Ad Nauseam (20 page)

She jotted the number down on a post-it note and carried it back to the dining room, retrieving her cell phone from the counter.

The phone rang four times before a machine answered, playing a pleasant male voice with soft wind chimes in the background.

“You have reached Dominik’s Dark Arts. I’m sorry, but I will be out of town for the weekend. Normal store hours will resume on Monday. Have a Dark Day.”

Emily waited for the beep before leaving her message.

“Hi Dominik, this is Emily Haven. There seems to have been a mix up and a package meant for you was left on my doorstep. I will keep hold of it for the weekend so nothing happens to it. Please call me at your earliest convenience and we will figure out how to rectify the situation.” She left her cell number, said goodbye to the machine, and hung up.

At least that was over. It was Friday, so she would have the whole weekend to work on her projects before possibly having to make the long trek into the city. Heading back to the office, she thought about the name Dominik Bettancourt, wondering where she had heard it before. Shrugging it off, Emily started her work for the day.

She soon forgot all about the box on her table.

***

Emily Haven was the founder and executive editor of Night Haven Books, a small publishing house she had built from the ground up, spending the majority of her thirties making it a success. Now in its tenth year of publishing, the company had earned a respected recognition in the field and won some awards for superior achievement by a small publishing house. Employing thirty part-time editors from all over the country, she used email and the internet to put together books and a print-on-demand press to put those books into online bookstores. Two of her contracted authors had recently made the bestseller list and business couldn’t be better. Her list of projects was long and always kept her awake late into the night.

Shortly after midnight, Emily sat at her desk, putting the finishing touches on an anthology she was formatting. The duplex was silent, the family next door asleep. Though it was a nice neighborhood and an expensive house, she could still hear the goings on next door when the kids were particularly rambunctious or their television was turned up too loud. She had even been embarrassed to hear them fight on a couple of occasions.

The sound of telephone startled her. Emily looked at her cell phone even though it was a regular ring she heard, not the jazzy ringer her cell was set to. She hadn’t owned a landline in years.

It’s too loud to be coming from next door,
she thought.

Emily stood up and walked down the hall, the ringing growing louder as she went. Turning on the dining room light, she looked at the battered box on her table. The ringing seemed to be coming from within. Loathe to open someone else’s mail, but also afraid the noise might wake the children next door, Emily was unsure of how to proceed.

There must be a cell phone in there. Maybe I could just slit the tape and shut the thing off. Then tape it back up again with no one the wiser.

Grabbing a steak knife out of the block on the counter, she sat down at the table and stared at the box for a moment, willing it to be silent. It continued to ring, the shrill noise loud in the calm night. She was going to have to open it. Emily sighed and went to work, using the tip of the blade to carefully puncture the tape and slice it away. Just as she opened the flaps, the box gave a final ring and fell silent. She considered just closing it back up.

What if it starts ringing again? Well, it’s already open.

Emily reached gingerly into the box, encountering not a cell phone as she had expected, but something much larger. She grabbed it and pulled it out carefully, setting it on the counter. She was half right, it was indeed a phone, but one like she had never seen before. Roughly the size of an old rotary phone, the squat base appeared to be fashioned from a human skull, two milky grey stones glued into the eye sockets, and a realistic set of teeth grinned at her.

Resting on two brackets which were screwed into the top of the skull was the handset, half of a thigh bone with two disks affixed to the ends as a mouth and earpiece. The handset was attached to the body by what looked like a heavy braid of dark hair. She lifted it up and traced her fingers across the smooth surfaces. Obviously it couldn’t be real bone, that wouldn’t be legal, but the artist had done a great job of making the resin look authentic, down to the pale yellow hue and small pits across the surface. There were a couple of teeth missing, the eye sockets deep and dark behind the semi-transparent stones.

There was no way the thing could’ve really worked, with no jack to plug a phone line into, and no numbers or dial on the face, but it would certainly be a cool conversation piece for whoever owned it.

