Cybrwzrd
Banned
It is getting closer to the witching hour on the east coast. Time to sit back, crack open a bottle of cider and tell a scary story. So let’s start it off with one.
About twenty or so years or so ago I moved across the country for a job.
When I left, it was a case of leaping for the brass ring: the dot com crash had wiped out all of the tech jobs in the area I was in, and after a year and a half of practical unemployment and crushing poverty I gave up on ever finding a decent job where I lived. Leaping for the brass ring, or maybe leaping out of the window of a burning building, but either way it was a blind jump into the unknown. I accepted a job offer at a place in the middle of nowhere, packed what I could and gave everything else away.
Picture the scene: you're a young kid, giving up everything you know and everyone around you just for the chance at making a living. You've got maybe a couple of hundred bucks to your name, everything you own is stacked in the back of your car, and you drive off into the sunset. There's not much keeping you above the ground; a breakdown that takes more money than you have to get fixed, any kind of medical issue, any kind of rough wave could upset your unsteady boat and then you're lost, in the middle of nowhere with no one to help you. The stress is almost unimaginable if you haven't gone through something like that.
I made it to where the job was, found a place to live- a nasty, cheap apartment next to a liquor store and a bar that seemed to have police cars pulling in with flashing lights almost all night long. The people upstairs screamed at each other in broken English all through the day. Meth heads panhandled the lot whenever the cops weren't around. The only way I could get any sleep in all of that was with a combination of sleeping pills and hard liquor, the cheapest I could get. Anyone who's been there before can tell you that this is a bad idea.
At some point early in the morning on one of those first days on the job, the phone rang, waking me up. You know how when you're bleary with broken sleep, booze and pills, everything seems unreal? This was back before smart phones were big, and the cell phones you could get were expensive. I had a crappy land line, with a ten dollar phone plugged into the wall. There was no clock on it, and I didn't know what time it was, only that it was still dark and that no one calls at that level of darkness unless someone's dying or dead.
I answered the phone still half-drunk. Some part of me knew my parents had died. How could you know something like that? The person on the phone was my parent's next door neighbor, who must have been pushing ninety. I had cut her grass once a week when I was a kid. Adding to the unreality of the moment was that she'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's nearly a decade before; the last time I had seen her, so little of her mind had been left that she probably wouldn't have been able to hold a telephone handset unassisted.
"Johnny?" she said.
Remember how I said I had mowed her lawn as a kid? I must have been the only person she ever saw for that last decade of her life that she knew. Every Saturday, I'd come by with the lawnmower, watching her slow decline into mindlessness as she waved to me more and more feebly. She didn't have any family, as far as anyone could tell, only an endless stream of nurses feeding her and taking care of her. I was probably the only person whose name she still remembered at the end. Looking back now, that must have been why she . . . called me, of all people.
"Mrs -------? What's wrong?" I knew the next words that were going to come out of her mouth. Car crash, house fire, some kind of tragedy -
"I'm so cold," she said. "I think there are -"
". . . what?" I was fighting through the pills and booze and panic and could barely hold on to the phone.
"Worms," she said. "I think there are worms crawling on me."
I couldn't answer. I literally didn't know what to say. Then she hung up and the phone went to that beep beep, beep beep sound you only get when you've had the phone off of the hook for too long without ever dialing. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing; everything was a fog and a dark haze. I hung the phone up. I remember hearing an ambulance siren off in the distance.
I didn't call my parents right away. I didn't want to panic them with a phone call in the middle of the night, over what was probably just a bad dream or a night terror of some kind. Instead, I spent three hours drifting in and out of a daze, staring out the window at the lights of the bar, watching the police cars drift in and out of the darkness like ghosts. When the sun finally came up, I knew that my parents must have finally been awake, and called them.
My mom answered the phone. I tried as hard as I could to sound as normal as possible, but she immediately knew something was wrong.
"Is Mrs. ------- okay?" I finally asked.
"Honey, she died last Wednesday," she said. "We didn't want to tell you until you were settled in, but she faded out almost the day you left. The funeral was just yesterday."
In a way, it was a relief. Ghosts don't make phone calls; Casper shouldn't have to rely on Ma Bell. It must have been a bad dream with coincidental timing, or more likely, some deep part of my subconscious had detected Mrs. ------- slowly failing and wasting away, and kept it hidden, only to bring it out later like a skull being washed clean from a grave after a flood. We can choose what we want to believe, that's all I'm saying, and I had enough problems as it was.
When my phone bill came in almost a month later, I had almost forgotten the whole thing. The money almost seemed a waste; I hadn't used the phone at all, other than to call my parents, and to be terrorized by it in the night. Also, other terrible things had swamped it out of my memory. I'd seen a guy get gunned down in the parking lot of the bar across the street. I almost lost my job, the one thing that was making all of this worthwhile, over someone else's stupid mistake; at the last moment the truth came out and I was spared. The horrors of the real had completely washed out the terrors of the night.
I remember sitting at the cheap, peeling Formica table in the corner of the apartment that was my combination desk and kitchen table, staring at the bill. Forty-eight dollars for a telephone that I had only used twice to call my parents and that no one had ever even called-
But the bill said otherwise. One incoming call was listed. Without even thinking, I threw the bill away without looking at the number. I did not want to know.
I think there are worms crawling on me, she had said.
I cancelled the phone the next day and bought a cell phone I couldn't afford. I'm sure it was nothing, maybe a wrong number, maybe a telemarketer, who knows. All I know is, we can choose what we want to believe, and I choose to believe that the call in the night was nothing more than just a nightmare.
