It's For You-Hou! (a short horror story)

(Dedicated to Stephen King's Christine.)


Amy ran to answer the phone before it rang off. Too late.

"Damn!"  she cursed, and for the millionth time wished that she'd bought that answering machine.

The telephone was new. Amy had bought it yesterday, but had not had the chance to use it yet as she'd only just installed it at half past two that afternoon. She'd already heard it ring three times before, but had not been around to answer any of the calls; she had either been on the toilet, in the bath, or in the garden.

Amy now stared at the phone and willed it to ring for the fifth time that day. She would not move this time.  She would stay right where she was, sitting on the second step at the foot of the staircase, no matter how long it took.

Her stomach growled. She ignored it. To take her mind off the persistent hunger, she studied the phone with satisfaction. She'd thought it was the best looking phone in the shop which was, of course, why she'd bought it. It was one of those weird, new-age designs; completely see-through with lights that flashed inside it every time it rang. Everyone she knew hated it, including her mother and boyfriend. They thought it looked crude, (her mother had even used the word 'raucous') which according to Amy, was absolutely ridiculous. How on earth could a telephone look anything other than a telephone? 

Tough, she thought. It's my phone and I like it. I'm finally living by myself after twenty-six years and I'll buy whatever I want.

She'd also wanted to buy the matching answering machine that came with it, but she didn't have the money and she hated answering machines. In fact, she despised talking to answering machines, and machinery of all makes and models seemed to despise her too.  She immediately remembered the time when a paper shredder had proceeded to eat her dress, so much so that she was forced to walk out of the office half naked. Let's hope that never happens again, she thought, grimacing at the humiliating memory.

Fed up of waiting for a call that was never going to come, Amy headed towards the phone and reached for the receiver. It wouldn't budge.

"That's weird," she exclaimed aloud, and tried to yank it up again, this time using twice as much strength. The receiver stubbornly refused to move.

"It must be stuck," she said, not caring that there was no one there to hear her, and this time went to pick up the whole telephone off the pine, matt-finished writing desk that it was resting on.

"Jesus Christ!" 

The telephone -- base, receiver and all -- would not move.

"Ridiculous, stupid, freaky phone," she muttered under her breath, not knowing whether to be annoyed or surprised. Actually, she was confused, and for some inane reason, a little scared. God knows why -- the phone was merely stuck (perhaps it had caught itself on something) and as a perfectly rational result, she couldn't pick it up. Nevertheless, a mental picture of vicious paper shredders and other fiendish machinery inadvertently crept back into her mind. It was as if the phone and the desk had moulded into one unit. Suddenly, the phone didn't look that good anymore. Come to think of it, it reminded her of something ... something familiar. She couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Last time I buy anything from that bloody shop."

"Brrrrrrrrrr!"

"Oh no, don't ring now, " pleaded Amy as she frantically, desperately, tried to prise up the receiver.  "Come on!!"

"Brrrrrrrrrr!"

A familiar feeling of utter irritation cascaded through her entire being as she ascended the desk, straddled the phone and pulled with every last morsel of strength she had left in her, knowing that she looked preposterous.

The telephone flew off the table as light as a feather, and so did Amy, landing on her back and cracking her skull against the leg of a stool.

"FUCK!"  she roared, as shivers of pain marched up and down her spine. For one horrifying second she thought she'd broken it, but then realized that if she had she would be feeling no pain at all.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!" It was only then that she noticed the telephone was still ringing in all its pompous glory. 

"Piss off!" she cried, staring pointedly at it, and slowly rose until she was on all fours. Her head felt as if it was about to explode from that colossal whack it had taken and the last thing she wanted to hear right now was the stupid telephone ringing.

Picking it up in both hands, she hurled it against the wall with an outraged cry.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!"

What?! It was still alive? Amy, still on all fours, scrambled furiously towards the socket, clenched the telephone wire in the fist of her left hand and wrenched the thing out of the wall.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!  Brrrrrrrrrr!"

She froze. Impossible! It was NOT possible. This cannot happen. The laws of physics defied it from happening. But it was happening. The telephone, which was not a cordless or mobile phone and had to be plugged into the mains for it to work, was ringing.

