The Voice Note I Received From My Sister, Two Days After Her Funeral.

The Voice Note I Received From My Sister, Two Days After Her Funeral.

​Grief makes you hear things. That’s what the therapist told me. She said it’s common for the bereaved to hear the voice of their loved ones in the wind, or imagine their footsteps in the hallway. It’s the brain’s way of coping with the sudden vacuum left by a person’s existence.

​But grief doesn’t send WhatsApp notifications.

​My sister, Sarah, died on a rainy Tuesday. It was a car accident—quick, brutal, and final. We buried her two days ago. I remember the smell of the wet earth. I remember the sound of the dirt hitting the polished wood of the casket. I remember placing her favorite necklace and her cell phone inside the coffin before they closed it. It was a stupid, sentimental gesture. She was addicted to that phone, and I thought, in some twisted way, she’d want it with her. I made sure it was on silent, fully charged, and tucked into her cold hands.

​Now, it’s Thursday night. The house is empty. My parents are asleep, sedated by grief and sleeping pills. I’m sitting in the kitchen, staring at the rain lashing against the window, when my phone buzzes on the counter.

​I look over. The screen lights up the dark room.

​New Message from: Sarah ❤️

​My heart stopped. Literally missed a beat. My breath caught in my throat like a jagged stone. I stared at the name, waiting for it to change, waiting for it to be a glitch.

​I picked up the phone with trembling hands. It wasn't a text. It was a voice note. Audio duration: 0:14 seconds.

​"It’s a prank," I whispered, my voice shaking. "Someone hacked her cloud account. Someone is sick."

​But I knew the phone was six feet under. I knew because I put it there.

​I pressed play.

​For the first five seconds, there was only static. Then, a sound that chilled my blood. It was the sound of fabric rustling. Heavy, muffled movement. And then, a voice.

​"Mark? It’s... so dark. The battery is low. Why is it so tight in here?"

​It was her. It was Sarah. But her voice sounded wrong—tinny, echoing, and panicked.

​I dropped my phone. It clattered onto the tiled floor. I scrambled back, pressing my spine against the refrigerator. This wasn't possible. She was dead. I saw her body. I identified her.

​My phone buzzed again.

​New Message from: Sarah ❤️

Audio duration: 0:05 seconds.

​I didn't want to listen. I really didn't. But I crawled toward the phone like a man possessed. I pressed play.

​"I can't breathe. Mark, let me out. It scratches. The wood scratches."

​Tears streamed down my face. Was she alive? Did we bury her alive? The thought was a sledgehammer to my sanity. I grabbed my car keys. I had to go to the cemetery. I had to dig her up. I didn't care if it was illegal. If there was a 0.01% chance she was in that box suffocating, I had to go.

​As I rushed to the door, a thought stopped me cold.

​The signal.

​Underground, six feet of dense, wet soil, inside a sealed wooden casket... there is no cell service. Physics doesn't allow it. A signal can't penetrate that deep. She couldn't send a message from the grave.

​I opened the "Find My iPhone" app on my phone. We shared locations. I needed to see where the signal was coming from. If it showed the cemetery, I would go.

​The map loaded. The blue dot representing my phone pulsed in the kitchen. The green dot representing Sarah’s phone appeared.

​It wasn't at the cemetery.

​The green dot was moving. And it was moving fast.

​It was on the highway, heading toward our suburb.

​I watched in horror as the dot moved closer. Exit 42. Main Street. Oak Avenue.

​She wasn't in the grave. Someone had her phone. Grave robbers? Did someone dig her up?

​The phone buzzed again. A third voice note.

​Audio duration: 0:03 seconds.

​I played it.

​"I'm coming home, Mark."

​The voice was different now. It wasn't the panicked, confused Sarah from the first message. It was deeper. Guttural. Mocking.

​I looked at the map again. The green dot was on my street. It stopped right in front of my house.

​I looked at the front door. The heavy oak door that I had locked for the night.

​Ding-Dong.

​The doorbell rang.

​I stood frozen in the kitchen. Silence stretched out, heavy and suffocating. Then, my phone buzzed one last time. Not a voice note. A text.

​From: Sarah ❤️

"Open the door. I’m cold."

​I didn't move. I couldn't. Because through the frosted glass panel of the front door, I could see a silhouette. It looked like Sarah. It had her height, her long hair.

​But she was standing wrong. Her head was tilted at an impossible angle, resting on her shoulder as if her neck was broken. And she was tapping on the glass.

​Tap. Tap. Tap.

​With the phone.

​I backed away, retreating into the darkness of the house, realizing too late that the thing outside wasn't my sister. It was something that had found her first. Something that knew how to use her voice to get an invitation inside.

​And I had just read the receipt.