About twenty or so years or so ago I moved across the country for a job.
When I left, it was a case of leaping for the brass ring: the dot com crash had wiped out all of the tech jobs in the area I was in, and after a year and a half of practical unemployment and crushing poverty I gave up on ever finding a decent job where I lived. Leaping for the brass ring, or maybe leaping out of the window of a burning building, but either way it was a blind jump into the unknown. I accepted a job offer at a place in the middle of nowhere, packed what I could and gave everything else away.
Picture the scene: you're a young kid, giving up everything you know and everyone around you just for the chance at making a living. You've got maybe a couple of hundred bucks to your name, everything you own is stacked in the back of your car, and you drive off into the sunset. There's not much keeping you above the ground; a breakdown that takes more money than you have to get fixed, any kind of medical issue, any kind of rough wave could upset your unsteady boat and then you're lost, in the middle of nowhere with no one to help you. The stress is almost unimaginable if you haven't gone through something like that.
I made it to where the job was, found a place to live- a nasty, cheap apartment next to a liquor store and a bar that seemed to have police cars pulling in with flashing lights almost all night long. The people upstairs screamed at each other in broken English all through the day. Meth heads panhandled the lot whenever the cops weren't around. The only way I could get any sleep in all of that was with a combination of sleeping pills and hard liquor, the cheapest I could get. Anyone who's been there before can tell you that this is a bad idea.
At some point early in the morning on one of those first days on the job, the phone rang, waking me up. You know how when you're bleary with broken sleep, booze and pills, everything seems unreal? This was back before smart phones were big, and the cell phones you could get were expensive. I had a crappy land line, with a ten dollar phone plugged into the wall. There was no clock on it, and I didn't know what time it was, only that it was still dark and that no one calls at that level of darkness unless someone's dying or dead.
I answered the phone still half-drunk. Some part of me knew my parents had died. How could you know something like that? The person on the phone was my parent's next door neighbor, who must have been pushing ninety. I had cut her grass once a week when I was a kid. Adding to the unreality of the moment was that she'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's nearly a decade before; the last time I had seen her, so little of her mind had been left that she probably wouldn't have been able to hold a telephone handset unassisted.
"Johnny?" she said.
Remember how I said I had mowed her lawn as a kid? I must have been the only person she ever saw for that last decade of her life that she knew. Every Saturday, I'd come by with the lawnmower, watching her slow decline into mindlessness as she waved to me more and more feebly. She didn't have any family, as far as anyone could tell, only an endless stream of nurses feeding her and taking care of her. I was probably the only person whose name she still remembered at the end. Looking back now, that must have been why she . . . called me, of all people.
"Mrs -------? What's wrong?" I knew the next words that were going to come out of her mouth. Car crash, house fire, some kind of tragedy -
"I'm so cold," she said. "I think there are -"
". . . what?" I was fighting through the pills and booze and panic and could barely hold on to the phone.
"Worms," she said. "I think there are worms crawling on me."
I couldn't answer. I literally didn't know what to say. Then she hung up and the phone went to that beep beep, beep beep sound you only get when you've had the phone off of the hook for too long without ever dialing. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing; everything was a fog and a dark haze. I hung the phone up. I remember hearing an ambulance siren off in the distance.
I didn't call my parents right away. I didn't want to panic them with a phone call in the middle of the night, over what was probably just a bad dream or a night terror of some kind. Instead, I spent three hours drifting in and out of a daze, staring out the window at the lights of the bar, watching the police cars drift in and out of the darkness like ghosts. When the sun finally came up, I knew that my parents must have finally been awake, and called them.
My mom answered the phone. I tried as hard as I could to sound as normal as possible, but she immediately knew something was wrong.
"Is Mrs. ------- okay?" I finally asked.
"Honey, she died last Wednesday," she said. "We didn't want to tell you until you were settled in, but she faded out almost the day you left. The funeral was just yesterday."
In a way, it was a relief. Ghosts don't make phone calls; Casper shouldn't have to rely on Ma Bell. It must have been a bad dream with coincidental timing, or more likely, some deep part of my subconscious had detected Mrs. ------- slowly failing and wasting away, and kept it hidden, only to bring it out later like a skull being washed clean from a grave after a flood. We can choose what we want to believe, that's all I'm saying, and I had enough problems as it was.
When my phone bill came in almost a month later, I had almost forgotten the whole thing. The money almost seemed a waste; I hadn't used the phone at all, other than to call my parents, and to be terrorized by it in the night. Also, other terrible things had swamped it out of my memory. I'd seen a guy get gunned down in the parking lot of the bar across the street. I almost lost my job, the one thing that was making all of this worthwhile, over someone else's stupid mistake; at the last moment the truth came out and I was spared. The horrors of the real had completely washed out the terrors of the night.
I remember sitting at the cheap, peeling Formica table in the corner of the apartment that was my combination desk and kitchen table, staring at the bill. Forty-eight dollars for a telephone that I had only used twice to call my parents and that no one had ever even called-
But the bill said otherwise. One incoming call was listed. Without even thinking, I threw the bill away without looking at the number. I did not want to know.
I think there are worms crawling on me, she had said.
I cancelled the phone the next day and bought a cell phone I couldn't afford. I'm sure it was nothing, maybe a wrong number, maybe a telemarketer, who knows. All I know is, we can choose what we want to believe, and I choose to believe that the call in the night was nothing more than just a nightmare.
