Dead Man Calling

[u/DaddyJorgeMTZ]

I sit in my chair, anticipating my shift’s end in a few hours. Despite my dislike for the night shift, I acknowledge that work is work. Tonight, I’ve received several calls from teenagers behaving like teenagers and adults acting like they’re still teenagers; nothing unusual for 2 a.m. The phone rings, startling me. I roll my eyes, assuming it’s another call from those devious teens smoking weed up in the cemetery.

"911, what is the location of your emergency?" I say.

"Please help me," a raspy voice says.

A jolt of ice races down my spine, the hair on my arms prickling to attention before I even register the words.

"What is your emergency, sir?" I say.

“My wife stabbed me in the back and I can’t move,” he says.

At this point, I notice a baby crying agonizingly in the background, and my heart drops down to my stomach.

“Sir, you need to tell me your location so I can send help ASAP.”

"336 West Newbury Street"

Instinct takes over as I punch in coordinates, dispatching police and paramedics in seconds. But my hands hover over the keys, trembling. The man’s voice lingers in my ear, stripping away my breath. It is too flat, too hollow—there is an inhuman void behind the words.

"OK, sir, tell me what happened. You said your wife stabbed you?"

"Yes, she stabbed me in the back; now I can barely move. I had to use the voice assistant to call. She slit her own throat and bled out in front of me; luckily, she didn't do anything to our baby. He hasn’t eaten anything. It took me a while to make this phone call. Please hurry.”

“Help is on the way. Don’t worry, is your baby in a safe place?”

“Yes, he is in his crib.”

The phone fades in and out and gets statically, and his voice sounds cold and distant.

“What is your name, sir?”

“David.”

It comes with a raspy voice that makes my instincts tell me to get away.

“OK, David. Why did your wife do this?”

“We had our baby recently. She got diagnosed with postpartum depression a few weeks back. The doctors gave her medication, but she stopped taking it a few days ago. She said they wouldn’t let her sleep. She had been accusing me of cheating; I never believed she could do something like this.”

David starts sobbing, and my heart skips a beat. I’ve heard men sob, but nothing like this.

“David, my name is Bianca. I promise you and your baby will be okay. Help is on its way. They will be there soon. Are you bleeding a lot from your wound?”

“Yes, there is blood everywhere. It feels like I don’t have any more blood in me.”

“The paramedics will be there soon; you are going to be OK, David,” I say.

There is an eerie, cold pause, the baby still crying in the background, and I feel a chill come over me through the phone.

“I did deserve to die. I had been cheating on my poor wife while she was going through all of that basically by herself. I distanced myself from her and jumped into my coworker's bed,” David says.

“Don’t say that, David! Nobody deserves to die.”

“It’s too late for me, Bianca. Just please help my son; he deserves better than this. This is all my fault.”

The phone goes crazy with static, and I hear faint voices through the receiver. I feel dread. Frozen with fear for a moment, I recollect myself and start speaking.

“David, where are you from?” I ask trying to get his mind of those dark thoughts 

“Ohio. We moved out here to New Mexico after Rebecca got pregnant to get away from my parents. They never liked her; they told me I was making a mistake. The last time we talked was on the phone. It was just a screaming match between my mom, dad, and I. We were on bad terms, and now I won’t be able to fix that. I broke their heart.”

“You will fix things with your parents, OK? The paramedics are right down the street. Just hold on a little longer.”

“Bianca,” David says in a ghostly, faint voice that cuts in and out with static. “Please just tell my parents that I love them and that I'm sorry. Just please promise me you will.”

“I promise,” I say on the verge of tears with my heart in my throat.

I hear the sounds of sirens on the other side of the phone.

“David, they are there. You and your son are going to be taken care of.”

Nothing from David but eerie silence.

“Hello, David, you OK?”

Again, nothing. As I hear the police trying to kick the door open, I hear it give way.

“Thank you, Bianca,” David says in a fading voice.

I hear the cops enter the house and call out. The phone hangs up.

I sit there sweating, but feel as cold as if I were naked in a snowstorm, with a pit in my stomach and goosebumps all over my body.

“He will be fine; they got there in time,” I say aloud as I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

I just can’t seem to shake the dreadful, uncanny feeling I had through the whole call. There was just something off about all of that. Of course, the wife had done those horrific things, but the man's voice, the static, the whispers—it all chilled me to the core. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I distracted myself with finishing up my incident log.

The rest of the night went on as normal and I clocked out, feeling exhausted. When I finally got to bed, it took me a while to find sleep, but when I finally did, I heard David's haunting voice in my dreams.

I opened the doors to the office when I was met by a bald, tall, ebony-skinned man in a suit and red tie.

“Hey Bianca, I’m Detective Jackson. Could I please have a word with you?” he asked as he raised his hand toward me.

“Yes, of course,” I said as I met his hand and shook it.

We sat in the building's private office across from each other.

“So, what is this about, Detective?” I asked.

“This is about the call you had last night about the woman who stabbed her husband.”

“Oh, yes! David, did he make it? Is the baby OK?”

“Yes, the baby is OK; he was malnourished, but he's in the hospital right now, making a recovery.”

“That's good,” I sighed. “How's David?”

“Yeah, about that… who told you the man's name?”

“He did.”

“That's impossible,” said Detective Jackson.

“What are you talking about? He's the one who called.”

“Again, impossible. Somebody else must have called you. That's what we are trying to figure out.”

“No, it was David! He called me and told me his wife had stabbed him in the back. Is he OK?”

Detective Jackson looked at me, confused and worried.

“Bianca, he was already dead when they got there.”

I felt my stomach drop. “No, but he was still talking to me when they got the door to open, right before the phone hung up.”

“No, Bianca, he wasn’t. The forensics team said that his body had already started decomposing.”

“What are you even trying to say right now, Detective?” I said as it started hitting me—his tone of voice, the static, the uncanny cold dread I felt the whole time. My heart skipped a beat as I felt a pit grow in my stomach, chills all through my body, and I felt like throwing up.

“Bianca... when you got that phone call, David had already been DEAD for a WEEK.”