Telephone Call (a short horror story)

Image courtesy of PickPik by way of a Creative Commons license.

TELEPHONE CALL

A short horror story

By Del Stone Jr.

—

Introduction

“Telephone Call” is one of my earlier horror stories, written in 1982 or thereabouts.

I was in love with the genre. Stephen King had brought new luster to horror with books like “’Salem’s Lot” and “The Shining,” but there were others, too – Whitley Streiber, Dennis Etchison and Anne Rice, to name a few. It seemed horror was the fashionable thing to read.

I remember wanting this story to be well-written. I labored over every sentence, struggling to imbue the prose with vivid imagery and realistic dialogue. What I accomplished was something far different.

When I read this story now I cringe, because I see I violated John Carley’s rule.

Who, you’re asking, is John Carley?

He was a columnist who wrote for the newspaper I worked for, a retired Army general and a super nice guy. We had lunch one day after I had begun writing a weekly column of my own, and he told me something about writing I’ve never forgotten:

He said that one day I’d know all the big words and would see the beauty of the small words.

You can see that lack of understanding in “Telephone Call” because it is shot through with big words and even bigger writing when something less would have done a better job. They call this “overwriting” and it’s a problem I’ve struggled with my entire writing career. Whenever I write anything I have to go back and slay slay slay my little darlings.

Finally, now, at age 68, I understand what John Carley was trying to tell me. I don’t feel bad about that; some people never learn.

So I now present to you this cautionary tale about overwriting – “Telephone Call.” Not a bad little horror story and certainly in the old gotcha style of horror storytelling, but yes, overwritten.

That’s the way things were for me in 1982.

—

TELEPHONE CALL

Light, swimming out of the nether-darkness like fluorescent goldfish, rattling their gill plates and incandescent scales and luminous, translucent fins, then corkscrewing back into that black plasma. Motes of incandescence, gathering just beyond reach, receding into the black hole of the subconscious. Inertia-less acceleration. He is drawn into that eddy of self. …

Brrring.

The cyclone is fractured – scattered under the weight of its own spin. Light dispersed into hazy shoals of anemic brilliance that spread across his subconscious field of vision like a rainbow sheen of oil on brackish water.

Brrring.

A pinprick of dawning awareness gnaws at his wounded reality. And there is perception of another impression, black and unwelcome. The sensation is discomforting. He attempts to subdue it.

Brrring.

The light fades.

Brrring.

His world collapses.

—

When Larry awakened, he didn’t know where he was.

Brrring.

A sound he thought he recognized … something he had heard on countless occasions – so often, in fact, that now, here in the dark, he was confounded by its familiarity and could not attach meaning to it.

Brrring.

God, the phone, asshole. With a focal point to which he could anchor himself and gather in memory, understanding returned to him – in disconnected snatches. His room – the unfamiliar shapes of a chest of drawers, book shelves, nightstand, filling in the gloom, giving the shadows substance – he remembered. The new apartment (in that exclusive building) Mom and Dad said he’d never be able to afford (He’d tell them about the promotion tomorrow, maybe …).

Brrring.

The telephone rang again, a rakish, shrill intrusion of obscene noise that violated the pre-dawn calm. He groaned, struggled to shift his weight from a numb shoulder. The radium leer of the clock said 2:47.

“Ohhh … oh Gawd …” he moaned. “Who in Christ’s name cou’ be callin’ this time o’ night – uh – mornin’ – ahhh — whatever. …”

Brrring.

A memory flared, a speck of light against a slate-gray wall, then shrank to a dull ember.

“Do – do I have to answer it?” And he tried to suppress a shudder. Once before, on a night that would forever remain stamped upon his brain, he had heard those same words spoken in equally harmless context – his mother had said it – when they were calling her from the plant down on Chillicuth to tell her that Dad had lost his right hand in a contour stamper while working the graveyard shift and could she please be at the emergency ward waiting room at Jonquil Medical in half an hour, that yes, he was quite all right, and what? No, he wasn’t in shock, although he’s looked better at times, that the doctor said he could go home in a few days and would eventually he’d be good as new. Well, almost.

