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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