Chapter 1 Wrong Number

The rain hadn't let up all day. It clawed at the windows of the bus, painted streaks on Gwen Morley's glasses, and soaked the cuffs of her coat as she stepped off onto the slick sidewalk. Her building was three stories of soggy brick, with a flickering hallway light on the second floor and a mail slot that jammed every Tuesday. She liked it because no one bothered her here. And no one asked questions.

The key stuck in the lock, same as always. Gwen twisted harder, muttering under her breath. The door groaned open. She stepped inside, kicked her shoes off at the mat, and hung her keys beside a Polaroid of someone who wasn't smiling anymore.

The apartment was warm in the way only small spaces could be-filled with the scent of old paperbacks, brewed tea, and rain-damp wool. She dropped her shoulder bag near the kitchen table, peeled off her coat, and filled the kettle.

One by one, she went through the rituals. Mug on the counter. Teabag in. The stove burner was ticking like a metronome before it lit. The hiss of flame and rising steam. She didn't turn on music. She liked the silence. Liked hearing the rain.

At the small table by the window, Gwen sat with her tea and her journal. Not the kind of journal with feelings, not anymore. Just numbers. Observations. Noted dreams. One sentence per day. It was easier that way.

Outside, the city was slick with reflections-yellow streetlights smeared across puddles like melted wax. Someone across the street was cooking with garlic; she could smell it through the cracked pane. She scribbled, Window steamed. Bus late. Dreamed of water, dark water. Heard a voice?

The landline rang.

She didn't move at first.

It was one of those wall-mounted beige phones, the kind everyone had in the early '90s, now mostly forgotten. She'd kept it out of habit. Some habits were too deep to break.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

She let the machine pick up.

A click. The tape whirred.

Then silence.

She returned to her tea, fingers wrapped around the warm mug. Then the machine crackled to life.

"Gwen..."

A long pause.

"...it's me."

Click.

The line went dead.

She blinked. Slowly turned her head toward the machine. The red light blinked once. New message.

Her hand hovered near the play button. She stared at it like it might burn her.

Her mug sat cooling in her hand.

The answering machine blinked its silent red eye, the color oddly loud in the dim kitchen.

Gwen stood motionless for a few seconds longer, then reached forward and pressed the button.

The tape clicked. A low hiss, like a throat clearing. Then the message again.

"Gwen..."

She gripped the edge of the counter.

"...it's me."

Click.

Dead air.

She pressed play again. Then again. Each time, the voice was identical-the same tone, same hesitation, same breathiness, like the caller was nervous. Or trying not to cry.

Gwen stumbled backward into the nearest chair.

It couldn't be. No one could fake that voice.

She hadn't heard it in ten years, but it was tattooed into the back of her memory: the way her sister always drew out Gwen's name, turning it into something teasing. Something loving.

Her hands shook. Not dramatically, not movie-style, just enough to make the mug rattle when she set it down.

She got up, crossed the room, and knelt beside the old bookshelf. Pulled out a blue shoebox buried behind a row of Agatha Christies.

Inside: scraps of old life. Concert stubs. A sticker-covered cassette. Gwen's handwriting on the label: "Lila. Mixtape. 6/96." And beneath it, one unlabeled black tape-thicker, heavier.

She popped it into the cassette player that sat, mostly decorative, on her dresser. Pressed play.

A low whir.

Then, static.

Then:

"Testing... Gwen, this thing is ancient," Lila's voice, laughing, from a decade ago. "Okay, okay. You said to record something. So. I'm recording. I'm recording... you... being weird. And I'm stealing your hoodie. Again."

Lila's voice. Warm, full, unmistakable.

Gwen pressed stop. Switched the machine off. Swallowed hard.

Same voice.

The exact same.

But that wasn't possible.

Because Lila had died ten years ago, on a rainy Thursday, in a field outside Crescent Bay.

Because Gwen had gone to the funeral.

Because she had watched them lower the casket into the ground.

The phone rang again.

She jumped, physically flinching like she'd touched a burner. The shrill ring tore through the silence. It felt louder now. Hungrier.

She stared at the receiver like it might speak on its own.

One ring.

Two.

She reached out and almost touched it.

Three.

She froze.

Let it ring.

Four.

Then it stopped.

Silence again.

No message this time.

The light on the machine didn't blink.

The kettle whined on the stove, forgotten.

Gwen turned it off with a numb hand, watching the steam coil like smoke from an extinguished fire. She poured the hot water down the drain. No appetite now. Her hands were still trembling, but now they felt cold.

She stood in the hallway between the kitchen and her bedroom, phone on one end, cassette deck on the other. The space between them suddenly felt charged-like both machines were staring at her. Waiting for something.

She took the old cassette from the deck. Rewound it carefully, the way Lila used to do with a pencil jammed into the reels. Then she walked back into the kitchen and hit PLAY on the answering machine again.

"Gwen..."

The tape rolled in the other room.

"...it's me."

Click.

Gwen played the mixtape next. Forward. Rewind. Pause. Rewind again.

Then she played the message again.

Same breath pattern. Same slight rasp in the G. Same faint lisp on "me." Even the inhale before speaking - that barely-there intake - matched perfectly.

You can't fake breath.

Gwen sat down hard on the floor. The linoleum was cold against her legs. She leaned her head back against the cabinet, arms folded across her chest like she was trying to keep something inside.

There had to be an explanation. Someone screwing with her? No one would bother. She barely spoke to anyone outside of work. No social media. No online footprint, by design.

