The last voicemail

I didn't realize the dead could leave voicemails.

At least not until yesterday.

At 3:17 a.m., my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but something about it felt odd. The ringtone sounded twisted, like if it came from underwater. I let it go to voicemail and attempted to go back asleep. I checked the message this morning. It was from my sister Maddie. A sister who died two years ago. Her voice was weak, but it was hers. "Ryan," she said quietly, "I don't have much time." It is freezing here. He monitors everything. Don't trust the lights. Then static. Then came quiet. I played it again. One hundred times. I checked the number. It's burned into my memory. I tried to call back. It did not exist. My hands couldn't quit shaking. Maddie died in a vehicle accident, which included a closed casket, a funeral, and grieving therapy. I witnessed the wreck personally. There is no going back from that. But this was her voice. I knew it like it was my own. I drove back to our hometown. The voicemail did not give me a choice. Maddie and I would sneak out to an old cabin in the woods behind our house, which we called "The Quiet." I hadn't been there since she died, but I found myself trudging down the path regardless, boots crunching in the frost and breath hanging in the air like ghosts.

The cabin was still there.

The door creaked open, just as it used to. Inside, the temperature was lower than it should have been. Except for a single, new footprint in the center of the room, the dust hung heavy and undisturbed. Mine did not match it. I followed the sound of weak static to the far wall. A lightbulb blinked overhead. Maddie's old tape recorder rested beneath it, and it turned on as soon as I touched it. Her voice appeared again.

"If you are hearing this, it indicates he allowed you in. But he never lets you leave." Then the lights went out entirely.

I heard breathing behind me.

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