Series By: deathfox919
Hello NoSleep. I am still (somewhat) alive. The last time I posted about my tiny ass town that technically doesn't exist was a long time ago. I told you I was going to go help Davis, Langdon and the other agents, and none of that worked out. I am currently residing with a friend in Idaho while my town is going through some...issues shall we say.
To sum up what has happened over the past three weeks or so, this is what Rick and I found out after exploring this situation a bit more. The agency that came to our town didn't exist, and we have absolutely no clue who Davis and Langdon were working for or how they knew so much about our town. The eastern half of the United States is a pretty broad area, so I know they weren't getting it from my posts here. Also, the hole on Mulberry Lane was basically a portal to Hell and would trigger a Shaun of The Dead situation with all of the people who went missing. Our town lost 2,000 residents and there's no way to get them back. Also, we lost all electricity for the foreseeable future and my apartment building burned down, so me and Eddie are out west now.
Anyways, I figured since some of you guys are somewhat interested in some of the other experiences I've had in my voodoo-ass Twilight Zone town from Satan's butthole, here's what happened with the payphone.
Before I found out that the University of Florida didn’t know I even existed and I was working at the grocery store, I had a very chill job at a small entry point to the large state park that stretches across about half of the unincorporated territory to the north of us (that we’re technically part of, according to the rest of the world).
Basically, I’d stand in a small hut and wait for people to drive up. If they had a certain license plate, they could get into the state park for free. If not, then they had to pay around five bucks for parking and I’d give them a little ticket to put on their dashboard. This was about a year before shit hit the fan for Rick and he became totally reclusive, so he helped pull some strings to allow me to get the job, as I wasn’t due to be eighteen until September.
Now there are definitely some stories I could tell you about this job, like the bear-humanoid hybrid that hunts people for sport or the supposed witch that lives alongside a large and fairly well-known mountain, but this isn't about those. This is about the payphone.
For some ridiculous reason, the park still has a payphone. It’s located right across from my little hut where I’d spend about ten percent of the time letting people into the park and ninety percent of my time Facebook stalking my classmates. I'm a bored teenager, shut up.
I worked at that park for almost six months, and only once did I ever see someone use that payphone. It was an elderly woman who probably didn’t know what a cell phone is, let alone how to use one.
However, that phone became a very interesting point in my life one rainy and foggy July afternoon.
I remember that some thrill seekers had come through expecting to go for some white-water rafting on the valley river that cuts through the park about a mile north of where my entrance was. About fifteen minutes later, after they had all chanted “Woo hoo!” and sped up the small hill and out of sight, I heard muffled ringing coming from somewhere close. It sure as shit wasn’t my cell or any cell phone that existed in 2015. It sounded a lot like an outdated...payphone. My stomach dropped as I glanced across the gravel road.
Yep. The payphone was receiving a call.
I let it ring twice more before it went quiet and the sound of the rain pattering on the roof and the ground around me continued.
I talked to my boss, Bradley Noyer, the next day about what had happened. Bradley kind of just shrugged it off and said something along the lines of, “Kid, strange shit happens here every day. Yesterday, someone heard blaring horns coming from the ground underneath them. I guarantee you that your phone call is not as strange as that.”
So I kind of shrugged it off too. Bradley had also lived through a lot of shit, so I took his word for it.
It wasn't until the very end of July when I heard the payphone ring once again. It was almost dusk, the last hint of sunlight was disappearing behind one of the larger hills near my entrance to the park, and it was getting somewhat harder to see without an artificial light source. The dim neon over the payphone allowed me to see the jet black phone moving as it rang.
I contemplated going over to the other side of the gravel road and picking up the phone, but I had an odd feeling about it. Something deep inside of me told me that if I went over to that phone, I would very much regret it.
Now I would’ve brushed this occasion off as well, but the phone rang again the next day, and then the next day, and the next.
About two weeks into the payphone ringing again and again, the curiosity ate away at me like rust on a fifty-year-old bridge spanning a river. I had taken up to noticing that the phone rang at 8:24 PM on the dot. Back when it began constantly ringing, 8:24 meant the sun was almost completely below the horizon. Two weeks later, it meant almost total darkness.
So, now as I’m expecting the phone to begin ringing. I leave the little hut at 8:23 and head over to the payphone. I loitered there for just a moment and patiently waited for the phone to ring. I was finally going to figure out who was calling and why.
RIIIIING
I snatched up the phone and put it to my ear. “Hello?” I asked sporadically, “Who is this?”
There wasn’t a single sound coming from the other end.
“Hello?” I asked again, “Why are you calling?”
For about twenty seconds, there was nothing but dead air on the other end. Then, I heard the tone suggesting that the caller had hung up. Feeling mostly defeated, I hung the phone back up and shuffled back over into the cabin.
This became a ritual of mine. I'd answer the phone and get nothing, then just go back inside the shed and wait until nine or ten when someone else would come in and I could go home.
One day, I had completed this ritual and was shuffling back into the hut when the phone rang once more. I turned around and sprinted over to the other side of the gravel road and nearly took out the phone before I picked up.
“Hello?” I panted into the phone, trying to breathe normally.
As I tried to hold myself together, I heard a very deep and raspy voice say my name on the other end of the line.
My full name. First name. Middle name. Last name.
I have a very unusual middle name, to the point where maybe four people outside of my family know what it is. I would write here what it is, but I don’t want to have anything like this happen again.
