Mary-san's Phone Call

On moving day, a girl left an old Western doll discarded at the rubbish heap without a second thought. Whether that doll — with its eyes of blue glass — had ever been given a name, no one bothered to confirm. Names are like that: the one who throws something away may forget, but the one thrown away never does.

That night, the telephone rang. From the other end of the receiver came a small, flat voice. "It's me, Mary. I'm at the rubbish heap right now." The girl hung up, but it rang again. The corner by the tobacconist, the next corner, then the alley just ahead — the coordinates the voice announced drew closer with each call, one step at a time, without fail.

Unable to bear the terror any longer, the girl at last opened the front door. Outside, in the darkness, there was no one. The moment relief flooded her chest, the phone rang again. "It's me, Mary. I'm right behind you now." No one has ever told what happened after that. Perhaps there is simply no one left who can.

The skeleton of this ghost story aligns with startling precision to an old Spanish tale, "The Ring" — in which a skeleton pursues its quarry step by step to reclaim a stolen ring. It seems that into this modern vessel of the telephone, the far older memory of the pursuing dead was poured. The urban legend of the Licca-chan phone line, the rumours of Japanese dolls that always return — these threads tangled together, and some even whisper that concerns over a certain trademark quietly reshaped the story into the form we know.

Variations continue to multiply. A version in which the threat closes in floor by floor through an apartment building. A version in which a dead victim calls a taxi driver. A version that took up residence inside a chain letter. The uncanny is not particular about its medium. So long as something announces "I am there now" — whether by phone or by message — it can become Mary-san.

The doll remembers being thrown away. The distance keeps shrinking. Even tonight, somewhere, a call is coming in from a number no one should know, and someone is hesitating before turning around.