My name is Ethan Reyes. I’m 29, and I’ve been living alone for almost four years. Last month, I started receiving voicemails from an unknown number. The first one was only six seconds long. A little girl laughing. I deleted it. The next day, another voicemail arrived. This time, a girl’s voice said: “Ethan, are you still mad at me?” I thought it was a prank. But the messages kept coming. Every few days, the same girl would leave a voicemail. Sometimes she’d talk about school, sometimes she’d complain about our parents, and sometimes she’d simply ask when I was coming home. The strange thing was that she always called me her brother. I eventually searched the number online, but found nothing. One evening, I played the messages for my mother. She immediately turned pale. “Where did you get these?” I explained. She grabbed my phone, deleted every voicemail, and told me never to answer that number again. I asked her who the girl was. She said, “Nobody. Just someone trying to scare you.” But I knew she was lying. A week later, I received another voicemail. This one was different. The girl sounded older, maybe around seventeen. “Ethan, Mom says you’re not supposed to remember me. But I found something in the attic. You need to come home.” I hadn’t visited my childhood home in years. The following morning, I drove there. My mother wasn’t home, so I went straight to the attic. I found an old cardboard box with my name written on it. Inside were photographs, school certificates, and a small pink birthday card. The card read: “Happy 10th birthday to my favorite big brother. Love, Mia.” I had never heard that name before. At the bottom of the box was a newspaper clipping. It was about a house fire that happened twenty years ago. Two children were reported missing. One was a little girl named Mia Reyes. The other was a boy named Ethan Reyes. I read the article several times. Then I noticed the photograph. It showed two children standing outside our childhood home. The little girl was holding my hand. I recognized her immediately. She was the girl from the voicemails. But there was something else. According to the article, both children had been missing for three days before I was found wandering alone near the highway. I heard the front door open downstairs. My mother had come home. I walked down holding the newspaper. “Mom, what happened to Mia?” She started crying. I asked her why she had lied to me all these years. She looked at me and said: “Because, Ethan, you were never supposed to survive that fire.” I couldn’t understand. Then she said something even worse. “You’re not Ethan.” She pointed at the photograph. “You’re Mia’s little brother, Daniel. We lost you both that night.” My phone vibrated. Another voicemail. I pressed play. A little girl’s voice whispered: “Daniel, you finally remembered.” Then, from behind me, my mother whispered: “Don’t answer her. She’s been dead for twenty years.” submitted by /u/shirogii [link] [comments]
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