The Forgotten Phone Call

I ought to have paid no attention to it. I tell myself that every time it occurs, but I cannot. Even though I know it isn’t good, some of me yearn for it. Once it starts, I know it will never stop.

It got underway some months ago—one evening, alone in my flat, lazily surfing social media, when my phone called. Though the amount was unknown, that did not chill me. No, I observed silence on the opposite side—dead air that smushed in on me like something choking.

I collected. “Hello?” asked

The silence stretched, loaded with tension only found in settings when something is just about to happen. I tightened my hand on the phone. My heart surged. Then, almost a murmur, a voice emerged.

“Is it possible to hear me?”

That voice belonged to a woman—soft, crackling, as though it were battling its way across stillness. I froze. This who was? Though I knew nothing about it, something in the voice seemed familiar. Not in a way that would comfort you. It was more like a recollection I could not precisely locate.

Though my throat constricted, I wanted to say something. “Who is this?” I enquired again, but the only sound that followed was the quiet hum of something on the other end—like wind moving through trees—that caused my neck hair to spring up.

Then, the call cut off as rapidly as it began. With my heart still racing, I watched the screen until the phone buzzed in my hand, signaling a missed call—from the same number as well.

That evening, I tried to ignore it. Perhaps this was a practical joke, a mistake in the number. Still, that did not adequately explain the emotion it left behind. A cold anxiety crept into the margins of my flat. The shadows seemed to lengthen and become more aggressive. Trying to fall asleep, I raised the blankets to my chin, but sleep eluded me.

The calls returned consistently many evenings later. Nobody would talk, only the rustling static and that faint, whispering inquiry: “Can you hear me?” Though I could not stop responding, I began to dread the ring of my phone. I had to know who was on the other side to appreciate the weight of that voice that seemed so close.

I conducted some research. Not even on the internet, the number vanished from any of the phone directories. I searched forums and searched for tales of haunted experiences and hoax calls, but nothing fit what was happening to me. I seemed caught in a cycle. The ringing was unrelenting, and the voice became more apparent and agitated with every call.

The calls cut off one day. I assumed it was over, that whatever unusual occurrence had plagued me had at last run its course. I felt almost relieved, as though I could breathe once again.

But it returned later. One call for that.

This time, the voice was not merely whispering. It was more defined like it was in the room with me.

“Do you recall me?”?

My gut went whirl. I replied nothing. In response to anything like that, how could I? Not honestly, how could I explain that I knew nothing about her? She said… It drew something profound from my past; some lost recollection eluding me. She sounded like someone I knew who ought to have disappeared from my life long ago.

On the next few calls, her voice became stronger and more forceful. “Do you remember me?” “Why did you part from me?” “Why not respond?” Her comments were final, and her desperation tore at me.

I started locking the doors and checking the windows at night and ceased socializing. When the phone rang, I even stopped responding. However, the calls never ceased. They arrived every hour and every minute until I lost all sense of waking or dreaming.

I must know. I had to deal with it, whatever it was. The solitude was wearing me down, and my psyche was disintegrating with every unresolved question.

One evening, I decided to flip the odds. I answered the second phone ringing, but I spoke first this time.

Who are you? I insisted, my voice wavering between wrath and terror. “Why are you treating me this way?

There came a protracted stop. Then, at last, a response amid a heavy silence seemed to last indefinitely.

“I am your mother.

I let go of the phone.

In years, I had not spoken with my mother. She had passed away in my early years from a terrible accident that had split my universe apart. Not even get the chance to bid farewell.

I rushed for the phone, my heart thumping in my chest. When I got it back to my ear, nothing showed. the same stillness and faint rustling that had dogged me from the beginning. Her words were weighty, like a large stone crushing down on me.

This may be some nasty joke. Would this be someone posing? The idea twisted within me. No, albeit it wouldn’t be possible. This was not at all possible.

Knowing it wouldn’t work, I habitually called my mother’s old number. Still, it did. The call proceeded. I heard just a soft buzzing noise. My heart sped up. I hurriedly hung up, my ideas disorganized.

I had questions and sought responses.

That evening, I drove to the old house where my mother had passed away. I had grown up in this house. It seemed like an impulse, like some invisible power, pulled me there. The house was abandoned; its windows were broken, and doors hung freely from their hinges. I entered, the air heavy with deterioration and dust. Still, I was not alone. She was here. Like a frigid hand on my shoulder, it was suffocating.

The phone rang then as well.

I didn’t think twice. I responded. Her voice sounded better than it had ever done this time.

“Why did you desert me?”

As I answered, my voice shook. “I didn’t abandon you. You vanished from me. Though I said them, the words were empty.

There was a stop, and then the voice started once more.

No. When you lost memory, you deserted me.

The link vanished suddenly. The phone slid to the floor with a dull thud from my hand. Now, alone in the land of my birth, I had lost everything.

But something in the air moved as I turned to go. A whisper, just barely audible, tickled my ear.

“Do you remember me”?

The frigid night air slapped my face as I shot from the house. I couldn’t get far enough, quick enough. Driven by extreme anxiety, I sprinted without stopping to breathe. But the calls trailed wherever I went. Everyone was closer than before until I could not tell if I was in the world or some twisted, half-finished dream.

I am sitting here alone once more, waiting for the next call. And I will respond when it arrives. Since the truth—the one truth that torments me—is that I know who it is.

I’m it. Always myself has been my constant.

And I missed it.

There is a ringing on the phone.

“You can hear me?”

Could I also respond?