The auditorium buzzed with anticipation. It was the 2012 season of The X Factor UK, and the cameras had already captured a mix of tears, dreams, and disasters. Now, another hopeful stepped into the spotlight.
Sheyi Omatayo adjusted his jacket nervously, gripping the microphone a little too tightly.
He’d told the host earlier, grinning ear to ear, “I work at Nando’s, mate! The customers are my audience every day.”
Even the crowd had chuckled at that. He had charm — that was clear. Confidence too. Maybe too much.
When he mentioned casually that he’d once met Pixie Lott, the audience laughed, and the judges exchanged knowing smirks. Tulisa whispered something to Louis Walsh, who stifled a grin. Simon, seated in his throne of critique, arched an eyebrow — amused, but wary.
The music began.
The opening notes of “What a Wonderful World.”
The crowd leaned forward.
Then came the voice.
It was deep. Raspy. Like gravel dragged across velvet. The first few bars filled the room — powerful, unexpected, raw — but not in the way anyone anticipated. The judges’ faces froze, torn between shock and barely contained laughter. A few giggles rippled through the audience. Someone whispered, “Oh, God…”
But Sheyi didn’t stop.
He sang with his entire body, eyes shut, veins taut. The notes weren’t perfect, but they meant something. Behind the cracks and grit was conviction — and a strange, magnetic force.
Then, something shifted.
Midway through the song, the stage lights flickered.
The sound system let out a low, distorted hum.
A few in the audience thought it was a glitch. The crew scrambled near the soundboard. But Sheyi sang on — oblivious.
When he hit the bridge, the hum grew louder, deeper, resonating through the walls.
Simon frowned. “Cut the backing track,” he ordered through his mic.
The sound engineer tried.
Nothing happened.
The hum turned into a pulse — rhythmic, steady. Almost like a heartbeat.
Then… silence.
All lights cut out.
The theater plunged into blackness.
A collective gasp filled the void. Someone screamed. The cameras went dead.
And then, through the pitch-dark, came one voice.
Sheyi’s.
Unaccompanied. Pure.
But it wasn’t the same voice anymore.
It was flawless. Ethereal. The rasp was gone, replaced by something so clear it made every hair in the room stand on end. He wasn’t singing What a Wonderful World anymore.
It was something else.
Something no one recognized.
A melody so hauntingly beautiful, it sounded almost… divine.
The lights flickered back on — dim, uncertain. The camera feeds rebooted.
Sheyi stood motionless in the center of the stage, bathed in a single spotlight. The judges were silent — transfixed. No one moved.
Then came the final note.
It lingered — impossibly long — vibrating through the air, through bone, through memory. When it faded, the silence that followed was absolute.
Simon stood up slowly. His face was pale. “What was that?” he whispered.
Sheyi blinked, dazed. “I— I don’t know.”
Then, his knees buckled.
He collapsed.
Paramedics were called immediately. The broadcast was cut. The audience was ushered out, buzzing with confusion and awe.
“She’s fainted before,” one crew member said nervously. “Overexcited contestants, it happens.”
But when the medics reached Sheyi, they stopped cold.
His pulse — steady. Breathing — normal. Eyes — open. But he wasn’t responding. He just stared upward, lips parted slightly, as though still hearing something no one else could.
Tulisa, pale, whispered, “Did you hear those notes? They didn’t sound human.”
Simon didn’t answer. He just stared at the guitar-shaped burn now faintly glowing on the stage floor — right where Sheyi had stood.
News of the “incident” leaked within hours. The official footage was confiscated by producers. The episode never aired.
Online forums exploded.
“Haunted audition?”
“Weird sound frequencies cause blackout?”
“Singer channels ghost on live TV?”
But none of that explained the most disturbing part.
When technicians reviewed the backup recordings — the ones stored off-site — the file contained the full performance. But when they played it back, Sheyi’s voice didn’t sound the same.
It wasn’t even his voice anymore.
It was a chorus.
Dozens. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Singing in harmony. In a language no one recognized.
Three days later, Sheyi woke up in St. Mary’s Hospital.
He blinked, confused. “What happened?” he asked, voice hoarse.
A nurse smiled gently. “You fainted, love. During your audition.”
He frowned. “The lights went out… didn’t they?”
Her expression froze. “There was… a technical issue, yes. Best to rest now.”
But Sheyi couldn’t. His mind buzzed with fragments — sounds, faces, light. The song he’d sung — he could still hear it. Every note. Perfectly.
When night fell, he turned on the small TV in his room.
The news anchor spoke of unusual electrical surges across London that same evening — power flickers, static disruptions, even reports of unexplained frequencies picked up by radio towers.
At exactly the same time his audition had taken place.
Sheyi gripped the remote tighter.
Two months later, The X Factor aired its season finale.
There was no mention of Sheyi Omatayo. No clips. No credits. He had vanished from the narrative entirely.
But that night, during the live broadcast, millions of viewers swore they heard something in the background — faint, beneath the applause.
A voice.
Singing.
The same haunting melody.
Producers dismissed it as “audio interference.”
Years passed. Sheyi never returned to the stage. He moved abroad, changed jobs, changed names. But the music never stopped. It lived in his head, in his dreams. Sometimes, in quiet moments, he’d catch himself humming it — without realizing.
Then one night, while walking home along a quiet London street, he heard it again.
That same melody.
Coming from a small café ahead.
He froze.
Through the window, a man was performing with a guitar. A young man — dark hair, plain black t-shirt, smiling nervously at the crowd.
Sheyi pushed open the door.
The singer looked up. His voice faltered mid-note.
He stared at Sheyi like he’d seen a ghost.
Because he had.
It was himself — twenty years younger.
The younger version smiled faintly, then whispered into the mic:
“Your turn.”
The lights flickered.
And everything went dark again.