The Red Witch - The Black Phone

The Black Phone

I don't know how long I sat crying. I don't think I want to know. I cried so much that there weren't any tears left to cry. And the longer I laid there the more doomed I felt. I wasn't getting out of this. I was as good as dead if I wasn't already.

Rrrrrinnnnggg.

I heard the hum of the phone echo in my ears. Out of instinct, I shot up and snatched the phone. Nothing. Just dead silence, not a voice or a hum or a buzz. Just nothing.

"It doesn't work." A sudden voice from behind me said. I gasped, dropping the phone from my ear and whipping around. "Not since I was your age." The Grabber commented. "Hang it up now." I couldn't place it but his voice sounded familiar. Like I had heard it time and time again. But I just couldn't place it...

I let the phone hang limp in my hand, my breathing becoming more rapid by the second.
"I know you're scared." He said, taking 1 step toward me. "You wanna go home? I'll take you home soon. It's just that..." He sighed. "Oh, everything's all fucked up."

There was an unexplained sorrow in his tone. Like the kind of sorrow, you get when your pet just died. I didn't expect that from my malicious kidnapper. This shit was just fucked up.

"I gotta be upstairs for a while. Something's come up." The Grabber continued. "Now hang up the phone." He sighed, taking another step toward me. He waited, watching me like a hawk for what I might do next.

I did what he instructed, maybe it would keep me alive, or maybe it was all part of his game. I didn't know. I seemed to not know anything these days.

"I was down here once when it rang." The man said suddenly, his tone not sad but happy. "Creepiest damn thing. I think it's static electricity that does it. It went off while I was right next to it, picked it up without thinking. To see if anyone was there."

"Was there?" I asked, my voice raspy. The man shook his head and without a word left the room, closing the door behind him.

Once he left I ran over to the door, maybe he was stupid enough not to lock it. But of course, he was. The metal thunked but the door didn't budge. I sighed, looking around the room again. My attention landed on the barred window.

I ran over to it, jumping to maybe climb up and get the bars off and break the window. But it didn't work. The window was too high. And if someone could have got through that window they would have done it already. I was fucked.

I glanced around the room again, looking for anything really. I started walking around, just a bed and the phone in the room I was already in, and down the small hallway in the corner a toilet and some rugs. What was I supposed to do? Beat the Grabber over the head with a rug?

I stepped back out of the makeshift bathroom. I was dead and nobody was coming to save me. I fell back on the mattress on the ground. This was it. I thought as I fished the battleship from my back pocket. As I flipped the token around my fingers I tried to think of something good, something happy. But nothing good or happy came to mind.

I lay on that bed for so long. Waiting. Just waiting for anything. A noise, a footstep, a word, a ring from that damn black phone. Anything. Anything at all...

Rrrrrinnnnggg.

I heard the phone ring again. But it wasn't really there, right? I thought it might just have been a figment of my imagination. But the ringing grew louder and louder. An immortal buzz that wouldn't stop until I picked up the phone.

"Hello?" I said into the receiver, knowing I was going crazy.
"Amy..." A boy's voice on the other end said. I screamed, slamming down the phone and backing away. I was going crazy, just hearing things that weren't there. That phone couldn't work, the cord was cut. It was just what the Grabber said, static electricity.

But that voice, that voice on the other end was familiar. Why did it sound so familiar? But I didn't have time to come up with an answer before the phone rang again. I rushed over, picking up the phone and slamming it down again.

"Stop it," I said, eyeing the phone suspiciously. Great, now I was talking to myself.

Rrrrrinnnnggg.

I'm definitely going crazy, I thought as I picked up the phone once more.
"Don't hang up." The same voice said.
"Who is this?" I questioned, freaking out.
"I don't remember my name." The boy said. "It's the first thing we lose when we die."

"So I'm talking to a ghost." I sighed. If I wasn't crazy before I was definitely crazy now. Dead people didn't just call you from their graves. "How do you know my name?" I asked, remembering he said my name earlier.
"We used to know each other..." The boy said. "You fumbled your pitch."

"Holy shit," I said, the realization washing over me. "Bruce." This ghost boy was Bruce. Bruce Yamada from baseball. Holy shit, I was going crazy.
"Y-yeah, I guess so." He stuttered.
"Did the phone ring for you too?" I asked.

"It rang. But none of us heard it..." Bruce said. "Only you. The Grabber hears the phone too, but he doesn't want to believe it."
"Why me?" I interrogated.
"You're special, Amy." He said. "I'm glad it's you. There's a dirt section of the floor in the hallway where the tile is loose." He explained suddenly.

"Dig down, underneath the foundation. I tried but there wasn't time for me to dig up and out the other side." He said.
"What?" I asked before the line went dead. "Bruce? Bruce? Damn you." I said, slamming the phone back down.

What the fuck. Like what the fuck. Was I just given institutions on how to escape by a ghost, Bruce Yamada? Or was I just going insane? I had to be going insane, right?! Dead people don't talk.

But what he said, the phone rang but only I could hear it. He said I was special... But I wasn't special, I was just Amy. And why was Bruce glad it was me, why would anyone be glad someone is trapped in a basement? Unless... No that was impossible. I looked all over this place there was no way I could escape.

"Dig down, underneath the foundation," I whispered to myself, thinking back to what Bruce had said. Mindlessly I walked over to the tile in the hallway Bruce had described, tucking the battleship in my back pocket. He told me to dig. Dig down and out the other side.

I glanced up at the barred window on the other side of the room. I had a lot of digging to do if I wanted to get out of here...