Emily wished for a second that it was hers; it would make a fine addition to her collection of strange artifacts in her office. It would look right at home with the hideous dolls, monster busts, and replicas of wooden stakes and silver bullets. She lifted the phone to put it back in the box, then nearly dropped it as it let out a shrill ring.

“What the fuck?” Setting the phone gently on the counter, Emily stared in disbelief as the gray stones in the eye sockets glowed an eerie red, fading and sparking in time with the shrill sound of the ringing phone.

No way.
She thought, wondering for a moment if she had fallen asleep while editing and was still slumped over her keyboard, having a strange dream.
It’s not even plugged in.

Emily cautiously picked up the handset, holding it up to her ear in a way that it didn’t actually touch her face.

“Hello?”

There was a heavy hiss of static on the line before a gravelly male voice responded.

“Emily? Is that you, baby?”

A sob lodged in her throat. It was impossible.

“Daddy?”

“Oh baby! I miss you. It’s been so long and I’m so lonely.”

Hot tears gathered in her eyes, her knuckles white where she gripped the handset. She knew without a doubt it was her father’s voice. It had been a quick and terrible death eight years ago when they found the lung cancer. Four months from diagnosis to burial, and she missed and grieved for him every day since.

“Oh Daddy. I miss you, too. I think about you every day. I wonder if you can see me, if you’re proud of me. I love you so much.”

“Proud of you? Are you kidding, girl? How could I possibly be proud of you?”
His voice changed, darker, harsher.

Emily froze, her mouth moving but no sounds emerging as she struggled to make sense of the heartless words coming from her kind and loving and
dead
father.

“Just what the hell have you done to be proud of, you worthless bitch? Look at you. No man, no family. What good is a woman with no babies? Does your success keep you warm at night? Did you want to grow up to be a lonely old woman with no one to fuck? You sit alone all night, typing away at your damned computer, your cold, hateful womb empty and worthless. I bet your fucking ovaries are shriveled black grapes.”

“Daddy?”

“Don’t worry, Emily. There’s a place in hell for you. For all you worthless, career-minded bitches who think you’re too good for a man. To goddamned high-class to squeeze a baby out of your rotten crotches. You’ll love it here. You’re gonna learn what a woman is really good for. They’re gonna fuck you in ways you never knew they could. Maybe I’ll take my turn and give those dried up ovaries a stir!”

The skull phone made a loud crash as it hit the wall, knocking a decent hole in the plaster, but Emily no longer cared if she woke the neighbors.

***

“Calm down, Em. There’s got to be some logical explanation. Someone’s just fucking with you is all.”

“I don’t know how.” Emily drew a steadying breath, trying hard not to cry anymore. She had done plenty of that already as she relayed the horrifying details of the night before to Layla, her only sister. Her cell phone felt hot against her face.

“I know you said you looked, but it was late. There had to be some hidden battery compartment or something. Some remote microphone in the thing.”

“So how did they know what Dad’s voice sounded like, Layla?”

“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe you were just thinking about Dad. We all miss him, honey. Maybe you were just missing him extra bad and your mind made you hear what you wanted to hear.”

“Well I sure as shit didn’t want to hear
that.”
Emily snapped.

“I know. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s a sick prank. You must’ve pissed someone off. Where’s the phone now? Maybe you should take it to the police.” Layla was always a calming influence, had a way of making those around her feel at ease regardless of the situation.

“I threw it in the box and drove into the city. Took me two hours to find the place in the middle of the night, but I did. Left it right on the sidewalk in front of the guy’s store. I don’t care if it gets stolen. Whoever takes it will probably bring it back, anyway. I should’ve never called that guy and left the message. Now he’s gonna get pissed at me for not keeping it. Fucking store looked creepy too, all kinds of voodoo and witchcraft shit in the windows.”

“Hey now. You’re into that shit.” Layla laughed and soon Emily found herself chuckling as well.

