Chapter (1)
Nnamdi's old Infinix phone wouldn't stop vibrating under his pillow. He'd ignored it for hours, pretending it was just a dream, or a glitch. But at exactly 2:33 AM, it rang again — for the fifth time that night.
Unknown Caller. Again.
He let it ring while he lay on his back, staring at the cracked ceiling. He could hear his mother snoring softly in the next room. The night was too quiet, the kind of silence that made every shadow look alive.
When the phone rang a sixth time, he gave in. His thumb hovered over the green icon, breath shaky. Then he pressed it to his ear.
"Hello?" His voice came out in a croak.
Static answered him first, like the sea trapped in a tin can. Then a voice, low and broken.
"You took what's mine…"
Nnamdi squeezed his eyes shut. "Who's this? Stop calling my phone!"
"You took it. Now bring it back…"
The line went dead.
He dropped the phone onto the bed, his pulse hammering. He wanted to laugh — maybe this was a prank, one of those campus boys messing around. But who would prank him at 2:33 AM, every single night for a week?
He'd blocked the number before, even changed SIM cards. The calls kept coming.
A new vibration. This time, a text.
[Return what you stole or they all die.]
He deleted it with a shaking thumb. A second later, the same message popped back. Then again. The same words filled his screen, line after line, until his phone froze and the battery symbol flickered red.
He tossed the phone onto the floor. Maybe if he smashed it…
He slid off his bed and tiptoed to the window. Outside, the streetlights flickered weakly over dusty roads. A stray dog barked in the distance, but otherwise the world seemed empty. Too empty.
He turned back to his bed — the phone was glowing. It shouldn't have been. The battery had been dead.
Slowly, he picked it up. The cracked screen lit up his palm. In its reflection, he saw his own eyes, wide and afraid — and behind him, just over his shoulder, a shadow that shouldn't have been there.
Nnamdi spun around so fast he almost fell. His room was empty — same broken fan, same dusty books on the floor, same smell of old wood. But the phone buzzed again in his hand.
Another text.
[One man. One cursed phone. No escape.]
Nnamdi's knees hit the bed as he sat down hard. He remembered the first time the phone had rung — just days after he'd found it in the old market behind the campus hostel. A battered, second-hand phone that still worked, and he'd thought he was lucky.
But he wasn't. He knew that now.
The vibration stopped. For a moment, everything was still. Then the phone started ringing again.
He didn't want to answer it — but his thumb moved anyway.
When the line connected, he heard breathing. Slow. Wet.
Then the voice whispered: "Time's up."
The line went dead. But the phone stayed on. The cracked screen flickered once — and then it showed a photo. A new one. A picture of him, asleep on his bed, taken from the corner of the room.
Nnamdi dropped the phone. It thudded to the floor but didn't break. The photo stayed on the screen. The darkness seemed to breathe with him.
Outside, the stray dog howled — and the phone started ringing again.