And no one else knew what Lila sounded like. Not like that.

She hadn't heard her voice in a decade.

She hadn't let herself.

Gwen got up. Walked across the room and took the phone off the wall. It was still warm from the last call.

She pressed REDIAL.

A long pause.

Then: "This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again."

She hung up. Tried again. Same message.

Disconnected.

That's when she noticed the cord.

The coiled wire snaking from the handset... to the wall jack.

Unplugged.

Her stomach dropped.

The phone had rung. Twice. The answering machine had recorded.

But the line was not connected.

She hadn't touched it since last week. She remembered the storm-she'd unplugged everything after the lights flickered. She never plugged it back in.

Gwen stared at the phone, then slowly reached out and pressed the cradle switch down once, twice. Dead air. No dial tone.

But it had rung. It had spoken. It had remembered her sister's voice.

A sound like a sigh left her throat, sharp and involuntary.

The only sound in the room.

Until she turned and saw her reflection in the kitchen window.

In the glass, her face stared back-pale, hollow-eyed, and drawn.

But just behind her, in the reflection, was another shape.

A smear of long hair. A shoulder. A girl, slightly shorter than Gwen, tilted her head. Just out of focus.

She spun around.

Nothing.

Just the empty kitchen.

The phone, the tape, the red light blinking once more.

Gwen yanked the cord from the jack.

The plastic made a soft snapping sound as it came loose. She stared at it in her hand-dead, dangling-like it should mean something. Like it should do something.

She left the receiver hanging from the wall, the line limp, useless. Unplugged the answering machine next. Then the entire power strip. The lights flickered slightly when she did, as if the apartment itself flinched.

She stood in silence, breathing shallowly. No humming from electronics. No static. No red blinking light.

Satisfied, or at least trying to be, Gwen backed away from the counter and turned off the kitchen light.

Darkness pressed in through the windows, thick and gray-blue, punctuated by the gold streetlight across the road and the occasional drip of rainwater hitting the sill.

She sat down on the couch.

One arm wrapped across her midsection.

The other clutched the tape.

She stared at the unplugged phone.

It didn't move.

Her mind was racing-trying to break it down, applying logic like a patch over a hole in the hull. Maybe she was remembering it wrong. Maybe she hadn't unplugged it after the storm. Maybe someone left a prank tape. Maybe she was tired. Too tired. Maybe-

RING.

The sound stabbed through the room like a knife through paper.

She stood up so fast the coffee table nearly overturned.

The phone.

The unplugged phone.

It rang again.

RING.

Not the machine. Not the tape. The physical bell-that old, metallic, analog scream-loud and piercing and impossible.

She backed toward the wall.

RING.

Three times now.

No power. No connection. No way.

RING.

She reached for the kitchen drawer, pulled it open blindly, fumbling past utensils for something solid. Her hand landed on a screwdriver.

RING.

She moved toward the phone. Step by step.

At the fifth ring, it stopped.

Silence again.

The kitchen window showed her reflection, trembling now-not from cold, but from a sensation she hadn't felt since she was sixteen, locked outside the church during Lila's funeral, because she'd arrived too late.

Abandoned. Out of time.

She looked down.

The answering machine was still unplugged.

But the tape had ejected.

It sat half-out, like something inside had forced it open.

And resting on top of it-delicately placed, carefully even-was something she hadn't seen in ten years.

A purple plastic butterfly hair clip.

Lila's.

The hair clip was small, the kind you could buy at a dollar store, translucent purple with a silver spring. Gwen hadn't seen it in a decade, but the moment her fingers brushed it, she remembered the texture perfectly - brittle plastic, a tiny chip in the corner, one tooth slightly bent.

She remembered Lila wearing it the summer she turned fifteen, keeping her bangs out of her eyes like it was armor. Gwen used to tease her about it. Called it her "bug catcher."

Her throat tightened.

She stared down at it, resting on the dead machine like a crown on a corpse. She hadn't seen that clip since...

Since before the accident.

She hadn't brought it here. She hadn't even lived in this apartment back then.

Gwen's stomach turned, a slow roll of nausea more emotional than physical. She picked the clip up delicately, like it might vanish if she held it wrong, and set it on the table beside the answering machine.

Then she turned.

The apartment felt colder now. Not by temperature - that stayed the same. But something in the air had shifted. Like the oxygen wasn't reaching as far as it should. Like the corners of the room were tilting in.

She walked to the kitchen window and looked out.

Night swallowed the street in shades of steel and amber. Rain streaked the glass. The streetlamp flickered in its usual pattern: long glow, two quick blinks, pause. No one outside. Just the sound of water running through gutters and the low hum of a bus passing a block away.

She raised her eyes and looked at her reflection.

She barely recognized herself.

The woman in the glass was pale, drawn, older than she remembered being. Her dark hair was pinned back, loose strands curling like smoke around her cheeks. Her expression was unreadable.

But something else was there.

Behind her reflection, in the glass.

Just for a second.

That shape again - soft, feminine, unmoving - like a memory that had learned how to stand up and wait.

She spun around.

Nothing. No one. Only the table, the unplugged machine, the clip.

She turned back, slowly, and pressed her forehead to the glass, eyes unfocused, breath fogging the pane.

Her voice came out small.

"Lila?"

The glass answered only with silence.

No voice.

No click.

No dial tone.

Just her own reflection, staring back at her like it didn't quite believe her either.