Do Not Reply

The first message arrived at 9:41, in the middle of a storm, and Priya Nair thought it was a wrong number.

She was lying on the sofa under a blanket with her laptop on her knees and a half-eaten bowl of noodles balanced on the arm. The house was quiet in that heavy, listening way houses are when the people you live with are somewhere else. Mum and Dad were at her cousin’s wedding in Birmingham, staying overnight. Her brother Arjun was at a friend’s, due back at eleven, and had promised not to be late in the way that guaranteed he would be. Outside, the wind was throwing rain at the windows in handfuls.

Her phone buzzed against the cushion. She glanced at it.

Unknown number

Priya. Lock the back door.

She frowned. She did not know the number. Not, actually, in the sense that it looked wrong; it was a long string of digits with nothing familiar in it. She turned the phone over and went back to her film.

It buzzed again.

Now, please.

“Okay, no,” Priya told the phone, and almost blocked it. But something stopped her thumb: the please. It was oddly polite, for a scam. And a small, cold part of her brain, the part that always noticed when a draught came from the wrong direction, had registered something about the back of the house. A faint chill. A sound, like an unlatched door shifting in its frame.

She got up, stood in the dark of the hallway in her socks, and looked down the passage toward the kitchen.

The back door was open an inch.

She didn’t remember opening it. She’d had a bin to take out an hour ago, and she’d come back in, and she thought she had shut it. The storm had probably pushed it. That was all. She walked down the passage, put her hand on the cold wood, and shoved it closed. Then she turned the key and slid the bolt, and stood there with her heart going faster than the job deserved.

On the kitchen counter, her phone buzzed again.

Thank you.

Priya picked it up very slowly. The screen glowed in her hand.

She did not stand there for long. It occurred to her that the sender could see her. That was the first sensible thing she thought. She spun round, pulse thudding, and looked at the black window above the sink, at the dark garden, the shed, the dripping trampoline, the line of fence.

Nothing out there. Just rain.

Her thumbs were moving before she’d decided on it.

You

Who is this?

The reply came back almost immediately.

Look at the number.

She looked.

It was not a long string of digits she didn’t know. She had been wrong. Not in the sense that it had changed; it was exactly the same. But she’d never looked at the end of it. She’d never needed to. And now, in the blue light of the kitchen, she saw that every digit in that number was one she’d typed herself, a hundred times, in every form and every school trip permission slip, her own phone number, in her own phone, written back at her as the sender.

It’s me, said the message. It’s you. I’m three minutes ahead.

She did the sensible thing. She turned off the phone.

It took a long time for the screen to go dark. She held down the button with her thumb, pressing, and the little menu came up, and she slid the red bar, and the phone shivered and died in her hand. She put it on the table, face down. She went and sat on the sofa with the blanket round her shoulders, and she turned the volume of the film all the way up.

She lasted a minute and a half.

Then, because she was fifteen and curious and frightened, and because she had never in her life been able to leave a door shut, she turned the phone on again.

It buzzed, almost at once. A message from her own number, which had been waiting.

Good. I’m glad you turned it back on. I was worried you’d leave it off. I didn’t have a lot of time.

The timestamp underneath said 9:47.

She looked at the clock on the cooker through the open kitchen door. It said 9:44.

Three minutes. Not a glitch. The messages were arriving, and had been arriving, stamped with a time that hadn’t happened yet.

Priya made a small sound in her throat and sat down on the arm of the sofa.

It’s a prank, she thought. Someone’s hacked the clock. Someone’s spoofed my number. It’s Arjun, probably, from Callum’s, with some app. She typed her brother’s name and sent it with a string of question marks. The answer came back at once.

It’s not Arjun. He’s at Callum’s with a pizza and his phone is dead. He doesn’t know.

Priya, I need you to listen. We haven’t got long.

Something is in the garden.

She read that one four times. She could not seem to make the words go into her head.

You

This isn’t funny

No. It isn’t. I wish it was.

It was at the back door when I wrote the first message. That’s why I told you to lock it. It had its hand on the handle. I’m sorry; I should have started with that. I was so frightened I forgot to say anything useful.

There was a pause. The three little dots appeared and vanished and appeared again, as if someone on the other end were typing and stopping and starting over with a shaking hand. Then:

I’m sending these from the other side of 9:47. I can feel the connection going. It’s like holding on to the edge of a table. I don’t think I can do it for long.

Priya was breathing so fast she was seeing spots. She crossed to the window and drew the curtains tight, one at a time, and was surprised to find that her hands were quite steady.

You

Prove it’s you.

The reply took longer this time. When it came, it was a single line.

You’re afraid of the shed. Since you were seven. Because Arjun told you there was a man in it who ate small girls’ hair.

She put a hand over her mouth.

She had told no one that. Not Mum, not Dad, not Maya or Callum or anybody at school. She had been seven. She had been so ashamed, afterwards, of being scared of a stupid thing, that she had buried it in a place so private even she didn’t go there.

Nobody knew. Only Arjun, and he’d forgotten.

