Chris Carter - The Caller

Erica poured the popcorn into a large bowl, grabbed her wine glass and walked over to her living room. There, she switched on the TV, and dumped herself on to the sofa.

‘OK,’ she said, in conversation with the popcorn. ‘Let’s find something to watch, shall we?’

Before she began flicking through the channels, she reached for her cellphone, took a picture of her wine glass and the popcorn bowl, and quickly uploaded it to her social media page. That done, she swopped the phone for the TV remote.

Flick — Rerun on and old show . Flick — Rerun on and old show . Flick — Rerun on and old show .

‘Are you kidding me?’

Flick — The Real Wives of Somewhere. Flick — The Real Husbands of Somewhere . Flick — Big Brother .

‘No way. This crap is still going on? Do people still watch this?’

Flick — some romantic comedy was just starting.

‘I guess this will do.’

Erica placed the remote down next to her and had a sip of her wine followed by a mouthful of the friends she was just talking to. She had just gotten comfortable, with the popcorn bowl resting on top of her crossed legs, when her cellphone rang.

‘Typical,’ she whispered, reaching for it.

A video-call from her sister.

‘That’s weird,’ she thought. Erica and Gwen didn’t video-call that often. Erica checked her watch: 10:12 p.m. She accepted the call.

‘Hey, Sis,’ she said as the image began materializing on her screen. ‘That was a quick date. Did everything go OK?’

All Erica could see were her sister’s eyes.

‘Sis, you’re too close to the phone. What are you doing? Have you gone blind? Move back a bit.’ She stuffed another handful of popcorn into her mouth.

‘Hello, Erica.’

The voice Erica heard from her phone speakers was scarily deep and time-delayed. Immediately, she frowned at her screen.

‘Sis, you’re too close to the phone. Your voice is distorting. Move back, woman. What’s wrong with you?’

Only then did Erica notice how red her sister’s eyes were. It looked like she’d been crying.

‘Gwen, is everything all right?’ Erica’s tone of voice became ominously serious. ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong?’

Her sister blinked, but there was no reply.

‘Gwen, what the hell? You’re starting to scare me now. Will you say something, please?’

Finally, the image began panning out, but strangely enough it stopped before Gwen’s face came into full view. Erica frowned. She couldn’t see her sister’s ears. In fact, she couldn’t see past the outside edge of her eyes. She was now certain that her sister had been crying.

‘Gwen? What the fuck is going on? Why were you crying? And why is the sound all fucked up?’

‘Talk to me, Sis.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the sound,’ the distorted voice came again. To Erica, it sounded like some sort of B-horror film demon’s voice. ‘And your sister can’t answer you because she’s not allowed to speak,’ it continued. ‘If she does, she dies.’

Gwen had an unusual sense of humor. Erica knew that well, but this wasn’t it. She was a psychiatrist, and one thing that she would never do was play with people’s emotions in this sort of way.

‘What?’ Erica’s voice wavered. ‘Who is this?’

‘I’m nobody. But you can be somebody. You can be a hero for your sister. All you have to do is give me two correct answers and all this is over.’

Erica shook her head. ‘What? What questions? What are you talking about?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘No, I won’t.’ Erica sounded angry. ‘What I’m doing is calling the cops.’

‘Do you really think that the cops can get to your sister’s house before I slice her up?’ the demon asked.

Suddenly, a gloved hand appeared on the screen, holding a kitchen knife, its tip just millimeters away from Dr. Barnes’ left eye.

‘I’ll start by gouging her eyes out,’ the demon continued. ‘Then I’ll slice her nose off.’ The tip of the knife moved to it. ‘Then I’ll rip the sides of her mouth open all the way to her ears and leave her here, bleeding to death for the cops to find her. How would you like that, Erica?’

Dr. Barnes’ eyes were filled with desperate panic, as they tried to focus on the knife. Her mouth opened, readying a scream, but fear silenced her voice.

‘Oh, my God!’ Erica’s heart began crawling up to her throat. Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘Gwen.’

‘You better listen carefully, Erica, because I’m only going to explain this once. Are you ready?’ Without waiting for a reply the demon explained the rules to his game. ‘That’s it,’ he said when he was done. ‘Simple, isn’t it? All you have to do is answer me. So... shall we begin?’

Erica was shaking so much she had to hold the phone with both hands.

‘Here we go. First question.’ To heighten the suspense, the demon added a long, stagnant pause. When he spoke again, his words came out slowly and syncopated. ‘What was the last post you uploaded to your social media page?’

Instinctively, Erica’s head moved back a couple of inches. She doubted her ears.

‘What? My last post? What is this? Are you serious?’

On the screen, Gwen’s lips began trembling.

‘Yes,’ the demon replied. ‘I’m very serious. You update your page several times a day with the kind of needless information about your life that no one really cares to know, don’t you, Erica?’

Erica looked lost.

‘So I want to know what your last totally unnecessary post was about. That was less than five minutes ago, remember? You added a picture to it.’ Another pause, this time a lot shorter than the previous one. ‘You have five seconds.’

Erica blinked once. Twice. Three times. To her, this made absolutely no sense.

‘Four... three...’

‘Umm... I posted a picture of my popcorn and my wine, saying that I was just getting comfortable to watch some Sunday night TV.’

The demon stopped counting.

Silence.

Erica waited.

Still silence.

For a moment, Erica doubted her answer. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’ The demon laughed such a guttural laugh, Erica felt her blood run cold inside her veins. ‘Yes.’ He finally accepted it. ‘Of course it is, but you doubted yourself for a second there, didn’t you?’

Erica felt so relieved, she almost wet herself.

On the screen, Gwen’s terrified eyes moved right and stayed there for several seconds. A couple of tears rolled out of them, but Erica was so confused, so lost, she failed to notice something very odd. The tears didn’t roll down her cheeks. They rolled to the side of her face.

‘Question two. Answer this one right, and this exercise is over. You and your sister win. Answer it wrong and...’ The demon didn’t finish his sentence.

Erica sucked in a difficult breath of air.

‘Your mother’s death anniversary, Erica, when is it?’

‘What?’ Fear exploded inside Erica’s mind and heart. ‘My mother’s?’

This time the demon gave no explanation. He didn’t repeat the question. He simply began counting down. ‘Five... four...’

Dr. Barnes’ trembling shifted from her lips to her entire face. A second later, she began sobbing violently.

Every year, on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Gwen would take flowers to their mother’s grave. Erica had tried joining her on her very first visit. At the time, Gwen was fourteen years old and Erica thirteen, but Erica never made it. At the entrance to the Home of Peace Memorial Park, on Whittier Boulevard, Erica froze.

‘C’mon, Erica,’ Gwen had said. ‘Let’s go.’

Erica couldn’t speak. All she could do was shake her head.