The Phone Box at Cwm Bach

Cwm Bach was a small village on the north coast of Wales. It had eighty-four houses, one shop, one chapel, no school anymore, and — at the very edge of the village, by a small bus shelter — one disused red phone box.

The phone box had been disconnected, the post office said, in 2008. The line had been cut. The phone inside had been left because nobody had thought to remove it. The whole box was technically owned, after a 2014 transfer of village heritage assets, by the village council. The council had repainted it in 2019. They had put a small plaque on it that read Phone Box, in memory. They had not, ever, reconnected it.

The phone box, by every official account, could not work.

The phone box, however, occasionally rang.

This was — Esme had been told by her grandmother on her first day in Cwm Bach — one of those things. Most villagers had heard the phone ring at some point. Most villagers had ignored it. Some — usually older villagers, usually a little drunk after a Saturday at the pub — had answered it. The reports of what they had heard varied. Some said static. Some said a voice that had said nothing and then hung up. One said a woman who had been calling for somebody called Tomos. One said a small child who had laughed and then gone quiet.

Esme's grandmother said: "Most of the village thinks it's a ghost. Most of the village is, at the same time, also half-joking.It's the kind of mystery a small village likes to keep. People come to investigate sometimes. They never find anything. The post office says the line is dead. So that's the official story. Whether it's the whole story — Esme. I don't know."

Esme was fourteen. She was spending the summer with her grandmother because her parents were both working. She had been to Cwm Bach every summer of her life. She had — until this summer — never been particularly curious about the phone box. This summer, she was.

Her cousin Bo, who was thirteen, was also staying with their grandmother for two weeks in late July.

Esme proposed the project to him on the first afternoon.

"Bo. I want to wait for the phone to ring."

"At the box."

"At the box."

"All night?"

"As many nights as it takes. We can take turns. Take a torch. Take snacks. We tell Grandma we're camping in her garden — which we will be, mostly. The phone box is at the bottom of her field. We can hear it from the tent. If it rings, we run."

Bo thought about this for thirty seconds.

"Okay. Snacks."

They started that Wednesday. They put up the small tent in their grandmother's lower field. They took torches, books, a flask of lemon barley, four packets of crisps, and a small alarm clock. They agreed to listen for the phone every night for as long as it took.

Their grandmother, when told the plan, said only: "If it rings, do not be afraid of who is on the other end. They are not, I am almost certain, a ghost. They are — almost always — a person. You can tell from the voice. Be kind. Stay on the line. Tell me about it in the morning."

That was — Esme noted — a more specific instruction than her grandmother usually gave.

She had a sudden suspicion that her grandmother knew, or had once known, who was making the calls.

She