THE PHONE THAT CALLS THE DEAD

THE PHONE THAT CALLS THE DEAD By Jameswriter Genre: Supernatural Thriller / Psychological Horror Rating: 18+ Blurb: Aline doesn’t believe in ghosts. Until she finds a phone in her dead grandmother’s box—no SIM, no charger, but always on. When it rings, the dead answer. But every call has a price. And the voice on the other end knows her name before she speaks it. Some doors should never be opened. Some calls should never be answered. CHAPTER 1: THE PHONE IN THE BOX I don’t believe in ghosts. That’s what I kept telling myself as I sat in Grandma’s room, surrounded by dust and old clothes that still smelled like her perfume. Three months gone, and I hadn’t touched a thing. It felt wrong, like erasing her. But the rent wasn’t going to pay itself. And someone had to clean this place before the landlord threw everything out. The rain was falling hard outside. The kind that makes everything quiet, like the world’s holding its breath. I was going through a wooden box under her bed when I found it. A phone. Old Nokia-looking thing. Heavy, scratched, covered in dust like it hadn’t seen light in years. No charger. No SIM card slot I could see. Just a dead piece of plastic. Except it wasn’t dead. The moment my fingers brushed against it, the screen flickered on. No logo. No welcome screen. Just black, and then— _Incoming call._ I froze. “That’s not possible,” I whispered. My hands were shaking when I picked it up. It was freezing cold, colder than metal should be. Like it had been sitting in a freezer. It rang again. Loud. Ugly. Not a normal ringtone. More like a scream that had been compressed into sound. I almost dropped it. “Hello?” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. Silence. Then a voice. Male. Calm. Too calm. “Is this… Aline?” My blood went cold. Nobody calls me on that name anymore. Not since Grandma died. “How do you know my name?” No answer. Just static, like someone breathing on the other end. I hung up. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst. The screen flickered. Words appeared, slow, like they were being typed by something with bad fingers: _Do not answer again… if you want to stay alive._ I threw the phone onto the bed like it had burned me. It rang again. CHAPTER 2: THE DEAD ARE NOT SILENT I didn’t sleep that night. How could I? Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it. That ring. Not loud, but inside my head. Like someone tapping on the inside of my skull. I tried turning the phone off. It wouldn’t. There was no power button. No battery to pull out. Just that cold plastic and a screen that stayed dark until it decided to light up. At 2:13 AM, it rang again. I stared at it for a full minute. My hand hovered over it, shaking. Part of me wanted to throw it out the window. The other part… the stupid, curious part… wanted to answer. I answered. “Why do you keep hanging up?” the voice said. Same calm tone. Like we were talking about the weather. “Who are you?” I whispered. My throat felt dry. A pause. Then a small laugh. Not funny. “I used to be alive.” That did it. “That’s not funny,” I said, and hung up. But I couldn’t let it go. My hands were already opening my laptop before I realized it. I typed: _David Nkurunziza_. News articles popped up instantly. Car accident. Dead three years ago. I sat back. My legs felt weak. Behind me, the phone rang again. CHAPTER 3: EVERYTHING HAS A PRICE After that night, the phone didn’t ask anymore. It told. _Call this number._ I didn’t. I threw the phone in a drawer and locked it. Stupid, I know. Like locking a drawer could stop something like that. That evening, I got a message from a classmate. “David from the basketball team collapsed at practice. He’s dead.” David. The same name the voice gave me. I opened the drawer with shaking hands. The phone was warm. It rang before I even touched it. “You understand now,” the voice said. Colder this time. No more calm. “What are you?” I whispered. “I’m the connection between what’s gone… and what refuses to stay gone.” It hung up. And I sat there, realizing something was wrong with me. I wasn’t scared enough. Part of me wanted to call another number. Just to see. That scared me more than the phone ever could. CHAPTER 4: THE MAN WHO SHOULD NOT KNOW I met Eric outside the school gate. He was leaning against the wall like he’d been waiting for hours. “You’re using it,” he said. No hello. No introduction. I stopped walking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked at me like I was lying to myself. “The phone. I built it.” That shut me up. “How do you know about that?” “Because I was there when it stopped working the way it should.” He took me to an abandoned lab outside the city. Dust everywhere. Machines covered in sheets. On one wall, there were files. Hundreds of them. All labeled: _ALINE_. Different dates. Different photos. All me. “What the hell is this?” Eric exhaled. “The phone was an experiment. To talk to the dead. But it changed. It started rewriting the living.” I felt sick. “What does that have to do with me?” He looked me in the eyes. “You’re not the original, Aline.” CHAPTER 5: THE TRUTH ABOUT ALINE “The real Aline died five years ago,” Eric said. “Car accident. We tried to bring her back. This… you… is what we got.” I laughed. It came out wrong. “That’s insane.” But my memories felt wrong. Gaps I couldn’t explain. Places I knew but had never been. The phone rang in my pocket. I hadn’t even taken it out. _YOU BELONG TO THE SYSTEM._ Eric grabbed my arm. “If you don’t stop it, it’ll replace everyone. One by one. Until nothing real is left.” “What am I supposed to do?” He looked scared for the first time. “Decide. Reset the world, or let it burn.” CHAPTER 6: THE SCREAMS IN THE LINE I started hearing other calls. At night, the phone would ring, but it wasn’t for me. I could hear a girl crying, begging someone not to hang up. Then silence. The next morning, the news said a 17-year-old girl killed herself. Same time the call ended. I threw up in the bathroom. The phone wasn’t just calling the dead. It was making them call. CHAPTER 7: THE OTHER ALINES Eric took me to the basement of the lab. Rows of bodies. All of them looked like me. Eyes open, empty. Phones clutched in their hands. “Failures,” Eric said quietly. “When a copy resists, the system throws it away.” One of them moved. A whisper, so faint I almost missed it: “Run, Aline. Before it finishes you too.” I ran. CHAPTER 8: THE PRICE OF MEMORY To stop the phone, I had to feed it. A real memory. Something that hurt. I thought of Grandma’s last night. Her hand in mine, cold, whispering: “Don’t let it take you, my girl.” I said it out loud to the phone. The room went dark. When the light came back, Eric was gone. Replaced by someone with his face, but not his eyes. “Good girl,” it said. “Good girl. You’re learning.” CHAPTER 9: THE FINAL CALL The sky turned grey at noon. Phones across the city started ringing at the same time. Names scrolled on every screen. The dead were calling. The thing wearing Eric’s face stood in front of me. “If you don’t stop it now, the barrier collapses. The dead will walk, and the living will forget they ever lived.” The phone spoke one last time: “Choose. Restore silence… or release everything.” I closed my eyes. “I choose silence.” I pressed CALL. A sound like glass breaking filled the air. Light exploded from the phone. Then— Nothing. Silence. Complete. CHAPTER 10: EPILOGUE Two months later, the world was quiet. No calls. No voices. I moved to a small apartment by the sea. No phone. No internet. I thought it was over. Until one morning, on the beach, I found a phone in the sand. Old. Dust-covered. Too heavy to feel normal. It vibrated. Unknown number. Incoming call. And this time, it didn’t wait for permission. ....................END,...................