A cold fear ran through her and she was vaguely reminded of waking up one stormy night when she was five, sweaty and tangled up in her bedsheets, from a flesh-crawling, nail-biting, Bogeyman  nightmare which she had thought catastrophical at the time.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!"

Amy sat physically motionless, her eyes wide in horror as her brain searched for a simple, obvious, logical explanation: it was the Bogeyman in her nightmare disguised as a telephone so that it could inconspicuously reside in her conscious reality and patiently wait for the opportunity to kill her. "NO!  Don't be so ridiculous -- it was just a nightmare. There's no such thing as the Bogeyman!"

Silence.

The phone had stopped ringing.

Amy whipped her aching head round, startled at the sudden quiet around her. In contrast to the loud, constant ringing, the silence was almost deafening.  She snapped out of the trance she was in and for one crazy moment wondered whether the last 5 minutes had been just another one of her nightmares. Of course, she hadn't had a nightmare for years.

Cautiously, she moved towards the telephone. A passer-by looking into her front window would have seen the baffling sight of a dishevelled young woman creeping across her living room, resembling a ferocious tiger hunting for food and trying not to scare away her victim. As she got closer to her prey, the roaring silence seemed to lessen until all she could hear and feel was the banging of her own heart against her chest and the blood surging through her veins.

She stopped thirty inches away from the phone ... and ... pounced!

The phone jumped away.

"Aaeeegh," a soft, but high-pitched, strangled cry escaped Amy's lips. This she was not expecting. "Oh my God, I bought the phone from hell!" she whispered.

No sooner had the words been spoken than the phone scurried across the carpet on all four of its corners towards her.

She screamed. An almighty, terrifying scream that sent the next door neighbours' dogs into a series of frenzied barking.

She ran backwards, not daring to take her eyes away from the unbelievable, horrific and ludicrous image by her feet. The phone was fast. It reminded her of some sort of animal or insect, or maybe even one of those yapping Pekinese breed of dog that was completely covered in long hair so that they looked like walking mops when they skipped around your ankles.

Suddenly and oh, so antagonizingly, the phone started to ring again, flashing its lights in Amy's face.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!"

The sound seemed louder and shriller than before. The phone was teasing her, she'd swear her life on it.  The relentless ringing was laughter; if it had had a face, it would have been smiling mirthlessly.

Then it leapt. No warning, no stopping for composure, nothing. It just leapt straight at Amy who was still screaming insanely, her face contorted into a mask of terror. In mid-air, the telephone lifted its receiver, stretched out its coils and continued to fly at the screaming, frozen Amy. It collided with her at full speed, wrapped its coils around her neck and hit her across the face with the receiver at an incredible force. She felt her left cheekbone cave in and found herself swallowing her own blood as the phone squeezed the coil tighter and tighter around her neck. With its body, the phone bounced on Amy's face, successfully smashing her nose and sending spurts of blood flying in every direction.

She gasped, forcing her lungs to take in air, but only managing to swallow more blood. Amy's fingernails groped at the coils around her neck, desperately trying to pull them loose, but the telephone contained remarkable strength and in her vain attempts to save herself, she only succeeded in scratching gashes into her neck that ran deeper and deeper until it was just a bloody mass of stringy flesh.

Part of her brain refused to believe this was happening, another part couldn't believe this was happening, and the third part thought of the many various articles she had scoffed at about UFO's, poltergeists, telekinesis ... the Bogeyman. She thought of all those dark, dark nights walking home by herself when she had feared of being raped or murdered, or both. But never by a fucking homicidal telephone!

She could still hear the neighbours' dogs barking, but the sound was muffled -- it seemed to come from a great, great distance, and all at once she was painfully aware of  being sucked backwards through a tunnel, through time, into her worst and most feared nightmares. 

Just before the bouncing telephone gleefully stifled all the life out of her, she had one final thought ... I wish I'd bought that bloody answering machine.

copyright © 1997, Dianna Hardy.
All rights reserved.

First published October, 1999, in The Dream Zone #4, (independent magazine) edited and published by Paul Bradshaw http://dreamzoneblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/dream-zone.html