The Gilded Number

Marta had just moved from the sun-baked plains of Jalisco to the rain-soaked hills of the Pacific Northwest, into a house that smelled of cedar and old carpet. It was a rental, a two-story Victorian with peeling paint and a porch that groaned like a tired animal. Her family—her father, a quiet man named Tomás, her mother, Elena, and her two younger brothers, Mateo and Andrés—had chosen it for the cheap rent and the proximity to the hop fields where Tomás found work. Marta, nineteen, was less enthused. She missed the dust and the heat, the familiar cacophony of her cousins. But tonight, she had a distraction.

She had saved for months for a new phone—a sleek, black slab of glass and metal that cost more than her mother’s weekly grocery budget. She’d bought it in Seattle on a rare shopping trip, and she’d spent the evening transferring contacts, downloading apps, and texting friends back in Jalisco. The house was quiet, the rain a constant hiss against the windows. Her brothers had gone to bed hours ago, and her parents, exhausted from the day’s labor, had followed. Marta sat on her bed, the phone’s glow illuminating her face, her thumbs dancing across the screen.

It was past midnight when she finally put the phone down, yawning. She lay back, the pillow cool beneath her head, and closed her eyes. The rain filled her ears, a white noise she’d grown accustomed to. Just as she was drifting off, she heard it: a soft, shuffling sound from the hallway, like bare feet on the wooden floor. It moved past her door, toward the living room. She sat up, her heart quickening. ‘Papá?’ she called, but there was no answer. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and padded to the door, pushing it open. The hallway was empty, lit only by the faint amber glow of the nightlight in the bathroom. She checked the living room: the old couch, the TV, the clutter of boxes—nothing. She shook her head, blaming her exhaustion, and returned to bed.

But sleep wouldn’t come. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain. And then, barely audible above the patter, she heard a sound that made her blood run cold. It was her name—’Marta’—whispered in a strained, airy voice, as if someone were trying to speak through a mouthful of cotton. It came from the corner of the room, near her closet. Her skin prickled. She sat up, heart pounding, and squinted into the darkness. ‘Hola?’ she managed, but the word came out as a squeak.

The silence that followed was thick. She grabbed her phone, turning on the flashlight, and swept the beam across the room. The corner was empty, the closet door shut. She got up, her legs shaky, and opened the closet. Nothing but her clothes and a stack of old magazines she’d found in the basement. She closed it and leaned against the door, trying to control her breathing. She told herself it was her imagination, a trick of the rain and the new environment.

She went back to bed, but this time she kept the light on. She fiddled with her phone, scrolling through her contacts, as if the glow could ward off whatever was in the room. It was then she noticed something strange: a new contact had appeared in her list. The name was ‘Aurelia.’ She had no idea who that was. Beneath the name was a phone number—a long string of digits that seemed to go on forever, far beyond the standard ten. She tapped it, and the phone began to ring. A robotic voice, devoid of emotion, intoned, ‘The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again.’ She ended the call, bewildered. She tried to delete the contact, but the phone wouldn’t respond to her commands. It just kept highlighting the name, as if it were stuck.

She put the phone down, deciding to deal with it in the morning. But as she lay there, she heard the whisper again, more insistent this time: ‘Marta.’ It came from the hallway, then from the foot of her bed. She snapped her eyes open, and in the dim light, she saw a silhouette—a woman, tall and gaunt, standing at the foot of the bed. The woman was soaked, her hair plastered to her skull, her clothes dripping water onto the floor. She was holding Marta’s phone, but it wasn’t Marta’s phone; it was an old rotary phone, black and heavy, with a frayed cord. The woman raised it to her ear, and Marta heard the whisper through the receiver: ‘You have a call.’

Marta tried to scream, but no sound came out. The woman vanished, and the room was empty again. Marta’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. She looked at it: a message from the contact ‘Aurelia’: ‘I’m inside the house now. Your room. Look behind you.’ Marta wheeled around, but there was nothing. Then her phone buzzed again: ‘Just kidding. But I’ll visit you when you close your eyes.’