“I don’t
believe
in it. I just like scary movies and horror novels. It’s not the same as living it.”

“Well, Big Sis, maybe you need a vacation. Robby and the kids and I would love to have you.”

With the subject changed, they talked for a few minutes about how long it had been since they’d seen one another and the cost of plane tickets from New York City to L.A. Layla refused to let Emily go until she had extracted a tentative promise that when things slowed down, Emily would visit them in California. Though she tried to remain upbeat after the conversation, Emily couldn’t help but feel awful for the rest of the day. The echo of her father’s words seemed louder when she compared her sister’s family to her own solitary life. It certainly wasn’t the first time she had questioned the decisions she’d made, but this time they seemed to have more of a dire relevance.

***

Emily woke from a nightmare she couldn’t hold onto. Something about hell and babies screaming. Children who ran from her when she tried to save them from the flames. She lay in her bed, disoriented in the darkness for a moment before the sound that woke her came again.

Ringing.

From the kitchen.

“No way. No fucking way,” she croaked as she slid out of bed and crept down the hall. Emily knew what she would find when she turned on the light, but was powerless to contain a shriek when she saw the phone sitting on the counter, its eyes glowing red with every ring.

Backing away, she kept her eyes on it, not looking away as her back encountered the heavy front door. She felt if the locks were still engaged. They were, and the chain was still in place.

None of this is happening. I’m dreaming this time. There’s no way it’s back.

Eyes burning with a demonic light, it continued to trill, as if mocking her. Emily remembered Layla’s assurance that this was a cruel prank, and her fear turned to anger at whoever could be vile enough to do this to her. Before she lost her nerve, she marched over to the counter and grabbed the handset, yelling into the mouth piece.

“You’re not my fucking father!”

There was a hiss of static once again, the voice on the other side sounding amused when it replied.

“Of course I’m not your father, babe. It’s Ricky.”

Emily froze, her blood cold in her veins. It sounded like Ricky. It really did. But like her father, Ricky was dead.

“Prove it.”

“Oh baby. I know things about you that no one else does. Your first time was with me in my parents’ bed when they left town for the weekend. You made me wait a year and a half before you gave in. You cried when I was done.”

It was Ricky.

Ricky had been Emily’s boyfriend from Sophomore year of high school until her Freshman year of college. He was a grade behind her, and she had thought they could bear to be parted for one year until he graduated and joined her at the state university. It all came to an end when he plowed his sports car into the back of a semi-truck at sixty miles per hour, taking his head off and severely injuring her sister Layla, who had leaned over at just the right moment to retrieve a can of pop that had spilled on the floor.

Emily had wondered for a long time if something might have been going on between Layla and Ricky, but her sister swore that he was just giving her a ride home from cheerleading practice. In the end, Emily chose to believe her sister, though in weak moments she still wondered.

“What do you want?”

“Wow, babe. You sure don’t seem too happy to hear from me. Of course, you always were a frigid cunt.”

“I’m not listening to this. Do you hear me? I’m hanging up, you sick bastard. I
will not listen to this!”
Emily yelled into the phone, rage and fear making her shake.

“Oh yes you will! You will because you want to know. You NEED to know what happened. You will listen until I’m done talking, bitch. You think we would’ve gotten married, don’t you? You think we were some perfect fucking couple. Well, we weren’t, Em. We never were. I was putting the stones to baby sis for a year before you even let me get a finger in you. You were a cold bitch, but Layla was hot for it. That little slut couldn’t wait to betray you. You think you’re so close? Little sister was slobbering all over my cock every fucking time you turned your back. And you know what? She was good at it, too. Better than you’ll ever be.”

Emily surprised herself by gently replacing the receiver in the cradle. She looked around the room with a calmness she didn’t feel. After rummaging in some drawers, she finally found something she could use. Just like the night before, she packed up the phone and put the box in the trunk of her car, though this time she headed away from the city. After some time, she pulled over alongside a vacant field, leaving her hazard lights flashing.