I used to sourly joke with my son, since he was a child that he was magical because he would lose things constantly. And they would sometimes stay lost for years, or forever. I told him he must make them disappear, maybe he put them down and would create a black hole that sucked them into another universe. It was supposed to be a joke.
“Mom, have you seen my phone?” my son Tyler asked, standing in my room before me and distracting me from the book I was reading.
I sighed heavily, the book flapping down into my lap. He looked at me, his big brown eyes lit with a questioning gleam.
“The last time I saw it, you were using it to talk to your dad,” I said. “When did you notice it was gone?”
Tyler’s thin shoulders lifted in a shrug.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “A week ago?”
I shook my head in exasperation, tamping down the impatience rising from my gut.
“This is the fourth, and most expensive phone you have made go POOF!” I said, “You better just un-disappear it.”
He looked away from me, his hands together fidgeting. “Can you help me look for it?”
Over the course of the ensuing months, we tore his room apart. No phone. Other things were found that we had forgotten about. I would find an item and show it to him, and we would remember looking in the same places for it months, maybe years before.
Other parts of the house also yielded nothing. Not even when my brother tried to help by moving furniture, no one could find it. Of course, my OCD son always powered his phone off when not in use, so we could not call it, or use “find my phone.” And so, a year went by.
“Mom, where do you think it went?” my son asked.
“Your phone?” I answered, and shook my head, my breath coming out in a short laugh. “You made it disappear, just like your other phones, and toys when you were a child, never to be seen again.”
Tyler huffed. “Aw, come on, you serious?”
I pursed my lips and frowned. “Maybe the fairies took your phone.”
Tyler did not laugh, he just walked away and plopped himself down in front of his computer, slouching in his chair with one leg thrown over an armrest. No wonder he destroyed so many desk chairs.
Not long after that, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard a whisper coming from my son’s room, which was next to mine. I sat up, leaning on one arm, and cocked my head to try and make out what he was saying.
Please fairies, can you bring me back my phone? And can you please stop taking my things?
I snorted softly and shook my head. I decided against saying anything to him, turned around and went back to sleep. I was woken the next morning by someone gently jiggling my arm. I opened my groggy eyes and looked up to find the intruder of my morning sleep.
“What?” I croaked.
My son stood over me. He raised his right hand, and in it was his long-lost phone. His eyes were bright with triumph.
“I got it back,” he said.
“Great,” I replied. “Now let me sleep, I have 15 minutes before I have to get ready for work.”
With a sigh, I rolled over and snuggled under my blankets as I heard him leave my room and my door squeak closed.
That night, my son and I were eating dinner when his phone rang. He got up and came back with it in his hand. It was still ringing.
“You going to answer it?” I asked.
“It says “Unknown,”” he replied, staring down at the screen.
He answered it and put it on speaker as was his custom.
We heard sounds like a scuffle, then a scream, a whooshing sound like a train going by, then a multitude of raised, confused voices and shrieks. Looking up at me, his face white as a ghost, my son ended the call. I felt a knot of anxiety and nausea form in my gut, an instinctual reaction to the disturbing and bizarre occurrence.
“Butt call?” my son said softly.
“Yeah….wrong number.” I said shakily. “Ignore it.”
The next morning at breakfast, I opened the newspaper as I sipped my coffee. The headline on page two pulled me to it, and my breath caught in my throat as my chest felt tight.
Man Stabbed and Pushed onto Tracks of Oncoming Subway
My mind did not want to let what I was reading sink in. I fought the memory of the call from the previous night, but it re-played anyway. A short shriek from my son jolted my thoughts, my hand spilling my coffee in my lap. I got up quickly and ran upstairs to find him. He was standing in his room, holding something. Turning around when he heard me enter, I saw him holding something in his hand, a look of shock on his pale face.
It was a bloody knife.
“Mom….it just appeared in my room,” Tyler whispered. “What the….”
“Drop it!” I yelled.
He let it go and it fell to the floor. As we both stared at it in horror, I heard the sound of my son’s phone ringing.
“Don’t answer it!” I said. “And don’t touch that knife!”
My mind spinning and jumping from thought to thought, I went back downstairs and picked up the newspaper with a shaking hand. I read more of the article. It said the attacker escaped, and the knife used by the assailant was missing. I felt the information hit my brain, and scramble against all that was rational and logical. It was like I had been reluctantly pushed into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
I took some deep breaths and tried to calm myself. First things first. I grabbed a kitchen rag, some rug cleaner and a garbage bag, and went back upstairs to my son’s room. He was pacing, wringing his hands, as I bent down and grabbed the bloody knife and shoved it in the bag. Then I started to scrub the rug.