The man (I’m guessing it was a man from the deep voice) inhaled through what sounded like clenched teeth and giggled. The giggle made my stomach twist itself into a lead ball and I felt like all of my organs were about to forcefully remove themselves from my asshole.
The man then said the name of my town.
This made me want to throw up, as not a single person I know outside of this town actually knows the name of this town. Many locals that actually bother to come through here call it “Sky Village,” which is not the actual name of my town.
The voice spoke one more time.
“See...you...soon.”
With a click and a tone, the call had been disconnected.
I then vomited on the ground next to the payphone. Before anything else, I scrambled back into the hut and slammed the door shut before I locked it. Then, I ducked under the table like a scared six-year-old just to make sure that no one could see me from the outside, as there was no way to cover the window.
A new kind of curiosity began eating away at me: I needed to know where the call had come from.
Considering I had some decent wi-fi in the hut (for us teenagers who were bored out of their minds watching the park), I looked up how to trace payphone calls. I knew that I had heard of someone being able to do that back when I was a kid, so I figured it was my best bet.
Eventually, some Google link told me that if I hit star 69, I could get an operator to tell where the last call had come from if the number wasn’t blocked. So, I pranced across the road once more and pressed *69 and waited.
The call was coming from a city in northern Idaho.
I had never heard of this place (turns out it’s actually fairly populated and is just outside of Spokane), didn’t know anyone from the state of Idaho, at the time at least, and knew that no one who was basically on the opposite side of the country would know about our hellhole town.
So how the fuck did they know this?
I hung up and wandered back to the hut in an almost zombie-like trance. Again, I locked the door and rubbed my temples trying to calmly figure out what to do.
Well, Glen Mauro came into relieve me of my duty around nine o’clock and asked me why I was so shaken. I told him about the phone.
“You answered it?” he asked.
I nodded.
Glen looked over at the phone, then back at me. I was concerned with the fact that his normally happy demeanor had seemed to have completely diminished. “What?” I asked.
“You didn’t trace the call, did you?” he asked, his voice shaky and shy.
I didn’t say anything. I mean, he could read me better than any book (I promise, Glen, that isn’t a poke at your dyslexia), so he already knew what I was gonna say.
“In about five minutes, we’re gonna get another call. You need to answer that one. Just talk to him normally, it’ll help the police tap it,” he told me.
I was petrified at this.
Sure enough, about five minutes after Glen had told me that, we heard the phone ring. The ring was not normal, it sounded muffled. Also, it was demonically low in tone. Glen was back in the hut dialing 911, while I shuffled over to the phone trying not to blubber like a little bitch before I answered.
“He-hello?” I stuttered.
That goddamn voice came back on the other end. “Is this [insert my full fucking name here] of [my town’s exact name]?”
I looked back at Glen, silently begging him to make it all stop. He just nodded at me before I turned back to look at the payphone.
“Umm...yes,” I said, still holding back my fear.
“I can see you, you know,” the man said. He made that terrible childlike giggle again, which made me break out in goosebumps. I had to do some impromptu kegel exercises to make sure I didn’t piss my pants.
“You...y-you can?”
“You’re the one in the red collared shirt on the shitty payphone, aren’t you?” he said. I swore his voice had gotten deeper as that sentence progressed.
From inside the cabin, I heard Glen shout into the phone, “I need you here right now sheriff! Shit’s gonna get very real and neither of us are equipped for that!”
On the other end of the payphone, I hear, “Tell Glen to keep quiet.”
Without hesitation, I lost my shit and threw the phone back in its hook before racing back into the hut screaming like an absolute lunatic. Glen looked at me like a great dane had just burst out of my asshole and was singing “Sweet Caroline,” while I slammed the door shut and locked it tight.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” he screamed at me.
I don’t even remember what I said back to him. I don’t think they were actual words from any known language, just made up sounds and something along the lines of “your name on the phone,” before I blacked out for about ten minutes.
When I came to, a police officer asked me what happened to Glen. I was so confused, but also freaking out. “Is Glen dead?” I asked.
“We don’t know. The call to 911 was cut and I didn’t get here until about two minutes ago,” the deputy told me.
I looked up and saw that the window to the hut was shattered and Glen’s Nalgene had cracked open and spilled water everywhere. He still wears the t-shirt he got from that.
After a brief interrogation where I told them exactly what had been happening for so long, I went home and tried to get some sleep. Of course, I wouldn’t get any sleep at all while my mind ran wild thinking about that goddamn payphone.
By the time the sun rose the next day, Glen was found. Naturally, he was found in a weird location, but this takes the cake for the strangest missing person report in my lifetime that occurred within this town.
Glen was found sixty miles north of our entry to the state park we worked. He was at a parking area for a somewhat well-known hiking trail off of a state highway. He was completely unharmed. But he had absolutely no clue of how he got there. In fact, he only remembered up to the point where he came into the hut and started talking to me; he had no idea that he called 911 to report the guy on the payphone.
Glen and I still hang out sometimes, usually at nights when we’re both off of work and have a minute to spare. We’d go to his apartment, which is tricked out as shit, and just chill for a few hours a week.
He’s still here even after the mass disappearance of seemingly everyone.
However, there’s one thing that really gets to me.
I had taken notice to a small whiteboard shoved into the corner by the filing cabinet that was only noticeable because of the light reflecting off of manila folders of the desk. There were seven tally marks on the whiteboard.
After that night, I counted eight tallies.
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