CALL #1, 6.33p.m. 16 / 11 / 17 -UNAVAILABLE-
I switched my attention from the caller ID box to the answering machine directly beside it, both sitting on the kitchen table beneath the wall-mounted telephone. A red digital ‘1’ showed in the answering machine’s little window.
I hadn’t thought to look at either device until 1:45a.m, even though I had gotten home from my second-shift job before 12:30. Since I had finally bought a new computer and gone online several months ago, I was more concerned with checking and replying to my e-mail, which I had just finished doing. Tonight’s offering: a humorous list of ‘The Top 10 Things That You Should Never Ask A Gay Man’ sent by my workmate, James; a work-at-home scheme; a story about a little girl with a brain tumour the size of a grapefruit, (aren’t all scary tumours the size of grapefruits?) for some reason inoperable, which I was supposed to pass along to five people or presumably I’d grow a brain tumour as well; and an e-mail from my ex-boyfriend, Paul: Gary, I know you could probably shoot me right about now, but I really do care about you, and I always will. Please unblock my number so we can talk. I’m - (DELETE) I was sorry now that I hadn’t read the whole thing. Was it still in my trash can, or would my e-mail service have dumped that already? No – why read it? What was the point? The presence of his words inside that box was a mockery when my flat rang hollow with the absence of his body. He was a ghost in the machine. He was the one who chose to delete me from his life. Insincere guilt did not soothe or comfort me, nor would it pardon or redeem him. Would he send me one of those silly little animated e-mail cards next? (DELETE) I shut off the computer and went to fix myself a late night snack of microwave popcorn. My iPhone played softly through speakers in the other room, and while pouring myself a glass of wine I had finally let my eyes drift to the two devices patiently awaiting my attention atop the kitchen table.
The one and only call, I saw, had been received at 6:33 – when I’d been at work. UNAVAILABLE, the display read, replacing the caller’s number. A bill collector? They were often listed that way, or as an ANONYMOUS CALL, and so when I was home I never picked up a call bearing either of those labels until I heard the message come over the answering machine (and if it was a bill collector, they usually didn’t leave a message anyway). Plus, Paul had taken to withholding his number on several occasions in an attempt to trick me into answering his calls.
I reached out and touched the PLAY button on the answering machine, expecting the few seconds of dead silence that would prove my theory correct. But instead of silence, there was a voice. A youngish man, speaking softly and intimately, so that the first image that sprang to my mind was of lips brushing a mouthpiece:
“It’s me. I’m sorry… I know I promised not to call…”
For a second, I thought it must be Paul, even though it sounded nothing like him. My chest constricted.
“…I know you don’t want to see me. I can’t blame you for being afraid of what I’m doing. I don’t fault you for getting out. It was probably stupid of me not to stop… to just go on with it. Yeah – that’s right; I finished it. Last night I put the stones in the four corners of the room. I drew the sign on each stone. I gave the fourth utterance of ascent, and… and… yeah. And it worked. It happened…”
I didn’t know this voice. I didn’t know what he was talking about. It was a wrong number. He had dialled a number similar to the one he wanted, no doubt.
“…I looked all over the house for it. I thought it would be in the cellar, or the attic, for some reason. It was in the bathroom, of all places. In the corner behind the hamper. I could only see… fog; but it felt cold when I moved the hamper and got close. I thought I heard a sound in there, way back, far off – like monkeys, maybe. A sound like monkeys calling. But, sort of like… electronic sounding…”
I shot an angry look at the microwave, where my popcorn was noisily popping, and the appliance annoyingly humming. I leaned my head down over the answering machine.
“…It’s still there now. But you know, after all my reading… After all this work. After losing you to get this far…I just can’t bring myself to go into…”
“End of messages,” a robotic voice suddenly announced, cutting in. The intense young man was gone. The switch in voices, from emotional to mechanical, startled me and I drew back. The microwave stopped, and only one or two last seeds popped, the bag now swollen like some inoperable tumour.
What had the stranger been going on about? What had he been looking for in his house or apartment? What was it he had found in the bathroom (of all places)?
I played the message back again. It made no more sense to me the second time.
UNAVAILABLE. He had called from someplace where they didn’t have caller ID, then. Or he had purposely withheld his number. Without his number being displayed, I couldn’t call him back to inform him that he’d whispered so intently to someone other than this person he had promised he would never call again.
Wasn’t there some kind of feature called Call Trace? Yes… phone off the receiver, and then punch in a few digits. But what was the number? It was four digit, right? I couldn’t recall it; and anyway, would it be able to trace an ‘unavailable’ call?
What did it matter? He was a stranger. But I had been drawn in, I had to admit, by his earnest sounding emotion. The touch of bitter, regretful humour in his words. By the warm, dark sound of his voice. Here was a man who still loved the person he was calling. It was the other person who had broken it off with him, I figured. He still wanted to be with them. How lucky they were, I thought. And what a fool they were.
My eyes were growing moist, as if it were the young man’s pain that moved me.
I touched a button. The robotic voice intoned, “Messages deleted.”
What a long night it had been.
