I don't believe that anyone here on Earth can speak to the dead.

Or, at least—I didn’t until yesterday.

But the concept was interesting. The original "wind phone" was an art installation in Japan, but now there are hundreds around the world. It’s comprised of an empty phonebooth with an old rotary phone in it, usually placed in a garden or another peaceful place. You go there and pretend to call up one of your deceased loved ones.

Yesterday, I noticed that one had been installed in our town's botanical gardens.

It stood out starkly among the greenery. A white phone booth with glass-paneled sides. Probably made from one of the old phonebooths that used to line Main Street. I parked the car and walked towards it, the gravel crunching under my heels.

The inside was plain. A metal shelf holding a pad of paper, a pen, and an old rotary phone made of shiny black plastic. There was a wooden chair, and as I sat down, it creaked loudly. Outside the windows, patches of bright purple zinnias bowed in the wind, and the pond rippled.

Should I do it?

Of all the people I've lost over the years, one stood front and center. Over and over again, in the middle of the night, he'd pop into my head. Sometimes I'd dream about him. It was like he haunted me. Almost ten years gone and he was still living in my head.

I picked up the phone.

"Hi, David. …Um, I don’t really know what to say. This is weird.” I let out a forced laugh. “Okay. I guess I’ll start by telling you everything that’s happened… since you left.”

That was a nice way of putting it. A mangled mess of metal and blood at the bottom of the mountain…

“I finally got that art degree. But in sculpture, not painting. Weird, right? But it’s even more fun than painting. I just never got to do it in school.”

Silence. Of course.

“And then last year, I got married. To William D__, of all people. We reconnected after college and settled back down here in town and... well..."

I trailed off. Great idea, Sara, go ahead and tell David you married one of his high school friends. I bet he’d fucking love that.

"Nevermind. Anyway. The Lakewood movie theater’s a gym now. And you know that rock in Highpoint park, that overlooks the whole town? Where we’d sit for hours, watching the cars and the people on Main Street? It's all overgrown with brush now. I don't think I could get there if I tried. Maybe with a machete or something..."

My laugh echoed into the receiver. It sounded more like a cry.

"Those were the good old days, huh?" I was about to complain how things were so complicated now, between dirty diapers and mortgage payments, but I stopped with a pang of sadness. He didn't even get to experience that. Being a dad. Owning a house. Getting married...

"Well, anyway. I wish you were here." The weight in my chest lifted, slightly. I took the receiver away from my ear--

Sssssssshhhhh.

Something like a breath--a gust of wind, a whooshing sound--came from the phone. My heart dropped. I pushed it back against my ear.

"David?"

Silence.

Because of-fucking-course. People can't talk to the dead, ghosts don't exist, and this is all just pretend. My eyes burned and I swallowed, swallowing away the tears--

Click.

It was soft. Almost outside the range of my hearing. I pressed the phone so hard to my ear it hurt.

Click... Click-click... click...

It sounded like the clicking of a bad connection. Soft, barely audible, but there. My heart pounded in my chest as I listened to it with everything that I had. Not even breathing.

David? Could it really be? Maybe if Ouija boards talk to the dead, maybe if people visiting their loved one's graves get a whisper on the wind, maybe, just maybe, David could be on the other end for a fleeting moment--

"Sara."

The voice was a low, staticky growl.

Every muscle in my body froze. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. “…D-david?” I finally choked.

“Sa…” Static cut in, fuzzing out the rest of my name. Then a beat of silence. I held my breath, the receiver shaking against my ear. Click… click-click.

How is this happening? Maybe it was another one of my dreams. I pinched myself. Reached over and checked the time on my phone. Looked away, then back at the phone. Same time. Not a dream.

“David… is that really you?”

Click… click-click. A few seconds of static. Click-click.

And then silence.

That’s it. I lost the connection. I began to sob. All the memories came rushing back in colorful pieces. Proms and late nights and his laugh like melted chocolate. The conversations we had for hours, about life, philosophy, our future…

But then five words came over the line. Crystal clear.

“You should’ve never married William.”

He sounded so angry. None of his sweetness, none of his laughter. Just pure anger, compressed into a voice on the other end of the line. My entire body went cold. The receiver nearly slipped out of my hands.

“W-what?”

A fizzle of static. Click-click-click.

And then his voice again, cutting in and out. Despite the static, I understood him perfectly.

“I—will—kill—you.”

All the blood drained out of my face.

I stared out at the darkening garden. I was alone. The shadows under the foliage, they shifted with the wind in strange and horrifying ways. For a second I thought I could see the shadow of a tall young man, peeking out from behind the leaning trunk of a maple.

My nails dug into the metal shelf.

Ghosts, spirits… if you believed in that stuff… weren’t they sometimes consumed by hatred? Didn’t it eat up their entire being, until they became vengeful spirits? Hell-bent on punishing those who’d hurt them?

I swallowed.

“David, I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered. “But… you’re not here. I know we wanted to get married, but you left. What was I supposed to do? Be alone my whole life?”

He didn’t have to answer.

I married one of his friends. He didn’t need to tell me it was weird, that it was a betrayal, almost. But when William and I reconnected, everything just clicked. He wanted to be with me. He wanted to marry me. There was no waffling or rejection.

And I fell in love with him.

“David—” I started.

“I—will—kill—you,” he repeated.

Click-click. The connection became steadily clearer.

“I—no—will—killed—you—out—”

“I—no—willya—illed—watch—out—”

Click. And then, for just a moment, the connection was crystal clear.

“I know William killed me. You watch out.”

I dropped the receiver.

The accident. He’d lost his brakes driving home, coming down the mountain from Highpoint Park. After hanging out with some friends, one final hurrah before leaving for college.

One of them was William.

“David,” I sobbed into the line. But it was useless. No sound came through on the other side. No clicks, no static, no voice.

Just silence.