Nora didn't dream — not exactly. But the silence behind her eyelids felt crowded, like a hallway lined with locked doors and whispers slithering under the cracks.
She woke at noon, half-buried under her aunt's knitted blanket on the couch. The tea was cold on the coffee table. Sunlight spilled through the curtains, warm on her cheek — and yet she couldn't shake the chill that prickled her spine.
The first thing she did was check the backyard. She padded out barefoot, heart hammering. The dirt under the oak tree was undisturbed, the salt crusted white where it had rained a little at dawn. No phone. No static. No sign the Second Voice had clawed its way out.
Still, her chest wouldn't unclench.
Her aunt found her at the kitchen table, hair a mess, eyes hollow. She didn't ask questions — she never did — just set a bowl of warm stew in front of her and squeezed her shoulder.
"You look like you lost a fight with the wind," Aunt Mari said softly. "And maybe won, too."
Nora gave her a ghost of a smile. "Something like that."
She ate half the stew, then pushed the rest aside. Her phone — her real phone, the old battered one with the cracked camera lens — sat on the table. She hadn't turned it on since the bridge.
Her thumb hovered over the power button. Part of her wanted to toss it in the trash, swear off all phones forever. But the world didn't work like that.
She turned it on. It buzzed to life, old text notifications pinging in:
Jay: You okay?
Jay: Call me NOW.
Jay: Seriously, Nora, pick up. I'm worried.
She should text him. Should tell him everything. But what would she say? Hey, the phone was haunted by an ancient static demon that wore my brother's voice and tried to kill Chris — but I smashed it, buried it, and now my best friend is marked like a curse magnet. Anyway, wanna grab coffee?
She closed her eyes. One thing at a time.
A soft ping startled her. New message — but not from Jay.
Unknown Number.
Nora's heart lurched. She almost dropped the phone. She checked the backyard through the kitchen window — the oak tree stood calm, leaves whispering in the breeze.
She looked at the screen again. The message was just a single word:
RUN.
Nora stood so fast her chair scraped the tile. Her aunt, rinsing dishes at the sink, turned. "Nora?"
Nora's mouth felt full of ash. "I have to go out for a bit. Back soon."
She didn't wait for the questions that would come. She grabbed her jacket, slipped on her shoes, and bolted out the door.
She texted Chris as she walked: It's back. Got another message. Meet?
The reply came quick — not from Chris's number but from a new one, an untraceable burner he used when he went deep hunting for leads.
Chris: Meet me at the old phone booth by South Market. 20 min.
Nora half-jogged the ten blocks, boots slapping puddles on cracked sidewalks. The sky had gone gunmetal gray again, low clouds pressing down like a threat.
When she reached the phone booth — an ancient glass box tucked behind a boarded-up liquor store — Chris was already there, pacing, hood up, eyes flicking at every passing car.
When he saw her, relief ghosted across his face — but it didn't last.
He didn't waste words. "Show me."
She handed him her phone. His fingers were cold when they brushed hers. He read the message, jaw tightening. "Unknown Number," he muttered. "Classic."
Nora wrapped her arms around herself. "It's the same, isn't it? Or… is it?"
Chris pocketed her phone. "Not the same. I don't think so. The Second Voice is gone — or starved, at least. But this? This is either a copycat… or something else trying to say hi."
Nora's knees went weak. She leaned against the booth's cold glass. "Chris — I buried it. I salted it. Why won't it leave me alone?"
He didn't answer right away. He reached inside his backpack, pulled out a battered spiral notebook. He flipped to a page covered in his tiny scrawled notes — phone numbers, strange symbols, names crossed out in red pen.
He tapped the page with a bitten-down pencil. "I've been tracking other cases. Other hauntings — except they're not the same. Different phones, same pattern. First you hear the voice you want to hear. Then the static. Then the door opens. Then it wants more."
Nora's stomach twisted. "How many?"
Chris met her eyes — that haunted look she knew too well by now. "Six. In the last two years. Some ended like yours — smashed phone, buried, silence for a while. But some didn't end at all."
Nora swallowed back the bile rising in her throat. "So it's not just my phone. It's not even a phone. It's something bigger."
Chris flipped to another page — a photocopy of a yellowed newspaper clipping. The headline read: Dead Lines: Old Switchboard Operator Found Dead in Abandoned Exchange.
Nora squinted. "What is that?"
Chris's voice was barely a whisper. "Before cell phones. Before the static got digital. They say there was a man — an operator who used to tap into dead lines. Talked to the ghosts that lingered on old wires. When he died, the calls didn't stop. They just found a new switchboard."
Nora's hands went cold. "The phones."
Chris nodded. "He was the first voice. The Second Voice was just an echo. There could be more. A family of echoes."
Nora pressed a palm to the glass of the phone booth. The dead payphone inside was still caked in grime and old stickers for cheap international calling cards. A symbol someone had carved into the glass caught her eye — an eye surrounded by tiny scratch marks.
She traced it with her fingertip. "How do we shut it all off, Chris?"
His hand covered hers on the glass. "We find the root. The original switchboard. We salt it, smash it, bury it deep."
Nora looked at him — pale, bruised, exhausted, but alive. Her only tether to the side of this nightmare that still felt real. "Where do we start?"
Chris pulled her hand off the glass and pressed something cold and metal into her palm. A rusted old key, tied to a frayed string.
"I know a place. It's not in any maps anymore. But it's where they say the first lines crossed — the old exchange where the dead never stopped calling."
Nora closed her fingers around the key. She felt the chill seep into her bones. The phone booth behind her seemed to hum, wires under the concrete vibrating like a heartbeat she couldn't hear but could feel.
Outside, the wind picked up. The clouds cracked open just enough for a sliver of sunlight to cut through — thin and cold.
Chris hooked his pinky around hers. "Next time, we don't run. We answer first. Then we cut the line for good."
Nora stared at the rusted key, the dark street behind Chris, the phone booth that smelled like rain and old ghosts.
Somewhere deep in her pocket, her real phone buzzed again. Another Unknown Number. She didn't need to read it to know what it said.
She squeezed his pinky tighter. "Okay. Let's end this."