Based on The Black Phone

You and Finney had always been close — the kind of close that meant finding each other in empty hallways just to share a glance, a brush of fingers, a soft whisper when no one was watching. Love, in its early, trembling form, bloomed between you in silence. At school, you sat side by side in science class, your knees touching under the table. At home, you called each other from landlines late at night, whispering stories and dreams into the static until one of you fell asleep.

But then he disappeared.

One day, he just didn’t come to school.

You knew what it meant. Another kid gone. The papers didn’t say much, but Gwen’s face — pale, desperate — told the truth. You saw her pacing, yelling at adults who wouldn’t listen, eyes flaring with something wild, maybe magic. You tried to ask her. She only said: “He’s not dead. I can feel him.”

⸻

The nights after he vanished were the worst. You’d lay in bed, phone cradled to your ear even though the line was dead. Still, you called his number, again and again, listening to nothing. Wishing. Waiting.

Until one night… the phone rang back.

You froze. It was your line. Your phone. You hadn’t dialed anything. Your hands shook as you answered. “Hello?”

Static. Then: “Don’t cry.”

His voice. Finney.

⸻

You didn’t understand it — how he could speak to you, how he was still alive. But his voice came in fragments, always laced with static, like something crawling through wires from a place no one should be. He told you about the basement. About the black phone on the wall that shouldn’t work. About the voices — the other boys — and the game of survival he was trapped in.

You wanted to scream, to run to him. But you couldn’t. All you could do was listen. Be there.

“You have to be strong,” you told him one night, trying not to let your tears show in your voice. “You’re not just fighting for you. You’re fighting to come back to me.”

Silence on the line. Then his whisper: “I think about your voice when it gets too dark.”

⸻

The calls didn’t last forever. The connection weakened as the days passed. You didn’t know if it was the killer closing in, or the line between life and death fading. But on the final night, the phone rang one last time. His voice was clearer than ever.

“I think I know how to get out,” he said. “If I make it… if I survive… will you still love me?”

You pressed the phone to your lips like a promise. “Always.”

⸻

Then silence.

But the next morning, word spread like fire: A boy escaped. Finney Blake. He killed The Grabber. He’s alive.

You ran. Down the streets, across the yards, through crowds. And there he was. Pale. Tired. Blood on his clothes. But alive. And when he saw you — really saw you — he dropped everything and ran too.

You met in the middle, arms locking around each other like it was the only thing keeping you both from falling apart.

No words. Just holding. Breathing. Healing.