Brrring.

Good as new. As much as a one-handed man could feel.

The memory was sour; it filled Larry with a disquieting sense of unease. He told himself: Yes. I got to. …

While asleep, he had wound the bedcovers about him into a linen sarcophagus. Now, as he peeled away the layers his warmth evaporated, was replaced by a chill that seemed to work its way beneath the flesh, down, down, into the marrow itself. He shivered.

Brrring.

He swung his feet off the bed. The shock of standing jarred him; blood coursed to his numb legs in a stinging tide that made him think: My God, am I getting old? He grabbed the door jamb to support himself, sighed, started to reach for the light switch and then thought better of it.

“No, no … don’t turn that damn thing on – ”

Brrring.

“Awright, awright,” he muttered. “I’m coming – I think.”

The bedroom opened onto an abbreviated hallway that fed into the kitchen and, ultimately, the living room. Larry knew the floorplan of the apartment well enough – had had every virtue pointed out to him by the agent who had shown him the unit. It wasn’t as if he were committing himself to unfamiliar territory.

Still … something was different. Something to which he could not attach a name. The air was oppressively heavy – humid, perhaps; it seemed charged with a … mood, or a presence that he couldn’t identify. The hall looked forbidding, festooned with mottled patches of wan, pale light reflected through the bedroom window and variegated strips of nebulous shadow. The doorways to the kitchen and living room were bottomlessly and uncomprisingly black. They concealed from him their interiors, their secrets.

Larry couldn’t name the faint stirring that was working inside him, but he did know that now, here, in the dark, turning on the lights hadn’t been such a bad idea, that he wanted them on –

Oh, for Christ’s sake! You’re acting like a goddamn kid! The thought again sent him remembering his boyhood, and lying awake late at night in the changed-over attic bedroom he and his older brother had shared, listening to Roy, who was all the time telling him, “And if you’re not asleep by eleven, you know, Loogey (that was his nickname), the boogerman comes with his boogerdogs, and he pries open the window downstairs,” (Here, he would furnish appropriate sound effects) “CREAK, CREAK, CREAK – and he comes down the hall until he gets to your bedroom door (‘Please Roy … it’s dark’) and he peeks through the door (‘Roy!’) and … HE GETS YOU!” He remembered how he had lain in heart-thudding terror, watching the very same alarm clock he had glanced at only moments before, praying he would be asleep before eleven.

Jeez … whatever happened to. …

(He wished fear could again be reduced to the simple common denominator of a boogerman, as it had been for him as a child.)

Brrring.

The sound jolted him out of his reverie, brought a new chill. A part of him still wanted the lights on, but stubbornness and adult pride and just a hint of shame forced him to wade into the soupy, nocturnal gloom (his arms outstretched, his hands crawling along the walls that should have by now become familiar to him but for some reason defied intimacy, for some reason felt alien and unnatural – as if they were …).

Brrring.

“Yeah, I’m coming!” And he thought: What’s that? The fifteenth ring? The twentieth? Shit! Why don’t the guy hang up and call back tomorrow?

Still, the phone had rung that way the night they called about –

Larry quickened his pace, and jammed his toe against the hall sideboard. He felt it strike wood, heard the lip-curling thud of flesh and bone suddenly compacted, and waited for the aftershock of pain.

Brrring.

“Ohhh, Goddammit! All right, all right!” Muttering imprecations, he turned into the dark kitchen, blindly flogged empty space. It seemed larger than he had noticed. Stupid damn idiot. Too late, he saw something loom out of the murk (a phantom shape that made his breath catch in his throat), and banged his head against a Club aluminum pan dangling from the wrought-iron rack. This set off a cacophony of clankings and rattlings among the other pots and pans hanging there that pierced the darkness, made him somehow feel vulnerable. Angrily, he snapped on the light switch and waited impatiently for the muttering fluorescents to sputter into life. (They did so with a delicate, chime-like sound, and filled the kitchen with ghostly, blue-white light.) The phone was snugged up against the wall, flush with the cabinets. He grabbed the receiver before it could ring again.

