Chris Carter - The Caller

‘Erica, c’mon.’ Gwen had reached for her arm to lead her sister in with her, but Erica was as rigid as a statue. Her muscles had literally stiffened in place. That was when Gwen noticed how much her sister was shaking, and how sweaty and clammy her face was. Seconds later, she had started hyperventilating.

‘Erica, what’s wrong?’

Still, Erica couldn’t speak. Her eyes had started moving from left to right frantically, focusing on nothing at all, as if she was about to have a seizure.

Erica never made it through the gates. She had to wait on the other side of the road while Gwen said a couple of prayers and placed the flowers they had brought with them on their mother’s grave. It was only much later that they found out that their mother’s funeral had been such a traumatic experience for Erica that she had developed coimetrophobia — fear of cemeteries. She remembered her mother, but her condition had caused her to push everything related to her death to the absolute edge of her mind.

‘Three...’

Erica’s breathing became labored.

‘Two...’

She tried to think.

‘One...’

Nothing.

‘Time’s up, Erica.’

‘No... please... I... I don’t know the answer. I have this condition...’

‘I told you the rules,’ the demon cut her short. ‘No answer — your sister gets punished.’

‘No... please...’

‘And remember, if you look away, she gets punished again. You have to watch it. Now let’s have fun.’

Finally, the image on Erica’s smartphone widened horizontally, allowing her to see past the edge of her sister’s eyes...

... And what she saw filled her heart with horrifying fear and panic.

As Hunter parked in front of his six-story apartment block in Huntington Park, he peeked at his watch — it was coming up to 11:00 p.m. He leaned his head back on to the seat’s headrest and looked up at the aging building for a moment. By one of the windows on the second floor, an old man sat chain-smoking cigarettes. With every third drag he had, he would cough two or three times before spitting down on to the sidewalk below. On the fourth floor, Margaret Dixon, a very sweet lady in her early fifties, was staring out the window of apartment 416, teary-eyed. Every night, without fail, she would stare out of her window at the road below for several long hours, waiting for her husband to come back from his night shift. Her husband, Philip, had been involved in a work-related accident several years ago. He had died that same night.

A far-away siren dragged Hunter’s attention away from the building and he wondered if going home right now was really the best idea. Sleep, if it came at all, wouldn’t be until the very early hours of the morning. His brain was still wide awake and he wasn’t looking forward to another night either tossing and turning in bed, or pacing the length of his small apartment.

He began contemplating taking a drive down to Santa Monica or Venice Beach when a completely new idea entered his mind. He considered it for just a few seconds.

‘Oh, what the hell. Why not?’ he said, staring into his own eyes in the rearview mirror. He shrugged and reached for his cellphone.

‘Hello,’ a female voice replied.

‘Hi, is this Tracy?’

‘This is she, yes.’

‘Hi, Tracy. It’s Robert. Robert Hunter?’ He thought that he would have to help her out with a little bit more information than just his name, but he was pleasantly proven wrong.

‘Oh, the mysterious detective. What a surprise.’

Hunter took that as a good sign.

‘Is this a bad time?’ Out of habit, he consulted his watch again.

‘No. Not at all. I was just about to... do nothing, really.’

Hunter smiled. ‘Funny, me too. Listen, I know it’s quite late on a Sunday night, not really the best night for going out, and you probably have lectures in the morning, but I was wondering if you would like to go grab a coffee somewhere.’

‘You mean... somewhere that’s not the UCLA library?’

‘Preferably not.’

Hunter heard Tracy laugh. The laugh was followed by a short pause.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she replied at last, ‘I have a better idea. Why don’t we go somewhere where they serve something a little stronger than coffee? There’s a great bar not that far from me. How long will it take you to get to West Hollywood?’

‘At this time... about an hour.’

‘OK, so how about I meet you there in an hour?’

‘That sounds great.’

‘Oh, my God, Gwen, what’s happening?’ Erica Barnes cried out in a voice choking with emotion. ‘I... don’t understand.’

The image on her cellphone screen had stopped zooming out and, though her eyes could now see a more complete picture, her fragile brain struggled to make any sense of it.

Her sister seemed to be lying down on some sort of wooden surface. It was hard to tell because in width, the picture on Erica’s cellphone screen didn’t show past her sister’s shoulders. In length, it didn’t show past her breasts, which were fully exposed, and that was where Erica’s confusion began. Her sister’s phone, the one broadcasting the images, didn’t seem to be positioned in front of her. It looked like it had been positioned above her, as if it was somehow hanging from the ceiling, but what really made the scene look absurd was the fact that Gwen’s face lay between two huge, serrated iron jaws. That was why, at first, the image didn’t pan any wider than the edge of her eyes. The demon didn’t want to reveal his murderous device too soon.

‘Do you know what this is, Erica?’ the demonic voice asked, referring to the strange device.

Erica didn’t speak, didn’t blink, didn’t move. Never in her whole life, not even on the day that her muscles froze at the entrance to the cemetery, had she experienced fear like that before. It was like her brain had disconnected from the rest of her body.

‘This is something I created myself,’ the demon continued. ‘And I decided to call it... The Skull Crusher . Good name, don’t you think?’ He laughed the same sickening, throaty laugh from moments ago. ‘I guess it can be compared to... an industrial-size vise, only better.’

‘Please... please... please...’

This time, the desperate cries came from Gwen herself. Her sobbing was so intense, Erica could see her entire body shake from the effort.

‘Why are you doing this to me? Why?’

‘Shush...’ A gloved finger was pressed against Dr. Barnes’ lips. ‘You’re not supposed to speak, remember?’

Dr. Barnes was struggling to breathe, which was something that she could now only do through her mouth. Her nose had completely clogged up.

‘Apparently,’ the demon said, once again addressing Erica, ‘an average human skull can withstand anywhere up to twenty-one hundred pounds of pressure, did you know that, Erica?’

‘Please... don’t do this.’ Tears and fear had caused Erica’s voice to go up almost a whole octave.

‘But I must add,’ the demon continued, disregarding her pleas. ‘I did find that information on the Internet, so there’s a chance that it could all be just bullshit.’ He paused for effect. ‘But let me tell you what’s not bullshit, Erica. Every full turn of the crank on this device adds about five hundred pounds of pressure to the jaws. Isn’t that beautiful? Can you imagine what these serrated jaws would do to somebody’s face?’

In hearing those words, panic, in a way she never knew it could exist, exploded inside Dr. Barnes, spreading like lightning to every atom of her body. As a result, she summoned all the strength she had left in her and tried to free her head from between the jaws, but the demon held her back by powerfully placing the palm of his hand against her forehead.