Samuel was halfway through making breakfast when his phone rang.
The sound startled him not because it was unexpected, but because it cut too sharply through the apartment's quiet. The frying pan hissed behind him as he grabbed the phone from the counter.
"Morning, Sam," his sister Clara's voice said bright, familiar.
"Clara." His shoulders eased. "I was just about to call you. Thought you were working early today."
"I am. Just wanted to let you know I might be late for lunch."
They fell into their usual rhythm trading little updates about the weather, their mother's garden, and Clara's ongoing feud with her leaky faucet.
At one point, she made a joke about fixing it with duct tape and prayer, and Samuel laughed really laughed, the sound bouncing in the small kitchen.
That's when the static came.
A faint burst at first, nothing unusual just the kind of glitch you get on bad reception. It dragged a little too long, like a thread being pulled through cloth, soft and crackling.
Samuel was about to say something when he realized there was something under the noise.
A breath. Slow, deliberate.
And then like it had been waiting for his ear to lean just a little closer 0came a voice, low and close enough to feel:
"Careful, Samuel… you never know whose name you're calling."
The warmth drained out of him in an instant.
"...What did you just say?" His voice was tight, cutting through Clara's mid-sentence.
"Say what? I just said the plumber's useless."
"No," Samuel said, sharper now. "Before that."
"Before what?"
"You didn't… hear that?"
"Hear what?"
His grip on the phone tightened until his knuckles ached. The pan popped loudly behind him, the smell of browning eggs filling the air, but he barely registered it. The whisper replayed in his head, slower each time, as if the voice wanted him to savor it.
He swallowed. "Forget it. Must've been interference."
"You okay?" Clara asked.
"Yeah. Fine." He ended the call before she could say more.
The apartment felt different now hollowed somehow, the walls thin, as if something was just on the other side, listening.
He turned off the stove, appetite gone, and sat at his desk. His laptop sat exactly as he'd left it, waiting on an unfinished paragraph. The name he had typed again and again stared back at him from the screen.
But now… his hands wouldn't touch the keys.