Marta didn’t sleep that night. She stayed up, phone in hand, watching the dark corners. When dawn broke, she told her parents, but they dismissed it as a dream. Her brothers teased her about being scared of the dark. She tried to explain, but she couldn’t make them understand. She thought about throwing the phone away, but it was too expensive, and she was too stubborn.

The next night, she was lying in bed, phone charging on the dresser, when she heard the whisper again. This time, it was right next to her ear. ‘Marta.’ She sat up, and the phone on the dresser lit up on its own. The screen displayed a video call. The caller ID read ‘Aurelia.’ Against her better judgment, she accepted. The screen showed a dark room, indistinguishable, and then a face: a woman with hollowed eyes, her skin pale and translucent, her mouth open in a silent scream. The woman reached through the screen, her fingers emerging like smoke, and touched Marta’s cheek. The touch was icy, wet, and it left a lingering chill.

The call ended. Marta was frozen. She looked at her reflection in the dark screen: she saw a faint damp mark on her cheek. She wiped it, but it stayed. Over the next days, the mark slowly darkened into a bruise. She tried to hide it with makeup, but her mother noticed. ‘What happened to your face?’ Elena asked, concern in her eyes. Marta shook her head, unable to explain.

In desperation, she threw the phone into the river behind their house. It sank, and she felt a surge of relief. That night, she slept peacefully for the first time in days. But in the morning, she found the phone on her nightstand, dry, its screen glowing with a new message: ‘You can’t get rid of me. I’m part of your life now.’

She decided to tell her boss, a grizzled old man who’d lived in the area for years. He listened to her story, his face growing grave. ‘The house you’re living in,’ he said, ‘used to belong to a woman named Aurelia. She was a séance medium, back in the eighties. She disappeared one night, right after a storm. They found her body in the river, drowned. But they never found her phone—a fancy rotary one she claimed was a gift from the spirits. They say she still lurks in that house, looking for a new phone to inhabit.’ He paused. ‘You need to burn it.’

Marta went home, determined to end it. She took the phone to the backyard, built a small fire, and tossed the phone into the flames. It sizzled and blackened, but the screen remained intact, flickering with the image of a woman’s face. The woman was smiling. As the fire died, the phone remained, untouched, and the woman’s voice came from the speaker, clear and cold: ‘You can’t burn a ghost, Marta. But I can burn you.’

That night, the house filled with the sound of dripping water. Marta locked her door, but when she turned around, Aurelia was standing there, dripping, her skin wrinkled like a prune, her eyes white as the river’s foam. She held out her hand, and Marta’s phone materialized in her palm. ‘Our bond is complete,’ Aurelia said, her voice echoing. ‘Now you must carry me wherever you go.’

Marta tried to run, but her legs wouldn’t move. Aurelia stepped closer, and Marta felt her body go cold, as if she’d been dunked in icy water. She saw her own reflection in the woman’s eyes—pale, hollowed, and strangely peaceful. When she woke up, she was in her bed, her phone on her chest. Her family didn’t notice anything. But when she looked in the mirror, she saw it: a faint trail of water running down her cheeks, as if she’d been crying, but it wasn’t tears—it was river water. And in her phone’s contacts, ‘Aurelia’ was now the only contact, and it was listed as ‘Mom.’

From that day on, Marta could hear whispers from the phone, even when it was off. They told her to go to the river, to join them. She resisted, but the pull grew stronger. One morning, her family found her sitting on the riverbank, her feet in the water, her phone held tight to her ear. She was smiling. They brought her home, but she never spoke of it. And every night, she would lie in bed, listening to the rain, and she would whisper back to the voice on the other end, because she had no choice. She had become Aurelia’s new vessel, and the phone was her anchor to the dead.

The last time anyone saw her with her own eyes, she was dialing a number on her phone, her fingers moving with a practiced, ancient rhythm. When they asked who she was calling, she said, ‘My mother.’ And she’d point to the river, where the water swirled in a strange, and the echoes of a long-drowned woman’s laugh floated up from the murky depths.