The Number in the Draft

I was nine when we moved into the house on Marrow Lane. It wasn’t the kind of place you’d pick for a fresh start; the paint was peeling like sunburn, and the porch sagged as if it were tired of holding up the world. My mother, my stepfather, my little brother Toby, and I had come from the city, fleeing a rent hike that felt like a shove off a cliff. The house was cheap, and that was its only virtue. I remember the first night, lying in my new room with its sloping ceiling and a window that rattled like teeth in a cold wind. The bed was a hand-me-down bunk, and the desk across from it was scarred with initials from kids who’d long since grown up and left. My mother had bought me my first phone, a brick of a thing with a glowing screen that made me feel like a secret agent. I kept it on the desk, plugged into a charger that buzzed like a trapped fly.

That first night, I couldn’t sleep. The house had a smell, a mix of old wood and something sour, like milk left out too long. I lay on the top bunk, staring at the ceiling, when I heard a beeping. It was coming from the phone. I thought my mother might be checking on me, so I peeked over the edge. No one was there. The room was a wash of gray shadows. I climbed down, my bare feet cold on the linoleum, and picked up the phone. The screen glowed with a number, a long string of digits I didn’t recognize. I stared at it for a moment, my thumb hovering over the delete button. But I didn’t delete it. Something stopped me. I wrote it on my palm in ballpoint pen, then cleared the screen and went back to bed. In the morning, the ink had smeared, but the number was still visible, a blue-black stain on my skin.

I didn’t think much of it at first. Kids are good at forgetting. But the number kept appearing. Not on the phone, but in my mind, like a song stuck on repeat. I would be in class, and the digits would flicker behind my eyes. I started to have dreams where I was dialing the number over and over, but the phone was always a disconnected lump of plastic. My mother noticed I was quiet, but she chalked it up to moving, to starting a new school. She didn’t see the number I’d scratched into the wall beside my bed, trying to claw it out of my head.

When I was ten, things got stranger. The house began to breathe. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean, I would lie in bed and feel a pressure in the air, like a giant hand pressing down on the room, and then a release, like an exhale. The windows would fog on the inside even in summer. And the number, that damn number, started appearing in other places. On the dust of my window sill. In the frost that formed on the glass in December. In the grains of the wooden floor, as if someone had traced it with a fingertip. I never told anyone. What was I supposed to say? ‘The house is spelling out a phone number’? I was afraid they’d think I was crazy. And maybe I was.

The worst was when I was eleven. I came home from school one day to find my room rearranged. The desk had been moved to face the bed, and the chair was pulled out, as if someone had been sitting there. My phone was on the desk, glowing. I walked over slowly, my heart banging against my ribs. The number was on the screen again, and this time, I didn’t hesitate. I pressed the call button. There was a click, then a low hum, like a faraway machine. And then a voice. It wasn’t human. It was a sound like a rusty hinge, or a gasp of static, but it shaped words. It said my name. Not my full name, but the nickname my mother used when she was angry, like a secret that had been stolen.

I dropped the phone. It clattered to the desk, and the call ended. The hum stopped. The house was silent. I tried to tell myself it was a prank, a wrong number, a malfunction. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and I felt the house breathe again. Only this time, it was slower, deeper. And I heard a whispering from the walls, like a thousand tiny voices all saying the same thing. They were saying the number. Over and over, in syllables that felt like chipped teeth. I covered my ears, but the sound was inside my skull.

I didn’t sleep for two days. On the third day, my mother found me huddled in a corner, muttering the number. She took me to a doctor, who said I was just stressed, a kid struggling with change. They gave me something to sleep, and for a while, it worked. The number faded. The house went quiet. But I knew it wasn’t over. It was waiting.

Now I’m thirteen, and I still live in that house. I’ve learned to keep the phone in a drawer, but the number finds its way out. It appears on receipts, in the foam of my soda, in the cracks of the sidewalk on the way to school. I’ve traced it to a location: an abandoned tower at the edge of town, a place where kids dare each other to go at night. I’ve never been there, but I know that’s where it’s calling from. The phone number is a line to that tower, and whatever is there is waiting for me to dial. It’s been nine years, and I’m finally brave enough to answer. Tomorrow, I’m going to the tower. I’m going to enter the number into my phone, and I’m going to see what answers. I just hope I don’t regret it. I have a feeling that once I do, the house will stop breathing, and the number will stop haunting me. But maybe not in the way I hope.