Dead Line
I drove with no destination in mind. The city was behind me, the lights were scattered and fading, and ahead was only the kind of silence that made a man feel small. You see, I wasn’t running away from anything. I had already lost it all. I was just waiting for a tree or a wall to find me. And I wanted it to find me fast.
People used to tell me I was good at solving puzzles, or at finding meaning in what looked like chaos. That was before the meaning was ripped out of my own life. Three years. That’s how long it had been. I still counted. How could I stop counting? Every empty morning I woke up, it was another mark on the wall of her absence.
I gripped the wheel tighter. The bottle tipped against my knee. Sometimes I wondered if she would forgive me for what I’d become. A cop who couldn’t even keep his own daughter safe. A man who carried his badge in his glove compartment now, because it mocked him when it sat close to his heart.
The phone buzzed on the passenger seat. I glanced at it once and turned my eyes back to the road. I wasn’t in the mood for voices. I let it ring out and sink back into the hum of the tires.
Then it rang again.
I frowned. It was the same number. There was no name on the screen. I reached for it, clumsy with drink, and pressed the green button. My voice cracked out like gravel.
“Yeah?”
At first I thought I was hearing things. The silence between us stretched, thin and sharp, and then I heard it.
“Dad?”
The bottle slipped. It hit the floor of the car with a dull thud. My hand almost let go of the wheel, and the car lurched across the wet asphalt before I yanked it back in line.
“Dad, please. I’m scared.”
Wait.
Wait.
It was her voice. It was not a memory, not a recording, and definitely not the way I heard her in dreams. It was her. Clear, alive, terrified.
Wait.
Maybe this was it. Maybe I’d finally done it; drank myself into a coma and crossed over. Maybe this was what the afterlife sounded like.
My throat locked as the road blurred in front of me. For a long moment I couldn’t breathe.
“Who is this?” I asked. But it came out too soft, almost like I already knew.
“It’s me. It’s—” She broke off, her words tangled in tears. “I don’t know where I am. Please come get me.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. I tried to speak, but all I could hear was the sound of rain smacking the windshield and her ragged breathing on the other end.
She had been gone for three years. I had seen her body. I had lowered her into the ground with my own hands shaking against the rope. Yet here she was, calling me like her death had simply been a bad dream.
I pulled the car over to the side of the road. My hands were trembling.
“This isn’t funny,” I whispered.
“I’m not joking,” she said. “They’re coming, Dad. Please hurry.”
The line cut.
I sat there with the phone pressed against my ear long after the silence had swallowed her voice. My chest felt hollow. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I told myself I was drunk, that my mind was playing tricks. But the truth was louder than any lie my wild imaginations could invent. She had called me.
And if she had called once, she could call again.
The second ring came in before I could complete the thought. My thumb brushed the green button like it had a will of its own.
I swear my heart had stopped at the first sound of her voice on the first call, and how I was still breathing, I didn’t know. My knuckles tightened around the wheel.
“Who is this?” My throat felt like gravel.
“Really, it’s me. It’s Anna. Dad, please, you have to help me. They’re coming.”
Her voice was small, scared, and threaded with tears.
The name hit harder than any punch. Anna. My Anna.
“This isn’t funny,” I said, though my own voice trembled. “Whoever this is, I’ll—”
“Dad!” She screamed it this time, high and desperate, the kind of scream she used to make when she woke from nightmares as a child. “Please, they’re here. Don’t let them—”
The line went dead.
I sat there with my chest heaving, and listened to the dial tone until it bled into silence. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I knew it couldn’t be her. Logic clawed at me; phones don’t reach the dead, grief plays tricks, and, you know, alcohol sometimes turns shadows into ghosts. Right?
But another part of me, the part that still set a plate for her at Christmas when nobody was looking, whispered that it was her.
I threw the bottle onto the floor and started the car again. I didn’t know where I was going. I just drove, headlights cutting through the black.
When the phone rang again, I almost crashed.
This time I answered before the second ring.
She was crying. “Dad, you’re not listening. Please, you have to come. It’s not safe. They’ll find me. They’ll find you too.”
“Anna,” I whispered. The word broke me open. “You’re dead. Do you hear me? You’ve been dead for three years.”
There was silence, then a shaky breath. “Not here.”
I gripped the wheel, eyes darting to the rearview like I expected her face to be staring back at me. “What do you mean not here?”
“I don’t have time.” Her voice cracked. “You’ll understand soon. Just… just don’t let it happen again. Please.”
The line cut once more, and I was left with nothing but my reflection in the windshield. And for the first time in years, I wasn’t sure I wanted to die anymore.
I hit “call back.” My hands were shaking, but I pressed anyway. The dial tone rang once. Then silence. And now, hear me out, there was something about this silence. Somehow, I noticed that it was not the kind of silence that means bad reception. This was heavier, and it seemed like the line had gone somewhere it wasn’t supposed to? I tried again. Same thing; one ring, and then nothing.
I set the phone down on the passenger seat, but my eyes kept sliding back to it. I told myself it was whiskey. It was the lack of sleep, the years of keeping myself alive when I didn’t want to be. But the sound of her voice wouldn’t leave me. It was as clear as rain, and bright, like the last time she asked if I’d come to her recital.
The wheel slipped a little under my palm. I gripped harder. I could feel sweat crawling down my back, though the night was cold.
Once more, I pulled the car to the side of the road. The gravel crunched under the tires, and I sat there with the engine running. The headlights painted two shaky tunnels through the fog. For a moment I thought I saw her shape in the beam, small and swaying like she used to when she tried to be funny and balance on one foot.
“Stop it,” I said out loud, because hearing my own voice was safer than the quiet.
I picked the phone up again. Checked the call log. The number wasn’t hers. It wasn’t even a number. Just a blank screen where the digits should be.
That’s when the thought slithered in. What if it hadn’t been a call at all? What if it was something else?
I laughed, it was short, and cracked. I was drunk, I was grieving, and I was a man too tired to know which way was real anymore. That had to be it.
Still, my thumb pressed “call back” again. Once more, the single ring. Then the emptiness.
I let the phone fall into my lap, and I pressed my forehead against the wheel. The leather was cold. I stayed there, breathing like I’d just run a mile. And then I saw it.
The dashboard clock.
It didn’t read 11:48 anymore.
No, wait.
It did read 11:48, but it was not in the right way.
The numbers weren’t digital red like they had been this morning, in fact, like they had ALWAYS been. This time, they were white. Like chalk. Like handwriting. I blinked. Even rubbed my eyes. It was still there.
I straightened up, and that’s when I noticed the road outside my windshield wasn’t the same. The fog was gone. The trees were taller, and they were bent in ways I somehow had never seen before. And the silence wasn’t silence anymore. It was humming, low, and like a throat clearing in the dark.
The phone buzzed again in my hand. It was not a call this time. It was a text.
And I swore I wouldn’t look. But I did.
It said: You’re late.
And the sender’s name wasn’t a number, it wasn’t even a name. It was just one word.
Home.
(PART TWO?)
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