Monday, October 16, 2017

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: D is for DASTARDLY DIALER




D is for DASTARDLY DIALER

She let the phone ring three more times. It was him again…if it was a him. It was hard to tell. He always let the phone ring and ring and ring, until someone answered it. Until she answered it, that is, because she was the only one left. Richard had died three years ago, and that was what made the calls so damned unnerving. The voice—the sickly cackle, so inhumanly warped and pitched—kept saying the same thing.
It continued to ring. She could feel her last nerve starting to chafe. She could call the police of course, but what if they couldn’t trace it? There were always strange calls, solicitors and scam artists and perverts, and these days they could funnel them through blocked numbers and route them through foreign service lines and things.
Finally, anxious and unable to listen to the damn thing ring any longer, she grabbed the receiver and pulled it to her head.
“Tensley residence.”
There was a pause. Then a click, like a break in the line.
Then, as always: “Hello, Margery. Are you lonely tonight, Margery? Don’t be lonely. I’ve got a message for you from Richard.”
The voice…that hideous voice! It would sound so cartoonish if not in this context.
“Who is this?” she screamed. “What the hell do you want?”
“…Margery. Are you lonely tonight, Margery?” it repeated in its mocking tone. “Don’t be lonely. I’ve got a message for you from Richard.”
“Richard is dead!” she screamed and slammed the receiver back into the cradle. She traced the phone cord to the wall and yanked it from the outlet. She couldn’t call the police. She’d have to go in person.
As Margery grabbed her purse, fishing within for her car keys, she stopped at the door to the garage. A trickle of cold dropped into her stomach and dispersed through her veins.

If this caller, this sick monster, knew her phone number, did he—they? it?—know her address as well? Her eyes turned to the window in the living room. Was someone outside, waiting? What about her car? She didn’t have much cause to go out these days, but someone could have done something to the car. If they had, she’d hardly notice until whatever it was had accomplished its goal…

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