He Died Five Years Ago… Then I Got a Message From His Number

Grief is a strange thing. People say it fades, softens, turns into something manageable over time. Maybe that’s true for some. For me, it never disappeared. It just learned to stay quiet… until the night my phone lit up with a message from a number that should have stayed silent forever.

It was a little after 11 p.m. My apartment was dark, the kind of darkness that makes every sound feel louder. I had just turned off the TV and was heading to bed when my phone buzzed. I remember thinking it was probably a bank alert or a late-night promotional message. But when I picked it up, the name on the screen stopped me cold.

“Daniel.”

My brother. My best friend. The person I lost in an accident five years ago.

At first, I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. The room didn’t feel real anymore.

The screen showed a single message.

“Are you awake?”

My heart pounded so hard that for a moment, I thought I might black out. My hands started shaking. I told myself it had to be a scam, a glitch, a recycled number gone to someone new. Anything except what my heart was terrified to hope for.

I opened the message thread. Everything was the same as it had been on the night he died — the last message I had sent him, the one he never saw:

“Text me when you get home.”

He never made it home. A drunk driver hit his car just three streets away from his apartment. He was gone before the ambulance even arrived. And now, five years later, here was his name glowing on my screen, asking if I was awake.

Every instinct said not to reply, but grief doesn’t follow logic. Grief follows longing.

I typed three words that barely made it through my trembling fingers.

“Who is this?”

The reply came almost instantly.

“It’s me.”

I stepped back from the phone as if it had bitten me. A cold ripple ran through my chest. People don’t come back. Numbers don’t send messages from the other side. So who was playing with me? And why?

I stared at the screen, trying to decide whether to block it or call it, when another message arrived.

“I’m sorry I left like that.”

My throat tightened. Daniel used to say that during small arguments, after late-night talks, whenever he felt guilty about something trivial. It was his way of smoothing things over. Seeing those words again felt like reopening a wound that never fully closed.

I typed slowly, choosing every word carefully.

“This isn’t funny. Who are you?”

Again, the response came without delay.

“Check the box under my bed.”

My breath froze.

There was only one person on earth who knew about that box.

Five years ago, after Daniel’s funeral, I cleaned out his apartment. I found that old wooden crate under his bed — filled with movie tickets, childhood pictures, and small things he collected over the years. Before I left, I locked it and kept the key in my drawer. I hadn’t opened it since.

But now someone — somehow — was telling me to.

I grabbed my jacket, took my car keys, and drove across the city. I don’t remember the road. I don’t remember the traffic lights. I only remember the panic pulsing inside my chest as I unlocked my old storage unit where I kept the crate.

The wooden box looked exactly the same. Dusty. Unmoved. Untouched.

I unlocked it and opened the lid.

Everything was still there — the movie ticket from our last cinema trip, a letter he wrote to himself when he was 15, the watch our father gave him.

But on the top, where nothing had ever been placed before, lay a folded note.

A note I had never seen.

My hands went cold as I picked it up. The handwriting was his. I recognized the curve of the letters, the way he always slanted the “y.”

The note read:

“If you’re reading this, I didn’t make it home. I’m sorry. Please don’t carry the things I never said.”

I sat down on the cold concrete floor. My breath came out uneven and shaky. Daniel had always been strangely intuitive. He would joke about writing “just in case” letters, but I never took him seriously.

I didn’t know how long I sat there before my phone buzzed again.

“You found it.”

A chill crawled across my skin.

I typed, “How did you know about the note? When did you write it?”

Then I waited. One minute. Two minutes. Ten. Nothing.

Finally, the three dots appeared — the typing bubble.

Then nothing.

Then it appeared again.

Then stopped again.

It felt like someone was struggling to say something.

At last, a message came through.

“Let it go.”

That was the final text.

The number stopped responding after that. When I tried calling it, a robotic voice said the number was not in service.

I reported the incident to the phone company. They told me the number had been inactive for years, not reassigned to anyone, and technically couldn’t have sent a message at all.

But it did.

I still don’t know who—or what—contacted me that night. Maybe someone hacked something they shouldn’t have. Maybe someone wanted to hurt me. Or maybe grief plays tricks sharp enough to cut straight through reality.

But the note was real. His handwriting was real. And whatever happened, it led me to the one message my brother never got to say while he was alive: let it go.

Since that night, something in me feels different. The grief is still there, but it no longer claws at me the way it used to. It sits quietly, like a memory instead of a wound.

Sometimes I still open my phone at night and look at the last message thread. It hasn’t changed. The final text remains:

“Let it go.”

And for the first time in five years… I finally think I can.