I pressed call a third time before I could lose my nerve. The greeting started exactly the same, but this time it didn’t stop after saying my hidden family name. My own voice whispered, “Don’t hang up this time. You’re almost too late.” Then the line filled with a faint crackling sound, followed by what could only have been my apartment door unlocking somewhere in the distance. Before I could speak, the call disconnected on its own.
I sped home with my stomach twisted into knots, expecting broken windows or someone waiting inside. The apartment was perfectly untouched, except for one thing: my answering machine light was blinking, even though I hadn’t owned a landline in almost eight years. Somehow there was a single new message. When I played it, I heard myself breathing for several seconds before my voice quietly said, “You answered the wrong call. The next one will know where you are.”
That night I turned my phone completely off and shoved it into a kitchen drawer, convinced I was done with whatever nightmare this was. At exactly 3:17 a.m., the dark screen lit up anyway with an incoming call from my own number. I never answered, but through the silence of my apartment I heard my ringtone playing somewhere else too—inside the bedroom closet, behind the closed door. When I finally worked up the courage to open it, the ringing stopped… and I found an old flip phone I had buried with my father fifteen years ago.
