The Midnight Caller

The phone would ring every night at midnight; nobody was ever on the other end. Up until one night, I answered.

The first call arrived exactly one week following my arrival at the old Victorian on Maple Street. From the brink of sleep, a loud ring sliced through the nocturnal calm, shocking me. Fumbling in the dark, I responded groggily, "Hello?" only to be confronted with emptiness—not even the politeness of breathing or background sounds. just nothing.

That happened once more the following evening. Midnight as specified on the dot, the same empty line.

After the fifth straight night, I started to expect it, even setting an alert to be sure I wouldn't miss it. I tried everything: demanding responses, threatening to call the police, and being quiet myself. Not one thing worked. The call would arrive, I would respond, and after thirty seconds of nothingness, the line would go dead.

The rational side of my brain proposed a basic answer—a system glitch or an automated telemarketer with defective code. Given the history of the house, the less logical part murmured more dark ideas. The real estate agent had only mentioned that the previous owners had left "rather suddenly," which seemed curiously evasive.

Two weeks in, I started to sense observation. When I was alone by myself, the floorboards groaned. My peripheral vision seemed to see shadows changing. And always, always the midnight call.

I asked a tech-savvy acquaintance who advised I log the calls. "Sometimes equipment can pick up frequencies the human ear can not," she said.

Recording device ready that evening, I waited. Midnight came, and the phone rang just on demand. I responded, pushed record, and then waited through the known quiet. My blood raced cold when I went over the tape.

There, hardly perceptible within layers of stillness: "Help me. I am still here."

That night, sleep eluded me. The following day, I dug at the local library into the past of the house. That chilled me to the very bone. Eleanor Winters, a young woman thirty years ago, vanished without a trace. Her last known place of residence. This same house. Her fiancé, who said she had left him, had been the previous owner. There was never any body found.

That evening, I sat by the phone surrounded by every light in the house blazing, a notepad, and a voice recorder, and when midnight arrived, I was ready, not only responding.

"Eleanor?" I asked softly to the recipient.

The stillness grew more intense, suddenly, quite clearly: "He's still here too."

The line failed, but something had changed. The air seemed weighty and electrically charged. Then I heard footsteps, slow and deliberate, coming from the upstairs chamber I always kept locked since something about it seemed inappropriate.

I ought to have taken off. Any reasonable individual would have left the house, never turning around. But compassion and questions anchored me right there. Eleanor needed aid, and somehow she had selected me over the line separating life and death.

Declaring I intended to remodel the master bedroom, I contacted a contractor the following day. "We'll need to tear up these floorboards," I stated nonchalantly, gesturing to the precise area where, based on my nocturnal talk with Eleanor, I would locate the proof.

Two hours later, the contractor phoned the police.

Along with a diary describing Eleanor's terror of her progressively possessive fiancé, they discovered her remains buried under the floorboards. The case was reopened, and following forensic evidence kept with Eleanor's remains, the man who had resided in my house for thirty years was arrested within weeks.

The phone calls stopped thereafter as well. The home seemed lighter, like a long-held breath at last being let out. Sometimes I feel as though the sound of the ancient house settling at night or the rustle of the drapes whispers "thank you."

Still, I have the phone right by my bed. Exactly in case.

Those who have been suppressed sometimes just need someone ready to listen.