A new Brazilian co-worker had flirted with me. He wasn’t bad looking, but at the end of the shift James had told me he was married, with kids. Shocker.
A long, long night, I thought as I let myself into my flat. Not popcorn tonight, with its low dietary points. Ice cream. Ice cream for sure.
But before I went to the refrigerator, before I checked my e-mail, before, even, I removed my coat, I glanced over at the kitchen table.
A red digital ‘1’ had appeared once again on the answering machine. I stepped nearer to see the caller ID’s display. It read: CALL #1, 8:43p.m. 17 / 11 / 17 -UNAVAILABLE- Without even removing my gloves, I pressed the PLAY button on my answering machine.
Tonight, I recognised the voice; as if it were someone I knew.
“I didn’t think you’d call me back. Then again, I hope I have the right number. I copied it out of your brother’s book, very quickly, when he was out of the room. I’m sure that’s enough to make you furious in itself. But I wish you’d talk to me. I wish…”
He sighed; trailed off. A few seconds of silence.
Hurry up, I wordlessly urged him, before your time runs out.
“I still haven’t gone through. I’m just plain afraid. Those sounds in there… And it’s so dark and cold. Last night I could barely sleep, knowing it was in the house, just a few rooms away from me. I’m keeping the bathroom door shut, but I can’t lock it from the outside. I should at least screw in an eye-hook latch or something. Humph – like that would stop anything that wanted to come through…”
I suddenly found myself unaccountably glancing up at my own bathroom, which opened off from the kitchen. Unlit, murky inside. Since childhood I had had a fear of looking in the mirror and seeing someone standing behind my shoulder, only in the glass. A ghost. Or something worse, perhaps…
The young man continued in his hushed, melancholy voice.
“You were right to get out. I should have listened. I took it too far. I really don’t think I’m going to have the guts to go in there. I think…I really think I need to close it up again. That’s what I’m going to have to do. I’m just afraid that if any of them see it from their side, they’ll be a lot braver than I am. They’ll want to come here. Not to learn, not to explore… I don’t even want to imagine what…”
“End of messages.”
“Bastard,” I hissed under my breath at the robot.
Well, my new man was in some kind of danger then. But who were these people he feared? What had he done that might draw their attention to him?
Who am I kidding? He’s crazy. He’s obviously crazy. Or on drugs. Or both.
I played the message back again, and this time, having already listened to the words, I noticed another sound behind them. It lasted only a fraction of a second, and it came right before the tape allocated for his message ran out. Right before he said, “…imagine what…”
I played the tape a third time. I leaned so close to the machine that its sound became distorted, but at least I heard that funny little background sound again. It was a distant squeal of high pitched laughter, I guessed. From a child. Maybe a cat’s drawn out meow, perhaps? A pet tropical bird, making an odd sound… trying to form words?
(“Monkeys calling… electronic sounding…”)
Stop it. I’m letting his delusions become my delusions I thought, disgusted at myself and the goose flesh I’d raised on my arms.
I deleted the message, removed my coat and stepped into the bathroom to pee.
I put the light on quickly, however – not wanting to see the mirror in the dark.
The next night there were two messages left on my machine, like letters written by an old friend, a lover called away overseas, brimming with contents that ached to be opened.
The first message had come in at 11:43p.m, the second at 11:45.
Damn. Why couldn’t he have called just a little bit later? I would have been home to pick up at last… Pick up and what? Tell him he had the wrong number? But then he’d stop calling, wouldn’t he?
No. Not if I asked him what was troubling him so. Not if I asked him if I – unlike his callous lover – could help him.
I squeezed my gloves into a ball. Unsqueezed them. Squeezed them; like a heart I was manually pumping. I’m losing my mind.
But then my eyes returned to the twin machines on the table, and I played the first message on the tape. The whisper was softer, more intense than ever. It seemed to come through a blizzard of static, to make matters worse. Had he switched to a mobile phone with a weak battery? Or was something interfering with the connection?
“Two of them came through tonight – I pray to God it was only two. I was in the bedroom; I stayed home all day. I don’t dare go to work, to go out at all, with the doorway open like that. I was in the bedroom…” there was a pause here, as if the caller had stopped to listen for something. “…and I heard something like feet pattering in the kitchen. A sound like children giggling. I rushed out – without a weapon, like an idiot – and I saw them duck into the bathroom. It was just a second, just a flash… I’m not sure I could really describe them. But… but they were horrible. Dark purple, like they were rotting. Their heads were huge, pulpy; like sacks. Like they didn’t have skulls. And their arms didn’t have bones. They couldn’t have had bones, the way they were moving. They might have been… tentacles…”
My God.
“I’m sure they’ve been stealing my books… my papers. They’re all gone. All of it. They must have carried it all away…”
His sentence was severed, but the tape went on to the next message; this time he had immediately phoned back to continue. Being cut off the first time only seemed to heighten the tone of urgency in his voice.
