Dead Men Still Text Back

When the campus housing director calls to say his roommate Danny has died in a drunk-driving crash on the southbound highway, Austin barely has time to absorb the shock before Danny's contact photo lights up his phone. The messages insist it is Danny, and that he is coming over. Austin has lived with Danny for three years; he knows the casual, dismissive tone too well to dismiss it as a prank.

A neighbor from 605, Seth, knocks and warns him not to answer. Seth says his great-uncle, a rural spiritualist, told him that a violent death leaves a soul tethered, hunting for a scapegoat to drag into the dark. He urges Austin to leave the dorm at once. Then Austin notices Seth's heels hovering above his slides, and remembers his late grandfather's warning about wandering shades that hijack the living and walk on their toes.

Trapped alone on the sixth floor with a dead friend's messages still arriving, Austin must decide how far he can trust the warning, and who is really standing beside him.