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The sound of my phone ringing woke me out of a dead sleep. I looked at the caller ID and instantly froze. My pulse was pounding, but it was not from the shock of waking up. I knew exactly what would happen, but I did it anyway. With hands shaking, I reached over and answered the call.
“Hello...?”
I was only met with static, accompanied by bits of indiscernible speech. Pressing my ear harder into the receiver, I listened intently for anything that I could understand. Then for the first time I understood something, and hung up as soon as my brain wrapped around a word. I flung my phone on my nightstand, and stared into the dark for an uncertain amount of time.
The last week or so I’d been getting calls from an unknown number, and answering always met with white noise and indecipherable talking. I dismissed it as a prank or some technical issue, but the consistency of the calls was strange. And this call was different, because I was able to get something.
“Jess....” It had said.
My name...it knew my name.
Whatever this was, it was intentional. Someone was trying to communicate with me. Perhaps if I could find out the number it was calling then I could get some answers. I could no longer dismiss this as some weird technical error. If anything, I could report someone if they were somehow pulling off some weird prank. So the next day, I got in touch with the phone company to trace the call.
At first, she saw no record of an incoming call. Yet after I sent her a screenshot of my phone which did show a number called-even if blank- she agreed to find a more thorough way of backtracing the number. She said it could take up to a week, so I agreed and hung up. I needed something to bide my time or else I’d go stir crazy waiting.
Two days later, I decided to speak with my friend Sam about it all. It was killing me having this weird occurrence without anyone knowing about it. Even if he thought I was crazy, at least I’d feel better. So I met with Sam after school and showed him my phone as I explained all the weird calls.
“Huh....you almost got me there.”
“No, I’m serious. I have the phone company tracing it. They said it’d be a week.” Sam looked at me intently, and his eyes softened.
“You are serious....”
“Yeah, have you ever known me to play pranks?”
“You have a point there. But why you? There’s a million other....wait, could it be Jeremy?”
“No, he’d have told me right away it was him so he could laugh at me.”
“I dunno....when it comes to pranks on significant others, they will go the extra mile.”
“No way. Jeremy’s not like that. As far as I know, anyway.”
“Well, six months is enough time to get an idea. He doesn’t seem the type , so I guess not. Hmmm...”
“‘Hmm’ is right. I just...needed to tell someone.”
“Why not Jeremy?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t wanna scare him away.”
“True...well you may have no other choice but to wait.”
“So do you think it’s something....supernatural?”
“Eh...I wouldn’t use that word. It’s certainly an anomoly, definitely unexplainable. But maybe it’s some techy guy who’s good at masking his number. Maybe the phone company can’t even...”
“Oh, don’t say that! The wait is killing me already. I think I’d die if they couldn’t even trace the number.”
“That would be weird.”
So Sam didn’t think I was crazy, but I still had to wait. It wasn’t the full week before I got the call from my phone company.
“Hello?”
“Yes, is this Beatrice?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Hi, I’m Jonathan with the Sullen Oaks Police Department. I understand you contacted your phone company about a number you wanted traced back, is that right?”
“Yes, I’ve been waiting all week! Wait, the police? What’s going on?”
“Well, we had to step in once we found out about the number that’s been calling you.”
“What do you mean?”
“So what I’m going to tell you is a bit upsetting and very strange, so you know. The number you’ve been getting calls from showed up. The odd thing is that the number is no longer active. It’s not connected with any phone. We’ve tried other phone companies and they have nothing either. It’s been out of use for two years.”
A shiver went down my spine. I’d been getting calls from a number that didn’t exist.
“What?”
“Yes, we can’t quite make heads nor tails of it. We thought it best to call you rather than the phone company. You see, the last ownder of that number was...murdered.”
My blood ran cold, and I shivered at the revelation. I’d been getting calls from a homicide victim.
“Wow, that is....that’s something...”
“Yes, I know this is very upsetting news. What’s more is that we’ve never caught the perpetrator.
“The murderer wasn’t caught?”
“I’m afraid not. We’ve actually begun looking more into the case due this strange occurrence. What did you hear on the calls?”
