“Are you sure we’re not lost, Jason?”
I took a gander at my pregnant wife, Marissa, before turning
right for the third time. Unlike many of our peers who married young and became
pregnant before they hit their thirties, Marissa and I met one another late in
life and married in our thirties.
Doctors and friends alike told us we wouldn’t be able to get
pregnant and that we should settle for an adoption. After trying for five years
without any results, we gave up all hope and prepared the paperwork to adopt a toddler.
When Marissa became with child, the last thing I expected
was this growing trepidation in the pit of my stomach. I never considered how
attached I would become to our unborn child. With each passing day, I learnt
something new about myself and understood with what heart my single mother raised
me in the ghetto.
But the blessing didn’t last for long.
A phone call came through in the dead of night. Jordan, my big
brother, said Mum had taken ill and probably wouldn’t make it through the
night. Marissa insisted on coming along seeing the distraught state I was in.
We were halfway through the countryside and what should’ve
been only a one-hour drive to the southeast. But when we passed the two-hour mark,
both of us knew that something was amiss.
I knew this route like the back of my hand. I grew up in the
countryside and knew my way around these parts of the country better than
anyone. But that night, something or someone hindered me from finding my way
out of the vicious loop.
“What does the GPS say?” I said.
“I’m not sure…”
“Put in the address again.”
“Like this?”
I briefly peeked at the phone screen. Since this was the
countryside and we were in the middle of a single-lane road through the
meadows, our surroundings were pitch-black.
“Delete the ‘e’. No, keep the ‘s’, just—hold on.”
When she typed it wrong again, I seized the phone without
letting my eyes off the windshield. As I typed the last letter, something in the
middle of the road caught my attention and I hit the brakes.
Lurching forwards, I looked up to take another look at what
I could only describe as a huge tree blocking off the route ahead.
Catching her breath, Marissa, “Why’d you stop? Jason?”
“Stay here.”
The first thing that arrested me was the clean cut. Someone
barricaded the roadway on purpose. As soon as this thought crossed my mind, I
looked around myself in the shadowy depths and tried to locate anything out of
the ordinary in the wooded vicinity.
“What’s going—”
“No, stay there!” I said without looking at her. “Lock the
doors and stay put.”
I saw nothing that could explain the angst taking hold of
every fibre of my being. The only thing I could tell for sure at the time was
that I needed to protect my family.
Something was in the offing.
Typing in 911, unsure of what to say to the operator, something
moved past me and disappeared into the wilted thickets. I paused and held my
breath.
A maniacal laughter reverberated throughout the vicinity. I
spun around in place, trying to locate the source of the strange laughter. How
many were they?
I stumbled backwards as I pressed the ‘call’ button, careful
not to make any sounds and make it back to the car in one piece.
“This is 911. What’s the address of your emergency?”
“I- I don’t know, I’m not sure. We passed the highway an
hour ago, I think.”
“Where were you headed, Jason?”
“We were—I’m sorry?”
“Isn’t this Jason speaking?”
“What’s—”
The woman’s voice morphed into a deep, slow tone.
“What have you done, Jason?”
“W- what is this? Some kind of nationwide joke?”
“What… have… you… done… Ja-son?”
I glanced at the phone screen. What the heck? The phone
number on the screen was a jumbled mess of random letters and symbols.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
The deep voice now turned shrill, like a disturbing cross
between a moan and a scream.
“Ja-son,
Ja-son, Ja-son…”
The phone slipped through my grasp, but the voice continued
to ring in my ears. Blood gushed out of my mouth and seeped out through the
corners of my lips.
I bled from every hole and pore. The crimson liquid, sticky
and warm to the touch, soaked me wet at an unprecedented speed.
I gasped. The voices faded away. Buzzing, another phone call
came through from an unknown caller. I picked up the phone and observed it ring
for a few seconds.
“Hel…lo?”
“Where have you been—Jason? What’s wrong? Did something
happen?”
I looked over my shoulder upon hearing her voice on the
other end of the line.
My legs gave way under me and I fell with the phone clutched
tight in my hand.
The disfigured body, cold and stiff, stared right back at me.
She held her belly. The look in her hollow eyes was that of a woman in great
distress through the windshield.
“Jason? Are you there?”
As I placed the phone in my ear, the skeletal figure gasped
to life and spotted me.
“Ma… rissa?”
“Is everything okay? You’ve been acting so strange lately.
Did something happen between you and Jordan?”
The living dead crawled out of the car.
“W- what do you mean?”
“You stormed out in the middle of the night and didn’t
return for weeks. Something’s different about you, I can tell…”
“Different?”
“You keep talking to yourself and…”
The cadaver drew closer. It was bleeding from its legs.
“And?”
The voice on the other end of the line faded away.
“Marissa? Hello—”
The deep voice, which sounded muffled and as if underwater,
returned.
“What have you done, Ja-son? What have you done to
our ba-by?”
I looked up as a shadow fell over me and shrouded everything
in shadows. The creature’s belly ripped apart from within. Something pierced
through my throat – something that lurked inside its bleeding womb.
As I collapsed into the pool of blood and convulsed, the
voice on the phone kept growing louder and shriller, purposely trying to jog my
memory and make me remember what I had no recollection of.
When I took my last breath, everything returned to normal.
The phone call ended.
The whispers faded away.
And… the beat of my wretched heart picked up.
Coming back to life a second time, I stirred awake with a
gasp and glanced at the clock. It read four past one o’clock in the witching
hour. When a minute passed, a phone call came through and made my chest rise
and fall in an unnatural rhythm.
It was Jordan.
I didn’t answer the phone.
When it finally stopped ringing, I shifted my gaze to Marissa,
who slept soundly beside me. I snug close to her and wrapped my arms around her,
placing kisses on her delicate shoulder.
I missed my mother’s last moments. She apparently told
Jordan not to call me for some reason, although he ended up calling that one
failed time after she fell asleep.
When we met up at the maternity ward two months later, my
brother told me something that would forever stay with me.
Quote, Mum kept telling me to not call you. When I asked why,
she said you’d know the reason, end quote.
Was this a mother’s intuition at play?
As I held my son and he wrapped his tiny hands around my
thumb, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of ache within my soul.
That night, when I picked up that phone call, did Mum know that something wicked had set its eyes on me and my family?
