Ghosts in My Phone

I found the phone by chance—though, looking back, chance feels too flimsy a word. It was propped in the dusty window of Old Man Granger’s pawn shop, wedged between a chipped porcelain swan and a Sega Genesis cartridge.

“Perfect condition,” he assured me, turning the device over with cracked, nicotine-stained fingers. “Factory-reset and all. Twenty bucks.”

My own phone had drowned in a puddle the week before, and payday was still two Fridays away. Twenty dollars felt like mercy.

That night, I pressed the power button, expecting the sterile blankness of a clean slate. Instead, the screen bloomed with a lock-screen photo: a blurry shot of someone laughing so hard they’d tipped their head back, the sun shredding their silhouette into burnished light. The date read March 14, 2023—six months ago.

Factory-reset, my foot.

I thumbed the power button again, deciding I’d wipe it myself in the morning. But at 2:09 a.m. the phone vibrated on my nightstand. A notification flashed:

Unknown Number: hi. can you see me?

Half asleep, I squinted at the message. Spam, surely.

Me: Wrong number.

Seconds later:

lol. figures. i’m the last thing on this phone that wasn’t erased.

that makes us roommates, i guess.

I stared, thumb hovering. Another buzz.

btw—i’m dead. sorry if that’s awkward.

A chill skittered across my scalp. I set the phone facedown and tried—in vain—to sleep.

The Photo Album

Morning arrived in a slurry of grey light. Curiosity elbowed away fear, and I opened the Messages app again. No new texts. I clicked on Photos. Despite the alleged reset, there was a single album titled “limbo.”

Inside: thirty-one images. Some crisp, others grainy. All haunting.

A cracked windshield spattered with rain, city lights smeared in motion.

A hospital corridor, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

A bare foot on polished linoleum, an IV line trailing like a leash.

A subway car empty but for a woman whose face was…smudged, as if someone had dragged a fingerprint across wet paint.

My stomach pitched.

The final photo was different. A mirror selfie: a young person—maybe mid-twenties—wearing an oversized hoodie, holding a bouquet of wilted lilies. Their eyes, enormous and unblinking, were turned not toward the mirror but toward the camera lens itself. Toward me.

The caption read: find me?

The Pact

That evening, I texted the unknown number again.

Me: Who are you?

The reply arrived instantly.

call me robin. pronouns they/them. died 3/18/23. phone ended up in a pawn-shop four blocks from the crash site.

lucky you.

Lucky wasn’t the adjective I would’ve chosen.

Me: You expect me to believe this?

nah. not yet. let’s start easy. look under your bed.

My bedroom door was closed; the house silent. Heart ricocheting, I knelt and lifted the bedskirt. A single lily petal—brown at the edges—lay on the hardwood. My sheets smelled faintly of pondwater and smoke.

I texted with shaking hands.

Me: What do you want?

to finish something. i didn’t get where i was going that night. need a witness. you in?

Against logic, against every self-preservation impulse, I typed:

Me: Okay.

The Route

Robin sent directions: a subway line I rarely took, an exit near the riverfront, a defunct skate park littered with graffiti ghosts. At each stop, my phone vibrated with another image from the limbo album, perfectly matching the scene sliding past the train windows.

I disembarked at Pierce Station. The air smelled of rust and river silt. The sun sagged low, bruising the sky violet. My phone pinged.

see the mural? big orange koi?

I spotted it—an enormous fish leaping across a brick wall, scales flaking with age.

Me: I see it.

stand there. take a pic.

I lifted the phone. Through the screen, the mural shimmered, fresh and wet, as if painted minutes ago. But something else layered over it: a reflection of headlights, water droplets suspended mid-air—exactly like image #1. I snapped the photo.

A new message: thank you. one more stop.

The Bridge

Metal groaned overhead—the old Laurel Street drawbridge. Robin guided me to its midpoint, where the railing bent outward as if wrenched by giant hands. Beneath: black water, thick with secrets.

this is where the car flipped.

A memory not mine pulsed behind my eyes: tires skidding on rain-slick pavement, a brief weightlessness, the shriek of twisting steel, water lashing through shattered glass. Then—silence. Crushing, absolute.

My knees buckled. I gripped the rail.

Me: What do you need me to do?

The reply glowed:

say my name out loud. tell the river i existed.

Tankers hummed in the distance; gulls wheeled overhead. My voice quavered but carried.

“Robin Ellery Hayes, you were here. You laughed, you dreamed, you died too soon. I remember you.”

Wind rose, cold and clean. The water glinted with sudden starlight though the sky remained cloudy. My phone chimed—a final photo auto-saved: the bridge, empty, tranquil, no spectral overlays. The limbo album vanished.

One last text appeared:

thanks, roommate. phone’s yours now. live loud.

The typing indicators flickered, then went dark.

Epilogue

In the weeks that followed, the phone never buzzed at 2:09 a.m. again. I kept Robin’s lily petal pressed inside a notebook. Some nights, passing the riverfront, I’d feel a hush—a gap in the noise—like someone quietly stepping aside to let me through.

I still scroll through my camera roll sometimes. There’s a blank space between March 14 and March 18, 2023, like a skipped heartbeat. I leave it untouched. A memorial of pixels.

And when my screen lights up in the dark with an unfamiliar number, my breath catches.

Because now I know: some messages are lifelines tossed backward through time. Some phones are haunted not by malice but by unfinished songs, waiting for anyone kind—or foolish—enough to press play.