“I can’t remember the words to close the doorway! I have most of it, but I can’t remember what sign to put on the second stone. And I can’t remember the fourth utterance of descent! Please… please… I know you’re angry at me…”
He was almost in tears now. So was I. I didn’t know why. Did I ache at having to listen to an agonised man go out of his mind? Or did I… believe him, somehow? Poor Gary. Always so gullible when it came to men.
But listen to him! Listen to his sincere emotion!
“…I need your help. I don’t want you to come here – I don’t want you to be in danger, too. But if you remember the things I’m forgetting, please help me! Just this one last time! I beg you, honey, I beg you!”
There was a distant crash behind his last words. Something knocked over in another room?
“I have to go!” he hissed.
“End of messages.”
“No!” I said loudly, accusingly, to the traitorous, taunting machine. A tear coursed down my cheek. “No!” I sobbed, louder still.
He might call back yet. Right? It hadn’t been that long ago. If he had called twice in one night, why not again?
I ran a bath. Put on a vinyl. Made a cup of orange-flavoured hot chocolate. A headache was coming on, so I laid back in the tub with a wet face cloth folded over my eyes. But it was like being blindfolded; it was too dark. I didn’t even want to shut my eyes. Not in the bathroom (of all places).
My eyes traced suspicious cracks in the plaster of the ceiling that I had never taken note of before, then slowly lowered to the corner of the room, just beyond the tub. They scanned sideways, across the toiletries and wipes piled atop my toilet tank. Something had crashed to the floor… something in his bathroom? My eyes returned to the corner. At any moment, I expected to see it yawn open. To feel a frigid breath exhaled from that new opening, like the breath of a dead man. To hear horrible cries deep within the churning mists. To see eyes, perhaps, glinting out at me from between the tendrils of fog. If they even had eyes...
Even as I finally slipped into bed at 3:10a.m, I thought he might call me yet. That I would be awakened by the yearning cry of the phone.
My sleep went undisturbed, however – except by dreams.
Just before I’d drifted off last night, I had decided to stay home from work the next day; to call in sick. This time I’d be there to receive his message when it came.
But in the light of day, I found herself unable to go through with it. When Paul had left me, only a week and a half ago, I had stayed out sick for two consecutive days. The company wouldn’t put up with much more of that.
But at the end of the shift, when Jane – my boss – asked me if I could stay an hour late tonight, I stammered my way out of it, claiming I had a headache.
And as soon as I unlocked the door to my flat, I headed straight to the kitchen table…
The counter on the answering machine read ‘0’.
Slowly I withdrew my finger that brushed the PLAY button.
Had he found the correct phone number, finally? Or had he given up on appealing to his former lover?
Unwilling to believe it was over – this little affair of mine with a man who didn’t even know I was receiving his calls – I checked the caller ID’s dim little window. It, too, showed no calls had been received.
Well, then. Well.
I took off my coat. Reluctantly trudged into my bedroom – where my computer waited for me like a paid lover – to check my e-mail. I had illogically hoped to find a message from my mysterious caller there. But… another chain letter. An animated e-mail card from my mother. Not even anything from Paul. I looked at the contents of my e-mail account’s trash can. It was empty.
They got him. My God, they got him…
From the kitchen came the shrill alert of the telephone.
I pushed my chair back so hard that it nearly toppled. I plunged into the living room, on into the kitchen. I had programmed the machine to start recording after four rings. I knew I would get to it in time to pick up the call myself…
But when I stood over the kitchen table, even though there were still two rings left to go, I found myself unable to take the receiver off the wall. I had to listen first. Screen the call. See if it was him. And even if it was, would I really be able to speak back to him at last?
Third ring…
A glance at the caller ID display. UNAVAILABLE. It might as well be his name.
Fourth ring.
“The person you are trying to reach is unable to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Following a beep, the tape began to turn, to record… Dead silence.
A bill collector? At 1:00 in the morning?
But then I heard a faint rustling noise. The subtle shifting of a body on the other end. A wet little sound like someone licking dry lips before speaking. But the static – worse than last night – might have been fooling me. I might be hearing nothing at all…
And then the terrible noises began. They were animal cries of some kind; wild, deranged, deafening. I fell back from the table several steps and clapped my hands over my ears. It was a cacophony. Voices filled with rage and glee. But they sounded like monkeys or tropical birds, whooping and shrieking, as if they were on fire. Banshee wails. The laughter of insane children with tumours like new brains crowding out their skulls.
“End of messages.”
Slowly, timidly, I lowered my hands from my ears. I heard the humming of the refrigerator directly behind me. And that was all.
Where had the calls been originating from? Several towns away? Another country?
I hoped, now, that he had lived very, very far away. Tomorrow I would have my number changed. But for tonight… I took the phone off the hook.
I could only hope that it was the other person – the nameless lover – and not me, not Gary, that tonight’s call had been intended for.
Despite my own fear, however, I felt fresh tears well in my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said very quietly to the two small machines, wishing I could be speaking the words into the mouthpiece instead. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and reached out to the answering machine once more.
“Messages deleted.”
Submitted December 31, 2017 at 10:57PM by abcdefgaryyy http://ift.tt/2q7EsId nosleep
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