The Dial Moan

"Once, not too long ago, in the woods near here, there were these three kids," Kaitlyn started. I listened closely to her voice. It was both terrifying and soothing, as if trying to scare the hell out of us but keep us close all at the same time. She was a friend of my sister’s, and they were having one of their famous sleep-overs. We sat attentively in a circle around her and listened as if our lives depended on it.

The words rolled off of her tongue as if she were the one lost in the woods. The look that she created with her facial muscles could convey just as much terror as any phrase. I loved to listen. I loved to watch.

"He heard a sound," she continued. "It was just up ahead in the darkness. He shined his flashlight and..."

BRINGGGG!!

The sound emanated from the background, making us all jump. It was the phone ringing. Kaitlyn looked up at the clock to see eleven-thirty. She obediently stood up and answered the phone as we all waited patiently. We knew exactly who it was. It was her mother, just down the street, checking up on her just at her usual time. But it was never long before Kaitlyn returned, with a smile and saying, "Well, where were we?"

I never thought I’d ever see the day when that smile would give way to agony and pain.

My sister and I had no words to say as we watched her cry. The tears poured as easily as words from her mouth or blood from her veins. She buried her head in her father’s embrace as the paramedics rushed her mother out the front door and into the ambulance. In a second, the siren’s blaring and Kaitlyn’s crying had given way to an empty, eerie silence. It was almost as frightening as any one of her stories.

It was a month later before Kaitlyn visited again. There were quite a few of us there. The lights were all off in the house as we watched some late night comedy show. Not a word was spoken or even breathed. I looked at Kaitlyn hoping that she would pop up and again start telling one of her famous stories. But all that came from her were sniffles and a lifeless stare.

Then a noise stole our attention. It came from the living room in the darkness. We all rose from our seats, all but Kaitlyn, and walked into the darkness to see what had happened.

We stared into the dark room. It was like staring into a lifeless abyss of shadows and the unknown. My sister’s hand shook as she reached toward the light switch. In a second, light filled the room and we saw the culprit. The phone lay on the floor as if it fell all on its own from the shelf.

My sister picked up the receiver and held it to her face. In a second, her face was flushed as she started breathing rapidly. "What?" one of her friends asked. But my sister just shooshed her and continued listening.

With my curiosity peaked, my sisted handed the phone to me. I listened closely and at first heard only a dial tone. But through the standard buzz there was something else. As if someone was on a phone somewhere else in the house. And there were cryptic, slurred words pouring from the other end. I laid the receiver down on the table and looked at my sister. "Oh my God," I said in terrifying realization. "There’s someone in the house!"

Kaitlyn still sat in her place silently in the den as we all huddled together and walked slowly upstairs to the only other phone in the house. It was all the way at the end of the hallway in my parent’s room, who were both out of town at the time. Their room was always cold and dark and pretty forbidding to children. We hated entering under normal circumstances, and this was anything but.

The door creaked as we slowly opened it. The light from the hallway shined through the darkness to reveal a perfectly kept bed, a cold interior, and a phone still on its cradle. It was untouched.

Then we were startled by another noise. It was talking, almost a whisper, coming from downstairs. "Oh my God," I said. "Kailyn!"

We all rushed to the stairs and started hurrying down them. But before we reached the bottom, we saw Kaitlyn. She was standing in the den, in front of our old grandfather clock which just at that moment rang a chime signifying eleven-thirty.

"Mother?" we heard Kaitlyn whisper into the phone. We listened, trying to decipher the inaudible whispers coming from her mouth. We watched as the low lighting reflected off the tears rolling down her somber face. Then, she smiled and slowly placed the phone back on its cradle. We all stared down at her in perfect astonishment. She looked back at us, and her eyes were almost as bright as sunshine, lighting up the entire room.

She cleared her throat, wiped away her tears, and slowly said, "Well, where were we?"