“Yeah. H’lo?”

“Lawrence J. Crockett?” The voice was dry, harsh, the sound of winter branches scraping against roofing shingles on a cold, windy evening. It rang of some terrible authority.

“Yeah, uhhh, yes, this is Larry Crockett,” he answered warily. “Whaddya want?”

“Lawrence J. Cockett of Gabled Arms Condominiums, Unit 3-C?”

Larry winced, held the receiver away from his ear. The caller had a peculiar way of enunciating each syllable so that it seemed to “click.” Words that might have been shaped by a fleshless mouth, Larry mused. They elicted various distasteful images that he refused to speculate about any further – at least not here, in the quasi-dark.

“Telephone number 234-2444?”

“Yes. Yes it is.” He frowned. Dumbass. Isn’t that the number used to get me?

“Mr. Cockett, I need to meet with you.”

Larry stared at the wall. Meet with me? A maelstrom of conflicting emotions whirled through his head. The first, and most distinct, was dread. Dread, followed by indignant anger (The gall of this bastard. What does he mean, calling me at three o’clock in the morning –). Lastly, there was curiosity. …

“What? Who – who is this, anyway?”

The line was silent a moment. Then, with dire calm: “This is Death calling, Mr. Crockett. I need to meet with you.”

Fear – the squirmy, nameless kind of fear a pseron might feel if he ever reached out into the darkness from the warmth and safety of his bed and encountered something cool and pliant that twitched beneath his touch – settled in Larry’s spine. He listened in fascinated horror, then slammed the receiver back onto its hook.

“A prank,” he whispered breathlessly to his fluttering heart. He grinned at his reflection in the glass-fronted china cabinet, took a breath. “That’s all it was. A prank.”

Brrring.

His heart missed a beat, then hitched into a loud yammering of sledgehammer blows.

He couldn’t have redialed that quickly.

“Hello?”

“I need to meet with you –”

“Leave me alone,” Larry cut in, a ragged edge of panic in his voice. “Leave me alone. Get off my telephone or I’ll call the police.” A person in the adjoining apartment thumped on the dining room wall and shouted for silence; Larry jumped. “Leave me alone!”

“I need to meet –”

He hung up, half-walked half-staggered into the kitchen where the light was better, and snatched a Dixie cup from the dispenser.

God! What’s the matter with you, Lar? You’re shaking like a goddamn schoolgirl on prom night. The Dixie cup quivered in his hand. Calm down, my man. Hell! You were spooked before you even picked up the damn telephone. He went to the refrigerator, jerked it open. The profile of his face was framed against a black background with spectral light. Where’s the orange juice? There isn’t any goddamned orange juice. He crushed the cup; shingles of wax flaked off into his palm. Then he dropped it into the trashcan and brushed his hands.

Get a grip on yourself. …

He stared at the phone as if it were a living thing, as if at any moment it might disengage itself from the wall and come stalking him.

I don’t think he’s gonna call ba –

Brrring.

Leave me alone.

Brrring.

Leave me alone!

Brrring.

Brrring.

Brrring.

The telephone was ringing. He let it go five minutes, ten, then fifteen; between each bell he held his breath, prayed the next would not come.

And when it became too much for him – when the ringing had pried its way into his brain and he began hearing bells even when the telephone was not ringing and he knew he must answer it or tear it off the wall – he worked up the courage, the anger, to storm across the kitchen –

– Wait –

He stopped, hand on receiver.

Brrring.

The phone quivered within his grasp.