“Uh...nothing. Nothing at first. There’s some talking, but it’s chopped up so much that I can’t understand it. Except the last call. I....I heard them say my name.”
“Really? Peculiar...”75Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUnAkIf6yJJ
“Yes. What leads do you have?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t say since the investigation is ongoing. For now, we’ll stay in touch if anything new comes up. I’m sorry again for having to deliver such grave information. We’d normally speak to people in person, but since it seems a random incident we didn’t think questioning would be necessary.”
“Okay.”
We finished the call with formalities and hung up. Now I had way more questions than answers. I relayed the news to Sam, who practically flipped his lid.
“Are you seriou....a murder victim??!”
“Yes, I know! You don’t have to be so dramatic!”
“But this is.. this is crazy. Have you...have you talked to your parents about any of this?”
“No! No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because....we barely ever talk. It’s like moving away almost put this weird barrier between us. We never got along great to start with. We communicate on whole other dimensions.”
“Wait a sec....”
“What?”
“What if it’s that! A person from another dimension. What if it’s....what if it’s you! That’d be so rad!”
“You’ve been watching too many sci-fi movies.”
“Well it’s already weird, why couldn’t it be weirder?”
We bounced back and forth between all sorts of crackpot theories, but were still left with nothing to move on. I decided to do some research of my own. What I found out was interesting.
According to multiple social media sites, getting calls from non-existent numbers was a recurring thing. Many stories had some of the same details, but the mind-numbing fact about this day and age is that you never know what is real and what isn’t. For purposes of selling a story, everyone slaps a “submitted real story” on their post. There’s never any concrete evidence to verify anything, so I might as well have read an entire book of fiction. The stories were at least interesting, I will say that.
One particular aspect I’d found when looking up the stories on mysterious numbers was the 911 operators. There were multiple accounts of 911 operators getting calls from numbers that were disconnected and getting people asking for help who weren’t there. Dispatchers were sometimes sent out to the locations only to find it abandoned and even in one case, a burned down house. I was chilled to the bone and yet somehow didn’t feel alone even if the stories were fake.
Three days later, I got a call from Jeremy. He was apparently coming home from his vacation early, which was exciting for me. It felt like we were just getting to know each other, and then he had a vacation to Europe coming up that he’d been planning for years. There wasn’t enough money for both of us, and I didn’t feel ready for that kind of adventure just yet. So reluctantly, I wished him a good time and he’d been for three weeks.
“It would have been really nice to have you here,” I told him as he phoned me from the airport.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. It’s just...life’s been strange lately.”
“I understand that all too well. You should hear the reason I had to come home early.”75Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaaod5rA3DG
“Oh no, what happened?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there. It’s a really really long story. I promise to make it super boring. Gotta board my flight in the next hour and I’ll be home tonight but I’ll need to rest so...see you tomorrow night?”
“Okay, yeah! See you tomorrow then.”
I anxiously awaited the next night, hoping that Jeremy could make sense of all this craziness. I didn’t receive any more strange calls between then so I felt a bit better. Approaching his house, I felt a sense of comfort. Jeremy was a great guy, and I was obviously begginning to feel safer around him. According to my girlfriends, this was a sure sign of love. I’d never really dated before Jeremy, so I was always getting their girl-advice. I wasn’t ready for the “L” word yet, but it could be going in that direction.
“Please, have a seat.” Jeremy motioned me to a chair. He wore a dorky chef’s apron and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“I hope you don’t mind me cooking. I found some exquisite cuisines and even had them mailed over here from Europe. Patrick kept them for me til I got back.” Patrick was Jeremy’s closest friend since high school.
“What’s he been up to these days?”
“You know Patrick, probably lying around somewhere.”
“Haha, yeah he is quite the lazy one.”
He finished up dinner and we ate some of the most food that I couldn’t pronounce. All I knew was that it was delicious, and I ate until I felt sick.
“Went a bit crazy on the meat, did you?”
“Yeah, I think I need to use your bathroom, actually.”
I went into the bathroom and did my business. Right after I finished drying my hands, I got a call. There was a lump in my throat, and I saw that it was the unlabeled number. I picked up to find the strange, garbled talking and white noise.
