Amy Cross - The Purchase

“It’s two in the morning,” he muttered. “I’m not going to listen to some drunk—”

Suddenly the phone began to vibrate yet again, and once more Catherine Chandler’s name flashed onto the screen.

Levant let out a long, heavy sigh, and for a few seconds he considered rejecting the call and switching the phone off. Any other student would have received that treatment, but he realized that Chandler – out of all of them – was the most studious and serious. In other words, she was the least likely to be calling for some trivial reason. Finally, despite continuing misgivings, he swiped to answer, and he tapped to activate the phone’s speakers.

“Ms. Chandler,” he boomed, “I am not very—”

“There’s something here!” she shouted, sounding absolutely panicked on the other end of the line. “You have to—”

Before she could finish, her voice was swallowed by a burst of static. Once the static was over, Levant heard only a series of loud, frenzied bumps, as if something was slamming against wood.

He sat and listened for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was hearing.

“Ms. Chandler?” he said cautiously. “What’s going on?”

He listened some more, but the bumps and thuds continued for a moment before suddenly being replaced by the sound of somebody’s panicked, gasping breaths.

“Ms. Chandler?” he said again. “What are you—”

“Help me!” she sobbed, sounding as if she was breaking down completely. “I tried the others but they didn’t pick up! Doctor Levant, I don’t know how but—”

Suddenly she screamed as another, louder bumping sound rang out, followed by shuffling and scraping noises and then a heavy thud.

“Ms. Chandler,” Levant said, now starting to worry just a little, “I want you to calm down and tell me exactly what’s happening.”

“I’m at the site!” she sobbed.

“At the…” He paused, and it took a moment before he realized what she meant. “The site in the valley? What are you doing there at two in the morning?”

“There’s something out there,” she whimpered. “I saw it. I got back in, but now it’s trying to get into the cabin. Doctor Levant, you have to help me. I tried calling the police, but I couldn’t get through. I saw its face, it’s the man from the tree and he—”

Before she could finish, there was another thud, this time accompanied by the sound of wood splitting. Chandler screamed, and Levant sat for a moment and listened to what sounded like utter chaos on the other end of the line.

“Chandler,” he said after a few seconds, “what—”

Again he was interrupted, this time by a brief cry. He heard footsteps, but only for a few seconds, and then a series of loud, heavy thuds, as if somebody had begun knocking on a door.

“He’s trying to get in,” Chandler whispered suddenly over the phone. “Doctor Levant, I don’t know what to do, but you have to send help.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Levant replied, still feeling a little exasperated. “Are you seriously telling me that you’re up there at the site? At two o’clock in the morning? Have you been drinking? Or worse? You’re not high, are you?”

Suddenly he heard the sound of wood being smashed. Chandler cried out, then it sounded as if glass was being broken, and finally the line went dead.

Immediately, Levant tried to call Chandler back, only to be put straight through to her voicemail:

“This is Catherine Chandler’s phone,” her voice said, sounding cheery. “I can’t—”

He cut the call, and then he sat in silence for a moment.

In all his years as a teacher, Doctor Jack Levant had experienced more than his fair share of student pranks. He’d found the past few years particularly trying, as students had begun to use smartphones and video editing software to construct ever more elaborate deceptions. Frankly, he was tired of his students’ drama and he always preferred to stay well away from these things, but at this particular moment he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps something really was wrong. He tried Chandler’s number again, still being put straight through to her voicemail, and then he sat for a moment longer. Was Catherine Chandler really the kind of person who’d play a prank? Serious, sometimes rather humorless Catherine Chandler, who had been one of his most dedicated pupils?

He hesitated for a moment, and then – despite the creeping concern that he was being made the victim of a joke – he dialed 911.

“Hello,” he said, as soon as a voice answered on the other end, “I hope I’m not wasting your time, but I feel I must report something.”

“Idiots,” Levant fumed as he eased his car to the side of the road and cut the engine, next to a turning that led deep into the forest. “I swear, if she’s still alive, I’ll kill her.”

It was almost 4am now, and the night seemed to be at its darkest. Having hurriedly dressed and left the hotel, without so much as a coffee, Levant was starting to feel a little groggy as he leaned back in his seat.

The 911 operator had been unhelpful, to say the least. He’d been able to tell, from the tone of her voice, that she’d been highly skeptical as he’d explained the phone call from Catherine Chandler. The damnable woman had even started picking holes in his story, as if seeking out continuity errors in some cheap movie or book. He’d spent several minutes convincing her that, yes, he really had received a rather alarming call from one of his students, but then the woman had asked where the student was located and he’d struggled to explain. She’d asked if he had, at least, some GPS coordinates, at which point he’d rather lost his temper and had called the woman a few things that, upon reflection, he should have held back.

“Tell some officers to meet me at the turn-off near Sutter’s Point,” he’d said finally, “and I’ll lead them to the cabin. How quickly can they get there?”

A couple of hours, he’d been told. After all, the area was remote and it was the middle of the night and – as Levant inferred – the operator still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was sane. That might have been partly his own fault, he realized now, since he’d been the one to mention the possibility that the whole thing was a prank. Anyway, now he’d arrived at the rendezvous point and the officers were already a few minutes late, so he sat drumming his fingers against the wheel and watching the road for some hint of lights heading his way. He kept glancing at his watch, but time was passing excruciatingly slowly and after just ten minutes he was fit to explode with anger. Finally, he grabbed his phone and tried Catherine Chandler again, only to find that the signal was too weak.

“Bloody phones,” he muttered. “When you actually need them, they never work.”

At 4.30am, half an hour after he was supposed to meet the officers, Levant decided that they either weren’t coming, or that they were going to be too late. He was increasingly of the opinion that this whole farrago was a waste of his time.

Sighing, he started the car’s engine and turned the wheel, setting off along the dark track that led down through the forest to the cabin in the valley. Part of the track wasn’t even a road, and Levant winced as the car bumped over rough terrain that he worried might cause expensive damage. He was cursing under his breath almost all the way, and more than once he began to think that he’d taken a wrong turn. Eventually he reached a point that he thought he recognized, so he kept going while muttering to himself and wishing terrible fates to everyone who’d contributed to his current situation.