Maybe – maybe you’ve been going about this all wrong. … He leaned against the counter, wrapped his arms about himself as if he would squeeze out a thought. His features were creased with a concerned frown. Humor the kook and maybe he’ll leave you alone. Maybe. Give it a try. You let ’im know you’re scared and he’ll be calling back all night, the shit.

Brrring.

He turned to the telephone, lifted the receiver from its hook (thinking: Be cool, now) and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Crockett? I need to meet with you, Mr. Crockett. I need to meet with you, Mr. Crockett. I need to meet with you, Mr. Crockett.”

Larry’s skin crawled, as if an invisible hand had pressed frigid fingers against the base of his spine. He swallowed hard. That – that voice. There was no dealing with it. It evoked … images. Flesh stripped away, revealing the intricate ridges of vales – the convoluted topography of a skull. Cavernous eye sockets. Blank, yet somehow seeing. Not so much as a hint of cartilage about the nose. And those awful teeth, clicking and snapping as words chattered through them with the sound of a tree branch being raked across the rotten slats of some weather-blistered picket fence, clinging to the mandible and maxilla long after the gums had peeled away.

A voice from the grave.

Larry felt his gorge rising. His strategies were seared to fly ash and blown from memory, leaving him defenseless again.

“Look,” he spoke into the mouthpiece. The words came out coated with chalk. “This has been loads of fun – I’m sure you’ve enjoyed yourself – but I think we oughta call it a night, you know?” Oh God, what are doing? Don’t encourage him to say anything! Very quickly, he continued. “I mean, uh, I’ve had a rough tday and all that and I’m really worn out, you know, and I gotta get up early in the morning and to work, so could you please … please … just. …”

A brief silence. Then, “Mr. Crockett, I need to meet – ”

“GODDAMMIT NO! NO! If I have to tear this – this fucking – ” (He had to force the word out.) “– phone off the wall to keep you from calling here, then – then – ” He couldn’t trust himself to speak any further. His anger was evaporating, leaving in its place a residue of fear he would have hated seeing in himself.

“I need to meet with you, Mr. Cockett,” the voice responded with a creaking cadence that set Larry’s teeth on edge. “I need to meet with you.”

“Please. …” He was moaning now.

“I need to meet with you, Mr.Crockett.”

“Please … just leave me alone. Please?”

“Mr. Crockett, I need to meet with you.”

Quietly, almost solemnly, he set the receiver on its hook. If the telephone rang again he would not answer it – not for any reason. He would taking no more calls this evening.

Brrring.

He had expected it, but still his muscles locked. He tried to ignore the sound. He’d let it ring all night. Maybe the guy next door would come over and handle it. Let’s see how good he could do. He wheeled on stick legs and turned off the lights in the dining room and kitchen; darkness crashed down around him like a series of collapsing walls, smothering him in a cyclone of vague, shadowy forms and shapes. His eyes smarted with the afterimage of light.

Brrring.

He set his jaw and waded into the black hell that was the hallway, felt his way along still unfamiliar walls and door moldings.

Brrring.

Ignore it. Just don’t pay any attention to it.

Brrring.

His room: a sinkhole of shadows, funneling in monolithic darkness, implacable and less compromising than he had ever remembered it. This, complemented by flawless silence, stifling and oppressive, not unlike the calm found within a sealed mausoleum. Even the clock was hushed. …

Strange –

He felt his flesh begin to crawl again, felt his skin scrunch up into goosebumps. A cool breath of dread blew against the spot on his back between his shoulder blades; the hairs on his neck came alive like tiny scintilla. He held his breath.

Something was wrong. The telephone had stopped ringing and something was wrong. He knew it just as surely as he knew he was standing there now, terrified beyond articulation, not sure why and wanting only to run and hide, to pull the covers over his eyes and listen to his thumping heart (praying to God it was his heart and not someone – or something – else’s) beating so loudly, wanting desperately to hear Roy chuckle and say, “Come on, kid, stop bawlin’ for Chrissakes – I was just kiddin’. I was just having a little fun. That’s all – all – all. …”

Get into bed.