“What’s going on?” My son said. “What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea!” I replied. “But we need to get rid of this knife.”
We drove to an isolated part of a local reservoir system. My son and I watched as the thrown knife spun out over the water and landed with a plop, disappearing. Well, that’s one odd thing we don’t have to face. As we sat there a second after it sank, I heard my son’s phone ring. He pulled it out and looked at it, then back at me his face stony and eyes wide.
“Unknown,” he said. “I think I should answer it this time.”
“No -!” I cried out, holding my palms up towards him in an effort to ward off his actions.
But he clicked on the call.
There was a sound of panting, and crunching footsteps. A muffled voice could be heard…
Somebody…please help me! No…please…stay away!
When the screams started, I grabbed the phone from my sons’ hands and clicked off the call. Blood was pounding in my ears, and bile was climbing my throat.
“Mom, that girl needed help,” Tyler said. “Should we call the police?”
“And tell them what?” I replied.
Tyler looked away, and then down at his lap, shrugging.
I pulled away and we drove home. I still had his phone, I took it, opened the window, and threw it out.
“Hey!” Tyler cried out.
I did not answer him.
The next morning, I tried to put it all out of my mind like a strange nightmare. My son slouched downstairs and put on the TV. He would not look at me when I said hi, so I just rolled my eyes and got ready to leave.
The mutilated body of Anna McNeil was found in the woods outside of….
The hair on the back of my neck rose. I glanced over and saw my son hunched over and watching the news story intently. I grabbed my purse and keys, trying to ignore the feelings of foreboding and unease that hit me. I headed to the door.
“Bye Tyler,” I said and left, looking forward to work and getting my mind away from where it was trying to go.
During my lunch break, I got a call from my son.
“Mom!” Tyler said. “You need to come home – NOW!”
“Tyler….wha –“ I realized; he was calling me from his cell phone. “Okay, I will be right there.”
I told my boss there was an emergency at home and ran out the door. He did not even get to respond, but I did not care. The drive home felt like I was pushing through Jello, every minute felt like a drawn-out shriek in my brain. My son was waiting for me behind the screen door.
“How did you get your phone back?” I said as I entered the house.
“I found it in my room,” Tyler replied. “I’ll show you.”
We walked into the room, and he walked over to the nightstand by his bed. He pointed. Standing next to him I looked and gasped. There was a bloody human ear next to his lamp. He clutched at my sleeve.
“That was not there before!” He yelled. “That girl that got murdered…Anna McNeil. Mom…”
“Yeah…okay,” I said, biting my lip. “Just…wait for me.”
After cleaning up, my son and I drove to a river, and watched the ear swirl away and down on its way to the sea. This time I dug a hole in the moist earth of the riverbank and buried the phone. Tyler watched me, hands in pockets.
“Mom, did you ever think that maybe the universe is trying to get us to do something?”
I looked up at him, moving my hair away from my eyes that had come loose from my ponytail with the back of my muddy hand.
“Do what?” I said. “Looks to me like whoever returned your phone is trying to frame you for murder.”
I patted down the ground over the phone, rinsed my hands in the river, and shook them dry as we went back to the car.
The next morning when I woke up, I still felt some trepidation. But as I went through my morning routine without a hitch, I tentatively began to relax. I yelled goodbye to my son and went to work. The day passed uneventfully, and I leaned into my work to lose myself in it and shake off the residual effects of the last few days.
I returned to a quiet house. I called my son’s name but got no answer. There was no sign of my son in the kitchen, the living room, or anywhere downstairs. Since he has no life outside of his computer, I figured he may be glued to Discord or YouTube in his room. I opened his bedroom door and heard a ringing….no sign of Tyler.
On his nightstand was his phone, covered in traces of dirt. It kept ringing. Slowly, I approached it, the words Tyler had said by the river last night repeating in my mind. I picked it up and answered.
“Hello?” I said, my voice catching in my throat.
“Mom! You have to save me!” Tyler said. “I don’t know where I am, or how I got here. It’s dark, but I don’t think I am alone….”
Breathing hard, my mouth open in shock, I thought I heard something else on the phone…whispers and laughter.
Anyone know how I can find my son?