The Call From the Deep

“Four days until what?” she said, and she was surprised by how steady she sounded.
A pause. The breathing. Then: “Until you have to do this for someone else.”
The call ended. The fluorescent light steadied. The bathroom was just a bathroom again.
Maya stood there for a long time.
She thought about the logic of it. If the voice was hers, and the voice had known about the bus, then the voice was her. Some version of her. Some version that existed somewhere further along the timeline, looking back. Trying to reach back. The physics were impossible. The theology was terrifying. The alternative — that something else was wearing her voice like a coat — was worse.
Either way, it had saved her life.
Either way, it was asking for something in return.
She went back to her desk. She opened a blank document and typed the date at the top. Then she typed: Day 1. Then she sat and waited, because if she had four days, she needed to pay attention to every single hour inside them. Someone out there — or some time out there — was going to need her to be watching.
That night, she did not sleep.
At 3:14 a.m., her phone lit up the dark.
This time, the number on the screen was not her own.
It was a number she had never seen before, a 206 area code, a Seattle number, and beneath it a name her phone had somehow already saved in her contacts, a name she had never typed.
The name was: Next.
She stared at it for three full rings.
Then she answered, because she already knew she would. Because somewhere further down the line, she already had.

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About the Author

Rowan Vale — a student of occult symbolism, for whom every abandoned church is hiding something. Never leaves house without Daisy … his little doll.

— Rowan Vale

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July 18, 2026

10min-stories