Chris Carter - The Caller

‘This has got to be a joke,’ she said, loud enough for her voice to be picked up by the multidirectional microphone at the center of the table. ‘A detective must’ve come back by now. C’mon.’

As she finished her sentence, she turned, looked at the heavy door a few feet behind her and waited, urging it to be pushed open.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty seconds went by.

No luck.

Dr. Barnes took a deep breath and sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair.

Laid out on the table in front of her she had her cellphone, her car keys, the envelope that had been left stuck to the windshield of her Toyota Camry, and the note she had found inside it. Every time she looked at it, her heart skipped a beat inside her chest.

After reading the note down at the underground parking lot of the building where she had her psychotherapy practice, Dr. Barnes had laughed out loud, quickly discarding it as a ‘ridiculous, humorless joke’. But then she found what had been left inside the envelope for her, something that gave everything a lot more meaning, and the laughter immediately turned into desperate panic. Twenty-five minutes later, she had stormed into the police station on Venice Boulevard.

An officer had spoken to her and taken down all her details, but Dr. Barnes had demanded to speak with a detective. She didn’t want this brushed under a carpet.

The officer had explained that no detectives were available at that time and that she had two options. One: She was more than welcome to wait for one if she really felt the need to. Two: She could go home and a detective would either call her or drop by at a more convenient time.

The last thing Dr. Barnes wanted at that particular moment was to go home alone, so wait she did, for a very long time, but still, no detective came to meet her. After almost two hours, four horrible cups of coffee, and five increasingly angry trips to the reception window, the officer finally told her that he had managed to talk to one of their detectives over the phone, and he was on his way back. The officer, who could clearly understand Dr. Barnes’ frustration, had asked her if she wouldn’t prefer to wait in one of their interrogation rooms, away from the noise and the mess of the station’s reception lobby. Dr. Barnes happily accepted it. She was getting a little freaked out by the looks she was getting from the tattoo-covered, burly man, sitting across the hall from her.

That had been almost an hour ago.

Mr. J blinked once... twice.

Cassandra held her husband’s stare for a split second longer before squeezing her eyes tight.

Seventh of March, he thought. That’s correct, isn’t it? It’s got to be. Why else would the date have popped into my head the way it did? Cassandra and I got married twenty-one years ago, on the seventh of March, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles.

Cassandra reopened her glassed eyes. In them now, only terror.

‘I hope that you are looking straight into your wife’s eyes, John,’ the demon finally said. ‘Because you have just let her down.’

‘What? No, wait...’

‘That’s not your wedding date,’ the voice cut him short. ‘And the rules are — you give me an incorrect answer and Cassandra gets punished.’

‘No, please wait...’

‘Rules are rules, John. You just told me that you are an “enforcer of rules” of sorts, so I’m sure you understand that they need to be enforced.’

Still keeping Cassandra’s face as its main subject, the camera panned up a few degrees. Seconds later, a figure dressed all in black took position directly behind her chair. All Mr. J could see were his wife’s face and the person’s strong torso standing just behind her head.

‘You remember the rules of our little game, don’t you, John?’ the demon asked rhetorically. ‘You have to keep watching. You close your eyes, she gets punished again. You look away, she gets punished again. If you move away from your phone’s camera and I can’t see you on the screen, she gets punished again.’

Mr. J’s gaze stayed exactly where it was.

‘Now, would you like to know the real reason why I paralyzed your wife?’ The demon didn’t wait for an answer. ‘So she wouldn’t spoil the fun by moving.’

Suddenly, the demon’s gloved hands appeared above Cassandra’s head. They weren’t empty.

Dr. Barnes checked her watch one more time.

‘Oh, screw this,’ she said under her breath.

She had had enough. She collected her belongings and placed everything back into her briefcase. She still didn’t want to go home, so she decided that she was going to do what she should’ve done a long, long time ago — drive herself to a different police station.

As she got up and turned to leave, the door to the interrogation room was finally pushed open by a tall and sturdy man. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with a rugged face that gave her the impression that he hadn’t smiled in years. His clothes were clean, but scruffy, as if they had been slept in, and his hair was lank and uncombed.

‘Ms. Barnes,’ he said, offering his hand. His voice sounded as rough as his clothes looked. ‘I’m Detective Julian Webb. Pleased to meet you.’

She shook his hand, properly introducing herself as a doctor.

‘I’m terribly sorry for making you wait for such a long time, doctor. If I could’ve made it back here any earlier, I would’ve, but tonight, so far, I’ve attended two homicide scenes, and one gang rape.’

Dr. Barnes didn’t disguise her surprise.

‘Unfortunately,’ Detective Webb explained, ‘some nights, that’s just how this city rolls. If this is the City of Angels, God forbid I ever come across the City of Devils.’ He gestured towards the table. ‘Please...’

Dr. Barnes returned to the same seat she’d been occupying for the past hour. Detective Webb took the one across the table from her.

‘So, how can I be of any assistance?’ He interlaced his fingers together and placed his hands on the table in front of him.

The doctor studied the detective for a couple of seconds. He had the look of a man who was used to hard work and responsibility. She breathed in through her nose and slowly let it out through her mouth before beginning. She started with when she got to the underground parking lot.

‘And do you have this note with you?’ Detective Webb asked, reaching for his reading glasses, which were hanging from a cord around his neck.

Dr. Barnes placed the note on the table.

Detective Webb retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, gloved up and turned the envelope so it was facing him.

‘And you’ve said that you’ve never received one of these before?’ he asked.

‘This is the first one,’ she replied with a headshake.

‘And has anyone else other than yourself handled it?’

‘No.’

‘So since you’ve found this note no one else has touched it?’

‘No.’

Detective Webb opened the envelope and pulled out the note. The fact that whoever had created it had used cut-out letters and words didn’t seem to surprise him. He read it silently.

I bet that you never even noticed me standing right behind you as you picked up your copy of the LA Times from the newsstand, did you?

I must say, your hair smells different when you are awake.

After reading the note twice, Detective Webb’s eyes lifted in the direction of Dr. Barnes.

She was staring straight at him.

Webb pulled his reading glasses from his nose and let them fall loosely by his neck again.

‘When was the last time you picked up a copy of the LA Times from a newsstand, Doctor?’