“Hello? Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked. Never had I been out of my own house and gotten the call. Then the voice said something else. I listened harder, and felt a bit more sure of what I heard.
“Jeremy? Did you just say Jeremy?”
The line went dead, and a knocking at the bathroom door startled me.
“Babe? You okay in there?”
“Yes, my stomach just isn’t feeling too great.”
“Okay. Can I get you some medicine?
I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt like I should decline. The voice....had it been saying Jeremy all along?
“I’m okay. I’ll just be another minute.”
My pulse was racing, and my mind was everywhere at once. Something felt off. Maybe the voice was trying to warn me about something. Was Jeremy in some kind of danger? Is that why he left Europe so early?
Another call from my phone jolted me out of my trance. It wasn’t the unknown number this time.
“Hello?”
“Jessica Burgess?”
“Yes, this is she?”
“This is your local 911 operator, where are you right now?”
“I’m...I’m at my boyfriend’s house.”
“Are you near him at the moment?”
“No, I’m...”
“Go somewhere safe right now and lock the door. You’re in danger.”
“I’m in the bathroom and the door’s locked.”
“Good, stay there! The police are on their way. Make no attempt to leave until the police are there!”
“What’s going on??!”
“I have to go but just please listen to what I’ve told you!”
The line went dead and I waitied in dreaded anticipation. After another eight minutes, Jeremy knocked on the door again.
“Babe? Are you sure you don’t need...”
I heard a loud banging on the front door.
“Sullen Oaks Police Department!”
“Uh, hold on...” Jeremy replied. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.
The next thing I heard was police kicking down the front door and shouting. I called out after it quieted down some, and a policemen called from the other side of the bathroom door. I exited and they escorted me from the house to the sight of my boyfriend in handcuffs.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” I asked the officer in their squad car.
“Ma’am, your boyfriend is being arrested for multiple murders.”
“What?”75Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFOOidgumc2
“Your boyfriend Jeremy, he’s a serial killer.”
“No, that can’t be...”
“His past girlfriends didn’t believe us either.”
Later, at the station I was interviewed and told everything about the case. Jeremy was connected to multiple murders, and most recently to one in England where he’d been staying. He left early because he thought the police were on to him, and came back early. The meat that Jeremy had served me...it was of his last victim. I immediately threw up whatever was in my stomach. After collecting myself again, it turned out that his friend Patrick that received the meat had become really suspicious. They found Patrick’s body in the freezer, right next to the meat of the victim that he’d served me.
When I asked about them calling me, they were shocked.
“You didn’t have an operator call me about Jeremy?” I asked.
“No. As soon as we got the email with the evidence from the UK to arrest Jeremy, we rushed over immediately. We had no idea that you were even there.”
“So who...?”
“Well this case has been shrouded by strange things. Just consider it luck. You’re a very lucky person, Ms. Burgess. We believe Jeremy was going to make you his next victim.”
After processing all this heavy news, I was checked out of the station. I was headed to the exit when a woman jumped up from her seat and approached me.
“Jessica?” She said.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m sorry I....we’ve spoken before.”
“We have?”
“I was the operator who called you.”
“Oh...oh my....thank you, how did...how did you know where I was.”
“Ms. Burgess, I’ve been a 911 operator for 20 years now and I’ve gotten some strange calls. But yours...yours takes the cake. I got a call from an unknown number. I couldn’t hear anything at first so I started recording it. When I played back and enhanced the recording I heard a voice tell me your name, number, and where you were. They warned me that your boyfriend is dangerous and not to leave the bathroom.”
“Wh-what?”
“I know, I know. It was all so strange. In my profession you take the strange with the normal. Anyway, I felt it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t call you and warn you. Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Well, thank you so much for calling. I’ve...received that same caller before. She’s been calling me for the past month now. It’s been a complete mystery, but it all makes sense now.”
She hugged me, told me everything was going to be okay and walked away. After I got home and settled down I got one last call. I picked it up, and this time it was completely silent.
“Hello?” There was no reply. “I know who you are...and I’m sorry for what happened to you. I hope that you can find peace now. Thank you for saving me.”
I hung up, and never received a call from that number again...
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