See? said the message. It’s me.

“What is it?” she typed. “What’s in the garden?”

I don’t know. I only saw it for a second. It wasn’t like a person. It was like a person trying to be one. It stood too still and it was the wrong height.

It can hear us, Priya. I don’t know how, but it can. And it learns. It learned the back door. It learned what you sound like when you’re frightened.

Please, listen. These are the rules. I worked them out while I still had time.

ONE. Don’t say anything out loud. Not even to yourself. It listens at the windows.

TWO. Don’t type anything you don’t have to. Whatever you send, it can see. Whatever you send, it can use.

THREE. Every message from me will be three minutes ahead of you. If it’s not three minutes ahead, it isn’t me.

FOUR. Stay downstairs. Away from the windows. Turn off the lamp.

She turned off the lamp. The room became a cave, lit by the cold grey flicker of the television. She turned that off too, and the dark rushed in, enormous and smelling of rain.

She sat on the floor behind the sofa with her phone cupped in both hands. The wind rose, fell, rose again. Above her head the old house creaked and muttered, settling its bones. From the kitchen came the slow tick of the clock. 9:52. 9:53.

Her phone lit.

It’s walking round the house.

She felt the whole of her skin go tight.

Clockwise. Slowly. It’s been round once already. It tries each window and each door. It’s doing it the way you would, if you were being polite, if you wanted to be let in.

You can’t hear it, but I can. It stops outside the front door every time.

She stayed very still. She pressed her shoulders to the back of the sofa. Her heart was going so hard it seemed to shake the floor.

On the other side of the living room wall, she heard a sound.

It was small. A soft tap, tap, like a fingertip on a pane. She turned her head, slowly, to the front window, with its curtains drawn and the rain streaming down behind them.

Tap. Tap-tap.

Then, in the voice of her mother, perfectly clear, muffled by the glass: “Priya? Are you in there? I’ve lost my key.”

Her lips parted. Every instinct she had, every ounce of her, rose up in a great warm pull toward the door. Mum. It’s Mum. It was Mum’s voice. It was her tone, her tired, funny, slightly cross tone. It was exactly right.

Her phone buzzed.

Don’t.

She’s in Birmingham. Look at the time.

She looked at the time. It was 9:57. At 9:57, her mother was a hundred and twenty miles away, asleep in a hotel bed, in a very uncomfortable dress.

“Priya?” said the voice outside. “Darling? It’s absolutely pouring. Please let me in.”

She put her head down on her knees and shut her eyes. She counted. She counted to a hundred and fifty, slow, in her head, with her lips pressed together. When she lifted her face again, the tapping had gone away.

Her phone said:

Good.

She almost made a mistake at 10:03.

It was the dots that did it. The little dots that showed someone typing, rolling grey on the screen, off and on, off and on. She watched them, hypnotised. And when the message appeared at last, it was three words long and her stomach dropped through the floor.

Priya help me

The typing was wrong. That was what she’d remember afterwards. Her own texts were always in lowercase, with too many dots, never a full stop. This was capitalised, with no punctuation at all, as if it had been written by someone who had learned from watching.

Priya help me

Its in the house

please open the front door its me

She read it. Her thumbs were already on the keyboard.

Who is this?

She stopped.

Rule two. Don’t type anything you don’t have to. Whatever you send, it can use.

It had learned how to text.

Of course it had. It had heard her whispering in the passage, and watched her through the window, and read the words that she’d sent, her fear and her questions. It had been learning her voice all night, the way you learn a language by listening at a wall. And now it had her number, and it had her name, and it was trying to sound like her.

She looked at the timestamp. 10:06.

She looked at the clock. 10:04.

Two minutes. Not three.

She had to be certain. But she could not ask a question, because anything she asked it could answer.

She stared at the dark. She thought, as hard as she could, in the silent chamber of her head: tell me something only I would know.

For a minute, nothing.

Then the phone buzzed again. And this time, it was a message from the time she wanted: 10:07 on the screen, 10:04 on the cooker, three minutes ahead, exactly. A long, calm, careful message, in lowercase, with too many dots.

ok. that wasn’t me. i’m sorry, i didn’t think it would be so quick.

you want proof and you can’t ask for it, because it’ll hear. so here. nani’s chai. cardamom, and a pinch of black pepper “so the cold doesn’t get in.” she made it for you the night before she went into hospital and you’ve never told anyone you didn’t drink it. you let it go cold on the windowsill, because you were scared that if you finished it, she’d be gone.

Priya made a noise she’d never made before.

i know because i’m you. i’m still there, a bit. but i’m very thin now. please, please do exactly what i say.

“What do I do?” she thought, as loud as she could, into the silence.

The answer arrived at once.

you can’t beat it. i’ve tried. it doesn’t hurt you if you don’t let it in. it only wants to be invited.

at 10:10 it’ll come to the front door. it’ll use arjun’s voice. then mum’s. then dad’s. then yours, saying exactly what you’d say.

when it does, you put the phone against your chest and you put your hands over your ears and you count to six hundred. don’t answer. don’t open. don’t type. don’t look at the glass in the front door.

if you do all that, it’ll lose interest. it’s patient, but it’s not very bright. it’s just something that learned to knock.

