THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: CHARLIE IS LOST (Patreon)

Snow rips by, outside my window, looking like some green screen trick when the phone rings for the fourteenth time. The phone rings and then stops, mid-ring like an interruption in the line, before ringing again, and for too long. One long BRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPP. My hand hovers over it for a moment. On TV, a face the size of a billboard in my vision—pimples and yellowed teeth—moves in silence. Muted.

I pick up the phone and flip it open. It beeps. The battery is low. I fish out the charging cable and plug it in and lean in so the plug doesn't come out of the wall, hunched over. 

"Mike? Is that you? Mike? Pick up." It's him. Staticky and drifting in and out, but him. Odd, wavering tones play under his voice, rising and falling in arcs like the surf crashing at the shore.  

"Charlie?" I say before I can help myself. It's the same voice and the same words as last time. It's Charlie, again. Again and again. Charlie is gone. Charlie is on the phone. It's Charlie. Hey, Charlie's on the phone. Everyone. It's Charlie.

"Mike. I think...it's here." Same words but the way he says them indicates that Charlie can't hear me. Which of course, makes complete sense considering Charlie's dead. I saw the body. I was at the funeral. But of course, that was before the phone calls. 

I know what's next, too. 

"Mike. You need to tell Lizzie, I'm sorry. Tell her that...Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Same sounds of running. Then the scream which I hear before I hear it again. The one I recorded the ninth or tenth time Charlie—who is dead—called. It's a scream I can listen to at any time, thank you very much. It's in my head, forever.  

"Charlie? Hello?" The words come out of my mouth like they were on a string. One after another, plop, plop. Even though after the second call I realized there was no way for him to hear me. He doesn't answer, of course. He's too busy dying, again.

Something gets him, and I try not to think about what. I saw it, once, I think, on the grainy video of a gas station in Arkansas. A shadow the size of a hatchback which knuckle walked like an ape, but an ape whose limbs had reversed their joints. Once, it looked at the camera, and there was a single beam-like reflection in the center of its too-small head. The guy from the University took one look at the video, snorted laughter and said "nice one." I left it at that.

Or so I thought.

Charlie went out that night and didn't come back. He was found on the highway the next day. The rest of him came in in dribs and drabs as time went on. The only upshot was he wasn't a Fed, he was a reporter. Otherwise, the entire state would be crawling with FBI.  

We were recalled shortly after that and told it was all need-to-know and of course, we didn't need to know. You learn in time what a blessing that call can be. Hallelujah. Then, blessed silence for nearly a month.

Then. 27 days later. The first call. Now, the fourteenth. In the dark. Alone. Talking to a dead man. Or being talked to by a dead man, at least.

Then disconnection. Dial tone. I pop the burner phone in half with a grunt, and it does silent and powers down, wrecked. I imagine Charlie calling my unconfigured voicemail. Talking. Begging. Dying. Over and over again. 

And what if I called him back?