So close, the sanctuary of the bed. He could just cross the threshold and make his way around the corner of the headboard (Under the sheets and Roy youcansayanythingyouwantonceI’munderthesheetsbecausenoonecanseemeorhurtme – ) –

Something touched him on the shoulder.

He recoiled in italicized horror. The room was already occupied, but not by any childhood boogerman who, after leaving his trusted hounds at the window, had come creeping-crawling up the staircase to spirit him away at the stroke of eleven. No, this was a thing so remorselessly cold that it could hardly be considered alive.

“Hello, Mr. Crockett.”

Larry screamed.

—

UNFINISHED ALTERNATE ENDING

Author’s note: At some point I wrote, or least began, an alternate ending to “Telephone Call.” I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but I can guess where I was going with this:

Larry tells the entity on the phone to come on over, then alerts the doorman to approaching undesirable. But what Larry doesn’t know is, the telephone caller has already arrived at his home.

—

Larry blurted, “Come now!” and tried to stifle a malicious giggle. He had had an idea, a foolproof plan, something he knew could not fail, if things worked out the way he expected them to.

The voice said uncertainly, “Are you sure, Mr. Crockett?”

“Yes! Yes!” he answered breathlessly. “Come right now! You know the address?”

“Of course.”

Larry dropped the receiver onto the hook, sprinted across the dining room, the living room (slipping from brilliant light into smoky tendrils of shadow). He found the call box on the wall to the left of the door, jammed his thumb against the button, and shouted, “Fulton! Fulton!” During one of his many conversations with Fulton, he had discovered that the doorman had once worked as a bouncer in a nightclub. If Fulton could delay the man until the police arrived. …

It took a moment. Then came the tinny, metallic response. “Yes sir. Mr.Crockett, is it?”

“Yeah. Lis – ”

“What you doin’ up so late, Mr. Crockett?” the man asked in a paternal tone.

“That’s what I’m trying to explain. Listen: This freak, this pscyho’s been calling my place for the past thirty minutes – really bothering me, you know? At first, I thought it was one of those prank calls. But this guy’s certified nuts. Well anyway, he knows where I live, and he said he was gonna come over – ”

“When’s he s’posed to get here?”

“That’s just it,” Larry said, pressing his mouth as closely to the speaker as he could get it. “He said he was coming over now!”

“Don’t you worry yourself none, Mr. Crockett,” Fulton told him, lapsing into heavily accented black dialect. “I’ll be ready for him.”

“Good. Good. Look, I’m gonna call the police – ”

“Shiiit! Don’t need no cops!” the man growled. “I’ll just get ol’ Fred and that McKinney kid from buildin’ security. We can handle it.”

“Yeah but – but I don’t want this weirdo bothering me anymore. Tonight may be the only chance we’ll have of catching him – ”

“Like I said, Mr. Crockett. Don’t you worry ’bout a thing. We’ll fix it so he don’t bother no one for a long-ass time. You jus’ get yourself back to bed.”

Larry chuckled. “All right, Fulton. Have it your way. And thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

“I know.” That, with mock indignation.

“I really appreciate this – hey! I’ll buy you and your buddies a drink sometime. OK?”

“I just might take you on the that, Mr. Crockett.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks again.”

“Uh huh. Goodnight, sir.” And the box was silent.

Larry turned away, smiling, and strode across the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

I wonder what they’re gonna do to him?

He punched on the light over the sink, extracted another Dixie cup from the dispenser. A roach skittered across scuffed linoleum, vanished the stove.

Funny. I thought these apartments were supposed to be clean. The refrigerator door opened with a begrudging sigh. He remembered

—

That’s where the manuscript ended. My expectation is Larry returned to his bedroom, where he encountered Death waiting for him.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .