You Shouldn't Make Prank Calls

My friends and I used to make prank calls when we were kids. It was just funny to us, giving the unfortunate person who made the mistake of picking up a hard time for a minute or two before cracking up and disconnecting. I think most people we called understood it was just an adolescent game, and humored us. After all, our jokes were pretty harmless. But I'll never forget the day we got a call back from one of our intended targets, and the events that followed, and we decided once and for all that we would never prank call again.
It was a crisp night in mid-October, and me, my best friend Tommy, and Luke, were all staying at our friend Brian's house. After an evening of wolfing down junk food and playing video games, Luke suggested we partake in our favorite pastime: prank calls. Of course the rest of us agreed, and Brian retrieved the home phone from the living room, and brought it back to his bedroom. Since it was Luke's idea, we decided he would make the first call; he punched in the area code, then pressed seven more random digits. He put the phone on speaker as it rang.
A cautious “hello” came from the other end of the line.
“Hey mister, my name is John Deere! Are you looking to buy a tractor?” Luke was known for nothing, if not for his uncanny ability to have bad jokes. But at least most of the time, they were so bad that it was actually funny.
After the poor guy hung up on him, the room burst into cackles as Luke passed the phone to me. I dialed random number after number, until I found a winner and the line began ringing.
“Yesss?”
The voice on the other end caught me off guard. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a slick kind of whisper, and it made me feel uncomfortable.
“Um, hello, is-”
“Let me guessss....my refrigerator is running, and I should go catch it?”
Okay, I'll admit, maybe I didn't have the most original material for my prank calls, but how did this person know I was going to use that specific joke?
“I- I'm sorry... Um, I won't call again. Goodni-”
“Ohhh, pleassse, stay and chat awhile,” the whisper leaked out of the phone like oil, “I haven't had a nice long talk with anyone in...quite some time.”
I hung up immediately.
“What the hell was that, Noah?” Tommy was staring at me, a very grossed-out expression developing across his freckled face. I had no answer for him. All my friends were sharing uneasy looks, and we decided that maybe we'd just watch movies in Brian's room instead of make any more calls that night.
Halfway through the new Spiderman movie Brian's parents had rented for us, the phone rang. At this point, it was about 10:30, and it seemed a little late for anyone to be calling. Since the phone was still in the bedroom, Brian answered.
“Hello? Um, can I help you?” There was a long pause, and Brian began looking more and more uncomfortable, before he finally said, “Look, it was a joke. I'm sorry. But you can't call here again, okay? You'll wake my parents.” Brian hung up.
He saw our confused faces, and told us that it was the person I had tried to prank call. The voice said that it wanted to talk, and that I shouldn't have hung up so fast. At this point, we were all pretty creeped out, and we decided that we should just try and get some sleep, and maybe tell Brian's parents what happened in the morning.
The next day, Mr. and Mrs. Williams listened as we explained the events from the night before. Obviously, they frowned upon our ten-year-old antics, and told us that we didn't need to be calling random people anymore. They also told Brian that if that person called again, to hand the phone to one of them so they could deal with whoever it was.
I rode my bike home, and got there just in time for dinner. After I ate, I got on the computer, and played some games, finally beginning to forget the creepy voice on the phone. I was in bed and fast asleep by 11 pm, when I was awoken by the sound of my house phone ringing. Afraid it was one of my friends, and that it might wake my parents up and get me in trouble, I bolted out of my room, and scooped the still screaming phone from its cradle on the kitchen counter.
“Hello,” I mumbled sleepily.
“Hiiiiii...is this Noahhhh...?” a disgusting, drawn-out whisper greeted me from the opposite end.
“Wha- How did you get this number? How do you know my NAME?” I was FREAKING OUT. Why would Brian have given this freak my name and home number?
“I just want to chat...you're up anyway, you might as well talk to me for a while...”
“Dude, don't call here. I- I'll call the police if you do it again!”
I swiftly hung up, and, after checking all the doors and windows in my house, I crept back to bed, and tried to calm myself down and fall back asleep.
