay. Some things come into your life so they can leave through you. And when they do, you’re lighter. Freer.

Trust your gut. Respect the strange. And if your little brother says he remembers a song he’s never heard before?

Listen.

Then help him let it go.

If this story gave you chills—or warmed your heart in some strange way—share it. Like it. Let someone else feel what you felt. You never know who might be hearing the same song.