A 911 Call Where Nothing Made Sense

Things were fucked from the beginning. A woman named Carol dials 911 and claims that somebody’s inside her house. We go investigate, searching the place inch by inch but find nothing.

Usually, this could be easily explained away. The mind of an older person living alone eventually starts deteriorating. The onset of dementia and other mental issues start to take a toll on their lives. Quite sad, really. However, this woman is only 24. In other words, the probability of this all being inside her head is extremely unlikely. She also seemed to be terribly distraught by this whole situation. Why would she be acting?

We leave her place and tell her to contact us if she sees anything again. I mean, we couldn’t really do anything at that point. We were somewhat surprised when we got another call from her the very next day. We drive down there and search the house again. We find nothing… again. Problem is... the house seems different this time. Almost as if there were some subtle detail that made it a separate place from the one we were in yesterday. My partner – Beck, says that he noticed it as well, but doesn’t quite understand what’s wrong.

We decide not to say anything about this as we tell Carol that we came up with nothing. However, she tells us to stay. “I recorded him” She says.

She takes out her phone and tells us to watch the video that she’s pulled up. It was footage of her in the house. She’s running around, breathing frantic. And then we see him. A large figure, covered head to toe in what appears to be a black bodysuit. He lumbers towards the camera as Carol screams and ducks into a room, locking it from the inside. There’s a few bangs on the door before we can hear footsteps walking away.

We don’t know how to react to this footage, but we try anyways. We come to the conclusion that the man must have left once Carol got behind the door. However, the front door was locked when we came, and Carol told us that she hadn’t left the room. Did he also have the keys to her house? That would explain a lot, but it also made this situation a lot worse.

We decide to keep an eye on her house for the night. We’re discrete, parking about a block down the road in an unmarked car. We’re both fully awake, ready to go as soon as we see some sketchy shit.

At around 2AM, we see somebody walking across the road, towards her house. However, it isn’t the man. It’s Carol herself. Beck and I must have had the same look on our faces. What the fuck?

We get out of the car and make our way over there, knocking hard on the front door. However, nobody answers. We can see lights flicking on and off intermittently, but we’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean. Was she trying to tell us to leave?

We get a call from dispatch a few moments later. They’re telling us that Carol has called 911 again, saying that there are now multiple people in her house. They ask if we need backup. We say yes.

Without another moment of hesitation, we force the door open and barge in. The living room lights still flicker on and off, but we see the light switch and nobody is touching it. We call out for Carol, but nobody responds. In fact, the place is dead quiet. I can see the neighboring houses starting to turn on their lights from the commotion. We rush up the stairs and start sweeping each room. But there’s nothing. Once again, we search the place inch by inch, but nothing is in here, not even Carol, who we clearly saw enter a few moments earlier.

As I pace around in petrified confusion, Beck speaks up: “There’s rooms here that shouldn’t be.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask in response.

“I’ve been counting” he says. “There were 9 total the last time we came. There are 10 now. You didn’t notice it?”

I force myself to think hard. Subconsciously, I knew that something was off, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. However, I eventually realize.

“The basement. There was only one door down there last time.”

Beck nods. “Two now.”

I don’t know what to think. I look at my surroundings and try to make an assessment, but there’s really none that can be made.

We hear a knock on the door about 10 seconds later. It sounds agitated. We look out the living room windows, but aren’t met with the red and blue police lights. We’re hesitant to answer, of course. I decide to take a step forwards, but Beck pulls me back.

He looks at me and shakes his head, whispering: “We left the door open, remember?”

He was right. My radio starts crackling. Another call from dispatch. They’re telling us that we need to leave the house immediately. That Carol called again, saying we were going to die, in a deathly monotone voice. The knocking has stopped, but we can hear footsteps in the basement. Something is in here with us.

We’ve decided that this was enough. We needed to get the fuck out of here. As we start descending the steps, we hear a voice coming from the kitchen. Carol comes out, blocking our path to the door. She looks detached, with blank, beady eyes staring right at us.

“Did you find him?” She asks, without any semblance of emotion in her voice. “I think he might be in the basement. Why don’t you go check?”

Beck and I are frozen in shock. She just keeps looking at us, gesturing towards the basement door every now and then. The footsteps down there sound like they’re running in circles now. We ignore her request, abruptly brushing past her and bolting out of the front door.

The backup still isn’t here, so we decide to just get into our car. However… we see somebody down the street peering through our driver-side window. He’s large, dressed in what appears to be a black full-body suit. He looks away from the window and directly at us. It’s hard to tell from this far, but the suit doesn’t seem to have any eye-holes.

Beck speaks up: “Sir, please step back from the vehicle.” His voice cracks in the middle of the sentence. He’s terrified.

As soon as Beck stops talking, the figure starts running towards us. It’s fast. Too fast. In the time that it takes for us to pull up our guns, we’ve realized that it’s actually moved past us, into the house. We waste no more time, running into the car, locking the doors and waiting until backup arrives.

When it finally does, we’re extensively questioned while what appears to be a SWAT team searches the house. However, it isn’t the police chief asking us. Instead, it’s some guy in a suit that we’ve never seen before. He asks us things like “How many doors were there in the house?” and “What did Carol look like, exactly?” and “Did we ever see a man with one eye wandering around?” We answer inconclusively to pretty much all of them. We have no idea what the hell’s going on.

At one point, we see SWAT members carrying multiple stretchers outside and loading them into their truck. Not an ambulance mind you, but their own truck. Eventually, the man who was questioning us tells us to go home, and to report to our station as usual. He tells us not to worry about what we’ve seen here.

I don’t know how he expects us to do that.

We drive back to the station in complete silence. As we park, Beck finally lets out a sigh.

“Jack is fucking crazy, dude.”

I look at him in confusion. “What are you talking about? Who the hell is Jack?”

He reciprocates an equally confused stare at me. “What the hell are you talking about? The dude who owns the house.”

“What? It was a lady named Carol. How’d you forget already?”

We hold each other’s chaotic gaze for what feels like a minute... but we say nothing further. We both silently exit the vehicle and start heading our separate ways home. We both know that something's terribly wrong with the other.

I try not to think about it too much as my head hits the pillow. I manage to drift off to sleep about three hours later, only to be woken up immediately by the telephone. Barely coherent, I answer it:

“We need you. A woman dialed 911. Says that somebody’s in her house.”

My heart sinks slightly. It sinks completely when he tells me the address. It’s Carol’s.

I hang up the phone and slump into the bed. I just want this nightmare to end. 

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Credits