My son-in-law forgot his phone on my coffee table last Sunday night. When it rang, the screen lit up with a face I had not seen in five years. It was my wife. My dead wife. But the real horror didn’t begin until I pressed play on the voicemail and heard her voice begging me to sell our home from beyond the grave.
I stood in the center of my living room, the silence of the house pressing against my ears. The Sunday roast I had cooked for my daughter Sarah and her husband Jason was still sitting heavy in my stomach. The air smelled faintly of rosemary and the expensive cologne Jason always wore, a scent that lingered long after he left, like he was marking territory. Outside, the streetlights of our quiet New England cul-de-sac bled through the sheer curtains, turning the windows into pale squares.
I was just about to clear the table when I saw it: Jason’s phone. It was sitting on the edge of the leather sofa, half-hidden by a throw pillow. The latest model, sleek and black, the kind that costs more than my first car. He must have slipped it out of his pocket when he sat down to complain about the economy again, which had become his favorite topic of conversation lately.
I reached out to grab it, thinking I could jog out to the driveway and catch him before he pulled away. But before my fingers even touched the cold glass, the screen lit up. The room was dim, illuminated only by the streetlights outside, so the sudden brightness was almost blinding.
And then I saw the photo.
My breath hitched in my throat, a sharp physical pain that radiated down my left arm.
It was Catherine.
My Catherine.
But it wasn’t just any photo. It was a picture I had taken of her in the hospital garden the week before the cancer took her from me five years ago, at Massachusetts General in Boston. She was wearing her blue cardigan, the one she said made her feel safe. She looked so frail, but her smile was there, that gentle curve of her lips that had anchored my world for forty years.
Below the photo, the caller ID read: Catherine – Mom.
I froze. My hand hovered over the device, trembling so hard I could hear the keys on the coffee table rattling.
I am a rational man. I spent thirty years as a forensic accountant, chasing money trails and exposing corporate fraud, half my career in glass towers on Wall Street and half consulting out of this old colonial house. I deal in facts, in numbers, in hard evidence. I do not believe in ghosts.
But in that moment, staring at the face of the woman I buried half a decade ago, my logic shattered.
The phone didn’t ring with a cheerful chime. It vibrated aggressively against the wood of the coffee table, a harsh buzzing that felt like a drill boring into my skull. Why would Jason have a contact named “Catherine – Mom” with that specific photo? Why was it calling now?
My heart hammered against my ribs in a frantic rhythm that made me light-headed. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. Catherine was gone. Her ashes were in the brass urn on the mantle, not ten feet from where I stood.
And yet the phone kept buzzing, demanding attention, demanding to be answered.
Then the ringing stopped.
The screen went dark, plunging the room back into shadows. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
A second later, the screen lit up again.
New voicemail from: Catherine – Mom.
My curiosity finally overpowered my fear. I needed to know. I needed to understand what kind of sick game this was.
I picked up the phone. It was locked, of course. Jason is a man who lives behind passwords and encryption. But Jason is also arrogant. He believes he’s the smartest person in any room, which makes him careless.
I remembered a dinner two months ago, at that overpriced steakhouse downtown, when Sarah had asked him for the passcode to check directions. He’d sighed, rolled his eyes and typed it in right in front of me. His thumb moved in a pattern I’ve seen my whole life: month, day, year.
My daughter’s birthday.
Typical. Predictable.
I typed in the six digits. The lock screen vanished.
My thumb hovered over the voicemail icon. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the device. I felt like I was violating a grave, like I was about to step into a world I didn’t understand and had no business entering. But the image of Catherine on that screen—so real, so alive—pushed me forward.
I pressed play and held the phone to my ear.
The voice that came through was weak, breathy… and terrifyingly familiar.
“Jason, please tell Sarah to sign the papers. Tell her to sell the house. I am so cold here. I cannot rest while William keeps that house. The money is the only way to set me free. Please, Jason, help me.”
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