I began dreaming. I was in a dimly lit room, and there was nothing in it with me, save for a small round table with a telephone sitting on top. The phone was ringing. 5, 6, 7 times in a row. I picked up just to put an end to the noise, which was reverberating off of the damp concrete walls surrounding me in this tiny room.
“H- hello?”
“Hiiii, Noahhhh....” That sick whisper. I slammed the phone down, but it immediately started ringing again. I tried to ignore it, but the rings just became louder and louder. Finally, I found the cord attaching the phone to the wall, and ripped it out. A few moments of silence, then, louder than ever:
RIIIIIIIING. RIIIIIIIIING.
I sat bolt upright, drenched in a cold sweat. The house phone was ringing once more. This couldn't be happening. I hurried to the kitchen, and picked the phone up.
“Hello?”
“Pleasssse don't hang up on me again, Noahhhh....I just want to talk to you,” the words slithering out of the phone and into my ear. I was getting mad.
“I'm telling you, you better stop calling me. Go find someone else to talk to!”
This time, I did what I had done in my dream, and pulled the phone cord from the wall. Part of me was scared that the phone would just start ringing again like in the nightmare, but it was silent. I slept through the rest of the night without incident.
My parents scolded me the next morning at breakfast for pulling the phone cord out, so I tried to explain the phone calls to them, pleading with them that we change our number. They got quiet, and started asking me lots of questions about who was calling: Was it a man or a woman? Did they tell me to do...weird things to myself, or to them? Have they asked me to meet them somewhere? I told them about the prank call that started this whole problem, and after grounding me from using the phone for a week, they assured me not to worry about the voice on the phone, that they would take care of it.
At school, my friends noticed how tired I looked, and I told Brian he was a jerk for giving that creep my number; that it was his fault I didn't get any sleep last night. He swore that he never even got another call, and that even if he had, he would never give my number to a stranger. After going back and forth for a while, I gave up trying to get him to admit it, and ignored him for the rest of the day. I got home from school to see a truck from the phone company parked outside the house. I walked in, and saw a guy sitting on the floor in the kitchen, installing a brand new phone while my mom supervised. Mom told me we got a new number. I asked if I could call Tommy, since we talked on the phone almost every day, that way he would know what number to use from now on. But my mom reminded me that I was grounded from the phone, so I spent most of the night in my room watching TV and doing my homework.
I woke up at around 11:45 that night to the phone ringing. It stopped after four rings, and I knew one of my parents had gotten up to answer it. I was curious, and a little scared, that it might be that horrible whispering voice again...but that would be impossible! I crept to my door, and silently cracked it an inch; just enough to hear my mom's voice in the kitchen.
“Who is this.” It wasn't even a question. She was demanding whoever was on the other line to identify himself. “He's....not home right now. He's at a friend's house. Now tell me who you are.” She sounded angry and scared at the same time, and I knew at that moment who she was on the phone with.
My mom was quiet for a while. Suddenly, I heard a clatter in the kitchen; mom had dropped the phone. A second later, she swung open my door. When she saw me standing there in the doorway, a strange sob escaped from her throat, and she shoved me into my room, telling me to put some shoes on, that we were leaving. Then she ran to her and dad's room, and a minute later, I saw her and my dad, looking bleary-eyed and confused, emerge with a small duffle bag in tow. My mom helped me pack a few days' worth of clothes, and then rushed my dad and I into the garage and into her Suburban. She told me we were going to Grandma's house for a couple of days. Only years later would she tell me that the reason we left home that night was because when she told the voice on the phone that I was at a friend's house, it told her that she was lying, that it could see me listening to her talking in my bedroom doorway.
After that, we got rid of the house phone. Mom and Dad never explained to anyone why. But I knew, and so did my friends, to whom I told everything that had happened in those few days. Some family members as well as a few of my parent's friends thought my parents were weird for this, but they got along just fine without the phone, communicating mostly through email. All I know is, it's been ten years, and we still haven't heard that creepy fucking whisper again. I hope we never do...
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