My thumb, slick with a cold sweat, hovered over the glowing green "Accept" button. The phone's vibration was a frantic pulse against my palm, a trapped hummingbird of pure dread. Every instinct, every shred of self-preservation screamed at me to swipe red, to hurl the device against the wall and shatter this impossible reality.
But I was paralyzed. The ghost of Aunt Carol's silent scream from the corrupted photo was a hook in my soul, pulling me toward the abyss.
I pressed accept.
The screen did not show a face, nor a room, nor anything recognizable. It erupted into a churning storm of grey and white static, a blizzard of noise trapped behind the glass. A hiss, loud and abrasive, filled my ear. And underneath it, a voice—or something mimicking a voice. It was low, guttural, and distorted, as if filtered through broken machinery and decaying vocal cords.
"...not... smile..." the thing crackled, the words stretching and breaking apart like bad reception from a grave. "...danger..."
My own breath hitched, a frozen knot in my throat. The air in my apartment grew cold. "A-Aunt Carol?" I stammered into the phone, my voice a pathetic, thin whisper against the overwhelming static.
The noise on the screen flared, a burst of violent white. The whisper sharpened into a piercing, electronic snarl that made me jerk the phone away from my ear.
"...WRONG... NAME..."
The call dropped.
Silence. Thick, heavy, and absolute. The screen went black, reflecting nothing but my own pale, wide-eyed terror back at me. I sat there for what felt like an eternity, the frantic thumping of my heart the only sound in the world. The silence wasn't empty anymore; it was charged, watchful. My eyes darted to the dark hallway leading to my bedroom, to the deep shadows under the kitchen table. The familiar geometry of my home felt alien and threatening.
With trembling hands, I navigated back to my messages. My heart sank. The entire thread from "Aunt Carol" was gone. Vanished without a trace. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I frantically scrolled through my camera roll, my thumb slipping in my panic. The original graduation photo was still there. But something was different. The vibrant colors from earlier seemed muted, washed out in a sickly yellow tint. And Aunt Carol's smile... it no longer looked like a knowing smirk or even a proud beam. It looked strained, a grimace of pain, her eyes wide with a fear I hadn't noticed before. Had it always been like that? Was my mind, frayed by grief, constructing this entire horror?
As if in answer, my phone buzzed again, a violent shudder on the coffee table. I flinched back as if it were a live scorpion.
It was a notification from the "FAM" group chat.
Liza had sent a message. It was a single, chilling line of text.
"Guys... what is happening?"
Beneath it was a screenshot. It was of her own camera roll. It showed the same graduation photo we had all taken. But in her version, where Aunt Carol's face should have been, there was nothing but a dark, shapeless smudge, a void that seemed to suck the light from the rest of the picture.
My blood turned to ice water in my veins. It wasn't just me. This was real.
Before my numb fingers could form a reply, another message popped up, this time from my Uncle Dan. His words were terse, frantic.
"Everyone, stay off your phones. Don't answer any unknown calls. Don't look at the pictures. I'm calling the police."
A cold dread, deeper and more profound than any simple fear, solidified in the pit of my stomach. This was no longer a personal haunting. The warning in the static wasn't just for me.
Whatever had used Aunt Carol's name was now hunting my entire family.