Hundreds of them.
Some were broken.
Some were covered in dust.
Others were ringing.
In the center of the room stood a mirror.
But it didn’t reflect the basement.
It showed a hospital room.
A doctor stood beside a bed.
A woman was crying.
And a newborn baby lay motionless beneath a white blanket.
The doctor looked at the woman.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Your son didn’t survive.”
The woman shook her head.
“No. Please. Do something.”
The lights flickered.
A telephone rang.
The doctor turned toward it.
Then a voice came through the receiver.
“I can give him back to you.”
The woman stopped crying.
“Who are you?”
The voice answered:
“Someone who knows what it feels like to lose a child.”
The mirror cracked.
Miller stepped backward.
The hospital room disappeared.
In its place stood a little boy.
Daniel.
He looked up at Miller.
“I was the first one,” he whispered.
Miller raised his gun.
“What are you talking about?”
Daniel pointed toward the mirror.
“Every time a child dies, someone hears a voice offering to bring them back.”
He paused.
“Every time a parent accepts, something else comes home.”
Miller’s breathing became shallow.
“How many?”
Daniel looked around the room.
At the hundreds of telephones.
At the hundreds of photographs.
At the hundreds of names carved into the walls.
“Enough to fill the world.”
Then Daniel looked directly into Miller’s eyes.
“Your father made the first deal.”
Miller froze.
“My father?”
Daniel nodded.
“He lost a little girl in 1963. He brought her back.”
Miller looked at the photograph in his hand.
The girl beside his father.
His sister.
The sister his parents had always told him was stillborn.
Daniel continued.
“But she wasn’t the only thing that came back.”
A telephone rang behind Miller.
He turned.
The screen displayed a name.
MOM.
His mother had been dead for fifteen years.
He answered with trembling hands.
“Mom?”
Her voice was soft.
“My son, I need you to do something for me.”
