PRANK
CALL
By
Daniel Skye
Five simple words echoed through Melissa Alden’s phone speakers
and chilled her to the core.
“You’re
going to die tonight.”
The
caller’s voice was distorted, yet she could clearly identify the caller’s tone.
It wasn’t a threatening tone, it was a sincere one. And that’s what alarmed
her.
The
caller said it in a matter-of-fact way. The same way you’d tell a person you
were leaving town or quitting your job. There was nothing urgent or pressing in
the caller’s statement. But they did seem in a bit of a rush to get off the
line.
Melissa
never even had a chance to respond. The phone rang twice; she answered and
heard heavy breathing, followed by the haunting words, “You’re going to die
tonight.” Then the line went dead.
She
didn’t try *69 because the caller had blocked their number. Instead she dialed
911 and an operator connected her with the local police, who worked to trace
the call, albeit unsuccessfully.
They
were able to trace the number… to a store-bought mobile phone, the kind you buy
without signing up to a specific company. The kind without GPS. The caller had
used a prepaid phone card to place the call, and tracing one particular card to
one particular location was seen as a waste of time and resources to the police.
Especially considering the police had a hunch the call was nothing more than a
prank. Four more people had called the station earlier that evening with
similar claims.
The
police said if the creep called her again to dial them from a different
phone–her cell phone perhaps–and they would try and pinpoint the location while
she still had the creep on the line.
Melissa
Alden had no enemies, no crazed stalkers. She was happily married with two kids
in college. She managed a department store and all the employees adored and
respected her. How many bosses can honestly say that?
Shane,
her husband, was a construction worker whose free time revolved around hockey,
football, model trains, and most importantly, family.
Devout
Catholics, the Alden’s attended service every Sunday, with or without their
children present. And Shane was always the most generous when it came to the
collection plate.
Why on Earth would anyone want to harm me? Melissa
wondered. Not just harm me. KILL ME.
As soon
as she finished speaking with the cops, she dialed Shane. His cell went
straight to voicemail. She tried two or three more times and got the same
result.
Then
she bravely did a full sweep of the house; made sure every door and window was
locked. The basement door didn’t have a lock on the outside and could not be
locked with a key. But there were windows in the basement that a person could
easily smash and crawl inside if so desired. So she grabbed a chair from the
kitchen and wedged it firmly under the knob.
If she
heard the glass shatter, she could be out the front door in five seconds before
an intruder even has time to realize the basement door is jammed.
She sat
in the living room for hours, her back against the wall as she watched the TV
at low volume. Every light in the house was on. The place was lit up like
Yankee Stadium. She had taken a butcher knife from the knife block on her
kitchen counter and was clutching the handle like it was a new appendage, an
extension of her body.
Her
mind was racing, her heart pulsing. Where
the hell are you, Shane? I need you here.
The
front door sometimes sticks when you try to open it from the outside. You have
to give it a hard push every once in a while to pry it open. When she heard
that hard push, followed by the door bouncing against the wall and swinging
back, she screamed loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
“Jeez,”
Shane said, dusting snow off the shoulders of his jacket. He stepped into the
living room where Melissa was cowering in the corner. “What’d you see a spider
crawl under the couch or something?”
“Shane!”
She exclaimed.
“That’s
my name,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Are you ok, babe? You look
really pale. And are you holding a knife behind your back?”
“Why
was your cell phone off? I tried calling you so many times.”
“My
battery died on the ride home from work. Sorry it took so long. I didn’t want
to, but Louis insisted on stopping for a beer. Now what the heck is going on
here?”
“I got
this weird phone call about an hour ago. Someone threatened to kill me.”
“What’d
they say?”
“They
said ‘I’m going to kill you’, and then they hung up. I tried the police but
they couldn’t get a name or a location.”
“It’s
probably just some punk teenager trying to scare you. I bet ten or twenty other
people got calls similar to that tonight. Someone did the same thing to my aunt
once. Scared the daylights out of her. You’ve got nothing to worry about now.
You’re safe with me. So put that knife away before you hurt me accidently.” He
chuckled as she lowered the knife and placed it on the coffee table. Then she
wrapped her arms around him like it was the first time she had seen him in
years. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me
too,” he said and smiled as she let go. “Now what’s for dinner?” he asked as he
stepped into the hallway and started towards the kitchen.
He had
removed his gloves and winter jacket and tossed them aside on the floor, an
unbreakable habit that irked her every time he did it.
As
Melissa unwrinkled and neatly folded Shane’s jacket, his phone slid out from
the pocket. But it wasn’t Shane’s iPhone that landed on the rug. It was a cheap
flip cover phone, a brand she didn’t even recognize.
She
should’ve stopped there, turned around, and ran straight from the house. But
Melissa had to know for sure.
She dug
her hand into the pocket that the phone had fallen from, and her fingers
brushed a thin chunk of square plastic. She drew her hand from the pocket and
held the phone card up to the light of the ceiling fixture. The spot where you
obtain the number to activate the card had been scratched away. The card had
been activated recently.
“Tell
me if this sounds familiar,” Shane boasted from the hallway. She turned and froze
at the sight of the Snub .38 in his hand. “You’re going to die tonight.”
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