The phone screen lit up in the darkness: 3:02. Emma rubbed her eyes and tapped on a message from her boyfriend, Mark: “I’m home. I’m so tired tonight—I’m going to sleep. Love you.”
She typed “Good night” and hit send. The message showed as read.
Three minutes later, her phone vibrated again.
“Are you asleep?” Mark messaged. Emma was about to reply when she saw the message marked as read. She hadn’t read it. She stared at the screen, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.
“Who are you?” she typed.
Read. No reply.
“Mark?” she messaged again.
Read.
Emma dialed his number; it rang once before being hung up. She called three times, and each time the call was hung up. The last time, the call was answered, but all she heard was heavy breathing—as if something was pressed against the receiver, gasping for air. Then it hung up.
She called Mark’s mom. “He’s home,” his mom said. “I even warmed up some milk for him half an hour ago.” Emma asked her to knock on Mark’s door. Knocks came from the other end of the line, followed by a scream.
Mark was lying on his bed. His phone was in his hand, the screen still lit, displaying the chat window with Emma. The medical examiner said he’d been dead for at least four hours. Cardiac arrest, no external injuries.
Emma was shaking all over. Four hours ago—that would have been 3:00 a.m. She stared at her phone; the conversation between her and “Mark” was still there. The last message from him read: “Open the door.”
She jerked her head up. The bedroom door wasn’t quite closed, and the hallway was pitch black. She tiptoed to the doorway and peered through the crack—the living room was empty. She let out a sigh of relief and looked down at her phone.
3:02.
Time had suddenly jumped back.
She received that message again: “I’m home. I’m so tired tonight, I’m going to sleep. Love you.”
A green bubble. Read.
Her phone vibrated again. “Are you asleep?”
Emma screamed and threw her phone across the room. With the screen facing up, she saw new messages popping up one after another in the chat window, all marked as read.
“I’m right at the door.”
“Why won’t you open the door?”
“I can see you’re reading this.”
The last one: “You’ve finished reading.”
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Slow and heavy, step by step, heading toward the bedroom.
Emma threw herself against the door, trying to lock it tight, but she noticed a note wedged under the door. She picked it up; it was in Mark’s handwriting, though the strokes were crooked: “Don’t open the door. That’s not me. I’m under this note.”
She flipped the note over. Written in blood on the back were the words: “Run.”
The footsteps stopped outside the door. The doorknob began to turn.
Her phone screen was still lit. The last message was green, with “Mark” listed as the sender:
“I’m in.”
