Mara had kept the light for eleven winters and never once heard a phone on the rock. The sea took voices and left only wind. So when she found the handset caught in the kelp at low tide—black, dry, warm as a living thing—she stood over it until it rang.
Once. Polite. She didn’t move.
It rang again, louder, and the gulls lifted all at once. By the fifth ring the beam above her flickered, as if something had stepped into it. She snatched the phone up before she could think.
Static. Then a breath that wasn’t hers.
“You shouldn’t have answered,” the voice said, close as the shell at her ear. “Now it knows you’re the one who can hear it.”
The light went out. In the dark, the phone began to ring again—from inside the tower.