At 10:09, she stood up behind the sofa. At 10:10, she went into the hall. She crept to the foot of the stairs, away from the glass, and sat down on the third step with her knees up and the phone pressed to her ribs.

At 10:10 and one second, the letterbox flap lifted.

“Pri?” said Arjun. “It’s me. I’m back early. Mum rang Callum’s mum. Let me in, I’m drenched.”

She pressed her hands over her ears.

“Priya Nair.” It was Dad now, deep and gentle. “Open the door, beti. It’s all right.”

Count. She counted. One. Two. Three. Her voice was in her head, and it sounded very far away, like someone shouting through a pipe.

“Priya, please.” Mum. “I’m so scared. Something’s after me. Let me in.”

Eighty. Eighty-one.

“You’re being so silly,” said Arjun. “Come on. You always do this.”

A hundred and twelve.

The letterbox rattled. Something on the other side of the front door leaned its weight against the wood, and the whole frame creaked with it. Then, in a voice she knew better than her own, a voice that had been soft and dry and sweet-smelling of cardamom, the voice of a woman who was a year and a half gone:

“Priya, meri jaan. Come to the door. It’s Nani.”

It was a mistake. She knew that, even as she sat there with tears running down her face. It was a terrible, brilliant cruelty, the only one that could have worked. It had found the one door she would have opened without thinking.

She pushed her fists against her ears until her head rang. She did not move. She did not stand up.

Two hundred and four. Two hundred and five.

She counted. She counted till her lips were numb. And somewhere, around four hundred, the voices began to overlap, her brother and her father and her nani all at once, a babble of loved voices speaking through a letterbox, getting higher and thinner and stranger, and at last they stopped being words at all. They became a kind of patient, wet clicking.

Five hundred and ninety-eight.

Five hundred and ninety-nine.

Six hundred.

Silence.

The rain had stopped. The wind had dropped. The hall clock said 10:21. The only sound in the world was her own harsh breathing.

She did not take her hands from her ears for a very long time.

Arjun let himself in at five to eleven, with his key, whistling.

He found his sister on the stairs in the dark, in a blanket, clutching her phone like a rosary. She was awake. She was white as paper. When he flicked on the light she flinched, and when he asked what was wrong she said “nothing,” and then began, to his alarm, to laugh.

“You scared me stiff,” she gasped. “I thought—I—nothing. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re green.”

“It was a thunderstorm.”

“It stopped an hour ago.”

“I know,” she said, and hugged him so hard he dropped his keys.

She told her parents the next morning that she’d had a bad night. She told Maya at school on Monday that she’d got spooked. She did not tell anyone about the texts, because when she looked back at her phone on Saturday morning, there was no conversation. No thread. No number. No messages, in any app, from anybody called Unknown or You; the whole night had been wiped as clean as a plate.

By Sunday she had almost persuaded herself. A storm. A power surge. A nightmare. She’d had a lot on her mind.

On Sunday evening, Mum made chai.

She brought it into the lounge on the good tray, in the good cups, with the cardamom smell rising from it in a sweet soft cloud. She set it down beside Priya on the arm of the sofa. And Priya sat with her hands wrapped round the cup, drinking slowly, thinking of nothing, thinking of Nani, thinking of a pinch of black pepper.

So the cold doesn’t get in, she thought. And she finished it. All of it, to the last cold dregs.

Her phone buzzed.

She had been expecting it, somehow. Some secret part of her had known. It lay face up on the cushion beside her, lit from within, a very small blue window.

You

It’s me again. 9:41 tomorrow morning. I’m three minutes ahead.

She put down the cup.

I’m sorry. I know you did everything right. I know. But I need you to look out of the back window.

Just look. Don’t type.

She did not move. She did not breathe. In the lounge, the radio played softly, and her parents’ voices drifted from the kitchen, and the lamp threw a warm gold circle over the carpet.

The phone buzzed again.

Please. It’s me.

It’s really me. You know it’s me. You can see it’s three minutes ahead.

She looked at the timestamp.

7:12 p.m.

She looked at the clock on the wall.

7:12 p.m.

There was no gap at all.

She stood very slowly and went to the window. She pulled back the curtain an inch with a finger that did not feel like her own. The garden lay blue and quiet in the dusk, the shed, the fence, the dripping trampoline.

In the middle of the lawn, perfectly still, stood a girl in her pyjamas.

She had Priya’s face. She had Priya’s hair, tied up in a loose knot, and Priya’s frown, and Priya’s habit of holding her phone with both hands. She was looking up at the window, and as Priya watched, she lifted the glowing screen and began, with great patience, with great care, with her head tilted to one side, to type.

The phone buzzed once more in Priya’s hand.

Hi. It’s me. Come outside. I’ll explain everything.

Priya read the message through to the end. Then she turned off the screen, and held the dark glass against her chest, and thought very loudly about nothing, and did not reply.