Dead Line (Part Two)
By Sobowale Oluwadarasimi
The word Home blinked once on the screen, then disappeared. I stared at the phone until the screen dimmed and threw my reflection back at me. My eyes looked sunken, my mouth slack, and my skin greyed by the dashboard light.
“Home,” I said aloud, just to hear it in my own voice. The word didn’t sound like mine anymore. It sat strangely heavy and unfamiliar on my tongue.
I looked up. The road was still there, stretching into a kind of quiet that pressed too close to the glass. But there was something different about the light. The fog had thinned, yet the darkness wasn’t exactly gone. It had simply… changed its color.
I turned off the ignition. The engine’s growl died, but the hum outside didn’t. It was softer now, like the sound of power lines trembling in the wind.
I stepped out.
The air was wrong. That’s the only way I can put it. It didn’t smell like rain or asphalt anymore; it smelled faintly of burnt wires and old metal. It was the kind of scent that hangs around a place that’s been left running long after everyone’s gone.
My shoes sank a little into the mud as I moved to the front of the car. The headlights were still on, and they threw long, thin shadows across the trees. Something flickered there. It was not movement, exactly, but something like the outline of movement, like the world itself was stuttering.
Then I heard a ringtone.
The sound came from the trees. The same ringtone as before.
For a moment, I thought I’d lost it completely. And then it resumed ringing.
So, I followed.
The ground dipped slightly, and the soil turned soft beneath my feet. The sound was close now. I could almost make out the shape of a phone’s glow between the roots of an old tree. I bent down and saw a cracked phone, half-buried in the dirt and on the screen flashed a single name: Anna.
I didn’t think. I just picked it up.
“Anna,” I whispered into the receiver. My voice trembled.
There was breathing on the other end. It was slow and careful.
“Dad?”
I froze. The voice was clearer now. Closer.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Home.”
The word fell like a stone in my chest. I looked around. The trees stood taller than before, darker too. And somewhere between them, faint and flickering, was a yellow, warm light and it moved like candle flame.
“Come home, Dad,” she said. “You took the wrong turn.”
The line cut.
And then, as though the world were listening to her, the light on the phone went out, and the one in the woods grew stronger. I could see the outline of a house now. There was a porch, a roof, and a door that was slightly ajar.
It looked like our old house. The one we left after she died.
But…but it couldn’t be.
I stumbled backward and almost tripped over a root. The air buzzed again and the hum grew louder and closer. I turned toward the car.
Wait.
Where was the car?
It was just there.
Now, it's gone.
THE. CAR. WAS. GONE.
The car I was just in was no longer on the road.
And in its place was the same cracked road, stretching ahead into the dark.
Only this time, the road wasn’t wet. It was covered in dust. And there’s no other way to say this, but it looked like the kind that settles after years of no use.
Somewhere in that strange stillness, I heard her laugh soft, echoing laugh, and it sounded just the way she used to sound when I spun her in circles in the kitchen.
I looked down at the phone. The screen was lit again, and it showed one single message:
You’re almost here.
I didn’t run. I couldn’t. I just stood there, staring at that house that shouldn’t exist.
Then I noticed that the sound had changed. It was no longer a hum this time, no.
This one was closer and sharper.
Wait.
Tires on gravel. Headlights. Behind me.
I turned. Another car was coming down the same road I’d been driving a moment ago.
Wait.
My car.
Wait.
It was the same make.
It had the same dent on the hood.
And behind the wheel—
Wait.
Wait.
Me. I was in the car: pale, hollow-eyed, hands gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead.
The person in the car didn’t see me. Or maybe I wasn’t supposed to be seen. It's not like any of this is clear to me anyways.
The car sped past with tires spitting dust, and disappeared into the fog ahead.
And before I could speak, before I could breathe, the line went dead again.
PART 3?
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