Joey's unwilling ear succumbed to the relentless ringing, a siren's call echoing in the blackness. Once. Twice. Five times a day it plagued him.
Always the same accursed numbers ringing on his phone: (301) 907–22██. Quiet was not to be had, for another wicked number appeared, its digits re-forming the malevolent rhythm.
On a drizzly Wednesday night, busy with tedious laundry-folding chores, instinct compelled him to answer, hoping for nothing, an emptiness that would shatter his universe.
What he heard was far more malevolent. "...Hello?" A whisper. Evil. Soaked in decay, evoking the fetid gurgles from the bottom of a deserted cemetery. Joey's air was caught in his throat, paralyzed by horror.
"I think I'm still here," it gurgled, reeking of despair. "Please… can you hear me?" And in a flash, the line went dead. He redialed the number, but there was nothing.
No ring, no tone, just an eerie static laced with a sick, rhythmic breathing. That night, Joey plunged into a nightmare in which he was underwater, floating helpless in a nothingness.
Above him, a window groaned with spasmodic light, blurring the wicked face of a woman. She drifted in stillness, her hair fluttering like deserted seaweed.
Her eyes, their outlines wracked with horror, stared fixedly into the void, her mouth open in a muffled shriek. The screams tormented him, screaming women, twisting voices in his head, a crying woman, a child's frozen shriek: "Can you hear me? "
There was only a low, threatening hum at one time and it sounded for a whole minute before the line died. Frantic, he scribbled down the chaos; the numbers, the distorted words.
But nothing rang… until the terrible realization sank in. The numbers, they were in an endless repeat. The last four digits distorted slowly, tick-tocking their way up like a ghastly countdown.". 2218, 2219, 2220, 2221.
As though something, or somebody—was ringing, methodically, searching for the right password. He silenced it, throwing his wicked phone in the drawer, taking out a new one for fleeting optimism.
But after a week, the calls resumed, threatening whispers lurking behind. Joey fought back fiercely, call blocking, carrier changes, even SIM swaps—but the constant voices persisted, ringing through the depths of night when the world fell into quiet despair.
Occasionally, he could feel something wicked clinging to the air, a dark presence watching him behind a one-way mirror. The voices shifted, twisting into mournful echoes from the past.
One night, it was his mother, her voice weighed down by sorrow. And then his ex-girlfriend, her voice venomous. And finally, his own voice, taunting him.
"You shouldn't have answered. You overheard us. Now we're in line. Now we're calling you from inside." The night had turned to horror when the lights flickered off, shrouding his universe in suffocating darkness, only his phone lit up, its screen lighting up an ominous Unknown Caller.
His heart racing, Joey replied, and was met with absolute silence, apart from the intake of deep breath, and a chill whisper that stood his hairs on end: "Unit 2B."
A word that meant nothing to him but now seemed, a door number branded in his mind, a woman behind the hallway mirror, threatening messages scribbled on the drywall.
Somebody else's memories overwhelmed him, a creeping horror. He let the phone fall, but it kept ringing, the sound mirroring the fear that now gripped him.
Two weeks passed, and Joey disappeared into darkness. The police found his apartment locked up tight, an impenetrable fortress of silence.
All electronics were charred, twisted remains of what they once were, his phone grotesquely warped as if it had been subjected to a raging inferno.
The most recent outgoing call was to an eerie string of zeros, no length recorded, no echo of conversation. Whispers plague the house, reporting that it still has an eerie reception, even when the electricity is off.
And when your phone rings in the dead of night, after midnight, with an unknown number flashing in blackness, do not answer. When you turn the ear over to the whispers, they will know you are listening.
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ring ring...
ring ring.....
Have you been scared yet?
I see you...
The next time someone calls, don't pick up.